Magic Enhancing Pills. As the name suggested, they were pills that enhanced your magic. If taken by someone like him, they would allow him to use the same amount of mana as someone who had formed the first out of the four core stars, the Grass-root Star. The drawback here would be that the pill would turn his own lifeforce into mana he could use, the end-result being a slight reduction of his lifespan. But the spell he wanted to cast was only General-grade so it should only be a reduction of about 2-5 years, it was an acceptable loss.
As for what a core star was, it was what the people of this world used to classify their mages. Unranked mages could only draw in mana from the surroundings, but when they gathered enough and packed it tightly enough around their heart, their body would eventually form a star. Well, it would be a lump of mana that constantly regenerated on its own rather than a star, they just liked their fancy name.
From that point on, their body would naturally produce mana, and be able to store more thanks to the star, so they had a lot more leeway in what spells they could cast. The first star was called the Grass-root star, and as the name suggested, there were three more of these core stars. Once you formed all four, you would be classified as a High-ranking mage.
But if you wanted to go the calamity ranks and higher, you would need to form a connection between each star, a line of mana that constantly channelled the energy between the connected stars. The end-goal would be to connect all four core stars, as well as the Apex star you would have to form as a balancing point. The final thing would look like a drawing of a star, with mana serving as the paint and your body as the canvas.
But no one had reached that level in many a year, people suspected that the last person to do so was the founder of the Earhart empire. The reason was simple actually, not even those who in the past managed to kill Deicide-rank Demons had reached that level, so it clearly surpassed it.
Naturally, Gabriel was far away from anything like that so it didn’t really matter to him, he only knew about it thanks to the show and due to what he was teaching Alice. What did matter to him, however, were the sensations that the mark he left constantly transmitted to him.
He felt the carriage pass through a few gates as the minutes and hours passed, making it all the more likely for it to be Leonardo who was using it. The sensations got a bit bumpy after that, as if the carriage had left the pre-established roads. Gabriel took this as his sign and swallowed one of the pills, a sour and painful sensation surging up from his stomach as the drug dissolved and forcibly drew out mana from within him.
And then he felt it. The mark shook violently, the rumbling so bad that it transmitted directly into Gabriel’s bones and made him feel as if he was going to get torn apart. The sensation continued for a bit, another sensation akin to rolling accompanying it before it calmed down. Once it stopped, Gabriel sucked in a deep breath and prepared.
"Karas Taki Ka Aset."
He tapped into the mana provided by the drug to activate the spell. Darkness Mark Me Switch. When it was actually translated, it basically sounded like gibberish, it also became a problem when you tried to cast higher level spells because of how simple the sentence was, it made it hard to properly control the effect. But Gabriel already had the solution for that problem so it wouldn’t bother him much when he reached it.
The spell activated and did exactly what it said, it switched him and the mark he cast earlier. He vanished from the carriage with a slightly sickening sensation, it felt as if he was spinning uncontrollable while sinking into a swamp.
Luckily, said sensation didn’t last for long before he found himself on a rocky patch of ground, a cloud of dust all around him. He felt some splinters dig into his hand as he raised himself up, broken pieces of wood scattered about him. The carriage on which he had left his mark was completely torn apart, the parts of what was likely two different corpses spread about.
The northern duchy really worked quickly when their ‘young master’ gave an order, barely needed half a day to set up this explosive ambush. The wind was starting to pick up, scattering the dust as an eagle cried.
Gabriel quickly grabbed the first thing he bought from the Night Pack, a red bead covered in dark blue lines. He dropped the bead and it cracked like glass, a thin mist quickly rising from within and blanketing the area. The cries of the eagle vanished and the wind settled down. Until this mist vanished, all spirits of the middle-grade, or General-grade to be more specific, would be sealed. Naturally, that included Leonardo’s eagle spirit.
Gabriel took in his surroundings for a moment. The ruined carriage and two corpses were around him, a forest with a few tinges of blue spread out to his left and a canyon stood to his right. The edges of the canyon were steep, dotted with jagged stones, the sounds of a rushing river coming up from below. To his front and back was the road, if a stretch of root-covered stone could even be called that. At the end of this road, one would find the base that Leonardo and his collaborators used for their meetings, hidden away neatly in this forest situated on the border between the southern and western duchy.
"Worry not, Young… Lord. I will drag you up."
A voice came from the right, Gabriel’s head tilting as his gaze fell on its source. The back he recognized as belonging to the bushy-browed knight who served Leonardo was there, a bit of blood staining his uniform. He was pressed up against the edge of the canyon, his voice trailing slightly as he clearly struggled with something.
He did his best, but if things went as they did in the show then he would die before he managed to pull up the man hanging from the cliff. But Gabriel was here to make sure that things didn’t go as they did in the show.
He unsheathed the sword that hung at his waist and moved forward with quiet steps. The knight was clearly pre-occupied, and perhaps his ears were busted after the explosion, so he couldn’t hear Gabriel. Thus, the young kid could walk right up to him and raise the blade, aiming the tip right at his back.
