Infinite Mana - Chapter 224: Enemies Inside the Walls (Patreon)

Chaos spread through the town faster than the dust from the collapsing buildings. People screamed names, dragged injured relatives through the streets, and abandoned carts where they stood while several families immediately started running toward the gates with whatever possessions they could carry.

Others did the opposite. Armed guards poured from barracks and checkpoints, forming squads at major intersections while officers shouted orders over the alarms. Gates began closing one by one, and anyone moving against the crowd suddenly became interesting enough to earn several suspicious stares.

Sieghart watched the response with a cold expression. It looked decisive from a distance, but he already knew the most important part had happened long before the first explosion. Whoever planted those spells was almost certainly nowhere near the buildings anymore.

That was the entire advantage of this kind of attack. Plant the charges quietly, hide the mana well enough that nobody noticed, choose structural points that would multiply the damage, then leave before anyone realized the attack had even begun. The guards were searching for suspicious people now because searching felt better than admitting that the attackers had probably walked out hours earlier. Sieghart understood the instinct, but that did not make the response any more useful.

Sieghart kept Magic Vision active despite the strain. The red traces were already fading from the places that had exploded, becoming harder to distinguish from ordinary mana disturbances created by panic, Aura use, healing spells, and damaged enchanted structures.

That made him wonder how nobody had noticed the charges earlier. Magic Vision was not some impossible legendary ability. Mira possessed something far more refined, enchanted glasses could reveal magical distortions, and even mediocre magical investigators should have recognized concentrated mana sitting inside support pillars.

Unless Magic Vision was genuinely rare outside mage circles. Sieghart already knew Aura society treated magic as secondary, useful for healing, support, crafting, and specialized utility while the people with real prestige usually trained their bodies and Aura instead.

If everyone expected threats to arrive carrying weapons and Aura, then a quiet magical charge inside a wall might remain invisible simply because nobody bothered looking for it. Sieghart had spent enough time around Aura users to know how often they underestimated anything outside their preferred system.

Whoever planned this attack understood that assumption perfectly. They had placed the danger inside first, then let human defenses focus outward while buildings collapsed behind them. Sieghart disliked how efficient that sounded.

His thoughts returned to his grandparents. The comparison refused to leave him no matter how often he tried separating emotion from evidence. Same style of charge. Same targeted supports. Same preference for collapse over an obvious magical blast. The similarities were too specific to ignore. Still, the targets were completely different. Destroying military-adjacent buildings inside a border town during an active conflict had obvious strategic value. Destroying an isolated farmhouse where two elderly people lived did not.

His grandparents had not controlled a dungeon, commanded soldiers, stored potions, or guarded a supply route. As far as Sieghart knew, they had been farmers who wanted to live quietly and raise the grandson his parents abandoned.

That difference mattered because it weakened the simplest explanation. A Fallen tribe sabotaging border infrastructure made sense. The same tribe spending resources to murder two old farmers deep inside human territory made far less sense unless the real target had been Sieghart.

That possibility brought back the wanted poster, the false accusation, and how quickly someone had been ready to frame him after the farm was destroyed. The attack might never have been about his grandparents at all.

Another building groaned in the distance, though this one remained standing. Sieghart forced his thoughts back toward the present and started moving through the town, looking for anyone who might possess information rather than merely repeating rumors.

That was easier to decide than accomplish. People with useful intelligence did not walk around carrying signs announcing that they knew who planted magical explosives. The streets contained frightened civilians, overworked guards, merchants protecting property, and adventurers trying to decide whether staying was worth the risk.

Sieghart passed one checkpoint where soldiers questioned travelers attempting to leave. The process looked thorough until he listened for thirty seconds and realized the guards were mostly asking whether anyone had seen suspicious strangers near the destroyed buildings.

Sieghart briefly considered approaching the guards and explaining what Magic Vision had revealed. He abandoned the idea almost immediately. That conversation would begin with how a fifteen-year-old merchant recognized concealed magical charges and end somewhere around why his appearance was an illusion.

He could offer anonymous information later if necessary. For now, learning more mattered more than attracting official attention, especially when he still did not know whether the authorities themselves were trustworthy.

That thought arrived almost casually, then refused to leave. Sieghart slowed while crossing another crowded intersection. What if the attackers did not need to sneak into town because someone inside had helped them?

Access explained several things at once. Charges inside structural supports required time, privacy, and knowledge of which locations mattered. A collaborator could provide building plans, schedules, guard rotations, storage access, or simply a legitimate reason to approach restricted areas.

The possibility was ugly, but not unrealistic. Human territory was not one unified family where everyone shared the same interests. Sieghart had already seen nobles, guilds, soldiers, merchants, mages, Aura users, commoners, and entire cities treat one another very differently.

Combat Aura users sat near the top of that structure. Their strength translated directly into military value, social prestige, noble authority, and political influence. People without that kind of power often lived beneath decisions they had little ability to challenge.

