Chapter 543: The Undercover Agent

"Finally... it’s done."

Hidden magical lines flowed beneath the earth and stone, the refined magic materials precisely anchored in the key areas. Under his feet, Sineel could feel a powerful mana current raging like an underflow, yet it was locked down tightly by another intricate layer of array patterns, turned into a calm lake that would not arouse anyone’s suspicion.

Under the joint arrangement of all eleven Royal Mage Corps mages, everything had been completed—perfect, like a work of art.

A work of art like this... even a so-called prince could be completely wiped from the world by it.

"Excellent, excellent."

Coton bent down, excitedly caressing the intricate and profound array lines. The fervor in his eyes swelled again, almost overflowing.

He had lain dormant for so long, waited for so long, worn this disguise for so long... and at last, this chance had finally—finally fallen into his hands.

He had been stuck in his current position for far too long. So long that he was completely sick of it—sick of dealing with those old fossils above, sick of leading the idiots beneath him. And now, he could finally take another step forward—no, if he rendered such a great merit, he might even have the chance to rise to an even higher seat!

Yes, that was what the Inner Council had promised him: resources, status, renown—these were all things they had pledged to grant. As long as he completed this task and became the greatest contributor to His Highness the Second Prince’s ascent to the throne, then whether it was a higher level of magic...

Or that once-unreachable position of Corps Commander...

Neither would be just some extravagant dream anymore.

"Good, good, very good! I promise you, once this is done, you’ll all get everything you want. That is the Inner Council’s pledge!"

Coton loudly declared to the participants.

The others cheered as well, and although arranging such a massive array had left them all exhausted, their faces still couldn’t fully hide their excitement.

Coton nodded in satisfaction, his gaze sweeping across each person’s face. He knew that after tonight, these people would become the most dependable core under his command.

However...

When Coton’s eyes fell on a certain someone, his brows twitched slightly.

"Sineel."

"...Here."

"You look like you’ve got something on your mind. Is there a problem?"

"N-no... no problem."

Sineel forced a smile. "I’m just a little tired, that’s all. I burned through too much mana."

"If arranging something this small already pushes your mana to the limit, you still have a lot of work to do," Vice-Captain Nell sneered beside him, his fierce gaze making it seem like he fully intended to give Sineel a brutal ‘extra training session’ afterward.

"..."

Sineel, who still carried psychological trauma where Nell was concerned, twitched at the corners of his mouth and hastily shrank his neck.

"Alright, there’s no need to be so strict tonight." Coton stopped Nell and smiled. "You too, Sineel—hurry and rest while you can, recover your mana."

"Yes, sir."

Sineel obediently did as he was told.

Watching the completely compliant Sineel, a trace of mocking amusement flashed through Coton’s eyes.

Among all these people, the one he trusted the least was Sineel.

Because everyone else, including himself—whatever their motives, interests, prospects, or even fate—had already bound themselves deeply to the Inner Council and to that Second Prince.

But this Sineel alone, according to the robin’s intel, had become the Inner Council’s lapdog merely because of... money.

That’s right. Just a bit of casual bribery, and he had taken such a huge risk to throw in with the Inner Council. He was purely a short-sighted idiot who would do anything for his own selfish gain.

Still... it was fortunate that he was a selfish, cowardly idiot.

Idiots like that just happened to understand best what they should and shouldn’t do, so that tiny bit of "kindly" lie he’d told earlier should be something Sineel would "deeply believe," right?

"There should still be a bit of time left."

Coton took out his beloved golden pocket watch and glanced at it.

"To be safe, let’s try running it once."

Coton was always cautious in his work. Even though he had personally supervised the entire array arrangement process from start to finish, he would not relax in ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ the slightest until he saw that First Prince turn to ashes in the array with his own eyes.

"Get ready. Quickly."

"Yes, sir."

As everyone took their positions, dim blue mana light flickered, and the profound patterns hidden beneath the ground began to operate at high speed.

The first to activate was the array that concealed their presence. Although he knew that it was practically impossible to fully hide something like this when setting it up inside the city, they still had to maintain absolute secrecy until the target stepped into the trap.

Next came the array that sealed the area. It would prevent the target from escaping and also lock the destructive force within this region, making the array’s power even more terrifying.

