Different ways to cast, like choosing a path through fog?

Surprise pricked Lucimia like a cold needle.

She didn’t need a Magic Array at all, like a bird flying free.

If not for the mana drain, she’d skip arrays like shedding armor.

Doubt pooled like rainwater.

She asked, her words light as drifting ash, “Is there a way to cast without building a Magic Array?”

“Without a Magic Array?” Desty looked as surprised as a cat hearing thunder.

She thought for a spell, then shook her head like a slow metronome.

“No. You need the matching Array to cast, otherwise it’s only raw mana, like water without a vessel.”

Curiosity flared like a spark; Lucimia pressed, “What if someone can?”

“I... don’t know,” she said, the words stumbling like loose stones.

Calm curiosity settled like mist before dawn.

She asked, voice steady as a plumb line, “Why does building this Magic Array yield that spell?

Take the Fireball Spell: form a triangle with mana, feed mana, and a fireball flies—why?”

“Why does mana become flame, like water becoming lightning?”

Desty froze like a deer in lamplight.

She raked her red hair like stirring embers.

“Ask the Archmagisters,” she said, her smile stiff as dried clay.

“I’m no scholar; maybe that knowledge makes a true Archmagister, the kind who births new spells like stars for others to follow.”

Resignation fell like a thin veil; Lucimia nodded.

She let the topic drift like a leaf and stared ahead, thoughts wheeling like migrating birds.

From the disease’s speed, racing like wildfire, that light‑green girl had acted, yet her hideout stayed hidden like a moon behind clouds.

Lucimia guessed, like reading tracks in snow, they’d need the time‑acceleration girl to wreck the Mystic Return Smoke plant and the walls.

But the girl kept hiding like a fox in reeds; Lucimia’s Fuzzy Orb found no one at the gathering spot, which scraped like grit under an eyelid.

Either find her new burrow, or bait her out like a carp to a hook.

Easy to say; the how lay fog‑thick, like a river with no bridge.

She thought while watching the soldiers below sweep a town shattered like cracked porcelain by chaos.

Her gaze drifted with their brooms like a slow tide, until she spotted a peculiar corpse like a dark stone in clear water.

The body looked untouched by sickness; a sharp blade had nailed his throat like a spike.

His right palm was gone, and blood fell from the wrist like red rain.

Alarm tightened like a drawn cord; Lucimia tugged Desty and pointed, her voice cutting like a knife: “Look at that man.”

“Huh? Missing a hand, like it got eaten by worms?” Desty guessed, her words crawling like beetles.

“Does it? I don’t think so; he looks clean of illness,” Lucimia said, her tone cool as shade.

“Maybe other worms,” Desty said, shrugging like a willow branch in wind.

Unease pooled like dark water; Lucimia fell silent and remembered Lev, whose right palm she had swallowed like a stone.

Yet the Lev she met in the underground jail had both hands, like nothing had ever broken.

Her pupils tightened like a drawn bow; she glanced at the burned, handless man, then recalled Lev eyeing his right hand, and shock flared like lightning.

Could it be that Lev’s hand was that man’s, like a grafted branch?

But how, like stitching dawn to night?

Reattached so fast, in a world where medicine is barren soil?

And his grip moved free, opening and closing like wind through reeds.

A shadow crossed her face like a passing cloud; she noted it and told Desty.

“Forget it. Let’s hide and watch what the Plague Followers do,” she said, her voice low as dusk.

“Alright,” Desty answered, crisp as flint.

——

At the soldiers’ camp, in an apartment office, the air sat stale as old paper.

Lev and his adjutant faced each other like chess pieces over a board.

Lev leaned back like a cat at ease.

The adjutant propped his elbows and cleared his throat like a small trumpet.

He said, words marching like ants, “The town’s chaos has settled.

But something’s odd: we told the sick to find soldiers, yet they didn’t, and the mess swelled like a storm.”

Lev straightened a fraction like a blade lifting.

He set his right hand on the desk and tapped his finger like rain on a roof.

“You mean someone stirred it on purpose?” he asked, tone flat as slate.

“Yes.” The adjutant nodded like a bobbing float.

“I suspect Plague Followers spread panic, or used worms to steer people, so disease could race like wildfire.”

“But only Gendi could control worms to control people, like a puppeteer, and he’s dead,” Lev said, his voice flat as iron.

Lev nodded, then let a thin laugh drift like smoke.

“You’re sharp to notice.

But there’s something I should tell you,” he said, words cool as steel.

The adjutant looked at him, doubt fluttering like a moth.

“The one who stirred all this was me,” Lev said, calm as still water.

“What?!” The adjutant jolted, nearly spilling from his chair like a toppled bucket, and caught himself with both hands like claws.

“You... Commander Lev?” He sounded like his ears were stuffed with cotton.

“Why would you do that?” he asked, confusion thick as fog.

Lev chuckled, his finger still tapping like a metronome.

“To catch the remaining Plague Followers, the usual ways fail like dull knives.

Force sparks rebellion, and it spooks them like birds.

So I riled the crowd, brewed enough chaos like a storm, then had you appear, using treatment as a pretext to pen everyone in one place.”

“If a Plague Follower hid among them, he could do nothing, like a snake in a jar.

If he wasn’t inside, even better: we check who’s absent and who died in the chaos, then match the registry like sifting grain.”

Lev lounged back again like a cat in sun.

“I can guess their outline, like reading smoke.

First, infect the town, and let the dead spawn worms to harry most soldiers like biting flies.

Second, sabotage the Mystic Return Smoke plant.

Third, break the walls like cracking ice.

It’s not hard to read, like footprints in mud.”

“Now the people are sheltered, so the followers can’t blend like fish in a shoal.

We guard the key sites like gates, and send patrols to wander town in random loops like drifting nets.

Hitting those three points becomes hard as climbing a cliff.”

“This...” The adjutant sat stunned like a statue; the plan shocked him like cold water.

He was shocked he hadn’t been told, and that Lev’s methods matched his fighting style like mirrored steel—both mad, both choking like a noose.

“...This plan cost many lives,” he said, the words heavy as wet cloth.

“Mm.” Lev nodded, unmoved like a rock in a stream.

Then he said, “To wipe out the Plague Followers, how could we not pay a price, like blood into soil?”

“...You’re right,” the adjutant sighed, the breath leaving like steam.

The shock tolled like a bell, yet pain settled in his chest like silt.

So many dead turned his heart sweet and bitter like unripe fruit.

It scraped against the Independents’ pledge to protect everyone like flint on steel.

He swallowed his thoughts like thorns and pressed the feeling down like a lid.

After all, Lev made sense; sacrifice was necessary like winter before spring.