NOVPUBLudger headed toward the entrance of the secret laboratory, disguised as a massive wastewater tunnel. 𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒑𝒖𝒃.𝙘𝙤𝒎
The rust and stench everywhere made it feel convincingly real, but just a bit further in, everything changed.
The inner walls grew pristine, and even the foul odor vanished.
Murmur, murmur.
Soft voices echoed from beyond, mingling with a dim crimson light.
Ludger immediately suppressed his presence and moved slowly.
"Ha. I’m bored out of my damn mind. How much longer do we have to stand around?"
"Who knows. We’ve still got more than two days left, so we’ve got to wait it out, right?"
"Why the hell did those damn specimens have to escape, of all things?"
"It might be fine. No one’s traced it back to us yet. Still, just in case, they’re cleaning everything up and planning to bail."
"Still better than dealing with all the gear and chaos inside. Guard duty’s not that bad."
"Anyway, shift change is coming soon."
"Ugh. If those damn bastards hadn’t escaped..."
Ludger pressed his back to the wall and listened closely to the two men talking.
Bored out of their minds from standing guard at the entrance, the two hadn’t stopped chatting.
"I was outside when it happened—how the hell did it go wrong? Bad handling?"
"Apparently there was a slip-up. The kid they kidnapped didn’t react properly to the drugs, so the cryptid transformation wasn’t complete. Probably because he was too young."
"So then?"
"So what? They tried to administer a higher dose, but he resisted."
"I heard that kind of injection is pure agony. Is that true?"
"Judging by the way he screamed bloody murder? Yeah, probably. The real issue was the parents causing a scene."
"What? The parents? Even after becoming werewolves, they still tried to protect their brat?"
"Yeah. The scientists never expected they’d still have any sanity left. But they went berserk—way more than anyone expected—and trashed the whole place."
"Damn it. So that’s how they escaped. Isn’t that dangerous?"
"Pfft! Dangerous, my ass. Don’t worry. I heard they brought in someone reliable to deal with it. Still, if I’d been there, I’d have stomped that little shit into the ground. We’re the ones suffering because of him."
So that’s how it happened.
Ludger no longer needed to keep listening.
He now fully understood how the situation had unfolded.
Squelch.
The moment Ludger stepped in a shallow pool of water, making a faint splash, the two guards immediately fell silent and looked in his direction.
"What the? Who’s there?"
"A rat?"
The entrance was lit by magic lamps, but ironically, that made the area where Ludger stood even darker, shrouding him in shadows.
The two guards reached for the guns at their waists.
But before they could even aim, two streaks of light shot from the darkness and pierced their foreheads.
Thud! Thud!
Without a chance to scream, the two guards at the entrance collapsed to the ground.
It all happened in the blink of an eye.
Ludger emerged from the shadows, walking slowly.
Leather boots up to his shins, black pants, a gray vest bristling with pockets, and a worn brown coat draped over it.
A black cloth masked his face up to his nose, and a hood was pulled low over his brow.
Like a ghost, Ludger stepped over the bodies and headed deeper into the secret laboratory.
Not long after he entered—
A scream echoed from within.
* * *
"AAAAHH! Spare me!"
A man on patrol near the entrance fled desperately from the monster that had suddenly appeared and slaughtered his comrades.
He had no idea where the thing had come from.
It had appeared like a mirage, killed his fellow patrolmen in an instant.
‘What the hell were the guards doing?!’
Just as that thought crossed his mind, his vision flipped.
"Huh?"
His body tilted and toppled forward—his legs gave out below the shins.
"What... why...?"
Looking down at his legs, he finally realized.
Both of his lower legs had been severed.
The moment he registered that fact, the pain came crashing in.
“Gkh!”
He grit his teeth and glared into the darkness behind him.
The passage beyond was pitch black—every light extinguished.
From the shadows came the sound of footsteps.
His spine froze. Every hair on his body stood on end.
It was him.
The intruder who had suddenly appeared and butchered his comrades.
He was already here.
Step.
The intruder emerged slowly from the darkness.
His face was completely obscured by cloth and hood, revealing no identity.
But judging by the sturdy physique, it was clearly a man.
The patrolman shouted with a trembling voice.
"Y-You! You think you’ll get away with this? You don’t even know who’s in there! You’re dead meat now!"
The man didn’t respond.
Instead, the glint in his eyes beneath the shadow of the hood grew sharper.
The patrolman’s lips went dry. His throat clenched.
Should he just beg for his life?
Just then, the sound of footsteps thundered from the passage.
"There! The sound came from over here!"
Mercenaries approached, holding magic lamps.
