16. 와이번
The explosion I'd taken for a one-and-done affair was only the beginning.
From the direction Chae Ju-ah had charged, blast after blast kept rolling back through the trees, and every detonation carried enough force to shake the ground.
Perched on Ga-eun's shoulder, I felt each shockwave travel through me and thought, Is Chae Ju-ah trying to wipe the entire forest off the map?
This wasn't eliminating the problem. This was eliminating the problem by deleting the whole neighborhood it lived in. That kind of strategy, I guess.
I was spacing out, turning thoughts like that over in my head, when—
"Crow Tit."
"Huh? I wasn't sleeping."
"No, that isn't what I meant."
Ga-eun called to me in a small, quiet voice.
"Couldn't you go help Senior?"
"Help Chae Ju-ah?"
"Yes. Senior Chae Ju-ah."
"And how exactly am I supposed to do that?"
"Well... you could fly."
Ga-eun looked at the pair of wings stuck to either side of my body as she said it, and the expression on her face—as if I'd just asked a completely ridiculous question—came free of charge.
Okay, hold on a second.
"You want me to fly out there? With all that chaos going on?"
"You're an archmage."
"Well, yeah, I am, but—"
"Can you not do it?"
What did she just say. What? Can I not?
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
I had the distinct feeling I'd just lost an argument, but whatever. Fine. I'd close my eyes and call this one a loss.
"Hah. Fine. I'll go help Chae Ju-ah or whatever her name is."
"Really?"
"Yeah. But just this once."
"Of course. Obviously."
Ga-eun looked at me with a faint smile.
"Thank you so much. Master."
"Hmph. Whatever."
This brat. She only gets all grateful when she needs something, doesn't she?
I whipped my head away as I spoke. My own little way of sulking. A protest, if you will.
Still...
Still, as bratty as this disciple of mine could be, if she got hurt I think I'd feel a little—just a tiiiny little bit—bad about it.
"Here. Hold onto this."
"Huh? What is this?"
"My feather."
Except this one came with magic on the side. I'd actually put a little care into making it, so it could stop most anything that came her way. Even if a meteor dropped out of the sky, she'd walk away from it a few times over.
"That's a rare one, so don't you dare lose it."
"Yes, of course."
She talks a good game, at least.
Anyway.
"I'll be back soon, so don't wait around."
With that, I pushed off from Ga-eun's shoulder and took to the air, beating my tiny pair of white wings as hard as they would go.
Finding Chae Ju-ah wasn't particularly difficult.
"Yeah, that's gotta be it."
There was a wide-open clearing sitting right in the middle of the forest. You couldn't not look at it. It was so out of place that anyone passing by would have done a double take.
Obviously this terrain hadn't been here originally. It had probably been carved out while Chae Ju-ah was fighting something.
My reasoning was simple enough. One look at the surrounding landscape told the whole story. Every tree around the clearing had either burned down to ash or been sheared clean off, and among those marks were gouges that looked like they'd been torn by an animal's foreclaws.
"So the monster's a Wyvern, then?"
A Wyvern. Put in terms anyone could understand: a budget dragon. Just your run-of-the-mill nobody who never quite made the cut for dragonhood. That was about right.
Wyverns basically resembled dragons. Hard scales, breath attacks—they shared those kinds of traits. But the reason they got called budget dragons was simple.
They were weak.
A refreshingly straightforward reason. In toughness and raw power they were a significant downgrade, and on top of that a Wyvern only possessed a tiny fraction of a dragon's features. It lacked the vast majority of what made a dragon a dragon.
"Ah. Yeah, that's a Wyvern."
As the clearing came into view, so did the creature. Its scale-covered body looked dragon-like enough, but the giveaway was how small it was by comparison. I spotted Chae Ju-ah just as quickly.
"Hmm. Still fighting."
Chae Ju-ah and the Wyvern were locked in a fierce, back-and-forth brawl. One attacked, the other defended. Then the other attacked, and that got defended too. Their entire fight was just that pattern on repeat.
The only thing was, they were doing it on a sheet of thin ice. The moment either one showed an opening, it would all be over. That much was crystal clear.
I hovered above the clearing and quietly watched them go at it.
"Chae Ju-ah might be at a slight disadvantage here."
