《The Silent Archmage [b1 stubbed]》


 Chapter 1 - Auria

    On October 3, 2019, the world ended. Strange portals that are now recognized as Gates appeared across the world at a rate of almost a million per day, and monsters unlike anything humanity had ever seen creeped out of them in tides. The first Towers rose through the center of every major population center.


    Complex electronics began failing in the immediate aftermath. At the time, the cause was unknown, but we are now aware that this was cause due to the sudden inundation of flux particles¡ªthat which is colloquially referred to as ¡°mana.¡±


    The world ended, but humanity did not. Even as the cities broke, the nations of the world organized responses. Guns, bombs, and baser weapons served as a first line of defense against the monster tides.


    Ten days after the first Gate manifested, groups of humans gained the ability to use what we now call magic.


    Initially, humanity believed these independent groups to be superhuman; blessed, perhaps, by the Gates or Towers. Within weeks, however, the truth began to spread.


    Magic is not strictly supernatural¡ªin fact, it is everything but. It is an observable phenomenon regarding the use and perpetuation of flux particles that enforces action upon matter. Some have called for it to be redefined as a subsection of physics to little avail.


    As the monsters evolved, so did humanity. Our species is nothing if not adaptable, and we rose to the challenge. Magical technology advanced at a rate not seen since the race to the moon. We started winning. The Gates became a secondary threat, the Towers a footnote meant only for those arrogantly foolish enough to try climbing them.


    Inevitably, we reached the point where our greatest enemies were not the monsters but each other. On January 1<sup>st</sup>, 61 AFI (After Flux Integration), World War III began.


    It lasted a grand total of seventy-three days and resulted in over two billion casualties. We feel the effects still.


    Trained summons from the Gates, magically-augmented nuclear bombs, and paragon-class spell formations proved too devastating for even modern humanity, and an uneasy peace formed more out of a mutual understanding that the human race would not survive continued war than any real basis for it.


    It is now 74 AFI. The state of the world has changed so quickly that it does not even faintly resemble the world of two decades ago, let alone pre-FI. Tensions are rising once more. Territory conflicts abound, and every nation continues to stockpile unregistered paragon-class magicians, ignoring the Beijing Accords. The median lifespan of a new military-grade flux user is less than five years, and those who last longer will face hardship beyond human imagination.


    This lecture is not intended to scare you. It is a base representation of what our world is today. If you wish to abandon this life, this is one of the last chances you will get.


    Nobody? Good.


    There is a name for those of us who remain, for those of us who will fight against the dark knowing that a brutal end may wait for us.


    Mage.


    - Opening statement to the class of 74, First National Academy Auria


    #


    The thing they don¡¯t tell you about pseudo-military magical academies in Auria is how boring a threat on your life can be.


    Today was the entrance ceremony, which was a painful necessity for admission into First Academy. If his time with the country had taught Syl anything, it was that they would stand on ceremony even in the face of death.


    It was also the first time that a member of the royal family was going to enter a public magic school, which left him on guard duty.


    He wasn¡¯t sure why she was doing it, to be honest.


    Though Auria operated as an ostensibly democratic monarchy, the royal family was still a high-priority target for any agents of opposing countries, of which there were far too many. The nation was a splinter of what the history books told him had once been the United States of America, and the other remnants were none too friendly towards each other.


    Syl, of course, kept this silent when the princess was next to him. Her last name had been changed for security purposes, but he knew from experience that there was no such thing as perfect information security. Anyone who searched hard enough would find her eventually.


    ¡°It¡¯s the first day,¡± said Bianca Ashwood, perfectly ordinary magician-in-training who was certainly not the child of a paragon-class mage and ninth in line to the Aurian throne. ¡°Aren¡¯t you excited, Syl?¡±


    ¡°No, not particularly. I¡¯m class 3, which means it¡¯s a miracle I¡¯m even here. Even if there¡¯re more resources here than the lower schools, I¡¯m not exactly going to be making use of all of them.¡±


    ¡°I keep telling you that you should have just taken the offer, Syl,¡± she said with all the politeness that being a princess demanded.


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to use royal favor to put myself somewhere I haven¡¯t earned,¡± Syl replied with a sigh. ¡°Are you trying to give us away as fast as possible? What kind of class 1 student would I be? The practical exams showed that I¡¯m not the kind of magician you want to see in the fast-track course. Also, your tone is too measured. Look around you. Nobody human talks like that.¡±


    Only class 1 students and a few class 2s had come so far, but there were a healthy number of them milling about the academy courtyard, walking or sitting around the expansive open space in the center of the castle-like shchool.


    There were separate ceremonies that both of those classes needed to undergo before the full-school one. Beyond that, it was clear that the class 1s were largely from more influential families, and wherever there was influence, there were those who were just barely relevant enough to know they weren¡¯t at the top of the totem pole. Many of the class 2s were split, trying to worm their way into existing class 1 friend groups.


    Syl could respect wanting a better position, but he had none for people abandoning existing connections in pursuit of possible new ones.


    ¡°Please,¡± Bianca said, visibly struggling to adjust her tone to sound more like the casual chatter around them. ¡°You and I both know that if the practicals were any more thorough, you¡¯d be above me in placement.¡±


    Syl shrugged. ¡°They measure important aspects of casting. I didn¡¯t meet the mark on any of them, so it¡¯s only fair.¡±


    In fact, he had done so poorly on the practicals that it was only his perfect score on the written theory aspect of the admission exams that had even qualified him for First. That was nearly unheard of, apparently, which had come as a bit of a surprise when the theory had been so surface-level.


    Almost unconsciously, his hand went to the flux casting device embedded just under the skin of his throat.


    ¡°If you say so, Syl,¡± Bianca said, hands clasped behind her back. ¡°Will you be attending the ceremony?¡±


    ¡°You know I have to,¡± Syl said.


    The entrance ceremony took place in a hall that seated all six hundred new students¡ªa hundred class 1s, three hundred class 2s, and two hundred class 3s, the latter of which Syl was in.


    Six exits, twelve potential points of entry, he thought as he took a seat towards the back. Magical ventilation, windows reinforced but not blurred.


    There were enough countermeasures to prevent basic attempts on student lives, but this was no military fortress. Syl double-checked the FCDs at his wrists, ensuring that they were both active in case of emergency.


    ¡°A little antsy, are we?¡± a voice interrupted his self-check. ¡°Is this seat taken yet?¡±


    Syl looked up to see a red-haired boy a bit younger than him¡ªeighteen or nineteen, maybe. He¡¯d unbuttoned his uniform, and his shockingly messy hair was definitely not up to standard.


    ¡°No,¡± Syl said. ¡°Feel free to take it.¡±


    The messy boy sat down, reclining as much as he could in an auditorium chair, and started fiddling with what looked like a baton. He turned to look at Syl after adjusting it a bit, smiling.


    ¡°Nice to meet you,¡± he said. ¡°Name¡¯s Lyon. Lyon Red. You?¡±


    Syl raised an eyebrow. Red?


    Reds were one of the seven great prismatic families. They were duelists, known for creating some of the most lethal single combat mages of all time. That wasn¡¯t the kind of name that ended up in class 3. Unless¡­


    ¡°Yes, that Red,¡± Lyon answered the unasked question, rolling his eyes. ¡°I¡¯m a bit of a black sheep, one might say. So, who¡¯re you?¡±


    Black sheep. Syl could guess why. Lyon wouldn¡¯t have been allowed to keep the Red name if he had failed his practicals like Syl had, so that meant unruly temperament and poor test scores.


    ¡°Syl,¡± Syl said. ¡°Ward of the state, so Auria¡¯s my last name. No real name, though.¡±If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry for your loss,¡± Lyon said automatically.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be. I was too young to remember my parents. It was quick. They were in New Oceania.¡±


    Lyon winced.


    ¡°A bit heavy to put on you during introductions,¡± Syl said. ¡°What¡¯s your specialty?¡±


    Full combat track, he guessed. Duelist, probably.


    That made the boy brighten. ¡°I¡¯m going full combat track.¡±


    ¡°Is that your FCD?¡± Syl asked, pointing at the baton.


    ¡°Sure is,¡± Lyon confirmed. ¡°I might not look it, but I¡¯ve got pretty good practicals. Just can¡¯t do theory for shit. What about you?¡±


    ¡°FCD engineer,¡± Syl said. ¡°Among others. I¡¯m quite bad at practicals. My casting speed is on the lower end.¡±


    Bianca had been correct when she¡¯d said that Syl would have ranked higher if they had measured other aspects of magical power during the practical exams, but the exact factors that made him powerful were also what hampered him.


    Syl checked his right FCD one more time as the rest of the students filtered into the auditorium, tapping the display open.


    User: Syl


    FCD: IMMP-R


    Type: Preload Multipurpose


    FCD Attributes: [Speed - C] [Precision - S] [Capacity - NOT DISPLAYED] [Power - NOT DISPLAYED]


    Age: 18


    Known Spells: 104


    Flux Particles: [NOT DISPLAYED]


    Loaded Spell: [Flash Step] (C)


    His flux pool was certainly on the higher end, especially for his age, but magic didn¡¯t like being penned up in a vessel with a less developed body like his. Over the years, the flux present within him had damaged his vocal cords beyond repair. A custom FCD let him speak, but it required constant flux supply and prevented him from using his voice as an active component in spells.


    Magic was a field of science just like any other. Humanity¡¯s understanding of it was still incomplete, but they understood enough of it to know some best practices in the realm of casting. Spells worked much, much faster with verbal components fast-tracking certain aspects of the spell, but since Syl could no longer use his voice to carry flux properly, his casting speed for a good chunk of magic had been severely crippled.


    ¡°Wow, is that a custom?¡± Lyon asked, eyes widening as he pointed to Syl¡¯s FCD.


    ¡°You also have a custom,¡± Syl pointed out. He hadn¡¯t studied the baton very closely, but he knew the Reds.


    ¡°Yeah, but that looks like an Incarnate model,¡± Lyon said. ¡°Do you know how hard those are to get?¡±


    ¡°Good eye,¡± Syl said. ¡°I¡¯m well aware.¡±


    Before Lyon could ask more questions, a bell chimed, bringing the auditorium¡¯s attention to the front and quieting the room.


    As the highest-scoring representative of this year¡¯s class, Bianca would have some speaking part here, which was the most likely point for enemy action. Syl doubted that it would happen here, though. There were instructors and student leaders present, both of which should possess A-class or even tactical-class magic.


    The most elite students here would continue on to graduate years, entering a part-military  part-political outfit that both participated in actual combat situations and oversaw the school. Unlike the previous equivalents in preparatory high school, said outfit had real influence, its participants universally at or above military-grade proficiency and mostly coming from influential families.


    The university would have been short on experienced instructors without them, mostly because magicians who were capable of teaching were largely on military assignments or dead.


    One of those rare retired survivors was the first to address them. Two-star General Allison Violet was pushing fifty years old but was still the same strategic-class magician who¡¯d constructed the bulk of Auria¡¯s defenses and minimized casualties during World War III.


    ¡°On October 3, 2019¡­¡± she started.


    ¡°Hey,¡± Lyon said quietly. ¡°You¡¯ve heard this all before, right?¡±


    Syl¡¯s attention was entirely on their surroundings. No student would have been able to sneak a weapon into the entrance ceremony, which was one of the few school events attended by active non-student members of the great prismatic familes. Security had been raised to the highest point that it would be at this entire semester.


    Outside, magical and technological surveillance monitored the event. While the bulk of that would be from the families themselves, there was always the possibility of an outsider looking in.


    ¡°Hey,¡± Lyon said again, a bit louder. ¡°You there?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve heard the speech,¡± Syl replied at a more reasonable volume. ¡°Not this exact variant, but I¡¯m more than familiar with the history.¡±


    ¡°Thought so. Knew you wouldn¡¯t just be a normal class 3.¡±


    That set off alarm bells in Syl¡¯s mind, but Lyon wasn¡¯t indicating that he had any more information than a hunch, so he let it slide. ¡°I could say that about you, too. A Red in class 3. No respect for conduct, and you look like you just got picked up off the street, but that¡¯s all fake. What are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°Oh you caught that?¡± Lyon asked, his voice dropping low. ¡°For your information, I like it this way. Also, that¡¯s classified.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure it is,¡± Syl said drily. ¡°What a prismatic scion¡¯s had for lunch is probably classified, too. Let me guess. Monitoring the class 3s for potential diamonds in the rough to recruit? Undermining resistance against prismatic hegemony? Maybe you¡¯re looking for a few specific threats?¡±


    ¡°Not so loud,¡± Lyon hissed, which drew some stars from the students around them.


    ¡°You¡¯re being louder than I am,¡± Syl said quietly. ¡°You¡¯re only going to draw attention to yourself if you make a scene. Relax.¡±


    Lyon relaxed.


    ¡°You know a lot about the prismatics for someone who¡¯s not on our radar at all,¡± Lyon said.


    That wasn¡¯t entirely true, but there was no point in letting Lyon know that. ¡°I¡¯m good at noticing patterns. That¡¯s all.¡±


    Syl¡¯s focus returned to the spell he¡¯d been maintaining since the ceremony had started, a simple dual-process one that he¡¯d designed for himself during¡­ a time he preferred not to think about.


    Sure enough, there were dozens of different spells and drones aimed at the ceremony from the outside, but most of them were from sources that Syl recognized, with some distaste.


    One of them, though¡­


    ¡°Lyon,¡± Syl said.


    ¡°What¡¯s up?¡±


    ¡°Tell your family or your handler or whoever your point of contact is that there¡¯s an outsider watching,¡± Syl said.


