223. We Are the Bedrock (4)
Just a little more. Fernandez thought as he drove wedges into the gaps of the surging magic energy all around him. It felt like hammering stakes. The wedges he drove—formless, condensed magic wedges—were tangled haphazardly among complex spells and incantations.
In his wake, crooked remnants were left behind, crackling alone. Running through the crumbling building, Fernandez was drawing a kind of map in his mind.
“You pesky fly!!”
-KWAAANG!
The map was revised. Part of the building exploded, and bricks came crashing down. He drove a wedge into the gap and ran again. Fernandez’s map wasn’t flat. It was a complex projection of a three-dimensional space.
The path he ran, the place where Rene Philippa was likely imprisoned, the debris of the collapsing building—all were reflected in real-time in the three-dimensional shape slowly shifting in his mind.
And at its center was Manderson. Half-demon Manderson, his glowing green muscles writhing, was smashing everything in sight. His mind was fading—either from rage or the corruption of hellish magic.
‘Foolish fool.’
Fernandez clicked his tongue briefly. When dealing with hellish magic, one needed extremely careful spells, protective rituals, and equipment. Making a rash contract with a demon and wielding its power would only lead to one’s own destruction.
Manderson wasn’t an idiot. At least, that’s how Fernandez remembered him. Timid and passive, but quite clever and capable. A low-ranking but brilliant mage in the academy.
“You’re disqualified, Manderson.”
Fernandez smirked and turned his head. With a crash, a cluster of bricks from the building’s outer wall brushed past his ear and smashed into the ground.
“How long are you going to keep hopping around like a rabbit?! Come at me! I said come at me! This royal castle is mine. Stop defiling the palace!!”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing right now.”
Manderson, now almost delirious, spoke as if he had already become the duke. Fernandez clicked his tongue and swung his greatsword through the air. A flying brick hit the blade and ricocheted into Manderson’s head.
“Guh!!”
Manderson staggered, clutching his head from the sudden attack. Soon, his eyes burned with rage and madness.
“GRAAAAAH!!”
-KUGUGUGUNG!
The entire building shook. The royal palace had already collapsed from the top floor down to at least three levels. The walls, barely held together by magic, crumbled and floated into the air.
Now, the walls no longer had a fixed shape. They floated in the air, one by one, like isolated stone bridges. Fernandez kicked off one wall to the next, grabbed a pillar, and leaped to the next foothold, swinging his sword relentlessly.
‘90%.’
Taking advantage of Manderson’s momentary lapse in sanity from the earlier provocation, Fernandez jumped to the highest point of the floating walls. Holding his sword upside down—
-It’s still a bit early to finish.
‘If more time passes, Manderson will give up on Rene. Then, on a macro level, it’s our loss.’
-It’s a gamble.
‘Our entire lives have been a gamble on ourselves.’
This is just a continuation of that. Fernandez, with the tip of his greatsword pointing downward, leaped into the air. Manderson’s burning eyes followed his body. His mouth opened, sharpened molars grinding as he burst into laughter.
“Finally caught you!”
Unlike running on the ground, the trajectory of a fall in mid-air couldn’t be altered. And if one could predict the direction of movement, crushing that pesky fly would be child’s play!
Manderson, laughing with glee, swung his arm. The dense magic energy in the air gathered and took shape. Pure force. Not a crafted magical spell, but simply overwhelming power!
In that case, magic wedges were useless. I’ll admit, his technique is impressive. Manderson smirked. But he’s mortal. Just a human body. The pressure of crushing magic far surpassed that of an industrial press. No human body could withstand it!
“It’s over!!”
“It’s over.”
Their gazes and words crossed. Just before the sword struck Manderson’s forehead, Manderson’s magic crushed the space around Fernandez, pressing down on both sides.
Expecting Fernandez to turn into a mere bloodstain, Manderson spread his arms wide and laughed maniacally. But.
But, the magic stopped.
“Wha, what… What is this…?”
“You should’ve paid more attention to your surroundings.”
-Tap.
