This Is How You Kidnap (4)
This Is How You Kidnap (4)
When mages dueled each other, there was one unwritten rule.
Test the waters with the first attack.
It was the same principle as knights lightly tapping blades before a fight.
The moment they clashed, he understood.
'...She's strong.'
Lloyd stared quietly at Olivia, who stood opposite him.
This was not a duel. On a battlefield where you killed and were killed, fussing over unwritten rules was even more absurd.
On a life-or-death battlefield, the most important thing was winning, and the second most important thing was also winning.
Using a spell one tier higher was for the same reason.
Light Orb. In appearance it was an ordinary cluster of light, but it was a flash-type spell that exploded and stole your vision the moment it touched magic of another attribute.
If Olivia had used an attack spell to neutralize the Orb, the fight would have ended in that instant.
Because a mage who had lost their sight was left with only two options.
Indiscriminate omnidirectional attack, or defense.
Either way, defeat was foreordained. The former had firepower low compared to mana consumption, and with the latter, you died the moment your barrier shattered.
This was why other mages dreaded fighting white mages.
Because the common sense of answering an attack spell with an attack spell collapsed.
The higher your attainment climbed, the more spells you could wield, so for an opponent, nothing could be more troublesome.
But.
She blocked it.
Lloyd tightened his grip on his staff.
The instant she saw the Light Orb, Olivia had responded with a Ice Wall.
Not an attack—defense. And with a freezing spell that possessed light-reflecting properties, no less.
Lloyd spoke, his face full of certainty.
"As I thought, you really were a witch."
The reason they had built the White Tower in the remote north—to block the magic beasts descending from the Great Snow Mountain, to accumulate vivid field experience—those were correct.
But the biggest reason was to minimize the exposure of white magic.
The most outstanding advantage of white magic was that it shattered the common sense of magic.
Which meant that, when fighting an opponent who already knew the common sense of white magic, you had to fight having lost one of your advantages.
Then how in the world had that witch figured it out?
Treason? That was impossible.
Every mage permitted outside activity had completed a Mana Oath.
Swearing that, no matter what happened, they would never divulge the secrets.
In that case.
"...Just how many have you killed?"
Olivia frowned.
It seemed she had been seriously misunderstood.
'You told me yourself, you bastard.'
Olivia clicked her tongue.
Because in her novice days, she remembered what Lloyd had said.
-The reason we can't enter the Five Great Magic Towers is simple. Our limits are too clear.
-Neither as strong as the Red Tower, nor as outstanding in defensive ability as the Blue Tower.
To put it nicely, their offense-defense balance was well-struck. To put it badly, they excelled at nothing in particular.
That was why she had abandoned training a white mage.
What could you do by training one early on? They got overtaken in every respect as the game progressed.
The other Tower Lords started at level 70 at minimum, while Lloyd alone lingered in the 60s—this was the same reason.
'Slow growth, weak spells.'
It wasn't for nothing that players who took the white mage route got treated like perverts.
'Sure, they smash demons and demonfolk pretty well, but so what? Demons aren't the only enemies out there.'
Olivia scanned her surroundings. In the eyes of the mages staring this way from beyond the barrier, rage and terror coexisted.
The terror came from the thought that their Tower Lord might be defeated.
Of course, not all of them were like that. Some mages had quelled their rage and overcome their fear, gazing this way with composed eyes.
[Jeina Eculein]
[Ro Fernandi]
[Aramis]
Familiar names.
People she had met dozens of times while raising her character at the White Tower. Naturally, she knew them inside and out.
Jeina Eculein. The next Deputy Tower Lord.
Ro Fernandi. A top-grade white mage.
And Aramis.
No less than the next Tower Lord. The youngest Tower Lord in the Empire, even. Then why was someone like Aramis only a supporting character?
Just as the leads included only one person who wielded the sword—the Sword Saint Kiel—the leads also included only one person who wielded magic.
'And that seat was already filled.'
Archmage Melina.
Master of space-time magic and Tower Lord of the Gold Magic Tower.
No matter how much of an acknowledged genius Aramis was, she was no match for Melina.
That was what it meant to be a lead in Lactea. And there were as many as fifteen of those bastards. What was odd was that they couldn't manage to take down one Demon God.
Her thoughts concluded, Olivia looked back at Aramis.
Heh heh heh. Her potential was still utterly outrageous even on a second look.
After checking the Status Window, Olivia wore a wicked smile.
