Chapter 129. The Battle of the Strongest (2)
Arhen's knight-guardian Darkan, the War God's shrine maiden Berdia.
The Divine Archer Melia, who belonged to the hero party that struck down the Demon King a century ago. Brukenstein, the pinnacle of magical erudition who inherited the accumulated secret arts produced by alchemists across centuries.......
And Bardos, who during his days under the guise of an adventurer boasted a near-perfect success rate, and ultimately ascended to the ranks of the Ten Strongest under the epithet "Solver."
That renown alone could have drawn vast wealth and standing on the surface, yet still Bardos abandoned life in the light and chose to turn back to the underworld as a fixer.
The reason was simple. He had no desire to shoulder the responsibilities that came with greater fame.
He'd begun the adventurer's life seeking freedom—so was it even remotely reasonable to force the duty of laying down one's life on the battlefield onto him, merely because his strength and ability had been proven?
Of course, the place he'd fled to from such tiresome obligations was no paradise either, but at least here, once your strength was proven, you could live without being crushed by the weight of responsibility.
Bardos found that freedom comfortable.
So comfortable, in fact, it felt stale.
'Still, I always knew it would come to this someday—but I never imagined the day would come when a Grand Archmage would come to kill me in person.'
Was it really strange, given that he'd touched the hero belonging to their party?
Finding his own predicament absurd, Bardos let out a short laugh and looked down at his subordinates scattered across the floor.
It was a group assembled from reasonably capable individuals by underworld standards, yet a single spell fired by a mage had rendered every last one of them incapacitated.
Whether they were still breathing was anyone's guess, but it didn't much matter. To him, an organization was merely a convenient front for taking contracts anyway.
'In the end, people can just be gathered again, and an organization can be rebuilt from scratch.'
It was a shame he'd have to burn through most of the profits he'd amassed, but considering his own abilities, that too was merely a matter of time.
So what he needed to concern himself with wasn't what came after—it was right now.
How to overcome the present, so there could be an afterward at all.
"How exactly did you track me all the way here?"
"Shut your mouth."
-BOOM!!!
The moment he spoke, the side wall exploded.
The shabby building collapsed pathetically under an attack that shot from her hand like lightning.
No—it was definitely lightning.
A mere flick of a finger.
That was the entirety of the motion the Grand Archmage performed to summon lightning.
"Shut that mouth. I didn't come all this way just to entertain your questions."
"......True enough, the right to ask questions belongs solely to your side."
Wearing a bitter smile, Bardos pulled the cigarette from his lips and exhaled a plume of blue smoke.
Almost as if sensing that even his composure was getting on her nerves, Ymir's face began to contort violently.
That was only natural.
He didn't know how she'd tracked him despite his consummate skill in erasing his traces, but regardless, now that she'd reached this point, there was no way she'd forgive him.
"Even so, you'll still have to open your mouth since I haven't gotten an answer yet. From here on, you'd better try hard to save enough strength just to move your jaw."
-CRACKLE!
As if in response to her emotions, the density of her mana deepened. High-output plasma surged with physical force.
But in contrast to the violently rampaging mana, the glare she fixed on him showed not the faintest waver.
"As it happens, I'm someone who doesn't know how to hold back. By the time you're begging for your life, your whole body might be roasted crisp, so do yourself a favor and dodge well."
Mana is energy that responds to human will.
As if to prove that an emotional person can never wield magic with mastery, a terrifying torrent of electrical discharge raged behind her.
All of it—not to destroy herself, but purely to incinerate her chosen target.
-CRACKA-BOOM!!
And so the coalesced vortex of lightning began sweeping through the area.
Everything it touched was scorched and ground to nothing. From the points where the indiscriminately branching bolts struck, debris erupted in violent bursts.
"...This crazy bitch."
It was destruction that drew those words out of him reflexively.
Dodging the lightning and shrapnel, Bardos sucked in a deep breath and trained his gaze on Ymir, who had cast the spell.
In most cases, a mage is bound to be momentarily immobilized after using a large-scale spell, caught in its recoil.