And lastly was the most important and central part—the multi-layered joint annihilation array that all eleven mages had arranged together.

As mana poured into it, the central patterns of the array grew brighter bit by bit, and the light in Coton’s fixed stare sharpened.

This was clearly only a test run, but as the array gradually began to function normally, he could already see, in his mind, the scene of the First Prince standing within the array as the tide of destruction reduced him to ashes.

A high-and-mighty prince, dying at the hands of a nameless nobody like himself—just imagining it was enough to make him so excited, so...

Crack.

Suddenly, a sound like something fracturing rang by Coton’s ear.

It was extremely faint—an ordinary person would have found it hard to hear at all. But to Coton’s ears, it was like a sudden discordant note blaring from the pipe organ at the climax of a concert.

So perfectly, painfully clear.

The smile on Coton’s face froze all at once.

In that instant, he immediately understood what had happened. His eyes flew wide as his gaze swept rapidly across the fiercely shuddering array patterns. With his magical attainments, it didn’t take long to pinpoint where the problem lay.

Or rather... whose work it was.

"Sineel! How dare you!" Coton’s expression twisted savagely.

How dare he—how dare he?

Did he not understand that tampering with the array at a time like this meant... death, for himself?

"Third Solo!"

His furious roar was drowned out by a lilting flute melody. Sudden radiance poured down from the sky, guided by the sound of the flute and turning into blades of destruction.

But those blades did not aim at Coton. They merely brushed past his side and stabbed precisely... into the array lines underground.

The complex mana flow was cut off in an instant. The array, already trembling from Sineel’s earlier secret sabotage, began to shake even more violently. If Sineel’s prior little trick had been like tossing a pebble into a perfectly meshed set of gears, then this sudden strike was like smashing a few of those gears outright.

The array teetered on the brink of collapse, the vast mana stored within it ready to erupt at any moment.

Coton’s eyes went bloodshot in an instant. At this point, there was no way he would allow the array he had built with such painstaking effort to be destroyed. He flung out his hands, and precise threads of magic quickly condensed between his fingers. Hundreds of mana threads connected, under his exquisite control, to the severed array lines. By himself, he actually managed to reconnect the array’s mana circuits and temporarily stabilize it.

But...

This was a chance Sineel, who had prepared for this long ago, could not possibly let slip. He took a deep breath and, ignoring the fact that the bone flute in his hand had already grown scorching hot, poured the rest of his mana into it once more.

The flute song soared.

Thin white mist gathered, rolling like a sea or a tide. Within its billowing depths, it was as if white-boned soldiers clad in armor and gripping cleavers were riding skeletal ghost horses out from beyond the fog.

"Stop him!"

The others finally reacted as well. Waves of mana surged upward, terrifying spells gathering in the hands of these elites at a speed nearly akin to instant cast.

But the white-boned soldiers, green ghostfire blazing in their eye sockets, suddenly threw back their heads and shrieked, the piercing clang like screeching metal echoing through the air.

Everyone present felt a stab of pain in their brains at the same time, and the spells they were gathering were interrupted for a brief instant.

"Death... Concerto!"

Sineel let out a bitter laugh as blood trickled from his nose. His mind felt like it was being torn open, and the precious bone flute in his hand shattered outright after being overdrawn twice in a row.

He knew that his strongest move could only win a single instant against this group of Royal Mage Corps elites.

But that instant was already enough.

After all, the strongest among them, Coton, had his hands completely tied up maintaining the array’s stability and had no room to make a move...

"Wait, wait!"

Coton, who had realized the reality as well, panicked. He spoke in a rush:

"Sineel, Sineel! We can talk about this. What are you trying to do? I can give you money—whatever you want, I can give it to you. Stop, we can talk, we can—"

"Sorry. There’s nothing to talk about."

"Wh-why? Isn’t what you want just..."

"Because..."

Sineel smiled, staggering as he forced his battered body upright and faced Coton.

"Because I’m an undercover agent."

"An... undercover agent?"

Coton’s eyes went wide. Before he could even comprehend the meaning of those two words, he saw Sineel lift his hand and give it a light wave.

Clang—

Weapons hummed. The white-boned soldiers hurtled past, driving their blades wreathed in green fire down into the array.

