Runar looked around. The head of the man in front of him just blew up, and there wasn't a single clue as to how it had happened.

  "Hm... He was still in the middle of talking, so I don't think he did it himself," he said to himself, signing to Yamada as he did. Runar looked down at the spray pattern of that black ichor. "But even so, his head blew up from the inside-out. Did you notice any mana intruding on this place?"

  Yamada quickly shook her head, and immediately started looking around the room. As a gunslinger, she had extremely good vision, and could even have certain details pointed out to her that might otherwise be missed. Weak-spots, hidden weapons, that sort of thing. Though, Runar doubted that she was going to find anything.

  He didn't sense any sort of mana enter his sensory range. And that was hard to do, even for the most skilled of mages. Not even Alicia was able to use magic without him noticing. Then again, if she could, it wasn't like he would know, so... Runar was trying to be very precise.

  "Looks like something was planted on him beforehand... something that could be triggered from afar... no, maybe it was set to automatically trigger when certain conditions were met." Runar started biting his nails, trying to think. But as he was squatting there, he noticed that the 'blood' that had sprayed all over the place was starting to dry out rapidly.

  The rest of the man's body, too, was drying up. It was hard to notice because he basically already looked like some kind of mummy beforehand, but the corpse was surely turning to dust right in front of Runar's eyes.

  "... How annoying," he groaned. "I was hoping to be able to extract some memories left in him if I could. We'd have already lost out because the head was blown up, but I guess we'll really have nothing, huh?"

  He stood up with a sigh and took out his pen, starting to write a rune into the air. A moment later, green flames started to spread around the body. They were going to keep burning until even the ashes were gone. If there was a trap set to kill one of their own, they might have set another one that could take out the ones that made the trap activate in the first place. Runar wouldn't have that.

  Instead, he decided to look around together with Yamada. Now that this happened, Runar really had to make sure to find anything he could.

  Throwing around as many runes as he could, he started to analyse every tiniest inch of this space. He tried to figure out exactly how mana flowed in here, and any sort of patterns that existed. But in the end, what caught Runar's attention wasn't any of that. It was something embedded in the centre of the room.

  It reacted the least to his mana, in an unnatural way.

  "Yamada," he said, calling her over. Though, he was really just using a rune to send vibrations over to her that she could feel through her skin, even if she couldn't hear him. He quickly started to sign the moment she looked at him. "There's something over here, come."

  She demon quickly rushed over and curiously looked at the spot Runar was currently excavating. The stone bent away from something in the centre. It seemed like a large, black marble orb, which Runar pulled out from the ground.

  "Do you know what it is?" Yamada asked, carefully touching the surface. Runar shook his head immediately. He had no idea.

  "Try injecting your mana into it. I want to know if it's just rejecting me."

  Yamada nodded and quickly did as asked. However, through the glasses he prepared, Runar was able to see that it disappeared even faster than his did.

  "It feels weird."

  "It does, doesn't it?" Runar replied. With a closer look at another's mana, he was certain. It wasn't that it was being rejected or disallowed from entering the sphere, but the mana was simply disappearing. It was being annihilated. Which was, of course, impossible.

  "Mana can't be destroyed perfectly," Runar bit his lip as he started to turn the large orb around, trying to see if there were any markings on it. But no, it was pristine. "It must be simply cutting off any sort of mana perception within it."

  With an excited smile, Yamada stood up. She pulled out one of her guns, looking at Runar eagerly.

  "... Fine, go ahead. Just make sure it's shallow, I don't know what's in there."

  While Yamada started preparing a special bullet, Runar quickly started to wrap the two of them in individual shields that would protect them from any sort of attack. It wasn't invincible, and it was hard to keep up for a long time, but it would buy enough time to get a grasp of what was going on.

  "Ready?" Yamada asked, and Runar slowly nodded.

  And with that, Yamada pointed her gun at the orb. With a loud blast, the bullet was shot from the pistol, hitting the orb.

  Runar expected a crack to form on the surface, but there wasn't anything of the sort. The bullet simply shattered into pieces, but instead of being flung around, each of the pieces fell flat to the ground.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Confused, Yamada started at the gun in her hand. "It didn't even make a scratch?"

  Runar squatted down and ran his hand over the surface, right where the bullet had hit the orb. There really wasn't anything. "Weird. You used the 'shatter' bullet, right?"

  "Of course I did. I altered it for spread instead of depth, but it still should have been strong..."

  "Don't worry, I know. That bullet is strong enough to cause a building to collapse if you shoot it right..." Runar placed his hand in front of his mouth, thinking. He pulled his arm back, and then hit the orb with a fist. It didn't even more. Letting out a long sigh, Runar stood up again. "Use the armor-breaking gun."

  Yamada's eyes widened. Her hands were shaking. "Are you... sure? Didn't you tell me not to use it anymore?"

  "I told you not to use it unless you really have to, and never within the city. And in this situation, I feel like we might need to, and we're hours away from the nearest village. So just calm down and take it out already." Runar said, already taking a step back so that he could prepare a more powerful barrier. It would take a bit of time to set up, but Yamada needed that time, too. And so, while Runar was preparing the circuit, Yamada excitedly waved her hand in front of her.

