Why Did You Summon Me?

Mana surged toward the Archmage, forming a vortex. The rushing wind caused his Met Gala-like robe to flutter wildly. The mana powered the formations on his robe and the accessories he had on him, causing them to light up.

The Archmage had not given any of his gears colorful names because they were unfinished products. Baiyi began making them ten years ago, but he did not manage to finish a single one of them, as event after event kept cropping up. There was also the possibility that the Archmage’s demands were so confusing, the accessories just could not be finished.

The gears allowed their user to cast forbidden spells without limit and negative effects. Baiyi created the gears because he thought the old man deserved it, as they would serve as a replacement for the Book of Servitude that he passed on to Baiyi. However, Baiyi did not build these gears alone; other Voidwalkers, Mia, and the other girls all helped with the project. Even the Warrior Walker and the Assassin Walker, both of whom knew almost nothing about magic, made contributions. Only these two knew why they decided to help.

This unprecedented level of cooperation was the reason why the gears, which contained more rare materials than the Voidwalkers could name, could be considered the peak of craftsmanship. The gear set was an incomplete product, but it was still the world’s best incomplete gear ever.

The Archmage was not pleased with a weapon of this magnitude, though. This was something he had voiced to his student time and time again.

“Just make the most out of it, will you? Everyone put their everything into this, for you,” Baiyi had said, sometime before falling into the deep sleep.

“Urgh, fine! I’ll use it… reluctantly,” the Archmage had replied with a groan, placing the gear set into his storage pouch. This particular storage pouch contained everything Tisdale and Mia had given him as gifts since they were kids. However, atop these gifts was a mountain of his cipher cards — everyone he had collected to date.

Although the gear set was still incomplete, it allowed the user to cast a handful of the Archmage’s favorite Forbidden Spells. With its numerous buffs, it already met every functional requirement initially planned for the robe — something the Archmage incorporated into his performance today.

As the Archmage chanted, three large formations glistening in pale blue light manifested before his chest, behind his back, and below his legs before shifting into the color of fiery scarlet. Even soldiers who had little grasp of magical knowledge could feel deluges of mana coursing through the spell, radiating heatwaves to his surroundings like a day under a cloudless summer sun.

On the last syllable of his spell, the Archmage thumped the ground with the tip of his staff hard, sending the three air-boiling scarlet formations to spread out before they faded.

Nothing happened afterward. The soldiers did not even hear whisper of the spell landing — if it ever landed. More importantly, the soldiers were unconsciously expecting a jaw-slacking visual spectacle following the Archmage’s buildup, yet all they got was the spell dissipating into thin air as though it never happened.

The unexpected silence invited the first wave of murmurs. “Did it flop?” Someone whispered quietly.

“I guess so? Maybe someone intercepted it before it could even land? I mean, even I can tell that the temperature around us had dropped.”

“Dang. I was really hoping to see something mindblowing…”

“Shh, guys! Look over there! Is anyone else also seeing a ball of brilliant red at that distance?”

“Er, I think I see it. Looks like the sun rising from the horizon or something like that.”

The Archmage ignored the soldiers’ chatter and focused on recent holographic images the Engineer’s dragonfly had just delivered. “I got them already?” He muttered in disbelief. “Did I… just overestimated them? I can’t believe I even applied the barrier-boring version of that spell!”

The logistics train that was erstwhile trotting slowly towards Fort Praxidike was now rendered to crisps, scattering ashes, and fumes of dust. Those poor cavalrymen did not even see any sign of their impending doom; the only thing that had managed to catch their attention one second before they were vaporized was the nagging feeling that their surroundings had become inexplicably hot.

Now, all that was left of them and the plain was a massive, soot-black crater. No human or animal bones remained — indeed, not even the path they treaded remained.

What the Archmage had cast was unrecorded in any historical books or magical tomes because it was one of the results of the Walkers’ latest attempt to bring magic to new heights. The concept was simple: one needed only to summon a fireball with concentrated heat before suspending it over a target area. The fireball would maintain its form while remaining stationary on the target location as the infernal temperature it caused vaporize everything within its proximity.

It was simple in its representation as it was in its execution. It was so unbombastic that Baiyi characterized it as “Dynamaxed Lumos”, though its simplicity did not take away its edge. Besides, it seemed that quieter, under-the-radar magic was more well-suited for ambushes like these.

As always, the Archmage had a mouthful, grand name he most certainly lifted from a work made on Earth: “Mountain Range-Shaking Firewood of Venus”. Perhaps he was trying to compensate the unflashy nature of this spell with a word-salad styled name.

*It’s always from Fate Grand Order. Archer Ishtar’s Noble Phantasm.

