The Klpandi's Scream
Chris let out a short, scoffing laugh.
"Your master was the first to call you stupid. You idiot."
"I'm not stupid."
"Why do you think I came at you with my body instead of ambushing you with magic?"
Chris had never properly learned magic, so a blow drawn from a Grand Master's body hit far harder than any spell he could cast. That was why he had fought with his hands and feet. The others, ignorant of his circumstances, had let the point sail right past them.
"Why use your body?"
"For the same reason your master finds it infuriating when I dodge every which way, and still won't try to pin my feet with earth magic."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"This bastard really is an idiot. Even you ought to have it by now."
David got it.
"The magic circle."
Chris tumbled across the floor, rolling clear of the black smoke crashing down from above, and shouted.
"Bingo. That's it. Earth magic would wreck the circle, so he's being careful. You understand now, you stupid bastard?"
Harvey's face flushed red. He bit his lip and set his mana in motion, and wind blades swept in to shred Chris.
Blades of wind barred the way ahead while black smoke hunted him from behind. Chris swept a hand toward the front. Wind gathered and smashed the blades apart.
However poorly he had learned magic, a mage of Seed Cultivation was not about to fall to spells of mere Thought Formulation.
"I hand you a lesson, and you repay it by nursing a grudge and attacking me. What good does that do?"
Chris chided him in a prim voice.
Harvey swallowed the flare of his temper and shouted at David.
"Stop gawking and attack!"
Chris broke into a run toward David as he spoke.
"David, do you know the way out of these ruins?"
David clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
"Fall behind, and you'll be trapped in the ruins for the rest of your life."
David's expression turned grave.
"If you don't want to be left here alone, take my side."
Sheikh cut in.
"David, don't fall for his attempts to drive a wedge between us."
David bowed his head as if weighing the matter with great care. When he lifted it again, fire arrows hung in the air.
"Send them at the wicked black mage."
The fire arrows ignored the invitation and shot straight at Chris. His body changed direction in an instant, cutting his path at a right angle to slip them, and Sheikh let out a sound of genuine admiration.
"You really can run. The rest of your magic is crude, but whatever you use for running is excellent."
Chris muttered inwardly.
It's excellent because it isn't magic.
Being called crude once or twice was one thing. Hearing it over and over was starting to grate. He swallowed the irritation and spoke.
"David, you just made a mistake."
"Hmph."
David snorted and kept the fire arrows coming. As if he had spent his whole life practicing nothing else, they flew fast and precise.
On top of the black smoke that never stopped chasing him, Chris now had to watch for sniping arrows, and then Harvey joined in as well. Whether the insult had put an edge on him, black smoke spread low across the floor and crept in.
Harvey's smoke lacked the chilling presence of his master's, and it did not look sticky either. Even so, getting tangled in it would take a good while to shake off.
The three blows Sheikh had taken at the start still hurt. His defensive magic tool had done its work, so the damage was not fatal, but it had not stopped every bit of physical force either, and the impact had not been nothing. A rib in his side was cracked, and so was the bone in his wrist. The pain kept climbing because of it.
A mage of Ring Binding was hardly going to be unable to cast over pain like that, but as the fight stretched on, it began to tell on his stamina. The throbbing in the wrist that had been kicked so hard grew worse and worse, and that pain gnawed at his strength.
The battle was settling into a long war.
Sheikh kept firmly in mind that the magic circle must not be destroyed. Even if he succeeded in killing his enemy, he thought a broken circle would be no different from defeat. He also had far more mana, so he saw nothing wrong with dragging the fight out this way.
It was only natural that Sheikh, a Ring Binding mage, should have more mana than Chris, who had reached only Seed Cultivation. Had some third party been watching from a neutral seat, they would have nodded and agreed that Sheikh had judged correctly.
That judgment, however, had one fatal flaw. Chris was no ordinary Seed Cultivator.
He was not running on mana. Now and then his lips moved as if he were casting, but every bit of it was theater. He was running on nothing but the strength of his body. A Grand Master's powerful flesh simply made it look like magic.
Sheikh thought it over.
That bastard's mana ought to be running out right about now.
He was probably still drawing mana in to replenish himself even as they fought, but that could never keep pace with power burning away this fast.
Once the mana stored in your Klpandi runs dry, you're finished.
Sheikh endured the pain and waited for that moment.
A fight always has another party in it, and that party is not always a fool. If an enemy is behaving irrationally, you have to ask yourself why. Sheikh had missed that.
Chris found black mages unsettling. There was no predicting what sort of magic they might use, so the instant he decided the man meant to harm him, he had struck first, intending to end it quickly.
The magic tool had spoiled that, and the battle had turned into a long fight. Chris adapted. He did not force a swift conclusion, because the magic circle could not be allowed to break.
He bothered to protect it only because he did not consider the fight unfavorable. Had he thought he was going to lose, he would have fought without restraint, circle or no circle.
Time passed, and Chris's speed still did not slow. Put another way, he showed no sign of running out of mana, and Sheikh grew flustered.
Why is that bastard lasting this long? He isn't even using mana stones.
The ruins were thin on mana besides, so drawing any in during a fight was no easy thing.
Damn it.
The pain kept worsening until his side ached as if it were caving in. He could not endure it any longer and meant to cast a healing spell.
