The magical power emanating from Rene's magic beast created a powerful force field around the surroundings.
It completely covered Rene, Rudger, and a portion of the area, in the form of a massive sphere.
The moment the energy of the force field reached its critical point, Rudger felt his body being urgently pulled somewhere.
It was clearly a phenomenon he had never seen before, but he didn't feel any discomfort in the sensation.
Rather, Rudger even felt a sense of familiarity here.
'This feels similar to when I leap through space with coordinate designation.'
When the flashing light before his eyes disappeared, Rudger felt the ground beneath his feet sink.
"This is..."
What touched his feet was snow that came up to his calves.
Rudger's expression froze as he saw the swirling white blizzard and cold air around him."The Kingdom of Yuta?"
At least during this season, if one were to name a place where frigid blizzards still raged, it could only be the Kingdom of Yuta.
The steep mountain ranges and scattered villages with crimson lights matched the scenery of the Kingdom of Yuta that Rudger remembered.
'How could we travel hundreds of kilometers away from Leathervelk...'
Rudger's questions didn't end there.
-Woooong.
Rene's magic beast began to vibrate again, and then repeated the same process as before.
Along with the sensation of his body being pulled somewhere, what Rudger saw next was a jungle with hot, humid air.
'The southern jungle region of the continent?'
It took less than 3 seconds to travel from the Kingdom of Yuta to here.
3 seconds.
In that short time, they had moved from the northern end of the continent to the southern end, a distance of more than thousands of kilometers.
'So that's what it was. Rene's magical power isn't something like a non-attribute.'
Magical power unknown to this world until now.
The power that seemed to explain why it was called a curse rather than a blessing.
Rene's magical power had the [Spatial Attribute].
And now Rene had fully awakened her magical power.
But that wasn't a good thing for her.
Rather, it was closer to making her already limited life span much shorter.
"Rene! Stop! If you continue here, it will become dangerous!"
Rudger shouted, but Rene didn't listen to him.
With her head lowered and muttering something, she looked like someone whose soul had left her body.
-Boom!
With another vibration, the surrounding scenery changed once again.
This time, the two arrived at some unknown precipitous cliff.
Rudger's eyes caught sight of massive, jagged mountain ranges all around.
'Is this the Giant's Backbone?'
It was a place where monsters that existed in the past were said to have disappeared beyond.
Because of the extremely harsh environment and high mountains, the area beyond remained an unknown world.
Rudger had wandered the world, but he had never been here before.
But that wasn't what was important right now.
'No good. My voice isn't reaching Rene right now. Then...'
He needed to somehow stop the magic beast causing this phenomenon.
Rudger gathered shadows in both hands, making them like beast paws.
Stepping closer to the magic beast, Rudger firmly grasped Rene's magic beast with both hands.
"Stop."
Speaking almost like giving an order, he applied pressure to forcibly suppress the power of the magic beast.
It was a coercive method, but without doing this, Rene's magical power could run amok beyond what she could handle.
In fact, the situation was already precarious.
The magic beast struggled to resist Rudger's force.
Each time it did, the surrounding scenery changed rapidly.
A factory where workers passed by.
A dense coniferous forest.
The lavish interior of a mansion.
A rural village where children played.
The rapidly changing scenery finally stopped.
Rene's depleted magic beast was naturally unsummoned, and Rudger finally exhaled his held breath.
'If I hadn't given Aether Nocturnus coordinate designation power, I wouldn't have been able to stop it.'
It was fortunate that Rudger himself had deep knowledge about space.
Otherwise, there was a high possibility that Rudger too would have been swept away by the power of that magic beast.
Rudger urgently checked Rene's condition.
"Rene. Are you alright?"
But there was no response from Rene, who was hanging her head.
Just as Rudger was slowly reaching out his hand, Rene slapped it away.
-Slap!
Rudger was struck speechless not by the pain running across the back of his hand, but by Rene's expression.
Rene's eyes were brimming with tears.
Soon, tears flowed down her cheeks.
But more than that, what pained Rudger's heart was that those beautiful eyes were glaring at him with hostile gazes.
Suddenly, an image of her from childhood overlapped in his memory.
"Rene. I..."
"Don't talk to me!"
Saying that, Rene turned around and tried to quickly leave the place.
It was a pitch-black alley-like place, but right now Rene didn't care where this was.
All she wanted was to get as far away from the man in front of her as possible.
So Rene tried to find an exit while navigating through the alleys as much as possible.
Perhaps thanks to luck, there was a light visible beyond.
That's the exit.
Just as Rene thought that and stepped toward the exit, she felt one of her legs sinking.
-Huh?
Rene realized she was somewhere very high.
And that she was now in danger of falling after misstepping.
Too late to assess the situation, Rene froze, and Rudger, who had hurriedly followed her from behind, grabbed her hand and pulled her back.
"Are you okay?"
"...!"
Rene hastily distanced herself from Rudger.
After glaring at Rudger, Rene cast her gaze at the scenery she had almost fallen into.
If her eyes had been filled with anger toward Rudger just a moment ago, now they reflected bewilderment.
That's how strange the scenery she now saw was.
"Where is this...?"
-Chiiiiik!
No sooner had Rene finished speaking than white steam shot up.
The hot air surged over 100 meters high, testament to how intensely it had been compressed.
Even from a distance, the heat was palpable on the skin.
Such pillars of steam were erupting from various places.
Hot springs? No. This wasn't such a nature-friendly space.
-Kikikik! Clank! Chiiiiik!
The sound of massive steel gears turning and compressed steam flowing through thick drainage pipes.