Now she needed to figure out how to make those three—no, four including the Ice Chicken—into something resembling functional human beings before they entered the main chapter.
'So that I live, and you bastards live too.'
Just wash your necks and wait.
The three, who had made eye contact with Olivia, shivered for no known reason from a sudden chill.
*****
"...Why is my body doing this?"
"I don't know either. Ugh... I feel weird."
Jeina Eculein rubbed her goosebumped arms.
"No, couldn't we fight together too? What in the world is the Tower Lord thinking?"
"I know. At least we'd be some help..."
"No. You'd be a hindrance."
Someone spoke from behind them with an appallingly rude tone. Anywhere else you might not be sure, but within the White Tower, only one person wielded such an appallingly rude tone.
"...Aramis."
Jeina's face soured instantly. As if knowing or not knowing her feelings, Ro Fernandi asked with an innocent face.
"Why a hindrance? Couldn't we help by attacking the witch's blind spots?"
Among the three, only Aramis was a chief mage, but because they had entered the Tower on the same day, they could speak to each other without honorifics.
"Because..."
"If we attack the witch, the witch will have to pay attention to us too, and as that goes on, casualties will appear. But one-on-one, there's no reason for that. Rather than waste mana on us when we're staying still, the witch will judge it better to subdue the Tower Lord first."
"Whoa, damn. Are you a genius?"
Ro exclaimed in admiration and stuck up a thumb.
"..."
"That was what you were going to say, right? Aramis?"
"Only half right."
Jeina frowned. When she made her dislike this obvious, any normal person would take the hint and vanish, but it was exactly what you'd expect from a sociopath with wrecked empathy.
"Do you know how long it took her to climb up here?"
"A few minutes?"
"Three minutes and forty-seven seconds. But she spent three of those minutes on the first floor."
Sensing something unusual, Jeina shot back a question.
"...What are you trying to say?"
"That witch is strong."
"Even I know—"
"Stronger than the Tower Lord."
"...Don't cross the line, Aramis."
"Taking down five elders in one minute is something even the Tower Lord can't do."
"..."
Jeina bit her lip.
No matter how appallingly rude Aramis was, no matter that he was a sociopath with wrecked empathy, his ability to analyze a situation was unmatched.
Watching him over long years, she had realized that his deductions usually hit the mark.
But Jeina could only counter like this.
"...That isn't enough. The Tower Lord is receiving a continuous supply of mana from a Mana Stone. Even if this drags into a protracted battle, the one who wins in the end is the Tower Lord."
"It's still disadvantageous."
In the end, unable to suppress her anger, Jeina grabbed Aramis by the collar.
"Hey, whose side are you even on?"
"J-Jeina! Calm down. Now isn't the time for us to fight among ourselves!"
At Ro's dissuasion, Jeina released his collar. Ro asked Aramis, who was smoothing out the wrinkles.
"Aramis, why do you say the Tower Lord will lose?"
"I didn't say he'll lose. I said the probability of him losing is high."
"So why?"
Aramis raised a finger and pointed beyond the barrier.
The dust thrown up by the explosions every time the two spells collided cut visibility to only a few meters. They could only infer each other's positions from the flashing lights.
"Why there?"
"At the very start, do you remember the Tower Lord using Light Orb?"
"Yeah, the witch blocked it with a Ice Wall."
"And after that?"
"The Tower Lord raised a barrier to block the reflected light."
"Right, that."
As if to say that was exactly it, Aramis nodded.
Ro frowned. For his part, he couldn't understand what that meant at all.
We attacked, they blocked. They attacked, we blocked. That was all. What was the problem with that...
The sigh came from a different direction. It was Jeina.
"...Crazy."
"Can you see it now?"
"What? Don't just keep it between yourselves, tell me too."
Jeina's face contorted as if she'd seen a monster.
"That bitch was toying with the Tower Lord."
"...What?"
"It's a simple numbers game. For every one spell the witch cast, the Tower Lord had to use two, maybe even three spells to respond."
Only then grasping the situation, Ro's face stiffened hard.
Would a witch of that caliber really have held back because she couldn't cast three spells at once?
No, there was no way.
Only now did he understand what it meant that she was going easy on him.
'What if that side also starts casting three at a time?'
Just the thought heralded something horrifying.
"And you just stood there watching, even knowing that?"
"No. I was merely searching for a method."
"So, did you find one?"
Aramis nodded.
"There's something you two can help with."