Then, at the last moment, he held back. Sheikh had reached the realm of Ring Binding. Using two spells at once was not particularly difficult for him, but there was no avoiding the cost. Cast healing now, and the black smoke — closed in so tight it looked ready to seize the enemy by the nape at any second — would slow.
Just a little farther and I can catch him...
With that thought, he kept putting the healing off.
But the man stayed just out of reach, always seeming about to be caught and never quite caught. The frustration was enough to drive Sheikh mad.
This won't do.
He decided to heal first. Then it occurred to him that he did not have to do the healing himself. He could make his disciple do it.
"Harvey!"
Harvey was pouring sweat as he worked to control his black smoke.
"Yes. Shall I drive this bastard to the left?"
"No. Get over here and cast a healing spell on me."
"Yes, understood."
There is one thing you must never forget in a fight. You must never let the situation turn according to the enemy's design. You have to move against what they want.
Chris judged that he had to stop Harvey. He had been circling along the edge of the magic circle; in an instant he changed direction and sprinted at Harvey at full speed.
Harvey sent black smoke flowing toward him and cast magic on his own legs, breaking into a hard run. He abandoned any fine control of the smoke. He trusted it would hold Chris's charge off for a while.
Chris kicked off the ground with the full power of his legs and leapt. That was enough. He cleared Harvey's black smoke and closed in.
When Chris came within arm's reach, Harvey recoiled in panic.
"Master, help me!"
Sheikh shouted.
"Get down!"
Harvey flattened himself against the ground.
Harvey had been running toward Sheikh, and Chris had been running toward Harvey. The result was that the distance between Sheikh and Chris became extremely short.
A smile caught at the corner of Sheikh's mouth.
Got you.
When you fight a troublesome enemy, you do not keep your plan simple. You prepare a Plan B and a Plan C against the chance that the first one fails.
Sheikh, who had dismissed Chris from start to finish, had at last acknowledged him as a difficult opponent, and so he had prepared a countermeasure. Having his disciple arrive safely at his side to receive healing was Plan A. Plan B, for when that grew difficult, was to catch the enemy who had closed in tight while trying to stop Harvey.
The smile told Chris the man had another plan. He did not care. If he meant to catch Sheikh, he had to get close to him too.
Neutralize his plan, and a good opening will come my way.
Chris stamped hard on the back of the prone Harvey, shattering his spine completely, and leapt. Sheikh lay below him.
"You're dead!"
Sheikh shouted it in triumph, then opened his mouth wide. Ten ghosts burst out of it. This was no figure of speech. They were real ghosts. Wailing as they came, the wraiths flew straight at Chris.
Chris spent the mana he had been hoarding until now without restraint and raised a sea of fire right in front of his face. Wood-attribute mana had a strong affinity with fire magic. Perhaps because of that, among the attack spells he used, fire was the strongest.
So far as magic went, it was the equivalent of playing his highest card. He had not the slightest doubt the flames would burn the wraiths away.
Hiss.
A wraith touched the fire. Astonishingly, three of them clustered together to shield the rest and threw themselves into the flames. Those three burned away and vanished, but because of them, seven burst through.
Damn it.
Chris's body had been falling on a slant, tracing a diagonal toward Sheikh. The instant the wraiths broke through the fire, he snapped his course and dropped straight down toward the ground at a right angle.
Speed is hard to build in the air. There is nothing for your feet to push against. The wraiths needed no such brace, and they flew faster than Chris was falling.
Around the time the soles of his feet touched the ground, the fastest of the seven dropped with him. Chris used his hand like a sword and cut the wraith with the edge of his palm. Mana was protecting that hand, and still he felt a pain as if it were burning.
Even so, he did cleave the thing. Six remained, which was a problem, but the sight of Sheikh's face contorting left Chris satisfied.
Unlike the black smoke, those wraiths seemed bound closely to Sheikh. When the three had burned in the flames, his face had twisted just like this.
Crack.
Chris's foot kicked off the ground, and his body shot away like an arrow. Toward Sheikh.
The distance between them had narrowed enough that calling it arm's reach would not have been wrong, but Sheikh was not worried. Six wraiths had latched onto Chris, and he had not the slightest doubt they would finish the enemy.
The teeth packed densely inside the wraiths' maws were enough to raise gooseflesh. Chris had raised a barrier to hold them off, but a barrier of that strength could not stop them. They gnawed at it.
He was not watching only the barrier. The flames he had spread to block the wraiths still hung in the air. He moved that fire above Sheikh's head and brought it down in a cataract. Flame poured like a waterfall.
"You think I'd fall to crude fire like this?"
Sheikh sneered openly and formed a barrier. The shield that took shape over his head stopped the sea of fire from falling.
Right now Sheikh was wielding three spells at once: the black smoke still chasing Chris, the wraiths gnawing at the barrier, and the barrier itself.
Chris was wielding two — the fire meant to drown Sheikh in flame, and the defense meant to hold the wraiths off.
Sheikh was under the mistaken impression that his opponent was using a speed-enhancing spell on top of those two. Without magical assistance, no one could move at a speed like that.
He was certain of it.
Three spells at once, with your mana already at the bottom? You won't last.
He spoke.
"I can hear it."
"Hear what?"
"Your Klpandi, screaming as you wring the mana out of it."