Chapter 46
Chapter 46
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 46
Chapter Title: The Forest of Illusions
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Three days after leaving the gorge, Allen arrived at the forest where the witch was said to be.
“We've... we've arrived.”
The coachman was clearly exhausted from driving the carriage nonstop, without a single stop in any village.
The carriage's frame was slightly bent, and its body was covered in scratches, a testament to the rough journey.
“I'll go on my own from here. If I don't come back after a day, return to the city without me.”
The coachman, as if sensing the witch's presence, hid behind a distant rock with a frightened look on his face.
“U-understood.”
Allen chuckled briefly at the sight before turning his gaze to the dark forest before him.
[You said this forest doesn't have a name?]
[Yes, there are no herbs or mushrooms... it's just lumped in with the surrounding woods and called the forest across the way....]
Allen recalled the few questions he had asked about the forest in the carriage.
No one would be coming into this forest from now on, he thought.
‘It's not like there aren't other forests nearby, so people will likely avoid this one.’
The very name 'witch' was ominous enough, so it was only natural.
Perhaps displeased by him just standing and staring at the forest, Vestla, who was at Allen's waist, grumbled.
「Didn't you say you were short on time? Why aren't you going in?」
“No, there's something I need to check first.”
Allen narrowed his eyes and stared into the depths of the forest.
His sensory perception radiated outwards, probing the forest's interior. However, Allen couldn't feel anything within it.
It was as if the witch's presence was a lie.
‘A barrier?’
He had been extending his senses toward the forest ever since he got out of the carriage, but it seemed the witch had prepared something; a barrier blocked him, preventing him from discerning anything.
‘This is my first time truly fighting a witch.’
His heart pounded a little, as he had never fought a witch, even in his past life.
「Why? Are you scared? A moment ago, you were striking a pose, all 'Witch, here I come!'」
“Who said that?”
Allen let out a soft laugh and grasped Vestla's hilt.
It just felt a little novel. Hunting a witch, eliminating the source of a curse that plagued the domain. This was the kind of thing Julius would have done in his past life.
He was just struck by the strange feeling of doing it himself.
Allen narrowed his sensory range to his immediate surroundings and stepped forward. With a pace neither fast nor slow, old leaves crunched and crumbled under his feet.
The moment he took that first step.
-Crunch.
「Oh.」
The scenery changed.
Allen wasn't fazed.
The instant his vision shifted, he spread his threads in all directions and lowered his stance.
“…No welcome party? They must know I'm here.”
「Who knows? Maybe they're secretly watching and preparing something.」
“Ridiculous.”
Allen moved forward, his guard still up.
The forest was quiet.
The silence, devoid of even the chirping of insects, was reminiscent of when he had entered the Spirit Spring.
However, unlike the vibrant life of the spring, this place seemed to have been drained of all vitality, looking gloomy all over.
A grim wind and a withered path.
In the dead forest, not a single living creature could be found.
‘Even after the witch dies, this land is done for.’
Allen spoke as he advanced toward the center of the forest, where he presumed the witch would be.
“Do you know anything about witches?”
「Hmm... well? I've never seen one myself, so I wouldn't know.」
“They're wicked, sinister beings. They bewitch people and spread curses, just like this. You don't know?”
「Aren't there a lot of things like that?」
“That's true.”
Allen acted as if he were letting his guard down while talking with Vestla, but no one attacked him.
When nothing had happened by the time he reached the middle of the forest, Allen also noticed that something was strange.
“Why isn't anyone attacking?”
「...Uh, I don't know? Maybe they ran away?」
He had expected monsters, undead, or at the very least, some minions to attack.
Allen quickened his pace.
Something was wrong. No preparations at all? Strange. Very strange. It made no sense for them to have fled now. It would be more logical to set a trap...
「...Was the forest always this big?」
“What?”
Allen stopped in his tracks.
“What did you say?”
「...Uh, I didn't mean to rain on your parade. Did I upset you?」
“No, that's not it. What did you say before?”
「Was the forest always this big?」
“I fell for it beautifully.”
Allen bit his lip and, as if realizing something, kicked off the ground with great force.
Trees and rocks shattered under his violent steps, kicking up clouds of dust. Vestla, bewildered by his sudden action, cried out.