    Throughout the auditorium, mostly concentrated in the front, Syl noticed a few others tapping away on displays only they could see or fiddling with their FCDs. He wasn¡¯t the only one who had noticed, then.


    ¡°What are you talking about?¡± Lyon said after quite a large delay.


    ¡°You¡¯re not good at this whole subterfuge thing, are you? Bianca is about to speak. Just be quiet and do what you have to do.¡±


    #


    After the ceremony was finally over, Syl found Bianca talking with a couple of older-looking students with different uniforms that indicated they were in the second, graduate phase of schooling. Judging by the sigils on their uniforms, they were all from prismatic families.


    ¡°Syl,¡± Bianca said. ¡°What did you think?¡±


    ¡°It was a good commencement,¡± Syl said. ¡°Memorable enough to leave an impression on the students while staying mostly risk-free. Who do I have the pleasure of addressing here?¡±


    ¡°Jennifer,¡± a tall, glasses-wearing woman said. Her sigil marked her as coming from the Viridian clan, and her FCDs were well-tuned enough that Syl could take a reasonable guess as to her class. ¡°Eighth year, class 1. FCD engineer. Treasurer for the Graduate Reserve. Pleasure to meet you¡­¡±


    ¡°Syl.¡± He extended a hand, which she shook. ¡°First year, class 3. Unspecialized, but looking towards FCD engineering. If you ever happen to have a spare moment, I¡¯d be interested in trading notes.¡±


    The other council member scoffed. ¡°We don¡¯t need any bottom feeders trying to latch onto us. Try staying in the school for a year, then ask again. You¡¯re just going to go to the front line anyway. What kind of notes do you think you can offer?¡±


    ¡°Excuse me,¡± Bianca said, her voice polite but her expression threatening death, ¡°What did you just say?¡±


    ¡°Drew,¡± Jennifer said. ¡°Not the time.¡±


    ¡°Drew,¡± Syl said, looking at the taller man in the eye. ¡°Violet, I assume?¡±


    ¡°Yes, and you would do well to respect that name,¡± Drew Violet said. ¡°Your kind won¡¯t even be in the school after your fourth year. Lieutenant in the GR. Sixth year, class 1.¡±


    So he was one of these. Syl had been ready to run into someone like this, but that made it no less irritating.


    ¡°Nice to meet you too,¡± Syl said. ¡°The same offer stands, but I imagine you don¡¯t have anything interesting if you¡¯re just a soldier. Bianca. We need to go.¡±


    ¡°Is that so?¡± the princess asked. ¡°It was lovely chatting to you both. We can continue tomorrow.¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± Jennifer said. ¡°The president will be here then.¡±


    ¡°Hold on,¡± Drew interjected, staring Syl down. ¡°You can¡¯t tell me that you¡¯re following this guy.¡±


    Bianca raised an eyebrow. ¡°Unfortunately, I can.¡±


    ¡°Are you planning on stopping us?¡± Syl asked lightly. ¡°I don¡¯t believe you have the right to do that in your position.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± Drew said, ¡°but I would suggest that you learn your place.¡±


    Syl smiled. ¡°I know my place just fine.¡±


    #


    Three and a half kilometers from the academy, a drone settled down inside an abandoned warehouse. Romeo Seven, the alias of the masked drone operator, collected it and readied it for data transference. The drone¡¯s inbuilt FCD triggered, quickly forming a ritual circle underneath the device and the operator.


    It did not complete its process before it simply shattered, the magic pattern dissolving entirely.


    Romeo Seven had believed his operation to be uncompromised, but he prepared for emergency anyway. With his gun-mounted FCD, he activated the perception-type Transparent Scan spell, letting him see heat signatures through the walls.


    There. There was one figure walking outside, hand raised to its ear like it was calling someone.


    Without hesitating, Romeo Seven fired. His FCD automatically applied a dual-process spell to each of the bullets, removing the sound and increasing the velocity. It made his shots more precise, lethal, and nigh undetectable in an area with no sensors.


    The heat signature flashed, blinking out of sight and avoiding the bullet.


    What?


    There it was again, nearly twenty meters away. Romeo Seven fired again¡ªbut then the figure flashed again, and the spell on his rifle failed, the bullet going wide.


    Another flash, and a chunk of the warehouse wall was simply missing.


    A man walked in, apparently unconcerned by the gun still pointed at his head. He was dressed in the uniform of First National Academy and had no visible weapons of his own. If he was a magician, though, he needed no weapon.


    Romeo Seven cursed, but realized quickly that the uniform had the sigil representing class 3 on it. The lowest one at the academies, it meant that in a battle of magic, he would be useless.


    ¡°What are you doing here, kid? You shouldn¡¯t be here.¡±


    In lieu of an answer, magic swirled around the student¡¯s arm once again.


    ¡°Last chance,¡± Romeo Seven said. ¡°You don¡¯t have the mana for this, kid. You should get out of here before you get hurt.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯ve got plenty.¡±


    The operator took that as a sign to drop his rifle and draw a pistol-shaped FCD, aiming a projection-type spell at the stranger¡ªwho waved his hand, apparently causing the spell to disperse. A wave of incredible energy crashed into Romeo Seven as runic circles started working their way up both the students¡¯ arms.


    What the hell? That kind of power¡­ it was more than even the class 1 students should have been able to manage. It was more than he could manage.


    ¡°Sonic Burst,¡± the student said casually. ¡°They sent someone whose best personal defense spell is B-class? You must be expendable.¡±


    The magic swelling around his arms intensified.


    Dual casting? How can a student¡ª


    Another flick of the hand later, Romeo Seven was suddenly missing his hands.


    Even as his mind blanked with pain and terror, a small part of him realized that the stranger hadn¡¯t spoken a single component of his spell.


    ¡°Hello there,¡± the student said coldly, his eyes completely dead. ¡°Should we talk about who you¡¯re working for?¡±


    ¡°W-wait,¡± the operative said, his vision clouding as blood spurted from the stumps where his hands and FCD had been. ¡°I can¡ª¡°


    Text scrolled across his screen, flux particles swirling in his brain.


    Operator [Romeo Seven] has been compromised. Initiating self-destruct in [10] seconds.


    ¡°No!¡± he cried out, scrabbling at his neck with arms that could do nothing but spill blood over it. ¡°No! Not like this. You promised!¡±


    The student crouched down, looking into Romeo Seven¡¯s eyes¡ªbut it was clear that his true gaze was fixated far beyond the operator himself. A strange gaze bored into the FCD that had been planted at Romeo Seven¡¯s brainstem.


    ¡°More expendable than I thought,¡± the student said. ¡°Don¡¯t interfere again. You won¡¯t like what happens.¡±


    He turned away.


    ¡°Wait!¡± Romeo cried out desperately. ¡°Help me! I¡¯ll, I¡¯ll, I can¡ª¡°


    Thank you for your service.


    Self-destruct initiated.

 [Book 1 afterword/stub announcement]

    Thank you to everyone for your support. The fiction has now been stubbed. You can pre-order (or regular order, depending on your timezone) an updated version on Amazon</a>.


    Original author note:


    <blockquote>


    Thank you all for reading book 1 of The Silent Archmage.


    Many of you have recognized the primary influence on this story, and while it may have taken many elements from The Irregular at Magic High School to begin with, I hope the original ideas I had came through.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    To be honest, I am not currently motivated to write a book 2. While I understand reader frustrations with cribbed elements, the sheer amount of vitriol leveled at my work and my character has made it hard to continue onwards. I have edited portions of the story for originality and will be publishing it on Amazon shortly. This fiction will stub in just over 24 hours (around 9 PM EST Jan 14 2025). Depending on response on Amazon, the story may continue. I like what I''ve written of this story and where I''ve taken it, but authors are humans too, and it is a bit disheartening to log in and only see hatred for my work.


    That said, I hope those of you who read to the end of this book 1 enjoyed it. If you''d like to support it, I will be announcing the official launch on 1/14. Thank you for your time. I hope everyone has a good 2025.


    </blockquote>

 Book 1 is now available on Amazon

    Hi all. As stated previously, book 1 is releasing on Amazon/Kindle Unlimited</a> today. I would very much appreciate it if any readers wanted to help out with the almighty algorithm by downloading the book or leaving a review. Thank you for your support until now, and I hope I will be able to justify writing a second book of this story.


    </a>


    <blockquote>


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    After dealing with monsters spilling from magical Gates and Towers¡ªand worse, the people fighting over the resources of the new world¡ªSyl is happy to be no more than an unremarkable class 3 student with dismal practical scores and a powerful secret at an Aurian magic academy. Assigned to guard the undercover princess, he is content to live school life¡ªright up until people start trying to kill them both.


    As outside forces start to close in and Auria hides its weakness from its people, Syl refuses to allow his peace to be trampled on. Once, he was legendary on the battlefield, a voiceless sovereign who left nothing in his wake.


    He will show the world why they feared the Silent Archmage.


    </blockquote>

 B2 Chapter 0 - Private File 317-Paragon: ALIAS [removed]

    Aurian Magic Institute - Semester 1


    After twelve years spent as part of Special Unit 317 (not counting ~10 years spent frozen in time due to a colossal-range paragon-class spell effect from Sloth [See The Seven Sinners and Middle America Chronostasis Incident]), Syl entered the Aurian Magic Institute alongside former Crown Princess Bianca. During matriculation, he noticed external influences spying on the entrance ceremony [See Sanguine and Cascadian Infiltration of Aurian Terror Groups (74 AFI)]. He tracked down the operative and killed him, making a note for this unit.


    Due to poor performance on practical exams, Syl was assigned to class 3 of the AMI. As Bianca was the single best overall performer on the entrance exams, she was scouted for the competitive circuit team as well as the the Graduate Reserve, an alternative to military service for members of prismatic families [See Aurian Oligarchy] and high-achieving members of national Aurian institutes. As the two already operated closely before their ten-year time stop during which both were fully awake and aware, they continued to be inseparable afterwards. Thanks to this, Syl alienated Drew Violet [See Kingdom of Auria Loyalist Faction], a master-class mage and experienced duelist. Using standard techniques and preying on Violet¡¯s overconfidence, he easily won a duel and averted suspicion from authorities [See Strategic-Class Projection-Type Specialist General Allison Violet]. Shortly afterwards, he and Bianca were instrumental in thwarting an attempted shooting of AMI student and prismatic heir Lyon Red by agents of the terrorist group Sanguine.


    Uriel Indigo, another prismatic heir, identified Syl as a more powerful magician than he claimed to be. She invited him to the circuit team tryouts, where he gained notice by defeating master-class magician James ¡°Wildcard¡± Rokho in a fair duel. After being accepted on the team, he befriended prismatic and magical engineer Jennifer Viridian as well as duelists Waylan Red, Lia Jeksen, and Wildcard.


    During this time, he achieved a breakthrough towards solving one of the fundamental unsolved conjectures of magic [See Zero¡¯s Conjecture of Free Casting], allowing him to cast pre-programmed spells without a flux casting device under certain conditions. This design is currently being incorporated into certain specialized FCDs [See Incarnate Engineering].


    The circuit team¡¯s first outing was to Gate 74AMI-C16, a C-class Gate with primarily low-class creatures within. Unbeknownst to them, a small group from Sanguine as well as a number of tactical and master-class Cascadian magicians had laid an ambush within the Gate, using as of yet unknown Cascadian magical techniques to enhance the monsters within it as well as setting landmines and other pre-placed magical effects. In the ensuing ambush, four Aurian students were killed and multiple more critically wounded. After Bianca evacuated the Graduate Reserve members from the ambush, Syl eliminated all but one of the enemy magicians [See 74 AFI Cascadian Prisoner Interrogation], whom he pretended to kill in front of General Violet to prevent the Aurian government from patching over the entire incident.


    In the wake of the ambush, it became clear that dissatisfaction with the kingdom was rising amongst the current generation of magicians, many of whom were aware that Auria actively suppressed information that would paint the country as anything except flourishing and powerful.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    During the service held for the four slain students, during which the administration explained they were killed in a tragic accident, Syl realized that Sanguine was once again targeting AMI and eliminated their entire power base.


    Afterwards, he continued to work with engineer Jennifer Viridian. They succeeded in making a breakthrough with her flux hypersensitivity, successfully creating a device that would allow her to mimic Cascadian methods of more efficiently casting spells.


    Uriel Indigo then recruited him for an underground prismatic organization [See List of Student Resistance Movements] assembled out of circuit competitors and Reserve members intended to replace the Aurian circuit team assigned to irregular war games with Cascadia.


    At this time, SU-317 was notified of a potential breach in information security with regards to Syl¡¯s identity. This was dismissed due to the lack of actionable information obtained by Drew Violet and Jennifer Indigo.


    Ultimately, Syl participated in the war games adjacent to the Santa Rosa Tower. During this time, Gluttony [See The Seven Sinners] appeared, breaking the FCD Syl used in place of his voice. Once again, Cascadia deployed an ambush, starting by a Cascadian magician killing Lia Jeksen after his non-lethal knockout was reversed by rain.


    Back and forth lethalities were traded until Drew Violet revealed himself and joined a three-on-three battle with Syl and Bianca. There, Bianca reports that the Violet identified the former Crown Princess as a threat to Aurian national security and made a temporary truce with the Cascadian faction to eliminate or capture them.


    Syl killed Drew Violet, then occupied enough attention for the Aurian forces to escape. Afterwards, he activated Horizon Breaker, his paragon-class full-body FCD, for the first time since he used it in the San Francisco Bay Incident three years prior. Total casualties included James ¡°Wildcard¡± Rokho and an estimated three hundred Cascadian magicians.


    The ramifications of this event are still ongoing. Our private intelligence reports that Cascadia has committed to military action towards Auria. There are extant possibilities that certain members of the Graduate Reserve [See Jennifer Indigo] are now more aware of the extent of Syl¡¯s power.


