When Laila eliminated the demon in the blink of an eye, Eustar glanced at her with a slightly surprised expression.

He had been feeling that Laila’s magical power was continuously growing stronger, but this was the first time he had seen such explosive power.

Judging by her expression, even Laila seemed bewildered that the demon had not just been subdued but completely disappeared.

“……I was trying to capture it……”

Laila muttered, looking down at her hands. The spell she had used was clearly meant for restraint. She had intended to stop its movement to make it easier for Eustar to attack.

To reassure the flustered Laila, Eustar deliberately spoke in a playful tone.

“My companion is quite reliable. I wonder if I just need to follow behind you.”

Laila turned to look at him with a sulky expression, her ears turning red.

“You’re teasing me again, Eustar.”

“No, I’m just truly amazed.”

As Eustar lowered his head, their foreheads lightly touched.

“Your growth has no limits, Laila. I’ll have to work hard too. I don’t want to seem like a boring man to you.”

He had never been a boring man. Laila thought. Whenever Eustar showed faint fear or anxiety in front of her,

Laila was perplexed, unable to deeply understand his feelings. She didn’t know how to express it well, but……

‘Unnecessary worry? No, rather……’

“Shall we go, Laila?”

At Eustar’s words, Laila snapped out of her thoughts. The presence of demons was still all around them. Like standing alone in the darkness, the tower gave them an overwhelming sense of pressure.

Up or down, there was no safe path anywhere. They could never make it out of here alive without relying on each other.

“We need to find Miss Olga first.”

“Muge? Do you know where Muge is?”

Laila shook her head. She told him about the ghost she had met in the place where she was first trapped. When he heard that Muge was trapped somewhere, slowly disappearing—or dying—Eustar’s expression became very serious.

Laila continued speaking.

“And…… she mentioned ‘Zaokunst’. The one you told me about.”

“What?”

“I think that magician…… the magician named Nierodora was either a member of Zaokunst, or if not, she definitely supported their ideology. I’m not sure if all the magicians in this city think the same as her, but…… In any case, it’s clear that Nierodora wants to get rid of non-magicians.”

Silence fell for a moment. Laila’s shoulders trembled faintly. As if belatedly resonating with the fear of that tiny ghost sitting on the windowsill.

“……Nierodora seems to be a very scary magician, Eustar.”

Eustar then said,

“She’s an extraordinary magician. If what the ghost…… the ghost Laila met said is true, we should issue an alert to all the soldiers of Sierow right now.”

“Will that prevent harm?”

“No, we can’t prevent it completely.”

The color drained slightly from Laila’s face. Eustar spoke slowly as he walked along the corridor.

“I’ve never actually met Nierodora either, but they say she’s a once-in-a-century genius. Whether interested in magic or not, few people don’t know her name. It’s also true that Nierodora controls the entire city of magicians. The fact that magicians scattered throughout the kingdom returned to the city to build their own fortress was probably because Nierodora called them back.”

Just then, there was a buzzing sound from the wall, and a demon like a black snake lunged with its jaws wide open.

Eustar swung his sword in a half-circle to cut off its head, and then pulled Laila’s hand to keep her from touching the blood dripping down.

He continued speaking.

“When the magicians returned to the city, there were voices of complaint that the royal family and nobles didn’t treat magicians well enough. If Nierodora has been planning to repeat the history of Zaokunst since then, we shouldn’t easily trust anyone we meet in this city.”

After being lost in thought for a moment, Laila looked up at him.

“Why are they doing this? What benefit is there for magicians if they kill all non-magicians?”

Eustar shook his head with a bitter smile.

“That’s the question. But magicians’ thoughts tend to be unpredictable. They’ve been united by a very, very strong bond for a long time. Once the seed of a wrong idea is planted in such a group, it’s difficult to completely uproot it.”

This time too. Eustar swallowed the last, not very hopeful words in his throat.

Subduing Nierodora itself was a big challenge, but even if they somehow succeeded in that, there was no guarantee that magicians with the same ideas as her wouldn’t appear next time, or the time after that.

As long as there were those who argued that there should be natural discrimination between magicians and non-magicians, those who believed that magicians were the perfected humans, that is.

