More Reliable Than Anyone 5
Han Se-ah is an outstanding mage.
That is not me looking at her inventory and minimap the way the rest of the party does and declaring, "Hanna is a genius mage!" Nor is it me, as a viewer of her stream, teasing her with "Our shining (as in lighting fixture) genius mage!"
From the moment she rode the tutorial's rickety carriage into the city, learned Magic Missile and a handful of other spells, climbed the tower, raised her realm, and finally mastered the upper-grade magic Call Lightning… she has never once made a mistake while casting.
Not when she sealed a goblin's nose with Water magic. Not when she caved in a wolf's skull with Magic Missile. Not when she seared an orc's armpit with Spark, scattered a swarm of bats with Gust of Wind, or blinded a giant with Light. In every single one of those moments.
She's more talented than I thought. Like the protagonist of some novel.
Thinking about it, it really was remarkable. For a Level 1 RPG player to clear the game, hunt four bosses, and grow the whole way without any major mistakes or dying along the way. Han Se-ah's biggest slip-up was probably just letting her guard down and nearly getting into danger, right?
Of course, even so, the viewers still treat her like some construction-site foreman.
"Somehow it feels like I'm using basic magic the most, just like Roland said."
She used Spark to light the campfire kit, Water to fill the pot for Irene who was prepping dinner, and one more Light spell because a single campfire left the cave too dim for streaming.
On the road toward the Harpy Nest on the 43rd Floor, there had been no occasion to use the upper-grade magic Call Lightning. She was simply running basic spells nonstop, so the viewers' teasing was hardly surprising. The stream title promised lightning, yet in reality she was assisting the cook with basic magic and paving floors with intermediate magic.
Thanks to that, Han Se-ah sat chewing the chunks of stew Irene had simmered while the chat treated her like a day laborer eating lunch on a construction site.
And so the day in the cave passed without a single upper-grade cast, rendering the stream title completely pointless. Then came the next day.
"There. I can see it."
"Hanna? Are we going all the way into the nest, or just grabbing Vacuum Stones and bailing?"
"Let's push as far as we can. We came all this way—it'd be too disappointing to just kill a few harpies at the entrance and leave again. Besides, the red ones seem to have learning ability, unlike the black ones. Constantly exposing ourselves to them probably isn't a good idea."
Aside from dealing with the occasional mountain goat that appeared, they reached the 43rd Floor without a single real fight.
Just as before, towering peaks wrapped thick belts of cloud around their waists, and harpies busily flew back and forth across the sky. The way they flew in organized scouting pairs made them look almost like bees coming and going from a hive.
This was not the shortest path between gates; it was a somewhat remote stretch, and the dense clouds seemed to function as a magical barrier. No traces of other adventurers were visible. Following the same route as last time, they advanced until distance itself seemed to act as a trigger—a flock of harpies immediately dove in.
"They're coming. Should I cast?"
"No. If we open with magic right away, they might cut the path with Vacuum Stones from far off. Get as close as possible, look for an opening, and make securing Vacuum Stones the priority over casting."
The flock punched through the clouds and began circling overhead in a threatening spiral. The way they drifted closer then pulled back felt like a murder threat, a promise of a diving strike.
The battle that followed was no different from the last one. Harpies raked downward with razor talons; the party smashed them aside and drove them off. As ordinary trash mobs rather than gacha characters, they had no varied patterns and no clever schemes—just the simple habit of diving from above to below.
Flying was annoying, sure, but no upper-grade adventurer was going to die to a pair of eagle claws.
"They're falling back! They'll come again with reinforcements!"
"We'll rest a bit in the next cave, then head straight out. If we throw Vacuum Stones from too far away, we won't be able to fulfill Elder Bobo's request."
"I'm curious about the harpy nest too, but cooperation with the Stone Dwarves is important."
"Exactly. Even inside the Demon King's Tower, they remain uncorrupted by demonic energy and keep their wits about them."
Harpies were crushed under maces, caught in explosive arrows and plummeted, had their bellies sliced open and frozen solid, had their wing joints snapped by gales and crashed. Once again roughly half the mana stones vanished into the dark abyss below, and the first fight ended simply.
The problem was that they still didn't know exactly when those things would drop Vacuum Stones…
But this was a game. Wouldn't they try to collapse the exact same spot as last time? If Vivi Games had any conscience at all, they would have at least set that much in place as a bare minimum of consideration. The place where the mountain trail that wound along the ridge turned into a cliff path.
In the distance, another flock of harpies came flying.
