Once Adam spotted William's position, he dropped out of the sky. He wore the gray robe the academy issued to apprentices, and cradled an egg in his hands.
The aura of this egg from the Abyss had only grown more evil; blood-red mist steamed ceaselessly off its surface, shifting into shape after shape, so eerie that even a normal person standing near it would feel their mind disturbed and turn muddled.
The inscribing of the master-servant contract could not be interrupted, so Adam now had to carry the egg wherever he went. The flesh and blood he kept in his personal storage space, taking some out once a day to feed it.
When Riley and Terry saw that Adam really had come to stand before them, they did not dare say another word. They shrank back timidly; facing Adam head-on put enormous pressure on them, especially since the figure Adam cut right now was anything but reassuring.
William knew Adam's temperament and had no intention of making introductions. He simply said, "Can we set out now?"
Adam nodded. At the apprentices' current level, travel was of course not a matter of flight magic. Adam followed William out past the academy gates, where Realm-Standard Hovercars were available for rent. The price was not too steep, but any damage had to be repaid in full.
Riley and Terry, both locals, were no strangers to hovercars. They took the driver's seat of their own accord and made themselves the drivers—partly, too, because the pressure of sitting near Adam was simply too much.
Thirty-three thousand kilometers sounded like a long way, but against the near-boundless expanse of the Mage Continent it was a short enough trip. The mission site sat right at the edge of the Mordo Elemental Tower's domain.
Adam exchanged not a word with them the whole way. He kept inscribing the contract on the egg while turning his gaze on the vast land beyond the window. For two days Ruili and Terry had not dared speak to Adam either, especially after they saw him take out flesh and blood to feed the egg.
Adam discovered that the Mage Continent was not the forest of towering cities he had imagined. Human settlements along the route were extremely sparse; forests, lakes, wetlands and plains were everywhere instead. Now and then magical beasts with powerful auras appeared on the wild land, along with enormous herds—but not one dared block the hovercar's path. No doubt the mages' power had long since been woven into their instincts.
On the third day, Adam suddenly spoke. "Why would that pack of wind wolves dare attack the townsfolk?"
The three were startled, and it took them a moment to catch up with Adam's line of thought. William pondered, then said, "I don't know. This mission actually has two parts: first, wipe out the wind wolves; second, investigate why the magical beasts attacked."
Adam knew the wind wolf. Its habits were the same as any ordinary wolf's—it was a pack animal too—and, as the name suggested, it commanded low-level wind magic and knew how to channel mana to strengthen itself, which made it very fast. To ordinary people at the knight stage it was a deadly threat, but one-on-one against a mage apprentice it was nothing to worry about.
Every wind wolf pack had a leader, and the size of the pack depended on that leader's strength. If the pack outside the town could work itself up into a riot, the wolf king's strength had to be formidable.
"And you three dared take a mission like this?"
William gave a sheepish laugh. "Of course it's not just the three of us. There are apprentices in the town as well, and the knight order's strength is not to be underestimated..." In truth, wind wolf extermination was an orange-rank mission in the mission hall—a rank that meant it was unsuited to rookies. But young people, well, they always have a mysterious confidence in their own strength.
Adam said no more. The hovercar drove on another five hours and reached its destination: a small town called Blan. William and the others had not noticed, but Adam could already tell they were under surveillance—magical beasts had been watching them the whole way.
Soon the expressions of William and the other two turned grave as well. They saw that a runic barrier had been raised outside the town, and the open ground was strewn with severed limbs and soaked in blood. A bitter battle had clearly just been fought there.
The hovercar slowed, and William said in a low voice, "Damn. I think we're in trouble."
Riley said, a little panicked, "Didn't the briefing say only townsfolk who left Blan would be in danger of attack? But this—this is already a siege!" Scattered townsfolk being attacked and the whole town being assaulted were plainly two entirely different things; the first they could handle, the second they were powerless against.
But retreat was impossible now. All three could do was pin their hopes on reinforcements arriving later—or on Adam's help...
The hovercar stopped outside the barrier, and someone inside called out loudly, "Who are you?"
William got out and showed the mission contract. The barrier opened, and they entered the town, where at one glance they saw the knight order covered in wounds, and two mage apprentices walking toward them.
"I'm Thomas, and this is Zach. Are you the advance support?" Seeing only four people climb out of the hovercar, Thomas's eyes dimmed, and then he asked, still hopeful.
William said awkwardly, "No. It's just us."