    Finally, the following transmission was intercepted by SU-317 two days ago:


    It¡¯s been a long time.


    Gluttony has made your acquaintance once more. I¡¯m sure you¡¯re aware by now that she¡¯s not dead. Don¡¯t worry. She¡¯s not displeased with you. The opposite, in fact.


    It¡¯s good to see you active again. After Sloth hit you, even I had written you off for a loss. When San Francisco happened, I suspected, but the cloaking job was superb. I chalked it up to my imagination. Thank Gluttony for noticing the patterns. She has friends in low places.


    What happens next is up to you, as it always has been. I¡¯ll be watching. So will the others. Gluttony won¡¯t interfere with your battle, but remember: the first quake isn¡¯t always the biggest. When you finish this, we all know there¡¯s going to be an aftershock great enough to shake the world.


    You have your war. Soon, we might all have one.


    Isn¡¯t it nice to be home, Pride?


    Yours in life and death,


    Zero.


    Syl¡¯s identity has been compromised. War is at Auria¡¯s door. The kingdom itself seems primed to detonate.


    SU-317¡¯s contingencies can be viewed [here].


    Aurian Magic Institute - Semester 2


    This document is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

 B2 Chapter 1 - Eye of the Storm

    There were a thousand urgent tasks when it came to war, but Syl had finished everything he needed to do already. For now, he chose to do nothing.


    Information about Cascadia was still filtering through several layers of Aurian censorship. Syl, of course, was a few days and multiple hundred bodies ahead of them. Even then, it was quickly becoming clear that the student body was aware that something was wrong.


    Everyone who attended the Aurian Magical Institute had grown up in a world defined by the third world war. They were no stranger to loss. The academy itself was known to have a substantial attrition rate even though it was populated by some of the most influential young Aurians, so it wasn¡¯t unusual to have a good chunk of students fail out or even die from accidents in the lab, training, or even actual fieldwork.


    It was not, however, common for ten students to die in a single semester, let alone ones that were notoriously powerful in the Graduate Reserve. There was only so much that institutional propaganda could do when James Rokho, one of AMI¡¯s shining stars, had been one of the names listed on the death announcement.


    Syl only paid it enough mind to add it to his list of visible changes in this generation of young magicians compared to theones he¡¯d fought alongside. The winds had been changing already, but during the war, there had been no shortage of magicians willing to die for their country. Even in a war as existentially threatening as the great one, patriotism and a willing to swallow lies to protect a home had prevailed. That no longer seemed to be the case.


    Bianca was the one who would actually engage with what that meant, though. Syl had a passing interest in politics at best, and that only came into play when it came to affecting those he cared about. His counterpart in the special unit and life itself was the one who tended to deal with people.


    ¡°You seem lost in thought. Is something weighing on your mind, or should I expect a superweapon to appear from that pack?¡±


    Speak of the devil, Syl signed, lips quirking upward. Nice to see you.


    It hadn¡¯t been long since Gluttony had made her appearance, sucking in all the ambient flux around the Santa Rosa Tower and destroying Syl¡¯s throat-mounted FCD. That was one of the few pieces of technology he¡¯d had that wasn¡¯t one of his own designs¡ªhe had never viewed being able to speak as a priority when all the communication he needed could be achieved with his hands whether that was through signing or casting.


    That did mean that he was still unable to speak. He¡¯d gotten the most recent implant just under three years ago, and it had kept working for long enough that he hadn¡¯t bothered to change it. Given how he¡¯d dissolved it into his bloodstream, removing all the special surgical connections that had allowed the FCD to work without obstructing his natural flux flow, Syl had not had an opportunity to replace it.


    For the time being, he was perfectly willing to accept an inability to speak. Back when he¡¯d been regularly running missions, he had very rarely used this type of FCD to prevent exactly the scenario that Gluttony had triggered. Syl was familiar with lacking a voice.


    ¡°I must admit some element of surprise that you continue to attend class,¡± Bianca said. ¡°Most of the leadership is gone.¡±


    They sustained more injuries than we did, Syl signed. More losses as well. You continued attending, so I continued.


    ¡°That is sweet of you,¡± she said. ¡°I come bearing good news.¡±


    Syl raised an eyebrow, looking up from the lunch he¡¯d ignored in favor of the modified FCD he¡¯d been tinkering with for the last while.


    Sensitive news? He signed. Only one camera and one sensor in this room.


    ¡°I know,¡± Bianca said. ¡°I do have senses of my own, you know.¡±


    She typed into her FCD, using C-class stealth-type spell Signal Obfuscation to prevent simple intranet hijackers like the ones hooked throughout the entire campus¡¯ network from reading any output from her casting device. Bianca had also identified the hidden camera in here, of course, but since this was a room typically only used by Reserve leadership, it was more of a formality than an actual surveillance device. Angling her body was enough to keep the camera from seeing her screen.


    srv GR nloy aur/gloy GR fac - nrum hrd us - sit k to prs det unk


    Bianca¡¯s message, of course, was a shortened version of a longer one. Syl read it with the same comfort as he would regular English.


    The surviving Graduate Reserve either possess no loyalty to the Aurian kingdom or more to themselves because I haven¡¯t heard any rumors about us. The situation is known to prismatics, but the exact details are still largely hidden.


    They were well accustomed to using this kind of language. It wasn¡¯t coded¡ªa regular student would be able to sort this out after a bit. The two of them and the rest of the special unit did have a coded version that was slightly less character-efficient, but they didn¡¯t need to use that given the circumstances. It was a much faster way for them to communicate without talking, an attribute that made shortened text absolutely indispensable when they weren¡¯t able to speak to each other in the field.


    It was nice to know that the others hadn¡¯t immediately gone back to inform their families about what had happened. It was inevitable that word would get out at some point, but the only critical points were Uriel, Waylan, and Jennifer. They were the first students Syl and Bianca had made contact with after they had come back, and they were also the most knowledgeable about their situation.


    The two of them hadn¡¯t just gone around telling people who they were, but Jennifer had recorded the burst of energy that Syl had created with the paragon-class transmutation-class spell Armaggedon and correctly deduced that the two of them had something to do with it. She wasn¡¯t dumb, and neither were the other two master-class Reserve magicians.


    Syl and Bianca hadn¡¯t owed any of them an explanation, but the Cascadian incident had been a wake-up call with respect to their priorities.


    Staying hidden had never been completely mandatory. As an active paragon-class magician, Sylvester Auria was known for a great deal of things. Subterfuge was not one of them.


    There was a reason his sin was Pride.


    He was still reasonably certain that his and Bianca¡¯s identities were relatively hidden. They had minimized the amount of information they¡¯d given to the Reserve leadership while still making it clear that they were both more powerful than they had initially seemed, but the one person who had successfully identified Bianca as the former Crown Princess had been master-class prismatic and Reserve duelist Drew Violet, who Syl had seen dead by his own hand.


    Good to hear, he signed at Bianca. Anything from the Reserve?


    ng rn - prv n100 - rvl ptl


    Not a good time to discuss this. If we can¡¯t be a hundred percent sure that there is absolutely nothing listening to us, there¡¯s the chance we reveal sensitive information.


    That was fair. Syl¡¯s passive senses for detecting magic were very good, but he was no Jennifer with her flux hypersensitivity. When it came to finding sensors, he could cast spells that looked for specific common ones as well as more powerful general perception-type magic, but he was far too experienced with magic to set aside the possibility that he was being watched by something else.


    Finding spy magic was a great deal more difficult than fortifying a specific location against it; Syl had once likened it to the difference between finding a needle in a haystack and keeping both hay and metal out of the farmhouse. Not that he had seen a farmhouse, but it was an old turn of phrase that had stuck around through flux integration.


    While Aurian magic theory had its shortcomings in many parts, the kingdom was not a country with no power to its name. Disregarding the prismatics as non-threats was how you got yourself killed or worse. Just to take one example, Syl still had yet to see a school of magic as dangerously subversive as that of the Violets.


    Then we can speak about it later, Syl signed.


    The reasoning behind the higher-ups in the Reserve taking days off was ostensibly to mourn and recover from wounds from what had been explained away as a minor terrorist incident leading to a flux harvester detonating. To some extent, that was true¡ªthe reason, that was. The cover story was wholly fake. A good chunk of the succcess had been attributed to Wildcard and Drew Violet, both of whom had contributed less than a percentage point of what Syl had.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Apart from recovery, though, the group of circuit magicians Uriel had assembled was angry. They had swallowed lies and bore the weight of Auria¡¯s sins, but they had just come into contact with reality and had found it lacking.


    Angry magicians could do a lot.


    That was a bridge to be burned later, though. For the time being, Syl was still engineering, Bianca was still forming human connections, and they were both still attending the academy.


    ¡°You should finish your lunch,¡± Bianca suggested. ¡°The break period ends soon.¡±


    Syl wanted to protest, but he hadn¡¯t been nearing a breakthrough on his project. He¡¯d been trying to adapt the principle of using the environment to pre-cast an activation process that the glasses he and Jennifer had worked on utilized to flux batteries, but it wasn¡¯t quite working out. While he had found that he could create ideal casting conditions within the context of an FCD and therefore increase the efficiency of a pre-loaded spell, he still had to use a manual charge from his body to stimulate a flux battery to activate and start passing flux into the activation and formation processes. That wasn¡¯t quite what he wanted out of this project, and he was still stumped on how to work with it.


    It could wait.


    Syl and Bianca ate in silence, communicating with their hands. The campus food had taken a slight but noticeable drop in quality. The meat was always synthetic, but the bread was coarser and more uniform than usual, indicating that it too had been replaced by a more flux-heavy substitute.


    A good chunk of the organic material in it came from large-scale farms near the border. Through their connections, Syl and Bianca were aware that Cascadia was readying a large-scale offensive. Chances were high that Auria was starting to shut down or move critical infrastructure away from the border in preparation for that. If the agricultural map Syl had memorized two years ago for the purpose of a single mission was still correct, one of the most productive grain farm systems the country had was in that area.


    A shame, but real bread wasn¡¯t going to be the only thing people lost if this situation got significantly worse. Syl was prepared for it, of course, but he highly doubted most of the kingdom was.


    At length, the period came to an end. They bid each other their respective farewells as they departed towards their next class.


    Syl¡¯s next one was Intro to Spell Theory with Alexis Lance, the same graduate student who¡¯d been in charge of the class 3 version of this class since the start of the semester. She hadn¡¯t bothered him much since he¡¯d made some choice comments about her choice of magic work and demonstrated that he was laughably far above her level, let alone the introductory level this class demanded.


    Lance looked noticeably disturbed today. Whether it was her mood pervading the class or just the general rumors percolating throughout campus, the atmosphere seemed subdued as well.


    Syl noted that the seat next to him was empty. He¡¯d been partnered with the boy there for most of the semester so far. The other class 3 had proven to be a diligent partner, capable in his casting fundamentals even if his flux pool wasn¡¯t the largest.


    The classroom door swung open with a crash two minutes into a stilted lecture about simultaneous process forming that Syl might have found interesting at the age of four, and the absent boy walked in.


    Lance trailed off in the middle of a sentence, the entire class looking towards one Len Jeksen, a long-haired class 3 swordsman. His eyes were red and downcast, his hands balled into fists by his side. Len¡¯s knuckles were bloody. The FCD he preferred, a sheathed fulminata sword, was scratched so heavily Syl thought he might have put it through a blender.


    ¡°Len,¡± Lance started. ¡°I¡ª¡°


    ¡°Stop,¡± Len hissed with such venom that the professor, a good six years more experienced than him, physically took a step back. His shoulders slumped. When he spoke again, his voice was defeated. ¡°Just¡­ stop. I¡¯ve heard enough of sorry for a lifetime.¡±


    Ah. Syl hadn¡¯t had this class since the incident at the Santa Rosa Tower, so he¡¯d forgotten. Lia Jeksen had been the first to die during what had ostensibly been a war game of an international circuit tournament, and she¡¯d had a twin brother.


    Len trudged his way to Syl¡¯s seat and sat down.


    Syl glanced at him, wondering if he¡¯d understand him if he signed.


    Something in Syl¡¯s gaze must¡¯ve tipped Len off, because he sighed deeply as Lance haltingly restarted the lecture.


    ¡°Lia would have wanted me to be here,¡± Len said, his voice barely a whisper.


    Syl picked up a pen and a notepad from the table, then wrote a sentence.


    She was a good magician.


    ¡°The best,¡± Len mumbled when he read it, trying and failing to keep composure. ¡°She spoke highly of you.¡±


    Syl hadn¡¯t known that.


    Len didn¡¯t speak again until Lance decided to declare the groupwork for the day. Once people got themselves formed into their pairs, ready to try the exercise¡ªsimultaneous casting, which Syl was actually quite bad at given his power thanks to his lack of available spell processes¡ªLen talked again, his voice almost entirely drowned out by the general volume of the class.


    ¡°Syl. This might be a sensitive question, but I¡¯ve¡­ I¡¯ve been dying to know.¡± There was a frantic, nervous edge in his voice that Syl could sympathize with.


    He gestured for the swordsman to go ahead.


    ¡°Were¡ªwere you with her when she, when she¡ª¡°


    Syl nodded, pointing at his throat before making an X over his lips.


    It took Len a moment to realize what he meant, but once he did, the swordsman flinched.


    ¡°Shit. I didn¡¯t mean to¡ªI¡¯m sorry. And I know how little that means, but¡ª¡±


    Syl put a hand on Len¡¯s shoulder, shaking his head. With his free hand, he wrote another note.


    I don¡¯t mind. Want to practice?