「What are you doing all of a sudden! What if someone attacks!」
He charged forward as if to destroy the entire forest with his sturdy giant's body, but after some time, he came to a sudden halt.
「What are you doing! You said mages are supposed to be rational people!」
“Look around you.”
「Look at what! Everything's probably destroyed... Huh?」
Vestla's blade, which had been poised to unleash a torrent of nagging, paused.
“Normally, at this speed, I would have already left the forest long ago. But what about our surroundings?”
Nothing around them had changed. It was as if Allen had never gone on a rampage.
The broken trees had returned to their places, and the shattered rocks stood as if they had never been touched.
「Huh? Huh? This can't be right.」
She slipped from Allen's hand and looked around several times before speaking in a bewildered tone.
「...Is this a hallucination? No, it's not a hallucination.」
“To be precise, it's a barrier constructed from illusions.”
Allen, for once, frowned.
“I should have been suspicious from the moment I passed through the barrier. I let my guard down.”
He had dismissed it with a vague conviction that a witch's forest would 'of course' be like this.
The fact that he had a similar experience at the Spirit Spring also played a part in him not questioning the forest's appearance.
‘Would it have been wiser to just break the barrier and come in?’
Allen thought coolly.
「...So what are you going to do? Is there a way to break the barrier?」
Vestla asked in a rather serious tone. Allen slowly reviewed the means at his disposal.
‘Reverse-engineering the barrier is impossible from the start.’
He only knew the basics of barrier-type magic, so dismantling it was out of the question.
‘Then is the only way to destroy the entire space containing the barrier?’
He had moved too far from the entrance; the opportunity to go to the edge of the barrier and break it was lost.
Then?
‘Create an opening.’
Barriers and spatial magic have direct and indirect connections. Even if it's less efficient than what a barrier-specialist mage could do, it should be possible to create an escape route.
Finding the barrier's central axis was next to impossible, so this was the most realistic method.
Allen immediately gathered the threads he had scattered around him and unleashed countless small shockwaves.
The shockwaves minutely shook the space, beginning the search for a crack in the barrier.
‘A barrier this large can't be perfect.’
If I can find just one small weak point, I can widen the gap.
Allen's hands moved busily, tapping the empty air as if fumbling for something. The barrier wouldn't have just one axis. If he could just twist one small anchoring point...
“Found it.”
Following Allen's hand signs, a vast amount of mana surged endlessly from his core, filling the area around him with innumerable threads.
The myriad threads stabbed into a single point in the air, which began to make a twisting sound. It felt like something was being forced open.
The mana consumption was immense.
‘...Tsk, I should have studied barriers.’
-Kreee...
Just as it seemed a little more time was all he needed to escape safely.
「Quick, look over there!」
Vestla, who had been quiet so as not to break Allen's concentration, suddenly shouted.
Allen's gaze followed her shout.
-Graaa-aaah-aaah!
-Ghe-eeeeeeeh!
-Krrrrrrrrrrk!
Skeletons, ghouls, zombies, dullahan, banshees, and other undead.
Are they real? Or illusions? Either way, inside the barrier, they were as good as real.
Allen let out a dry laugh and took his stance.
“Vestla, you were right.”
「...Ahaha, I guess so?」
When Allen glared, Vestla quickly shut up and flew into his hand, settling there.
“From now on, try not to run your mouth.”
「...Yes.」
As Allen swung his hand, the threads wove together, and dozens of awls rained down on the corpses.
“...I'd like to finish this today.”
CRASH!
A black wave of corpses washed over them.
***
Allen's sword slammed down on the headless, rusted armor. With a crunching sound, the dullahan turned into a mere pile of scrap metal, split in half from neck to groin.
But that wasn't the end of it.
A zombie with rotting skin hanging off it thrust its face into the gap left by the sundered dullahan. He immediately swung a fist, and its head exploded, splattering pale brain matter into the air.
How many are left?
“Vestla!”
「Just a second!」
Allen shouted and tossed Vestla into the air, and she quickly assessed the number of enemies.
「There are still so many! Aren't their numbers supposed to be going down?」
Allen frowned. So they weren't real, just illusions?
