The Forest of the Mage (5)
All spirits possess a special innate ability known as Evasion.
Translated literally, it means just that: evasion.
But unlike the unassuming word itself, the ability was far more sinister than one might think.
It grants absolute immunity to all physical attacks. Save for a tiny handful of exceptions, this is precisely why a spirit must be faced by a spirit-user or a mage.
What's more, beyond its immunity to physical attacks, Evasion also reduces any damage a spiritual body does take—which means even a lower spirit won't go down easily to anything less than magic of the 4th Star Rank or above.
It's from this that the old adage arises: to beginners, a spirit is a more troublesome foe than even the mightiest of monsters.
"Damn it all."
And the one we now faced was a Medium Spirit—by no means a common grunt, but an elite among its kind.
With such a thing set against us, a bitter groan slipped out of my mouth of its own accord.
Rone had tried a 3rd Tier spell, but the effect had been negligible. The spirit's body had seemed to bore a hole through it for an instant, only to regenerate before our eyes.
In the end, bringing it down meant landing a blow powerful enough to overcome that absurdly cheating body of its—and right now, no suitable method came to mind.
It might be different if my sword could at least connect with the spiritual form, but that was about the extent of my options.
Crack!
I was still searching for an opening.
As if intent on giving us no room to breathe, cold lightning came pouring down from the sky yet again.
Fortunately, I managed to roll across the ground and dodge it somehow.
But when I lifted my head, I saw it—blue lightning coalescing above Aldric's head.
"Aldric! Look out!"
I shouted his name in desperation. Yet by the moment Aldric reacted to my voice, the lightning had already reached him.
Too late—a hollow thought, fleeting as it was—
KRAKOOM!
The lightning struck a silver veil that had formed above Aldric's head, deflecting in a spray of sparks in every direction.
"Dodge, now!"
"……!"
At the voice from behind, I turned to find Rone standing there, arm outstretched, straining to hold the barrier steady.
Seeing this, Aldric dove out from beneath the veil, which looked ready to shatter at any second.
The instant he did, a sound like glass shattering to pieces rang out. The silver barrier Rone had cast scattered into shards of light without leaving so much as a trace behind.
Truly remarkable.
She had only bought a moment's respite from the lightning, but it was a scene that drove home, all over again, exactly why Rone was called a genius.
The rear guard had been holding off Sirius himself with offensive spells of her own—and even amid all that, she had found room to spread a magical barrier over the front line as well.
No wonder Enya, standing beside her, was looking up at Rone with eyes full of reverence.
"Not bad, for a student."
At the sight, a low murmur of admiration escaped even Sirius's lips.
I couldn't tell whether it was sincere or empty flattery, but that air of feigned composure of his grated on my nerves.
My one great regret was that I hadn't managed to tear off an arm with that earlier strike of mine.
Still—this isn't a fight we can't win.
I rose to my feet, gripping my sword tight.
The small mercy was that piloting the Medium Spirit seemed to demand more of his strength than expected, because he wasn't launching the kind of attacks that had manipulated the surrounding trees and brush like before.
Which meant that if we could evade the spirit's assaults and close the distance to him one more time, an opening might just present itself.
But that would require one of us to draw the attention of both the spirit and Sirius.
"Aldric."
"What?"
Having dropped back to stand as close to the rear guard as possible, I called quietly to Aldric at my side.
"I'll pull the spirit's attention. You take the mage—with the other two backing you up."
"You sure about that? One hit from that attack and it's over."
Remembering the bolt that had fallen moments ago, Aldric stiffened, his voice thick with worry.
He had a point. If even the barrier Rone cast had only stopped it for a heartbeat, I didn't want to imagine what a direct, unguarded hit would do.
But one of us front-liners had to either block or evade that attack regardless. And better that it be me, with quicker footwork, than Aldric lugging around a clumsy weapon like a partisan.
