* * *

“『Ice Ball』! 『Ice Spear』! 『Ice Arrow』... Damn it!”

Alex, a high-level player from the Magus Guild, swore as he fired skill after skill from atop the castle wall.

It wasn't because overusing his skills had made him dizzy. It was because the tide of shadow monsters refused to diminish, no matter how many skills he unleashed.

SWISH!

“Ugh?”

Perhaps because he had briefly eased his assault, a shadow monster had climbed the wall unnoticed. Its tentacle seized Alex's ankle and knocked him down. Even in his panic, he reacted as a high-level player should, using 『Ice Cutter』 to sever the tentacle and attack the monster.

But despair soon crossed his face. The tentacled monster had only been the beginning: shadow monsters were pouring over the wall everywhere.

The Blue Dragon Clan's knights teleported back and forth along the battlements, cutting them down, but that merely bought time. If the shadow monsters kept springing up endlessly as they had so far, the castle's fall was only a matter of time.

‘Why? Why is this happening...?’

Alex kept activating his skills and fighting the monsters to resist the death looming before him, but his heart was already steeped in despair. Alongside it came regret so bitter he wanted to vomit blood.

‘We should never have touched the Great Barrier of London!’

Because every citizen had wanted it. Because he had thought it was right. Above all, because he had trusted the Monarch.

As a member of the Magus Guild, he had gladly helped eliminate the Misty hours. Had he known the outcome would be this, he would have opposed it with everything he had, even if it meant being expelled from the guild.

But that regret had come far too late. Before he could even dwell on it, all his skills went on cooldown, and a shadow monster pinned him beneath it.

As its gaping maw approached to bite his head off, he squeezed his eyes shut.

SLASH!

Sticky liquid splashed his face, and the decapitated shadow monster collapsed.

For a moment, Alex merely blinked, unable to comprehend his abrupt escape from death. When he finally realized he was still alive, he scrambled to his feet—and froze in confusion.

It wasn't just the monster that had attacked him. More than half the shadow monsters atop the wall had somehow been split apart or cut to pieces.

“W-what just happened?”

He wasn't the only one astonished. From the Magus Guild's players to the Blue Dragon Clan's knights, everyone fighting in the castle was bewildered, unable to tell who had done this.

Everyone, that is, except Lucas and the other master-level experts of the Blue Dragon Clan, who were ranging across the hill alongside the elders, drawing monsters away from the walls.

‘Was that... thread?’

Having seen the flash sweep across the battlements just before the monsters were dismembered, Lucas first thought of the Heavenly Net Shaping Style, one of the Seventy-Two Martial Schools. But he rejected the possibility himself.

‘No, I felt no psionics. And I've never heard of a player in London with a skill like that.’

‘If it wasn't the Heavenly Net Shaping Style or a skill, then how...?’

‘More importantly, who?’

Doubt clouded the faces of Lucas and the elders, but only briefly. To stop the monsters from piling their bodies into towers and climbing the walls, they had to return their attention to cutting them down.

Thus, they failed to notice the young man who quietly swung his hand once more from the shadows of the tallest spire in the countess's castle.

『Secret Art of the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword

Secret Art of the Demon-Cleaving Dragon-Slaying Sword

The Formless Sword Cannot Be Seen

The Formless Sword Is Invisible』

SLAAASH!

The instant that slender thread swept out, the remaining half of the monsters atop the wall were cut to pieces. Extending as sharply as a blade, the sword thread precisely sliced through the monsters alone, avoiding the players and knights fighting on the battlements.

“Tsk. Still a long way to go.”

Yet Limon, the man responsible, clicked his tongue. He should have swept them all away in one pass, but had barely achieved the desired result after splitting the task into two.

Even so, it was a remarkable improvement. If he hadn't slain Ryu Gang-cheol's constellation and gained both its parallel-thinking ability and its knack for controlling countless roots as though they were alive, he would have needed several more passes.

Of course, the difference was slight. With his body already perfected, it amounted to little more than making the sword thread easier to handle.

