Wearing the Mask of a Witch (2)
Wearing the Mask of a Witch (2)
'This bastard's a total nutjob.'
He was the sort who wouldn't listen unless you snapped at least one of his arms without holding back.
Calliope brought her rapier up in front of her own face. It was her personal way of keeping her composure.
In the next instant, Calliope's eyes sank cold and hard, just like the blade of that rapier.
Whatever else, their opponent was the powerhouse who'd single-handedly wrecked the White Tower. The fact that she was holding off the Killing Intent blasted out by two royal knights made that obvious enough.
But...
Calliope's expression firmed.
'She picked the wrong opponent.'
They were the Night Crows.
If asked to choose between an honorable defeat and a cowardly victory, they were the sort who'd pick the latter without an instant of hesitation.
Knights who remained loyal to their liege yet never once chose their methods.
Knights who were, endlessly, anything but knightly.
That was the Night Crows' identity.
Calliope signaled with her eyes.
"Seth. The moment you see an opening, join in."
"Got it."
Watching Seth slink around to the side, Olivia spoke.
"Coming at me at the same time, huh?"
"Why? Getting a little scared now?"
"An ant's eyelash worth? I'd say any more than that's a little difficult."
Olivia smiled a fresh, sunny smile. But there wasn't a soul there who didn't catch the provocation.
Calliope wiped the smile off her face.
No more words were necessary. Just having to face that witch's face sent her rage boiling over even at the shabbiest provocations.
"Let's see if you can still laugh when that arm's sliced clean off!"
In the next instant, Calliope's form shot forward in a flash. Innumerable sword strikes flew in, splitting the air with shrieks.
Vermillion strikes that filled her vision. Every single one of them carried the subtlety of a master's cut.
Watching the sight, Olivia's eyes gleamed.
'Not bad.'
Honestly, it was far showier than Kiel's swordsmanship. The power might be far stronger on his side, but when it came to sheer flashiness, the advantage was here.
And even looking just at swordsmanship, Calliope was nobody's inferior.
It simply wasn't widely known, but she was a figure who possessed the martial strength of a Commander-level force. There was no way someone like that could be weak.
Ssssssshk!
Sword force poured in from all sides, filling her vision.
'If it fights the same way as the game...'
Olivia stretched her hand forward, slowly. A blue energy spread outward from her fingertips.
Thudududud-bang!
The sword strikes bounced off, unable to pierce the thick barrier.
"Hup!"
Calliope was driven three steps backward in an instant.
'Tough.'
It wasn't just the strength. The closer you got to the damn woman, the more your whole body felt like it was freezing solid.
Calliope shook off the frost shards clinging to her sword tip. They'd only clashed a moment, yet the blade had already iced over.
At this rate, getting close was hard enough, let alone linking combos.
"Urgh!"
Just as expected, Seth landed with a racket, having bounced off without cracking the barrier.
"That thing's damnably tough."
"I'm aware."
"Captain, do you happen to have a fire?"
"...What do you need fire for?"
"My hands froze. Can't unclench my fists."
"..."
What kind of son of a bitch was this?
Calliope's face filled with genuine disbelief. She'd known he was an idiot, but she hadn't known he was this much of an idiot.
Light him a fire mid-battle?
And over what? His hands froze?
Th-this damned bastard...
I was definitely going to petition His Majesty to have him dismissed.
As if he felt the unhealthy shift in the atmosphere, Seth opened his mouth as though making excuses.
"You think I'd drop my guard mid-battle like some nutcase? There's a reason I said it."
"And what reason is that?"
"There's no Killing Intent."
"What?"
Seth pointed a fist at Olivia. Unable to extend his fingers, he had to lift his whole fist, which was rather comical.
"That witch. What I'm saying is, she's got no intention of attacking us."
Calliope narrowed her eyes.
Now that he mentioned it, by this point she should've attacked and...
Cracklecracklecrack!
"Hyaaaahk! My hands! My haaaaands!"
Seth panicked and shook his whole body. Whether he did or not, the freezing energy spread stubbornly up his body. In that brief moment, both his arms froze so blue they were nearly black.
"Captain! Captaaaaain!"
What? No Killing Intent?
She was completely committed to killing, you idiot.
Calliope turned her head away from Seth without a second thought. He had such absurdly high stamina that leaving him like that wouldn't kill him.
"If you leave him like that, he's going to freeze to death, you know."
"..."
Calliope answered with a chilly glare instead of words.
Now that she thought about it, the temperature was unnatural.
'...Why didn't I notice?'
The cold was so intense that even her breath couldn't travel far before crystallizing. No matter how heated her body was, failing to notice such a rapid shift was a serious problem.
Now she saw - it wasn't simply cold around the witch.
Cracklecracklecrack!