Due to the elusive and speedy nature of the spell’s effect, VP Haydyn’s surveillance magic only picked up the resultant magical pulses after the Archmage’s attack landed. It was too late for any prevention by then; as he looked at the pitch-black aftermath, horrified, he blurted, “What the hell just happened to our logistics team? Why didn’t one person from that oversized group survive at all? How did it even happen?!”

“Are you telling me that that violent burst of magical pulses was from our enemies?” The Archbishop sprung on the sorcerer’s outburst, his voice just as wrung with shock. “is our first supply train really just gone?!”

“This is impossible! Impossible!” Haydyn cried indignantly. “Not only did the Eye of Provision detect nothing, but there was also no way the enemy could sneak past our web of watertight anti-magic barriers and cast wide-range magic beyond Fort Praxidike! That’s not all; what about the extensive net protection and safety precautions we have installed on the logistics team’s trail? Did none of those pick up a single sign of the enemy’s attack?!’

“Were there any explosives among the ammunition? Maybe the team had an accident…” One of Haydyn’s subordinates suggested quietly.

“I’m no expert of alchemy, but do you really expect me to believe that there exists a kind of explosive capable of creating such a violent reaction which ends with a wide-area bang without producing any warning sign at all?” The Archbishop snapped coldly. He remained outwardly unperturbed, but his true sentiments were subtlely expressed by the involuntary twitches at a corner of his eye.

The doomed supply train was transporting not only hundreds of wagons worth of subsistence but also consecrated items such as holy water and sacred anointments — all vital objects that were not easy to come by. And the less one mentioned the loss of siege-essential equipment, the better; unlike provisions, which could at least be purveyed and restocked, the loss of weapons like ballistae and siege towers translated to a permanent loss in the army’s overall arsenal.

“Your Excellency, with all due respect, it’s even less plausible that there exists any magic capable of bypassing extensive webs of surveillance and resistant barriers. As such, I can’t believe that it was an enemy’s attack,” the man said.

“Well, what if it was fired from inside the fort?” The Archbishop asked instead.

“Your doubts on my understanding of magic is unnecessary, Your Excellency. Those demons’ den is about slightly over six miles from here, yet no human can cast magic that flies over half a mile,” Haydyn replied confidently.

“Yes, that is a limit for humans. The question is, do they qualify as humans?” The Archbishop hummed.

“Regardless of what they are, this is an objective law. An undefinable, irrefutable axiom if you will. And magic… always runs on Laws,” Haydyn’s right-hand man said.

As high-profile members of the Association, these sorcerers regarded themselves as the vanguards of progress and the front-runners of contemporary achievements; their prestige in modern-day magic was a source of immense pride. Even if their opponent was the Sage-Emperor, idol of almost all aspiring sorcerers, he was still just a relic of Isythre’s thousands-years-old past. His brand of magic was antiquated and irrelevant. Besides that, he was out of practice for millennia. The old man had squandered every moment he had in that uninhabitable Void trying to survive the threat of ever-present darkness and disintegration.

If one wanted proof of how démodé the Archmage’s magic had become, one needed only to look at the number of papers he had ever submitted for the Association to review: zero. He was even too cowardly to register himself as a legitimate practitioner of magic as though he had something to hide! It would be a stretch to think that whatever the old man knew, modern-day sorcerers like Haydyn and others did not, though the opposite may be true.

It was enough evidence for Haydyn and his ilks. Baiyi may have submitted theses that were astute enough to merit some attention while his students were academically satisfactory, but the sorcerers were hard-pressed to believe that any of their ideas were conceived while the Walkers were still trapped in the Void. Instead, they rationalized that their most novel ideas were cobbled from bits and pieces of modern-day findings, no doubt is seen as revolutionary and mindblowing by these ancient relics when they finally stumbled upon the fortune to return as Soul Armatures. The best of their academic achievements were flukes that were utterly unrelated to their actual grasp of magic; only a sheeple as tremendously impressionable as Grant could possibly gush over people like them.

“The only logical explanation is that our enemies had somehow covertly planted magical mines along the trail without alerting our surveillance systems,” Haydyn, who considered himself an intelligent and logical man, said. “Those snakes are adept in playing dirty little tricks, I’ll give you that. I admit I might have underestimated them.”

“Those ‘little dirty tricks’ had cost us one-fifth of our entire logistics,” the Archbishop replied coldly. He was beginning to feel quite irritated by the man’s bloated confidence.

“It won’t happen again, rest assured; I’ll grab them where it hurts. I’m already ordering my men to scan through the trail as we speak; their stupid shenanigans are going to be a minor inconvenience at best,” Haydyn said.