Chapter 557

— […The Fire Department reported that the fire started when sparks from a furnace at the smelting plant landed on some timber, but for reasons still unknown, it spread too quickly to be brought under control. The wind then carried the flames to the street trees in the residential area….]

The message from the Command Headquarters came through the artifact. My memory seized every word and every pause between them, preserving the scene before my eyes just as vividly. I parted my lips and spoke to the eyes burning red with a more yellowish tint than Luka’s.

“Narke.”

“Hmm?”

Narke smiled, his eyes narrowing. Sweat was running down his face. Seeing it trickle from beneath his hair toward his temples, I found myself whispering.

“What’s wrong?”

He was acting unlike himself, as though he couldn’t afford to stay here much longer. I couldn’t understand why Narke was smiling, why he was twisting his face as if trying to suppress that smile, or why I could sense such desperate effort, determination, and longing beneath it. Of the dozens of possible reasons driving him to act this way, there was only one thing I knew for certain. The fire was draining something from him…

And it wasn’t just Narke. Everyone lying collapsed here was dying because of it. How?

No matter how I examined myself, my strength remained unchanged. My heart was pounding with fear of the fire, but the adrenaline coursing through me was also beginning to give me strength. I cupped Narke’s face in both hands. The pulse beneath his jaw throbbed out of sync with the one beneath my fingers. Startled, I instinctively tightened my grip.

It felt as though something in him was in a heightened state of alert—his blood vessels, the mana tangled with the blood flowing through them, or perhaps his heart… or the will of his brain, commanding that heart to beat.

Though he seemed to be struggling, Narke’s expression was still…

“I’m fine. My body just reacted to the sudden situation before I could think. I’ll adjust soon enough.”

He sounded calm. Whether he was trying to reassure me or genuinely believed what he was saying, Narke spoke as if there were nothing to worry about. Before I could ask anything else, he raised a hand to my face. He wiped away the sweat trickling down my brow and changed the subject.

“So all we can do is use mana to move the air and push back the fire. They must have thought my divine power would be necessary to deal with a fire like this.”

“…Yeah.”

Mana itself couldn’t put out a fire. Just as soundproofing magic could block sound traveling through the air, mana could block air under the right spell formula. Or it could push the air away, like when mana was forcefully released. It worked differently from a barrier, which allowed air to pass through both sides relatively freely.

If I memorized the formula used for soundproofing magic and wrapped the entire building in mana, I could keep the fire burning only until all the air inside had been used up, but…

I looked at Narke, who was glancing between the people around us and the building, and asked, “Are there people inside?”

The Command Headquarters said they didn’t know. They’d been told the fire department had evacuated the building, but with even the firefighters now collapsing unconscious, there was no way to know whether everyone had gotten out. If anyone was still inside, covering the building would be like sealing them in and suffocating them to death. It would end up killing the people we were trying to save. But hadn’t people already collapsed because of the flames? Anyone still inside would have suffered even more. We had no way of knowing whether they were alive or dead. What were we supposed to do?

Narke answered, looking a little calmer than before.

“We’ll have to go inside and find out. I can’t say for sure, though.”

I didn’t agonize over it for long. The answer was obvious.

“Fine. We have to save the people first.”

I turned and asked, “What about Senior Mecklenburg?”

Water. We needed water. The firefighters who had just arrived were collapsing too, so we couldn’t rely on them. This was a situation that called for his Special Ability.

But before I could even finish speaking, I realized why those bastards had coated the powder in oil.

To make it impossible to put out with water.

The powder scattered like dust. Would each individual particle really catch fire that easily? Wouldn’t the fire be no more intense than a spark from cigarette ash? Even if oil covered the surface of the powder, could it withstand a massive amount of water poured over it through a Special Ability? It was reasonable to think that, since the particles were dispersed over a wide area rather than clumped together, the fire wouldn’t be difficult—or even impossible—to put out with water. But I’d never actually seen a fire firsthand. My knowledge was limited to theory, and I had especially little experience with disasters like this, so I couldn’t be certain…

It was hard to say. Pouring large amounts of water over the powder might cool the particles and cut off their oxygen supply, stopping the chain reaction of combustion. On the other hand, if the particles were fine enough to remain suspended in the air, spraying them with water might spread them even farther.

