Chapter 17
THE NEXT MORNING, Mira left her inn early to tour the station on foot. She indulged once again in her new hobby: picking out a station bento. The cultural influences of former players were deep and vast; in the massive market inside the station, there were all sorts of cuisines available.
Oho, salmon rice bowls! Or maybe chunky meat stew… Oooh, steak sandwiches are always exciting. But how can one overlook the mapo tofu rice bowls and gyoza?
Mira bounced around the restaurants, examining each and every one. In the end, she purchased the “Forest’s Bounty” lunch. It was rather expensive, stuffed with mushrooms and edible plants from the forest at the base of the mountains layered generously with various local meats.
The voice overhead announced that the train would depart in thirty minutes. Mira made for the platform with a satisfied grin.
***
It seemed other passengers used the thirty-minute warning as their signal as well. People flooded onto the platform, and Mira once again used her small figure and Immortal Arts to slip into the train ahead of the crowd.
Hrmm? That man…
As she secured her window seat, her eyes came to rest on a person sitting alone in the corner.
He looks just like that hit man I saw.
The man was dressed exactly like the mysterious person she’d seen at a sightseeing spot on the first half of her journey. A white shirt under a well-fitted black suit.
Then again, maybe that was a popular fashion now…?
She wasn’t sure enough to swear it was the same person. Mira had seen people wearing black suits at inns and Guild Unions. They weren’t common, but they weren’t suspicious either.
What really drew Mira’s eye was the short-brimmed black trilby, worn low over his face, and the sunglasses peeking out below. The man looked like some sort of secret agent from a movie.
A hat and sunglasses inside a train? I can only imagine he’s hiding his identity. Could he actually be a secret agent…? Let’s call him…Agent Smith.
He was certainly more suspicious than not. Agent Smith sat completely still. His face was hard to make out through the hat and sunglasses, but based on his lips, Mira thought he was young.
On closer inspection, there was another man to his left sitting with arms crossed and face tilted down. He looked to be…sleeping? Maybe he was tired. To Smith’s right was a tall man sitting stiffly upright. Wearing a surcoat and taking big bites out of his lunch, he looked like a knight on his day off.
Just then, another throng of passengers entered the train car.
Eventually, almost every seat filled, and the train began to move. Mira listened to the pleasant sound of the wheels and gazed at the scenery outside the window, forgetting all about Agent Smith.
***
A few hours later, the train emerged from a tunnel that took it from the open plains into the middle of a small forest. As it did, it gradually slowed, approaching an enormous waterfall and river. Before long, there was an announcement that the train would once again slow down to pass over the Tosenka Bridge.
Viewing it from the corner of the window, she has a moment of regret at not picking a window seat on the other side from last time. Still, it was quite impressive. Mira was awed by the overpowering rush of water in the distance.
Suddenly, she lurched forward.
Hm? Have we stopped? I thought the train was just supposed to slow down.
Confused, Mira turned away from the waterfall. The other passengers clamored louder and louder, apparently as confused as she was.
“What’s going on?”
“Hey, did we hit something?!”
An announcement boomed over the commotion. It seemed there was a problem with the engine, and they were currently investigating it. A new wave of fear arose among the passengers.
So something is wrong!
The noise in the car redoubled, and tension began to spread. Mira found herself fidgeting with excitement. Some other adventurers seemed to share in her glee. Despite the problems, they felt like spectators at a fire.
Something drew her eye…
It was Agent Smith. That the man next to him remained sleeping through the pandemonium in the train car was…odd, but Smith remained in his seat with arms crossed, totally silent, as if nothing was wrong. His calmness was conspicuous.
What’s with this guy?
She couldn’t read Smith’s expression under the sunglasses, but he did adjust his arms and take sips of his drink, so he couldn’t be sleeping. The off-duty knight to his right was looking out the window with great interest.
As Mira was monitoring Agent Smith, she heard one voice carrying over the many.
“Is it just me, or does the flow of mana feel weird right now?”
Hrmm, the flow of mana…? The words tugged at her mind. She tried focusing to test the hypothesis.
Mana was something akin to magic itself—a mysterious element both indispensable to casting spells and usable as energy to power magical devices. It was called the “universal element” among researchers, but much about its nature was still unknown.
A disruption in the flow of mana could cause miracles or natural disasters. If something about it was “weird,” Mira could not overlook it.
Mira had an ability known as Mana Perception: the ability to feel mana around oneself.
Mana Perception allowed a player to feel mana vaguely, as if it were the presence of a ghost. It was amorphous…hard to pin down. Some players, in extremely rare cases, could sense it as easily as they breathed, as if they had ESP.
Mira was not one of them. She was a master of many skills—but not this one. Her ability was middling, at best. Mira and the other former players had come from a world without mana, after all. It was easy to see or hear, because those were senses they had lived with for their entire lives. Sensing mana was something she had little practice at.
