So to end up in a Mage's hands is definitely worse than dying.
Adam knew that these ground rats, whose magic was still mostly stuck in the ancient era, had some bizarre tricks that modern Mages didn't quite understand. He gave Clark no chance at all to close the distance, and bound him again from far off.
Clark knew he had no hope of coming out alive; instead, courage rose in him. Since he could neither flee nor win, then he would make them pay. He resolved to find a chance to drag Adam down to hell with him, or at least leave a mark on Adam.
Just then, the apprentices from Blan Town appeared.
In Riley's mind, Adam was a deserter—someone who had left Blan Town at the critical moment of life and death to save his own skin. Now, seeing him turn up just as they had the Magefoe cornered, there to steal the credit, she could not sit still. Seething with grief and fury, she burst out of the runic barrier, and the wind magic she had never handled well suddenly came together in an instant; she flew at Adam in a rage.
"Get away from him, you coward!"
Riley was too fast—too fast for Terry to react, too fast for William and the others to stop her. But apart from William, everyone present actually shared Riley's view, because Adam hardly looked like he had been through a battle at all: his clothes were still spotless, not a wound on him, and the only change was that the egg looked different.
At that, Adam raised his head and looked at Riley, decided to ignore her, and went on applying the binding. Under his will the psychokinesis turned into chains, layer upon layer, wrapping Clark tight.
Riley was beside herself with rage. She could not believe anyone could be so shameless, and she could not understand how such a person deserved such power. Before she landed she swung her magic staff and sent a Water Arrow into the ground. What reason she had left kept her from attacking Adam outright, but a small warning was still in order.
"He doesn't dare kill me here—the academy would never let him get away with it." Riley thought it with perfect certainty, and cast again. Two spells in a row struck the psychokinesis Adam was maintaining and nearly broke it apart.
Clark bared his teeth in a savage grin. He knew his chance had come. In the instant the psychokinesis wavered, he recklessly mustered every scrap of strength he had left, recovered his mobility, and charged at Adam.
Adam's expression turned cold. Fools were plentiful in the world, but so long as they did not stand in his way he would not kill at random—yet Riley's behavior had provoked him. He gathered a fireball, ready to teach Riley a lesson.
But before the fireball could fall on Riley's head, Clark crushed a gray crystal ball in his hand and howled madly, "Die! Then face the wrath of the Om family!" Then a shrill shriek that no human throat could produce rose from his mouth. Negative energy erupted in a monstrous surge; Clark's body came apart like a dissolving mosaic; his spiritual power and soul were torn to shreds; and a gray energy shockwave spread outward from him in all directions, sparing nothing.
"Stop!"
"Get out of there!"
Two shouts rang out one after the other. The first came from William: by instinct he refused to believe Adam was a deserter, and he would rather believe that Adam had fought and come out of it without a scratch—otherwise he could never get past it himself, because that would mean all his following had been meaningless.
But if the second possibility was the truth, then Riley was in danger. Adam would show her no mercy.
The second voice came with a violent surge of mana; a gale twisted into a tornado and bore down on Riley and Adam. It was Mage Blake, who had come without a moment's rest from Moldo Tower to reinforce them.
With a Mage's breadth of knowledge, he had easily discerned the system of Clark's magic, and he knew just how much damage the self-destruction of an apprentice who cultivated negative-energy magic could do to ordinary apprentices.
He did not know who Riley was and did not care what became of her, but Adam was his disciple—the one Cristel had personally begged him to save.
In the distance, the tottering runic barrier over Blan Town shattered. Luckily the barrier had held it back for a moment; dense runes welled up all around Mage Blake, half his body elementalized into an incarnation of air, and he descended in an instant to block the negative-energy shockwave. Even so, the apprentices of Blan Town collapsed where they stood, dull-eyed and limp like walking corpses, their minds and souls stuffed full of negative emotion.
Riley, closest of all, took the brunt of it and could not put up the slightest resistance. Bloody tears ran from both eyes. In that instant she felt that life was nothing but despair, that only death was final release; the urge to kill herself was overwhelming. Just as she moved to act on it, her soul gave way under the load and shattered.
After saving Blan Town, Mage Blake rushed toward Adam, and could not help recalling his disciple's words.
After receiving the Tower's orders, Mage Blake had told Cristel the news about Adam, and Cristel had begged him to save Adam no matter what. Blake had asked then, "Do you like him?"
