Outside the World, Outer Land (6)
The Flickering Witch, Ermina.
Not much was known about the witch of the mythic age who had lived for at least a thousand years. That she had thrown herself into the Demon King’s army. That she had made burning humanity the purpose of her life.
And that she was a 7-Circle mage.
As a rule, 7-Circle mages were treated as beings who had drawn infinitely close to transcendence without ever quite reaching it. The gulf between a true transcendent and everyone else was simply too vast to ignore.
Yet no one—not even the transcendents themselves—ever dismissed the Flickering Witch Ermina as a mere ordinary mortal who had failed to cross that threshold. The constellations that had fallen to her hand stood as proof of her strength.
“She was a mage who’d already tasted transcendence from the start,” Merlin said.
“I shattered every last one of her circles, but that doesn’t mean she forgot the feel and the knowledge of magic.”
Merlin let out a long sigh, still unsure how Ermina had managed to restore those circles.
“What’s standing in front of you is a transcendent.”
Merlin’s voice was absolute. She might not yet wield true 8-Circle magic that had fully crossed into transcendence, but the woman before them was unmistakably a transcendent—a superhuman no different from a Sword Master.
“And a witch who’s reached transcendence is annoyingly, infuriatingly troublesome. I told you, didn’t I? Witches are a race of complete lunatics who cheat on a species-wide scale.”
She pointed at the sky.
Seven circles hung there, and the flames born from their spinning had dyed the heavens crimson.
“Experience it for yourself from now on.”
“This is the kind of battlefield you’ll have to stand on someday.”
The witch flicked her hand. Pale fingers clawed through empty air. An ordinary human’s gesture might part the air in front of them; a transcendent’s gesture parted the landscape itself.
7-Circle Spell: Flame Demon.
The witch’s motion was as casual as swatting away a buzzing insect, yet the flames that surged from her fingertips looked like something else entirely.
Fire rolled like a wave. The blaze surged like a tide.
A scarlet wall of flame swept across the battlefield. Even a 5-Circle spell was already called siege magic—what, then, did one call something above that? The curiosity Najin had once carried was answered in this very moment.
Insane.
A wave of fire tens of meters high was rushing toward him. The sole mercy was that the flames were not hunting the retreating soldiers. The worst part was that they were locked precisely on Najin.
Boom!
Najin kicked off the ground and ran.
The wave of fire chased him as if it were alive. The earth charred black. Rock melted. Where the flames passed, not even soot remained—only ash that crumbled to nothing, or ground that simply vanished as if it had never existed.
If it catches me, I die. The instant it touches me, body reinforcement or anything else melts away. Najin was certain of that.
So he kicked off the cliff wall and sprinted with everything he had. Flame Demon was a spell meant to scour a wide area; if he poured every ounce of speed into the run, he could still escape its range.
“That’s just the setup magic,” Merlin said.
But of course—
“Here it comes. Get ready.”
—there was no way the witch didn’t know that.
Najin, still racing along the wall, tightened his grip on his sword. His eyes stayed fixed ahead, but his senses felt it: the mana swirling above his own head.
5-Circle Spell: Scorching Ray.
4-Circle Spell: Fireball.
Not one spell. Two spells layered and cast together. Seven scorching rays and seven fireballs shot toward Najin. Still running along the wall, he swung his sword without even looking.
Reaching the realm of Sword Seeker had sharpened Najin’s senses further still; even without seeing them with his eyes, he could tell exactly where the swirling mana was aimed.
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiing—!
The scorching ray that tried to punch through his skull met his blade instead. The beam split in two and carved past either side of him. Najin clicked his tongue at the melting cliff face.
Even a graze would finish me for real.
And there were seven of those rays. He had only just knocked one aside. He clicked his tongue again as he felt the remaining beams twist and cling, hunting him. But the heat rays were not the only things he had to stop.
Kwaaaaaaaaaang!
The instant Najin kicked off the ground, a fireball slammed into the spot where he had just been standing. The three-meter sphere of flame cratered the stone, and shattered rock fragments sprayed in every direction.
And the fireballs did not stop at one.
They flew at once toward the place he had stood, the place he might plant his foot, the place he might flee. The slightest hesitation or opening, and the chasing scorching rays would skewer him.
So what if he simply leapt far away? What if he kicked off the cliff and set foot on solid ground? The 7-Circle Flame Demon waiting below with its mouth open would simply swallow him whole.
So this was how mages fought—spreading nets in every direction, steadily shrinking the ground under your feet, herding you into a corner. Truly, endlessly troublesome.
