Volcanic Eruption
The instant the earthen wall she'd raised to block the strike vanished, a blade slash came screaming toward her face.
But it was an attack Morana had anticipated long before she dismissed the ground, and she unleashed the mana she'd already drawn up.
"Darkness."
"Ugh—?!"
Pitch-black darkness poured from Morana's breath and clung straight to the woman's face. It was no mere veil over the eyes—it was an advanced dark-element spell that robbed the victim of all sense of balance: Sensory Disruption.
Thud—
Even a Sword Master could not stay upright without balance. The charging woman toppled flat to the floor.
Determined to finish the woman who had already defied her expectations, Morana pulled in mana once more.
"Fire…"
Just as she prepared to drive a spear of flame through the fallen woman's skull—
"Darkness!"
The girl's mana reached the woman before Morana's fire spear could fully form.
Clang—!
The darkness blanketing the woman's face shattered under the girl's external interference. A pure contest of power would never have broken it, but like the subjugation magic she'd unraveled from the criminals earlier, the spell was fragile against outside disruption—and that made it possible.
The girl who had freed the woman from Sensory Disruption shouted,
"Sigrun! Watch the attack from above! Dodge—!!"
Released from the spell, the woman called Sigrun moved without a heartbeat of hesitation. She poured mana into the shield strapped to her arm, slammed it into the ground, and used the rebound to spring clear of the spot.
The moment she vacated it, Morana's belated fire spear punched through the empty ground.
Whoosh—
The spear that had skewered nothing but stone collapsed into a handful of sparks and vanished. There was no time to mourn the miss.
Freed from Sensory Disruption, Sigrun kicked off the floor again and charged straight at Morana.
"Hup—!"
"Strike."
In the blink of an eye Sigrun's thrust came flying; Morana whipped a lash of flame to bat it aside. Clicking her tongue at the failed attack, Sigrun widened the distance again and waited for another opening.
"Pierce!"
And that was not all. The girl's magic, constantly shifting position and hunting for Morana's blind spots, was eating away at her concentration. Whenever Morana tried to focus on Sigrun circling her, the girl's spells arrived with uncanny timing to threaten her life.
"Block."
The power was too real to ignore. Morana could not commit fully to either opponent. Had the failed ambush convinced them to switch to a pincer attack? She deflected the incoming spells with earth magic while keeping a sharp eye on Sigrun orbiting her.
This one… isn't just any Sword Expert…
Studying Sigrun with cold calm, Morana felt a sharp sense of déjà vu and frowned. When she had first laid eyes on the woman, she had dismissed her as a mere Sword Expert—beginner-level at that, far beneath the knights of the Void Cult. Her initial read had not been wrong. Sigrun was still stuck at the beginner Sword Expert stage.
But she possessed one quality that set her utterly apart from ordinary beginners.
Her fundamentals are different…!
Most fighters grew their realm and their technique together from nothing. Sigrun was different. Her swordsmanship was already near completion. Her footwork was already near completion. While others still had to reinforce a shaky foundation as they built upward, Sigrun's foundation was rock-solid—so she could simply keep raising the structure itself, steady and unshakable. That was how she had reached Sword Expert so young.
More than that—the sword arts and footwork she displayed were things Morana had seen before.
How does she know that Sword Master's techniques…?!
There had been a Sword Master who once clashed lightly with the Void Cult—a nightmare of a day for the organization. The sword arts and footwork he had shown then were unfolding right now through Sigrun.
Footwork that bewitched the eye and slipped into an opponent's unconscious, controlling distance at will. Swordsmanship that could feel crushingly heavy one moment and weightlessly light the next, weaving freely between straight lines and curves. Morana lacked the vocabulary for finer distinctions, but the point was simple: the shadow of the Sword Master who had carved an unforgettable scar into the Void Cult was visible in Sigrun's every motion.
Which meant the present situation—being pincered by a girl of talent that already outstripped her own, incomplete though she was, and by a knight who looked every bit that Sword Master's disciple—had never once entered Morana's calculations.
"This is… not ideal."
She had been full of leisure at the start. Now she had no choice but to admit it: that leisure had been arrogance. Beating either of them alone would not have been hard. Beating both at once was another matter entirely. If Sigrun had been a mage, seizing the initiative would have been easier—but she was a swordsman, and one who seemed to have inherited a Sword Master's craft. This was not mage versus mage. It was mage versus mage-and-warrior—and both of them, even if still below Morana for the moment, were monsters of talent. She could not claim victory with any certainty.
Worse still, while she was locked in place by the two of them, the cult's priests were losing the free-for-all against the criminals. The fact that these men had broken out of captivity after being jailed for their crimes was proof enough that Himrave's underworld was packed with serious fighters.
"If I'd known, I would have brought stronger ones."
Competent cult members would have handled it without trouble—but today's mission had not required much force, so she had brought neither knights nor capable mages. That judgment was now poison. If the priests all fell and the criminals joined the fight on this side, the strain would become severe.
The thought settled over her. Morana muttered through a thoroughly crumpled expression,
"…No choice, then."
She had desperately wanted to take the girl alive today. Unfortunately, today was not the day. If she had brought even a single knight, none of this would have happened. The thought still made her grind her teeth; then she let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Even so, I can hardly leave the Saintess's mission unfinished…"
Capturing the girl looked practically impossible. Completing the mission the cult's Saintess had personally entrusted to her did not. Which of the two Morana had to prioritize was perfectly clear.
The moment her choice was made, she stamped the ground hard.
BOOM—!!!
A footfall packed with earth mana sent a thunderous quake through the stone. The roar left every ear ringing. The girl, Sigrun, the priests and criminals still brawling at a distance—every gaze snapped toward Morana.
In that brief pocket of attention she drew a deep breath and shouted,
"Operation begins now!! All priests, withdraw!!!"
Her voice, layered with mana, rolled through the air like a bell. The priests in the melee reacted at once; the quickest among them already had teleport scrolls in hand and tore them open. Flash after flash, the priests who had been fighting the criminals vanished. The criminals lunged too late—teleportation left them nothing to catch.
The girl and Sigrun were just as slow to react.
"Sigrun! Stop her!! Right now!!"
"…! Understood!"
Whether they had only now grasped what she intended, Sigrun answered the girl's desperate cry and charged. But a rush born of panic was never going to reach Morana.
"Rise."
Whoosh—!
She kicked off the floor and chanted; a fierce wind hurled her body skyward, past the girl who had already claimed the air, higher still into the cavern vault.
Then Morana attuned herself to the subjugation magic she had laid on the criminals—specifically, to the one bound to the man deepest in the cave—and said,
"Sorry. You're already too late."
With the words, she flicked her fingers lightly.
And the clear, bright snap of that sound rang out—
KRAAAAAAAAAAANG—————!!!!!
—as a cataclysmic explosion tore through the cavern of Bramante Volcano, shaking heaven and earth.