The Magician's Forest (2)
For first-time visitors to the Magician's Forest, the greatest trial by far was finding their way.
Trees that looked identical no matter which direction you walked, an environment where even light struggled to filter through the canopy. Above all, the place was all but deserted, leaving almost no trace of human passage—so whenever someone strayed from the path, they had no choice but to carve out a new route from scratch. That was the biggest reason the forest claimed its victims.
And the Academy's cadets were no exception.
Most of the students here were precious scions of noble houses, raised in comfort behind family walls. What experience could such people possibly have with blazing trails through wild forests and exploring uncharted territory?
Swish.
"Ugh, this isn't a path either, I think?"
Swatting away branches and underbrush with the dagger in his hand, Bren—a male cadet—scowled as he peered past the foliage. Beyond it lay a wall of trees and boulders packed so tight that not even a beast, let alone a person, could have passed through.
He was tempted to blast the rocks out of the way with magic, but fear of the monsters lurking nearby kept his hand from rising.
"What? You're the one who said this way!"
At that, Meryl—his partner from the same group—glared at him and raised her voice, as if she'd caught him muttering to himself.
One map had been issued per pair. She'd snatched it away as if it were hers by right and swaggeringly declared that he should just follow her—yet now, of all times, she claims it isn't the right path. He was too dumbfounded to even form words.
They would have been better off checking the map together as they walked. Why shove baseless confidence in people's faces and drag them on a wild goose chase?
"I said it seemed like this way. I never said it was this way. Besides, did you think you could just follow a map perfectly without thinking?"
But Bren, too, was nursing his own frustration at the realization that the route he'd trusted had led nowhere, and no kind words were going to come out of him. He knew perfectly well he'd made a mistake and oversimplified things. He hadn't produced this result out of anything but good intentions, and being yelled at out of nowhere stung. Not to mention, his point wasn't wrong.
In a forest where every stretch looked the same as the next, walking straight ahead rarely meant you were actually going straight. In truth, people ended up circling the same spot endlessly, or found themselves heading in the exact opposite direction before they knew it—there was no end to such cases.
Still, her behavior just now was unmistakably the pot calling the kettle black.
"Then why did you take the map in the first place?! We should've looked at it together!"
"Like you'd know what you're looking at!?"
"How would you know whether I do or not!"
The two of them had planted their feet and were now screaming at each other at full volume. They bickered back and forth for a good long while—
Vwiiing.
—when a strange sound rippled through the air, like an enormous dragonfly sweeping past.
"...Wait. Did you hear that too?"
"I-I heard it. What was that?"
Forgetting their fight entirely, the two edged closer together and turned their heads toward the source of the sound. There, towering before them, stood a tree easily ten times the girth of a grown man's waist. The sound had seemed to come from just beyond it.
"It's not a beast or a monster... right?"
"Then wouldn't we have heard some kind of cry? I-it can't be a spirit, anyway."
With the Spirit King's Touch in hand, the two had nothing to fear from any spirit except the Medium Spirits said to guard the Blessing of Astesia—nothing else could approach them. And as for beasts or monsters, they figured they could handle those one way or another. So they kept their eyes glued to the tree—
Vwoooong.
—when something wreathed in light emerged with an eerie hum.
"A Light Spirit!"
It was shaped like a sphere engulfed entirely in radiance, save for two arm-like protrusions jutting out on either side. The moment Bren's instincts registered it as a Light Spirit, he reflexively drew his dagger and dropped into a fighting stance—utterly useless as a blade would be against a spirit body that physical attacks simply couldn't touch.
"You idiot. Why are you freaking out? We've got this, remember?"
Meryl, keeping a far cooler head, tapped his arm and held up the blue stone clutched in her hand.
"Oh... r-right, of course."
Realizing this, Bren sheepishly scratched his cheek and slid the dagger back into its sheath. He'd been repeating to himself just moments ago that spirits were nothing to worry about—and now he'd forgotten it in an instant. Was he a goldfish? His own idiocy was embarrassing.
And so they stood locked in a staring contest with the Light Spirit—until Bren suddenly registered one odd fact and tilted his head.
"Hey, Meryl."
"What?"
"Wasn't this stone supposed to keep spirits from getting close? But she keeps coming toward us."
"...You're right."
The Light Spirit still hung in the air, humming its vwoooong, and was drifting steadily closer to the pair. A strange unease crawling over her, Meryl began instinctively backing away, one step at a time.
Above all, the strangest thing was that the spirit's body was getting bigger. Of course, things naturally look larger as they approach—but that wasn't what Meryl meant. She meant that the spirit body itself, the thing literally wrapped in light, was swelling like a balloon.
It was no trick of the eye.
Vwiiiing!
Before long, the spirit's movements grew fiercer, its body lashing out as if in open threat. Sensing something deeply wrong in the sight, Meryl carefully took Bren's hand and pulled him back.
"Bren. When I count to three, we both run. At the same time."
"Run? Why?"
"No questions—just listen to me. The way that thing's coming at us is not normal."
"O-okay."
At Meryl's flat declaration, Bren nodded with a stiff face. Her lips finally parted, and a countdown began, pitched just low enough that the Light Spirit couldn't possibly hear it.
"One, two... THREE!"
PAHT!
The instant "three" left her mouth, the two of them sprang off to the right at a dead sprint.
In that same moment—
Zeeeeeng.
—white particles began to gather in front of the Light Spirit's body. The frame that had been swelling for the past minute had already grown to more than twice Bren's height.
Meanwhile, Meryl—who had glanced back over her shoulder mid-flight and seen the sight—went pale as the truth settled over her.
