57 — Chapter 57

The room was sparse, furnished with the bare minimum and cluttered with a massive amount of equipment.

I turned to the red-haired girl and asked a question.

“How does it feel to be a damsel in distress?”

“……”

Unfortunately, I received no reply.

This was despite the fact that I’d removed her blindfold and hadn’t bothered with a gag. She simply glared at me with blatant resentment. Perhaps she was dissatisfied with being tied to a chair, especially since I was using Magic Tools to keep her restrained.

Regardless, I couldn’t afford to loosen the bindings. It would be a problem if she interfered with the plan, even by some slim chance.

Present in the room were Alice, the red-haired girl, and myself. We had been holed up here for half a day, and I had ensured that leaving wouldn’t be easy under normal circumstances.

It had been five days since our return to the Fortress City. During that time, I’d renovated the area surrounding our base. Currently, the vicinity was completely deserted; not a soul remained besides us. I had paid off the residents to clear them out and issued a notice for everyone else to stay away.

The entire perimeter had been sealed off with earthen walls. I’d mobilized a full force of temporarily hired mages to build them. Furthermore, I’d littered the interior of the zone with numerous traps. It was a rush job, but with Alice and me working together, there were no functional issues. I was taking every precaution to ensure no hiccups occurred.

One entire wall of the room was covered in a mosaic of countless projected images. The night-time cityscape was displayed from various angles, with some views even showing the interiors of buildings.

These were Far-Sight Magic Tools. To put it simply, they were the “Otherworld” version of security cameras. I’d installed them throughout the area so we could monitor every key location.

The “cameras” themselves were actually the eyeballs of corpses. The vision captured by those eyes was what was being projected here. Alice’s fourth incarnation had been a mage who manipulated the dead—a Necromancer—and I’d had her prepare these using those skills.

However, her aptitude for it was apparently low, making it impossible for her to do something like raising an army of the dead. Using parts of them like this was supposedly her limit. Still, I thought it was impressive enough.

As a side note, she mentioned that the techniques she refined to manipulate corpses were now helping her control golem technology. Normally, one could only give golems broad, simple orders. It was supposedly impossible to move them simultaneously in real-time like Alice did. Complex mechanisms like the Golem Car would have been out of the question otherwise.

She was only capable of such feats because of the diligence she’d put into her past life as a Necromancer.

“You never know what might come in handy in life,” Alice had remarked. In her case, since she inherited knowledge and abilities from her previous lives, she likely felt that more keenly than most.

‘They’ll be here within a few hours at the earliest, or two days at the latest.’

I pondered while scanning the countless screens. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary yet.

By now, Michael and his group were likely searching for the red-haired girl. No matter how much he could stop time, it would be next to impossible to pinpoint our location immediately.

However, there was no way he would abandon her. I already knew Michael’s personality from my prior investigation.

“He’ll definitely come for her.”

I hadn’t bothered with any cover-up to prevent Michael and his team from reaching us. If they scrambled for information, they’d eventually figure out that I was involved in the sniping incident and had abducted the red-haired girl to the Fortress City. I had simply used the time it took them to find us to prepare our welcome.

“Jack, they’re at the northern wall,” Alice reported calmly thirty minutes later.

I opened my eyes from my nap and stood up from my chair.

“Finally showed up, huh?”

I focused on one of the countless screens. There they were—Michael and his two companions. The image quality was a bit grainy, but there was no mistaking them.

‘So they didn’t ask anyone else for backup?’

I stroked my chin, feeling a bit suspicious. It didn’t look like they were trying to split up or infiltrate from different angles. Alice had already countered any specialized infiltration methods, such as magic, and we had no hits on those sensors. It seemed Michael’s group had truly charged in with just the three of them.

“You’d think they’d have acquaintances they could’ve asked for help.”

They could have hired mercenaries just like we did. Perhaps they were so panicked by their comrade’s crisis that they couldn’t think straight, or maybe they were arrogant enough to believe the three of them were sufficient for a rescue. Either way, it was a careless move.

As I watched the screen, the elf woman used magic to shatter the earthen wall. They entered the area in a tight formation. They were bold, appearing out in the open without even trying to hide. It seemed they were still severely underestimating me.

“Hmm…”

I observed them closely. The way the three of them walked cautiously was a bit awkward. No doubt the wounds from my sniping were still bothering them. They had likely treated the paralytic poison from the bullets, but it hadn’t been a complete recovery. They must have rushed here with absolute priority on finding the red-haired girl. They really were a group that cherished their comrades.

So far, there was nothing suspicious about Michael’s movements. He hadn’t used his time-stop yet. He was likely conserving his ability. If he could stop time at will, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to be standing right in front of me by now. The injuries from the sniping might be a factor, but as I suspected, there were likely constraints on his time manipulation.

“Not a bad situation. Luck is on my side.”

I never stood a chance in a head-on fight to begin with. If they were going to charge in with such honest idiocy, it suited me just fine. I’d be more than happy to use every cowardly trick in the book.

“Now then, little lady, why don’t you take a nap for a while?”

“Wait, you—”

I grabbed a cloth soaked in a sedative and pressed it over the red-haired girl’s mouth and nose, sending her off to sleep. If she saw the spectacle about to unfold, she’d only make a fuss, so I silenced her ahead of time. While I was at it, I flipped a nearby lever to activate a certain trap.

On the surface, nothing changed. This was the type of trap that took time to show its effects. I looked forward to seeing the results.

Meanwhile, Michael’s group continued their cautious advance. I had heavily renovated the interior of the zone. Countless earthen walls and ceilings had been erected, both indoors and out. The entire area was now an intricate labyrinth. For them, progress would be exceptionally difficult.

Before long, Michael’s group hit a dead end. The elf woman immediately prepared her magic. She probably intended to blow through the wall again. As expected, a fireball she manifested slammed into the earthen wall—which promptly exploded, peppering her with a massive amount of shrapnel.

“Hahaha! Taking shortcuts is so boorish, don’t you think?”

I laughed, thoroughly enjoying myself. I had rigged parts of the earthen walls with explosives. If they tried to “cheat” like that, I’d made sure they’d pay a painful price. I’d gone through the trouble of building this grand maze, after all. It would be a waste if they didn’t enjoy it for a long time.

The elf woman had collapsed after taking the shrapnel. Fragments were embedded all over her body, and even from the distance of the camera, I could see she was bleeding heavily. The system didn’t pick up audio, but there was no mistaking her agony. Michael and the dark-skinned woman rushed to her side, frantically beginning first aid. One of them really should have been guarding the perimeter, but there was no one there to give them that advice.

“Don’t think it ends with just one hit.”

I selected one switch from the many I had prepared and pressed it. An explosion tore through the ceiling above Michael’s group, sending a rain of rubble and bricks plummeting toward them. The debris swarmed down almost the instant they looked up.

However, they weren’t there anymore.

Checking another screen, I saw Michael’s group in a back alley a short distance away. From that timing, avoiding the collapse should have been impossible. In other words: time-stop.

“Good, good. You used it.”

I grinned, satisfied that things were going exactly as planned. The purpose of the labyrinth and the traps was to force Michael to burn through his time-stop ability. I would force him into a constant state of attrition until he reached this room. If the traps along the way killed him, that was fine too. Even if they broke through, they wouldn’t emerge unscathed.

Setting traps and lying in wait was one of my specialties. A momentary time-stop wouldn’t be enough to evade everything. I was going to make sure he didn’t even have the luxury of thinking about conserving his strength.