Fernandez stood on Manderson’s shoulder. Thanks to Manderson’s demonic transformation and increased size, balancing on his shoulders was easy.
Moonlight poured down from beyond the collapsed building’s roof. The obsidian greatsword gleamed under the moonlight. Manderson stared blankly at the blade and the faint silhouette of Fernandez beyond it.
And the two eyes glowing ominously.
“Magic wedges… You used magic wedges to create a spell…”
“This technique was originally yours, Manderson.”
Fernandez paused briefly before speaking. Driving magic wedges to disrupt the enemy’s spells, then using those wedges to form a large-scale magical formation.
Magic wedges are, quite literally, wedge-shaped fragments of magic. They contain no information, just magical noise. By driving these into the weakest gaps of the enemy’s spell structure, one can disrupt their magic and nullify it.
A counter-spell. A high-level technique requiring complete understanding of the enemy’s spell structure.
-A magical formation is a tool for weaving spells by drawing magic circuits onto specific objects.
‘And magic circuits are the totality of condensed magic lines.’
So, by connecting magic wedges—magic fragments containing no information—and using them as stakes for a massive spell, one can fill the gaps with the enemy’s own magic.
Back in the day, Manderson called this technique ‘Jack.’ A fittingly timid name for him. If it were Faijashi, he would’ve named it something like ‘Faijashi’s Plunder’ and made it his signature spell after creating such a complex and beautiful combat technique.
It was a technique worthy of that. Manderson. Manderson of the Corpse Tower. Timid but sincere and witty. A friend who fragmented enemy spells and pieced them together to his liking, crafting his own spells in a complex combat magic.
“This… spell’s name is…?”
“Manderson’s Plunder.”
“Ha… I never thought…”
“I never made a spell.”
“That’s why I think it’s fortunate. If I had to deal with the future you, not the current you, it would have been even more troublesome.”
“What’s your name?”
“Faijashi. Faijashi Wildcast.”
Fernandez looked at Manderson’s body, collapsing from the backlash of the spell theft. The demonic muscles and bones that made up the man were disintegrating, revealing a pale, naked body beneath.
The face of a young man, still boyish and emaciated, appeared. Though his body had rapidly aged due to the backlash of necromancy, just before death, his flesh was clean, free from such side effects.
Above him, Fernandez lowered his greatsword. The blade pierced through the emaciated chest, moonlight glinting off the dark steel. Just above the grip, crooked letters shimmered: “Dain, Compassion.”
“May the Temple of the Gods bless us.”
-*Whoosh.*
The stolen spell slowly dissipated, and the black halo floating behind Fernandez’s head faded. The Bronze Throne had reached its limit. Magic no longer circulated. Manderson, sensing this, let out a bitter laugh. If he had held on just a little longer, could he have won? Had he hesitated too much?
“Damn it, how futile.”
-*Crunch!*
The greatsword cleaved through Manderson’s heart. Fernandez paused, driving the blade deeper, then bowed his head. His hair fell, brushing his cheek. Silently, he pulled a rosary from his sword belt.
-*Clink.* The chain jingled softly as the Keyblade emblem dangled from it.
“Rest in peace.”
“Even if our actions hadn’t accelerated his corruption, he was still a Dark Mage. We would have had to kill him anyway.”
‘There is no fate in the future.’
“Can even someone like him be saved? That’s not mercy or compassion—it’s hypocrisy.”
‘Hypocrisy is always better than outright evil, Faijashi.’
He was exhausted. The relentless sprint across the wasteland and the immediate, fierce battle had pushed Fernandez to his physical limits. Even for Diemonica, there were limits. Being able to fight for three nights straight only meant he was extraordinary, not infinite. There was a limit to his endurance.
Fernandez let out a deep sigh and stood up, brushing himself off. There was no time to rest. He had never lived a settled life, and that much would never change. He stretched his neck and surveyed his surroundings.
Then, their eyes met.
“…Brother.”
Pascal was leaning against the wall on the staircase landing. It wasn’t that he had deceived Diemonica’s senses. It was just that the sudden fatigue from the dissipating magic had made Fernandez overlook him.