    Len inhaled deeply, held it, and exhaled. Syl recognized it as a breathing exercise similar to the ones Lia had used shortly before her untimely death. They trained at the same facility and as part of the same family, so it made sense for them to use the same techniques.


    Once he was calmer, the swordsman nodded.


    ¡°I suppose some silence would be welcome,¡± Len said. ¡°No offense.¡±


    Syl shrugged, signing back none taken.


    Len looked at Syl¡¯s fingers, confused, then shrugged as well.


    They got to the day¡¯s practice, both of them quieter than they usually were. Syl was able to handle the low-class spells relatively easily, since most of those didn¡¯t need more than two or three spell processes at a time, but he knew how difficult it would be once he cast more complex spells. For those, he would have to flicker his flux between two ongoing spells at the same time at such speed that one allocated process could serve the purpose of two, trusting in his preparations to be completely accurate since he wouldn¡¯t be able to adjust any of them on the fly.


    Since the class practice was relatively low-stakes and boring normally, Syl practiced that flickering. Despite years of experience doing so, it was still one of his weak suits. He rarely flickered his spells during combat, since using two subpar spells at the same time was a pretty poor tradeoff when compared to activating one very powerful spell with the finest control a human could manage.


    Practice made better if not perfect, though, so he kept at it. It was clearly helping Len, who was throwing himself into a relatively basic exercise full-throttle. Syl recognized the manic desperation in those movements, the need for something¡ªanything¡ªto occupy the mind. He could sympathize.


    There was anger too, an increasingly familiar kind.


    Fifteen minutes into the exercise, Syl¡¯s FCDs buzzed gently, notifying him of a message. Two minutes after that, it buzzed again, slightly more urgently this time.


    With the second buzz, Syl saw the instructor¡¯s FCD light up as well. He wouldn¡¯t have paid much attention to it if he didn¡¯t catch her expression go from mildly crestfallen to corpse-level ashened as she read the text on it.


    ¡°Attention,¡± Alexis Lance, seventh-year graduate student and interim professor for their class said half-heartedly.


    The class didn¡¯t react to her words, most of the students too wrapped up in their own magical worlds to bother listening to her.


    Lance swore under her breath, then cast a burst of purposeless flux outwards, gaining the attention of most of the class. There were one or two hopeless cases who didn¡¯t react¡ªSyl assumed they had terrible flux perception, which wasn¡¯t a skill tested on the practical exams.


    ¡°Class is canceled for today and the foreseeable future,¡± Lance said. ¡°Or maybe they¡¯ll get a substitute in. I don¡¯t know. Feel free to keep practicing or whatever.¡±


    With that less than half-backed announcement, she hurried out of the room, slamming the door into the wall with how hard she hit it.


    ¡°The hell was that about?¡± Len asked.


    Similar conversation burst out around the class, thirty students talking at and over each other.


    Syl took the opportunity to check the messages he¡¯d received. Given the timing, he suspected that they would be very relevant.


    The first one was from the one-star general who led the special unit. Rather than commanding the thousands of wartime magicians that role would usually entail, this general had initially been tasked with managing a number of special units, all of which Syl had learned were now deactivated.


    With one exception, by technicality.


    [RANK HIDDEN] [NAME HIDDEN]: Blood in the water. Activity at the border. Stand by for potential deploy.


    Stand by for potential deployment meant no commitment to doing so. Syl was always ready for the situation to suddenly, drastically get worse. He could safely ignore that for the time being. If things got urgent, the general would contact him more directly.


    The second one held the context he¡¯d been looking for.


    Mj. Uriel: Just got official word from the higher-ups. About 20% of Graduate Reserve in Auria is getting deployed. The other universities are contributing less than us. More than half of us are being sent to the border. They¡¯re not being clear on who the inciting incident is from, but it¡¯s pretty obvious.


    As he was reading it, another message came from Bianca, once again in the shortened form.


    [RANK HIDDEN] Bianca: km wr


    That shortening was borrowed from another language and could be summed up to mean I have a bad feeling about this.


    [RANK HIDDEN] Syl: My class is out. We should reconvene when you¡¯re done.


    He had known this would come, but he had thought they would hold off on an offensive for at least some time considering the losses they had suffered.


    It would take some time for both sides to deploy their forces, so Syl whiled it away in the undergraduate lab. He would have used the replica he¡¯d made of Jennifer¡¯s authorization to enter the graduate ones, but it would be too much of a pain to ensure that none of the numerous sensors specifically aimed at the graduate labs caught him breaking regulations.


    About an hour passed before his FCD buzzed again, more urgently this time.


    [RANK HIDDEN] [NAME HIDDEN]: Change of plans. We just lost agents near the Santa Rosa Tower. The front is eighty klicks east and ten north. Deploy to Santa Rosa at your earliest convenience.


    Less than two mintues later, Bianca arrived to the lab, already typing on her FCD.


    ¡°The storm is here,¡± she said.


    Syl nodded, signing back. Then we¡¯ll chase it.

 B2 Chapter 2 - Tower

    The popular image of a paragon-class magician was of a near-deity. Unstoppable machines of magic, mages like the Seven Sinners, the Asian continent¡¯s dark emissaries, or the African lords of war were frequently looked towards like they were inherently other. Countries and organizations treated them like nuclear warheads while individual magicians thought of them like the ancients did their folk legends.


    Of course, reality was quite different. Paragons didn¡¯t operate only in flashy incidents like the ones the Sinners tended to get themselves into, and even the Sinners themselves didn¡¯t always utilize the most direct methods. Syl had completed a number of missions without ever leaving a apartment-turned-situation room half a country over, barely ever leaving his desk. While he was something of a special case, it held true that many paragon-class mages were people. Walking superweapons, yes, but they were still humans that needed to do human things.


    In this case, that meant waiting while Bianca piloted a private hovercraft towards Santa Rosa while Syl prepared his pre-loaded spells. He had Horizon Breaker with him as he always did, but that FCD was meant for emergencies and situations that called for great deals of indiscriminate destruction only. For the purpose of this excursion, that would not only be unnecessary but actively detrimental.


    That was another common misconception about paragons. Not everything they did was of the same level of importance. Information was power, and sometimes a special unit would send a tactical nuke where a switchblade would do in the pursuit of it.


    Alexander Petrov¡ªalias Zero¡ªhad, by all reports, had been like that. Syl had studied the original Sinner as a manner of course. He had racked up an enormous kill count that didn¡¯t only end in bodies; Zero was infamous for nearly single-handedly eliminating three major international alliances and dismantling the ruling bodies of at least five separate sovereign bodies. The sixth and seventh were disputed, true, but that was mostly because a good chunk of the modern world didn¡¯t recognize those two as countries.


    Yet that hadn¡¯t been all he¡¯d done. He had also been active in lower places, clearing out Gates and Tower floors as well as occasionally making an appearance in an area with no reason or rhyme to where or who he visited. Zero had done a deal of good early on¡ªstopping violence, saving towns from Tower and Gate creatures and the like¡ªto the extent that mass media had made a push to brand magicians like him as ¡°superheroes¡± in the early days before he had caused the United States to splinter into a dozen pieces.


    And he was dead. In 61 AFI, days before Syl had been trapped in Middle America, Alexander Petrov had been recorded by over thirty independent observers in New Zealand. Video and flux analytic footage demonstrated him suffering a total destruction of five layers of strategic-class free-cast magical defenses thanks to a combination effort from seventeen strategic and five paragon-class magicians from around the globe before taking a railgun shell to the skull.


    That had also been where a rare phenomenon known as a catalyst event had been discovered. Leading theories on it stated that when a paragon-class or abnormally flux-rich strategic-class magician died while casting certain types of major magic, their death would violently expel all that flux that had been stored within them, reacting with their mid-cast spell and detonating. The details of it were unclear, since detailed magical records typically didn¡¯t transmit through the ensuing blast and testing it was impossible for obvious reasons.


    No footage past the moment of the railgun obliterating Zero¡¯s body had survived, but the four survivors in New Zealand had reported a chain reaction of those catalyst events feeding into each other until the country had sunk. That had been the first and second time a paragon-class mage had been recorded dying in combat.


    Yet not two days ago, someone had correctly identified Syl and spoken as the late paragon. Syl, Bianca, and the others in the unit were still split on whether it had been a fake trying to imitate him or if Zero had managed to survive his own catalyst event.


    Syl found himself leaning towards the latter. He hadn¡¯t exactly known Zero, not as a person, but he¡¯d exchanged words with the man once or twice when he¡¯d been younger. The original Sinner had designated him as Pride in their first meeting, replacing an archmage who had reportedly been assassinated in his sleep. Syl¡¯s impression of the man had been brief, but even he knew that Zero had been a man to be feared.


    Pride had survived something that shouldn¡¯t have been survivable. Despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, Syl found himself believing that Zero could have done the same.


    Isn¡¯t it nice to be home? the message had asked.


    Home. There was a word that hadn¡¯t meant anything to Syl in a while.


    ¡°We are approaching the Tower,¡± Bianca said. ¡°Signs of flux imbalance in the area.¡±


    Sure enough, the hovercraft started to shake and jolt uncomfortably as they slid into the region of the Santa Rosa Tower. It was designed to stand up to the overwhelmingly flux-dense conditions that a Tower caused over time, but a combination of Gluttony, Syl, and the Cascadians that had come after had significantly destabilized how the flux in the area was acting, lessening the impact the stabilizers could have. The skies were a clear bright blue above, contrasting the burnt, glassed-over ground for kilometers around the Tower. Signs of conflict and investigation post-Armaggedon cast littered the area as well.


    Syl leaned towards the monitors, navigating his way through the hovercraft¡¯s sensor suite with trained efficiency.


    He tapped Bianca on the shoulder after a moment. Found something.


    About a kilometer from the Tower, someone had established a temporary structure. Unlike the ruins around it, it was clearly meant to be temporary and flux-resistant. From the remainders of the framework and the residue of the special heavy-duty canvas in the area, the source was obvious.


    ¡°That was one of ours,¡± Bianca said.


    Syl nodded. It had been a standard setup for hazardous, temporary field work outposts. Had been, because someone had demolished it in its entirety.


    Cascadians, Syl signed. Recent.


    ¡°Sensors are picking up denser collections of flux near the Tower and the outpost,¡± Bianca reported. ¡°I assume the Cascadians went inside. We were looking to see if they were searching for something, correct?¡±


    Syl gave her a thumbs up. The Cascadian offensives couldn¡¯t only be serving a single purpose given their inconsistency with it¡ªthey hadn¡¯t launched anything like a full-scale invasion during their Tower ambush. They had been making a play for something, and the special unit had commandeered a few squads of regular Aurian magicians to find out what it was.


    ¡°May they rest in peace,¡± Bianca said, briefly inclining her head. ¡°Shall we enter the Tower?¡±


    She didn¡¯t even need to look at Syl to see his response, but she did anyway.


    Someone is dying today, he signed.


    #


    ¡°Dragoon squad, this is Dragoon-1 acting as Dragoon leader, check sound.¡±


    ¡°Dragoon-2, check.¡±


    ¡°Dragoon-3, check.¡±If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The comms lit up with a total of eight confirmations, the standard size of a tactical-class Cascadian squad.


    ¡°Sound should work for at least twenty more hours, but we want to be out before half that¡¯s elapsed,¡± Verrin Nexson, callsign Dragoon-1 said. ¡°Previous expedition cleared up to here before repurposing their mission. Remember, we are strictly exploratory. Kill monsters if necessary but prioritize escape or passage. Kill Aurians if possible. If not, ensure they see the flag. All colors secured?¡±


    A round of affirmations followed his question.


    Not one of the people in this group was Cascadian military. One of them had come from the country while not being an official operative, another was a mercenary, and the last were Verrin¡¯s own magicians. He didn¡¯t ask questions about the two he¡¯d been tasked to bring along. He wasn¡¯t being paid to ask questions.


    They had made it to the sixth floor of the Santa Rosa Tower and so far, the plan was proceeding nicely. Thanks to Cascadian efforts elsewhere along the Aurian border, he and his skeleton crew would have plenty of time to work their way through the structure. They had found it delightfully unguarded but for one research team with a lax security team, all of whom were now ash in the wind.


    The strange scenery of the inside of a Tower always bothered Verrin. Though he was already well acquainted with the fact that yet-unstudied magic made the insides substantially different from what they should have been able to contain, it was never not unnerving to walk in a floor like this one. His surroundings appeared exactly like the grassy hills that characterized the region just north of this right up until he looked at what its grass was made of or noticed that the sky was a shade of deep purple.


    Tower climbing was a substantially different endeavor compared to Gate clearing. While Gates tended to have a very speciifc extradimensional space that was unlikely to change between delves and had clearly defined boundaries, Tower floors varied in size and were often biomes of their own.


    The broad strokes of the fifth floor of the Santa Rosa Tower had been recorded by the previous Cascadian exploration into it, though significant details had changed while nobody was in it. Verrin had learned the reasons for it during his crash course in the topic, but he¡¯d forgotten them. As a field operative, it was less important to know why something happened than how to respond to it.


    The details on this particular expedition had been sparse. There were specific items Verrin was supposed to be looking for with the sensitive equipment his squad had been provided as well as recordings he was to bring back to his superiors, but that was once again not something he was going to question. A good operative followed orders, even if said orders were as inane as using callsigns with no remote operator overseeing this mission.


    ¡°Leader,¡± Dragoon-6 called. ¡°Picking up something strange on the sensors.¡±


    Six was the Cascadian civilian who had been assigned to this mission specifically to man the sensor suite, a fragile-looking exoskeleton that went over the military uniform she¡¯d donned for the time being. It came with so many cameras and camera-like sensors that it made her seem like a human-sized insect. Verrin found it unsettling, but it wasn¡¯t his job to be unsettled.


