At the Faded Frontier, Episode 3 - Hunt in the City

Hunt in the City I ran. The cold air stung. Evading the giant spider and the swarm of hundreds upon hundreds of spiders, I sprinted down a road with no end in sight. Jieun was probably watching me from somewhere, waiting at her leisure. Like a hunter. Until the hound snatched its prey. "Ah, this is driving me nuts!" At this rate, I'd only burn out my own stamina. I had to fight back. While running, I gathered energy in one hand and pressed it to the ground. Centered on where my palm touched, red streaks of light spread in every direction like roots growing. The light turned into sharp thorn vines and covered the whole road. The spiders caught on the thorns piled up as corpses one after another. But the swarm trampled over the corpses of their own kind littering the ground and kept chasing me. Their numbers didn't seem to shrink at all. If anything, they seemed to multiply from beneath the giant spider. There was no doubt that the giant spider was the source producing this endless spider legion. In that case, I'd change the target. This time I scattered the energy in my hand into the air like sprinkling salt. The energy scattered in all directions, each grain becoming one arrow, and in an instant multiplied into hundreds, packing the space around me. As if glaring, the red arrowheads aimed at the giant spider. I'll finish it in one blow. At my will, all the arrows flew at the giant spider at once. At the same time, I drew a long line in the air with my energy-laden fingertip. The red line thickened and took the shape I wanted. A red longsword with a sharply honed edge. I aimed the sword at the giant spider and started running toward it. I picked up speed, cutting down the little ones that lunged at me one by one. My judgment that something that big couldn't dodge this counterattack was correct. Every single one of the leading arrows hit its body. The creature roared, shaking its body, studded with arrows like a hedgehog. In no time I had closed the distance to it. I put even more strength into both hands gripping the hilt. The target was the face. I stayed one step ahead of its foreleg stabbing down at me. Facing its dark blue eyes at point-blank range, I swung the sword with everything I had. As if cutting through air, the red blade cleanly sliced across its face diagonally. It hit. It was the moment I was about to check the result. '...Nice try.' As if whispering right beside me. Her single remark, heard from somewhere, grated on my ears. "!" The blade in my hand cracked and then crumbled limply. The sword, having lost its form, returned to its original state, red light. And it was sucked into the mouth of the giant spider before me. The arrows too, still stuck in place, were absorbed by its body. My mouth hung open in shock and wouldn't close. Unconsciously, I took a step backward. The giant spider was unharmed. My counterattack hadn't even left a scratch. Why? Before I could even wonder, I instinctively thrust my hand forward. I hurriedly made a shield of energy to cover the front. By a hair's breadth, the giant spider swung its foreleg again. Its foreleg collided with the shield. "Gah!" The shield couldn't hold and shattered to pieces at once. I flew like a kicked soccer ball and tumbled along the road. "Phew..." Thanks to reflexes I could admire myself, I luckily avoided having my whole body wrecked. But the damage spread through my whole body without mercy. My arms and legs went numb, and my back, scraped against the ground, throbbed hotly. I felt firsthand that the wounds from back then hadn't fully healed yet. I checked ahead. The spider swarm was chasing after me without giving me a moment's rest. I pressed both palms to the ground and sent energy flowing underneath. The red energy filled the road the swarm was surging down. Then, where the red light lay, huge walls rose layer upon layer and blocked the road. I hurriedly got up and started running again. I replayed what had just happened. The counterattack had failed. The giant spider had taken no damage from my attack. If anything, it had devoured all of my magic. The sword and arrows made with materialization magic merely took on shapes and traits according to my imagination; inside, they were lumps of pure energy. In other words, that thing had absorbed the energy of mine that touched it. If that was the giant spider's ability, my magic at least wouldn't work on it. This was troublesome. Against an opponent that magic was useless against, ironically, magic was the only card in my hand. '...In that case.' An idea flashed through my mind. But it was far too vague a guess. Still, now that I couldn't escape from here, fighting back was all I had. It would be better to try and regret it than to give up like this. Before the walls collapsed, I hurriedly hid myself from the spiders' eyes. I needed time to prepare. I wasn't the least bit sure, but thinking of it as my one chance to turn it into a breakthrough, I had to give it everything. □ From the moment Seyeon's counterattack came to nothing, I was certain of victory. She was a magician, so she couldn't kill my summoned beast. It absorbed all magic that touched its body and used that energy as its own power. It was truly my creation, designed over a long period for the very purpose of killing magicians. When a brief opening arose, Seyeon vanished somewhere. But it was a pointless effort. Since this space had been specially prepared by an expert in this field, there was no way to escape without a power great enough to destroy the entire space. Becoming spider food was her only future. "?" A signal was detected from the opposite side. An intruder. There should have been no way in from outside. Wondering if it was a mistake, I came down from the roof and moved to the spot the signal indicated to check for myself. Even if her helper had come, it wouldn't be a big problem. It would be a bit of a hassle, but I could just leave her to the summoned beast and deal with the intruder myself. It wasn't a mistake. There was one intruder. 'That kid...' The boy in a gray hoodie and denim jacket had a familiar face. His white hair was so distinctive that I recognized him at once as a classmate. He seemed to have lost his way, looking around as he came this way. For a magician, his behavior was far too defenseless. Had he wandered in by chance? But this space wasn't so flimsy that an ordinary person could slip in by mistake. There was no need to think further; I could just dispose of him along with her. I could fudge the report to my superiors somehow. It was while I was distracted by such a trivial matter. She appeared again on the opposite side. ◇ The situation had returned to square one. I ran down the endless road, and the spider swarm chased fiercely behind me. Right, left. I turned corners dizzyingly. Whenever the swarm seemed to get close, I kept raising thorn fields and walls to widen the distance. I had to. Rounding the last corner, I came out at a dead end. I turned around with my back to the wall. Like water pouring from a dam, the spider swarm was swarming in, disgustingly. I didn't run anymore. There was no need. As planned, I had arrived at the stage I'd prepared myself. I put my hand on the wall blocking the way and shouted the declaration I'd prepared. " Everything goes as I will. " Those words were the ignition point, and everything began to operate. First, a huge wall grew behind the swarm, cutting off their way to retreat. Then the thirty trap devices in total that I'd set up around the streets until just now started up, with the noise of gears meshing loudly. Just as you need a bow to shoot an arrow, to manifest magic you need a medium that takes fuel and a formula and turns them into magic. That was the role of the trap devices. All the devices were connected to my whole body and acted in place of my will. From each trap device, dozens of red arrows rose into the air. The number was on a different level from when I'd made arrows alone. Dozens gathered together into hundreds, thousands of arrows