08. The Slave Hunters
Artia looked down at the face of the man who called himself their captain, the one groaning and grimacing in front of her.
Seasoned to perfection. Absolutely delicious.
She was the one stuck in a hostage situation, but if she knew nothing else, she knew one thing that mattered. She had to take the initiative.
Easier said than done, of course. In most cases the leverage in a negotiation belonged to the hostage-taker from the outset. The side across the table started already penalized by the need to keep the hostage alive, and that was only natural.
But what if this side decided the hostage didn't matter?
Then the other side had no answer left.
That was why a hostage's value mattered. If the opponent was willing to throw the captive away, the whole thing could end as nothing at all.
Ander had already failed, right there.
He must have realized it the moment the hostage play began. That would explain the posture he was showing her now.
Even so, Artia felt no particular pity watching him twist and squirm. Sympathy for a slave hunter was a luxury. The only reward fit for wicked slave hunters was the fist of stern judgment.
No matter what the man said, she had no intention of letting them be.
She had only observed them briefly, but their organization still nagged at her. One look was enough to tell they were veterans of the trade, and if that was true, they would have connections to match. If she parted from them with all their limbs intact and they later scraped together every contact they had and didn't have to come hunting her trail, the whole mess would turn into a monumental nuisance.
Artia knew very well the stubbornness and stupidity of human desire, and the explosive force those things could produce. So she dug in harder.
You are in no position to set terms. Get your head on the ground. Now.
Whether that attitude came through with perfect clarity, the captain of the elf hunters—the man who had begged for ten seconds to think, Andel or Ander or whatever he was called—squeezed his eyes shut and shouted.
"All right! I said all right!"
"C-Captain?"
"What are you doing, you little shit. Put the knife away."
He snapped at the man beside him, the one still holding a blade on the hostage elf. When the flustered subordinate failed to satisfy him, Ander knocked the knife aside with his own hand and shoved the captive elf in the back.
"Go."
With that short word, he pushed her forward. Driven out by the force of it, the elf stood blank for a moment, as if she couldn't believe what was happening, then began to walk on unsteady legs.
"Please, just spare my life and my boys' lives, Lady Elf? Yeah?"
The elf coming toward her, not a thread on her body, weaving with every step, was a pitiful sight. Artia had never seen her face and didn't know her name, but she wasn't some completely deranged piece of shit, so she moved to catch the faltering elf before she fell.
That was the moment.
She saw Ander doing something suspicious. His hand went to his waist and came up with something, the motion swift beyond belief. A sheet of paper, rolled tight, snapping open as it unfurled. A scroll. There was no mistaking it. And across the opened page, a complex geometric pattern was already pouring out a magical light.
A magic circle.
The instant she confirmed it, Artia's eyes flew wide.
That! That, that! That's the thing!
Whoa. A magic scroll.
Whoa. Fantasy!
After the restraints that sealed an elf's magic, here was another object that had never appeared in the game she knew.
Magic tools.
When she had played her first run as a male human knight, there had been ancestral treasure blades of old houses, legendary swords, and the like—magic weapons—and magic tools possessed of special powers. Every one of them had been rare, and every one of them expensive. On her second run, playing an orc archmage, she had encountered magic tools more often than the first time, but nothing fundamental had changed. They had only been relatively easier to obtain because she was an archmage. Magic tools were still costly, still precious, and still a pain to make. A tool imbued with serious magic was large and heavy, and the magic that could be sealed into a small, portable one had hard limits.
And yet they had put magic powerful enough to work on at least a high-rank warrior into nothing more than a thin sheet of paper?
Set beside the era of her second playthrough, that meant the magical arts had undergone one hell of an innovation. The restraints that sealed elf magic, and now this thing that looked like a magic scroll—why was so much of it different from the game? Was the world she had fallen into something like Elda-212? And the Elda Continent she had experienced as a game back on Earth actually closer to Elda-136?
Stop.
Enough brooding over world-lines. Artia hauled her thoughts back into line.
She did not move from where she stood. She had no idea what the spell was, but she had already decided to block it with her body. Dodging was not an option. A bastard that underhanded would have aimed the magic not at her, but at the hostage elf behind her. Obvious. If Artia stepped aside, whatever burst from the scroll would go straight for the elf who had been the hostage. Frail beyond words, that captive would struggle to endure a spell, and she would struggle just as much to endure the speed of Artia moving to avoid one.