The fight had settled into a war of attrition, where stamina was everything. Comparing Chae Ju-ah's endurance to the Wyvern's... the Wyvern had the advantage, no two ways about it. Even if Chae Ju-ah's abilities were superhuman, the gap between species was bigger than you'd think.
Still, she was holding her own against the Wyvern pretty well.
"Oh..."
Chae Ju-ah's sword shuddered the air around it and flared a deep crimson. She closed the distance on the Wyvern in an instant and brought her blade down. A vicious arc of steel came crashing into the creature—
And rang off its scales with a harsh, metallic crack.
Her blow was stopped cold. On those iron-hard scales, the attack left nothing but a faint scratch.
The Wyvern swung its tail at the woman who'd gotten in close. It was the kind of blow you'd expect from a swinging flail.
"Ugh..."
Chae Ju-ah caught the strike on her sword, but she absorbed the full impact of that crushing mass with her entire body. Her frame locked up for a split second.
The Wyvern didn't waste the opening. Its wing smashed into her, and Chae Ju-ah went flying.
"Kh...!"
She'd thrown up an instinctive, last-ditch guard, but that half-baked defense didn't do much against an attack like that.
"This is... not good..."
After tumbling across the ground, she planted her sword and pushed herself up, thinking. That last exchange had cracked the stalemate. It had already been a razor-close fight. Even at full strength, this was as far as she'd managed. How long could she last now, with a body that was already hurt?
"There's no way this is B-class. This is A-class at minimum."
Chae Ju-ah muttered it as she watched the Wyvern close in.
"Today I just have the shittiest luck."
It had been a weird Gate in every possible way. From the Double Gate right down to the Wyvern standing in front of her. She blamed her past self for ignoring that nagging bad feeling.
The Wyvern threw its head back and roared in her face, a sound that rolled across the ruined clearing like a physical blow.
"Ah, shit, that's loud as hell."
Chae Ju-ah glared at the Wyvern with savage eyes.
"I gotta land at least one good hit or I won't be able to live with myself."
She raised her sword overhead. Just like before, the blade wrapped itself in crimson mana. The difference this time was that she poured even more into the already glowing red edge, layering it thicker and thicker, until it looked as though a colossal blade of crimson light had replaced the sword entirely. The original shape of the weapon was gone. An edge longer than the Wyvern's whole body thrust toward the sky.
Crimson Line
This strike was her best—an attack that carried everything she was.
A tremendous boom split the air, and a shockwave exploded outward in every direction. An overwhelming volume of energy, fully worthy of the name S-class hunter. She couldn't see well through the dust, but surely nothing could take that hit and still be ali—
A low growl rolled out of the haze.
"No way..."
Chae Ju-ah stared at what stood before her, her face stunned. Through the settling dust, the Wyvern was still standing on its own two legs, a thin trickle of blood running down its head and nothing more.
Worse—its mouth was packed with fire. The unmistakable prelude to a breath attack.
"Ah, I'm so fucked..."
It was already too late to dodge a breath that wide. She'd have to take it head-on. It was an ultra-high-temperature blast, but there was no other choice.
The moment Chae Ju-ah adjusted her grip on her sword—
"Yeah, this one's gonna need a hand."
I'd been watching from nearby. I flew over to her side.
"Huh? You're Ga-eun's crow tit...? What's this little guy doing here...?"
Chae Ju-ah looked at me with a startled expression.
Oh well. She's going to want to sit down for this one.
⟨ Polymorph ⟩
White feathers burst into the air in a sudden whirl, and a vortex of mana erupted around them. From the eye of that storm, a silver-haired girl stepped forth.
Now in the form of a small girl, I began casting at once. Magic circles arrayed in my white mana rose into the empty air.
Dozens of layered white barriers
Dozens of layered shields, woven from mana, wrapped around me and Chae Ju-ah. The Wyvern's breath crashed over us a heartbeat later—and it couldn't even crack a single layer.
"She blocked a breath... that easily...?"
Chae Ju-ah's eyes went wide at what had just happened. She looked thoroughly, thoroughly stunned.
I spoke to Chae Ju-ah, who still hadn't caught up with the situation.
"Hey. You."
"Huh? Uh, m-me?"
"Who else? You think I meant the dragon over there?"
"R-right."
Chae Ju-ah slowly nodded.
I looked her dead in the eye.
"You can thank Ga-eun."
She's the reason I came, after all.