A Hidden Blade (2)
I had absolutely no intention of shivering in a nightmare, waiting to see what my fate would be. Since the traitor of the Marseille branch had already slipped away to the rear, it was now a two-on-one situation. I wasn't in a vastly different position, but my opponent didn't know how strong I had become since the fall of Kaliningrad either. He could only know what I had done in the UK through indirect reports. Furthermore, I held the advantage of surprise. By tampering with Anatoly Pushkov's soul in the catacombs, I had lulled the Marseille faction into a false sense of security. Their current response was likely nothing more than a cautious 'just in case' measure. If they hadn't been so complacent, this would have been a much harder fight, so it was actually a stroke of luck. In other words, I had no reason to tremble in fear. The only question left to consider was not 'Can I win?' but 'How do I win?'
"Pavel, don't move until I give the signal."
Just as I always gave my all, I expected my enemies to do the same. It would be nice if they played dumb, but one couldn't build a grand strategy on such wishful thinking. In that sense, it was wiser to keep Pavel slightly back. Though he wasn't a complete novice to the magical path, the sheer scale of the clash of forces about to occur would be on an entirely different level. For now, it would be enough if he could just distract the enemy mage. Perhaps that distraction would allow me to seize the perfect opportunity and secure a decisive victory. Feigning composure, I spoke.
"Let's get one thing straight first. Are you absolutely sure you were in Kaliningrad that day?"
"Why? Do you think I'm lying?"
"No, I'm just trying to decide."
"Decide what?"
"Whether to just kill you normally, or obliterate you so thoroughly that not even a corpse remains."
There was no need to wait for an answer. Nor was there any need to hesitate. I had plenty of aces up my sleeve—hidden trump cards. Extending my shadow, I unleashed a swarm of shadow hands toward the enemy mage. The materialized shadows surged directly toward the target. Hidden within their palms were razor-sharp blades. He wouldn't have the means to snap four or five shadow limbs all at once; the moment even one got close enough, I could open a mouth in its palm and swing the blade.
The materialist mage reacted instantly, as if he had been waiting for this. He unleashed a barrage of pre-loaded magic bullets through the air. Instantly, holes were punched through the hands and arms of my shadow beasts. Even though they had materialized, the attacks felt incredibly painful, perhaps because they were heavily infused with magic. I tried to pull in the surrounding liquid shadow to patch up the gaps, but the rate of loss was simply too high.
As expected, it's too much...! The matchup was terrible. Perhaps because they were magic shaped charge shells, they were piercing through my Schattenmaiden—which was normally impervious to conventional weapons—as if it were mere paper.
The materialist mage sneered. "Magic that only Nazi bastards would use. I don't know where you dug that up... but is that really all you've got?"
He was clearly well-versed in magic. The moment he saw the shadow hands, he had already deduced that it was a form of primordial magic passed down in Germany.
Clang! A sharp metallic ring echoed. Of all places, the bullet had struck the exact spot where the dagger was hidden...! The sight of the dagger flying through the air, deflected, was a stroke of bad luck that rendered all my carefully laid backup plans useless. In that case, I had no choice but to improvise and close the distance...!
I rolled to the side just as the alarm of my improved Rosetta Stone blared in my mind. A magic bullet detonated with a directional explosion right where I had been standing a split second ago. Concrete dust clung to my hair and skin, and the hem of my dress tore with a sharp rip, but none of that mattered right now. I used my shadow to snatch the deflected dagger out of midair, pulling it back. As long as the shadow remained unbroken, I could move things freely within it.
Without a moment's hesitation, I slashed my own wrist. Pavel would undoubtedly look at me with sorrow, but I couldn't afford to be picky about my methods right now. The Council's materialist frowned, watching my seemingly bizarre action with a look of bewilderment.
"You use a hodgepodge of magic. Is that a technique to conditionally boost your magical output using blood as a medium?"
"And what if it is?"
"What indeed? It simply means that even after I present you to the Magisters, there will be more relics left over for me to claim."
An incredibly confident assessment. But it wasn't unreasonable for him to look down on me like this. Just as it was with Pavel and the other mages of the Syndicate, it was generally true that a mage's power was proportional to the time they had spent walking the magical path. I slipped the blood-soaked dagger back into my shadow. I had long abandoned any hope of inducing fear. My goal was simply to distract him with the unknown, leaving him wondering when and from where a hidden weapon might fly. A dull, throbbing pain radiated from my slashed wrist. Yet, the stinging ache that built up with every heartbeat was actually welcome.
"Haaah..." The expansion of my senses was directly proportional to the blood loss. It was a mage's instinct, transcending the five physical senses. My resonance with the improved Rosetta Stone transformed into an additional warning bell.
Thump-bang! A magic bullet that was about to be fired at me detonated prematurely. Thanks to the heightened perception granted by my expanded senses, I could detect the formation of his magic bullets much faster. Seizing the opportunity, I projected my own magic to detonate his magic bullet before the shaped charge spell could fully load inside it. Because part of the explosion materialized physically, a violent gust of wind swept through the room, sending furniture and debris flying in all directions.