The entire mountain range was freezing over.
Calliope's deliberation was short.
If she stalled any longer, both Seth and she would freeze to death.
"...I take back the part about only cutting off an arm."
I'll go in at full strength, right from the start.
Fwoooosh!
Calliope's rapier spewed out an impossibly crimson energy.
The sword force shot up like a pillar of flame, and in an instant it subdued the cold.
Calliope flicked her rapier lightly side to side. The snow that had piled along the sword's path melted away in a flash.
"A Magic Sword?"
"Your noticing it is already too late!"
KABOOM!
The earth where Calliope had stood split into fragments. In the next instant, her form shot forward like an arrow.
Sword strikes, split into dozens of trajectories, flew in from all sides, aiming for Olivia.
But their force was different from before. The searing sword-wind Calliope had created pushed forward, expelling the cold air in an instant.
The moment the number of sword strikes multiplied to the point they couldn't be counted by eye.
"Seth!"
"I know!"
Sssssss-swick!
Seth appeared behind Olivia, both arms already restored.
His face said he'd planned it this way from the start.
'How do you like that!'
Within the Night Crows, Seth was called the bear. Dim and dull, but when it came to dirty tricks, one who was stunningly slick.
He was a man who knew how to use his own dullness.
"Hahahahaha! Die!"
Fists dyed in black magical power tore through the atmosphere as they flew in.
At the same time.
"Block this one, too."
The essence of the rapier.
The single thrust that had been hidden among the dozens, the hundreds of cuts revealed its form.
Truthfully, a rapier was a weapon made for thrusting. It wasn't as though it couldn't cut, but the blade was so light that putting power behind a cut was difficult.
Nobody was ignorant of that simple fact.
Ssssssssssssshk!
But in front of those countless sword strikes, there was likewise no one who'd be able to recall that simple fact.
Intense heat rose from every part of Calliope's body.
House Rheinsel's secret technique.
One Flash.
Shwooooooo!
Calliope's strike advanced, splitting time itself. The overwhelming speed, almost impossible to follow with the eye, meant that even the one executing the technique had trouble reading its path.
A single thrust!
The overwhelming rotational force loaded within it was something not even Seth, who'd spent years with Calliope—no, not even Calliope herself had experienced before.
It was like a flower blooming to life inside the ice.
Like a stem stretching out by piercing through a solid glacier, it advanced, piercing through everything.
'She can never dodge this!'
Simultaneous strikes fired from the front and the rear.
Either one was a fatal, unignorable blow.
It was checkmate.
You bastard.
The best course left to her was to drag one of the Night Crows with her to the grave, but so far, not a single person had made that choice.
The Sword Demon of the Roel Kingdom, the Black Mage who'd tried to bring down the Kingdom of Canis.
Even the most infamous villains of the continent.
They had all made the same choice, and not a single one of them had survived.
As Olivia extended her hands in both directions, a nasty smile bloomed on Calliope's lips.
'You're trying to block both sides too!'
In the next instant.
Twah-kwaaaaaa-bang!
The explosion created by the collision of power against power surged high enough to reach the clouds.
*****
"Huff, huff, huff..."
"Heh... heh... hehehe..."
The Night Crows, who had been blown back by the explosion they'd created, heaved themselves upright, gasping for breath.
Fortunately, they'd fallen on the thickly piled snow and avoided major injury.
Calliope looked down at her throbbing right arm.
Not only was it trembling beyond her control, but every side of it was a mess of bruises and burst veins.
It looked like she'd need well over a month of proper recovery time.
More to the point, how the hell was she supposed to get sick leave? And how was she meant to explain ditching Her Highness and taking off for the North without authorization? If she said she'd taken down a single witch, that'd be a mitigating...
A mitigating...
Hold on.
"...Seth."
"Captain, couldn't you blast out your Aura one more time like you just did? My arms are in awful..."
"Seth!"
The smoke from the blast cleared slowly.
"...What is it?"
Seth's gaze slowly turned toward where Calliope was staring.
What they'd just unleashed was the single strongest strike since they'd joined the Night Crows. For anything to survive a direct hit like that was impossible...
"H, how..."
Olivia stood there.
Dusting off her clothes with a face that said it was nothing much.
"Th, that's absurd. It was clearly..."
There was no way that was possible. The characteristic feel of her hands had definitely been the feedback of a barrier being broken.
Having spotted something, Calliope's eyes trembled like aspen leaves.
She checked over and over, but the outcome didn't change.
The barrier had definitely shattered.
Exactly one of them.
And by an ant's eyelash, at that.
"Uh... Uh..."
"You startled me, you bastards."
...You're the one who was startled?
Not us?
"Let me just ask one thing."
"..."
"Who sent you?"
Olivia was already right in front of them, wearing a demonic smile.