    ¡°Six, is it relevant to our current sitch?¡± Verrin asked, doing his best to keep the impatience out of his tone.


    She¡¯d been chafing the regular squad the entire time they¡¯d been here. There was a reason they didn¡¯t usually work with civilian magicians even if they were talented. Those people just didn¡¯t operate in the same world as soldiers.


    ¡°Yes,¡± Six said tersely. ¡°Picking up more traces on potential artifacts on the search list. We should find them within a floor or two. Aside from that, two unknown signatures just passed by sensors I left on previous floors.¡±


    ¡°You should have led with that,¡± Verrin growled. ¡°Magicians?¡±


    ¡°Likely,¡± Six said. ¡°I would have patched the data to you if you had let me in your network.¡±


    Verrin glared at her, then shook his head. ¡°The private feed is still open. Send it to me and I¡¯ll send it to the rest.¡±


    ¡°Yes sir,¡± Six replied sardonically, using one of the additional four arms her exosuit provided to salute with a hand held out at the shoulder, palm facing upwards. A Polarian salute.


    The helmet-adorned members of Verrin¡¯s native country glanced at each other, flickers of flux splitting off from each of their FCDs as expressions of a general feeling that amounted to something like is this lady serious?


    It took a valuable minute for the sensor data to start coming through. The private channel Verrin had with Six was secured in a different way from the standard data stream his country¡¯s military used, and part of that meant a number of security protocols that made the transfer from sensors that Verrin didn¡¯t have equipment to interpret much more of a pain than it would have been otherwise.


    Through this filter, though, the relevant data could be rendered readable by Verrin¡¯s heads-up displays. Once it started flowing, it quickly caught up to live data, though the bitrate was still insufficient to provide the kind of detailed live-action displays that he was more familiar with.


    The moment the data made it to him, he distributed it to the rest of the squad. A great deal of it was simply noise, completely unreadable by his devices, but the flux signature detection was unmistakable. His squad usually would have had a seventh magician working as a dedicated perception-type specialist, but orders were orders, so they were working with Cascadian data instead.


    ¡°Bogeys on floor two,¡± Dragoon-3 called. ¡°Wait, on three? Display doesn¡¯t make sense.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s signatures on four floors already,¡± Verrin said. ¡°Dragoon squad, split up. Seven, cover Six.¡±


    ¡°Go elsewhere,¡± Dragoon-8, the private military contractor who¡¯d been the second addition to Verrin¡¯s squad said. ¡°I will cover the data specialist.¡±


    Verrin bit back a retort. ¡°Alright. Seven, take your standard driection instead. Keep eyes on each other, but establish minimum safe distances.¡±


    Contrary to the military wisdom of the before times, splitting up was often the optimal choice when one became aware of incoming magicians. Based on the flux signatures, these two were anywhere between high A to mid tactical-class magicians, which meant they had access to devastating area of effect magic that could potentially obliterate large groups of magicians with the wrong defenses.


    Even though Verrin¡¯s own squad was made of tacticals with the assistance of a master-class mercenary, there was always the possibility that a certain spell slipped through pre-prepared defenses. Magic was an uncertain field, and minimizing the amount of damage a single spell could cause was standard operating procedure.


    ¡°Flux signatures are acting strangely,¡± Verrin said, noting the patterns on his heads-up display. ¡°Weapons and FCDs hot. Either there¡¯s something wrong with the sensors¡ª¡°


    ¡°There is nothing wrong with the sensors,¡± Six said crossly.


    ¡°¡ªor we have zero information on what¡¯s actually happening down there. Pre-aim the likely manifestation spots.¡±


    They had the advantage here. While the Tower wasn¡¯t necessarily the most consistent in many respects, mankind had a habit of studying what they couldn¡¯t understand. Despite its irregularity, the Cascadian woman¡¯s sensor suite kept modern Tower detection technology in it, the same type that Verrin used. Based on flux concentrations, it was possible to identify the most likely locations for transitions between floors. By locking those down, ambushes became nearly trivial. There were ways to manifest that didn¡¯t take the traditional pathways, but the spatial transportation magic present in the Towers was so unknown that those methods were unreliable at best.


    Still, these people were moving unpredictably. Verrin wasn¡¯t going to let his guard down.


    ¡°Flux sensors are showing a ton of fluctuation on floors two and four,¡± Dragoon-2 said.


    A clattering rush of data surged through everyone¡¯s display like the data pipe had just unclogged, and multiple voices overlapped on the channel.


    ¡°Just lost sensors on three¡ª¡°


    ¡°¡ªcan¡¯t tell what¡¯s going on¡ª¡°


    ¡±¡ªno eyes on one¡ª¡°


    ¡°¡ªshit, shit, shit¡ª¡°


    ¡°Clear comms!¡± Verrin barked. ¡°Ready spells, ready weapons!¡±


    The overlap cleared up as Verrin drew his own assault rifle, a one-handed affair that he could expend a small flux charge on to prevent all recoil. Thanks to Cascadia, it came with an underbarrel attachment¡ªtactical-class chaonite. A spell jammer.


    ¡°Detecting a breach,¡± Six said, a note of strain in her voice. ¡°Three likeliest locations identified.¡±


    ¡°Focus the breach,¡± Verrin said. ¡°Prepare for¡ª¡°


    The ground beneath him jolted. A pit formed in his stomach like he was dropping from an airship, his sight jarring into complete darkness. Comms were nothing but chaos as Verrin struggled to maintain his composure, trying to cast a personal protection spell.


    Before he could finish the activation process, though, the world restabilized. The sensation faded, and Verrin found himself in the same place he¡¯d just been¡ªalmost. A deep fog had descended upon the fifth floor, limiting visibility.


    Further obstructing that was the lack of unnatural light. The purple sky above them had turned a pure, midnight black.


    ¡°NODs!¡± Verrin called out into his mic.


    No response.


    ¡°Sound check,¡± he said. ¡°Dragoon-1 speaking as Dragoon leader, sounding off.¡±


    A crackle of flux indicated that the system was transmitting again, and he breathed a quiet sight of relief.


    ¡°Dragoon-2, check.¡±


    ¡°Dragoon-3, check.¡±


    Silence.


    ¡°Dragoon-4,¡± Verrin said. ¡°Ernest. Are you there?¡±


    Another crackle.


    ¡°Bianca Ashwood speaking as Dragoon-4,¡± an unfamiliar woman¡¯s voice said. ¡°Check.¡±


    The next sound, transmitted through the comm system less than half a second later, was that of Dragoon-5 screaming. That, in turn, was followed by a thick, wet thud.


    ¡°My partner is unable to tell you this,¡± Bianca said, ¡°but he would like you to know that you are operating outside of your jurisdiction.¡±


    Heat seared through Verrin¡¯s mind, his vision blurring at the edges. Flux spiraled around his body, incandescent with rage.


    ¡°Dragoon leader. KILL THEM BOTH.¡±

 B2 Chapter 3 - Tower II

    Syl hadn¡¯t been inside a Tower in quite some time now. During the increasing activity leading up to World War III, he¡¯d partaken in more than a handful of climbs.


    The flux oversaturation that characterized the area around a Tower was much less of a problem inside, where all that excess flux manifested itself in environmental changes and monster manifestations. As such, there had been those who had tried to start civilizations within them, though those inevitably went poorly because, as it turned out, Towers reset themselves at irregular intervals, wiping the slate clean.


    What had been much more common were individuals or small organizations taking temporary residence in Towers, using them as training facilities or undetectable planning areas. Since there were no spells yet known to humanity that could penetrate the walls of a Tower, perception-type surveillance spells included, they had repeatedly proven themselves to be very effective as temporary enclaves for groups that didn¡¯t want to be found. Oftentimes, they would take a floor that could generally be marked as A-class or tactical-class¡ªusually the ones below the tenth. Syl had rooted out a number of them, and he¡¯d grown reasonably knowledgeable about Towers.


    Syl had learned from a great deal of mages in his own time, most notably the ones whose knowledge had quite literally been planted into his brain. Some of those had been Aurian archmages. While the country had a nasty habit of covering up its own inadequacies and pretending that its magical theory was the only one necessary to succeed as a magician, there were elements of brilliance to certain schools of Aurian thought that most other countries simply hadn¡¯t replicated.


    For instance, when combined with the works of some of the more notable Manchurian dark emissaries, the late Aurian fortification-type specialist Lillian Creshi¡¯s insights into Tower magic were absolutely fascinating. Every country had done their due diligence in analyzing Towers and Gates¡ªthey were, after all, the primary source of a number of magical resources that were critical to the continued functioning of the magical world as well as one of the few places that modern magical theory simply did not have a full grasp of it. Creshi¡¯s interactions with the Tower she¡¯d spent much of her magical life as well as her ultimate death in had yielded information that was useless for most people, but not for Syl.


    Her expertise mainly came in handy for floor-crashing. Since around the early 30s AFI, it was common knowledge that each floor on the Tower had at least one and up to several hundred potential exits that could be taken up or down a floor. Some manifested as portals, others physical staircases, and still others ritual circles that had to be properly activated to ascend to the next level. Entrances, on the other hand, were not defined but were predictable. Obviously, this made them perfect for people who needed security in the short term. Floors were easy to fortify from attack both above and below, and many a competent tactical-class death squad had met their end traveling between floors straight into pre-placed explosives.


    Thanks to Creshi¡¯s understanding of floor makeup built through nothing short of tens of thousands of fortification-type spells cast exhaustively over kilometers of Tower as well as filched expertise from the paragon-class mage heading one of Lingdao¡¯s black ops wardbreaking squads, Syl and his unit had developed a unique way to break through in points that nobody would expect.


    Doing so relied on finding an exit on the previous floor quickly and hijacking it, essentially overwriting parts of its flux structure with Syl¡¯s own. Given how Towers worked, said structure would start replacing itself almost immediately, which meant Syl had a very limited time window to read the exposed patterns, much of which were fully incomprehensible in the way that calculus would be to a caveman¡ªthe framework just didn¡¯t exist in modern magical theory, no matter the place. That said, there were parts that were parseable, and it was there where he would convince the Tower that, at least for a period of time, this modification he was making was part of its own natural order.


    This had variable effects depending on the exit utilized and what Syl could do with it, which meant that it heavily relied on his extreme magical literacy and adaptiveness to work with. It was theoretically replicable, but he had never seen if anyone else could do it. They had no reason to share, after all.


    There were two primary effects.


    The first was that he could cast spells between floors.


    In this specific case, he had injected one tactical-class spell and multiple synergistic A-class ones into a portal. Not even he had been able to accurately predict the effects¡ªwhile the appearance of thick fog on the fifth floor was roughly the same as what was produced by the Spelldampening Cloud that it was based on, but the black sky¡¯s cause was anyone¡¯s guess. It was also hard to tell if the ground had already been this disturbed on the way in or if the tactical-class Earthquake had done that.


    The second effect, of course, was enough destabilization of the above floor¡¯s flux to enable an unpredictable entry.


    Syl had planned on doing it on every floor since they hadn¡¯t known where the Cascadians were, but he and Bianca had found recently hidden flux sensors on the first floor which had conveniently been tapped into an encrypted frequency. Breaking into that hadn¡¯t been trivial, but Bianca had a great deal of experience doing exactly that. Finding the floor the Dragoon squad was on had been simple from there.


    There were six magicians remaining. Both Bianca and Syl had one kill to their name. He hadn¡¯t seen how Bianca had gotten hers, but his had been simple. The magician he¡¯d scanned with a close-range Flux Radar had been disoriented by the darkness and had still been trying to engage countermeasures, so Syl had dropped the detection spell, cast a low-impact D-class absorption-type Silencer, and shot his target in the head.


    Early on in the semester, he¡¯d listened to a lecture and subsequent demonstration of practical magic by Professor Adams, a high master-class magician with a couple of strategic spells up his sleeve back at the academy. He had emphasized the importance of knowing how to use a firearm in combat because magic alone wasn¡¯t always fast enough.


    Syl had to wonder if Adams actually knew what the real battlefields were like. His file had him placed in or around Auria throughout the entire war, and while there had been a nasty battle or two, there was nothing like the horrors Syl had witnessed. Yes, part of using firearms was because of attack speed, but the real reason was efficiency.


    There was a reason Syl didn¡¯t just walk into every single engagement using Ruin into Armaggedon. While that would solve one fight, even he would be gassed after two or three activations of that, and in war, you just couldn¡¯t get away with leaving yourself vulnerable. It was better to use a low-cost spell that perfectly fit the situation than a higher-cost one that could steamroll through it unless the latter had no downside, which no strategic-class or higher spell could boast. Especially when it came to a mission that didn¡¯t have the parameters of total and complete destruction, limiting the amount of flux used (for a regular magician) as well as the necessary occupied processes (for Syl) was critical.


    Even paragons could fall if they weren¡¯t careful. Syl knew that all too well.


    His caution was immediately rewarded. Since the flux impact of the spells he¡¯d cast for his gun was low, he had enough mental awareness and immediately available flux capacity and spell processes to hard switch into perception-type spells once he heard the leader start barking orders.


    Syl got low to the ground, waiting until his Safety Net detected Bianca¡¯s gun alongside the sidearms that two dead bodies and six live ones were carrying. Once he had a firm idea of where everyone was, he moved. Bianca was keyed into his spellwork thanks to the fact that half her flux pool was constantly flush with Syl¡¯s excess, toxic magic, so she made her move at the same time.


