Chapter 646: Black Magic, White Magic, and Gray Trickery - 5
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 646: Black Magic, White Magic, and Gray Trickery - 5
Temperus collapsed powerlessly under my grip. Missionary Casas saw this and was horrified.
“He's dead! To murder a family Executor within the family's own domain. Do you fear neither the heavens nor the family?!”
“He's not dead. Just unconscious.”
Don't look at me like I'm a murderer. I don't kill people unless they're begging for it.
“Hmph. So you do have some common sense.”
Missionary Casas walked over, checked on Temperus, and breathed a sigh of relief. He might have possessed the political sense not to make an enemy of the Celsius family in their own land, but it was more his character that couldn't tolerate a murder happening right before his eyes.
“I will go and melt the ice covering those guards. Even if they are the Executor's escort, it would be dangerous to leave them like that.”
“Before you do that, how about melting the ice stuck to my body?”
“I have no Holy Power to waste on the likes of a black mage. Take care of it yourself.”
Then why did you even talk to me? You should've just taken care of it yourself.
While Missionary Casas was using a dispelling spell to melt the ice, Hilde sidled up to me. I didn't get the feeling she was looking up to me in awe for defeating an Executor of the Celsius family.
“You're a liar, Father~.”
“Huh? What about?”
“Just now, when you dealt with the Executor~. You didn't actually use any magic, did you?”
“What are you talking about? Didn't you see my magic? The pinnacle of Standard Magic. A Strategy-level spell woven purely from the body, something even the Military State couldn't achieve.”
“That was it, though. Enduring the ice, knocking down the Executor... none of that had anything to do with magic, did it?”
She was sharp. Feeling a bit awkward, I scratched my head.
“You saw through it. Even the Executor didn't realize.”
“Of course. The Executor is a mage. Since you didn't use magic, he had no way of knowing. You just bulldozed your way through with brute force, Father.”
“Brute force? It was a trick no different from magic, I'll have you know.”
Even with my enhanced strength, there was no way I could move while encased in ice bound by mana. Even if I had managed to break it by force, the sharp fragments would have torn my body to shreds.
With Tyr's divinity, I wouldn't have died, but if I'd shown off my regeneration so openly, Temperus would have noticed something. He wouldn't have felt such a complete sense of defeat.
To keep Temperus shrouded in mystery, this was the only way.
“So what method did you use?”
“A simple trick. I froze my joints with ice beforehand.”
“What?”
“The essence of Celsius magic isn't cold, but phase transition. In other words, it's crystallization magic. And crystallization magic can't crystallize a crystal. Because it's already a crystal.”
“Ah!”
Hilde, whose main line of work was disguise and espionage, had a broad base of knowledge to handle unexpected topics. She understood what I said immediately.
“That's right. I pre-froze my joints. Thanks to the rules of the Celsius domain, just splashing some water on is enough to freeze it. Even if my whole body was covered, as long as my joints were fine, I could walk. It was cold and difficult, though.”
“So the Executor was completely fooled by your acting.”
“Fooled? Right up until he passed out, he thought I was using magic. So how is that any different from magic?”
If you get caught, it's a trick. If you don't, it's magic. Isn't that how it works? If you peel back the curtain, all you find is a pathetic and desperate struggle.
“The fact that you'd tell me a trick like that so readily... I can assume you trust me a whooole lot, right, Father?”
“I can't hide it forever, can I? A secret is only complete once you've secretly confessed it to someone.”
“And then it enters someone's ear, and eventually becomes a rumor for the whole world to hear~.”
“Well, if that happens, I'll have brought it on myself.”
Right. If you really don't want anyone to know, you shouldn't say anything in the first place.
Hilde tilted her head for a moment, lost in thought.
'Ah! That's right, isn't it~? If we just retreat safely from here, nothing will change. And that's not the outcome Father wants...'
“Anyway, can you get this ice off me? My body's starting to get stiff.”
“Alright, Father. Stand perfectly still. I'll shatter it in one go with my Qi Art, Blast.”
“You're just going to break the ice, right? Not me along with it?”
“Of course! Just trust me and hold still!”
“Let's save that as a last resort. I'll try melting it with my body heat first.”
“Tsk...”
“You just clicked your tongue, didn't you? Your goal was just to hit me, wasn't it?”
This magic was certainly tricky. If I tried to break it with force, I'd get hurt too. Maybe I should try to break it off piece by piece along the joints.
“Huh?”
I hadn't done anything, but the crystals were slowly melting away as if touched by sunlight. As I regained my freedom, I looked down at the liquid trickling off me.