He had intended to exploit that opening and hurl a concealed weapon, but even in this instant she was staring directly at him as if she'd forgotten to even catch her breath.
-WHOOOOSH!!
Immediately after, another snap of her fingers—and a wave of surging flames.
The moment it blanketed the area and spread toward him, Bardos pulled mana into his body and broke through the torrent of fire.
It was an attack focused purely on area. If you had enough ability to endure the heat, you could withstand it for a little while.
'If I break through here and close the distance......!'
Yes. Normally, he should have plunged straight into her guard from there.
-CRACKLE-CRACK!
But at that moment, his feet faltered as the floor began to freeze over.
No sooner had he retreated to avoid the ice spikes that shot up next, than the debris behind him began coalescing, forming the shape of a gigantic hand.
It came down as if to crush him flat.
-CRASH!!
The moment he evaded that attack, a spear of lightning came from his flank and slammed into Bardos's body.
After the current discharged against the arm he had raised to guard, Bardos's eyes widened as he registered the damage.
"......Well now, this is something."
Even having deflected it as much as possible, his arm now bore bruises and burns. It wouldn't impair his movement, but the fact that she had inflicted this much damage on him specifically was telling.
As if confirming his initial thought upon first facing her—'This person can kill me'—had not been mistaken.
'The youngest Grand Archmage in history....... You really do have the ability to rise to such a position.'
Every single spell she'd used so far was a high-grade lethal spell. She was chaining magic of that level together as if handling basic spells, and driving him into a corner.
Without the slightest sign of fatigue, maintaining that murderous glare.
If her target had been an army rather than a single individual, they would have had to brace for being crippled by the attacks she'd already unleashed.
"......This is the problem with mages. All they do is read books, so they have no clue how much trouble their actions cause for everyone around them."
But no matter how much he'd chosen a sparsely populated area for the sake of infiltration, this was still the middle of a city.
Wouldn't scorched-earth tactics like this draw attention far exceeding his objectives, and even cause harm to civilians?
"Isn't that something a kidnapper piece of shit shouldn't be lecturing about?"
"Fair point."
Who was he to give advice, anyway.
With a self-deprecating laugh, Bardos once again concealed his body in the darkness of the building and began scattering the weapons hidden beneath his hood into the air.
-WHIRR!
Mana-infused projectiles danced through the darkness together with scattered wires, and all of it began surging toward Ymir with cunning precision.
The flashes reflected off the flames that consumed the surroundings, tracing their trajectories.
It was a sudden assault that, against an ordinary mage, would have skewered them dead before they could even register it. Even if they managed to guard, projectiles imbued with mana could easily tear through a mana shield.
-CLANG!
But defying all such common sense, the projectiles he'd launched were stopped in front of her in a manner so preposterously simple it was galling.
By the semi-translucent barrier that had enveloped her at some point.
-CRACKLE!
And once more sparks flew from beyond the mana shield.
The moment a storm of lightning and fire descended upon him again, Bardos dodged the attacks and cut through the ruins, glaring at the barrier surrounding Ymir as he let out a deep breath.
'A mana shield....... No, it's slightly different.'
An ordinary mana shield is a mass of magical energy formed by condensing pure physical force.
Its shape typically resembles a heat haze caused by distorted light, but the thing before him now showed no such phenomenon at all.
Just as a well-tempered aura blade takes the solid form of a sword without wavering,
the 'semi-translucent black barrier' she manipulated possessed a crystalline quality in and of itself.
'Ah, right. So that's what that is.'
Black Crystal.
The epithet she carried had originated from the unique spell she unveiled during a magic duel she petitioned against her own academic advisor—before she even became a Grand Archmage.
To refine the nature of mana, which ordinarily exerts physical force by responding to will, until it resembled one of the fundamental elements, carbon—and then transform it into the most resilient structure possible.
The carbon tube (carbon hardening) created through this process was known to boast the most formidable durability of all defensive magics in existence.
Because the caster enveloped by it appeared 'as if sealed within a jet-black crystal,' she had been granted the epithet Black Crystal.
She was the first—and youngest—Grand Archmage to overcome the fatal weakness inherent to mages: their vulnerability in defense.
