Staring at the phone in his hand, Runar's hand started to shake in anger. This call was supposed to be from Anders, but the one that spoke to him was Richard Snappertie, the individual that Runar, Yamada, and Anders were trying to stop from infecting even more spirits with his corruption.

  "How dare he?" Runar practically growled as he pressed his teeth together, jumping up from his seat. He looked over at the confused Yamada, explaining the situation to her as he grabbed everything he needed to rush out. Of course, Yamada herself had already rushed downstairs to go get the car ready.

  With everything gathered together, all the tools and items that Runar had been preparing over the past few days, he ran out of the flat. Not even bothering with the elevator, Runar entered the stairwell and glanced down the deep hole in its middle. Without hesitation, Runar jumped down, pulling his arms against his body to make sure he didn't hit the railings on the way down. And then, a few metres over the ground, the runes that were placed onto the underside of his shoes activated, halting his fall and safely placing him down onto the ground.

  Now at the bottom, he could hear the car's engine, and Runar ran into the parking garage. He practically slid toward the car with his pen in his hand, and wrote some stealth runes into the air in front of each of the doors, the front, and the rear. The glowing symbols quickly placed themselves onto the car's exterior, wrapping it in a magical shine. At the front of the car, Runar signalled Yamada to pop the hood, and he quickly opened it up. He had no idea about how this thing worked, but he knew what he had to do to super-charge this thing. And then, after strengthening the tires with some runes as well to improve not only the rubber's strength but also the grip they would have on the road, Runar jumped into the open door and pulled it shut in front of him.

  Yamada revved the engine for a moment, and with an immense push onto Runar's whole body, the car took off through the parking garage. The demon drifted around the corner, making Runar shake around as he tried to write something onto the windshield. A small arrow was starting to be displayed on the windshield, turning quite rapidly and slowly stabilizing as Runar finished the writing. He was connecting it to Anders' last known location, so that Yamada could be guided while fully keeping her eyes on the road.

  And then, once she knew, Runar quickly buckled in and made sure he was ready for what was about to happen. A grin formed on Yamada's face as the car rushed through the roads of the Channel. Dodging past cars, running red lights, and almost crashing into every other wall before Yamada turned the car away at the last second. And with the help of the stealth runes that were placed onto the car, nobody even noticed.

  Runar's stealth runes were so well-crafted that even when trying to look at the car through a camera, it wouldn't be visible. It wasn't as though the car wasn't actually visible, of course, but whenever someone was trying to view the footage, they simply wouldn't notice the car speeding along. The concept of 'Stealth' as far as this magic was concerned was less about 'hiding something', and more about 'making sure nobody can find something'.

  It was the best way to handle situations like this, and was frankly a lot more effective than trying to hide something so obvious in the middle of the day. Plus, this type of stealth rune was much more simple to create than a rune that blocked it all in the first place.

  Runar closed his eyes and held his hand in front of his mouth while holding onto the handle above the door, trying not to get sick with how much the car was shaking around. This always confused Runar; he was able to jump down twenty stories without breaking a sweat or jump from falling platform to falling platform to cross a hundred vertical metres, and that was the tame stuff. But why the hell did he get sick so easily in a car ride?

  He groaned loudly, pressing his feet into the ground. Runar could practically hear Yamada's massive grin, a mixture of anxiety for Anders' safety and excitement for being able to drive like this as freely as she would like.

  They crossed the bridge away from the Channel after just a few minutes, taking a shortcut through Copperbeach's district of abandoned factories, as this place had extremely broad roads and low traffic, and made their way to the centre of New Riverside, where the three districts of the city's main island met. Copperbeach, Upstream, and Lakeview. This was the place where some of the massive fireworks for tomorrow were supposed to be launched in a way that they would be visible from almost every place in the city. Of course, there was a reason why this part of town was chosen; there was a large proximity to multiple fire spirits that had settled down here way back in the day, either during the times of Old Riverside, where the centre of the island was reserved for a massive ceremonial bonfire, or when the area was later turned into one of the central factory areas connecting all the districts during the industrial age.

  Though many of them ended up moving over to to Copperbeach when it was first developed into a copper foundry, there were still a few left that liked to live in what remained of either the bonfire or the factories. Specifically, the spirit that took on most responsibility during the last day of spirit week every year was the fire spirit living in the bonfire plaza, being one of the oldest spirits here in general, not even mentioning other fire spirits. And considering what the bonfire represented for this town, it stood to reason that this was the highlight of the entire week's celebrations.

  That was why Anders was supposed to make sure that the spirits around here were all doing well and were protected. But clearly, Richard had a different idea. Runar just hoped that Anders was okay. He didn't believe that Richard, who was effectively supposed to be just a low-levelled, young technomancer, albeit one strengthened through corruption, could really hold a candle to Anders. When it came to one-on-one combat, Anders was by far the strongest out of the three of them. Frankly, as far as Runar knew, Anders could be one of the most powerful Brawlers of this era.

  But who knew what other cards Richard had up his sleeves, especially with the support of the White Shadow Society? Anders wasn't the strongest against magic or trickery, and according to Ryan, this guy was supposed to be ridiculously smart and tricky.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The car pulled into the bonfire plaza, and Runar immediately looked around. His eyes were infused with some of his runes, creating what were essentially magic circles in his irises. It took a while to set up, but this was the best ocular enhancement that Runar could place onto himself. With this, he looked around the area, trying to see every speck of magic that was flowing through the plaza. In its centre, within the large wooden bonfire that was going to be lit tomorrow night, potent fire magic had been gathered. But there was also something more, a deep, dark spark of what could only be the corruption lingering within that magic, just waiting to sprout.