In the end, they’re telling me to choose.
Najin clenched his teeth. Nowhere to plant my feet? Nowhere to run? Then I’ll just make one.
Boom.
He kicked off the ground and charged straight ahead. He made no attempt to dodge the falling fireball; instead he drove his body into its trajectory.
Kwaaaaaaaaaang!
The fireball struck him with a deafening roar.
Flame and dust billowed upward. Then Najin burst through the cloud. In the moment of impact he had swung his sword, reducing the damage to the absolute minimum and tearing free.
He was not unharmed, of course. Soot clung to his body, and the palm of the hand gripping his sword had melted and fused to the hilt. He had simply chosen the path that minimized the damage and let him survive.
Clearing the flames, Najin gasped for breath and forced his eyes wide. Blood surged through his veins. His body accelerated past its limits. Sliding along the cliff as if skating, he swung his sword.
The blade wreathed in constellations flashed.
It carved white trails that split fireballs and shattered scorching rays. Kicking off the wall and racing onward, Najin met and turned aside the witch’s spells one by one. At a glance he seemed to be holding his own against her—yet—
Even as he swung, Najin felt it.
At some point the witch’s gaze had begun to track him. She no longer saw him as a merely irritating insect, but as something to be pierced and killed.
Thud.
The fingertips of the witch who had been fighting Najin with her right hand and the chain unit with her left went still. A single instant of silence—barely a second. Time began to move again the moment her two hands crossed.
Her left and right palms met.
A sharp clap.
The sound that shattered the silence rang in Najin’s eardrums. The seething Flame Demon, the spells chasing him—everything scattered in that single moment. But that did not mean they vanished.
They had only been broken down to be used more efficiently.
The scattered flames split, fractured, decomposed, and reassembled. The entire process took less than a second. Had any mage been present to witness it, they would have doubted their own eyes.
Spells already completed and launched—the witch was now dismantling them, reconstructing them, transforming them into entirely new spells.
It was magically impossible, a violation of every rule, a mockery of common sense. Even the empire’s great mage, the Eternal Brilliance Horn Cypria Gachevska, could not have done it. Yet a witch performed the feat with casual ease.
Because they were a race beloved by magic itself.
Because the world had granted them the right to break its laws.
In less than a second the reconstructed spell was ready. She split the 7-Circle spell into seven strands, then each of those into seven, then seven again…
Hundreds, thousands of flame arrows.
The moment the arrows of fire filled his entire field of vision, Najin let out a hollow laugh. He understood, with his whole body, what it meant to draw a witch’s full attention—what it meant when a witch recognized him as an enemy.
Right after that,
thousands of arrows shot toward Najin.
There was nowhere to dodge. Arrows closing from every direction without the slightest gap could not be avoided. That left Najin with only one choice.
He forced his eyes wide open.
Bloodshot veins spidered across his pupils as his vision expanded.
Holding every oncoming flame arrow in his sight, Najin gripped his sword. Then he swung. He swung and swung again. If he could neither dodge nor fully block them, he would cut down as many as he could.
That was the method he chose.
Every swing of his blade split a dozen arrows. Because the original spell had been carved into so many pieces, each individual shaft carried little power. The problem was the sheer number. One swing felled ten—
Pabababak!
—and the three he missed punched into his body. Skin seared. Agony of burning white-hot shook his mind, yet Najin clenched his teeth and kept swinging. He continued to cut arrows down, and the ones he failed to cut pierced through him.
More than a thousand arrows in total. It no longer felt like deflecting shafts; it felt like swinging a sword against a towering wave.
Before a wave, a single human was powerless. Powerless—yet he had not the slightest intention of being swept away. As he swung, Najin never stopped thinking. He adjusted the path of his blade, seeking movements that were a little faster, a little cleaner.
Slash—and thunk.
Countless arrows were severed; countless arrows buried themselves in Najin’s flesh. Guarding only his vital points, he swung and swung again. As if determined to cut the wave itself, he refused to yield a single step.
Faster. Cleaner.
How much time had passed? One second? Ten? He could not tell. He simply sank into the act of swinging. He had believed his motions were already pared to the absolute limit, yet there were still movements he could trim further.
Strip away everything that can be stripped.
And with what remains, swing the sword one more time.
With every stroke the constellations that clung to his blade left afterimages, until the air around him seemed filled with stars.
And then—slash.
Najin brought his sword around in a great arc. The final wave split apart, and his vision opened wide. He finally released the breath he had been holding. He had endured more than a thousand flame arrows to the end.
“Haaah… hah…”
He was far from unscathed, of course.
