The Ashen Bazaar didn't have gates, guards, or a VIP list. It was a sprawling, subterranean black market hidden deep within the abandoned metro tunnels of Moscow, a lawless ecosystem where the city's magical dregs came to disappear.
Rina descended the cracked concrete stairs and merged into the dense, chaotic crowd.
The tunnel was alive with the glow of unregulated magic. To her left, a Chanter was furiously muttering a rigid Latin incantation, wasting precious seconds just to levitate a heavy crate of smuggled weapons. To her right, a Conjurer was melting down stolen gold, his hands wreathed in borrowed, volatile flame that he had to beg a fire deity to use. A few yards away, a Summoner was struggling to keep his mana-link stable while his bound shadow-beast growled at passersby.
Rina watched them with a quiet, analytical detachment. They were all so loud. So inefficient. They needed words, gods, and beasts to shape reality. Rina was a chantless mage; she only needed the silent, instantaneous mathematics of her magic.
She hadn't come here to pick a fight. She had come for answers.
Rina approached a merchant selling illegal potions, pulling out the printed CCTV image of the thief. She tapped the man's forearm in the photo. "The twisted tree root tattoo. Who does it belong to?"
The merchant took one look at the ink and went completely pale. He shoved the photo back at her, sweeping his vials off the table and into a bag. "I don't know nothing. We don't talk about that here."
Rina moved on. She asked a Chanter dealing in stolen artifacts. He took one glance at the tattoo and immediately turned his back, pretending she didn't exist. She asked a mercenary sharpening a blade. He packed up his weapons and walked away without a word.
The reaction was the same everywhere. Absolute, suffocating terror.
The twisted tree root wasn't just a random piece of ink. Down here, in the darkest depths of the underworld, it was a ghost story. It was the symbol of the most notorious, ruthless criminal syndicate to ever exist—a faction so dangerous that even whispering their name was considered a death sentence. And apparently, the man who Rina's chasing could be here.
Frustration prickled at the edge of Rina's mind. She finally stopped at a dimly lit corner bar, sliding the photo across the rusted counter toward a grizzled bartender. The man had the scarred, burn-marked hands of a Conjurer.
"The tree root," Rina said, her voice dropping to a cold, demanding whisper. "Where do I find him?"
The bartender froze. The small, conjured flame he was using to light his cigar snuffed out instantly. He didn't look at the photo. Instead, his panicked eyes darted left and right, scanning the crowded bazaar to see if anyone was watching them.
He looked back at Rina, noting the unmistakable icy aura of the Black Fangs surrounding her. He swallowed hard, grabbing a dirty rag and wiping down the counter.
"Keep your voice down, for god's sake," he hissed, his voice trembling. He threw the rag over his shoulder and stepped out from behind the bar. "Come with me."
He didn't wait for her to answer, turning quickly and slipping into a narrow, unlit maintenance tunnel behind the stalls. Rina's eyes narrowed, but she didn't hesitate. She let her spatial mana pool silently in the palms of her gloves and followed him into the dark.
The maintenance tunnel was pitch black, smelling of damp concrete and the sharp tang of ozone. Rina walked in silence while her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She did not really need to see them. She could feel the rigid, anxious pulses of other people's mana waiting just up ahead.
She knew it was a trap before the bartender even stopped walking.
"This is far enough," the bartender said. His voice had lost its trembling fear. He turned around and stepped backward into the shadows. "Sorry, kid. But the Root pays a lot more for Black Fang heads than you do for intel."
"I figured," Rina said, her voice deadpan.
From the darkness ahead, three figures stepped out to block the tunnel. The man in the center rolled up his sleeves, revealing the jagged, twisted tree root tattooed across his forearm.
"A Black Fang rat in our sewers," the tattooed man sneered. "Bold. But stupid."
The ambushers did not waste time.
The man on the left was a Chanter. He raised his hands and began loudly reciting a rigid Latin incantation he had spent years memorizing from a grimoire. His words slowly built the complex formula framework needed to cast his spell. "Ignis et sanguis, exurge..."
Magic in this world was strict. A mage needed a grimoire to learn the formula, and they needed a chant to build it.
Rina skipped all of that.
As a chantless mage, she had no use for dusty books or ancient words. She calculated complex magical mathematics instantly, building her own custom formula frameworks directly in her mind. And because she invented her own spells, she got to name them.
Unfortunately, while Rina was a prodigy at magical theory, she was notoriously terrible at naming things.
The crests on her glove flared a blinding blue as she locked a localized air-manipulation formula into place.
"Formula construct," Rina muttered with a completely flat expression. "The Shut-Up Bubble."
Instantly, a perfect spherical vacuum encased the Chanter's head. His grand Latin incantation was cut off by a wet, sickening gag. Without air to carry the sound or fill his lungs, he collapsed to his knees. He clutched his throat in silent panic before passing out on the floor.
One down.
"Kill her!" the tattooed Conjurer roared. He thrust his hands forward, channeling borrowed power from a storm deity to unleash a massive, blinding torrent of lightning straight at her chest.
Rina did not even try to dodge. Her mind snapped together a new framework, weaving a highly condensed shield of reflective kinetic mana.
"Formula construct," she said, her voice utterly devoid of emotion. "The U-Turn Mirror."
A shimmering, geometric barricade materialized inches in front of her. The Conjurer's lightning smashed into it, immediately bouncing perfectly off the framework and reversing its trajectory. The lightning blasted the Conjurer point-blank in the chest. He screamed, his body seizing violently before he crumpled to the damp concrete. He lay there smoking and unconscious.
The third man, a Summoner desperately trying to pull a shadow beast out of the floor, froze in place.
He looked at the Chanter turning blue on the ground and the Conjurer smoking on the pavement. He could not comprehend what he had just seen. There were no grimoires. There were no long chants. It was just instantaneous, custom-built formulas with the most embarrassing names he had ever heard.
The entire fight had lasted less than three seconds.
Rina walked forward, the heels of her boots clicking methodically against the stone. The Summoner stumbled backward as his portal collapsed. He hit the brickwork with his eyes wide in absolute terror.
Rina stepped over the smoking Conjurer and stopped right in front of the terrified Summoner. She grabbed him by the collar and slammed him hard against the brick wall.
She raised the printed CCTV photo and pinned it to his chest. Her glove glowed faintly as her mind began building another framework.
"Let's try this again," Rina whispered, her icy gaze piercing right through him. "The twisted tree root. Tell me exactly what it means, and tell me where to find this man. Or I will use Formula Construct: The Human Blender."