Out of Control (3)
I'd already been pouring Fire Balls for twenty minutes straight.
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
Even through that roar of explosions, the enemy didn't seem dead. Didn't even seem tired.
How did I know? Because the mana signature hadn't dropped by a single scrap.
Come on. Twenty minutes of Fire Balls and you should at least suffocate, even if you don't burn to death.
Didn't die while on fire. Didn't die without oxygen. Were Sword Masters not even human? Were they tardigrades?
A tardigrade that draws an Aura Blade… what kind of cosmic horror is that?
Damn it. The anxiety had my brain throwing up every stray thought it could find.
"Rotate the reloads! Do not let the fire break!"
"Yes, sir!"
Clack! Clack!
The sound of the unit swapping magic stones into the cartridges carried over the bombardment. This was already the second swap on average.
How long can we keep shooting like this… thirty minutes? Forty?
If we'd been running standard Altar Cannons, the much larger magic-stone stockpile would have let us pin him far longer. The saddle-type Altar Cannons, though, could only carry a fixed allotment of stones, so their endurance was a lot shorter.
Even the thirty-to-forty minutes we had left was a Maginot Line we'd bought by rotating forty members of the Dragoon Unit and myself, just to keep the bare-minimum firepower needed to hold a Sword Master.
Once the stones run dry, we survive on nothing but our own mana and skill. Can His Highness the First Prince wipe the enemy before then?
Fortunately, a battlefield without a Sword Master favored us.
Plenty of them were from the Eastern Knight Order, so individual quality was high—but the knights who'd followed the First Prince were no slouches either, and clawing back a gap of over a hundred men was not exactly easy. Both sides' knights would grind each other down hard, but if we simply held this shape of the fight, we could take it on points and pull out.
Once both sides' knight forces are spent, neither will have the strength to expand the battle in any meaningful way. We'll still have the Magic Corps, though, and they'll still have the Sword Master—so the shape of us pounding them one-sidedly still holds.
Then we could revive the original doctrine the Vice Tower Master of the Blue Magic Tower had wrecked: infantry holds the line, the Magic Corps bombards.
…Wait. What was the Vice Tower Master of the Blue Magic Tower doing right now?
In a normal situation, the contract would be over and there wouldn't be any further intervention…
Was this a normal situation?
When the other side was essentially throwing the entire East onto the table as chips, would they even think about conserving what they had left?
Count Windhafen is gambling the whole East on a win-it-back-later mindset. And now, of all times, he'd hold back?
I was uneasily weighing the possibility of the Vice Tower Master's re-entry when—
"Son of a bitch. He's actually coming?"
Speak of the devil. A massive mana signature was racing toward the battlefield.
SHWOOOOOOM!
Something was cutting through the air, closing fast. As the sound swelled, the mana signature sharpened with it. The Dragoon Unit felt it too—panic rippled through them from every direction.
"Hold the fire! No side jobs!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
I barely patched the hole that had almost opened in the Sword Master containment line.
Then the mana signature stopped—directly above the Magic Corps.
And there he was, just as I'd expected: the Vice Tower Master of the Blue Magic Tower.
Frostrich.
The one silver lining: his mana volume isn't that far off from mine.
Probably because of the grand magic he'd spent less than an hour ago. The mana I was sensing ran about even with my own.
I decided to leave the Sword Master to Bruno.
"Bruno, I can leave this to you, right?"
"Uh… it should be all right, I think?"
Not the most reassuring answer, but he'd run the Dragoon Unit alongside the First Prince before. He'd be fine. Besides, what they were doing wasn't all that complicated, strictly speaking.
Though I still can't afford to drop the tension until the very end.
Anyway, to take on the Vice Tower Master in the air, I started casting flight magic.
"Fly!"
⟨ Fly ⟩
Whoosh!
I shot upward at speed and immediately prepped a spell and fired.
"Fire Javelin!"
⟨ Fire Javelin ⟩
When it came to speed, nothing beat this.
The spear of flame streaked toward the Vice Tower Master—and just before it reached him—
CHING!
A clear, ringing note, and the Fire Javelin vanished without a trace.
A Dispel-type spell? Or a barrier?
Whatever it was, my ambush had fizzled without landing a meaningful hit.
"Young fellow's got no manners, I see."
"On a battlefield, do I have the luxury of manners toward the enemy?"
"Heh heh. First time we've met, and you won't even exchange a greeting? This may well be the last moment of your life."
No. Not right now, at least.
We were on a time attack. The Dragoon Unit was desperately holding the Sword Master. The moment those magic-stone reserves hit zero, our lives hit zero with them. Who had time for hellos?
"Judging by the look of it, already Fifth Circle at that age. Quite the gifted young man."