Still, she could feel it to some extent if she focused hard enough, thanks to some extra training with Wise Man Flonne.
She tried to recall the sensation as she stretched her perception around her. There! She could indeed sense some unusual mana.
My senses are sharp as a tack today!
Mira turned her attention toward the powerful mana reaction below—likely coming from the train’s magic engine—and found another source of mana that seemed to coil around it. It didn’t stop there; tendrils extended to every car, and their source was none other than Agent Smith.
He must have manipulated mana to interfere with the engines and stop the train. I doubt it’s simply because he wants to admire the view.
The train car was full of people shouting at the conductor who had come to explain the situation, yet Smith remained silent and still. Nothing would change unless she acted, so Mira strolled over with the attitude of a police officer investigating a case.
“Are you the reason the train stopped?” she asked, confident yet cautious.
Her words must have traveled, because many of the passengers near her quieted down and turned. Smith maintained his immobile silence. In fact, he seemed not even to notice Mira.
“I feel the presence of strange mana here,” Mira continued, certain that he couldn’t escape her interrogation. Yet he still refused to respond.
“She’s right!” A nearby mage confirmed her findings. Many passengers turned suspicious eyes on the man in black.
“D-damn it! I was so close!”
Unable to take anymore, a figure stood and morphed from a human to a bat-like demon with spread wings, a black body, and twisted horns. The mood changed instantly as screams broke out in the train car.
Everyone knew demons were mankind’s worst enemy. Everyone knew they were extinct. And yet…here stood a demon.
The crowd in the train car roiled as some passengers fled for their lives, while others stepped forward, steeling themselves for a life-or-death battle.
With a swing of one powerful arm, the demon destroyed the rows of seats in front of it. It stepped forward and glared down at Mira.
“Oh, hell…” Mira was amazed by this turn of events. Not because a demon had assumed human form—she’d expected something like that. But because the human that had transformed wasn’t Agent Smith!
It was the man who had been sleeping next to him. She stared in confusion.
Either way, I’m faced with a demon. It’s about time I deal with it. Mira shook off her shock and readied herself for a fight. A viscount, huh?
Her status check revealed a noble title. These demons often had much more annoying abilities than those without. She glanced around and saw that all the passengers who couldn’t fight had thankfully fled to other cars. Those willing to face the demon watched the situation warily from a distance.
“Hey, it’s dangerous! Get out of there!” someone warned. Mira dismissed them with a wave of her hand.
She stared back at the demon and—partially to cover her earlier mistake—shouted, “What are you plotting?!”
The demon did not answer. It simply curled its inhuman lips into a grin and surveyed the crowd, as if to intimidate them. A few adventurers shrunk back under the pressure of its gaze.
Hmph. If you won’t speak, then I’ll just have to crush you before you can do anything.
Without warning, she stepped in front of the demon and unleashed an [Immortal Arts Heaven: Pulse]. She simultaneously used a partial summons to conjure black swords that attacked the demon from two sides.
Before the swords could complete their swing, they were enveloped in pale flame and turned to dust. Mira’s approaching fist—the manifestation of condensed destructive power—was stopped by a single open palm.
“You!” As the vibrations from her attack shook their surroundings, Mira glared at Agent Smith, who stood before her.
She now faced two formidable foes. Mira jumped away and righted her stance. An explosive sound tore through the air and the demon began to run.
“Get back here!” Mira roared.
Just as she moved to stop it, the man in black blocked her path once more. Their impact caused a shock wave like a cannonball strike as the train car groaned around them.
It didn’t stop there. Mira opened her fist and seized the enemy’s arm to unleash [Immortal Arts Earth: Violet Spark], a spell that emitted deadly high-voltage electricity. She was thrown back before the spell could activate. With a flick of his wrist, Smith tossed her away.
Mira flipped in midair, skirt fluttering, and landed on a seat’s headrest. She kept her eyes fixed on the mystery man.
Right as she wondered what sort of foe he was, he spoke: “You know what to do, Faust!””
The off-duty knight stepped up to the plate.
Nrgh. Him, too?!
Taken aback by the appearance of a third opponent, Mira put some distance between them and watched both men warily. But the knight ignored her completely, replying, “Got it,” before breaking the window and leaping outside.
“What?!” Mira was confused, but at least she didn’t have another enemy to contend with.
They had only traded a few blows now, but she knew she was in trouble. After all, Smith had dispelled or avoided each and every one of her attacks. The only one who could do that would be someone of equal or greater ability to herself.
The two stared each other down. The adventurers watching from further down the car were speechless at the raw power they saw from both sides in this short fight. What could they do? It was clear that they would get slaughtered if they carelessly intervened.
The battle raged on. Neither combatant yielded a single step, yet neither could get a clean strike on their opponent.
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