The roar of turbines spinning and cylinders meshing created a bizarre yet harmonious cacophony from all directions.
Steel machines.
The vast space, which would be hard to match even if several Theon Academy fields were combined, was filled with countless machines.
"Of all places, we end up here at the end."
Rudger sighed as he looked at the familiar scenery at the end of their random spatial jumps.
"[Isla Machina]"
People call it the moving island.
People call it the city of future technology.
Others call it the future of magical engineering.
The headquarters of the New Mage Tower, an island made of machinery and steel.
That was Isla Machina.
'I'm not sure if this is unfortunate or fortunate.'
Isla Machina is an island that floats and moves on the sea.
It sucks in enormous amounts of seawater, refines and boils it, and uses that steam energy to move the entire island.
This island wasn't a place one could come to as they pleased.
Because its coordinates changed periodically, they might have fallen into the open ocean if they had been unlucky.
Rudger wanted to tell Rene that they should leave this place first.
But Rene's eyes gradually lost their strength, and she began to stagger and fall.
Rudger quickly approached Rene and supported her body.
"Haah. Haah."
Rene breathed heavily. Rudger felt tremendous heat from Rene's body.
'The fever is serious.'
It wouldn't be strange if she fainted at this rate, but Rene stubbornly endured.
Not only that, she even tried to push away Rudger who was supporting her with weak gestures.
'Even in such pain, you still try to push me away.'
Seeing that, Rudger felt an ache inside his heart.
It was natural.
The pain of betrayal by someone who had been deceiving her all this time was probably greater than the physical pain.
Someone who had killed her mother, sealed her memories, and even pretended not to know while staying close to her.
Knowing this, Rudger couldn't offer any suitable excuse to Rene.
He couldn't.
Rene's feeble resistance stopped.
Her body completely drained of strength, Rene was about to collapse on the spot.
Rudger urgently supported Rene and checked her condition.
'Her magical power is running amok inside her body due to excessive magical energy.'
And it wasn't just any magical power, but spatial magical power.
Rudger placed his hand on Rene's forehead and summoned his magical power.
"Bear with it a little."
A magic circle appeared above Rene's forehead.
Rudger tried his best to regulate the magical power to suppress the rampaging magic within Rene's body.
Rene's expression, with eyes closed, became more relaxed, but Rudger's stern face did not ease.
This was ultimately just a temporary measure.
Though he had stabilized her magical power now, if it were to run amok again, how long could she endure?
'Once magical power runs amok, it's likely to continue doing so. The person themselves must calm their mind to subdue the magical power, but.'
Looking at Rene, who had fallen into sleep as if unconscious, it seemed difficult.
'Of all places, we end up at Isla Machina.'
He thought that this too might have been some kind of fate.
It wasn't a completely unconnected place, and there was someone he needed to meet here anyway.
"Bear with it a little longer."
Rudger carried Rene in his arms and moved.
-Kiiing.
And there were lenses watching Rudger from the darkness.
The lens aperture contracted and relaxed, capturing the scene.
Nikolai, who had been monitoring recent activities around Isla Machina, received a report.
Nikolai had been expanding his influence by clashing with black magicians from the underworld.
Initially, he was able to expand rapidly, but when the threatened black magicians joined hands, the situation changed drastically.
So while currently stuck in a protracted war of attrition, this report was enough to catch Nikolai's interest.
'Someone appeared suddenly without any entry record on the island?'
Nikolai immediately grasped the crystal ball that came with the report.
The palm-sized small crystal ball was a simple artifact capable of storing and showing specific scenes.
When Nikolai used the crystal ball, light unfolded before his eyes, revealing a scene.
An alley in a neutral area untouched by human feet.
In that empty place, a light suddenly flashed, and a man and woman appeared.
'What is this?'
That's when Nikolai was surprised.
They literally appeared as if they had dropped from the sky.
No, if they had fallen from the sky, he wouldn't have been this surprised.
He would have thought that a magician using flight magic had landed there.
But the moment the two appeared was too quick.
Appearing in just a flash? If they flew at such speed, they would have crashed into the ground and died.
No matter how much he slowed down the stored image, it could only be explained as "suddenly" appearing.
'As if they leaped through space...'
Wait. Leaped through space?
Nikolai frowned with a strange sense of déjà vu.
Because even among the people he knew recently, there was a man who demonstrated similar magic.
Nikolai replayed the video stored in the crystal ball.
There was still much content left.
In the crystal ball, a pair of man and woman could be seen arguing.
The light wasn't good, making it dark, so their faces weren't visible, but it seemed like the relationship between the two was serious.
Then the woman turned away first and fled, and the man hastily chased after her.
And the moment he saw the video captured by another magical device, Nikolai's eyes widened.
'John Doe!'
The appearance revealed in the brightened face was someone Nikolai knew well.
The First Order of the Black Dawn Society, John Doe.
Currently using the fake identity of Rudger Chelici, a teacher at Theon, he had come to Isla Machina.
'Wait. Something's strange.'
Nikolai felt his head becoming complicated.
Currently, Theon and Leathervelk were in a chaotic situation due to a sudden natural disaster.
And as far as Nikolai knew, he had received reports that Rudger Chelici was at Theon just days ago.
'It's not enough to come from the Empire to Isla Machina in just a few days.'
Moreover, Isla Machina hadn't "docked" recently, so there was no reason for outsiders to enter.
Yet, a man who should be in Leathervelk is here?
'Plus, the girl with him is a student from Theon?'
What's going on here?
Nikolai tapped his head with his index finger, pondering, and then grinned.
Whatever the situation was, it didn't change the fact that an opportunity had arisen for him.
Now was the chance to kill him.