He'd apparently pegged my rank from the flight magic. I couldn't have cared less. He, on the other hand, was fascinated. The Vice Tower Master kept talking.
"Remarkable, that. It's been a while since I've seen someone reach that level without belonging to a Magic Tower—and reaching it so young is rare even inside the Towers."
If you only listened to that chuckling delivery, he sounded like some countryside grandfather praising his grandchildren.
"A pity. I'd love to take you into our Tower, but I've a commission to fulfill, you see. Do understand."
"Frost Lance."
⟨ Frost Lance ⟩
Whoosh!
The atmosphere flipped in an instant.
With no warning at all, a spear of ice was suddenly screaming at my head. I barely twisted my neck aside.
Pfft!
Not a clean dodge. Something nicked the edge of my earlobe.
Trickle.
Warm blood ran down my cheek.
Damn it. I didn't catch the tell at all.
The casting was insanely fast. I'd thought the mana signature was the same as usual—then in the blink of an eye he'd assembled it and fired.
"Heh heh heh. You reacted to that, did you? All the more the pity. To think I have to kill a talent like this with my own hands."
"If you don't want to, then don't."
"Unfortunately, I've already taken the contract deposit."
Even as he said it, the next spell was already ready.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
A triple Frost Lance. One from the upper-front diagonal, one from the right oblique, one from the lower-left. I barely shook them off with flight magic—but—
THUNK!
"Gah!"
"Dodging isn't everything, I'm afraid."
They had homing. In the end I took a hit—left shoulder, punched clean through.
Damn. He's got the experience edge too?
I was already behind on raw spellcraft, and he looked more used to actual combat as well. The Vice Tower Master hadn't earned his seat playing children's games, that was for sure.
Squeeze! Shlick!
I yanked the ice spear out of my left shoulder and threw it away. I'd bled a fair amount, but it beat letting frostbite take the arm entirely.
Then I went to high-speed movement and started dumping spells at him.
Whoosh! Shwooom! Bang! Bang!
They still streaked in fast—and still vanished right in front of his face, as if they'd never existed. At a glance it looked like nothing was landing—but—
Just as I thought?
He wasn't invincible. Every time one of my spells connected, his mana was definitely getting shaved down.
"So it's a game of chicken up here too."
On the ground, the Dragoons and the Sword Master were in a game of chicken over remaining magic stones. In the air, he and I were in one over remaining mana.
Shook! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Under the continuing barrage, he realized I'd spotted the weakness.
"Heh heh heh. Sharp eyes, young man."
He spoke with a show of ease. I figured it was a bluff.
Altar-assisted or not, he just used a spell bordering on Seventh Circle and then jumped back in not long after. Meanwhile I've been running mostly Altar Cannon work—I'm close to a full charge.
And I was born with an excellent mana pool besides. This felt doable.
"Old man. Let's see which of us kisses the dirt first."
I chained Fire Javelins. He knew that if he just kept blocking, his mana would run out first, so he started dodging in earnest.
Shook! Bang! Crash!
Spells flying into empty air, grazing past each other—
BOOM!
—or colliding. Ice and fire slammed together; steam exploded out like fog and swallowed the surrounding view.
Where is he?
Mana-sensing alone wasn't enough. Residual mana mixed into the steam scrambled any clean lock on his position.
Whoosh!
A Frost Lance punched through the fog, coming straight at my torso. I banked hard left and threw a Fire Javelin back along the line it had come from.
BANG!
Hit.
What I saw through the fog was still my spell vanishing like nothing—but at the same time, a chunk of his mana sheared off.
"Hrm. At this rate, I lose."
He seemed to have made a decision. He drew a staff from his robes.
Then the air itself changed. Tremendous mana began gathering around him. This was no Third- or Fourth-Circle harassing spell. Not even close. He was about to throw the strongest magic he could still use.
I ran with everything I had.
"Fleeing now that the tide's turned against you, young man?"
Even as he cast, he came after me on flight magic. A Sixth Circle spell, and Fifth Circle Fly running at the same time. Vice Tower Master of a Magic Tower. Not a job just anyone could do.
A short chase, and then his spell fired.
"Blizzard."
⟨ Blizzard ⟩
"Everyone, evacuate! Drop what you're doing and get out!"
"Huh? Commander? E-evacuate!"
The place I evacuated to was the airspace where we'd been pinning the Sword Master.
Then I dropped the Fly until I was practically scraping the ground—and—
BANG!
I kicked into a vertical climb so hard a sonic boom cracked out.
KRA-KRKRKRKRK!
The spell that slammed into the ground a heartbeat later had lost me as its target—and chewed everything in every direction into ice.
"—!"
The Sword Master who'd been standing there, of course, included.