"I can manage. Besides, that mage will be keeping an eye on me anyway."
I'd already laid the groundwork. The strike earlier hadn't killed him, but the fact that Sirius had momentarily lost sight of me was surely carved into his mind now.
Which meant, whether he liked it or not, he would strain to keep me within his field of vision. All I had to do was exploit that—move as loudly and flashily as I could.
"You two heard the plan, right? I'm counting on you."
"Got it. We'll do our best."
"Stay safe, Vel."
"That's the plan. I don't feel like dying in a dump like this."
With a faint smile, I took the first step forward. No sooner had I moved than the index and middle fingers of Sirius's left hand—the hand commanding the spirit—curved slightly.
A motion I'd seen several times now. Instinctively, I knew what the lightning spirit he commanded would do next.
It's going to charge.
So instead of waiting to see it with my own eyes, I threw myself to the right, putting as much distance between me and my companions as possible.
BOOM!
Just as predicted, the lightning spirit slammed its massive bulk straight into the ground where I'd stood.
True to his alias, the Puppeteer—Sirius was steering this spirit with invisible threads of magic woven through his fingers.
Which meant that if I could read his hands, predicting a pattern or two in advance wasn't impossible at all.
What's more, judging by how he hadn't spammed the lightning attack earlier, he apparently needed some recharge time after all.
At this rate, we had a fighting chance.
Fwoom!
The instant I dashed headlong toward the spirit, several small flames flickered to life above Rone's and Enya's heads. With Sirius's and the spirit's gazes locked on me, they meant to strike with a swift attack of their own.
A sound decision. Then it fell to me, as the bait, to charge as honestly and directly as possible from the front—carrying the thought that even if this attack was blocked, it didn't matter.
As if obliging, the lightning spirit twisted its body until it faced me perfectly. On the far side, I could see Aldric sprinting for Sirius's back, no longer shielded by the spirit's protection.
The moment I thought, he'll take the bait, and pushed off toward the spirit—
CRACK!
A bone-chilling sound rang out behind me once more. In my field of view, as I turned with the spirit still at my back, was Enya's figure—black smoke rising from her body.
A moment later she pitched forward and crumpled, lifeless, onto the frigid brush.
"Damn it all!"
Aldric, belatedly grasping what had happened, abandoned his attack and bolted for the rear guard.
"……"
Having watched the whole sequence play out, I cracked my aching neck. Behind the spirit's translucent form, a deep smile had settled at the corner of Sirius's mouth.
At the sight of it, I ground my teeth and clenched my sword until it creaked.
He'd deliberately pretended his attention was fixed on me—deliberately ignored Aldric at his back—to strike at the rear guard first. It was possible, even, that the glaring opening he'd shown earlier had been nothing but a trap, laid to force two of us into casting spells at the same moment. If either of his hands had been left free, he could have intercepted the lightning for them, just as he'd done before.
Still—that lightning. Wasn't it supposed to take considerable time to cast again?
Perhaps he'd shortened the reuse time by siphoning his master's mana. One thing was certain either way: the situation was thoroughly fucked.
"Shortsighted of you."
At Sirius's laughter-laced words, my body nearly lunged forward on reflex—but I suppressed the emotion as best I could and reset my stance. Because if I fell too, in this state, it would all be over.
"That makes it two to one."
Sirius cast his gaze toward me and intoned the words in a voice unmistakably laced with mockery.
He was right. Even if Rone poured healing magic into Enya, neither of them would be able to rejoin the fight while doing so. And so long as another bolt of lightning might fall on the rear guard at any moment, Aldric had no choice but to stand guard at their side.
In other words, from here on out, I alone would have to stall both of them somehow.
But that alone won't be enough.
I pushed the thought aside and fell into deep contemplation. Time that four of us together couldn't buy—how long could I stretch it by throwing this one body of mine at them? And this time there'd be no magic support, no second front-liner to flank with. Assuming that lightning attack came at me and me alone, surviving even one minute would be a miracle.