They were all armed, and among them stood a particularly large, heavily-armored figure.
The fallen man shouted in relief.
"Hey! Over here! Here! Hahaha! You’re dead now! In this tight corridor, you’re gonna be—gack!"
Ludger shoved a dagger into the man’s mouth.
As he pulled it free, blood splattered and the corpse slumped to the side.
At that moment, the incoming troops spotted Ludger.
"There! Shoot him!"
They were clearly well-trained—they didn’t even bother asking who he was before raising their weapons.
But Ludger stood completely still, like he’d been nailed in place.
"Fire!"
They pulled their triggers—
But the expected °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° gunfire never came.
"Huh?"
"W-What?"
Click. Click.
No matter how many times they pulled the trigger, nothing happened. The guns weren’t broken—the gunpowder had simply gone dead.
A bead of cold sweat rolled down the cheek of the commander who had ordered the attack.
He knew what this meant.
"[Silence of Fire! He’s a mage!]"
Since the rise of firearms, a great deal of time had passed in this world.
And yet, mages and knights still remained among the most powerful forces alive.
The reason was simple.
Guns held no threat to either.
Knights, with their superhuman reflexes and strength, could dodge or deflect bullets with ease.
Mages didn’t even need to dodge.
They had spells like [Silence of Fire].
[Silence of Fire]
A spell that suppresses all gunpowder-based weapons within a certain radius, centered around the caster.
At the 3rd Circle level, it could nullify machine guns.
At 5th Circle, it could disable artillery.
At 6th Circle, wielded by a Lexur-level mage, it could shift the tide of war itself.
This was why, even in an age of bullets and gunpowder, mages and knights kept their supremacy.
But Ludger’s magic reached only up to the 3rd Circle.
So instead of lamenting that limit, he had worked to strengthen what he had—enhancing his spells to the extreme.
A standard 3rd Circle mage could cast [Silence of Fire] in a radius of 20 meters.
Ludger’s version?
—Covered a full 200 meters.
“Damn it! Everyone, draw your blades!”
The Shamsus School agents reacted swiftly.
They discarded their useless guns and drew swords and batons instead.
Crackle.
Electric current crackled along one of the batons.
Ludger raised both hands.
In each, he held a revolver.
"You idiot! [Silence of Fire] makes your weapons useless too—!"
Thunk!
The man mocking Ludger was silenced instantly, a bullet of magic piercing his forehead.
Everyone froze, pale-faced.
What just happened?
"W-What..."
"How...?"
Ludger had fired, yes. But what he’d fired wasn’t a bullet.
It was magic.
More precisely—materialized mana bullets.
That’s why there was no sound, and why it wasn’t affected by [Silence of Fire].
“Y-You...!”
"Were you expecting a fair fight?"
Ludger sneered and unleashed a flurry of mana bullets.
Tatata-tang!
Despite firing in rapid bursts, his aim was unerring—each shot pierced straight through the center of a skull.
Blood and screams exploded across the corridor.
"You idiots! Get out of the way!"
A towering figure clad in heavy armor stepped to the front.
The reinforced suit, made of synthetic black metal, easily deflected the mana bullets Ludger fired.
It was an exo-suit—product of advanced magitech.
Slow, but immensely durable and powerful—specifically designed for anti-knight combat.
That might be a pain.
“Die!”
The massive man in armor charged, arms wide, barreling toward Ludger.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
Thud thud—each heavy step echoed like a tank charging into battle.
But Ludger neither flinched nor panicked.
Retracting his revolvers, he reached to his belt and drew two karambit daggers shaped like crescent moons.
"A mage trying to fight in close quarters?"
Just as the armored brute shouted and lunged to grab Ludger by the collar, Ludger’s form vanished—collapsed like a shadow.
What?! Where did he go?
The man in reinforced armor hesitated, startled—then a bolt of searing pain shot down his forearm.
Blood spurted from the joints of his armor.
“Argh! What the hell?!”
The blade had struck perfectly between the armor’s seams.
"How did he...? No, it was too fast—I didn’t even see—"
He tried to move his left arm, but it wouldn’t respond.
Something cold and sharp had sliced beneath his armpit.
"W-What...?"
Next came his ankles.
Before he could even process what was happening, the tendons in both legs were severed, dropping him to his knees.
And finally—
A cold touch on his neck.
“P-Please...”
Shhk!
Ludger didn’t let him finish. He drew the karambit across the man’s throat.
“Damn it! Gabe’s down!”
“Outta the way! I’ll handle this!”
Another brute emerged, clad in a different kind of armor—not black, but a burnished brass exosuit. White steam hissed from vents behind both shoulders.