And yet…

If that many particles were floating around, wouldn’t water be the better solution? There was no telling where they might settle and start another fire, so we needed to make it pour over the entire area. I immediately tapped the transparent artifact hooked around my ear.

“Senior.”

— [……..]

“Senior. Can you hear me?”

Only silence answered. I narrowed my eyes slightly. After letting out a breath, I brushed my fingers along my ear and spoke again.

“Headquarters, can you hear me? Can you reach Mecklenburg from Team A of the 98th Unit?”

— [We can hear you. Our last contact with him was three minutes ago, at the residence where Lord Askanien was dispatched.]

At the residence? But no matter how carefully I looked around, Mecklenburg was nowhere to be seen. An instinctive chill crept up the back of my neck.

I examined the dirt on the ground. Narke and I approached the fire and circled the building to inspect it. There really were no signs of red dirt having burst out anywhere. If that was the case, there was one thing worth trying.

I turned to ask Narke whether it was safe, but he answered immediately.

“We can try it on this building.”

“Narke. You need to use your power to draw up water and make it rain.”

I’d already heard that Narke had drawn water from the river and poured it over the building. At my words, he nodded.

“But there’s something you need to understand. I made sure the water fell only over that archive. Besides, the archive was…”

“Wide open. This one isn’t. But we still have to put out the flames outside.”

Fortunately, we were in Mitte. The Spree, which ran through the heart of the capital, was right nearby. Berlin had waterways all over the city, and the Spree carried relatively little water by comparison, but since they were all connected, that shouldn’t be a problem. Narke blinked a couple of times before nodding.

“All right.”

He gave me a brief, apologetic look, then scooped me up by the legs and leaped toward the building. In an instant, he spread a barrier and reached the rooftop, then jumped across to the roof of another building. Feeling his hands tremble slightly, I muttered, “Sorry, but I can jump between buildings, too.”

“I know. I know, but…”

Narke was stumbling over his words. He probably wanted to say that we had to consider speed. It was true that he was much faster than I was. He stopped on a building between the Spree and the residential district. From the roof, which stood a little higher than the others, we could see both the river and the neighborhood on fire.

The moment Narke transformed his wand into a staff, a clear, tinkling sound rang out. As soon as he was far enough from the flames, he regained his composure and lightly struck the rooftop with his staff.

— The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

Whoosh—…

The wind rising from his legs made his cloak flutter. It swept downward, violently shaking the street trees and the windows of nearby houses. The windows rattled in their frames as though an earthquake had struck, the clattering echoing throughout the city center. Without making a sound or moving a muscle, I cast a cognitive distortion spell over the area below with nothing more than a glance. Amid the deafening roar of the gale, he gazed steadily at the tranquil river and spoke.

— I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Rumble…

KRA-KOOOOOM—!

The river water rose into the air, forming the shape of a bowl. Something seemed to crack as the water was torn away from the river. Its thunderous roar rippled overhead, sending a chill down my spine and raising goosebumps all the way to my shoulders. I watched the water floating above us, held aloft by divine power as though in a vessel, and counted down toward the building.

“Three.”

The water moved past us. Then…

“Two.”

It stopped directly above the houses. I parted my lips.

“One. Now.”

KRAAAASH—!

“AAAH!”

“Huh?!”

Someone screamed as an impact resounded throughout the city center. Water poured down over the city like a waterfall. The sound was almost like an explosion, but the deluge completely extinguished the flames clinging to the trees. Even the fire climbing the outer walls of the buildings disappeared.

