6. A Bird?
Lucia and the red-haired girl pressed forward at a steady pace.
“Kyaak!”
The occasional goblin-tier trash mob reared its head, but—
Boom!
—they were dealt with at the edge of Lucia's mana bullets.
“Having a vice-captain around is so convenient. We could probably pick up the pace a little.”
The red-haired girl kept positioning herself behind Lucia the whole way.
Was she sizing up the right moment to betray her?
'Come to think of it, this is a trap zone.'
On the right-hand wall, a stretch of red flooring glared out, practically declaring step here and you die.
Step on that, and you'd be ejected from the dungeon on the spot.
'But you can't just hug the opposite wall either.'
The abduction-and-confinement trap she'd warned Lucia about in advance.
Get scared, cling to the left wall, and you'd stay locked up until the dungeon was cleared.
So Lucia walked the center of the path, while the red-haired girl trailed just off her left shoulder.
Thud.
Lucia shoved her with a shoulder.
“Kyaah! What are you—?!”
The girl shrieked as the floor swallowed her whole.
'Hm.'
An unfortunate accident.
A group member who misstepped had, regrettably, stepped on a trap.
“That was... an accident, right?”
[Exactly.]
She hadn't been a particularly useful member of the team, and there was no way to rescue her anyway.
On rational judgment, he ignored her.
For some reason his steps felt lighter afterward, but that hardly mattered.
***
The early section of this dungeon proceeded with the party split into pairs.
The monsters were correspondingly low-grade, and all you had to do was regroup and take down the boss.
Bad luck meant stepping on a trap, but for the most part this stage was known as a free ride.
'The rendezvous point should be coming up.'
The end of the long cave came into view.
It was a cave on the other side too, of course, but far more spacious than this corridor, where even walking two abreast felt cramped.
And so they arrived at the enormous chamber.
“Ah, there you are...!”
The gloomy girl waiting before the massive wall greeted Lucia.
“...”
“C-Claude... I mean, Chloe fell on some kind of red floor and vanished...”
So the troublemaker had been flushed out, but one of their core fighters had disappeared along with her.
'Talk about bad luck.'
Chloe falling into a trap.
That was one of those rare, unfair events that only triggered once in a blue moon.
“Thankfully I could clear out the goblins with mana bullets, so I made it here... oh, sorry, I'm rambling again, aren't I?”
“...”
Lucia turned her gaze away.
A black wall stood blocking the path forward.
[Put your hand on the wall.]
At his word, Lucia approached it, and—
Craaack!
—the enormous wall shattered like glass and vanished.
“B-but what happened to the other one? Did she perhaps also fall into a trap...?”
“Yeah. An accident beyond any argument.”
Lucia pressed onward.
A wide open space, twenty meters across at least.
At its far end loomed a gray-hued portal.
It wouldn't activate until the boss was defeated, presumably.
[...Lucia, stop there.]
But the mana in the area was behaving erratically.
'Could just be the boss zone.'
His instincts said otherwise.
“U-um, why did you stop...?”
The moment the gloomy girl opened her mouth—
GUUUUUM!
—the mana across the chamber surged like a storm.
'Damn it.'
Now he remembered.
[Run back, now. The wall is coming back up.]
Lucia scrambled backward, caught the gloomy girl by the midsection—
“Hooeeek—!”
—and hurled her over the rising black wall.
BOOM!
The girl tumbled across to the other side just as the wall slammed shut.
“...I couldn't make it through. I'm sorry.”
[No. You did the right thing.]
Panic had made his thinking short-sighted.
If Lucia had escaped alone, the gloomy girl would have died.
'It's been a while since this gimmick.'
He'd wondered why academy life had been so suspiciously peaceful.
This world's foundation was an infuriatingly unreasonable brand of misfortune.
And this particular gimmick only triggered when Chloe fell into the trap and escaped.
A wipeout mechanic.
[Lucia, the boss is going to appear.]
“Yes, I can feel it.”
Skreek, skreek.