It was a steam-powered exoskeleton.
Gripped in his hands was a massive barrel—a cannon whose tip was connected to a huge Tesla coil mounted on his back.
“Die!”
Bzzzzap!
Violet electricity surged down the corridor. The Tesla gun’s high-voltage current, unaffected by [Silence of Fire], cracked and danced across every surface.
“Ahahaha! How do you like that?!”
But the laughter didn’t last.
The electricity, meant to swallow Ludger whole, halted abruptly—as if hitting an invisible wall.
"W-What?"
No—not invisible. The current was being absorbed into a metal construct that had risen in front of him.
It responded to the energy directly.
Metal-based elemental magic, enhanced by alchemy?
He controls the metal element?!
That was bad. High-voltage Tesla weapons didn’t work on mages who wielded metallic magic.
The moment he realized it—
It was already too late.
Ludger’s revolver was drawn again. A single mana round struck the Tesla gun’s barrel.
And detonated it.
BZZZZZT—BOOM!
Electricity exploded outward, charring everyone nearby.
One survivor remained, barely alive. He leaned against the wall, half his body burnt black, glaring at the slowly approaching Ludger.
“Hah... hah... y-you psycho. Why are you doing this to us?”
His voice trembled with pained disbelief.
But Ludger gave no answer.
He simply walked past him.
He wouldn’t kill him. No need.
The man wouldn’t survive anyway—not in that state. Better to leave him to suffer.
‘How many have I taken out so far?’
Roughly twenty.
There were still about half remaining inside.
And judging by how none of them had come out yet, they were preparing for him.
More than that—he felt it.
A gaze.
Something watching him through the gaps in the pipe-covered walls.
A deliberate, probing stare.
‘Insect-based black magic.’
There were supposed to be two black mages inside.
He’d heard that some black mages could share their vision with insects, using them to scout places others couldn’t.
Whoever was watching now was likely one of them.
Huff.
Ludger exhaled lightly and raised his right foot, stomping gently against the floor.
Thunk.
A small, controlled sound—yet it rippled outward in waves, spreading deep into the laboratory.
* * *
Deeper within the lab—
The scientists inside couldn’t help but tremble with anxiety.
“Are we... are we sure this is okay? We should be destroying the data and grabbing the experimental drugs right now—!”
“It’s fine. Calm down.”
The one who silenced the panicked scientist was a blond man with tattoos on his neck.
He was dressed lightly—almost like he’d come for a stroll. He held no weapons. His casual posture belied the reality.
Everyone in the lab knew: this man was the most influential black mage in the facility.
Beside him stood a bald, massive man—silent and still.
The bald man was Veron.
The blond was Bruno.
Though not blood-related, they were known as the Insect Brothers—black mages with a notorious reputation in the underworld.
“There’s only one of them.”
Bruno relayed the info he'd gathered through his insect familiars.
Yes.
Unbelievably, the intruder who wiped out two armored enforcers and an armed unit was just one person.
“O-One person... how...?”
“Don’t know either. Maybe the Empire’s Security Bureau found out about us.”
“Th-The Security Bureau?!”
The Security Bureau.
A division composed solely of the Empire’s most elite.
Within it was a specialized knight order—
The Nightcrawler Knights.
They weren’t your average knights.
What made them terrifying wasn’t just their strength—it was their ruthlessness. To achieve their goals, they would use any means necessary.
They weren’t bound by knightly codes or rigid honor.
They’d target weaknesses, exploit every vulnerability, and end lives without hesitation.
Even if the target was a three-year-old child deemed a threat to the Empire—they wouldn’t hesitate.
They were demons in the eyes of the underworld.
“But his fighting style is... strange.”
Bruno tried to use his insects to get a better view, but something had happened.
The signals from his scouts had all gone dark.
Had the intruder noticed?
Coming alone was already unusual—this man wasn’t ordinary.
“Brother. We need to prepare.”
“Yeah.”
Veron rose from his seat. The guards stationed in the lab took up their weapons and shields, faces tense.
The corridor leading from the entrance to the lab’s central chamber—
They all focused on it, bracing themselves for the intruder.
Wooooooom.
A strange pulse swept through the lab.
Then, darkness fell—every light snuffed out at once.
“W-What the?! Turn the lights back on!”
“Get the backup generator running!”
As the others scrambled in a panic, Bruno turned to his brother.
“Brother. That guy just did something, didn’t he?”
“...”
“Bro...?”
No answer.
Bruno looked toward Veron.
Even in the dark, his huge silhouette was distinct.
But then—
Veron’s silhouette lost its head.
It tumbled to the ground with a wet thud.
