Chương 92: The Job Beneath Them

The following morning, several Bellhaven guards arrived at the abandoned mine with two wagons, enough rope to restrain a small army, and expressions suggesting they expected someone else to do most of the unpleasant work. While the guards followed the upper passage to recover the stolen merchandise, Mellia's group prepared to investigate the descending tunnel. The authorities had already paid them a reward for capturing the bandits and locating their hideout.

The amount wasn't enormous after being divided between five people, but Sieghart had earned more for two days of work than most farmers earned in several weeks. Still, a small part of Sieghart remained bothered by the fact that they weren't allowed to keep anything from the hideout. The bandits had stolen everything, so stealing it from them felt less like theft and more like correcting the natural distribution of wealth. Perhaps I've become too cynical over the last four years.

Sieghart had survived a war, watched his grandparents die, lived underground, and spent years preparing to kill people whose identities he didn't even know. Believing there was nothing wrong with stealing from thieves was probably one of his less concerning personality developments. Unfortunately, there were more important matters than his personal interpretation of justice.

The stolen merchandise belonged to merchants and families who had already suffered enough, and Lunar Arc's reputation was considerably more valuable than whatever they might have found inside the bandits' chests. Lunar Arc was the only recognized mage guild in the human lands. That position gave its members influence, but it also left them exposed.

Any noble family frightened by magic could use a single crime as an excuse to place restrictions upon them, or, in the worst case, gather support for eliminating the guild entirely. Returning the stolen goods without taking anything was the correct decision. It also prevented Mellia and the others from learning the considerably less respectable lesson that robbing criminals was acceptable whenever no witnesses were around. Fine. This worked out better.

Once the guards disappeared into the upper tunnel, Mellia summoned a floating sphere of pale-blue light and led the group down the other passage. The tunnel descended at a sharp angle, forcing them to move slowly while loose fragments of stone shifted beneath their boots. The walls gradually changed as they went deeper.

The straight cuts left by mining tools became less common, replaced by rough stone, crooked passages, and thick stalactites descending from the ceiling like the teeth of some enormous subterranean beast. The blue sphere illuminated only twenty meters ahead, while everything beyond its glow remained swallowed by darkness. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, and every small sound traveled through the cavern before returning as a faint, distorted echo.

Sieghart glanced upward when the light passed beneath a cluster of stalactites. Several dark shapes hung between them, their folded wings wrapped tightly around bodies almost as large as adult men. He stopped walking. The others noticed the bats at almost the same moment. Mellia raised one hand, Kart tightened his grip around his rod, Lucia summoned two small winged constructs, and Hernan's six metal rings began rotating around his wrists. That tiny collection of movements was enough.

The scraping of boots, the soft metallic clicks of the constructs, and the change in everyone's breathing traveled through the cavern. The bats stirred almost simultaneously, their enormous ears twitching as they detected the group beneath them. One opened its mouth. The shriek that followed was painfully sharp, vibrating through Sieghart's bones and making the magical light tremble. The remaining bats released the stalactites and dropped from the ceiling before unfolding their leathery wings.

"Defensive formation!" Mellia shouted. Three rectangular plates flew from Mellia's belt and expanded into translucent barriers above the group. The first bat struck one of them with enough force to produce a thunderous crack, but the barrier angled the creature aside instead of trying to stop it completely. Kart slammed the bottom of his control rod against the floor. Two heavy guardian constructs unfolded from metal blocks near his boots, their thick arms extending as they placed themselves in front of the others.

The second bat crashed against one of the guardians and sank its claws into the construct's shoulders. The guardian staggered, but Kart twisted his rod and forced it to grab the monster around the neck. Lucia's flying constructs darted toward the ceiling, releasing rhythmic pulses that interfered with the bats' attempts to navigate. Their movements immediately became less precise, causing two of them to collide while trying to attack Hernan from opposite directions. Hernan thrust both hands forward.

His metal rings separated, linked themselves through strands of mana, and formed two narrow spears that launched toward the disoriented bats. One spear pierced a wing, while the second entered the other bat's open mouth and emerged through the back of its skull. Hernan grimaced at the sight but maintained enough concentration to pull the weapon free. Sieghart projected one thread of mana toward Kart and another toward Hernan.

The threads were almost invisible in the blue light, and he sent Protection and Muscle Reinforcement through them before either boy could notice what he was doing. Kart's guardian suddenly stopped sliding backward. He clenched his jaw, dragged the trapped bat down with the construct's reinforced arms, and smashed the monster headfirst against the cavern floor. Hernan's next spear flew considerably faster than the first.

