Weak Points

But Astria's Elemental Core was interesting; it was her hands. I had thought it would be her heart since her lineage wasn't purely of a Mage. An Elemental Core would be the most protected part of the body for a Mage. But the hands are pretty exposed, especially in a conflict.

However, the Crystal Princess might've worn some protection on her hands, or her Magecraft could have been done without hand movements. Either way, it wouldn't be too difficult to strike her weakness. I then glanced at the rest of the profiles before Z stood up.

"Now that's odd. I do recall having most information about the Unknown Children being intact. There might be some corrupted data within the archives if the notes are redacted like this... Either that or someone had tampered with this thing," said Z as he peered at the screens.

"No worries, I can always do a simple search within the archives using another method," I said, cracking my knuckles.

Bryan and Tomoe glanced before watching me type on the holographic keyboard. After a moment had passed, the redacted notes on the profile were unblocked, and everyone could see new things about the opponents.

"How did you do that?" asked Z, blinking rapidly.

"Uhm... It should be simple from where you're coming from if you know how to look for information on the web. I've just searched up a broad term for the opponent's Elemental type and see if there were other matches. Once I got the results, the holes were filled in instantly."

"So you searched up others that are like them? I must've been having a monkey's brain..."

Don't worry, man, and you're not the only one who gets random brainfarts in the heat of the moment. Anyways, I went to look at the children's Elemental Cores and found that all of them had different Cores. This feature makes another headache for me.

Starting with Vastra's Elemental Core, the Sand Mage's weak point was at her spine. Unfortunately, it isn't too far from a human since it's also another way to cripple the target. Go for the head for a quick and painless death, but aim at the spine to paralyze them for life, making them vegetables.

In other words, head for mercy and spine for revenge. But as I read on, I found that it's the bottom part of Vastra's spine. This fact was according to the predecessors of Sand Mages, but even this information might not be accurate. In the end, I concluded to aim for the entire bone.

"It would appear Vastra's motive to join Fabian Brookes was against her will. In these records, her reports make it sound that she was remorseful for kidnapping other kids," said the Valkyrie, jumping out of my arms.

"See, Vastra's kidnapping methods were vastly different from the other Mages. I would argue that Vastra is more merciful when doing her crimes. Take a look at these reports. She only targets the orphans of the area, giving them food and shelter before handing them away."

We looked at Mavislin with confused eyes as we had been on the topic of Elemental Cores and finding our opponents' weaknesses. But how could I forget the essential thing within a mission like this?! The motive of the target and why we need to stop them in the first place.

I've mentioned all of the targets being children, but why are we confronting them in the first place? As an assassin that dishes out the command given to her, I would need sufficient reasoning to go on the kill, or else my work would be no different from a madman.

Sure, these five Mages are all working for Fabian Brookes, a Mage responsible for the vanishing of several children throughout the Briton Domain. So my next thing was to find out how each of the Mages helped Fabian Brookes in his crimes and their motives. And my search worries me.

I didn't want to use the archives, so I asked Vania to help me out on this information dump. Mistakes were made today as I got to see the many deeds that Fabian Brooke has done to the innocent. I couldn't comprehend how much of an atrocious man was Fabian Brookes.

Hell, he made Hitler sound like a saint with everything he had threatened to do to the five kids. And the worst part about everything was that Fabian didn't scout out these five children as we had thought. No, they were part of a massive group of refugee Mages.

Those willing to hunt down humans and use their corpses to build a home and shelter for themselves were spared from the endless torture and horrors of Fabian's punishments. He had an infinite supply of 'Servants,' copies of himself to dish out tortures.