Chapter 225: Mobius (9)

It was completely dark all around. Taffy’s eyes tracked the stairs unerringly, even in the pitch-black darkness. Everywhere her body brushed past, the clamor of mages and the sounds of magic being cast followed in quick succession.

“Catch her!”

“Don’t let her get away!”

They weren’t chasing Taffy just because she was an intruder. What Taffy had wrecked wasn’t just some ordinary power room. Taffy had just shattered the lives and futures of the people diligently working in this magic tower.

“Kill her!”

“Tear her to shreds!”

With boundless fury, the mages’ staffs waved through the air, and energy blasts lit up the top of the stairs. The mages held their staffs upright, chanting spells to stop Taffy from ascending the stairs.

“Where do you think you’re running?! Light Flame!”

Three mages joined their staffs together, aiming them at the stairwell ceiling as they chanted. A massive energy orb formed at the tips of their staffs, erupting in a powerful pillar of light that shot upwards like a geyser. The pillar of light, shattering the solid stairs sequentially as it ascended, posed a significant threat even to Taffy.

She stopped moving, her body half-phased into the stairs, and watched the pillar blocking her way.

A pillar rising relentlessly, scraping the walls and threatening to shatter the magic tower’s ceiling. Taffy glanced between the mages relentlessly pursuing her from below and the pillar of light, then phased through the wall where the magic hadn’t yet reached and threw herself into the adjacent room.

A mage below, witnessing Taffy phase through the wall, yelled.

“It went into a room!”

“Catch it! Don’t let it get away!”

Taffy couldn’t fathom why they were chasing her so relentlessly. She shook her head, suppressing the murderous impulse that surged within her once more. The sheer number of mages made it difficult for her to fight them head-on, and since the sun was still up, it would be far too disadvantageous if they decided to break down walls and fight her.

“Oops.”

Taffy paused upon entering the room and scanning for a hiding spot, her eyes landing on a massive machine dominating the center of the dimly lit space. It was an object resembling a cannon, or perhaps a crossbow, fitted with a sharp blade at the front.

The machine radiated a menacing aura, looking capable of turning a small person like Taffy into a hamburger patty if they got caught in its mechanisms.

“Uh, uh, hey! You, you, you! You! Don’t, don’t touch that!”

The mage who burst through the door saw Taffy standing before the machine and canceled his spell, shouting in a panicked voice. His face was paler than Taffy’s, visibly terrified even in the dim room.

The mages who followed behind him also let out near-screams and thrashed about, even though Taffy was just standing there.

“Aaaargh!”

“D-don’t! Just don’t break the Imperius! It’s a prototype we’re sending to the royal palace this time!”

“P-please stop! D-don’t touch it!”

Seeing them trembling, unable to even consider attacking her, Taffy felt a spark of mischief. As black magic gathered in her hand, the mages started to thrash about, tearing at their hair and weeping as if they were at a rock concert.

“Oh, no! Don’t do it! Please, I beg you!”

“We poured months’ worth of the magic tower’s budget into it! Stop!”

“It’s a product that holds the kingdom’s future!”

As Taffy withdrew her hand, they took a collective breath, wiping the sweat from their brows.

“Phew…!”

“Hoo…!”

As the mages’ screams showed no sign of subsiding, Taffy gathered her magic again and reached out her hand.

“Aaaaaargh!”

“Don’t! Nooo! Oh, no, no!”

“D-don’t! Aaaaaargh!”

She pulled her hand back again.

“Haa…! Haa…!”

“Y-yes… Just stay still like that…!”

But being told to stay still only fueled her urge to reach out her hand again. As she started gathering magic in her hand again, one of the mages yelled, his face flushing crimson.

“Hey, you shameless, worm-like bitch! If we’ve begged this much, shouldn’t you at least pretend to listen?! Is it fun playing with us? Huh? Break it! You fucking bastard! Break it!”