  At this level, it should be easy enough to cure the corruption, though convincing the fire spirit to let Runar douse it in a liquid of all things wasn't going to be easy by any means. Though, that wasn't the only thing that was worrying Runar. There were dozens of other, powerful mana-signatures all over the place. Though these signatures had the exact same nature. Black, wriggling worms that were coiling around each other in a jagged pattern like lightning. It was corrupted mana. Richard's. But how were there dozens of people with the same exact mana around here?

  Even before Runar could even think about answering that question, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck. His eyes widened and he slammed the dashboard with his fist. Yamada's eyes darted toward Runar and she immediately twisted the steering wheel to the side.

  The car, which was still moving quite fast, suddenly turned sideways. It would have flipped over, but the runes placed on the wheels completely prevented that from happening. Instead, the car quickly came to a halt, and just a few steps to the side, a robot slammed into the ground. The ground cracked under the impact. But there wasn't much time to figure out what was going on. Soon, a black spark of magic was shot toward this robot from one of the others scattered around on top of the nearby buildings, and it suddenly shot right at the car without even needing to accelerate. It just suddenly gained the speed it needed.

  Its arm pushed through the car's door, and with a swift motion, the door was torn off. But of course, the only thing that it could expect was a shot to the forehead from Yamada's gun. At the last moment, the robot turned its head away. While the bullet shattered the left side of the robot's head, it still seemed functional despite some of its wiring being exposed and frayed.

  Both Runar and Yamada jumped out of the car and got started. The first thing he did was create a communication channel between himself and Yamada. They had specifically trained for situations like this, where Runar could give information to the demon so that the two of them could communicate properly. It was quite simple as well. Runar could specifically target Yamada's eye, and was then able to draw different small symbols into her field of view. They had a few dozen different signals set that wouldn't be too distracting in the middle of a battle. But this same method of targeting Yamada's eye had another use. Runar could mark targets for Yamada.

  Basically, if he applied specific runes onto each enemy, Yamada would be able to properly see those enemies even through walls. The range was up to a few hundred metres.

  And so, Runar quickly got started. While Yamada was distracting the onslaught of robots that were coming after the two of them, Runar wrote onto his arms and legs, allowing him to move out of the way quickly as he scouted. With his eyes already strengthened, he was in the best position for a scout. But he still had to do something else.

  He wrote onto his hand and his fingers, making them more nimble and dexterous so that he could write runes faster and faster. Though, since one of his basic skills already strengthened his dexterity while he was writing runes, this additional boost strained his fingers quite a bit, so he tried not to use it. He just didn't have another choice this time around.

  Runar held his breath to stabilize his hands, and immediately let out a flurry of runes as he jumped around, marking each and every one of the robots for Yamada. Once the markings were done, Runar placed gravity runes onto the nearby robots, increasing their weight as much as he could in this short amount of time. With this, the gunslinger was already able to take down a couple of them.

  As he ran around the area, Runar started writing runes down onto the old cobblestone under his feet, using them to draw a large circle around the unlit bonfire in the centre of the plaza. In the process, he had to create five cornerstones, which were more complex magic circles that required some more of his attention, of course leading to some of those robots attacking him. And they were incredibly annoying as well.

  They moved in unnatural ways and dodged out of the way of Runar's strikes even though many of them were weighted down. Even Yamada seemed to be struggling to get a good hit on any of them, and could only slowly whittle down on their bodies. In the end, this seemed like a battle of endurance. Though, considering how fast every new robot was falling, this seemed like an easy win for the pair.

  But pretty soon, Runar saw something quite annoying. It seemed like they were sharing their mana amongst themselves, like they are basically charging each other so that every robot would be at the same mana level. And whenever one of them was taken down, that robot's mana was spread between all the rest, strengthening those. The more of the robots were taken down, the stronger the remaining ones became.

  Of course, that didn't mean that Yamada and Runar were in any real danger, the robots were just more annoying to deal with, and each subsequent robot took longer to take down as a result. And they didn't exactly have a ton of time right now. They were here to look for Anders; Runar hadn't sensed any of his magic or aura around here, so they had to hurry it up and get going.

  Before then, though, Runar finished off the large rune circle, quickly activating it. A barrier was formed around the unlit bonfire, so that no magic could get in or out. The spirit would be trapped, and Richard would be unable to mess with it any further.

  Now that this was done, Runar could fully concentrate on the remaining robots. He created more runes that were supposed to restrain them, slowing them down further. And though they seemed somewhat resistant to this magic for some reason, all this allowed Runar and Yamada to take down all the rest.

  Once they were gone, Runar looked around, trying to follow where the mana was going to go. Most likely, it would be right back on its way to Richard. And considering how fast the mana was moving, the gnome had to be fairly close.

  Without further ado, the two of them ran after the mana together, with Yamada keeping an eye out on whatever could be lurking around the corner. But they were just able to keep moving, turning around one of the corners. And there, Runar said him.

  Anders. All of his magic and aura was basically completely drained out of his body, and right next to him was another small robot, though clearly not meant for battle in the same way those others were. But the robot was the one that received the other robots' mana, quickly breaking it down and letting it dissipate in a way that it wouldn't seek out Richard after this.

  "He was just buying time?" Runar ground his teeth, squatting down on the ground in front of his dwarven friend. Anders was still breathing, but he was clearly in critical condition. Immediately, Runar hoisted the dwarf onto his back, trying to briefly free one of his hands to sign to Yamada, "You bring him to the healer, I'll stay here and take care of the spirit."