"You've certainly... changed your tune!" the materialist shouted, his voice ringing out more clearly than before. Letting his roar go in one ear and out the other, I expanded the scope of my realization. I see... so that's how it works. I felt like I could do it now. I engraved a flickering magical trace into the space, drawing an imaginary line of fire toward the target. Then, without a single shred of hesitation, I fired...!
Kabaam—! The second wave of magic bullets flying toward me detonated all at once. The directional explosion magic charged inside them failed to reach its target, dissolving into a multi-directional shockwave. "You copied my magic bullets...!?" This time, I had successfully thrown him into a panic. Unless a spell required highly specific materials to cast, there was no magic that couldn't be replicated once you understood its mechanism from top to bottom.
"Haa... Why? It's not like this is your unique signature magic. Is it really that surprising?" Unfortunately for him, I had always been quite good at mimicking magic I saw for the first time. In my line of work, surviving meant being able to deduce the function of any newly excavated or activated relic on the fly. If you knew how to activate it, you could easily figure out how to make it go haywire. When dealing with 'employers' who could turn into thugs at any moment, the threat of "If you discard me, I'll detonate this relic right now" worked with a very high success rate. So, if it wasn't a national treasure like the Rosetta Stone, but merely a spell used by an individual mage...!
Since I wasn't trained in this specific school of magic, a perfect replication was naturally difficult. However, it was well within my capabilities to gloss over the minor details and recreate just the core form. While the shockwave had spread in all directions, the leakage of magical traces from the premature detonation formed a fan shape centered around me. Using those traces as raw material, I shaped a multitude of magic bullets flying in the exact opposite direction. The very magic bullets that had once targeted me were now recharged with the shaped charge spell, returning to their creator. And they did so with explosive force.
"Fine then! I'll just have to take your corpse back!" the commie bastard shrieked, the veins in his neck bulging. What a lunatic...! His response wasn't to block the magic bullets I had replicated, but to conjure a fresh batch of his own to attack me. It was a move perfectly aligned with the adage 'the best defense is a good offense.' I could feel his damn resolve—he didn't give a single shit if his own defensive magic suffered irreparable damage.
"Suka...!" Unlike him, my only option was to dodge. A mage was ultimately bound to physical reality, and Yerina's body was fragile enough that a single direct hit from a magic bullet would take me out instantly. The only consolation was that rolling ungracefully on the floor wouldn't kill me. The warning bells of the improved Rosetta Stone mapped out the trajectories of the magic bullets as illusory lines. They were lines of death, perceivable only through the senses of the soul. Fortunately, I managed to dodge every single one of them, but I had no way to prevent more than half of my prepared magic bullets from dissolving back into magical traces. Still, ten to twenty percent remained. I fired all the remaining directional magic bullets at the materialist mage, and they found their mark.
"Ha! Did you really think you could wound me with my own weapon?" "Tsk..." But a hit didn't necessarily mean a telling blow. He was a mage who had used these magic bullets countless times in actual combat. He knew their strengths and weaknesses inside and out. In that case, I had to attack with my own weapon...! Wasn't there something he had forgotten all this time?
"What the...!?" He had been so engrossed by the fact that I had copied his magic bullets that he was too slow to notice the Schattenmaiden stretching through the air, its palm splitting open to reveal a gaping mouth. Without hesitation, the open mouth spat out a projectile with ferocious force. Though it looked like a crude spit, the carefully calibrated trajectory placed the enemy mage dead center. The sharp blade shot forward like a thrown knife, slicing through the air. At the same time, the magic bullets I had fired detonated against his defensive magic with a deafening roar. I wasn't just standing idle either. Leaving the shadow beast on autopilot, I kept pushing to carve out a breakthrough of my own.
A magical breach had clearly formed in the center of his barrier. If one could illustrate magic for ordinary humans to see, it would look like a gaping hole in the ozone layer. Once a structure began to collapse, its self-destruction accelerated, and without the infusion of additional magical resources, the barrier would eventually vanish entirely. And right through that gap, the sharp blade slipped in. Although the blade was aimed at his heart, it didn't matter if it missed the mark. The mage's superhuman crisis-detection ability deflected the sharp edge aiming for his vitals. Clang! Moving his hand with blinding speed, he deflected the blade. Losing its momentum, the dagger bounced off the floor, spun, and came to a halt. But this was more than enough. One way or another, deflecting the blade had cost him an irreversible injury. A single drop of blood was all it took. Because now, the blade, the ancient relic, and thus my very soul, could truly gaze upon the enemy.
I backed away slightly to catch my breath. As I willingly answered my lungs' desperate plea for oxygen, a brief, bizarre standoff ensued.
"Haah... You were so confident, but is this really all you've got?"
"A mere scavenger gathering scraps from here and there without any discipline...! I suppose that was the only way you could quickly boost your power after your father died!"
"Hmm, that's true. But aren't you on the verge of defeat by those very scraps? Your argument isn't very convincing, is it?"
His accusation that I used too wide a variety of magic was true. Setting aside common modern magic like telekinesis and defensive barriers, Schattenmaiden was something I had acquired in Germany in my past life, and the dagger I had plundered from that white nigger in Northern Ireland was highly unlikely to be of British make. And then there was Charm, whose origins I didn't even know. But so what? The foundation of my magic wasn't just broad; it was both broad and deep. At least deep enough to easily tear a communist to shreds.