Bab 71: The Broken Society
The stern voice of the leader of the enforcers standing at their helm—a fat, middle-aged man with a fedora covering his balding head—boomed once more.
"Drop your wand and lie down on the ground!"
A maelstrom of anger and bitterness churned within Tia, stoking a fire that seemed to incinerate any lingering threads of patience and understanding. She had acted in self-defense, her actions likely saving innocent lives, yet she was met with condemnation, viewed not as a savior but as a criminal.
"Why am I the criminal here for defending myself, and possibly others, against those terrorists?!" Tia's voice erupted like a volcano of suppressed anger and disillusionment. Her words echoed with bitterness, the sentiment of being let down seeping into every word.
'This society is flawed and broken. They will not survive.'
Yet the mages didn't lower their wands. Instead, they slowly split, fanning out into a broader formation. "You have used lethal magic with killing intent! This is not self-defense but murder, making you a criminal!"
The words hit her like a wave of scalding steam, boiling her anger to a critical point of eruption. They were not there when the danger was real, only to appear afterward, pointing fingers and assigning blame. It felt like a grotesque distortion of reality and justice, a cruel joke where her instinct for self-defense was twisted into a criminal act.
'Deadly magic? What nonsense! What was I supposed to do? Tickle them to submission?'
"Are you blind, corrupted, or stupid not to see it was self-defense?!!" She yelled back, her throat almost growing sore. Her hands were already trembling with hatred and dragon-like wrath.
"That is for the court to decide! Surrender right now; this is your final warning!" The leader of the enforcers in a fedora signaled to his lackeys, and all of them started silently muttering unhearable spells with the tips of their wands aiming at her shining.
Her grip on her wand was quickly tightening.
"Hahaha!" A harsh laugh erupted from Tia, devoid of any humor. "A fair trial, you say?" she scoffed, her voice tinged with venom. "You've already labeled me a criminal!"
She would have understood if they took her for interrogation as a witness, but it was obvious that they weren't considering her to be one. Instead, they had already decided she was a criminal.
Her breath steadied, and her mind became a fortress of resolve as she raised her wand with a deadly gleam in her eyes. "If defending myself makes me a criminal," her voice rang out, powerful and determined, a beacon of rage against the unfair law, "then so be it. I won't be a puppet in your blind display of justice!"
"W-what are you doing?! Surrender right now!" To her shock, the enforcers took a step back. She could see the fear and worry in their trembling wands and their dilated irises.
The entire street vibrated, the air turned hotter, and the windows rang as the energy surged through her body.
"Fuck! That woman is insane!" The young enforcer in the back pivoted and turned to sprint away, his gray suit quickly growing distant.
"Return! You will regret this!" The fat officer yelled, but his own wand was trembling and his knees were unsteady.
"Haha," Tia burst into laughter, seeing how pathetic the mages before her were.
'No wonder the terrorists are running amok here if those people are supposed to stop them.'
Another enforcer took a step back, his voice trembling as he turned to the fat supervisor, "S-sir, maybe we should retreat? She just killed five dark mages on her own!"
'Finally, someone who isn't dumb has noticed!' However, she had already had enough of it.
Tia unleashed her power with a fluid wave of her hand. Instantaneously, a thunderous crack pierced the silence. An unseen shockwave burst forth, sweeping unerringly down the road. Before she could even smile, the shockwave crashed into the enforcers like a speeding car, lifting them effortlessly into the air before hurling them violently across the street.
"Ahh!"
"Gahh!"
With horrifying force, they collided against the wall of a house, screaming at the impact. They slumped lifelessly to the ground, their bones fractured.
'Truly pathetic...' Tia felt only let down by how dumb the world she visited was. There was so much potential, yet the local mages were ignorant, blind, and scared of the unknown.
'They have no chance. A single man with a machine gun could probably annihilate this entire squad before they could even cast a single spell.' She was cautious when facing the masked mages, mostly staying on the defensive as she expected them to have some magic defensive tools to protect them from her fast attack, but now she saw she was wrong with how much she overestimated their competence.
They were unprepared, without any defensive magic tools or a way to defend against fast attacks.
'This is wrong...' The more she watched the local magicians, the more disappointed she grew.
The entire subterranean town of mages lacked any visible technology, even with the bustling metropolis above their heads. No matter how much she tried to remember, there wasn't any semblance of modernism.
'They are living in the Middle Ages!'
From what she saw, they had access to technology, yet they refused to acknowledge it, missing the potential for growth that could propel their civilization to the age of colonizing other planets in their solar system.
She sighed, remembering the murdered mage in the office who seemed to interact with technology, mundane people, drive cars, and likely even more. Yet sadness filled her heart, knowing the man was murdered for that, showing how dysfunctional the magic society of this world was.
'The superhumans of Garlicia were of much higher quality. I would bet that the only reason this world has the rating it has comes from those so-called lessers—the mundane people without magic—and their armies.'
Tia didn't doubt there were dangerous, strong, and talented mages out there, but if what she had witnessed now was average, she was sure their society was doomed to fall.
'Phh, I will rather deal with those they call lesser; even though they lack magic power, they at least have the desire to embrace the unknown.'
She threw one final glance of disdain at the mages twitching on the road like pathetic insects that they were, "You are a shame of us, arcane practitioners. We should be open-minded and ready to explore the vastness of reality. Today, I will let you live because of your ignorance—consider it to be the last showcase of my mercy toward you."
Tia wanted to kill them on the spot, to squash their pathetic, dumb, and corrupted existences. Yet she suppressed it, wanting them to witness what she was going to do.
'This place is broken. Let's shatter it fully.'
With resolution and determination, she walked down the street, heading back to the staircase.
'Let's gamble and try a big game. If it works, I will win a lot, and if not, I will abandon this world.' Her eyes gleamed as she was ready to shake the entire civilization with her actions.
Hadiah
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