KABOOM―

When a mana-powered shell detonated with an ear-splitting roar, what followed to fill the void was hellfire that devoured everything in its path and the acrid sting of Cor energy.

Five hundred years ago, magitech scientist Joseph Martin, who coined the term “Cor energy” for the black smoke produced by mana use, discovered that this Cor energy dispersed into the air was not actually disappearing but accumulating.

Later, his disciple and Archmage Lucadio Crusa went on to issue a grave warning: if humanity continued using magic at this rate, the skies above the continent could become completely blanketed in Cor energy.

And now, the year 1391 of Attica.

The fifty-year war between the government military and the rebel forces had done its part in smothering Attica’s skies in black smoke. The Cor energy produced by reckless and unrestrained mana *buse had begun to gradually veil the heavens, until at last it had seized the entire atmosphere.

This black curtain, known as the “Cor energy layer” or colloquially as the “ceiling of hell,” had finally robbed Attica of its light.

A country dim and sunless, with no distinction between day and night.

No matter how fierce the sun’s rays, piercing through the thick-formed Cor energy layer was impossible. The lush green life that had once filled the broad earth withered and yellowed in no time, and Attica, which had known four distinct seasons, lost even those.

And amid that process, there were other things that had quietly faded away.

A pair of heavy military boots that had been pressing steadily forward came to an abrupt stop. Bellus’s expressionless eyes locked onto a single point.

A small hand jutting out from the rubble of a concrete building that had crumbled into ruin.

Bellus stared hard at that tiny, utterly still palm, then cut her gaze away.

Even if that hand were to move, there was nothing she could do. It wasn’t her mission. With all hesitation erased, Bellus’s boots picked up their pace again.

Her face remained exactly as it had been from the start: dry and blank.

“Major! I found it!”

Bellus gave a nod at Dolor’s shout announcing he had found an entry point into the interior of the completely collapsed laboratory. She placed a hand on Dolor’s shoulder as he came to her side, and in an instant they were inside the building, accompanied by the nauseating sensation of her brain being wrung inside out.

Shaking off the aftereffects of spatial transfer magic, which were as awful as ever no matter how many times she experienced them, she swept the interior of the collapsed laboratory with sharp eyes.

Bellus Aonis. She was the youngest major in the Special Operations Unit under the government military.

She had been operating as a team with Dolor, who specialized in spatial transfer magic, a rare and special-class ability, for quite some time. Their primary mission was to infiltrate the military facilities of Justia, the rebel and terrorist organization, and eliminate their key commanders.

Today, however, they had received a rather unusual assignment.

The orders, delivered in urgent haste since the early hours of dawn, were to rescue researchers held in a certain laboratory. It seemed Justia’s target this time had been that laboratory. It was only natural that Bellus tilted her head in the direction of it, so markedly different from their usual pattern of carrying out attacks against orphanages and training facilities where children were housed.

But what could Bellus have asked of a superior who, without any further explanation, was urging her to deploy with urgency written all over his face? The mission she had taken on so abruptly was riddled with questions, and because of it she had no answer to give when Dolor, right beside her, posed his.

“Major. Why would Justia suddenly attack a research laboratory?”

“…For now, let’s focus on finding the researchers.”

Dolor studied his superior standing before him with a curious look at her uncharacteristically vague response. Most people would have shrunk back, mistaking her clipped, cool voice for a reprimand, but Dolor, who had spent enough time at her side to know better, caught it at a glance.

His superior was at a loss right now.

‘Looks like the Major doesn’t really know either.’

Arriving at his own answer, Dolor asked nothing more and gave a nod. It had already been four years since he had been carrying out missions as a team with Bellus. Having had his life saved by Bellus dozens of times as they teetered on the threshold of death, Dolor now felt fairly confident in his ability to read his superior.

Throughout his days at the training facility, the name “Bellus Aonis” had circulated like a legend.

Born with a vast reserve of mana likened to a “spring that never runs dry,” and a genius-level ability to control it. A meteoric rise through the ranks, breaking her own record for youngest promotion each time. Even setting aside the fact that he himself could only specialize in a single type of magic, rare as it was, she was in a completely different league.

Yet among everything mentioned alongside the name “Bellus Aonis,” there was something cited even more frequently than those facts. “Human weapon.” “Coldblooded.” “Attica’s dog.” Among the countless titles she was called, there was virtually not a single one that could be considered flattering.

So when Dolor left the training facility and was assigned as her direct subordinate aide, he trembled with intense fear.