‘It’s realistically impossible.’

Eustar quietly gritted his molars.

They eliminated the demons that attacked as they climbed three floors of the tower, but there was no trace of Muge to be found.

No matter how hard Laila tried to track, no matter what kind of magical tracking devices she used, it was impossible to find Muge’s energy.

Eustar said,

“She’s either very far away from this tower, or in a place with such strong magical power that we can’t break through.”

“Far away? For example?”

When Laila asked, he shook his head with a bitter smile.

“Anywhere is possible. But they wouldn’t have taken Muge out of the city while leaving us here. If she’s in the city, we should be able to find her to that extent. So in the end…… I think the latter is the correct answer.”

Laila looked up and carefully examined the structure of the tower.

The structure that seemed to converge to a point as it went up, but looking down, the width difference wasn’t large, and considering the exterior of the tower she had seen when first entering the city, each floor must be of similar width.

The floors, composed of somewhat distorted circles, had doors in some places and not in others.

‘We can’t rule out the possibility that they’ve hidden doors. One fortunate thing is that the space of this tower itself doesn’t change. Even though Eustar and I have eliminated demons or consumed magical power, it doesn’t affect the tower……’

After carefully organizing her thoughts, Laila said,

“The demons in this tower seem to just be trapped here.”

Eustar looked at her with eyes that needed explanation.

“I thought that magician Nierodora was trying to eliminate you and me using the demons. But it doesn’t seem that way.”

This tower is alive. Laila thought.

It was a bit different from breathing, moving, and needing nutrients, but she could tell that it existed with its own will. It was hard to be sure how she could know such a thing, though.

Eustar said,

“Then we have no choice but to search everywhere one by one, but that would take too long.”

“That’s right. In the meantime, Miss Olga might……”

If something irreversible happened, it would be impossible for the two of them to restore Muge. But they couldn’t give up like this either……

“Should we try necromancy?”

Eustar immediately shook his head at Laila’s words.

“No, Laila. This is inside the city of magicians. The ghosts here might be too powerful for you to handle, or they might have malicious intent.”

“But we can’t just sit here worrying, Eustar. While we’re doing this, Miss Olga is probably getting into a more dangerous state with each passing moment.”

He couldn’t deny it. After lowering his gaze and pondering for a moment, Eustar stared intently into Laila’s eyes.

“I want to ask you something, Laila.”

“What is it?”

“Would you be okay if my lifespan was shortened a bit?”

Laila’s eyes blinked quickly and then widened.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m asking if you’d forgive me for doing such a thing.”

“Your life…… You should explain that first. What are you trying to do?”

Her expression suggested she absolutely wouldn’t allow it, but Eustar pulled out a small crescent-shaped piece from the deepest part of his leather pouch.

It looked like a crudely carved stone, and when Laila tried to reach for it, Eustar quickly hid it in his palm.

“What on earth is this?”

“It’s a magical tool I developed right after Tentinella was created.”

“A magical tool? You had something like this?”

Eustar nodded, looking into his own hand.

“But it didn’t work properly, so I couldn’t use it. It’s natural that you’ve never seen this. What I made by improving this is the Renning Roar…… I mean the eyeball. This one is much more powerful than the Renning Roar, but it consumes too much energy. I tried it once and almost collapsed from being completely drained.”

Laila responded with an expression of incomprehension.

“Then it’s still unusable now, isn’t it? What’s the use if you collapse? We can’t leave you collapsed here. And I can’t carry you around either.”

“I know, of course. If I use this now, I won’t collapse. When I first made it, it used energy including magical power, but I failed because I couldn’t control it. I destroyed everything I had made so that no one would use it unknowingly…… This is the last one that Deceptor played with a bit.”

“Deceptor?”

Laila’s reaction immediately turned defensive. Eustar smiled with a softened expression, as if he had expected this.

“He changed it to use life force instead of magical power or other energy. Even the most powerful magic isn’t that great compared to directly cutting away life force. Even if the magic used to use this once is equivalent to what’s accumulated over ten years, it can be substituted by directly cutting away one year’s worth of life force. It’s like changing to a very efficient fuel, you could say?”