"That goddamn bastard just keeps scurrying around like a rat!"
Yes. It was precisely because she was protected by magic of such absolute durability that she could recklessly barrage him with spells like that.
Once again, Ymir used the frictional heat of her fingers as a medium to ignite flames and laid down suppressive fire.
Dodging all those attacks wasn't difficult since they lacked precision, but their number only grew with each passing moment.
It wasn't just the firepower—the area of effect, and the secondary damage from terrain destroyed by that force, couldn't be ignored either.
-CRASH, BOOM!!
Cutting through a place that was barely distinguishable from a bombing zone as he fled, Bardos burned his cigarette deeper and glared at Ymir.
"You're exactly what I'd expect from a young lady who became a Grand Archmage through a magic duel."
That she'd earned the title of Grand Archmage through a grudge match against the academic advisor who humiliated her—it was a story known to anyone who was anyone.
If her freedom to attack were guaranteed, there likely existed no one even among the Ten Strongest of Humanity who could unleash as overwhelming a bombardment as her.
That is, strictly in terms of 'firepower.'
"But a contest and a real fight are very different things."
Yes. Every spell she'd used so far was only truly efficient against an army or a large-type monster.
It was neither efficient as a barrage aimed at a single individual, nor could it guarantee a confirmed kill.
-THUD-THUD-THUD!
The breakthrough lay right there.
Having closed the distance to the limit he was permitted, Bardos promptly began scattering the tools he carried inside his coat around her.
"What is this....... Bombs?"
No—simple misdirection.
Smoke pellets, formed by clumping ash powder together, focused purely and solely on obscuring the opponent's vision.
But against someone whose fundamental tool was a mana shield, they would be effective.
'No matter how robust this carbon tube magic is, its foundation is still a mana shield. Its defensive capability may be certain, but a shield cannot afford to consider only protecting the caster.'
Before protecting the body, it must also account for preserving the caster's own condition.
For instance, allowing light to pass through the barrier to maintain visibility.
Filtering air from beyond the barrier so breathing remains unimpeded.
"Cough!"
Yes. At this very moment, the irritant components present in the smoke were disrupting her breathing.
No matter how capable her body was of firing off bombardment spells, magic required intense concentration and calculation.
If something occurred to disrupt her focus—like obstructed breathing—she would become unable to cast magic properly.
"Don't resent me too much, young lady. I don't have a choice if I want to live."
Even a Grand Archmage was still human—one stab to a vital spot and she'd die like anyone else.
Wary of any potential counterattack, Bardos promptly widened the distance and began hurling a throwing knife toward Ymir's throat.
To carve out her throat while her concentration was scattered and she couldn't gather mana.
-CLANG!
But in that instant, a flash of light surged in from the side and struck the projectile.
Seeing his weapon drop powerlessly with a metallic ring, Bardos stiffened and turned toward whatever had blocked the attack.
'What the hell is that.'
Was it magic?
No. It wasn't magic.
What had fallen from the air alongside his thrown knife was something long. A shaft tipped with sharp metal at one end—commonly known as an 'arrow.'
'With an arrow.......'
No sooner had he registered that than Bardos swallowed a breath once more.
Then his gaze began to slowly shift toward the direction from which the arrow was presumed to have come.
The far opposite end of the slums, located at the city's periphery.
It came from the bell tower, similarly situated on the outskirts—the source of the discordant presence he now felt.
'From that distance, she precisely deflected my projectile with an arrow?'
-SHWING!
Immediately after, the sound of air being sliced rang out.
The moment he heard it, he felt the thread of tension that had slackened grow taut once more.
***
...And then.
-SHIIING!
The sound of a bowstring being drawn quietly resonated from atop the bell tower.
After that, feeling the string's vibration, the green-haired girl let out a deep sigh and once more reached for the quiver on her back.
"Haaah."
She exhaled deeply.
The girl, who once again lifted her eyes toward the place where the target was, promptly drew the bowstring and began aiming at her target once more.
From her lips came words that she had repeated countless times throughout a life spent as a hunter—a life that now spanned far longer than any human lifetime......
"...The hunt begins."