"Arrogant elf bitch! I'll make you pay!"
Crackle—zzzzzt—
"?!"
With Ander's shout, an ominous light erupted from the scroll, and dozens of bolts of lightning surged up. Strand by strand, the divided thunder wove itself into a net in an instant. A spell that occupied a considerable volume of space. Pale lightning. Its core had no color at all, and its outline was black, warped like the mingled chaos of every color in the world.
She had never seen a color like that. A distortion that seemed not to belong to this world, perhaps? What was that? A color that strange? It was not, at least, any ordinary lightning-attribute magic Artia knew.
Crackle—snap!
The pale lightning braided and twisted like chains, flew in, and bound her. Every time she tried to move, sparks leapt, and worse, the stuff clung to her like spider silk and would not come off. It ran down in sticky streams, joined the earth, and became one with it, restraining her. The violent force of the lightning tried to burn her and paralyze her.
How to put it? The texture of the magic felt different. Lightning magic was supposed to be defined by single-strike destruction and brutal status effects. It did not suit this clinging, sticky malice, this stubborn refusal to let go.
There was no pain. There was no damage. But one thing was certain: her movement met real resistance. If she put her strength into it properly, she felt she could tear free—but if she did, the elf collapsed behind her would be caught in it as well.
"Yeah!"
At the sight, the elf hunters who until moments ago had been getting beaten senseless in despair began to cheer. Those still in one piece surged as if they meant to rush in that very second and clap restraints on the elf.
"Whoo! Captain! I knew it, Captain! When the hell did you get your hands on something like that?!"
"Shut up and stay still, you idiots! You worthless pieces of shit. Do you have any idea what this costs, goddamn it!"
But Ander did not stop there. He halted the ones trying to charge, then drew out another magic scroll. The scroll of binding magic had only ever been meant to buy time, so he could land the real blow. If the enemy had been merely competent, the first scroll alone would have been enough, but in Ander's eyes this elf was not a woman who could be put down with that. A fierce premonition told him that unless he struck with the genuine intent to kill, nothing would come of it. Wounds from lightning magic would drop the merchandise's value considerably, but there was no helping it now.
Ander produced one more of his hidden magic scrolls and activated it without delay. A second scroll spread wide, and magical light poured forth.
Rumble—
Intense mana rose from the additional scroll and took on a miraculous shape. That alone was enough to loose a cry that set the air trembling. The manifested spell held the power of lightning, like the first, but its form was unmistakably different. Instead of splitting fine into the shape of a net, the bolts twisted and coiled around one another and concentrated into one. Lightning, gradually taking a specific form.
That's—?
The color of the magic was something pale and wholly unlike any spell Artia knew, but the shape itself was one she knew very well. One of the sweet spells in Eldas Legendary that had nailed both the swagger and the efficiency. A spell she herself had loved using on her second run as an orc archmage—not the strongest, perhaps, but absolutely in the conversation for the finest anti-personnel magic there was.
Among the elemental magics, it concentrated the most destructive force of lightning into a single point. Its power to pierce an opponent's defense was outstanding, and so was its speed. Unless you knew the cast was coming and moved beforehand—unless, in other words, you acted before the thunder spear was already loosed—even a high-rank warrior would find it difficult to evade, and a direct hit meant you had to worry over life and death. Considering that a high-rank warrior wrapped their own mana about themselves like armor and took not so much as a scratch from any ordinary attack, one could imagine just how tremendous that power was.
It was only an intermediate spell, and yet, limited to use against a person, it was far more powerful than most of the advanced spells a full tier above it. Set aside only the difficulty of learning it, and it was rated highly enough to be called one of the most ideal anti-personnel magics there was.
Krrrrumble—
The ferocious lightning gathered in one place let out a dragon's roar. The light pouring from the pale bolts seemed to steal the color from everything around them. The fangs of the lightning bared their savagery and fixed upon their prey.
"—@#%!!!!!"
Whatever the elf hunter was shouting was swallowed by the thunder and never reached her.
And then—
Flash—
A single streak of light shot toward Artia.