Chapter 14: Illegal Alien (12)
LL-15 Abandoned Residential District.
Supposedly, it used to be workers' housing back in the day.
Now, it had no door signs, no registry, and no one coming to look for you even if you dropped dead.
In short, a criminal's den.
Raden, a Tier 1 mage, was holed up inside.
Even after getting kicked out of the Upper Levels, he refused to give up his title as a mage.
Sure, his registration had been revoked when he defaulted on procedure fees.
His ACU output had dropped to less than half, reducing him to a state where he could only throw his weight around bottom-feeders in the slum.
But a mage was still a mage.
At least, that was what Raden believed.
Or rather, wanted to believe.
"Shut up."
He reached out toward the man cowering before him.
Deep within his neck, the outdated ACU flared scorching hot as faint blue light flickered across his fingertips.
"I told you, this is all the money I have! I swear!"
The man whimpered, holding out a fistful of metal credits.
But Raden scoffed at the sight.
"Then hand over an organ."
"Please don't—"
Raden constricted the man's throat with a flick of invisible force.
It was strictly for intimidation, nothing impressive.
A basic Tier 1 Telekinesis Auxiliary Formula.
It couldn't lift heavy objects, breach reinforced iron doors, or hold up in real combat.
A crude formula, sure, but more than enough to intimidate an ignorant underground dweller.
Against a terrified target, it worked even better.
Through extortion, threats, and human trafficking, Raden scraped together a living in the Lower Levels from whatever filth came his way.
He survived day by day, held together by a single, bitter obsession: returning to the Upper Levels.
Just then—
Bzzzt.
The magitech lamp overhead flickered.
Raden jerked his head up, looking at the lamp in annoyance.
"Fuck… why now of all times?"
Bzzzt, bzzzt.
The light died and sputtered back to life twice more.
"Dammit."
This happened several times a day, so it wasn't particularly unusual.
In fact, it was more of a miracle that lights even turned on in the Lower Levels.
But this time, something was different.
A strange pressure made Raden frown.
"What the…"
In the next instant, the light died completely.
Bzzzt.
And when it turned back on, a young man with black hair and black eyes was standing in front of him.
"Hiiik!"
Raden shrieked in shock at the sudden appearance and stumbled backward.
The man he had been choking collapsed onto the floorboards when the force dissipated, but Raden ignored him.
He had no idea how long the young man in front of him had been standing there.
There had been no footsteps, and almost no mana signature.
"W-who the hell are you?!"
The young man didn't answer.
He just stood there, studying Raden quietly.
"Where did a punk like you roll in from…"
Raden gritted his teeth, his instinctual terror rapidly twisting into ugly rage.
I don't know who this bastard is, but he's no mage. In that case…
The ACU implanted in the back of his neck flared with scorching heat.
A neon-blue light surged down from his nape into his shoulders, flooding through his arms and legs like liquid fire.
His heart hammered violently against his ribs, forcing raw, artificial power into every muscle in his body.
Tier 1 Body Enhancement.
It was merely an auxiliary formula for a mage, but it was more than enough against an unarmed human in the Lower Levels.
Raden kicked off the floorboards and charged, swinging his fist with all the strength he could muster.
"Die!"
The young man simply shifted his stance by a single step, and Raden's fist cut through empty air.
Before Raden could recover, his wrist was seized and twisted, sending a spike of white-hot pain shooting straight into his elbow.
"Ugh…!"
As his body pitched forward, the young man grabbed Raden's shoulder and twisted it downward.
Bam!
Raden's face slammed straight into the floorboards.
His magic-enhanced body dented the wood, but that was all.
The spell didn't do a damn thing to save him.
He couldn't even process what had just hit him.
"Gah…!"
As he struggled, the ACU heated up again.
Raden tried to push his body up using body enhancement once more, but…
Fingers dug deep into the back of his neck, seizing the glowing hardware and ripping it out.
"AAARGH!"
A sickening tear of metal and tissue echoed through the room.
The young man inspected the dripping module, then muttered under his breath.
"…So this is the level of Tier 1."
Raden's face contorted.
"You…"
He gritted his teeth, pinned to the floor.
"Are you looking down on Tier 1 too?"
He poured out the bitter resentment of a disgraced mage who had never been treated with respect just because he was Tier 1.
But the young man gave no response.
"You magicless bastard!"
Raden thrashed and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"What do bastards like you know?! A mage is still a mage, even at Tier 1! I was recognized in the Upper Levels…!"
"Just shut up."
The last thing Raden ever saw was the heavy sole of a boot coming down straight toward his face.
Crack!
* * *
Kael lifted the ACU he had torn from the unconscious Tier 1 mage's neck into the light to examine it closely.
So this tiny thing…
It rested on his palm, barely larger than two finger joints.
Fine patterns were engraved into its black metal casing, and silver circuit lines thinner than hair were intertwined on the inside.
…is an artificial circuit unit.
Kael lightly ran his fingertip along the edge of the casing.
He had heard it was a device of the lowest tier, yet its internal architecture was surprisingly complex.