Pascal’s condition also looked critical. Blood gushed between his ribs. Fernandez approached him first, examining the wound. It was severe, but not beyond healing. If he could get to a priest or a doctor soon…
“What are you?”
Pascal grabbed Fernandez as he inspected the wound. Blood had surged into his eyes, staining them red. He coughed briefly, then looked at Fernandez with a hollow gaze.
“I can’t tell you.”
“If you heal me, I will report your use of Dark Magic to the Church. This is not about principles or the Church’s will—it’s my duty.”
“I know.”
“And yet, you’ll still heal me?”
Fernandez paused and looked at Pascal for a moment. Should he heal him? If his use of Dark Magic were reported to the Church, what would happen? Could he turn the Church into an enemy and still save the Archangels? Would the Church believe him?
No, they wouldn’t. The Church was pragmatic. The Inquisition Office treated fallen Inquisition Officers with the same suspicion as heretics. They didn’t consider circumstances—only results. They would only confirm whether someone was a ‘heretic.’
From that perspective, the use of Dark Magic was the most blatant evidence of heresy. If they saw the black halo burning, even Beorn wouldn’t be able to protect him.
“Is your intent pure, brother?”
“…What?”
So this was the utmost respect a rigid Inquisition Officer could show.
“You slew the demons of the Great Wilderness, and now you’re carrying out the Church’s mission to stop the Empire’s corruption. I thought you were being used by heretics, but upon closer inspection, it was I who was being used. Brother, I saw you using Dark Magic to hunt demons. Could you commit evil to destroy a greater evil? All Inquisition Officers grapple with that… *Cough!*”
Pascal spat out blood. It was a gruesome injury, mixed with flesh. He wiped his mouth with a trembling hand. Could one commit evil to purify evil? If innocent lives were sacrificed to destroy the wicked, would that be the right thing?
Could a sacrifice enforced without individual consent even be called a sacrifice? Perhaps it was no different from the ‘offerings’ made by demon worshippers.
Inquisition Officers never shared such dilemmas with others. It was a burden they carried alone. So, Pascal thought:
If a righteous sacrifice to destroy evil was unavoidable, could a saint who used demonic methods to hunt demons be tolerated?
According to the sacred laws of the Temple of the Gods, it was blatant apostasy. But from an individual’s perspective, it was a difficult judgment to make.
So Pascal, wiping blood from his mouth, collapsed to the floor. With trembling hands, he handed over his Keyblade rosary, engraved with his name. Fernandez took the blood-soaked rosary.
“If committing evil is necessary to achieve a greater good… If the world built by these tainted hands can find peace under the Temple’s blessing… Lord, I would gladly do so. Brother, ‘do not seek peace for yourself.'”
“‘It is not you, but my sheep.'”
“‘You are the shepherd’s dog guarding the sheep, the shepherd who stands before the wolf. We are not peace, but the sword.’ Brother, kill me and burn my corpse.”
“Brother Pascal.”
“If I live, this will surely be reported to the Church. Can you handle what comes after?”
“Brother…”
“So kill me. I cannot abandon my duty. Let me die by your hand, so I may rest within my duty. And someday, at the crossroads… at the crossroads of corruption and apostasy, do not forget my blood.”
With those words, Pascal lowered his head, as if inviting the blade to strike. Fernandez raised his sword. Just before the strike, Fernandez closed his eyes and whispered.
“May there be a place for you in heaven.”
“It is said, my life shall be a cornerstone of the bright world.”
“May the Temple of the Gods bless us.”
-*Crunch!*
The sword cut through the air. The straight strike of the greatsword was so powerful that it felt no recoil from the weight of flesh. So, the recoil Fernandez felt was only the faintest thread of life.
-Fernandez.
‘Quiet, for a moment.’
Fernandez coldly warned, then poured oil over Pascal’s body. Soon, flames rose. The corpse would be made to look as if it had been damaged in battle. Erasing traces was one of a Dark Mage’s specialties, and Fernandez was an expert in that field.
After finishing the task, he stumbled briefly, then steadied himself and walked on in silence.
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