    Spells flashed, and Syl stumbled for a moment when they weren¡¯t what he¡¯d expected. Cascadian squads almost always led off with either physical attacks or something water-related. Since there were no sources of running water and it wasn¡¯t raining, Syl had assumed that they would either try to use the water in the grass beneath them or disrupt his body¡¯s bloodflow and had prepared countermeasures for that.


    Instead, he read four spell processes overwriting the darkness, tightly packed together and just narrowly avoiding overlap like a good set of coordinated spells should¡ªlike this, it would be nearly impossible to countercast one of them, let alone the set.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    The contents of those spells, however, were completely unlike what he¡¯d expected. Instead of casting a spell to temporarily transmute the water in his blood to a substitute that wouldn¡¯t react as well with flux, Syl switched tracks at the last second to throw up a completely different spell in just under half a second.


    In that half a second, magnetically charged projectiles synthesized out of the material in the ground via a tactical-class transmutation spell accelerated from zero to twenty-six hundred meters per second thanks to a third and fourth spell that created an artificial firing solution with incredibly powerful magnets pulling in opposite directions, utilizing the limited space to create what could best be described as a fully automatic railgun.


    Bianca covered Syl before he had to abandon his spell for a Simple Shield, creating several dozen C-class protective spells at once. They were simple forcefields, breaking the second they absorbed an impact, but her ability to manage so many simultaneous spell processes meant that she could continue repositioning them to take one or two impacts.


    This was less of a crisis for the two of them than an academic problem. One they had solved many times before, at that. The only surprise came from the fact that they hadn¡¯t expected it to come from this group.


    This was four parts of a seven-part standardized spell package that utilized all A-class or lower spells to achieve a devastating barrage that outclassed an entire battalion worth of traditional small arms fire and non-magical artillery. Standardized in the years leading up to the Third World War in certain countries, it was commonly known as the minimum mass driver. It functioned best with seven people, but could be made lethal with as few as three.


    It was also not Cascadian magic. The country that had popularized this and continued to use it in units down to their traditional seven-man squads was Polaris, Auria¡¯s neighbor and ostensible ally.


    More importantly, it was a spell pattern that Syl and Bianca both had a great deal of experience against.


    One of the primary selling points of it was that once a solid holding pattern was established, the minimum mass driver could continue functioning with minimal flux investment so long as concentration was maintained on the spell. Thanks to her link to his flux pool, Bianca¡¯s flux and focus restored quickly enough to continue supplying her with enough processes to continue blocking the general area that the two of them were getting hit from, but the Polarian spell formation could keep firing for as long as she could throw them up.


    No magic pattern was flawless, though, and the minimum mass driver was no exception. Typically, one of the spells cast over it was meant for security, preventing alternate forces from acting on their firing solution. Syl¡¯s standard method to break a firing solution was to counter-cast the security spell and then override the railgun setup with a wide-range spell.


    That was generally lethal, though. This was an information-gathering mission, and two of the squad utilizing this Polarian technique weren¡¯t casting towards it at all. Syl recognized the classified Cascadian sensor suite one of them had equipped around their body, which raised suspicion. That made them the the highest priority magician to take as prisoner.


    Without the anti-interference spell and with the context that he still needed at least one of them alive, the spell he ended up casting was not what he would¡¯ve done against a standard group running this formation.


    Counter-casting was tricky work. Syl was extraordinarily good at it in large part because of how proficient he was at reading spell patterns and memorizing every spell he¡¯d ever seen, but it was much harder to do in the darkness he¡¯d spat out onto the next floor. Reading spell processes wasn¡¯t the most doable when there was no visibility.


    Instead, he went for something a little more direct. B-class sabotage-type spell, Concrete Dissolution. Intended for breaking through physically constructed walls, Syl was able to cast it much further than the touch distance it was typically intended to be used at. Rather than destroy the spell that transmuted the dirt into hardened steel projectiles, he dealt with the end result, dissolving bullets into foil.


    The next step was the actual attack. The base spell was C-class, but Syl needed to cast it with enough flux to elevate it to A in order to ensure that it would be capable of dealing with the speed and volume of the projectiles involved here.


    Reflection-type spell: Redirect Trajectory. The base spell was simple enough¡ªcast once, it was a way for a skilled magician to change the direction of a decently-sized projectile if they were skilled enough to catch it midair. The manner Syl cast it in was noticeably different, modifying aspects of the spell to make it an area of effect one as well as a persisting one. It wasn¡¯t the type of thing a magician could come up with on the fly unless they were extremely talented and familiar with the spell.


    From start to finish of his two spells completing, roughly one second passed.


    Bianca danced her way through the ongoing barrage towards Syl, arriving at his side just in time for his magic to take effect.


    Over the comms they¡¯d hijacked, Syl heard three cries of pain. He¡¯d directed the spray of supersonic steel flechettes towards the people casting every spell but for the magnetizing one, which he knew from the experience was the most flux-draining one and thus on the person who had the least other combat ability.


    ¡°Dragoon squad, check,¡± the man who¡¯d identified himself as the leader said.


    ¡°Your time is best served surrendering,¡± Bianca replied, using the same comms system. Dragoons two through six are dead or mortally wounded. If you lay down your arms now, your life will be guaranteed. You may also grant some of your fallen comrades a chance at life.¡±


    A moment of silence passed. Around them, the fog was starting to dissipate, Syl¡¯s old spell finally deviating enough from the floor¡¯s original flux that it began cannibalizing itself.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± Dragoon leader asked, the anger from less than a minute ago now entirely gone, replaced by fear.


    ¡°If you intend on surviving the next thirty seconds, you will be the one answering our questions, not the other way around,¡± Bianca said. ¡°Now. Do you wish to surrender?¡±


    As the fog cleared, Syl took in their surroundings. It looked like these might have been grassy plains at some point, but said grass had mostly been churned by the earthquake he¡¯d caused. Five prone bodies were on the ground. Two of them still seemed alive though mostly immobile, while the third one who¡¯d been casting the spell to create a vessel for the minimum mass driver lay unmoving in a noticeably darker patch of dirt strewn with viscera.


    Dragoon leader hadn¡¯t been part of the targets Syl had selected with the trajectory redirection, and he stood a solid hundred feet from them, Cascadian military uniform bloodied. There were two others, both protected by a wide shielding spell presumably cast by the only person Syl hadn¡¯t identified yet. The other was the one strapped into a Cascadian reconnaissance exosuit.


    The shield dropped as Syl watched, taking a stealth-type spell down with it, and he suddenly realized that they had managed to hide a cast from him.


    The exosuit-clad woman released the spell she¡¯d formed. Master-class. Artillery-type, from a quick reading¡ªmovement, annihilation, conjuration all in the same spell.


    Syl snapped his fingers and cast one of his own signatures.


    When he¡¯d cast Ruin as an Aurian student for the first time, it had been targeted at FCDs. On his second cast, he¡¯d eliminated two humans. This time, he aimed for nothing but flux.


    In the same instant the spell reached completion, roaring out with the devastating, city-block-devastating force a master-class spell could manage easily, it flickered out like a birthday candle in a hurricane.


    Vindicated again, he thought.


    ¡°What the fuck,¡± the exosuited woman they¡¯d identified as Dragoon-7 said. ¡°How¡ªyou¡¯re a student!¡±


    ¡°I am not going to ask again,¡± Bianca said.


    Dragoon leader looked to the magician next to Dragoon-7, then to Syl. Then back to the magician.


    Slowly, he unclipped the bracer-type FCD from his wrist and let it drop to the ground.


    The moment he did, the last unidentified magician moved.


    Syl moved faster. Using the recorded spell he¡¯d innovated earlier in the semester, he approximated free-casting Flash Step, sending him hurtling forward towards his target. He shot twice, aiming for center of mass and then the FCD. The first shot bounced off reinforced armor. The second made contact, shattering the spellcasting device. To ensure a nonlethal takedown, his followup spells were aimed at limbs. Three of the four were successful, severing the magician¡¯s arms as well as one of his legs, cauterizing them in the process.


    That was enough to take the magician out of the fight, but evidently not enough to stop him from his actual goal. He must have used some sort of flux or movement-activated trigger¡ªwhatever it was, it was quick and explosive.


    The exosuit the woman had been wearing detonated in five separate spots, each with a yield much smaller than even a standard hand grenade but still enough to demolish the frame beyond recognition¡ªand kill the woman within.


    Syl tilted his head, watching as the ruined mess of metal and flesh crumpled to the ground.


    She cast a master-class spell, he signed. You would kill a friendly master-class to hide your data?


    The presumably Cascadian magician on the floor was too busy going into shock to answer.


    He rolled his eyes, starting on basic treatments with synthesized kaolin before deciding to just jolt the magician¡¯s nervous system and put him to sleep.


    ¡°Syl?¡± Bianca asked.


    Once he was adequately satisfied that the Cascadian wasn¡¯t immediately about to die, he turned back to his companion just in time to see the unconscious body of the Dragoon leader hit the ground. Bianca had his FCD in one hand, raising it towards Syl like a trophy.


    ¡°Next steps?¡± she asked.


    Syl signed. Triage the downed ones. We lack the equipment to properly investigate the Tower. Return the prisoners for enhanced interrogation.


    ¡°Sound direction as always,¡± Bianca said. ¡°It has been quite some time since we have had to fight Polarians. Has something changed?¡±


    Just one way to find out, Syl signed back.


    Auria¡¯s geographically closest ally had either splintered, actively turned against them, or decided to train Cascadians themselves. Said Cascadians were taking specialized into equipment into Aurian Towers, going so far as to commit open acts of warfare upon peacetime research teams in the process.


    They were looking for something. Syl intended to find it before they could.

 B2 Chapter 4 - Border

    Uriel was no stranger to violence, but she had to admit that this was a level beyond what she had grown accustomed to.


    ¡°Three degrees west, five point four six units north,¡± she called out. ¡°Shield gap is coming up. Ready spells. Barrage beginning in ninety seconds.¡±


    A timer ticked down across the FCDs of seven separate Reserve magicians¡ªfour A-class, two tactical, and Uriel at master. Each of the artillery-type specialists scrambled to their positions, kneeling down on the rapid-deploy platform meant for this kind of unit.


    The Graduate Reserve did not function like a traditional military unit did. Its original stated intent was to create a modular internal fighting force of magicians that could be deployed reactively against issues within Auria while the bulk of the magical military acted proactively. Uriel and every other Reserve member with a functioning frontal lobe knew that its actual purpose had changed to be a safe place to avoid the draft.


    Not so safe anymore, apparently. On some level, the original functions still persisted. Of the thirty-two magicians deployed to this temporary outpost, only three were from the AMI Reserve branch¡ªUriel, Ashley Aurum, and a tactical-class private by the name of Alexis Lance. The rest were mix-and-matched from other universities, a number of which were substantially less prestigious than AMI. While a disproportionate number of AMI Reserve had been called upon, they¡¯d been split across over a dozen similarly sized squads distributed at intervals of multiple miles across the border.


    Uriel assumed that a part of that was because the families suspected. It was inevitable, to some extent. There was only so much a clandestine student movement could do before it was no longer as secret as she would hope. They couldn¡¯t afford to kill off their own, not when so many of them needed their children to ensure continued Aurian hegemony. They could, however, separate them and monitor them with dozens of lower-class magicians that they knew they could control.


    As the countdown proceeded, Uriel began weaving a set of spell processes that she could have set up with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back.


    ¡°Spotter,¡± she called out. ¡°Confirm position.¡±


    Her favored spell for devastating attacks was the master-class spell Antimagic Railgun, but she could only cast that once or twice an hour if she was fully focused on restoring her magic. It was almost a strategic-class spell in how many resources it took.


    For the time being, she was using a tactical-class artillery-type spell that was similar in function but different in form, compressing flux down before sending it in a highly accurate long-range spell. Five of the other six artillery specialists with her would be doing the same, albeit with lower-powered spells. The last was their spotter¡ªwhile Uriel was capable of doing long-range recon herself, she didn¡¯t have the flux sensitivity that Alexis did. The former class 2 student and now Reserve grunt was significantly above average at her job¡ªtypical of an AMI student


    ¡°Confirming,¡± Alexis said, muttering a list of incantations with perfect clarity at a speed not even Uriel could match before looking up. ¡°Defense composition is lacking as predicted. Layered simple shields. Shift change is happening now. Adjust point two degrees north to hit the weak point.¡±


    ¡°Copy that, spotter,¡± Uriel said. ¡°Point two north.¡±


    With final adjustments in place, the time ticked to zero.


    ¡°Mau flagea!¡± Uriel shouted.


    ¡°Blaiz flagea!¡± the rest of the artillery-types declared in unison.


    The shield bubble that Ashley Aurum was currently magically fueling lost power for a quarter of a second as their resident fortification-type specialist manipulated their own defenses to let their artillery barrage through.


    After that, there was silence.


    ¡°Confirmation on hit,¡± Alexis said after about half a minute. ¡°Defenses were insufficient. Significant damage inflicted. Not total. Defenses coming back up.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, private,¡± Uriel said. ¡°Dismissed.¡±


    Alexis nodded, saluting before scampering off. She had a lesson to instruct, if Uriel recalled correctly¡ªthe private was primarily on research and teaching and wasn¡¯t even supposed to be in the line for active duty.


    ¡°Major,¡± one of the other artillery-type specialists said. Justin¡­ Lilac, was it? An offshoot of a prismatic family¡¯s boy, one way or another. ¡°Do you mind if I take a quick break?¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to ask me,¡± Uriel replied. ¡°Just ensure that you¡¯re ready when we need a barrage.¡±


    Lilac scurried off, and Uriel immediately put him out of mind. He wasn¡¯t her soldier, anyway.


    She tapped her foot, her hand snaking inside her pocket and thumbing a worn-out wristwatch. Her brother¡¯s, once upon a time.