Romantic love is a violent emotion. Apprentices who have not been tempered by years, who have not gone through any shift in their thinking, are easily trapped by it and waste their years for nothing. Mage Blake did not want that for his disciple, because once one advances to full-fledged Mage, one discovers that love is merely a small diversion in a long life, not worth keeping in mind.
Cristel's answer, unexpectedly, was not what he had anticipated: "No, Master. 'Like' is too low a word for it. Adam is what transformed my mind; he showed me truths it would otherwise have taken me ages to grasp. He is my goal. I'm going to surpass him. I don't want him to die like this."
Mage Blake was gratified by his disciple's awakening. Hearing those words, he could not help thinking of Wollaston—his companion back then, now someone he could only look up to. It was because of Wollaston, too, that Blake, with his poor aptitude, had been able to pursue the path of the Mage so unswervingly.
The gray energy swallowed Adam. Mage Blake knew this was an eruption of human despair on the scale of tens of thousands of people; a soul that had not been sublimated, one not protected by Mage Armor, could not possibly withstand such a negative assault.
The shockwave flared and was gone. Adam still stood where he was, unmoving, the egg whose presence had suddenly grown so overwhelming resting in his hand.
Clark's desperate strike was genuinely no small thing. Part of the negative energy that rushed at Adam was absorbed by the balloon, and part of it got right into his body. His logical thinking worked furiously, burning a great deal of spiritual power and computing power before it fully suppressed them.
But Adam did not feel good. A strange energy could not be purged, and it kept sending out waves into the surroundings—that was definitely not a good thing.
This time the negative-energy balloon had not managed to absorb it all; it had only dared snap up the small portion that passed by it. Adam guessed this was because the purity and grade of this negative energy exceeded the limit of what it could devour. Still, that seemed to have been enough: the balloon was swelling and contracting without pause.
Adam looked up, saw Mage Blake, and greeted him in surprise: "Good to see you, honored Mage Blake. What brings you here?"
Mage Blake's appearance was startling now: the elementalized portion of his body was rapidly converting back into flesh, his whole person drawing in the ether of the surrounding space like a vortex, air currents swirling with his every movement.
Mage Blake did not answer his question. Instead, with a weighty tone, he said, "A death mark."
Adam was taken aback. "What's a death mark?"
"That Magefoe apprentice cursed you with his soul before he died. Your existence is already known. Any Mage who cultivates the same meditation method as he did can tell that you are his killer. Within a certain range, they can even pinpoint your location precisely."
Adam was alarmed. This was serious trouble. Behind Clark stood a family, and full-fledged Mages. If they were truly willing to risk everything to kill Adam, it was not impossible that they would stake it all and come to the Mage Continent.
As he was now, Adam could not possibly be a match for a full-fledged Mage—not even one of the Magefoes who cultivated negative-energy magic.
Mage Blake saw his worry and shook his head. "I don't have any good solution either. Unless someone at the transdimensional level steps in, or it is canceled out by the soul transformation that comes with advancing to full-fledged Mage, there is no other way to erase this kind of mark."
Adam was silent for a moment. Things being as they were, he could only accept it. At least he was still on the Mage Continent, so for the time being he was safe.
Mage Blake turned his gaze to Adam's hand. "A devil's larva. Where did you get it?"
The truth dawned on Adam: so this was not the egg of an abyssal creature but a being of another plane—the larva of a devil, a specialist in harvesting souls. No wonder it could withstand negative energy; no wonder it could devour tormented souls.
"Lord Mage Victor gave it to me as a gift. I originally assumed it was an abyssal creature's egg—I never expected..."
Devils are inferior to abyssal creatures in their use of energy, and their bodies are far frailer, but devils are lawful beings: they abide by contracts, growing by trading with the intelligent beings of lower planes for souls. They adhere strictly to the terms of a contract—and, of course, they leave a great many traps in it as well.
Mage Blake had no suspicions; he simply assumed Adam had survived thanks to the devil's larva. In any case, Adam's survival was good news—even setting Cristel aside, the Tower would not want a genius like this to fall.
The two walked toward Blan Town. No one gave Riley's wretched corpse a second glance. That was only natural; even if Riley had not died in the self-destruction, the academy would never keep such a foolish apprentice.
Adam asked quietly, "Honored Mage Blake, I've heard that Magefoes need human negative emotion and soul power to advance. But Clark already had that much negative energy—so why did he still come to the Mage Continent and take such a risk?"
Since the battle ended, this was the question that had troubled Adam most. It absolutely could not be explained away by Clark's stupidity.
Mage Blake glanced at Adam and explained, "The negative energy gathered in the crystal ball was collected by someone else..."