"I knew it—that thing IS a Medium Spirit!"
"WHAT!?"
Bren's eyes flew wide, as if his ears had deceived him. Why would a Medium Spirit—the guardian of the Blessing of Astesia—appear here, of all places? But if it were true, then even the Spirit King's Touch failing them moments ago made perfect sense.
"Meryl! Watch out!"
Soon after, a warning tore from Bren's throat as he stared at the spirit—a cry like a scream. The spirit's head had turned, redirecting itself toward Meryl, who had split off from him mid-run.
By the time she registered it, it was far too late. Reflexively, Meryl pumped mana into the Spirit King's Touch, trying to teleport out of the forest—but the situation was so utterly desperate that the mana wouldn't flow properly at all.
Just as she was drowning in panic—
KWAANG!
—the gathering light before the spirit fired off in a burst, and Meryl's body seemed about to be swallowed, powerless, by the flood of radiance.
In that instant, two voices rang out from somewhere.
"Rone!"
"Got it!"
At the same moment, Meryl felt as though someone had snatched her body clean out of the air.
BOOM!
"Meryl!"
Bren's voice reached her through a roar that left her ears ringing. Meryl, strangely, felt no impact at all—and blinked her tightly shut eyes open.
"You alright?"
There before her was a young man with a somewhat sharp, wild countenance. As Meryl wracked her memory over the vaguely familiar face, she finally placed him—the Class E cadet who'd introduced himself that very morning. Vel Dinauer.
"Y-yeah. I'm fine."
"Good to hear. Rone! How's it looking on your end?"
"I've blocked its line of sight! Looks like the thing's already retreated!"
Vel tossed the question down to Rone below him and nodded in satisfaction. Then, with Meryl still in his arms, he dropped lightly from the tree branch and set her down in the grass—her shoulders and hands trembling violently enough that he could guess she didn't have the strength left to stand.
"Meryl! Are you hurt anywhere!?"
"No... I'm fine."
Bren rushed over a moment later and immediately began checking her over. Whatever their quarrels, she was his friend—they'd been paired together and grown close over the month since enrollment. Which was why he'd been berating himself for failing to throw himself at her in that split second, only for a cadet from another class—the one he'd seen just that morning—to save her in his stead.
It was nothing less than a hand of salvation delivered from the heavens.
"Thank you for saving Meryl. Class E cadet."
Bren rose to his feet and bowed deeply toward Vel, gratitude thick in his voice. In response, Vel simply turned his head away without so much as meeting his eyes. He understood the situation they were in all too well—he had no room to loiter here, not even for a moment.
"Save your thanks. More importantly, get out of the forest. Now."
"What? But—"
"You mean to keep going when your partner's in that state?"
Bren opened his mouth to object, but under Vel's sharp rebuke he pressed his lips shut and nodded. The man was right. Above all, there was no guarantee Meryl—reeling from the shock—could get back on her feet and continue the exploration.
"...Understood. Meryl, hand me that."
"Mm-hmm."
Taking the Spirit King's Touch from her, Bren stared quietly at Vel's profile for a moment before speaking in a low voice.
"I'll thank you properly later. For now, we're getting Meryl to the professors."
"Right."
Vel only gave a brief nod—he had no particular desire to be thanked.
Zzzzeng.
Soon, a blue glow emanated from the Spirit King's Touch, a magic circle blooming beneath the two of them before their figures vanished entirely.
Dammit. It's already started.
Watching them disappear, Vel spat a curse in his mind. This place was unmistakably far from the zone where the Blessing of Astesia grew. Which meant the Light Spirit they'd just encountered was not the Medium Spirit guarding the flower.
In this Magician's Forest, there existed no Medium Spirits apart from the guardians of the bloom—so only two possibilities remained. Either they'd stumbled upon a freak case where a Lower Spirit had evolved into a Medium Spirit in mere moments, or a spirit mage—or someone else—had deliberately forced a Lower Spirit to evolve through some means.
And when he recalled the original novel's episodes, Vel's suspicion narrowed to a single answer.
Bartel. That son of a bitch.
Gritting his teeth, Vel recalled the sequence of Bartel's scheme in the original story. First, the man forcibly drove Lower Spirits berserk, transforming them into Medium Spirits, then set them loose to attack the cadets. Meanwhile, he himself would watch at his leisure until the time of blooming, then slip in and snatch the flower for himself.
In the original, Arden and Rone's pair had unexpectedly reached the site of the Blessing of Astesia ahead of schedule and tried to claim the flower, only for Bartel to ambush them, sparking the battle.
But walking into the tiger's den of my own accord? Not a chance.
Vel didn't like that scenario one bit, either. An ambush, by its very nature, was drowning in variables. Above all, Bartel wielded a special magic that let him conceal himself within surrounding objects—trees, stone, flora—making it nearly impossible to predict where or when the attack would come.
So instead, Vel resolved to turn the tables—to take the very tactic Bartel had used to ambush Arden in the original story and employ it for himself this time. Their goal, after all, was the Blessing of Astesia. To claim it, they would have to show themselves whether they liked it or not.
If he could aim for that moment and bring them down in a single decisive strike... it just might work.
"Rone, listen carefully to what I'm about to say."
"Okay. What is it?"
As Rone drew close, Vel began relaying his instructions in a whisper.
The Blessing of Astesia would serve well enough as bait—but the bigger the bait, the likelier the catch. Hunters, after all, were the last ones to ever suspect that they themselves might become the prey.
Vel decided to aim for exactly that blind spot.