**#307. City of Giants (2)**
—
Nell used the broken axe handle as a support and forced his trembling body to stand.
His three eyes, muddled with confusion, stared at the white-haired boy standing below.
He couldn’t believe it.
The warriors entrusted with guarding this plaza were the elite of the giants—each one capable of taking on dozens of magic users from other races on their own.
And yet they had been bested by a single mage.
A mere human child, at that.
What was even more astonishing was that despite the intensity of the battle, the boy stood without even the faintest disturbance in his breathing.
“Where’s Koom?”
“Who are you?”
Ray and Nell spoke at the same time.
Orea, who had flown away with fluttering wings, landed on Nell’s nose and tugged hard at the skin beneath his eyes as she answered for Ray.
“Listen, will you? I told you—he could be the one we’ve been waiting for!”
“Orea, if by ‘the one’ you mean the Rainbow, then that’s not possible. The Rainbow abandoned us and left.”
Avoiding Nell’s massive hand as it slowly reached toward her, Orea scurried from his nose to the rim of his ear.
Then she shouted directly into it.
“Abandoned us?! Watch your mouth! It wasn’t abandonment! He simply left our side temporarily when his strength ran out! Ugh, we have more pressing matters to deal with right now, so we’ll talk about this later! People trying to awaken Koom have entered this city! Not long ago, they passed right through this plaza!”
Nell grimaced slightly at the sound reverberating in his head and replied.
“That’s impossible. Since Koom’s sealing, not a single intruder has been detected in this city.”
“Ugh, so stubborn! Maybe they slipped past your precious senses! Do you know how long it’s been since the sealing? Magic in the outside world has likely advanced a lot since then! Don’t you think?”
Orea’s voice was fervent.
But Nell didn’t seem to take her words seriously.
“Orea is telling the truth.”
“…”
Nell turned his gaze to Ray.
“A man trying to break Koom’s seal is in this city. We don’t have time to explain everything right now. Please—tell me where Koom has been moved.”
The moment their eyes met, Nell felt a strange sense of déjà vu and a wave of nausea.
“It’s true. There’s no time.”
That uneasy sensation grew stronger the moment he saw the red-haired girl standing beside the boy.
Nell staggered with a groan.
“…This…”
“Now do you understand? Do you see what the appearance of these possibilities before you means? If we fail to make the right choice now, we might find ourselves once again living through an era of regret.”
Orea spun in front of Nell’s eyes.
After clutching his head in anguish for a long while, Nell finally opened his mouth.
“…Orea, I’ll consider you a sign of minimal trust. You’re not one to speak nonsense.”
According to what followed, Koom’s seal had gradually weakened over time.
As a result, they had relocated Koom from the plaza to another place.
“To amplify the seal’s power and bind him with stronger restraints, we had no choice. This plaza could no longer contain Koom, who had started to regrow.”
“Where did you move him?”
In response to Ray’s question, Nell raised a thick finger and pointed.
“To the north, the underground Grand Cavern.”
The group immediately headed to the northern part of the city.
Nell stayed behind to rally the fallen giants and planned to catch up.
As they moved between the towering buildings, Ray spoke, sensing something was off.
“Emotional traces left by Indiago. They follow the very path we’re on.”
“What?”
“There’s no sign that he wandered elsewhere. It means Indiago went straight from the plaza to the Grand Cavern.”
“But how did he know where Koom was sealed?”
Veronica asked in alarm.
After a brief pause, Ray answered.
“…Emotion.”
“Emotion?”
“There’s a high chance Indiago’s emotions are resonating with Koom’s. They both carry the same intent.”
Guided by the resonance of emotion—a primal instinct—Indiago had headed to where Koom was sealed.
The emotional traces, growing stronger as they neared the cavern, confirmed it.
Koom, whose seal was weakening.
Indiago, who bore the same destructive resolve as that ancient entity.
If they didn’t act fast, they’d face irreversible consequences.
“I’ll go ahead.”
“Got it!”
“Wa-wait—! Kyaa!”
Ray flung Orea, who had been perched on his head, toward Veronica and broke into a sprint.
Then, a stabbing pain rang through his head, making him frown.
A flood of strange memories suddenly surged into his mind.
Fairies, giants, elves, spirits, dwarves.
Blue forests, wide plains, clear skies…
The memories felt both like his and not his.
They hovered in a mist, on the verge of becoming clear, but never did.
But there was no time to ponder them now—Ray forced them away and kept running.
Soon, he exited the city and spotted a massive steel gate set alone in the wilderness.
“…It’s open.”
Indiago’s emotional trace continued downward from there.
*Tap tap tap!*
Ray dashed down the stairs.
At the end of a sloping corridor appeared a vast underground space, crisscrossed with flowing lava.
Reddish, glowing rocks jutted out like blades, and cliffs descended steeply around a massive central pit.
This was once used by the giants of the old era for training.
*Vwooom!*
Ray cloaked his skin with mana to block the searing heat.
He closed his eyes.
