Infinite Mana - Chapter 223: The Same Pattern (Thank you for your support, Bennett Street!) (Patreon)

Sieghart tried to act natural after realizing someone might be watching him, which was unfortunately much harder once he became aware of the problem. Every movement suddenly felt deliberate, from adjusting his coat to closing the carriage compartment, and he hated how obvious that probably made him look.

Pretending not to care worked much better when he genuinely did not care. Now every reflection in a window, every person lingering near a doorway, and every set of footsteps behind him became something his attention wanted to follow immediately.

He activated Magic Vision without changing his expression. If somebody had already noticed that his fifteen-year-old appearance was an illusion, there was a chance they were using some kind of ocular spell or magical perception to examine him from a distance.

Sieghart had improved Phantom Image considerably since first realizing how vulnerable illusions were against people capable of seeing mana directly. The spell now layered its distortions more carefully over his real proportions and reduced several of the obvious inconsistencies Magic Vision had once revealed.

It still was not perfect. He could not guarantee that a stronger ocular mage would fail to recognize the difference between his actual ten-year-old body and the older form projected over it, especially if they already knew something suspicious was there.

That uncertainty was irritating enough by itself. The town made everything worse because Aura users were everywhere, and their presence constantly disturbed ambient mana in ways that turned Magic Vision into something much less clean than it usually was.

Soldiers crossed intersections in groups. Adventurers moved between shops carrying weapons. Mercenaries leaned against walls outside inns. Every time one of them used Aura even slightly, nearby mana bent, scattered, or compressed around movements Sieghart could only observe indirectly.

Trying to identify one distant observer inside all that interference felt like searching for a single ripple inside rain. Sieghart could push Magic Vision harder, increase its range, and focus on every disturbance individually, but that created another problem. Anyone watching him through magic might notice the sudden increase immediately. Expanding Magic Vision aggressively around a crowded border town would be the magical equivalent of turning around and shouting that he knew someone was following him.

Sieghart decided against it. Instead, he finished securing the carriage and started walking through town at an ordinary pace, allowing Magic Vision to remain active at a level he could plausibly maintain without attracting attention. He did not take the most direct route anywhere. He crossed the market, passed several smithies, turned through a residential street, and eventually circled toward a busier district while repeatedly checking whether the uncomfortable sensation of being watched remained.

It did. Sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger, but never disappearing completely. Sieghart still could not identify any individual person following him, which made him consider whether the observer was changing positions or using something that did not require remaining nearby.

Then Magic Vision showed him something stranger than a watcher. A faint red distortion appeared near the corner of one building before vanishing behind several overlapping mana signatures from passing Aura users.

Sieghart slowed slightly, then forced himself to continue walking. Red mana by itself meant little, but the pattern had felt familiar enough that his stomach tightened before he consciously identified why. Corruption. Not exactly the same as the crimson waves inside the golem dungeon, but close enough that he immediately started searching for another trace.

He found one several streets later. A thin red shimmer clung around the lower section of a support column beneath a large administrative building, so faint that ordinary Magic Vision might have dismissed it as ambient residue.

Another appeared around a warehouse foundation. Then another near the base of a stone arch supporting part of an elevated walkway. Each concentration was small, irregular, and positioned where nobody casually passing would have any reason to inspect it.

Sieghart’s thoughts accelerated. If those traces really were corruption, then something had carried it into the town. The border was close, but the Fallen were not supposed to be walking openly through human streets without anyone noticing.

Could they already be inside? Could corruption spread through objects or spells without the caster remaining nearby? Or was Sieghart simply seeing some unrelated branch of magic that happened to resemble what he had encountered underground?

He needed a closer look. Sieghart changed direction naturally at the next intersection, walking toward the nearest red trace while pretending to examine the shops lining both sides of the road.

The concentration sat beneath another large building, this one several stories tall with thick stone pillars supporting the front section. People entered and left through broad doors while carts waited along the street outside.

