Pillar of Blue Fire
KRA-KOOM!!!
A colossal pillar of blue fire erupted skyward with a deafening roar.
It was the very place where Taylor Winchester and Jack Richmond’s battle raged at its fiercest.
The shockwaves of their clash set the surrounding trees ablaze, and in an instant the forest became a living hell of flame. Acrid black smoke billowed upward until it blotted out the entire sky, while searing heat painted the earth and timber a furious scarlet.
“Ah… Young Master…!”
Elizabeth was racing with Angela toward the lake marked on the map, desperate to save Enri. Even in that urgent moment she could not tear her gaze from the distant pillar of fire. At last she stopped dead in the heart of the burning woods, her legs simply giving out beneath her.
Ah…
Fear and sorrow crashed over her in relentless waves; a splitting headache twisted through her skull. It was a sensation she had tasted to the bone once before—helplessness.
Am I repeating the same mistake? Leaving the Young Master alone again while I run away…?
The trauma carved deep into her heart seized her ankles and refused to let go. In her foolish childhood she had abandoned Taylor Winchester at his lowest point and fled alone. She had done it for his sake, yet with time she came to understand how deeply her choice must have wounded him. By the time she realized her error, it was already too late. The Winchester ducal house had locked its gates and refused every visitor. She never even managed a proper apology to her fiancé, and the regret that followed nearly crushed her.
So she had sworn: never again would she run. She would face every hardship with everything she had. She polished her talent harder than any of her peers and made her fiancé’s long-ago dream her own, believing it the only atonement she could offer him.
Fortune smiled; her talent was the S-Rank gift known as Wind of the Azure Sky. Every effort returned immediate reward, and she grew faster than anyone. Family, servants, everyone around her heaped praise upon her. When she claimed the title of top student at the Hero Academy, the expectations only grew heavier—now the academy staff themselves watched her with shining eyes. For a teenage girl the pressure was crushing, yet to Elizabeth that very weight was fuel. It was proof she was on the right path, a living milestone confirming that every choice she had made so far had not been wrong.
Years later she entered the academy and reunited with her fiancé, Taylor Winchester. The boy she met again looked every bit the prince she had once imagined. At first she grieved when he seemed to avoid her, yet the time they spent together taught her that, though he had grown more taciturn, he remained the same kind soul who always put others first. She nursed him through the night when he was wounded. They shared their first date in the village and she received a gift. She joined his party and, for the first time in her life, made friends of her own gender. Drunk on that happiness, she had woken to find herself here—torn from the sweet dream and forced to face reality once more: fleeing while leaving the person she cherished alone.
If only I had tried a little harder… if only I had been a little stronger…
What dragged her from the darkness was Angela, who had been running ahead.
“Lady Elizabeth, please snap out of it!”
“……”
When had she come so close? Elizabeth lifted her head and met the red eyes of Angela Schutzbury. Soot streaked Angela’s face as she carried the unconscious Enri on her back; she looked frantic, yet her gaze burned with unyielding will and fighting spirit instead of despair or fear.
“Angela…”
“Pull yourself together! What did you promise the Young Master just now?! You said you would heal Enri and return to him no matter what!”
“……!”
The word promise yanked her drowning mind straight to the surface.
That’s right… I did…
Angela was correct. There was still something she absolutely had to do. She had sworn it to him.
Focus returned to her clouded blue eyes.
“…I’m all right now. Truly.”
Elizabeth studied Angela’s face for a moment, then closed her eyes tightly and opened them again.
“Angela, I’m so sorry for worrying you.”
When their gazes met once more, the two pairs of eyes looked almost identical.
The storm of flame that rolled toward me, thick with suffocating heat, was no easy thing to endure even with a dragon’s mana.
—KRA-KOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!!
“Die!! Die!! Just disappear already, you insect!!”
Blue fire swallowed the surroundings and scorched everything in sight, yet it never managed a decisive blow against me. Was it the superior affinity of my mana? Or the reinforced armor Harson had forged for me? Both played a part, of course—but a clearer reason stood right in front of me.
Even though the firepower was vastly stronger than last time, his skill execution and mana control looked absurdly crude. Just as I once struggled to contain a dragon’s mana, he was simply dumping power he could not handle in wild, uncontrolled bursts.
I at least had Beatrix as an exception—
Where the hell had he gotten mana like that? I still had no idea how or why he had suddenly grown so strong.
No matter how flashy or powerful a skill is, crude handling makes its weaknesses scream for attention.
“Found it.”
After a few exchanges I began to map the gaps in his technique.
“!!”
I drove the golden spear in my right hand—Gungnir—straight into a flaw in the flaming storm. Whether the skill itself was already straining him or not, he failed to react to my thrust.
Thuck!
“GAAAAAAAH!!”
The spear punched clean through his shoulder; a heartbeat later crimson mana that looked like fresh blood erupted along the shaft. Screaming from the pain, he still refused to take the hit lying down and clamped both hands around the spear that impaled him.
“Drop dead!”
Flame raced up Gungnir and engulfed me in an instant.
“Kh!”
Even I could not tank a phoenix’s fire indefinitely. I ripped the spear free and leapt back.
He’s a damn zombie…
The moment the spear left his flesh, blue fire gushed from the wound and the injury sealed itself at terrifying speed.
“Khk! How dare a worm like you wound me!!”
Realizing that his sloppy skill use had let me counter him so easily, he changed tactics. His new choice was brutally simple and brutally effective.
“DIIIIIE!!”
Layer upon layer of flame poured out, a prison of fire that advanced without pattern or pause.
If there’s nowhere to dodge, the only option is to punch straight through.
Bracing for injury, I poured mana into Gungnir.
“<Crush the enemy with movements like light.>”
Charge of Annihilation
I lowered my stance, drove power into my legs, and exploded forward like a gale, tearing straight through the searing flames toward their source. Even wrapped in mana, the fire that licked my skin delivered constant, vicious pain.
Aaaagh! Damn it, that’s hot!!
The flames whipped harder, determined to keep me at bay.
“Why?! Why won’t you fall?!”
The closer I drew, the more panic flooded his eyes. The Richmond marquisate’s bloodline talent, Phoenix, was a terrifying power that devoured not only its user’s mana but an opponent’s as well, growing endlessly stronger. Yet his flames had already weakened noticeably from the start. The blue fire that should have been feeding on my mana and burning ever brighter was instead failing to swallow my crimson power and slowly dying out.
High-rank skills demand absolute mana in proportion to their absolute might. However he had obtained so much power, every well eventually runs dry. Watching him wring every last drop of mana to control the flames was like watching a cornered beast teetering on the edge of a cliff.
“You insecttttt!!”
“This one’s for Greenie.”
Thuck!!
Fwoooosh!
Gungnir, empowered by Charge of Annihilation, punched clean through his body. A fountain of blood erupted from his chest.
“GAAAAAAHK!!”
The hole left in his torso looked twice the size of the wound Enri had suffered.
“Khuhk… urrgh… khaaaah!!”
With a final, wretched scream the blue-burning body locked up as if every string holding a puppet had been cut.
“Kh!”
Crack.
Then, with a grotesque sound of twisting bone, every joint in his body began to bend the wrong way.
Crunch. Crrrunch.
What the hell is that…?
Goosebumps raced across my skin. From the pierced chest a massive blaze erupted, and an enormous volume of mana began condensing at terrifying speed.
Oh, shit—!!
Dodge! This is dangerous!
Even without Beatrix’s warning it looked lethally obvious.
Gooooooooh!!!
The howling of mana that shook the air finally fell silent—
KRA-KOOM——!!
—and a blue flash exploded outward, swallowing everything around us in an instant.