After repeating the same fight several times, they had returned to the very spot where they had once retreated with tears in their eyes. Not only Grace, but Roland and the rest of the party could also see the point where the trail on the slope ended and the cliff path began.
"Grace!"
"No Vacuum Stones!"
"Then I'll prep the magic!"
The fact that this flock carried no Vacuum Stones meant that once they wiped them out, the next group would almost certainly bring some. Acting on that guess, they immediately put Han Se-ah at the front.
The harpies came charging fiercely through the thick white clouds that stood like a barrier, but they had chosen the wrong opponent. The player who had loudly promised her viewers she would show them upper-grade magic—and had been burning with frustration at not being able to deliver until now—was waiting for them.
The lightning mana that was supposedly hard to control gathered as meekly as a flock of sheep and formed dark clouds.
"You don't have to wipe them all out in one hit, Hanna."
"I know. But… I want to try."
In the open sky, dark clouds crackling with blue-white current gathered in place of fluffy white cumulus, yet the black harpies had no idea. The eagles with old women's heads had never once encountered a threat that stood above them.
No matter how much education they had received from gacha characters, to them the enemy was always below. The only things that belonged in the sky were their own kind and their leader.
The tower's fields, which never experienced climate change, played their part as well. Born and raised their entire lives inside the tower, the harpies knew nothing of rain or wind, nothing of typhoons or storms, and nothing at all of the lightning cradled inside dark clouds or the destructive force of a bolt striking home.
And the fate that awaits a beast that has never learned is only a merciless death.
"—Call Lightning!"
Perhaps because the nest was close, a flock of nearly thirty harpies came diving in—but of course the speed of falling lightning far outstripped the speed of harpies diving toward them.
The staff struck the trail; a clear, ringing chant rolled out. As if answering the call, the dark clouds freely released the vicious lightning they had been holding. Lightning pillars with enough force not merely to burn but to physically shatter even a great tree slammed into the harpies that had been flying fearlessly beneath the clouds.
When a single pillar split like the branches of a tree until it finally became thirty separate forks, the delayed thunderclap rolled across the sky—and nothing remained above.
"…Was that too strong? I think the mana stones got blasted away too."
"No, you did great. I'll go on ahead—the rest of you catch your breath here."
"Be careful, Roland."
While Han Se-ah, bathed in the viewers' praise and Irene's gentle hands, steadied her breathing and swayed on her feet, Roland tossed her a word of praise without the slightest hesitation and sprinted forward.
A whole flock of harpies had just been annihilated right before the cliff path began, so the only option left to them was to collapse the cliff with Vacuum Stones. Careful not to destroy the trail under his own feet, he raced ahead—and saw a flock of harpies hurriedly rising out of the clouds.
"Roland! The harpies! Vacuum Stones!"
Just as Grace shouted, the creatures came flapping toward them with great red chunks of rock clutched in their massive talons, like eagles that had snatched up stones to smash a turtle's shell.
The clenched claws snapped open, and the crimson rocks fell like bombs released from a bomber, unable to defy gravity, dropping lower and lower.
Instead of mace and shield, what Roland held in his hands was a sealing cloth—a magic tool he had bought at the Magic Tower. If he could just catch the Vacuum Stones with it and wrap them—
…Shit. They're throwing them farther than I thought.
The problem was that the collapse point he had confirmed through Han Se-ah's stream VODs and the spot where these harpies had thrown the Vacuum Stones were different. Whether because of the distance from him or because they had been spooked by Han Se-ah's magic, it was clearly farther than last time.
"Roland, juuump—!"
Should he leap even if it meant shattering the trail under his own feet?
Or should he jump down the cliff face and catch the Vacuum Stones that were about to disintegrate the rock?
The deliberation was short, and Han Se-ah's voice from behind him moved his body on pure instinct. The party leader was Han Se-ah, and she also possessed the ability to reverse time. So the tank trusted the leader's command and moved without hesitation.
He slammed mana into his legs and launched himself forward from a distance that should have been unreachable—but it was still a little short. He threw his body with the force of a fox diving headfirst into the ground after prey, yet the harpies had flung the Vacuum Stones from too far away and fled.
"—Gust of Wind!"
But in Heroes Chronicle, a mage is not a mere DPS—she is a universal problem-solver.
"Got it!"
A gale slammed into his face, and the spinning boulder that had been plummeting through empty air suddenly changed direction toward him as if it had turned into a balloon.
A wind spell wrung from the last scraps of mana left after casting Call Lightning. Pushing a rock with wind—truly the kind of feat only an upper-grade mage could pull off.