But the consequences of making a “sword” a little easier for Limon, a Sword Master, to handle were terrifying.

WHIP-WHIP-WHIP!

It evaded a swinging foreleg and pierced an eye, stealthily coiled around a neck and severed it. It sliced clean through a torso, then swung an entire monster into another and crushed them together.

It was the pinnacle of finesse. Swift swordplay, deceptive swordplay, supple swordplay, powerful swordplay—techniques that normally required rapiers, curved blades, flexible swords, two-handed swords, and all manner of other weapons were performed with a slender thread alone. The skill was like magic.

Thanks to it, the monsters became corpses the moment they climbed the wall, and the defensive line regained some stability.

RUMBLE!

At that very moment, a building-like column suddenly rose in the heart of London, whose monster-covered streets had looked like nothing but surging waves of shadow.

“W-what is that?”

Alex and the other Magus Guild members stared at it with strange expressions. It was a building, yet hardly looked like one at all.

A house made entirely of sweets, with a house of mirrors atop it, then a house of clocks, then another covered in doors... Five bizarre houses were stacked together and bound by a gigantic beanstalk. Calling it a building almost felt like a misuse of the noun.

But while the others were bewildered, Limon remained unruffled. He merely gave a brief snort and muttered under his breath.

“Slow as ever. Just what you'd expect from an old hag.”

* * *

[“Miss Witch, hurry! Hurry!”]

“Don't rush me so, dear.”

[“How am I supposed to not rush you right now? Look at the disaster over there!”]

“Even so, we can't begin before the preparations are finished.”

At the summit of the column of five stacked houses that had risen in central London, Cir chuckled at Yu Na-gyeong fussing on her shoulder.

Then she slowly surveyed London, buried beneath waves of shadow monsters, and casually asked,

“Well, girls? Is everyone ready?”

...

“You are? Then let's begin.”

No answer had come from anywhere, yet she smiled in satisfaction and nodded as though she'd heard one, taking out a red vial.

She tipped the vial upside down and poured out a blood-red liquid. It spread in all directions, tracing an enormous magic circle on its own.

Standing at the center of the blood-colored circle, Cir next produced a pouch. She carefully drew out its contents as though handling a precious treasure and said cheerfully,

“The true Walpurgis Night.”

The moment Cir dropped one item from the pouch into the magic circle, strange changes began throughout London.

RUMBLE!

A ship sunk on the riverbed. The basement of a dilapidated factory. A cottage in an old park.

Each rose high into the sky, entangled in columns of water, steel reinforcement, or tree roots. These disparate structures shared only one feature: a woman stood in each magic circle spread across their roofs.

As twenty-two building-towers rose in a ring around London, centered on Cir's tower of five houses, the women opened their mouths.

[“TeSab (Shake).”]

[“baRuma (Tilt).”]

[“Akarosy (Harden).”]

[“YaGaTing (Sing).”]

[“guAmos...”]

[...]

As though playing a word-chain game, the women each uttered a phrase. Their words never faded or died away, but echoed throughout London.

With every successive phrase, the echoes grew clearer. Overlapping again and again, they eventually formed a strange melody that was both speech and song.

At the end of that strange melody, woven from twenty-two incantations, Cir spoke softly.

“Zuiesz (Awaken).”

RRRUMBLE.

The twenty-three building-towers trembled, and mist slowly began rising from their bases.

* * *

“Utter nonsense!”

Karl shook violently, then shouted in a voice that sounded ready to tear apart.

“Revive the Great Barrier of London? Do you honestly think that's possible?”

From his bloodshot eyes to his contorted face, nothing remained of his usual composure. He glared at Rose and shouted,

“That requires all twenty-seven magical lineages! Five witches are already dead! How do you propose to revive it now?”

“... So you already knew about the witch murders.”

“Don't change the subject! I'm asking about this nonsense of yours!”

He was so agitated that he radiated murderous intent, as though he would kill her unless she answered immediately. Rose regarded him steadily for a moment before speaking calmly.

“Yes, Lord Karl. You are correct. Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible.”