Zach said, beside himself, "Damn it, damn it! What in the world is the academy doing? We already sent in an updated report, and they send only you four! And you're all rookies, aren't you?"
William looked even more awkward. "You know senior apprentices are scarce at the academy. And it's not four—he," William pointed at Adam, "didn't take the mission. He just came along to take a look."
"A look? Just came to take a look? Ha, have I been away from the academy that long? Since when is the academy so lenient with apprentices?" Zach turned to look at Adam, and that one glance made him swallow every complaint he had left. For no other reason than that the egg was too shocking—an apprentice who owned a thing like that was not someone he could afford to cross.
Adam paid him no mind. He walked over to the edge of the barrier alone and studied that man-made energy field.
William said hastily, "Sir, I think you had better tell us what actually happened here. How could that pack of wind wolves attack a town? And can't the barrier hold them off?"
Thomas heaved a heavy sigh, beckoned them over, and said, "Forget it. Let's hope the academy sends support soon. This time it could get very ugly—the beast attack is being controlled."
"Controlled!?" the three of them blurted. Mages did not much care about ordinary humans, but at least no one had ever carried out a wholesale slaughter of ordinary folk. So who would now dare drive magical beasts to attack land ruled by an Elemental Tower?
Adam thought of an interesting possibility. In the Mage Plane, the only ones who dared openly make enemies of the towers and butcher humans were the Magefoes.
He recalled the library's records on the upper floors about the Magefoes. They were the dregs of an age: after Prometheus the True Spirit Archmage and Anne Croft the Guardian of the World reformed the Mage Plane, they had—some held back by their own aptitude, others simply unable to accept magecraft becoming a profession open to all—taken the road of opposing the mainstream.
They preserved the old schools' lineages, keeping every scrap of knowledge jealously secret, and devoted themselves to curses and magic of the human soul. Some Magefoes hid inside the various towers, winning resources through plane wars; the great majority, however, scurried about the Mage Plane like field mice, preying specifically on ordinary people, weak mages, and apprentices.
They were the enemies of mages.
Adam suddenly spoke. "Magefoes?"
Zach and Thomas looked at Adam in surprise, as if they had not expected a rookie to know about that. They nodded. "From the look of things, most likely."
"What's a Magefoe?" Ruili asked, bewildered.
Adam plainly had no interest in explaining it to them. After hearing Zach's account, the three went deathly pale, filled with regret—Magefoe, it sounded terrifying. How had they gotten dragged into something so horrible?
Adam found it rather interesting. He had treated this trip merely as a bit of relief from his own confusion, never expecting to run into something like this.
Unlike William and the other two, he was not worried about the Magefoes. Every tier had the resources that matched it, and the Magefoes were no exception. From the fact that they dared attack only mortal towns adrift at the edges of the towers' rule, it was clear enough that no power at the level of a full-fledged Mage existed among them.
And as for apprentices, Adam had no fear of them at all.
In the dense forest several hundred kilometers from Blan Town, four Magefoe apprentices, wholly hidden under black robes, sat scattered across a patch of open ground.
"Support from the Mordo Elemental Tower is here," said a voice so hoarse it hardly sounded human, an eerie smile in its tone. "A small hovercar, so there won't be many of them." As it spoke, it stroked the wolf king cowering and shivering at its feet.
"Is that so? Good. It's time these fools who live in the sunlight learned the truth of the world. I wonder whether they'll be fond of my little darling once they see it?"
The second figure reached a hand out of the black robe. In the center of that palm was a hideous face, its mouth packed with layer upon layer of fine fangs, straining without pause as though it wanted to grow its way out of the hand.
The second figure rubbed its cheek against it and said softly, "There, there, don't be hasty. You'll get your meal soon enough."
This one was actually a woman!
"Quelina, put that thing away. Damn it, I hate it!" the third one said. "Last time it almost ate me!" The black robe was thrown open to reveal a wound on the left arm that had still not healed. "Don't let me see it again, or I'm afraid I won't be able to keep myself from killing it!"
Quelina gave a sweet little giggle and reached a hand toward the third one. The monster's face shot out of her palm, growing at terrifying speed, and rushed at the third one trailing a writhing mass of nauseating tissue, its piercing shriek echoing through the forest. "Don't you like it? Look how cute it is!"
The third one, furious, jabbed a finger through the air. A streak of dark-green radiance grazed the monster's body and struck the ground, corroding deep furrows into it. "Quelina, I'm warning you..."