Focused his mind with each breath.
When he opened them again, Indiago’s emotional traces appeared more clearly.
A misty navy-blue mana trail spiraled down along the cliffside.
At its end—
*Found him.*
Indiago and the Doctor were there.
With rage boiling up, Ray leapt into the pit.
*Crackle! Crackle!*
Flames sparked on his clothes from the intense heat of friction, but he paid them no mind.
All his attention was fixed on one man.
*Indiago.*
The boy had long awaited this moment.
The murderer who had manipulated golems and stolen the lives of the underpass children and Niles.
Now, the chance to deliver rightful retribution had come.
He remembered the anger and regret he had felt when he missed that chance before due to his lack of strength.
*Not this time.*
Never again.
But then, a single thought crept into his heart.
What would come after revenge?
What would remain once the rage cooled?
Emptiness? Relief? Despair?
He had no idea.
A moment’s hesitation passed through his mind.
But it wasn’t enough to affect his actions.
This revenge was a vow he had made to himself.
*Crack!*
Metal formed in midair, shaping into a spear in the boy’s hand.
Its sharp tip pointed downward, and as the distance closed, details became clear.
Indiago looked unwell.
He staggered, occasionally stopping mid-step, and the Doctor would watch him as if studying him, only moving again when Indiago resumed walking.
And just as the distance between them shrank to under ten meters—
The Doctor suddenly looked up.
With a movement that suggested he had been expecting this, he extended his palm toward Ray.
*VROOOOM!*
A crimson-black mana beam surged forth.
Ray had predicted this.
Though he was cloaked in high-output stealth magic, he never believed the enemy would go down without a fight.
Twisting his body midair, Ray narrowly dodged the beam by stepping off a mana platform.
*BOOM!*
The beam exploded against the cliff behind him, and Ray, carrying the momentum of his descent, drove his spear straight at Indiago’s head.
*Crack!*
Instead of the sound of flesh being pierced, he heard a metallic clash.
Ray was repelled by a dark navy shield and landed at a distance with a backflip.
He stood at the edge of the path that led further down into the pit.
“Think you can take him?”
“…Someone like that? Any time.”
Indiago stepped forward, muttering toward the Doctor, and continued.
“You’re persistent. I didn’t expect you to follow me here.”
His cold voice, paired with a cynical gaze, sent a chill through Ray’s body.
Ray didn’t reply.
He quietly assessed Indiago’s power.
*Six circles. Sixth Circle.*
During the battle with the Dawn Society, Indiago had absorbed the life force of seventy to eighty members in order to jump directly to the Sixth Circle for a time.
Now he had reached the Sixth.
Clearly, the Doctor had helped—and countless sacrifices had been made.
What stood out most, though, was the pure white mana clinging to the circles and veins, gnawing away at Indiago’s navy mana.
Ray instantly recognized it.
*Light of the Artificial Sun.*
The radiant mana purifies and annihilates dark, tainted mana.
Struck directly by the light during their last battle, Indiago still bore the scars in his body.
Sensing Ray’s gaze, Indiago spoke.
“Are you looking at the mana flowing through my body?”
“…”
“The Doctor told me. That you can see mana with your eyes—even in its faintest, unshaped form. So? What do you think of my six circles?”
“I just don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to become that powerful.”
“Keuk, keukukuk… You don’t understand why I strive for power?”
Indiago, who had been laughing, suddenly turned serious. His expression turned cold as he spoke.
“Someone like you, born with talent, will never understand someone like me. Do you know what I felt first when I found traces of the magic you used to defeat the golem under that bridge?”
“I’m not particularly curious.”
“Shut up and listen. It was inferiority. The lingering traces of magic exuded such breathtaking beauty that they couldn’t be ignored—and showcased the boundless potential of their owner. Potential that someone like me, whose growth was capped at the 3rd Circle, couldn’t even dare to dream of.”
A brief silence fell between them.
The heat of the flowing lava all around them slowly inflamed both body and mind.
Before long, Indiago’s bitter voice echoed through the space.
“Isn’t it ridiculous? A grown man jealous of a child? But that’s how I’ve lived my whole life. Born into an environment where having no power meant having everything taken from you—I’ve lived constantly envying, resenting, and hating others. Desperately writhing in the mud to crawl my way up, willing to kill anyone more talented than me if that’s what it took.”
From Indiago’s words, Ray could infer that he, too, came from the slums.
And also what kind of wish he may have tried to fulfill by completing the Rainbow.
“I grew up in the slums too.”
“Unlike me, you were probably born with a natural gift for magic.”
“Feelings of inferiority toward others don’t give you the right to take their lives without cause.”
“How laughable. Easy for you to say when you’ve never been in my situation.”
Responding to Indiago’s emotion, a gloomy navy-blue mana began drifting around him like mist.
The multicolored orbs of light also began to swirl around Ray.
“You can’t understand me.”
“I have no intention of trying to.”
At that moment, with the clash of the two mages, the area was engulfed in light.