    Keep this safe for me. His last words to her. Uriel had already reached adolescence by there, her understanding of politics and war enough to understand that something was wrong¡ªbut not exactly what.


    Now, that same sensation of wrongness permeated her consciousness. She had deployed expecting a repetition of the chaos that had split her budding movement apart during the war games against Cascadia. Syl and Bianca, both of whom had inexplicably survived that event, had warned them about war. Uriel remembered the last war, and this wasn¡¯t like that.


    This was trench warfare. Uriel had experienced this a couple of times, but never with the stakes that were currently at hand. Neither side could advance far past the fortifications they¡¯d set up because both sides had seeded the ground with so many traps and explosives that going too far beyond their setups would ensure certain death. They were trading artillery shots with not much else happening. Uriel had just killed real human beings from miles away, and she could barely even see her destination.


    This felt insufficient. The master-class magician couldn¡¯t shake the idea that there was something more to this. They had brought so many magicians to the war games in an ambush attempt, and Uriel knew for a fact that they had more. Why were they so non-committal here?


    There was only one answer she could think of to that¡ªthey were a distraction. If they were, though, where were they attacking?


    She couldn¡¯t find out without turning this entire defensive upside down.


    All she could do for now was hurry up and wait.


    #


    [RANK HIDDEN] [NAME HIDDEN]: Prisoner transfer was successful. The previous Cascadian prisoner expired under duress, although we believe that the amount of useful information he could provide had reached its limit in any case.


    Syl had received the message during Practical Magic training, where he had practiced countering his dueling partner with only counter-casts. It had left the class 1 boy flabbergasted, but Syl had concluded he needed to practice counter-casting real magic more. There was every possibility he would slip up trying to counter a strategic-class spell, and that wasn¡¯t the kind of mistake a magician walked away from.


    The message hadn¡¯t been sent with the tag labeling it as urgent because it wasn¡¯t. It was a good update, as was the fact that the previous magician he¡¯d brought it had likely been executed. Their special unit hadn¡¯t accidentally tortured any magicians to death for at least two years.


    Cascadia¡ªand possibly Polaris, based on the two magicians he and Bianca had managed to capture alive¡ªwere clearly searching for something, but without their specialized technology or their plans, Syl had no way of knowing what that was. Enhanced interrogation was their best play, but that took time. For the time being, the unit had deployed another research unit with better protection to the Tower to search for any anomalies that they might have missed.


    That meant that Syl and Bianca were back at the academy now. Though they were both keen on identifying on what exactly the enemy wanted, they also had very little interest in any war that was anything short of absolutely necessary. They¡¯d done enough heroics for several lifetimes. Even if a hostile nation was knocking at the door, they were going to take advantage of the normal life they¡¯d never gotten the chance to have before.


    For Syl, that meant another day in the class 3 spell theory class. He¡¯d found a perverse kind of entertainment in going to the class to examine what he knew and compare it against what beginners were expected to learn. Sometimes history was involved, too, and that ranged from surprisingly accurate to propaganda so blatant he had to wonder if a single person in the room believed it.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Today¡¯s lesson involved some history, it seemed. With their teaching grad student currently on deployment with the Reserve, lesson timing and manner had been changed. She had a link to the campus intranet from an uplink installed as part of the standard rapid-response outpost, so she was calling in from a makeshift classroom near the border. Alexis Lance had told the class that she was on a ¡°research outing¡± with the Reserve¡ªan official line, of course¡ªbut Syl was pretty sure less than half the people here bought that.


    The intranet connection was a flux reproduction of the internet, which had once been a wholly electronic system. It carried features that the old internet wouldn¡¯t have, but it was also remarkably limited in comparison. There was nothing like the worldwide connections that had once been possible, but the front half of the classroom held a three-dimensional representation of the room Lance was in, which electronics hadn¡¯t managed to accomplish before they¡¯d either stopped working or been bombed out of existence.


    ¡°We¡¯re going to examine sabotage-type spells today,¡± Lance said, sounding harried. She startled, looking off to the side, then shook her head and looked back at the class. ¡°This is the second half of the Enhancement school of fundamental magic, bringing us to our last unit.¡±


    The bulk of the semester so far had been focused on the five fundamental schools of magic, each of which carried two primary opposing classes within them¡ªManipulation¡¯s, for instance, were conjuration and absorption. Existence, Detection, and Acceleration had all had some holes in their explanations, but Syl had decided that they were good enough for beginners. Fortification, the ¡°positive¡± end of the Enhancement school, had been interesting enough and had surprisingly followed the actual course of history. He was hoping this would be the same.


    ¡°The magical schools as we know them today were not formally established until the early 30s,¡± Lance started, clearly reading off a prompter of some kind. Her own notes, maybe? ¡°Sabotage-type magic was the last school to be fully realized. Until this time period, this kind of magic was largely either unused or classified as a more complex combination of other schools. It was not until the Taiwan singularity that sabotage-type magic came into its own, finding uses primarily in reducing the efficacy of electronic machines and artificially generated magic.¡±


    That sent murmurs through the class, which was a bit noisier than usual without the professor physically present to handle them. Most everyone had heard of the artificial intelligence that had quickly replicated and taken Taiwan under their own control. Just like the Sinners, those intelligences were living legends, seemingly too powerful to be true¡ªyet they had walked the Earth at some point.


    They no longer did, of course, but Syl had to admit that the three times he had visited the frozen ruins of the nation-state, peppered by every permanent magical effect under the sun as well as several hundred megatons worth of nuclear bombs, he had gotten the unsettling impression that humanity had not been the only being to walk away from that. It was just an impression, of course, but the allure of that mystery drew in even the most ignorant magicians.


    After he¡¯d gotten over his initial dislike for Lance¡¯s elitism, Syl had accepted that she was at least a decent lecturer. It was clear sometimes that she knew that what she was teaching was incomplete material, but she did at least make it palatable.


    Syl was already more skilled at sabotage-type magic than someone like Lance could hope to be in her lifetime, so he tuned the lecture out as he continued on¡ª


    He paused, his eyes locking onto a corner of the projection. The intranet ran off of transmitted flux, which meant that any notable sources of flux in the same area as someone holo-calling would interfere with the transmission to some extent. Syl couldn¡¯t be a hundred percent sure of the spell from here, but¡­ he could guess the school of magic. He could even be fairly certain of which family had sent that person.


    Syl stood up and walked out of class without another word. If he was wrong, this was a fairly harmless waste of time. If he was right, then he couldn¡¯t waste any time.


    Two minutes after contacting Bianca, she was out of her class as well, joining him as they both used stealth-type spells to avoid detection by errant faculty or school security systems as they departed towards the garages.


    ¡°Lyon Red passed me in the hallway,¡± Bianca reported. ¡°My stealth spells were up, but I believe he caught me.¡±


    It¡¯s okay, Syl signed. I am guessing some of the prismatics already know what is happening. They will not identify us from this. Full suits available, yes?


    It would be a pain, admittedly, but there were so many moving pieces in the situation as it was that Syl didn¡¯t think the Red plant in class 3 was anywhere near the top of his problems.


    ¡°They are,¡± she said. ¡°What problem did you identify?¡±


    I¡¯ll tell you on the way, he signed back.


    #


    Alexis sighed, shutting off the intranet connection. It was flux-hungry enough to actively affect the amount of magic allocated to the outpost defenses, but not enough to the extent where she could reasonably use that as an excuse not to continue giving her lessons.


    That was part of her contract with the Reserve. She¡¯d almost been sent packing to Lingdao after her relatively mediocre performance at school, a front that she was well aware had an attrition rate she didn¡¯t want to risk. Alexis¡¯ research into magical linguistics had made her valuable enough to keep on as part of the Reserve so long as she spread some of that expertise to incoming students, so she had accepted it over near-certain military service. Even if it was going to be her eighth year here soon, anything was preferable to even two years in Lingdao.


    At least, that was what she had thought. Now, with every earth-shaking impact in the distance sending heart-stopping fear coursing through her veins, she was no longer sure.


    ¡°Just a few more weeks,¡± she told herself. ¡°Then it¡¯ll be done and you can go home.¡±


    Home. Home meant Viv and Ethan and ultra-processed food and shitty pre-integration TV dramas that had been restored and made compatible with the intranet. A boring existence, but boring was better than this.


    ¡°Having a rough time?¡±


    Alexis¡¯ gaze snapped up, her hand instinctively going to her FCD. She relaxed when she saw who it was.


    ¡°Justin,¡± she said. ¡°You scared me.¡±


    ¡°My fault,¡± the Lilac said, holding his hands up. For a prismatic, even one from a lesser family, he was surprisingly down-to-earth. Easy to interact with. ¡°I was just thinking that you look stressed. Want me to take over your next spotter shift?¡±


    She wasn¡¯t supposed to do that, since this was reserved for people with classroom clearances, but it did sound nice. Being able to relax after this tension, away from the bombs and spells¡­ Alexis deserved this, didn¡¯t she?


    ¡°If you don¡¯t mind,¡± she said.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± Justin said, smiling too wide. His eyes flashed alongside his brilliant teeth. ¡°And, if you don¡¯t mind, I¡¯d like to hook into the intranet. Just real quick. All I need is a few moments.¡±


    Alexis frowned. She wasn¡¯t supposed to do that, but Justin was being reasonable. This was just quid pro quo, wasn¡¯t it?


    ¡°Go ahead,¡± she said.


    Those captivating violet eyes flashed again. ¡°Thanks a billion.¡±


    Somehow, the next few minutes seemed to pass by in a hazy flash. Alexis rubbed her eyes, shaking herself out of her daze. She really was tired¡ªshe had barely even noticed Justin leaving.


    ¡°I should take a nap,¡± she muttered to herself¡ªor, at least, tried to. Alexis was familiar enough with rambling through chains of magical phrases thousands of words long in an effort to distinguish the microscopic differences between them to tell that her vocal cords were working to vibrate, to produce sound, but nothing was coming out.


    She snapped to alertness immediately, synapses firing as she realized what was going on.


    Shit, she thought. Justin did something. I need to get in touch with the others.


    Alexis picked up her FCD, working the buttons as best as she could, her hands shaky.


    No signal. Flux pulsed from her casting device and snuffed out just as quickly.


    Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Alexis scrambled to check the intranet port, then jerked to a halt.


    Someone, probably Justin, had used some kind of spell to physically chain her to this location. A second later, she noticed that the port was no longer empty. There was an FCD plugged into it.


    This was a setup, she realized. Her heart sank, realizing that the signature on that would almost certainly be heard.


    They were going to find her here. Alexis¡¯ life was over.


    Sure enough, after some time that might have been a couple of minutes or an hour, the temporary door to her ¡°classroom¡± opened and two magicians with their faces obscured wearing uniforms Alexis had seen only twice before stepped in, clearing the room with a sidearm in one hand and an FCD in another.


    Special forces soldiers.


    She hung her head. All her life, she had just wanted to learn. She hadn¡¯t even been particularly good at that despite her passion, but she¡¯d tried oh so hard just to end up here.


    What a pathetic way to die, she thought.


    The two special forces units put down their guns for a moment and started gesturing towards each other in a manner that Alexis eventually recognized was a standard English sign language. She couldn¡¯t read it or say anything past the basics, but she could tell they were communicating.


    Were they deciding how they would kill her now? How to gather information from her corpse? Even if she could talk, she couldn¡¯t tell them anything they would believe.


    One of them knelt down, forcing her to make¡­ well, not eye contact, since they were wearing a helmet that blocked their face, but something similar.


    The magician held up a piece of notebook paper¡ªreal paper, not the plastic synthetics that most people used.


    Scrawled on it was a short, neat note.


    You are going to be okay. This is for your own safety.


    A blast of flux poured into Alexis¡¯ head, filling it full of heavy cotton. Her vision started dimming at the edges.


    ¡°Who?¡± she tried to ask, mouthing the words when her voice produced no sound.


    As if he had predicted her question, the magician turned the sheet around.


    An archmage, of sorts.


    An archmage who didn¡¯t need to speak.


    Alexis¡¯ delirious mind continued thinking even as she started succumbing to the sleep spell. A¡ªthe silent archmage¡­ that rings a bell.


    Before she could connect any more dots, she passed out.


    #


    Syl looked to Bianca.


    Attack force incoming, he signed.


    A distraction, Bianca signed back.


    He agreed. If they had wanted just to wipe this outpost off and move onwards, a hostile infiltrator would have needed only to plant a bomb strong enough to wipe them all while they were off guard.


    Still hostile, Syl said.


    Bianca nodded. Dead or alive?


    Syl considered, then shrugged. It doesn¡¯t matter to me.


    The wide-range spell jammer, an artifact retrieved from the inside of a Tower, finished establishing itself in that moment. With the tactical-class jamming field slipping into place, the shield spell covering the outpost shattered.


    Syl and Bianca stepped out of the room.


    Someone was going to regret their violence today, and it was not going to be either of them.

 B2 Chapter 5 - Border II

    Magical violence tended towards extremes. Magic in general tended to do that, but combat was even moreso. Apart from World War III, which had been an outlier in so many ways that it was easier to list the few ways in which it had resembled a normal conflict, most fronts typically involved a great deal of waiting, putting the pieces into place to execute a masterstroke. Said masterstrokes usually quickly devolved into extremely messy, brutal fighting¡ªthe other mode of magical combat.


    A recent incident recorded by both the high council of Cascadia and the royal court of Auria in the Santa Rosa Tower had occurred exactly like that. Tensions had been high, but the first fatalities had come during structured duels before the fighting had come to a head with Cascadia¡¯s ambush attempt followed by a paragon-class spell deployed by what Cascadia believed was the Sinner Gluttony and what certain individuals of the Aurian court knew was a different one.