The witches of the twenty-seven magical lineages had been able to revive the Great Barrier of London, the Silver Age's strongest magic, not simply because they were exceptionally skilled. Their lineages traced back to the three Great Witches who had created it.

Conversely, that meant even descendants of the Great Witches could hardly revive the Great Barrier unless all twenty-seven lineages gathered.

“If she weren't here, that is.”

“She?”

“The dark-red-haired witch you saw earlier, Lord Karl.”

“Ha! What? Are you suggesting that witch with her ridiculous parlor tricks is a Lady of the Lake?”

Karl sneered. The three Great Witches who had founded the twenty-seven magical lineages—Vivian, Morgana, and Nimue—had long since died or disappeared.

“She is not a Lady of the Lake.”

Rose readily acknowledged that fact, merely adding,

“But she knows as much about the Great Barrier of London as the Ladies of the Lake themselves.”

“You expect me to believe that nonsense?”

Karl looked incredulous.

“You will have to. Her name is Cir.”

“This gets more absurd by the moment. Where among the twenty-seven magical lineages is there a witch named Cir?”

Rose answered quietly.

“I never said she was a witch of the twenty-seven magical lineages.”

“What?”

“And Cir is not her full name. It is merely a shortened form.”

“What does that...?”

Karl frowned at Rose's increasingly incomprehensible words, then suddenly flinched. Only now did he notice the subtle difference in pronunciation that his agitation had initially kept him from recognizing.

“Did you just say Cir? Not Sire?”

It was no more than a slight difference in pronunciation arising from the spelling, something he would ordinarily have dismissed without a thought. But everything Rose had said brought a certain being unbidden to the mind of a man who had spent so long investigating witches.

“A witch who calls herself Cir... Surely not!”

That peculiar pet name, Cir. A witch of exceptional skill. Above all, Rose's bold assertion that she knew as much about the Great Barrier of London as the Ladies of the Lake.

As those three clues brought a figure to mind, Karl involuntarily cried out in horror.

“Circe, the Witch of Origins! That ancient monster is still alive?!”

* * *

“Akma sa Ronan Κίρκη (My ancient name is Circe).”

In the distant days of ancient Greece, she had been a granddaughter of the sun god Helios, of half-human, half-divine descent considered legendary even in the Silver Age.

“maKdur hoil esebT SsyaR Ekaman (A witch of origins who stole the power of the gods, an immortal who unraveled the secret of eternal life).”

One of the first witches, who discovered how to tread the precarious boundary between the priestly magic permitted by the gods and the black magic that violated their taboos.

The aunt of Medea, princess of Colchis, and the teacher who imparted to her the secret arts of magic. In doing so, she had established half the foundations of the witchcraft that spread throughout ancient Greece and, eventually, all Europe.

“Fals rOmaNum agNIws KaisIr dom ravat. (Ruler of the greatest empire, a wretched sinner who defied the gods).”

A ruler who had taken a name and an emperor's destiny as payment from a powerful man who coveted the secret of ageless immortality, and risen to the pinnacle of a nation herself.

A rebel of myth who had waged war against the gods to resist the indiscriminate witch hunts born of religious war.

A legendary figure who had built the world's strongest nation through mighty magic and cunning schemes, only to be sealed away at last by the barrier of three Great Witches allied with the gods.

“lsir magi Atur Gaius Julius Caesar ku RonaM asir (In the name of the great king of magic, Gaius Julius Caesar, I command).”

Rome's first and last empress. The greatest witch born of the Silver Age, who could be called the living history of magic itself.

In reverence and terror, she had been called the Queen of Magic—shortened to the Demon King—or Emperor Caesar.

With a bewitching smile, that woman completed her incantation.

“Avalon. izot Kantra Az Sectos, tuRacS! (Rise, Avalon, island of mist adrift between the worlds of the living and the dead)!”

BOOOOOM!

With an explosion of immense magical energy, the strongest magic of the Silver Age—the magic that had halted the Roman Empire's advance in the distant past and sealed away the Demon King—swept through London.

The mists of Avalon engulfed the city buried beneath shadow monsters.