‘No, it could be a property of the barrier, just like how the trees and rocks returned to normal.’
Either way, it was bad news for Allen.
Grrrk!
A ghoul with hideous muscles exposed descended upon him, its serrated claws glinting. Allen struck the air, and a massive shockwave broke the ghoul's back.
He stomped on its lowered head, and with a sickening crunch, its skull caved in.
Countless undead surged toward Allen like a wave. Even from Vestla's vantage point, their numbers seemed endless.
Allen made full use of his physique.
He used his overwhelming physical abilities as a tool to smash the corpses' skulls and blocked incoming attacks with his steel-like skin as a shield.
As he broke through the wave of corpses, Allen thought. At this rate, it would never end.
Perhaps the witch had started controlling them, because at some point, they began to form cunning formations and move to drain Allen's stamina.
‘Stamina isn't the problem.’
He didn't think his body, with its giant-like properties, would collapse from something like this.
But if these attacks continued, his mind was more likely to tire before his body.
“Vestla! Enlarge!”
「Got it! Hya!」
Allen caught her as she fell with immense weight and twisted his body. His muscles screamed as if they would snap. The air shrieked with friction as a shadow fell over the enemies' heads.
The slow-moving sword strike became an overwhelming force of violence by its weight alone.
CRASH!
A clearing dozens of meters wide formed around Allen, the ground littered with finely scattered, crushed pieces of flesh.
‘Even after this, they'll just return to normal.’
But it didn't matter.
This was all to create an opening.
He immediately let go and formed a hand sign.
If the undead are the enemy's minions, their bound servants.
‘I can steal them.’
[Contract] [Domain] [Force] [Seize]
The four concepts forged in his mind mixed, becoming a single formula. The threads split into thousands of strands and shot toward the fallen corpses on the ground.
The flesh of the corpses squirmed and began to reassemble.
Allen smiled in satisfaction as he watched the threads weave into the masses of flesh.
“Forced Contract.”
As the core in his heart beat wildly, he moved both hands with the delicacy of a puppeteer controlling a doll.
“Go, my monsters.”
Tear each other apart like mad.
The now fully restored undead turned and began to fight against the oncoming wave of corpses.
Allen used his perception to assist the movements of each one, and a splitting headache washed over him from the effort.
‘This trick won't last long...’
He knew nothing of summoning-type magic, so he had no choice but to control them directly.
'Call of the Cradle' wouldn't work on them since they were already dead. He had to find a way to escape while buying time like this...
As Allen pondered, Vestla, who was floating beside him, spoke up with a reluctant voice.
「...There is one way.」
Enduring the headache, he turned his head and saw the unknown characters etched on Vestla's blade, which he had thought were just decorations, begin to flash and glow white-hot.
“Vestla, what is this...”
「Once I use this, I don't know when I'll wake up again. It could be a month, or it could be a year.」
“Didn't you say you had no special abilities?”
Even with his headache, Allen spat out the words in disbelief. Vestla replied in a flustered tone.
「I-I only realized it a few days ago! Anyway, just hurry up and choose!」
Should he use her ability to escape this place, or should he find another way?
The answer came quickly.
‘It would be a waste to use her ability now.’
He didn't know what the ability was, but if using it just once carried such a risk, it would be far more useful to save it for a more important battlefield, a more dangerous moment than this.
Then again, just standing around wouldn't produce a solution either.
As long as the opponent didn't fall first, escaping a prepared barrier was no easy task.
‘What if I just bombard the entire forest and destroy the barrier's central axis...’
Most of the undead controlled by Allen had already fallen, and time was just slipping away.
「Make a decision, quickly! You said you had things to do!」
‘Right. I have to get out.’ The moment Allen opened his closed eyes, his resolve hardened.
*Shhhk-*
A white book suddenly flew open, and words began to write themselves on its blank white pages.
『The book connected to ■■■■ confirms the conditions. ■■ is recognized! A target related to ■■ is nearby! The user wishes to repel ■■!』
『Conditions have been met. ■■■ ■■ (Tentative) will now manifest!』
『?Three steps to the right. Two steps back. In 8 seconds, shockwave 400m above.』
“This is...”
A new variable had appeared.