He had been placed in such a demanding position purely because he was a trainee specialized in spatial transfer magic, a rare special-class ability that few others could handle, despite his mediocre training scores and his far from sharp disposition.

Having endured petty pranks and bullying throughout his trainee days while dreaming of nothing but escaping the training facility, Dolor felt the weight of this new misfortune deeply. “Can my luck really be this bad?” He had spent the night wide-eyed, seriously considering whether he ought to get his fortune read for the year.

And so the next morning.

The woman Dolor came face to face with in the company commander’s office looked a little different from what he had imagined.

The woman, who had neatly pinned up her hair that held a deep darkness in it, like something that had absorbed every color in the world, gave off a remarkably cold impression. Her black eyes, holding not a trace of emotion, made it immediately clear where those fearsome nicknames had come from.

Yet that face, cold as it undeniably was, struck him as oddly peculiar.

Her face, pale to the point of whiteness, stirred a subtle and hard-to-name impression. Seen one way, almost endearingly small-featured; seen another, strangely and faintly sensual.

What contributed handsomely to transforming that rather peculiar impression into something ascetic was her height, quite tall for a woman, and her neat military uniform buttoned stubbornly all the way up to the collar.

In any case, alongside that unexpected first impression, “Bellus Aonis” was a fairly, no, quite easy superior to serve.

She was called coldblooded for her frigid gaze that made the back of one’s neck prickle and her blunt way of speaking, but honestly, from a subordinate’s perspective, there was no superior easier to serve than one who showed virtually no emotion.

It was precisely the feeling of “thought it was a minefield, but turns out it’s a goldmine buried deep.”

Dolor’s light green eyes, carrying a faint trace of amusement, instinctively sought out his superior. Bellus, catching his gaze while scanning the surroundings, turned to look at Dolor.

“Doesn’t look like there’ll be any further collapse. We’re going in.”

“Yes, Major!”

Dolor snapped off a brisk informal salute and hurried after Bellus as she took the lead. The laboratory had been completely leveled by concentrated bombardment, but using Dolor’s spatial transfer ability, they had managed to locate a spot that had somehow held without collapsing beneath the steel framework.

Walking in silence and rapidly scanning the information around her, Bellus felt a strange stillness and furrowed her brow.

‘…It’s quiet.’

This space was eerily quiet. There was none of the faint human sobbing or distress signals one would ordinarily expect to hear at the scene of an explosion. She had extended her senses using mana, but still nothing registered. Her dark eyes, settling into a cool, watchful look, were sweeping alertly across the laboratory, whose research purpose she could not begin to guess, when it happened.

Creeeeak―

Bellus’s gaze shifted at the sound of an old iron door opening. At the end of that gaze was Dolor, holding a massive iron door with an awkward look on his face.

“Ah, Major. This was open just a crack, you see.”

And indeed, just as Dolor said. Even without a close look, the door’s complex structure made it clear that considerable care had been put into its locking mechanism. It had likely been firmly shut right up until the bombardment.

But when the laboratory itself came crashing down from the sudden unexpected bombing, it seemed even that iron door with its impressive thickness had been no match for it. The iron door, its corner completely warped, squeaked ungainly at Dolor’s prompting.

The interior beyond the iron door, entered carefully while keeping watch on the surroundings, was a space that took on a perfect dome shape. A massive metal needle positioned at the center of the dome aimed its sharp tip downward toward the floor. Drawn to it, Dolor stepped to the center of the dome and looked up at the needle above his head with a blank expression.

“A Dimensio Dome…?”

Bellus gave a nod of agreement at Dolor’s questioning voice. Right, this place did look exactly like the inside of a Dimensio Dome. Having had to stand inside a Dimensio Dome twice against her will, this place brought back memories for Bellus of that time around age fifteen, when she’d had to have her mana measured again.

A “Dimensio Dome” was a kind of mana measuring device.

Any citizen of Attica, upon turning five years of age, would be made to stand inside the Dimensio Dome located in the basement of the Department of Magic. Mana flowing out through the metal needle of the Dimensio Dome would strike down like lightning, and the resulting waves from its reflection would measure the degree of one’s mana.

A memory surfacing without warning sent a crawling unease slithering up the back of her neck like a snake. Bellus gripped the revolver in one hand so tightly her knuckles ached, and was just lowering her eyes to hide the faint stirring in them when it happened.

KABOOM― KABOOM!!

“Aaagh!!”

The ground shook like it had gone mad along with the sudden onset of bombardment. Bellus caught sight of Dolor crumpling ungainly to the ground and bit down hard on her lip.