8. Bianca del Castana - 07
8. Bianca del Castana - 07
Kugugugu—!
Kwarururung—!
The open clearing in front of the hut where Kain and Bianca had been staying was once a place of considerable charm, dotted with rare flowers and beautiful garden beds. But the clash between Aria and Bianca had reduced that meadow to utter ruin—so thoroughly destroyed that it no longer bore even a trace of its former shape.
If one had to sum up the space they now occupied in a single phrase, it would be the mortal world's own hell.
Ceaseless thunder rolled across the battlefield. The violent aftermath of their duel had shattered strata and set the very earth ablaze. Worse, the ground they stood on had been exposed to lightning-wreathed plasma and the searing heat of ultra-high-temperature White Flame. The surface had melted outright, reduced to a gelatinous sludge.
The former blue meadow had become a wasteland no human could possibly traverse.
And through that slice of hell, a blazing golden flash streaked across the sky. Cloaked head to toe in golden lightning as she hurtled through the heavens, she looked like a lone meteor tearing across the firmament.
"Aaaaaah—!"
Engulfed entirely in lightning and plasma, Aria swept across the battlefield at near-subsonic speed. She was far too fast for any human eye to track. Even Bianca, who had applied an enhancement spell to her own vision, could not visually lock onto Aria. She could only guess at Aria's position from the lingering afterglow tracing her wake.
"To carry on like such a brute, and you claimed to be a mage!"
Bianca had hurled spell after spell at Aria, yet not one even grazed the hem of her clothing. Irritation crept into her voice as the complaint spilled out of her.
Bianca was currently afloat above the battlefield, shielding herself with more than a dozen layers of magic barriers swathed around her body.
The woman called Bianca del Castana stood at the very pinnacle of present-day humanity as a mage. The spells she wielded were a step above in sophistication and two steps better in efficiency compared to those employed by ordinary magic users. The Multi-Layered Magic Barrier she now employed was no exception.
The Multi-Layered Magic Barrier was a spell known to every combat mage alive—the act of stacking protective shields with one's own Magic Power, exactly as the name suggested. It was one of the most fundamental defensive magics. Though the principle was straightforward, the thickness and number of barriers it produced were determined by the user's magic capacity. As a result, the disparity in results between practitioners was more extreme here than in practically any other spell in existence.
Bianca's case, however, was a little different. Unlike others who crudely piled on more power to raise their barriers, she created conduits linking each layer, circulating her magic through them with ruthless efficiency—maximizing her defensive strength.
At present, she had wrapped a full sixteen barriers around herself. Consider that ten years from now, even the Winter Witch had found it impossible to shatter Bianca's magic barriers all at once. For all intents and purposes, there was likely no way for the Aria standing here now to inflict a wound on Bianca.
...Yes. If their battle had unfolded like a conventional duel between mages, that is certainly how things would have played out.
But Aria had chosen a different path. Instead of bombarding her opponent with spells the way Bianca did, she had opted to face this battlefield wrapped in the very magic she poured around her own body.
She wasn't casting any separate offensive spells. She had no need to. From the moment she enshrouded herself in matter-melting plasma, Aria's body already boasted destructive power rivaling that of a high-tier spell. Turning herself into a living arrow, she knifed across the battlefield, striking at Bianca's every blind spot.
Craaash!
"...Kgh...!"
Yet another magic barrier shattered under an ambush from a blind spot. Rebuilding the barrier was, of course, possible—but each restoration came at a correspondingly steep cost in Magic Power. Moreover, the constant apprehension of another unseen strike steadily whittled away at her concentration.
A single strike, then immediate withdrawal. Darting at Bianca from oblique angles at speed beyond sight, Aria broke her barriers down layer by layer, methodically gnawing away at her mental fortitude.
This was the decisive gambit Aria had prepared to oppose an opponent who overwhelmed her in magical attainment, reserves, and instantaneous output. A tactical crystallization devised solely for this showdown against Bianca del Castana.
"...I see. Fallen as you may be, your skills do not shame the name of the Winter Witch."
From Bianca's lips slipped what sounded like an acknowledgement of Aria. No, she couldn't not acknowledge her. The Aria of this moment was strong. Perhaps a mere fragment of the Winter Witch's power—less than two-tenths of what it would be ten years hence—but the very fact that she was fighting Bianca on even terms with so little meant Aria's ability was worthy of praise.
"....."
Naturally, there was no reply from Aria. She was wholly concentrated on killing Bianca del Castana; she had no leisure to respond to Bianca's words.
"Hmph. To offer not even a word of gratitude in the face of a compliment—truly such speech and conduct are as barbaric as they are discourteous."
Bianca was tossing abuse at Aria, but even as she did, a glint of something odd settled in her eyes as she scrutinized Aria's bizarre tactics.
'...Still, this strange way of fighting—I feel as if I've heard of something like it somewhere.'
The tactics Aria was employing now were not those the Winter Witch would use a decade from now. During the fierce battle against the Expedition Force, the Winter Witch had not raced across the battlefield like a streak of lightning the way Aria now did.
If anything, the Winter Witch's combat methodology had been remarkably close to Bianca's own. She wrapped herself in layers of magic barriers and carried out carpet bombardments of high-power magic against her target—much like a mobile fortress.