    This time, that same Sinner had entered the situation when it was already midway through that violence.


    Unlike the rest of the sins, Pride did not have a standard modus operandi¡ªnot this Pride, at least. The others had gained their names for reasons that were transparently obvious to anyone familiar with their legend. Gluttony¡¯s signature spells revolved around devouring the magic in a wide area, Sloth¡¯s slowed time until it was functionally frozen, Greed stole flux and blood from within people¡¯s bodies, and so forth. Pride, on the other hand, had no single signature¡ªat least, not one that any observers survived to see.


    He was also currently not operating in his capacity as a Sinner. This, at least, was par for the course. A Sinner¡¯s appearance was monumental, potentially world-shaking news, but paragon-class magicians often disguised themselves to have lower power levels in situations where raw power alone wouldn¡¯t solve the problem.


    Thus, Sylvester Auria and Bianca Ashwood cleared the temporary installment room by room. Syl had identified the silencing effect from analysis of the ambient flux, though he couldn¡¯t tell what spell it was. His assumption, which was that it stemmed from a Tower artifact, was correct, but he had no way of verifying that until he found the source of the effects.


    Said source was currently preparing to leave. Justin Lilac had completed the job his family had sent him here to do. He didn¡¯t know why they were assisting Cascadians, but he wasn¡¯t in a position to refuse. The people above him knew more, and they were always right.


    Both Aurian and Cascadian magicians had realized that the Auria side¡¯s defenses had shattered at roughly the same time. Naturally, the Cascadians had attempted an artillery barrage, but the Indigo daughter in charge of the Aurian side had maintained the presence of mind to get fortification specialist Ashley Aurum outside of the range of the jamming effect as quickly as possible, though she remained within the large-range silencing one.


    The magical artillery barrage had thus taken only one or two lives, clipping the outer edge of the rapid-deploy setup where Aurum¡¯s protection spell didn¡¯t reach.


    The situation had developed from there.


    Syl and Bianca stepped over bodies both Aurian and not as they maneuvered their way through an outpost with flickering power and insufficient flux. The Cascadian forces had maneuvered their way across the no man¡¯s land to make an attack coinciding with this ambush, and from the looks of it had managed to take control of part of it.


    They had to be relying on nonmagical firearms. A master-class spell of any significance would have obliterated a good chunk of the outpost, and most of it had still been intact when the two of them arrived.


    Cascadia hadn¡¯t sent master-classes, which fed Syl¡¯s growing suspicion that these weren¡¯t only Cascadian soldiers.


    His suspicion grew as good as confirmed when Bianca broke down a barricaded door and found three magicians in Cascadian colors with four Reserve privates, the former preventing the latter from moving with their rifles.


    Against enemies with no strategic value, Cascadian MO was take no prisoners.


    To their credit, the four ¡°Cascadians¡± adjusted quickly, bringing their guns up, but Syl was faster.


    Chaonite magic jamming worked by disrupting flux fields around people, preventing their magic from escaping and trapping a large amount of energy around them. This base, however, was under the effect of artifact magic jamming. Artifacts from Towers were such a black box that not even the world¡¯s most talented magical engineers had been capable of cracking them, and their effects varied even between two similar items from the same Tower floor.


    Syl had tried to cast a spell the moment he had sensed the effect take over, and he had quickly realized that rather than the flux field restriction that directed chaonite jamming involved, this artifact just disrupted standard spell patterns, making it absurdly hard for a traditional magician to complete a spell. The enemy soldiers had equipped pre-activated magical equipment to compensate for this, granting them an advantage over the Aurians who were caught completely off guard by their sudden inability to verbal cast their spells as well as the chaos that burdened them when they tried to create regular spell processes.


    Unlike them, the silent archmage had been casting in these conditions his entire life.


    Thanks to the enemy¡¯s own artifact, they couldn¡¯t cast either, which meant they had no defenses against a relatively easy to counter lethal spell.


    Sabotage-type A-class spell, Aneurysm. Syl felt the artifact crushing his spell processes, but he knew how to operate with none. From start to finish, without even using a verbal component, the spell completed within a quarter second.


    Normally counterable by simply creating a basic spell process within one¡¯s own body when targeted, the specific conditions of the jamming prevented the enemy from doing so.


    Four magicians that Syl suspected were not Cascadian but Polarian froze up simultaneously, then crumpled to the ground.


    Elsewhere, silent gunfire from Bianca eliminated two more who¡¯d come for backup.


    They continued onward without sparing a second glance for the Aurians they¡¯d saved, systematically eliminating every enemy magician they came across.


    Less than half of the Aurians who had been in this base were dead. The ambush had been effective, but not lethal. That spoke in part to Uriel¡¯s competence as a leader and magician, but it also raised further suspicions about the true target of this attack.


    Once they were far enough in, Syl signed to Bianca to finish clearing the space out and identify anyone using Violet family magic. He took to the outside.


    #


    Ashley and Uriel were holding down a makeshift position, their backs to one wall and their front covered by Uriel¡¯s spells. The master-class artillery specialist was acting as a one-woman army, firing cover fire towards the magicians trying to use movement-type spells to breach the gap between the two of them. She had a notable killcount already, but there were a surprising amount of magicians firing back, and it would only take one lucky shot.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    The moment an unknown magician arrived, clad from head to toe in an FCD a couple steps down from Horizon Breaker, Uriel nearly fired on him. She stopped herself when the silent magician turned instead towards the kilometers-distant outpost that held what was proving to be a startlingly high number of magicians.


    One critical piece of information Syl had that Uriel did not was the composition of the enemy forces. Every nation had their own unique style of warfare, and one of Polaris¡¯ most notable points was their use of a clone reserve. Cloned biomatter could not awaken a flux pool of its own, but Polaris was a very effective mass-producer of magical items. Loading a set of programmed clones with cheap weapons that could simulate up to B or even A-class magicians gave them the ability to throw a lot of bodies on the field, providing more opportunities for their enemy to make a mistake.


    Uriel was growing very close to doing so. Still assuming they were fighting against Cascadians, she was putting more flux than necessary into each spell, predicting that the enemies would resist them more than they ended up doing. Since she was still silenced, the usual fractional seconds of time between successful casts were stretching into full seconds, sometimes longer. Failure was an inevitability, not a question.


    The figure she didn¡¯t recognize prevented her from making a fatal mistake against the enemy by removing the enemy.


    Familiar with casting silently, he decided on a single spell for that purpose.


    Wide-range strategic-type artillery-type spell, Raijin.


    Certain spells started losing functional names around the tactical to master-class range, not just because of vanity by the spell¡¯s creators but also because of the exact details of what they did. While it would have been close enough to its function to call this spell Lightning Storm, that was not what it did.


    This spell functioned best with clear skies and dusty or sandy terrain. Electric charge erupted from forty-one points across a one-mile radius, connecting with designated spots on the ground. Unlike other precise spells of its like, Raijin did not require a spotter. It took the path of least resistance, searching for liquid¡ªsuch as, for instance, that inside a human body. When it couldn¡¯t make contact thanks to a lucky dodge or magical defense, it arced onto the ground, kicking up and igniting sand. Utilizing the same thermobaric principle as a flour explosion, a miss resulted in an explosion large enough to kill the oncoming magicians.


    Uriel stared in abject shock at the spell. She recognized the spell as well as its use, but it would have taken her at least half an hour to cast that with a ritual casting array and several million dollars worth of flux batteries. The stranger had done it in less than ten seconds.


    He barely regarded them with a glance before turning to leave, satisfied that they were alive.


    As he set off, the silencing effect abruptly dropped, a pressure that had been constant on Uriel¡¯s shoulders lifting.


    She¡¯d been unsure of it at first when she¡¯d read the sensor data coming from within the base, but she was certain now. This was the same secret magician who had turned the San Francisco Bay into a crater. The same one who had somehow saved the lives of two Aurian students at the Santa Rosa Tower.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± she asked, hating how childish she sounded in that moment.


    The magician swiveled his head to look at her, opaque visor hiding his expression, then turned back.


    ¡°The spell jamming is down,¡± Ashley said abruptly. ¡°My dome is back to full effectivity.¡±


    That¡ªor something completely unrelated, it was hard to tell¡ªgot the silent magician¡¯s attention. He blurred with speed, and then he was gone, taking off back into the base.


    Uriel and Ashley stared at each other in silence. There was nothing for either of them to say.


    #


    Bianca had taken care of the majority of the enemy magicians who had invaded the base and had managed to both deactivate the silenceing, jamming artifact as well as fully disconnect a number of information cards from the intranet system.


    Back at the academy, Syl had recognized fluctuation in the flux of the transmitted image as well as a brief peek of someone with a facial structure and family crest he recognized.


    He¡¯d been hit with a Violet spell more times than he cared to admit, and he knew exactly what one looked like. The fact that there had been one actively casting in the background had led to the natural conclusion that something was amiss.


    Sure enough, Bianca had a Violet¡ªor at least someone related to the family¡ªby the scruff, a headless magician at her feet.


    ¡°His name is Justin Lilac. This magician here was his escape plan,¡± Bianca said. ¡°Swap uniforms and defect. I don¡¯t know what was supposed to happen next.¡±


    Syl frowned. The Violets were intense loyalists. He knew that General Violet herself was a stout defender of Aurian propaganda from her experiences with her, but then again, Drew had betrayed them to the Cascadians in an attempt to kill Bianca.


    Is he working for anyone? Syl signed.


    ¡°I was moments from asking,¡± Bianca replied. ¡°He does not understand sign language.¡±


    We should go. Syl tilted his head. Uriel and Ashley are here. Wasn¡¯t expecting that.


    Bianca¡¯s expression was unreadable behind the visor, but she nodded. ¡°The unit should be coming soon, correct?¡±


    I called them on my way back in, Syl signed. Five minutes maximum.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± Bianca said. ¡°Once we have him prisoner¡ª¡°


    Up until this point, Justin Lilac had gone slack thanks to Bianca¡¯s careful disabling of his most important nerves, but that word seemed to trigger something. His eyes glazed over, and his muscles began to work.


    Syl, recognizing the telltale signs of pre-programmed information security measures, sent a burst of flux at the Violet branch family¡¯s magician at the brain, throat, and heart¡ªthe three most common places to hide a suicide device. He had grown adept at getting rid of them, and the Sanguine operators had reminded him to take precautions in these cases.


    Lilac, however, had a significantly more old fashioned method. He bit down, hard.


    ¡°Gas,¡± Bianca said, a note of alarm in her voice as she shoved the prismatic aside, sending him tumbling bonelessly to the ground.


    A plume of nearly colorless gas rose from Justin¡¯s mouth as his body entered its death throes, foam overflowing from his lips.


    Syl used a purification-type spell to contain and eliminate that gas. It was too late for their would-be prisoner. These kinds of capsules risked being countered by purification spells, but the Violets had been thorough. Justin had been dead from the moment he¡¯d bit down on whatever had been implanted in his tooth or saliva glands.


    ¡°No prisoner, then,¡± Bianca said. ¡°Just an ID.¡±


    That tells us enough, Syl signed. We should go.


    The pieces of the puzzle were coming together. There still weren¡¯t enough to make a solid guess as to what the final picture would look like, but they were no longer firing blind.


    Before Uriel and Ashley could regroup and ask them any further questions, the two of them were already gone.


    #


    Syl: I hear there was an attack on your outpost.


    Mj. Uriel: You shouldn¡¯t have that information. It¡¯s only a day old.


    Syl: I told you before. We¡¯re operating on a different level from you. I have my sources. You¡¯re off the front?


    Mj. Uriel: We¡¯re wrapping up here, yes. There were similar ambushes at a number of other locations.


    Syl: No Violets implicated in the rest, I presume.


    Mj. Uriel: I shouldn¡¯t be surprised that you know that, but I am. Three other Lilacs, each at a specific location. The Violet family has found evidence that certain members of the branch family were planning on a coordinated defection.


    Syl: That doesn¡¯t surprise me.


    Mj. Uriel: I¡¯m sure it doesn¡¯t.


    Syl: It was too easy, wasn¡¯t it?


    Mj. Uriel: Pardon?


    Syl: There was an ambush, and yet you lived past the first thirty seconds. Nobody blew you up. They threw one or two tactical-classes at you and a ton of As and Bs.


    Mj. Uriel: I was thinking about that. There was¡­ it sounds stupid, but someone saved me. An Aurian magician. You wouldn¡¯t happen to know them?


    Syl: I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about. Besides, reports indicate you likely would have been fine, though it¡¯s possible you would have taken more losses. A lot of the other locations that were similarly ambushed survived, and even though there was a direct attempt on your life, you had the general situation under control without outside interference.


    Mj. Uriel: I suppose that¡¯s true. I won¡¯t call it toothless because nine non-AMI Reserve students are dead, but they didn¡¯t capitalize on it as well as they could have.


    Syl: ¡°Appear weak when you are strong.¡±


    Mj. Uriel: Sun Tzu. War strategy from thousands of years ago wasn¡¯t exactly applicable to pre-integration Earth. Much less so now.


    Syl: Not always, but this is too strange a coincidence. I suspect that the actual point of the ambush was to distract from another movement or set of movements. One of them has been identified¡ªa Tower invasion. More investigation is needed.


    Mj. Uriel: I¡¯ll let you know if anything pops up on our end, but we should be back within a couple of weeks. The deployment is almost done for all of us.


    Syl: Is that so? I look forward to speaking with you in person, then. Assuming Jennifer is coming back then, I need to meet with her. I have some artifact technology she might be interested in.


    Mj. Uriel: Copy that. Stay safe.


    Syl: Likewise.