It pierced another bat through the chest, pinning the monster against a stalactite before the construct shattered into fragments of mana. [White Magic gained 20 Experience Points.] Sieghart ignored the message and watched the remaining enemies. One slipped past Lucia's interference and descended behind Mellia, but Sieghart formed an ice shuriken and launched it through the membrane of its wing. The monster spiraled out of control.

Mellia turned, shifted one of her barriers vertically, and slammed its narrow edge against the bat's neck before it could recover. The last creature tried to escape toward the darkness. Lucia's constructs followed it, marking its location with glowing threads, while Hernan formed a curved bow from his metal rings and launched a mana arrow through the back of its skull. Silence returned to the cavern with unsettling speed.

The only remaining sounds came from dripping water, the fading echoes of the fight, and Hernan breathing harder than he wanted anyone to notice. They continued downward after checking the bodies, but the tunnel offered them little time to recover. Another group of bats attacked within twenty minutes, emerging from a narrow chamber where the ceiling was too low for Lucia's constructs to maneuver freely. Those monsters used their voices differently.

Instead of releasing a single piercing shriek, they produced repeated pulses that disrupted the mana flowing through the summoned constructs, causing Mellia's barriers to flicker and Kart's guardians to move sluggishly. Mellia adjusted by placing her barriers against the walls, creating a narrow corridor that forced the bats to approach from the front. Kart anchored his guardians behind those barriers and used them to grab anything that tried to squeeze through.

Lucia landed her flying constructs on the walls and changed their pulses, matching the rhythm of the bats' cries before producing an opposing vibration. The interference wasn't enough to silence the monsters, but it weakened their ability to disrupt the group's magic. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Hernan remained behind Kart and repeatedly changed his rings between spears, blades, and arrows.

Each transformation required concentration, yet he adjusted his weapons according to the distance without wasting more mana than necessary. Sieghart alternated his support spells between them, strengthening Kart whenever a bat struck the guardians and shifting Muscle Reinforcement to Hernan whenever he prepared a heavier weapon. He couldn't maintain separate threads for everyone, so every change had to be timed carefully.

One bat slipped through the formation and cut Lucia's shoulder before Mellia crushed it between two barriers. Sieghart immediately used First Aid from a distance, closing the shallow wound before Lucia lost enough blood to weaken her concentration. [White Magic gained 10 Experience Points.] Right… also healing from a distance… The fight ended without serious injuries, but the difference between Sieghart and the others became increasingly obvious.

Their mana reserves were limited, their constructs were damaged, and every difficult maneuver added to their mental exhaustion. They eventually found a defensible alcove and stopped to rest. Kart sat against the wall while repairing one guardian's damaged shoulder, and Lucia carefully replaced a cracked wing on one of her scouts. Hernan inspected his metal rings one at a time, rubbing away scratches before placing them in a precise circle around himself.

Mellia remained standing for another minute, watching both ends of the tunnel before finally allowing herself to sit. Sieghart was hardly tired, but he sat with them to avoid looking even stranger than usual. As he watched the others maintain their equipment, a question that had been bothering him since the beginning of the mission returned to his mind.

"Your type of Summoning Magic is unusual. You sometimes combine physical constructs with your mana and control them instead of creating everything from mana." Every member of the group looked at him. Sieghart slowly blinked. Judging by their expressions, he had stepped on a social landmine without even realizing that the ground had been dangerous. Hernan placed his metal ring down.

"What exactly are you trying to imply?"

"I'm implying that your Summoning Magic is unusual. That was the first thing I said." Hernan's eyebrows twitched.

"People usually say that when they want to call us fake summoners."

"I didn't call you fake summoners. Ronan taught me part of Summoning Magic, but even he doesn't understand the variation you use. I wanted to know how it works." Mellia raised one hand before Hernan could respond. She had already realized that Sieghart's expression wasn't mocking or judgmental. If anything, he looked irritated that they had transformed a simple question into a complicated confrontation.

"Calm down, Hernan. Sieg probably wasn't raised in Seraphina, so he wouldn't know much about the different schools of magic or why people argue over their branches."

"He lives beneath the guild," Hernan replied.

"How could he not know?"

"I lived in one room beneath the guild. The walls didn't explain local history to me." Lucia covered her mouth, but her quiet laugh still escaped. Kart kept working on his guardian, although the slight movement in his shoulders made it clear that he had heard the exchange. Mellia rested one of her rectangular plates across her knees. Thin runes covered the object, forming several interconnected circles around the mana stone embedded in its center.

"Traditional construct summoners create everything from mana. The shape, the weight, the movement, and the commands all depend on the caster. That gives them freedom, but maintaining complicated constructs consumes a tremendous amount of mana and concentration." Sieghart nodded. He had experienced that problem while learning Mana Sword and Mana Shield. Even with infinite mana, creating a stable shape required considerable control, and an imperfect construct could collapse long before its mana should have run out.