  Her mana crackled out from her fingertips, first creating a frame in the air. The frame was soon filled out with bright yellow mana visible to the naked eye. Shapes started to appear on it, and as the mana's light began to fade, a wall of numerous guns spread out in front of her. With a glance of her eyes, the wall shifted, hiding some guns and revealing others.

  There were dozens, all with different forms, sized, and purposes. Yamada quickly put her twin pistols into their indented spots, and then continued 'scrolling' through the wall until she got to a particular weapon.

  It, on its own, took up the entire wall. In form and size, it looked more like some kind of bulky, angular rocket-launcher, but that wasn't what this was at all. She took it down and quickly felt the weight push down on her body as her mana spread throughout the weapon.

  She held out her hand, as a massive bullet, the size of a small arm, was being created in the air. The instant it fully came to be, Yamada opened the gun's chamber and fitted it in properly, making sure to lock everything in safely.

  By the time she was done preparing and setting up her stance properly, Runar was done creating the safer barrier.

  The demon skipped over to him with the massive gun over her shoulder. It was more like a cannon than anything.

  "... Don't point that thing at me, please," Runar shivered at the idea, but Yamada just smiled broadly. She couldn't sign back right now, since her hands were both used to hold up the weapon. She made eye-contact with Runar, who slowly nodded.

  Yamada pushed her feet into the ground and aimed her gun. A dozen or so layers of magic circles appeared in front of the weapon, as Runar hurried and wrote some runes over his ears to protect himself from the sound.

  And then, the demon pulled the trigger. For a moment, it was like the world itself folded in on itself. The ground cracked apart into tiny pebbles, and the entire mountain began to collapse above them. Dust flew through the air, though that air itself had started to burn up from the heat released by the bullet and the gunshot. Yamada shivered as her whole body was injured, but a special setting on the gun was quickly activated, helping her recover the tiny fractures within all her bones almost immediately.

  Though, the ceiling was still about to collapse down on them.

  As stones and boulders hit the barrier Runar had deployed, he activated the secondary pattern he had created. Runar twisted his hand around, and the stones stopped falling. Instead, they started to return to where they were just a moment ago, returning the chamber to the state it was in when Runar first deployed this rune circuit.

  Everything except that black marble orb, which now had a large bullet stuck in its side and small cracks spreading out from that point.

  Yamada lowered her gun, dumbfounded. She stared at Runar, confused, propping the gun up against her shoulder. "How is it still whole?"

  "... Because it's sturdy as hell. It fully absorbs all energy within itself and then refuses to show said energy to others. Though, I've got no idea why that kind of thing would be here in the middle of this chamber..."

  Runar approached the orb, and grabbed the bullet with his hand. It was red hot, but he quickly made it cool down. As the metal pulled itself together, the bullet was slightly easier to remove. As he pulled it out, though, the orb seemed to already try and heal itself.

  "Oh no, you won't." Runar quickly wrote something onto the orb. He was starting to feel some mana leak out through the hole and cracks, so he should be able to use magic on it now.

  The rune that he wrote started widening the cracks further, until they covered the whole marble orb. Runar pushed his fingers between the cracks and started pulling off sections of the orb.

  And what was underneath it was...

  "Another stone? Seriously?" Ryan sighed. "You made it sound so exciting. So what, is it some super special material?"

  "... Something like that." Runar responded hesitantly from the other end of the phone. "It was rare, though that 'stone' wasn't really what was absorbing the mana. Turns out, that marble had a hugely complex array set up inside it. I'm still trying to properly analyse it all and figure out how it works, but it's using a magic system that's completely foreign to me."

  "Huh, alright... So what's the stone then? Some kind of battery?"

  "... Not really, no. It was more like the entire mountain was the battery. You know, places like that are stock full of natural mana. Because of that creepy mummy guy's mana stinking up the place, I barely noticed, but there was far less ambient mana than there should've been. The orb was absorbing it all and feeding it into that piece in the middle. The mummy guy was some kind of guardian for that, on top of being a gatekeeper for the next point in the array."

  Ryan was even more curious now. "It was charging something up, huh?" he asked, though the moment he did, an even more important question came to mind. "Wait, did you say array?"

  With a frustrated groan, as if he was annoyed to even think about it, Runar responded. "Yeah, I did. They set up a massive array spanning all the mountains around the valley, as it turns out. We found another couple of those orbs, but we haven't been able to break them open yet. Though the assumption is that there are more of those pieces inside."

  "Hm, okay. So what are they, those pieces?"

  "... I'm still not fully done analysing it, but if I'm right, then it's part of a Titan's heart."

  "Wait, what?" Ryan let out involuntarily. "A titan? Like the one in my basement?"

  Runar stayed silent. A sensation came over Ryan, as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. "Dude, no."

  "... Mm-hm."

  "That heart belongs to the titan whose skull is in my basement?"

  A long, stretched out sigh followed. It wasn't that Runar was trying to avoid answering, it was more like he was avoiding to acknowledge that conclusion until this very moment. "I believe so, yes. I think the place you live might have been a lot more important to the church than we thought."