Arrows still jutted from every part of his body—dozens of them. Arms, legs, shoulder, collarbone, abdomen, ribs… he had protected only the true vitals, yet he looked little different from a human porcupine.
Melted skin. Flesh blackened with soot.
Yet his eyes remained clear. Najin lifted his head and looked at the sky. For the first time since the battle began, the witch’s expression changed. Brow furrowed, she stared down at him.
“You.”
The witch spoke for the first time.
“What the hell are you?”
Ermina glared at Najin.
Her crimson eyes held displeasure, contempt, irritation. Meeting that gaze, Najin grinned.
“Finally decided to pay a little attention, huh.”
An insect to be brushed aside—that was how she must have seen him at first. Now she looked him straight in the eye and spoke. The fact alone drew a laugh from him.
“You’re a madman. This world already has more than its share of madmen, but you stand alone. Strange. I’m certain I’ve never seen you before…”
Ermina’s brow furrowed a little deeper.
“Yet you feel familiar. Something about you is familiar. What are you? Do you know me?”
Of course I do, you crazy bitch.
Najin did not answer, but Merlin did. Standing at his side, Merlin curled her lips into a sly grin.
“I ground your circles into dust just the other day, and somehow you’ve crawled back up again. Honestly—talent-sucking bastards, the lot of you.”
Merlin raised a finger.
She pointed to the scar that ran from Ermina’s shoulder all the way down to her calf and murmured,
“I should have pierced your heart back then.”
The place her finger indicated—
Najin slammed his foot into the ground with a heavy thud and swung his sword. Of course the tip could never reach a witch floating in the sky. Even if he stretched his sword aura as far as it would go, it would fall short.
But Najin had seen it—the blades of Sword Masters who cut distant targets without any aura at all.
He had watched Caron’s sword. He had watched Yuel’s sword. He had watched Gerd’s sword. Picturing those movements in his mind, he swung. Under ordinary circumstances it was not something one could imitate simply by trying, a motion that should have been forever beyond him.
But right now—
immersed in the sword, having swung and swung until his senses were honed to their razor edge, Najin could, if only the tiniest bit, copy that motion.
Skak!
From the witch’s shoulder to her calf, a fine hairline followed the scar Merlin had carved a thousand years ago. The power was negligible, of course—little more than a light graze with a sword tip—and even that was blocked by the flames wreathed around the witch, making the fire merely ripple.
A blow that was nothing before a Sword Master.
Yet, unmistakably,
Najin’s sword had reached the witch.
“….”
Ermina touched her shoulder.
Looking at the swordsman who had swung along the scar left by that monstrous mage a thousand years ago, she parted her lips.
“Aha.”
What curved her mouth was laughter.
The witch burst into laughter—wild, unhinged laughter. Ermina dragged a hand down her face and laughed like a madwoman.
“You.”
Then, abruptly, the laughter cut off.
“You’re not going to die cleanly.”
The scar carved into her body.
It was Ermina’s reverse scale, and no human who had ever touched it had lived. Ermina snapped her fingers with a sharp crack.
Behind her, an eighth circle rose into the air.
The eighth circle.
The very symbol of a great mage.
The eighth circle that floated behind Ermina still carried soot, was cracked through, and in places had been shattered completely. In short, it was a defective piece that no longer functioned as a circle.
The circle Merlin had smashed a thousand years ago.
Even after a full millennium, Ermina had never managed to restore that eighth circle. Merlin had twisted her very essence and crushed her Mystery into dust. Because of that, Ermina could never be whole again. She was forced to carry incompleteness.
She could not reach Sublimation.
She could never again touch true transcendence.
Yet she was still a great mage who had once experienced transcendence, and even after losing everything she had rebuilt herself from nothing until she stood once more at the very brink. That was why she knew how to imitate transcendence.
A star glittered in the sky.
It was Ermina’s star.
Of the five stars she had originally possessed, four had been shattered by Merlin. Only one remained. That single star shone upon her eighth circle. This was the answer she had found.
Starlight filled the broken places, the cracked places. In that way the eighth circle she had lost temporarily functioned once more.
“I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing,”
Ermina’s crimson eyes swirled like a storm.
“but I’ll burn you down to your soul, you arrogant little brat.”
8-Circle Spell: Flicker.
The heavens heaved. A vast torrent of mana howled around her. The witch’s flames—flames that would burn even starlight itself—locked onto Najin.
And Najin—
“Fifteen minutes.”
—curled the corner of his mouth upward.
At the same moment, someone split the landscape in half and stepped into the battlefield.