Sieghart was still halfway across the intersection when the red distortion suddenly brightened. His steps stopped before he could prevent the reaction, and Magic Vision showed the mana inside the pillar tightening into a pattern he recognized only a heartbeat before everything changed.

The first pillar exploded. Stone fragments blasted across the street as the entire lower section vanished inside a compact detonation. People screamed, horses reared, and one parked wagon overturned when debris struck its side hard enough to tear through the wooden frame.

The second pillar exploded before anyone understood what had happened. Then the third. Each detonation struck a structural point rather than wasting force across the exterior, destroying exactly what the building needed to remain standing. Sieghart’s blood turned cold because he knew that pattern. The upper floors shifted, windows shattered as the entire structure lurched sideways, and a deep grinding sound rolled through the street while stone walls began folding toward the missing supports.

People ran in every direction as panic erupted around the collapse. Some escaped immediately, others froze, and several disappeared beneath falling debris when part of the front wall came down faster than the crowd could move.

Sieghart moved without thinking. Telekinesis grabbed a slab falling toward two civilians and dragged it sideways while Wind Magic shoved dust away from his face, but another explosion sounded somewhere behind him.

A second building lost its supports, and another detonation echoed farther down the district before anyone could understand the first collapse. This was not one accident or a structural failure spreading by coincidence. It was coordinated. Sieghart turned slowly, Magic Vision expanding despite every earlier concern about revealing himself. Faint red concentrations appeared throughout the surrounding blocks now that he knew exactly what to search for.

Some were beneath pillars. Others sat inside walls, foundations, support arches, and structural joints. They were not random pockets of corrupted mana. Somebody had placed them where small explosions could create maximum destruction.

Another building collapsed in the distance. Dust rose above the rooftops while bells began ringing from guard posts, and panicked shouting spread through the streets faster than anyone could organize a response. Sieghart barely heard the noise because, for a moment, the border town disappeared entirely. He remembered the farm, the sudden destruction, and the ruins that had replaced the place where his grandparents should have still been waiting for him.

He remembered the explosion that had destroyed everything before anyone understood what was happening. He remembered finding the ruins afterward, the impossible absence of anything that should have explained an ordinary accident, and the grandparents who had never walked away from it.

The details were not identical. The scale here was larger, and whoever planned this attack had planted multiple charges throughout a crowded district instead of destroying one isolated property. Even so, the method was the same.

Destroy the supports. Use compact magical explosions. Let the structure kill everyone inside. Hide intent beneath collapse and confusion. The sequence came back with such clarity that Sieghart could almost see the farm disappearing again beneath broken timber, stone, smoke, and dust.

Sieghart’s hands tightened until his nails pressed painfully into his palms. The world around him returned through layers of screaming, falling stone, alarm bells, and people calling for healers, but the recognition remained colder than everything else. He had seen this modus operandi before, and that was how his grandparents had been killed. The realization did not prove the same people were responsible, but it was far too close for him to dismiss as meaningless coincidence.

For several seconds, every other question disappeared. The border conflict, the new dungeon, the Fallen tribe, the watcher, the corrupted mana, and even his shopping trip became secondary to one possibility Sieghart had spent years waiting to find.

Maybe this was coincidence. Maybe someone else had independently discovered the same efficient way to destroy buildings by targeting structural supports, and maybe the resemblance meant nothing beyond similar magical engineering. Maybe the red mana had nothing to do with the people who murdered his grandparents. Maybe whoever had watched him was unrelated as well, and he was simply forcing separate problems together because the memory was too personal to ignore.

Sieghart did not believe in trusting maybes when the pattern looked this familiar. He turned toward the nearest unexploded red concentration while Magic Vision sharpened enough that hiding his search no longer mattered.

Whoever had been watching him could continue watching. Sieghart was done pretending not to notice. Now he was watching back, and if the same people who killed his grandparents were here, he finally had something worth following.