Lily-Style Peace
“Huh?”
Clank!
The water droplets that had filled the sky all vanished at once, and the ship, which had been pure chaos moments ago, settled back into stillness.
Even Redberry, who had been in the middle of the fight, lowered her staff with a dazed expression and turned to look at me.
“Wait, is that…”
“That's right. It's that one.”
The Birdcage of Many Colors.
A spell that seals away an opponent's power and techniques.
Magic I had originally devised to save a young noblewoman being eroded by a fragment of the demon race.
I'd also used it once on Vlack's guild members during a scrim for the Mock Siege Battle.
“…?!”
The girl opened and closed her mouth, then stretched her arm out exactly as she had before.
And of course, nothing came out.
“…Come out. Come out!”
No matter how much mana you have—so much you'd think it infinite—if the 'path' is blocked, it means nothing.
Mana only has value once it travels along its path and out into the world.
“Ugh…!”
“It's no use. I already sealed it.”
“…Wh-what did you do to me?”
With the knife hidden behind her back, the girl glared at me, growling like a wild animal.
Whatever confidence and ambition she'd had before had vanished entirely, replaced by wariness.
I approached the girl slowly and reached my hand out toward Cal, who lay unconscious behind her.
“Don't touch Cal—”
“Name.”
“Huh?”
“What's your name?”
“…En. En Kaums.”
The kid called En hid the knife even further behind her back.
Her personality aside, given that they were the same tribe and looked quite similar, they were probably siblings.
Ignoring En's resistance, I reached out and traced a holy sigil into the air.
“No… huh?”
“He should be fine now.”
Cal's wound was completely healed.
Perfectly, without a single trace.
“Good. Now then, En. Will you guide us to the village elders?”
“…That's going to be a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“If they find out you did this to us, the elders will kill you. Especially once they see my condition.”
En spat out words that were closer to a threat than anything else, her whole body tense.
Right now, En was in a state where she couldn't use mana at all.
If they learned she'd truly lost her power entirely, as she'd said, the Wenetus who cherished their own tribespeople would no doubt try to kill me for it.
But still.
“What does that matter to me?”
“Huh?”
“I didn't come here to fight. I came here to trade.”
If I explained things well enough, they'd understand.
“More importantly, the ship's a wreck. Honestly, I think I'll have to charge you for repairs…”
“We barely broke anything…”
“Nope. That part and that part are broken, and it's soaked through with water.”
There was the brief window when Cal had gone berserk, plus the aftermath of the water droplets Redberry hadn't managed to block.
Not as bad as the Yena incident, but still a situation that warranted repair fees.
“Well. I can just haggle a bit when it's time to collect. For now, please guide us.”
“If you'd just release this first…”
“Procrastinate and the repair bill goes up, I'd say. Not that it matters to me…”
“……”
“What on earth are those things?”
“No idea. Just hurry up and follow.”
En Kaums, a child of the Kaums tribe, glanced back at the women trailing behind her.
The beautiful woman with blue hair, walking alongside the red-haired one, scanned the forest and murmured toward empty air.
She wasn't showing even the slightest hint of tension.
Just like us, before we boarded the ship.
“Ugh… this makes no sense! You expect me to believe you can't use the Ancient Power?”
“……”
“Say something! If she hadn't struck first, you would've won!”
Cal grabbed at his own head, the birdcage still drawn on his forehead.
But even En had no way to make sense of this bizarre phenomenon.
After all, in the blink of an eye, every one of her attacks had been neutralized, and everything from her mana on down had been sealed away.
She hadn't even known about the birdcage drawn on her forehead until Cal mentioned it after waking up and attacking the blue-haired woman.
It's not like a brand or anything. There's just a stark white birdcage picture stamped right there on his forehead.
Inside it, a single bird—red on one wing, blue on the other—flapped lazily about, and according to Cal, whenever he tried to call on his power, the bird went wild.
But by all accounts it only thrashed around—there wasn't the faintest sign of it breaking free.
Cal, too, glared at the blue-haired woman, then whispered at En's ear.
'I think they went and brought back someone seriously strong after what happened to us. Probably stronger than Uncle Umpura.'
'…No way.'
'No, I'm telling you, I'm sure of it!'
Cal glared at the woman once more and spoke with a voice full of conviction.
'That woman twisted my arm clean the wrong way in one motion. Beyond sealing mana and the Ancient Power, her physical abilities must be off the charts.'
'…Then what about the Divine Generals? The Divine Generals could handle her, couldn't they?'
'That's… yeah, they probably could.'
