Delcan Ruins, underground.

“Damn it!”

The Mage King exploded with magic as he dragged in a ragged breath.

The fortress, tangled like a vast anthill, shook with a deafening crack.

“Please, calm yourself. If it collapses like this—”

“It isn’t complete?”

A vast inner chamber beneath the ruins.

Once the dark creatures filling the place had been cleared away, a magic circle drawn in blood was revealed, covering the floor, the walls, the ceiling—everything.

When he first saw it, the Mage King had thought at last that his wish had been fulfilled.

If he revived the dark mage and took that power for himself, he would be able to plunge this land back into war.

And then he would kill everything that defied him, until in the end he stood as the absolute ruler of this world.

“And yet it’s unfinished!”

But it had been nothing of the sort.

The magic circle was lacking something.

No matter how much power he poured into it, there remained a fatal flaw—something that would not fill.

“We’ll move the entire magic circle to the palace. We’ll gather the knowledge of every high-rank mage and elder and complete the final formula without fail— Ghk!”

The Mage King smiled with a savage twist of the mouth and seized the high-rank mage by the throat.

“No. No, that’s not it!”

His eyes flickered with madness.

“There’s a faster way than that, isn’t there?”

“Kgh—w-what—!”

A sweet fruit laid before his eyes.

The moment he realized it was nothing but a painted feast, his reason vanished, and unbearable fury and impatience surged through him.

But he knew the quickest way to resolve it.

“I was going to wait for the mark to grow... but I can’t do that any longer.”

He had to capture the seventh and force that child to complete this magic circle somehow.

Just one thing.

Just one final formula was all he needed!

Resolved, the Mage King licked his lips in agitation.

“I need to go to Babilon. At once.”

“What? Th-that’s far too dangerous! If His Majesty the Emperor of Babilon notices you... it will cause serious trouble for the alliance. And shouldn’t moving the magic circle here take priority? The amount is so enormous that transporting it alone would take time—”

Smack.

The high-rank mage’s head snapped to the side.

The Mage King curved his eyes in a soft smile.

“If you keep saying things that stupid, won’t that make me sad? Do you really think I would be so easily discovered by creatures lower than insects?”

His eyes gleamed with a madness that had burnt reason away.

“......”

“Call the second. This sort of record management suits that child perfectly. Leave it to that one, and the rest of you follow me.”

“...Y-yes, understood...”

The high-rank mage withdrew, saying he would send a message bird to the palace.

Left alone, the Mage King flexed his fingers.

If only I’d managed to inscribe the mark on the seventh perfectly, I wouldn’t be wasting time with this nonsense.

The power inside that child.

That had always been the problem.

Of course, he had succeeded in taking it, and because it was power that would become wholly his with time, he had grown careless.

To think that insolent little thing dared to run.

The problem of runaway mages in the Kingdom was nothing new. But most of them had been vermin whose existence hardly mattered, so the Mage King had paid little attention.

The mark was the symbol of absolute obedience offered to the Mage King.

But using that mark to strip a mage of their will, or control them, was a separate matter entirely. That required a tremendous amount of magic.

Until now, if I left them alone, the tracking mages caught them well enough.

Or else they exhausted themselves while fleeing and died on their own.

But of all his “children,” the seventh was the first to flee the Kingdom.

If it had been any of the others, he would have accepted the loss of magic and dragged them back through the mark.

But he could not do that with the seventh.

Because of the power that child possessed.

I should never have waited for the mark to grow.

He ground his teeth, sunk in thought, when the high-rank mage who had just left appeared again.

For some reason, the man’s face looked uneasy.

“What is it?”

“Well... from the second, at the palace...”

The Mage King tilted his head slightly.

“There’s no response.”

“...No response?”

“It seems the second has left the palace...”

“......”

“Perhaps... did you assign some other task?”

A dangerous gleam flashed through the Mage King’s eyes.

*****

“Your mark is growing, isn’t it?”

The second spoke with the expression of someone who already knew everything. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

“That’s because Father personally searched through ancient magic and inscribed a mark on you in a form completely different from ours.”

The marks borne by the mages were usually inscribed by elders or high-rank mages of the palace.

It was not especially difficult to inscribe a mark, and the Mage King hated wasting his own magic on such things.

“But when they inscribed your mark... I heard it wasn’t easy. As if some enormous power were interfering.”

“......”

“So in the end, the best they could manage was a form that would slowly grow and eat away at you.”

Naturally, Wigeria was the first thing that came to mind.

Of course, the Mage King’s power was far too strong for Wigeria to block the mark completely.

After all, he was the strongest mage in the Kingdom.

“All right. I’ll transfer it.”

The second pointed awkwardly at a blank sheet of paper with her finger.

At once, the writing inscribed beneath her collarbone flowed in ripples down her arm and etched itself onto the page.

She held the parchment out to me.

“Here, t—”

“Oh, thanks!”

I snatched it away.

“I’ve got it, so hurry up and go back! What are you going to do if the Mage King notices?”

I had assumed she came here under the Mage King’s orders...

But if this was the second acting alone, that changed things.

The Mage King can’t find out this ended up in my hands.

I hurriedly started taking in the contents of the document. There was a lot.