That did not mean everyone without combat Aura secretly wanted humanity destroyed. Sieghart refused to make that leap. Most people complained, endured unfairness, found other paths, or simply tried to live without turning resentment into treason. But some people were different. Some would rather see the system burn than continue living beneath it, even if the fire spread into homes belonging to people who had never wronged them personally.

A saboteur did not need to love the Fallen. They only needed to hate the current order more than they feared what might replace it. That thought felt disturbingly plausible in a society already divided by power.

Sieghart felt his jaw tighten. The possibility complicated everything because it meant looking for obvious Fallen infiltrators might be the wrong approach entirely. The person responsible could be human, respected, employed, and completely familiar with local procedures. That also made his grandparents' murder easier to connect without making the Fallen directly responsible. Whoever attacked the farm might have belonged to the same network, used the same spell design, or simply learned the method from the same source.

The spell itself could be the clue rather than the faction using it. Magic had traditions, teachers, regional styles, and repeated structures. A demolition technique that efficient might originate from a particular school, military unit, criminal organization, or specialized profession.

Sieghart stopped near one of the collapsed buildings and watched healers work through the rubble. White Mana moved everywhere as injured survivors were pulled free, while Aura users lifted stones too heavy for ordinary people to move quickly. He expanded Magic Vision slightly despite the risk. Red residue remained inside several broken supports, but the pattern had degraded enough that reconstructing the original spell from observation alone would be difficult.

Still, he memorized what he could. The mana had been compressed into narrow channels, hidden close to structural material, and triggered in a sequence rather than simultaneously. That sequencing was familiar enough to make the memory of the farm even harder to ignore.

Sieghart wondered whether the charges had been activated remotely. If so, the attacker might not have needed to return at all. A timed trigger, linked rune, sympathetic signal, or magical contract could have started the chain from kilometers away.

The Recall enchantments he had purchased that morning suddenly seemed relevant in an unpleasant way. If magic could establish persistent relationships between separated objects, then triggering hidden charges from a distance was hardly impossible.

Another possibility occurred to him. The watcher from earlier might not have been connected to the sabotage, but the timing made dismissing that connection difficult. Someone had been observing him shortly before the charges detonated. Had they been watching Sieghart specifically, or watching the area because they knew what was about to happen? If the second possibility was true, then whoever followed him might have expected to see his reaction.

That thought made his skin crawl. Perhaps the explosions were not merely an attack on the town. Maybe someone wanted to know whether Sieghart recognized the method, reacted to the red mana, or revealed abilities while trying to help.

He immediately rejected the most paranoid version of that theory. There were too many civilians, too much damage, and too many strategic targets for the entire attack to revolve around one disguised child who had arrived yesterday. He moved again, circling toward the commercial district where rumors spread fastest. Merchants complained loudly when frightened, soldiers talked too freely when exhausted, and adventurers loved sharing information whenever doing so made them sound better connected than everyone else.

Fragments of useful information appeared slowly. One destroyed building stored military food contracts. Another contained records related to supply shipments. A third housed offices used by officials coordinating transport toward the border.

That pattern changed the attack from random destruction into something clearly strategic. Whoever chose the targets wanted to disrupt logistics, administration, and confidence simultaneously while forcing guards to divide attention between rescue work and internal security.

His grandparents still did not fit. Sieghart returned to that problem again and again, testing different explanations until none felt satisfying. Their house had offered no obvious strategic value unless something hidden there mattered.

Maybe the real target had been information. Maybe his grandparents knew something. Maybe they possessed an item Sieghart never discovered. Maybe the attackers believed he was there and wanted to remove him before his abilities became known. Sieghart disliked how much speculation was accumulating. He needed facts, not increasingly elaborate theories built from grief and coincidence. The problem was finding someone with access to the right facts without revealing why he cared.

He considered Aldren. The captain might know more about border operations, the targeted Fallen tribe, and whether sabotage like this had happened elsewhere. Unfortunately, Sieghart had no immediate way to contact him without locating soldiers bearing the same emblem.

The town itself remained his best source for now. He needed names, previous incidents, records of similar attacks, and anyone who understood the red mana well enough to identify whether it truly belonged to corrupted magic. He looked toward the border beyond the town walls. Somewhere out there, humans and Fallen were beginning another conflict over territory, dungeons, resources, and whatever grievances had accumulated between them.

Inside the walls, someone had already demonstrated that the boundary between both sides was far less secure than people wanted to believe. Whether the attackers were Fallen, collaborators, mercenaries, or something else remained unknown.

Sieghart's expression hardened. He had come to this town for armor, books, and equipment. Instead, he had found the first clue in years that might connect to the people who destroyed his grandparents' home.

Coincidence was still possible. He would not confuse wanting an answer with actually having one. But he also refused to walk away simply because investigating might drag him closer to the border conflict.

For the first time since leaving Seraphina, the next destination no longer depended on which dungeon looked useful or which road offered interesting magic. Sieghart needed information about the sabotage before the trail cooled completely.

If someone inside human territory was helping the enemy, he wanted to know who. If the same spell had killed his grandparents, he wanted to know where it came from. And if both questions led to the same people, then the border had just become personal.