Aria, however, was doing the exact opposite. For someone who was a mage herself, she was casually exploiting all the blind spots and weaknesses of a mage. There was no doubt about it: she had definitely heard of this peculiar fighting style somewhere before.
...And so, Bianca committed the one mistake one must never make in battle. For a single moment, she let the curiosity sparking before her eyes steal her attention. She made the idiotic error of looking away from the enemy who was, at this very second, rushing headlong to kill her.
'Shit!'
In the next instant, Bianca recognized her blunder—but it was already far too late.
'An opening!'
Realizing Bianca had bared a gap, Aria's eyes flashed. In a split second, she piled acceleration atop acceleration. The lightning wreathing her body ran mad, surging with impossible violence, but Aria forcibly seized control of every tendril of power, converging it all down into a single point.
"Bianca del Castana—!"
Aria's form was lost for the span of a single second. In that heartbeat, she seized the chance to slip to Bianca's flank. High-power plasma flared across the entire field, searing at Bianca's vision and hemming in her movements. A thunderbolt of ruinous destruction, potent enough to melt all matter outright, drove flush into Bianca's side.
Kwakwakwakwang—!
"Kyaaaaaagh!"
Amid a sound like shattering glass, seven of the sixteen barriers swathed around Bianca were obliterated. Worse, the barriers hadn't fully absorbed the bolt's destructive power, and the shockwave transmitted straight through to Bianca herself.
"Ku, hurgh...!"
The received shock folded Bianca's body into an L-shape. In the end, a thin stream of blood trickled from Bianca's lips. The cost of a momentary lapse in vigilance while the enemy stood right before her eyes had proved utterly wretched.
"You goddamn witch!"
Fires kindled in both of Bianca's eyes. More infuriating than the fact that she'd let her guard down and taken a hit was the fact that a woman who might as well be her rival had landed a blow on her. That truth fanned Bianca's fury all the more. Before she killed Aria, she had to capture her alive and slap that pretty face a few times—otherwise, she felt her rage wouldn't be sated.
"Ha! You looked utterly ridiculous, acting so refined and elegant all on your own. That kind of face suits a woman like you—Bianca del Castana!"
Aria gave a derisive snort, staring at Bianca's visage, twisted like that of a ghastly fiend. Even as she spoke, Aria lunged straight for Bianca's front. This was an opportunity she'd only seized after countless exchanges of offense and defense. There was no way she would let a golden chance like this slip away.
"Tch!"
Her magic flow, tangled from the earlier shockwave, left her momentarily disrupted. Worse still, Aria was now right on top of her, closing to within spitting distance while exuding a fearsome bloodlust. It was nothing short of a life-or-death crisis.
But Bianca did not panic. A predicament like this was merely one of the countless near-fatal moments she had weathered during her time in the Expedition Force. Bianca's genius intellect immediately derived the spell best suited to shatter this situation, computed the calculations, and spun the magic into existence at her fingertips.
"Oh, converging celestial authority—be you a flash of light!"
In the next instant, Aria felt a momentary illusion that the world itself had been split in two. Accompanied by a terrifying boom, a colossal blade of light—easily stretching dozens of meters—scythed through everything in its arc, hurtling straight at Aria.
"Hmph!"
Yet Aria merely sneered at the blade of light that threatened to bisect her at any second. True, the spell contained formidable power. But at the same time, it was something hurriedly thrown together to stop her charge. A paltry threat of this magnitude—she could meet it head-on without issue.
"Come forth, lightning of judgment, chill of the frozen earth!"
In one hand crackled thunder; in the other coiled a north-wind blizzard capable of freezing all. Double Casting. An art among arts, one impossible without innate calculation prowess and a supreme understanding of magic itself.
Yet that was not the end. Aria dragged up every wisp of Magic Power from her being and fused the lightning and ice dwelling in her palms into one.
"Twin Divine Synthesis."
The fundamentally incompatible magics of lightning and ice converged at her fingertips into a single unified new energy. Even Bianca could not afford to dismiss the dreadful pulse of that Magic Power; it carried a ferocity far too potent to disregard. That thing was dangerous.
"Dance of Ice Lightning!"
The instant the colossal light-blade met the storm of ice and lightning, a cataclysmic roar erupted, as though heaven and earth were crumbling on the spot.
Kwaaaaaaaaah—!
As the massive shockwave burst outward, a literally mind-numbing explosion rippled out in concentric circles, scouring the surrounding hundreds of meters in every direction. A vast wave of superheated air accompanied the blast, scorching the entire area. The ground—already reduced to muck—buckled under transcendent pressure, and the very strata in the vicinity flipped completely over.
"Hhk, haa, haa... that goddamn... fuck..."
At the very center of the blast, a woman of slender frame somehow kept herself upright, drenched in blood. She had nearly, genuinely died just now. If, in that final instant, she hadn't poured most of her Magic Power into her barriers, Bianca del Castana would have vanished from this world without a trace.
"Haa, haa..."
Aria was far stronger than Bianca had calculated. If things went on like this, it would be truly dangerous.
Aria simply observed the bloodied Bianca with frigid eyes, then slowly parted her lips.
"How was the price of arrogance, Bianca del Castana? Is it only now beginning to sink in that this place shall be your grave?"