Swish.
Having thought it through that far, I raised my sword to shoulder height and settled into a stance that looked ready to charge at any moment. If buying time was hopeless, then there was nothing for it but to hurl myself at them with the will to die.
"A delaying tactic, then?"
"No."
I shook my head at Sirius's question, narrowed my eyes, and swept my gaze over the spirit's form once more—the thing that had seemed so impossibly massive until now.
That's right. It was me who had been the fool. Why had I agonized so endlessly over a problem that could be solved by simply cutting down the enemies before my eyes, and manufactured such a god-awful situation for myself in the process?
I had gotten scared early on. Convinced, without ever testing it, that this was an enemy I couldn't beat. That against a foe even Rone's and Enya's magic had failed to touch, my sword could never land. That some nobody who wasn't even the protagonist had no business being arrogant.
Harboring such pathetic thoughts, I had plainly given up on winning from the very start.
And the moment I admitted it, my mind—shrouded in haze just moments before—felt as though it had been wiped clean.
"Foolish bravado."
"Only one way to find out."
Watching me reset my stance, Sirius declared coldly. But I bared my teeth in a smile.
He was right about one thing: me, someone who couldn't even cast a proper spell, swinging a sword at a spiritual body—there was no doubt it was madness. I had no confidence of victory, either. It was simply that if I didn't win, everything ended anyway. That alone was reason enough to raise my sword.
Crackle.
The spirit's form flickered at the edge of my vision, sparks scattering in every direction. The image of moments ago—how no matter how I swung, it snapped back to normal in an instant—burned itself into my mind. That scene flickered past like a lantern show at the edge of death. And somehow, every single frame of it felt as though it were mocking me, jeering: Look at you. You'll fail anyway.
But then a single phrase rose up behind them, and wiped every one of those images clean away.
'Abandon the thought that it cannot be cut. There is nothing a sword bearing true will cannot defeat.'
The verse that surfaced in my consciousness played back in the voice of some man I'd never heard before.
Who had said it? That much wouldn't come to me. But one thing was certain: it was the only thing left for me to lean on right now. A single line someone had once spoken—groundless, and grasping at clouds. Fixing my whole mind on it, I kicked off the ground and charged at the enemy before me, as if to hurl even the faint tremor of doubt—that if this attack failed, everything would come to nothing—into that single stroke.
And so I swung my sword with all my might at the lightning spirit.
Fast. Hard. Unwavering.
I even erased from my mind the countless thoughts that had surfaced every time I'd ever swung a blade. Carrying nothing but the conviction that I could cut it—in my body, in my sword—I took one step forward.
Slaaash.
As if the world had answered that resolve—unlike the sensation of slicing empty air from before, I distinctly felt something connect at the tip of my blade.
The spirit's upper body split cleanly apart, and Sirius's face, hidden behind it, came sharply into view. In those eyes flickered a single thread of alarm.
"Kuh…!"
Belatedly, a beam of light shot from the palm Sirius raised. And the instant I saw it, the thought that came to me was neither to dodge nor to block.
'Cut through it.' That was all.
Crunch.
My body was swallowed by the light—flesh flayed away, my bones shrieking—but I gritted my teeth and drove forward. The sword felt heavier in my hands than it ever had, but one strike is all I need, I screamed inwardly—a plea to no one I could name.
My hands wrenched the blade through its great arc, and the golden light that had swallowed my vision split apart, at last, from side to side.
Just like the déjà vu from moments ago, Sirius's figure—once hidden within that light—was revealed again.
"Die, you bastard."
This time it was I who wore the sneer, as I thrust my sword forward with everything left in me. Then came the strange sensation of the blade sinking into something—and red liquid bloomed into the air.
Something scalding soaked my nose, my forearms, my thighs without discrimination, and then came the sensation of something burning out entirely inside my skull.
And so my vision went dark.