“...You know I understand Father’s every movement better than anyone. He’s so distracted by the ruins right now that he won’t call for me for weeks. More importantly... you’ll keep your promise, right?”

“Hmph!”

I snorted lightly.

The reason the second had brought this document to me

was simple.

“When you complete the magic circle that breaks the mark, erase mine too.”

“What?”

“I... I don’t want to die like that. Like the fourth, without even knowing why.”

She looked barely twenty.

A mage who had always stood to the right of the throne with an emotionless face.

That was all the second had ever been to me—something like part of the air of the palace, or one of its pillars.

“Wow, you really are pathetic. You sat safe inside the palace all this time, and now suddenly the Mage King {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} scares you, so you want me to free you from the mark?”

Even at my cutting tone, she only bit down hard on her lip.

“Sorry, but that’s how I survive. Not everyone gets to live by making righteous choices all the time... It’s not as if I have some special power like you do...”

“Don’t act tragic—”

BWOOOOOOT—

The elephant trunk, furious on my behalf, smacked her on the cheek. Tap tap tap.

“Absolutely not!”

Wow. I had just realized that getting really angry improved lung capacity instantly!

“You’re just selfish!”

The reason she had followed the Mage King was probably not loyalty, but parasitism.

The kind who entrusted her life to the strong and obeyed them.

And now she wants to attach herself to me instead?

How annoying!

Still, the document the second had brought was pretty useful.

Anyway, I need to send her back quickly.

My eyes moved rapidly over the document.

What it contained, written in ancient language, was simple.

The circle that inscribed the mark, and the circle that broke it.

The text itself had been twisted into code, but as long as my eyes were glowing red, that was no problem.

The breaking circle... its structure is similar to the circle that inscribes the mark.

Forming the shape of the World Tree,

and then erasing it again.

But the last remaining formula is different from the mark circle?

And instead of information about that final formula, the document went on with a line of tiny nouns.

What was this? They looked like names.

Babiles?

I found one familiar word among them. Then this wasn’t—

not names...

Place names?

Was the last remaining formula located in one of the places listed here?

“But seriously, this is—”

And then, a moment later, I exploded.

“The writing is way too small! What is this?!”

“Sorry... I had to compress it as much as possible to steal it.”

Ugh, my eyes were about to fall out of my head.

Wasn’t there something like a magnifying glass around here?

Sadly, there was not.

Just then, a thought crossed my mind.

Come to think of it, there’s an office in this library full of all kinds of odds and ends, right? Probably...

“All right, let’s go out.”

“Huh?”

“You—just go back already!”

“...What about our promise?”

“Ah, are you a leech? Go!”

The moment I barked that, the second flinched.

“You’ve gotten kind of vicious...”

Anyway, I took the second with me and left the Rare Books Archive.

The library had already closed, so there was no one in the lobby. Liam was off on a date with the biology professor today, after all.

As I shut the door to the Rare Books Archive behind me, I glanced down at the document in my hand.

If you want to erase something, you need a force stronger than the thing itself...

That thought came to me suddenly.

The reason Wigeria had not told me the magic circle that erased the mark.

Maybe it thought my body still couldn’t handle that kind of surging power yet.

I looked down at my small hand.

I had grown since going north—eating well, running in circles around the training grounds, playing hard.

Of course, because of that, the mark had grown too, but as it grew, I had made up my mind that I had to break free of this restraint.

Wigeria, you...

What exactly are you trying to make me do?

Just then—

“Ugh.”

The second suddenly clutched at her throat and collapsed to the floor.

“What is it? Why are you suddenly—”

At the same time, there came a burst of static—the crackle of a circuit opening.

Khalid?

We were supposed to avoid using the communication circuit at the Academy.

[ Ruby! Where are you? The Mage King... ]

He sounded as if he were running. Something kept interfering, swallowing the rest of his voice.

“Hello?”

[ ... ...! ]

What was this?

To make matters worse, the second’s breathing on the floor grew even rougher. And in that moment, a strange sense of wrongness washed over me.

“...Second, you... don’t tell me.”

“Why... is it... this hard to breathe? Is it because... I’m low on magic...?”

She muttered as she dragged down the collar of her shirt.

Watching her, I found myself repeating the very last word Khalid had managed to force out.

“Hey, the Mage King...”

My voice came out tight.

“...Where is the Mage King right now?”

At that, she jerked her head up as if she had been waiting for me to ask.

“Here.”

“...What?”

“On this continent.”

My skull rang, as if someone had struck the back of my head.

The Mage King was a man who had not even taken the field personally during the human-demon war. So of course I had assumed he would still be holed up in the palace this time too—

“Delcan... Ruins. Ugh.”

She clawed obsessively at the reddening mark.

And then it happened.

The second’s mark flared with a dark, blood-red light.

And through that mark, something utterly different from anything before began to flow out.

It was...

“No way...”

My steps faltered backward.

Instinctively, I moved my magic and erased the writing on the document in my hand.

At the same time as I backed away, trying to run—

“Ghk!”

My arm was seized with violent force.

The blue veins that stood out across the second’s hand writhed like living creatures.

A grip strong enough to crush.

Clouded eyes flickering with an eerie light.

“Ah, that hurts—”

“Found you.”