Brilliant rainbow light shot up from the ground before it ever had the chance to gestate destruction and death.

Like fireworks, it lit up the sky above the Lower District, dazzlingly beautiful.

...

...

"Cough, cough..."

After the billowing dust dispersed on the night wind, Sineel struggled to push himself up and used the last faint thread of mana in his body to run through himself and check his condition.

It was bad.

His mana was essentially gone, his mental strength also nearly exhausted. Under the impact just now, many of the bones in his body had been fractured.

His chest hurt—tight and painful. It was a little hard to breathe. His broken ribs had probably pierced his lungs.

But all of it was still better than he’d imagined.

He turned his head and swept his gaze around. The vast mana stored in the array had indeed been released in that instant, but without being converted into destructive force by the array, mana was still just mana. The blast that erupted at the time had only been about as strong as an ordinary gas explosion.

It had blown a large, gaping pit into the road, but fortunately, this was a fork in the street—wide enough that the blast hadn’t reached the surrounding civilians.

As for those civilians... Sineel saw a few candle flames flicker to life and then quickly go out. People who lived in the Lower District knew very well what they shouldn’t be looking at.

That was good.

Very good.

"Cough, cough..."

Sineel spat up another mouthful of bloody phlegm and chunks of tissue, then painfully reached out and fumbled around until he finally dragged out a magic scroll to heal himself.

Of course, he knew this was a pointless effort, because—

"Sineel!!"

Down in the massive pit gouged out by the blast, Coton climbed up step by step, his expression ferocious, his aura terrifying, like a beast closing in.

He had been at the very center of the explosion, yet there wasn’t a single wound on his body—only dust on his clothes making him look slightly disheveled.

The others were also closing in, surrounding him with killing intent, leaving the already gravely injured Sineel with not the slightest chance of escape.

"Ha... you really are even more foolish than I thought. Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?"

Coton roared at Sineel like a madman.

"All of us could have had bright futures ahead, and you—you’re the one who destroyed it all. It was you, you hopeless idiot!"

"Save it. I already know I’m a hopeless idiot."

Sineel tugged at the corner of his mouth with difficulty.

"But I’m an undercover agent. An undercover agent... is supposed to cause you some trouble, isn’t he?"

"Trouble? Heh. It’s true, you’ve been a bit of trouble."

Coton strode up and grabbed Sineel by the collar.

"I don’t know who sent you, but I’ll tell you this—your goal won’t be achieved. Even without the array, under the combined assault of ten mages, that First Prince still doesn’t stand a chance of surviving!"

"Yeah?"

Sineel chuckled, revealing teeth stained red with blood.

"Doesn’t matter."

"What?"

"I said it doesn’t matter."

Sineel tilted his head back and looked up at the night sky, which was still pretty decent tonight.

"Whether the First Prince lives or dies has jack shit to do with me. As long as I stop what you were trying to do just now, I’ve already achieved my objective."

"So it doesn’t matter."

"..."

Coton’s mouth hung half open as he stared for a long moment.

At last, as if he’d finally understood what Sineel was trying to say, he let out a mocking laugh of his own.

"You’re even dumber than I thought, Sineel."

"Thanks."

"Well then, seeing as you still count as a man, I’ll give you a clean death."

Mana gathered in Coton’s hand, forming a razor-sharp blade. Looking into the eyes of the man he had misjudged, he offered his farewell:

"Goodbye, Mr. Undercover."

Splurt.

Without the slightest hesitation, the blade of mana tore through flesh and brought death in an instant.

Sineel’s eyes flew wide as blood sprayed.

But... it wasn’t because of the terror of dying. It was because of... shock.

A shock so intense it jolted strength back into a body that had nearly run out of it entirely.

"Eh?"

Coton was just as stunned. He slowly lowered his head and looked at his chest.

Right now, a sharp blade of mana was piercing straight through his body.

"Wh... why?"

Following Sineel’s incredulous gaze, Coton turned his head, stiff and slow, to look at the person behind him—someone he had never expected.

"Nell?"

"Sorry, Coton."

The thick-browed, big-eyed Nell, a man famous for his loyalty and rigidity, smiled faintly.

"I’m an undercover agent too."