An unpleasant sound drifted through the air, like something crawling up out of the ground.
Lucia turned around.
A beast of pure black silhouette.
Goat horns sprouted from its skull, and a wolf's skull made up its face.
Four meters tall, give or take.
KRAAAM!
The thing closed the distance in an instant—and slammed into his barrier.
He'd sensed the mana coming and blocked it on reflex; apparently it was just a charge attack.
'Terrifying force, though.'
The impact shattered the surveillance magic tools embedded in the cave walls.
In any case.
[This is an opponent you can't beat as you are now. One wrong move, and you could die.]
“...Yes.”
[What do you want to do?]
He could deal with the thing himself.
But he wanted to hear her opinion.
“...That movement just now, I couldn't follow it with my eyes at all.”
She looked up at him, her expression grave.
“Still, I want to fight for as long as I can.”
She had steeled herself.
[If it looks like you can't dodge, I'll block it.]
He could parry that thing's attacks without effort.
[Releasing the barrier.]
The blue light enveloping Lucia faded, and she immediately darted sideways.
“Kyaaahk—!”
The beast gave chase. The gap between them shrank in a heartbeat.
Lucia fired off a hasty mana bullet.
It missed, and the beast's fist came crashing down.
“...!”
[Don't worry. Keep moving.]
He blocked it, naturally.
BANG!
Lucia detonated mana at her feet to buy distance—about five meters of it.
She began weaving a spell, and the beast condensed its own mana in answer.
[Here it comes.]
The instant the beast lunged, Lucia threw up a defensive barrier.
The movement was closer to teleportation.
But Lucia was a hair faster.
Crack.
The surrounding mana crystallized.
'...So it did freeze up.'
Did having its mana stolen mid-sprint stiffen its body?
The opening it left behind—
—flared with Lucia's mana bullets.
BOOM!
A heavy, meaty impact.
[Hold your distance.]
At his word she detonated mana again, opening a gap of three meters.
“Kigeaaaah!”
The thing came screaming toward her.
She raked a mana bullet across its skull—and left not a scratch.
'This thing's a lunatic.'
In any case, this time Lucia was the slower one.
KAANG!
The barrier caught the blow.
Without him, Lucia would have died on the spot.
[Lucia. What do you think you should do?]
He wrapped her in a barrier, giving her time to think.
“...Open the distance, and prepare my magic.”
Lucia continued.
“I can raise a barrier if it closes in while I'm casting... but in the end, I can't land any decisive damage.”
[Right.]
“I don't think... I can win this one.”
Casting time.
That was the fundamental limit of a mage.
But.
[I'll teach you a way.]
[Stop its charge with your defensive magic, and then—instead of mana bullets—use something stronger.]
“...That would mean preparing a spell in advance.”
[So prepare one.]
Double casting.
'I could manage it, sure.'
But that was only because he was a great-magic bird; with a human brain, it was flatly impossible.
However.
[You can do something close to it.]
Lucia's defensive magic converted the mana around her into her own spells.
Granted, in its current form she could only fire mana bullets.
[Let's change the shape the completed spell takes.]
Magic was simply a matter of application.
[Well?]
“...Yes.”
Lucia nodded.
'Inefficient as hell, of course.'
Her range would shrink.
Her calculation time would multiply several times over.
Using it in actual combat right away would be impossible.
[I'll protect you. You'll have plenty of chances.]
They dove straight into practice.
'Start by opening some distance, then.'
He dropped the barrier and shoved the beast away.
A good few dozen meters, casually.
[Complete your spell before the beast reaches you.]
Its speed was beyond imagination.
The time she was given: less than two seconds.
'That's brutally tight.'
At first, she could barely revise a single spell in time.
[There's a contradiction between these two parts. How would you fix it?]
But Lucia never gave up.
[The spells fused together. Like this, it won't do anything.]
She moved the mana. Spread the spell.
Broke it down. Rebuilt it.
Revised it, endlessly.
Lucia failed again and again and again.
[Again.]