“You could have melted it yourself all along? Tsk. I should have known. I was worried for nothing! Give me back my worry!”
“No. This wasn't me.”
It was a phenomenon similar to Missionary Casas's time-based ability. But he was busy saving the other frozen people. In that case, this was...
“Father Casas. I think we need to hurry.”
It wasn't melting. The small crystals were flowing away like grains of sand, rolling and tumbling in one direction.
If a glacier had an ebb tide, it would look exactly like this. As if its very nature as water made it long for the moon.
The ice flowed toward the castle tower made of ice. It seeped into the structure and became one with it, as if it had been a part of the ice castle from the very beginning. I was marveling at this function of the ice castle when something strange happened.
“Father. Look, the castle is moving...?”
I didn't even need to turn my head. The ice castle was so massive it filled my entire field of vision, and it was, without a doubt, moving.
The ice castle, being a castle, was composed of several towers. The place we were in was the courtyard of an annex, a remote spot where a commotion wouldn't be easily noticed. The Executor probably brought us here because he wanted to handle things as quietly as possible, but...
It seemed his superiors already knew.
Ruuuumble.
The annex slowly 'stood up'. The building, which should have remained firmly in one place, was committing a grand act of deviance.
A pointed tower became its head, and the windows below it, a face. The thick lower floors split apart to become its arms. The first floor and its stairways became legs, firmly supporting the giant.
It was about 25 meters tall. A giant of ice of staggering size, looking down on us insignificant creatures as if we were beneath its notice. An ice colossus of such overwhelming size that the thought of fighting it didn't even cross my mind.
“Whoa... That's insane.”
I didn't have the luxury for it, but an irrepressible gasp of admiration escaped my lips. An ice castle rising to its feet, standing on two legs like a giant. Just witnessing it was enough to fulfill a certain romantic ideal.
“Admire it more. Gaze up in greater awe. Looking up from down there is what suits you.”
The voice came from the giant's face. Looking up as she'd said, I saw a young lady with long blue hair sitting in a wide-open window, her chin propped on her hand in a supremely arrogant pose, looking down on us.
She had a familiar face, but a far more arrogant attitude. After taking a sip from a crystal teacup, she looked down at us with cold eyes.
“An Executor could never finish a job properly. If he had watched with a little more dignity, he wouldn't have been fooled by such a petty trick. Then again, that's why he's stuck cleaning up messes.”
For words spoken from a dizzying height of twenty-five meters, they reached my ears with perfect clarity. It didn't even sound like she was shouting. I wondered if my own voice carried like that and asked at a normal volume.
“And you are?”
“I shall bestow upon you the glory of hearing my name. I am Elcia Celsius. The one who will become the master of this beautiful and brilliant tower.”
The master of the Celsius domain is the Celsius family. The Executor was nothing more than a useful pawn, selected from among the mages born and raised in this land.
A clan of geniuses who inherited the blood of the prodigy who first discovered their magic, born with superior intellect.
I felt a sense of déjà vu from her striking looks and arrogant demeanor.
“The Blue Tower Master?”
Her profile, leaning out the window, looked so much like the Blue Tower Master of the Floating Castle.
Elcia Celsius gave a confident smile.
“It seems my poor little sister has lowered the family's dignity in more ways than one.”
Sister? This was the first I was hearing of it. The Blue Tower Master never mentioned any family. Not that we were close enough to share family histories.
...But still. I never heard she had an older sister with a Unique Magic!
“To think there are so many who look down on the Celsius family.”
She pointed her finger directly at me.
“Father!”
Just as Hilde shoved me aside, the giant moved. A massive fist of ice struck the ground not far from me.
A small earthquake occurred. The vibrations flowed through the ground and the ice, and shards of ice that broke off the giant's body rained down like hail. Crack, crack. The cracked and splintered ice was about to shatter and scatter...
...but it seeped back into the giant's body.
An infinitely regenerating ice giant? And it was incredibly fast and powerful, too. For something of that size to unleash its power so freely without fear of self-destruction... This wasn't a physical force a human could withstand.
Above all, that... was not a Unique Magic!
“Hughes, was it? I shall give you the chance to answer my question. For the record, this is not a duel. It is a grace I am bestowing upon you. Though the answer will be your despair.”
Elcia was still leaning against the windowsill, leisurely looking down at us.
Her Unique Magic hadn't been activated yet. The ice giant was a separate power, neither magic nor a Unique Magic. Its identity was...!
“My loyal knight, Olaf. What is the identity of this little snowman I'm riding?”
“A Relic...!”
A crystallization left behind by a mage of the past, a manifestation of their Spiritual World in reality