Cal and En glared at the woman in unison.
Despite the sustained stares, the blue-haired woman didn't spare them a single glance.
En let out a dry cough and thought to herself.
'She's strong, but… still.'
She still didn't fully understand what had happened.
But there was one thing she knew, having been born and raised on this land.
'In the end, everything bends before a greater power.'
No matter how strong a sealing ability was, it couldn't seal away a force that was greater in both quantity and magnitude.
Victory would belong to the tribe's elders in the end.
“We're here.”
“…? This is just a forest?”
The red-haired woman tilted her head and looked around.
Just as she said, all that greeted them was forest.
No buildings, no structures of any kind—just forest.
“Don't be dense. Obviously you can't see it right now. We'd never show our village to outsiders with no ties to us.”
“……”
“…Well, you can see it because we're here, obviously.”
Ahem!
“A-anyway, undo whatever this is on my forehead first. I can't get us in otherwise.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Outsiders can't enter the village. Unless the gate is opened with the Ancient Power itself, you can't even perceive its true form…”
Faaahhh…
The illusory barrier concealing the village dissipated.
In an instant, a vast, unfathomably mystical village revealed itself to welcome the strangers.
Bathed in azure light, the blue-haired woman lightly withdrew her hand, which had faded to pure white, and took a step forward.
“Shall we go?”
“Wh-what?”
…What on earth is this human?
The moment we stepped inside the village, what greeted us was the flow of mana.
Mana saturated the air to the point of excess.
There was so much of it that anyone without an adaptation to mana would have suffered mana poisoning.
The problem wasn't the flow of mana, though.
Cal! En!
Even though we were only at the village's edge, the Wenetus were already swarming toward us.
Having already grasped the full situation, they pulled Cal and En to their side and surrounded Redberry and me.
“Good heavens, the children's foreheads—”
“I can't sense any mana from them at all!”
“What have you done!”
There were more than thirty of them—warriors stronger than the girl who had traded blows evenly with Redberry, or perhaps stronger still.
Each and every one of them possessed abilities surpassing even Besk, who had once been one of the Eight Swords.
Before them all, I pulled out the Blue-Red Stone I had purchased in advance.
“We've come to trade. Specifically, to purchase this stone.”
“What?”
“This absolute lunacy…!”
The Wenetus fumed with indignation.
It was a hair-trigger situation where battle could erupt at any moment, but—
“Enough.”
At someone's intervention, the village fell silent in an instant.
A middle-aged man, his build visibly far superior to the other Wenetus.
The moment he took a step, mana churned, and his dark green eyes blazed with an especially deep blue light.
“…Heh. How amusing. And yet you laid your hands on children, in that state?”
“It was truly regrettable. I, too, wished to proceed peacefully, but…”
Things simply turned out this way.
It couldn't be helped.
“By the way, might you be Chieftain Karuns?”
“…No. I am Umpura, one of the Four Divine Generals.”
“A Divine General, then. What rank would that be? Roughly just below the chieftain, I'd assume?”
“……Are you trying to toy with me right now?”
“Toy with you? Not at all?”
I really didn't have any intention of joking around.
When I tilted my head, Umpura's face flushed red.
Not befitting one of the blue ones.
“I'm merely seeking the most suitable party to talk with. If we're to purchase mana stone at a fair price, speaking with whoever holds final authority is the fastest route.”
“After pulling this stunt?”
“The children attacked first. They mocked our knight to his face, and even damaged our ship.”
“Is that not a problem in itself—that you came here at all?”
“Does our presence here constitute a problem? According to our knight, it doesn't.”
When our merchants and knights first arrived on this land, the Wenetus had actually welcomed the strangers warmly.
They had been delighted to see them, and had eagerly expounded on themselves and the greatness of this land.
Then they had demanded proof of tribe from the traders, who had almost no military strength whatsoever.
Knowing full well they couldn't possibly provide it.
“And yet now, of all times, our mere presence is the problem…”
“……”
“How, exactly, am I supposed to take that?”
“Insolence!”
CRACK!!
“Halt!”
Despite Umpura's restraint, one Wenetus whose face had been mottling between colors this whole time wreathed his fist in fighting spirit and thrust it forward.
Its destructive power and mana density were beyond any comparison to the blow Cal had loosed.
But.
BOOM!
“Urk?!”
The world spun upside down for the Wenetus whose hand was caught.
As if heaven and earth had been reversed from the very beginning, countless legs filled the warrior's vision.
And then—
CRASHAAANG!!
He was slammed straight into the ground.
“………”