Hundreds of attempts.
The beast charged yet again.
It was beginning to tire; even its sprint had slowed.
The time she was given now hovered around three seconds.
“...”
She revised the spell.
Shaping the crystallized mana into the framework of an offensive spell.
[Ten meters remaining.]
The magic was less than half-finished.
[You can do it.]
Lucia spread her mana—
—and at last, completed dozens of interwoven formulas.
“...!”
The moment the magic took form, Lucia lifted her head.
The distance to the beast—
[—a hand's breadth.]
was almost nothing. Its attack was a hair away from landing.
Craaack!
The mana crystallized.
And with it, the beast's body seized up.
A split-second opening.
The surrounding mana gathered at Lucia's fingertips—
—and a ferocious gale slammed into the black beast.
KRAAAAM!
Its body was hurled backward several meters.
[Congratulations. It worked.]
“...I couldn't really wound it, though.”
It had been scraped along the torso—that was all.
But the goal had been met.
[I'll take it from here.]
“Yes.”
He sealed the beast inside a barrier.
Shff.
A blade of mana swept through its neck, and the thing scattered into drifting dust.
“...That felt a little anticlimactic.”
A faint smile crossed Lucia's face.
[You grew, didn't you? That's what counts.]
“I suppose so.”
He erased the residual mana lingering around the chamber.
He left only the traces of a few casually fired mana bullets. That should keep things from getting complicated.
And just as they moved to leave through the portal—
“Uwaaah!”
CRASH!
The wall sealing off the space dissolved, and the black-haired gloomy girl came tumbling through.
'...Ah, right. Her.'
She'd apparently been waiting on the other side of the wall the whole time.
***
Several hours after the exam ended.
Rihel, first-year combat instructor, combed through the cave.
'So this is the boss room.'
An accident had occurred in the mock dungeon today.
The boss monster's configured values had broken down, and the space had even split apart.
'Thank goodness Chloe stepped on that trap when she did.'
Otherwise, the incident would have spiraled far beyond control.
The imperial court had its eyes on that girl, after all.
“...And yet.”
Even a cursory sweep turned up nothing but traces of mana bullets.
If the boss had been dealt with by mana bullets alone, the difficulty couldn't have been all that high.
'Time to head back.'
She'd sunk a good half hour into this just in case, but it seemed nothing had actually happened.
This, too, would probably go down as an unexplained incident.
Lucia. This was already the second strange event tied to that girl.
'Is something going on?'
She was turning to leave, leaving only a brief speculation behind—
—when a powerful afterimage woke every sense she had.
It felt like being overwhelmed by something immense.
'...This is beyond what any student could leave behind.'
Rihel focused for a long while, hunting the afterimage's source.
The trace had been erased so flawlessly that hours passed before she found anything.
“...Just as I thought.”
She found it.
It was a trace of a magnitude that could never truly be erased.
'This is... wrong.'
She was the disciple of one of the Great Archmages.
The lingering aura of an overwhelming powerhouse was something she had long since grown used to.
But.
'...This isn't a person.'
Rihel was certain: this was the trace of some transcendent existence, something beyond humanity.
This was not the awe one felt before the strong.
It was the terror of the unknown.
It felt like the residue of an omnipotent someone whom no one could ever hope to resist.
'What is this?'
And to make matters stranger, another mana was interwoven through that trace.
Analyzing it took her a long time yet again.
But in the end, she understood.
'Two spells, cast in a single instant.'
Double casting.
At first, she assumed it belonged to the transcendent being.
But this trace was, in some way, familiar.
'Lucia.'
The cave was saturated with the residue of mana bullets.
It matched that mana exactly.
“...Her again?”
Rihel recalled a body of forbidden knowledge.
An omnipotent transcendent who had crossed over from another world—an Outer God.
The legendary figures of ancient myth, it was said, had achieved their impossible deeds through pacts with the Outer Gods.
And so.
Rihel was certain.
'They've returned.'
Lucia had made a contract with an Outer God.