I stared at the flames flickering through the shattered windows and asked. I couldn’t get Mecklenburg out of my mind, not knowing where he was. This was only a temporary measure. We hadn’t extinguished the fire inside, so there was no telling when the flames might be carried by the wind to another street tree and spread to nearby buildings. The surrounding buildings had also been drenched, buying us some time, but anything could still happen. The possibility that oil-coated blood powder remained at the smelting plant only made the situation more dangerous.

“You can’t get the water inside the building, can you?”

“Right. Water isn’t my Special Ability, so if I tried that… it would spill before I could even get it inside. I can only use gravity.”

Right, I knew that. Hadn’t I overturned a river myself in the Extra Chapter? If I could use divine power on my own here, I would’ve done the same thing long ago. But for now, my best option was to piggyback on Narke’s divine power and use my own little by little, without anyone noticing. Narke took my hand and pulled me along as he spoke.

“We need to hurry before it spreads any further.”

“Wait.”

Wasn’t there something more I could deduce from the fact that they’d coated it with oil? Was this really the time to let myself feel relieved? Was that really all I could come up with?

The particles had been coated in oil, but how much oil could there really be? It was almost disappointingly naive not to consider the possibility. Sulfur, for example, was far more reactive when finely powdered than when left in solid chunks. The reason was simple: its surface area had increased. What I could deduce from this was that they had developed something like powdered sulfur and coated it with oil so that water couldn’t easily put it out. They might have intended to scatter it in powder form, but I was also considering another possibility.

Earlier, I’d thought that if the oil-coated particles were ‘dispersed over a wide area’ rather than ‘clumped together as powder,’ it might be possible to overcome the oil’s resistance with a sufficiently large amount of water. And right now, the particles were ‘dispersed over a wide area.’

Then what about ‘clumped-together powder’?

For example, what if someone put a tank of blood powder inside a container used to transport hematite powder or inside a factory, then dropped a match? The sack of powder would catch fire almost instantly. In this world, where fires still had to be fought using methods from the early 20th century, when firefighting systems were nowhere near as advanced as those of the 21st, that would be an enormous problem. In a place where powder was scattered everywhere, as it was now, water pressure might wash the oil off the particles or quickly cut off the air supply. But if water were sprayed onto a box full of powder thoroughly soaked in oil, it could end up accelerating an explosion. The water would become fuel for an even bigger fire.

I looked at my watch. The second hand jerked forward with a clatter, reminding me of the timer on a time bomb. Narke read my expression and tapped his artifact. We didn’t need to say a word to know what the other was doing, so I sent my message to him through divine power.

— “Headquarters, do you hear me?”

“This is Farnese of the 101st Unit. Do you hear me?”

— “Contact every factory, ship, freight train, and dye merchant holding hematite, iron oxide, iron oxide pigments, or any other red powder. Check whether there’s oil on any containers holding the powder. If there is, dispose of everything immediately in accordance with safety protocols, and take every security precaution. There’s a risk of fire. Not even an amount the size of a bottle is acceptable. Dispose of it all, no exceptions.”

Narke repeated my words without changing a single syllable, save for a difference of just one word. Then he grabbed my hand and warped us to the front of the residential building in an instant. He had remembered the coordinates after hearing them just once. I could see the fire department’s newly arrived trucks and horse-drawn carriages. The firefighters who had just arrived grimaced when they saw the scene, then spotted us and handed over all kinds of equipment.

“The government said the mages from the Association were to take charge. They said divine power was necessary…”

The firefighter mage looked uncomfortable about entrusting the task to us, a pair of students. He seemed conflicted. We nodded at his explanation and put on the equipment he handed us—which amounted to leather helmets, fire-resistant coats, rubber boots, respirators that looked barely finished, and ropes made of mana. They were primitive beyond comparison with anything from the 21st century.

But that wasn’t the real problem. The firefighter mage asked, “Where are the other members of the 101st Unit?”

“We don’t know.”

“I see. In that case, you should know that someone has already gone inside. He is a mage from the Association’s 97th Unit. He can use divine power, albeit only to a limited extent, so he was the only one able to enter. Join up with him.”

“What?”