It housed an intake node to absorb external mana, a refining matrix to filter out impurities, an auxiliary computing circuit wired directly into the user's nervous system, and a micro-buffer to regulate mana pressure right before output.
Interesting.
Kael couldn't help but marvel at the ingenuity of magitech engineering—though a faint tinge of regret lingered beneath his curiosity.
As he held the ACU, one fact became undeniably clear.
Destroying the device would forcefully discharge its trapped mana for a split second, stripping the energy back down to its raw, unrefined state before it could bind to a spell formula.
In that fleeting moment, Kael's dormant circuit could catch the overflow, allowing him to cast magic once again.
Granted, it was like catching someone else's spark on bone-dry firewood, but it was the only option he had.
Kael slowly rolled the ACU across his palm, lost in thought for a moment.
As a low-tier device, the mana he could extract was limited.
He couldn't expect the kind of raw power he once held—a destructive might that could split fortress walls and shake the Demon Lord's castle to its core.
But casting a minor spell was well within reach.
For what lay ahead, he knew that would be more than enough.
Preparations are complete.
Kael stood up and set off once more.
* * *
Pale had been scouring the Lower Levels for days.
LL-18 Wastewater Junction, LL-17 Waste Compression Zone, LL-16 Illegal Residential Block—even doubling back around LL-19 Scrap Market.
Yet, they had nothing meaningful to show for it.
The target's unique wavelength was detected intermittently before vanishing.
At times it was detected in a pile of junk; at others, on the wall of a transport pipe, or the rusted latch of a deserted room.
It was as if someone had deliberately scattered traces around.
And that realization was slowly eating away at Pale's nerves.
"Repeat that."
When Pale spoke flatly, the subordinate standing before him answered with his head lowered.
"Regarding the search on LL-16, the target was not found. However, there were three points where similar wavelengths were detected, and all were confirmed to be residual reactions from discarded magitech devices."
"Residual reactions."
"Yes, sir."
"Residual reactions again."
Pale nodded slowly, then whirled around and roared at his subordinates.
"Are you telling me that all you've found over the past few days are residual reactions?!"
The subordinate froze, and the agents standing nearby held their breath.
"Do I need to remind you that the target isn't a residual reaction? It's a human being!"
Someone to kill if alive, and someone whose corpse must be confirmed if dead.
Furious that the brat had still not been caught, Pale slowly raised his hand.
The subordinate looked up belatedly, but…
"Sir Pale, I—"
The rest of the sentence never left his throat.
From the tips of Pale's fingers, blue mana extended like thin threads and wrapped around the subordinate's neck.
The agent choked, clawing frantically at his throat with both hands.
"Kgh, a-ack…!"
The pressure in the room was beyond words.
Without changing his cold expression, Pale slowly curled his fingers into a fist.
The subordinate was hoisted off his feet, dangling uselessly in midair.
He thrashed, but didn't last long.
Thump.
As the corpse hit the floor, the faces of the remaining agents turned pale.
One took an involuntary step back before catching himself and snapping straight into a rigid posture.
Pale slowly looked around at them.
"Incompetent bastards."
Nobody could answer him.
A single misplaced word meant joining the corpse on the floor.
"You still haven't found a single brat, making me go through all this trouble?"
Pale's voice, brimming with fury, echoed through the room.
"To think trash like you carry the emblem of Seraph Security when you can't even sweep the Lower Levels."
He cast a brief glance down at the body, then looked back at the surviving squad.
"Search it again. The transport conduits, the drainage pipes, the scrap markets, the back-alley clinics, the organ-harvesting dens—comb every single inch where even a whisper of mana lingers."
One of the agents dared to voice an objection, his voice trembling as he spoke.
"B-but Sir Pale, we've already swept some of those sectors three times over—"
"Keep talking if you want to be next."
"…No, sir."
The agent swallowed his words instantly.
Pale glanced down at his wrist terminal.
The screen was flooded with incoming logs, every single entry a record of failure.
A quiet anxiety gnawed at him.
Pale was no longer a loyal hound of Seraph Industries.
He had already accepted a lucrative headhunting offer from a rival MegaCorp.
An offer backed by one condition: quietly eliminate the young succession candidate inside Seraph.
Specifically, leave it on official records as an accident, and either recover the body or erase it completely.
He had assumed trampling a pampered greenhouse flower would be effortless work.
Just lure the target into the Lower Levels and dispose of her.
No matter how powerful a MegaCorp was, investigating a disappearance in the Lower Levels was a logistical nightmare.
Yet that brat had survived.
Or rather, might have survived.
Because of that single possibility, Pale had been digging through the underground trash piles for days.
His face contorted as the worst-case scenario crossed his mind.
If this dragged on any longer, his employer would pull the offer and find someone else.
Worse, Seraph would eventually catch wind of his betrayal, branding him a traitor and hunting him down.
There is no time.
Right then—
Chime.
A brief notification popped up on his wrist terminal.
Pale frowned and checked the sender.
An unknown sender through an untraceable, encrypted route?
He stared at the screen for a moment before opening the message.
[I will give you the location of the child you are looking for.]
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