"Our style is called Frame Summoning," Mellia continued.

"We create physical frames ahead of time and carve patterns into them. The frames give the construct a stable foundation, while the patterns control some of its movements." Kart lifted one of his guardian's detached arms.

"My guardians already know how to walk, block, grab, and strike. I provide the mana and direct their priorities, but I don't have to consciously control every joint." Lucia raised one of her birdlike constructs and spread its metal wings. The mechanisms were extraordinarily detailed, containing dozens of thin joints connected through threadlike runes.

"My scouts have patterns for flying, balancing, following targets, and recording sounds. I still control where they go, but I don't need to think about every movement of their wings." Hernan picked up one of his rings.

"My frames can combine into different weapons. I control the transformations and attacks, but the patterns hold their shapes. That doesn't make them fake. I can use mana swords, but they are more expensive to use…"

"I didn't say it did."

"You sounded like you were going to."

"That sounds like a problem created by your imagination rather than my words." Hernan glared at him again, but Mellia released a quiet sigh and continued before their conversation transformed into another argument. She had clearly accumulated considerable practice in stopping Hernan from becoming angry at everyone around him.

"Most people can use some magic," Mellia explained.

"Lighting a candle, moving a little water, or helping crops grow isn't rare. Using magic effectively in battle is another matter entirely." Magic required concentration, emotional control, sufficient mana, and enough time to shape a spell. Aura users could strengthen their bodies and activate familiar techniques almost instantly, making them far more reliable during sudden confrontations.

Because of that difference, most people treated magic as a tool for servants, farmers, artisans, and anyone too weak to fight properly. The rare combat mages who proved otherwise were viewed as exceptions instead of evidence that the common belief might be wrong.

"Mages have to be creative," Mellia said.

"If we can't overpower an Aura user directly, then we improve our efficiency. We prepare frames, combine different specialties, use the terrain, and make every spell support another." Sieghart looked at their damaged constructs. The methods weren't as flexible as his pure mana creations, but they allowed people with limited mana to maintain complicated summons far beyond what their natural reserves should have permitted.

In a way, their physical components performed the same role as tools, weapons, or even written formulas. The constructs reduced the burden placed upon the caster by solving certain problems before the battle ever began. That was considerably smarter than trying to overcome every limitation with raw power. Sieghart could cast an absurd number of spells, but didn't automatically grant him perfect control, greater speed, or the knowledge necessary to create something new.

"If you hadn't carried the bandits with that sand platform, the guards would have looked down on us as well," Mellia added.

"They probably assumed four young mages couldn't have defeated ten armed criminals." Sieghart frowned.

"Weren't they the ones who called Lunar Arc for help?"

"They called us because they considered this job beneath them." The answer came from Lucia, whose usual cheerfulness had disappeared. She continued repairing her construct while carefully avoiding everyone's eyes.

"The bats were attacking travelers outside their walls, so the guards didn't consider them an immediate threat. Sending their own people into an abandoned mine would have been dangerous, expensive, and inconvenient." Mellia nodded.

"They expected the guild to accept the danger because we need contracts and public approval. If we succeed, then we only did what they paid us to do. If we fail, they can say that mages are unreliable." Sieghart stared toward the dark passage.

"That is an impressively efficient form of stupidity." Kart released a short laugh before disguising it as a cough. Even Lucia smiled, while Mellia's expression softened slightly despite her attempt to remain serious. Hernan crossed his arms.

"We don't need your approval."

"That's fortunate. I wasn't offering it." Hernan's expression darkened again, but Sieghart continued before the older boy could misunderstand him for the third time during the same conversation.

"I was trying to understand your method because it is efficient. Using physical frames to reduce the burden of constructing and controlling a summon makes sense. I might be able to apply something similar to my own magic." Hernan studied him for several seconds.

"Was that supposed to be a compliment?"

"Who knows?" Mellia shook her head, although this time she appeared more amused than frustrated. The tension around the group gradually faded, leaving behind a cautious understanding that hadn't existed before their conversation. Sieghart leaned against the stone wall and considered everything he had learned. He had spent years treating magic like a collection of isolated skills, but these four used preparation and teamwork to stretch their limited abilities far beyond their natural limits.

Perhaps he could do something similar with Mana Runes. A physical frame might stabilize his Mana Sword, allow his Mana Shield to react without constant commands, or even let him create constructs capable of acting independently. Before he could ask another question, a deep impact traveled through the cavern beneath them. Dust fell from the ceiling, and the remaining bats hidden farther down the tunnel suddenly began shrieking.