He tilted the blade slightly so that it wouldn’t get stuck on the spine and angled it further before plunging it down. He knew the human body quite well so the tip of the blade pierced through flesh and lungs, digging right into the heart while avoiding the ribs that would usually be in the way. Gabriel didn’t have the confidence to break the ribs and pierce the heart with his current strength.
It was quick and it was efficient, the knight choking on whatever he was about to say and collapsing as some blood gathered in his throat. He fell like a sack of potatoes, most people did when they died this suddenly. And with that, there was nothing blocking Gabriel’s gaze from meeting the golden eyes that were now looking up at him.
"Hello, Leonardo."
Leonardo was barely hanging on to some roots and moss that stuck out of the cliff, his hair dishevelled and his face covered in scratches. He managed to survive the explosion thanks to the bushy-browed knight, who pushed him out of the carriage when he sensed the magic activate. But the resulting blast still blew Leonardo over the edge of the cliff, it was only luck that he managed to latch onto this.
"You…You… How are you here?"
Leonardo’s voice trailed. His tongue was injured so it was a little hard to understand him. A large burn covered the right side of his face, almost melting his eye, but he was still able to make out Gabriel. But he was practically delirious.
"Up… Tanisha isn’t answering me… please… Help me up, I don’t want to die… Tanisha, please find Tanisha and help me…"
Tanisha was the name of his spirit, if she was here then her wind would easily help him up. But she was already sealed, so she could not help him. Gabriel bent his knees and crouched down at the edge, drawing his sword out of the knight’s back.
"Don’t worry, you wouldn’t die even if you fell from here. You’d manage to use your hidden water magic right at the end to cushion your fall. You’d be horribly injured and disfigured for life, but you’d live. And you’d be one hell of a shit about it too. Lawrence was supposed to be here instead of that bushy-browed knight, and one of the first things you would do when you get back home is have him executed for failing to protect you. And Alice, oh boy would you get pissed with her, you’d accuse her of colluding with the northern duchy to kill you, you’d blame her for your wounds and disfigured face. Really, the things you’d do to her to appease your anger…"
Gabriel spoke more than usual, thinking back to the show he saw in the past, the graphic details. This event wasn’t supposed to happen for quite a few more years so Lawrence would have been the one to follow Leonardo here, having been fed some sort of excuse. It was this event that marked the complete descent of Leonardo’s sanity, there were times where he cursed the fact that he survived the fall.
Gabriel raised his head slightly, the numbers in the sky reflecting in his violet eyes. He counted them for a second before lowering his gaze again.
"You can’t see it, but the numbers in the sky have actually gone up a bit. I guess people just really like seeing the downfall of an insufferable man."
He wanted to click his tongue actually. The number that constantly hung in the sky was higher than it was when he first awoke in the orphanage. His goal was to lower it as much as possible, not raise it like this. But he just had to accept the situation for now.
"Please… Tanisha… Bring her. I don’t want to fall, it hurts…"
Leonardo’s pupils, or pupil as it was now, swam around in a panicked and unfocused manner. Sometimes he looked at Gabriel and sometimes he looked below him. He trembled every time he looked at the drop that awaited him, he could already imagine the pain. But Gabriel comforted him.
"Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing."
He raised the sword as he spoke, pointing the tip at Leonardo’s remaining eye. And then he plunged it down, piercing through the eye and angling the blade towards the brain. It wasn’t as easy as when he killed the bushy-browed knight, but getting to the brain from the eye socket would be easier than having to pierce the skull, at least somewhat.
Leonardo’s body jolted as the blade was stabbed into his head, his arms twitching for a moment before they fell limp. His grip on the roots naturally loosened so he fell backwards, drawing a line of blood through the air as he plummeted downwards, his skull smashing against the side of the cliff as he fell like a ragdoll.
Gabriel drew back the blade and cleaned it somewhat on the bushy-browed knights uniform, his gaze following Leonardo as he fell. And just like that, one of the petty villains met an anticlimactic end a few years ahead of schedule, his future demise kick-started along with the rest of the future.
Gabriel’s gaze rose skyward again, the sight of the numbers increasing filling his vision. He clicked his tongue at the sight and sheathed his blade. He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the last of the two pills, popping it into his mouth to draw out mana once more.
"Karas Taki Ka Aset."
He cast the spell again and switched places with the mark, which was currently in the carriage on the way to the capital thanks to their earlier switch. He appeared again in his seat and spat out a long breath.
"Karas Kardur Taki."
As he uttered the words and traced the air with his fingers to picture the formation, he finished the last of the things he needed. Darkness Remove Mark. Now, no one would be able to find the traces of the mark he left earlier, further reducing the chances of being found.
He leaned against the small window and looked at the passing scenery. Now he only had to get through the spirit awakening ceremony.