Taffy deactivated the mana in her hand with a crestfallen expression. The other mages stared at the cursing mage in disbelief, then let out sighs of relief when she actually stopped.

The man standing in the center of the group of mages spoke up.

“Alright, now throw down your weapons and surrender. I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing, but there’s an anti-air defense system outside. The power is running independently. Whatever your scheme was, you’re trapped now, so don’t cause any more damage…”

Behind the man, Milia and Evan, dressed in robes, exchanged glances. Taffy recognized the two demons and gave a casual wave, to which Milia responded with a knowing nod. The female mage standing before Milia peered at her face and asked.

“You’re wearing lower-class robes. How did you get in here?”

Milia wasn’t the one who answered her question. Evan replied by punching her jaw.

“On foot.”

The mage, struck defenselessly on the jaw, stumbled to the floor with glazed eyes. The mages, their tension already broken by the earlier commotion, were too slow to process the sudden violence before them. Milia grabbed the nearest mage by the collar and swung him like a weapon towards another, while Evan’s fist landed squarely in the gut of a mage reaching out towards him.

“Ueeergh!”

“Urk!”

Perhaps because they were mages who focused on research rather than combat, they were poor fighters. Taffy fired weak magic projectiles from behind, attacking the remaining mages. The mages who attempted to subdue Evan and Milia, getting hit on the back of their heads, danced wildly as if caught in a waltz, while Evan and Milia pummeled the stumbling mages into submission.

“Oh dear… Oh dear…”

“Urk…! Ugh…! W-who are you guys…!”

In moments, the magic tower transformed into a corpse-less funeral hall. People were rolling on the floor, wailing like mourners, while the three demons stood tall, dusting off their hands. Evan kicked the jaw of the man who was still conscious, saying.

“It’s love and justice.”

“Gck!”

“…What?”

Petunia Titi, arriving belatedly, surveyed the fallen mages. They were all unconscious, but unharmed. Seeing that none of the mages had died, Petunia Titi looked at me with a puzzled expression.

They told me not to kill them, so I didn’t. Why are they looking at me like that?

Petunia Titi was a valuable ally and collaborator. She was only joining us out of a sense of responsibility as part of the hero’s party; she was the sort of person who might draw her bow on us instantly if she deemed us hopeless.

That was the sole reason I hadn’t killed them.

“…No, it’s nothing. More importantly, now that the mages are subdued, all we have to do is head to the top floor, right?”

“Right? I wish I could just break through the wall…”

I said, tapping the wall lightly. It was meant as a bit of a joke, but Petunia Titi stared intently at the wall.

“That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. We’ve already subdued the mages upstairs anyway, so should we just smash our way through?”

Given that Mobius hadn’t come down despite all this commotion, it was obvious he was engrossed in experiments in the basement.

The reason we hadn’t gone straight to the basement was twofold: we didn’t know Mobius’s location when we burst in, and blindly smashing through walls into the basement would have left us surrounded by mages above and below.

With the mages subdued and Mobius’s location almost certainly underground, heading straight down was indeed the logical move. I nodded and opened my mouth to speak.

“Huh?”

But something other than ‘Okay’ blurted out.

“Huh?”

Petunia Titi stared back at me, her eyes equally wide.

Taffy and Milia grabbed onto nearby objects, their faces etched with panic.

It was because, from below, magic was surging with terrifying intensity.

Two beams of light slashed violently through the ground, like a colossal guillotine rising up. The intense vertical light scraped upwards along the entire building. A white wall momentarily appeared and vanished before our eyes, and intense heat surged through us before receding.

We could only watch, drenched in cold sweat, to see if the ground beneath us was stable.

Eeeejik

We couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh as we watched the floor slowly begin to crack.

The Imperius, which the mages had reportedly invested months of budget into creating, tilted precariously and sank into the floor, dragging us down with it.

No.

“Everyone, hold on tight!”

We were falling.