The firefighter mage looked at me in confusion, as though he couldn’t believe he had to repeat himself.

For a moment, I nearly turned to look at Narke. This was the last thing I’d expected to hear. Since there was no chance of anyone seeing through us indoors, Narke and I had planned to use divine power—which was more efficient than mana and far better at purification—to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. But now we couldn’t. It meant Narke would have to be the only one using divine power even inside the building.

Narke, seemingly unbothered, pulled me along. He wrapped both of us in a thick layer of divine power, then thrust out his wand and used mana to force the flames at the entrance back.

Bang—

I tightened my grip on the fire hose they’d handed us and followed Narke inside. Everything in my field of vision was red.

Whoosh—

Unsettling sounds came from every direction. It hadn’t even been long since we’d pushed the flames back with mana, yet I could barely see what lay ahead. My breath caught in my throat. I’d never entered a burning building in my entire life. As my mouth dried out, I struggled to control my wildly pounding heart. It was beating so hard that it felt as though it might burst.

I stomped my foot and sent mana shooting forward, spraying water wherever flames remained. Then, for Narke’s sake, I immediately raised another barrier of divine power around us. I couldn’t spread divine power over the entire fire, but maintaining a barrier of this size should be manageable, even with the unfamiliar mage from the 97th Unit around. It had to be.

“As you saw from above, the building stretches a long way sideways.”

I muttered the words under my breath.

There was a single corridor lined with rooms. Staircases stood at both ends and in the middle, and there were so many of them that I suspected the flames would keep pouring down to the first floor unless we put out the fires upstairs. The roar of pressurized water drowned out our voices. Without a word, Narke tackled the flames burning across the ceiling.

BOOM—!

“Ugh…!”

I grabbed Narke, who was following a step behind me, and pulled him back. A ceiling light fell, sending dust and smoke billowing through the air. Narke took a deep breath and swallowed. His condition had been getting worse ever since we stepped into the heart of the fire.

“It’s five stories tall. Putting out the fire is important, but let’s hurry and find out if anyone’s still alive before we head back.”

Narke nodded. I placed a hand on his back and channeled divine power into him. With it, I quickly put up a barrier, giving him enough time to remove his respirator and drink the potion. As he did, the gentleness in Narke’s eyes gradually faded. After a little while, I took his hand and kicked the door open. Narke’s divine power shot forward, forcing the flames straight up toward the ceiling. The same thing happened over and over again.

I hadn’t realized it until then, but I understood once we reached the second floor. Searching the first floor had been easy compared to what came afterward. The floor shook as though it could collapse at any moment. I could only hope I was imagining it. I just couldn’t get used to this fire.

When we entered the third room on the second floor, I found someone lying unconscious on the floor. They hadn’t been burned. I knelt beside them and channeled divine power into their body. Are they dead? My heart raced, faster than it ever had before. I grabbed their shoulder, hoisted them onto my back, and made my way to the window.

I could see the mages outside. When I smashed the window, they spotted me and the person beside me and raised their wands. I handed the person over to them, then turned and left the room.

“Since there was someone in here, that means…”

Narke murmured the words under his breath. We had to search all the way to the fifth floor. There might be more people inside. That was what he wanted to say, probably. But he didn’t have the strength for it. I didn’t know whether he could hold out much longer.

I glanced at the mana rope wrapped around my waist. I couldn’t rely on it. No one else could come inside anyway. Narke was probably managing to endure this thanks to his divine power, and few divine mages possessed power as pure as his.

— [Can you hear me?]

Sophia Nussbaum’s voice came through the artifact. It seemed Ulrike had properly delivered the spare communication artifact we’d taken from Mecklenburg. Sweat trickled down my face. I wasn’t conscious of what I’d said in reply, but I must have said something. Sophia continued.

— [Wow, this is amazing. You mages can even use things like this. That’s not fair.]

“Th…”

I hadn’t originally lived with anything like that. I developed it myself. Maybe I’m burning to death because of the price I have to pay for using that strange device.

What does it mean to revere people with mana in a society that treats mana as money? Whether it’s mages praising their own kind or an attempt to make the entire public sing their praises, all this public opinion that holds mages in high regard seems to do a good job of concealing how it has become a tool for cheaply addressing the lack of a social safety net—a problem the mages themselves failed to pay attention to while they indulged in their own little world, even though, ‘in the government’s eyes, they’re nothing more than bottomless wells of national power—mana.’

Those tools are scattered all along the road over there. I’m no different.

It’s so hot I can’t think straight. I bit down hard on my lip. There was nothing but a disgusting, salty taste.

At least I still had enough presence of mind to do everything I could to keep myself from panicking. I used my mana while struggling to bring my vision, which kept turning white and fading, back into focus.

What happened to the mage from the 97th Unit? Is Mecklenburg even here? What about the civilians?

While everyone else was dying first from the fear and physical shock of having their mana drained, I was about to pass out from the shock of being thrown into the middle of a fire without a single day of training.

Whenever gas and heat that my mana couldn’t block seeped in, it felt like my lungs were burning away.

If I was in this state, what about everyone else? Their mana was disappearing, too. We needed reinforcements, but there was no one who could come.

I had to pull myself together.

— [Are you listening? You don’t seem to be doing too well.]

I’m listening. She was reluctant to tell me which buildings were used by socialist organizations. Of course she was. If I were her, I wouldn’t tell some royal bastard that sort of thing either. Especially in Germany, where the Social Democrats weren’t exactly popular.

Ah, that makes it even worse…

But I hadn’t been royalty my entire life. I’d lived in the 21st century and watched the pillars of capitalism crumble one by one. I’d benefited from the system, but I’d also seen how it had brought things down—or perhaps how it had all ended that way. And that was why I wasn’t trying to dig up this information just to screw over the socialists…

Whoosh—

“…!”

I dropped the hose and thrust out my hand, forcing the flames up toward the ceiling. They kept coming, without end. I continued to swing my arm. Extreme terror and the need to use magic carefully, because there might be people on the other side, somehow coexisted in my mind.

In any case, I had no way to convince Sophia. No one would believe something like that. I agreed with the economic adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not in the way it was intended, though—I thought of it in terms of capitalism. Even my fellow citizens from the 21st century wouldn’t think that, while benefiting from capitalism, we were also racing toward our deaths because of it. And so, they wouldn’t accept that someone in this world could feel that everything was so vast and overwhelming, even with the kind of public recognition I had that was practically equivalent to money in society.

Enough. This was why the habit of thinking about too many things at once was a problem. I had to convince her somehow, but I didn’t even have the strength to speak. As I did nothing but breathe, I heard a hesitant voice.

— [About the socialist organizations. I think it would be better to look for places associated with the Conservative Party and the National Liberal Party as well, rather than just those. The other side is clearly trying to make it look as though the Social Democrats hold a grudge against their rivals, the Conservatives, as if—]

KWA-BOOOOM—!

My eyes flew wide at the deafening roar. A gale blasted in from behind me, driving the flames all the way to the end of the corridor. Something inexplicable surged into my chest in an instant… I scooped up the unconscious mage from the 97th Unit, whom I’d found on the floor, and spun around. Narke, who had been bent low with one hand braced against the wall, turned his head as well.

“We promised to meet in five minutes.”

His voice came through clearly even over the noise. I looked toward the person spraying the fire extinguisher hose into the room beside us. Ulrike had a rubber hose-like tube in his mouth, biting down on it to keep it in place as he flashed a grin. Even as he fought the fire with the hose, something like a barrier kept radiating from his body. The mana in that barrier was gradually being drawn into the flames he’d pushed back.

But something else caught my eye. He had a personal tank tucked against his body, easily five liters in capacity, and he was sucking in something coming from it. His legs trembled ever so slightly, but his face and eyes burned with a determination more intense than anyone else’s. Tapping the hose in his mouth, he shouted at the top of his lungs.

“I did show up ten minutes later! I had to make something!”