The Purple Demon vs. the Indigo Witch (1): Inverse Calculation and Attract
A few minutes before the match began.
Rachel's meddling had left the air between Linne and Rowbedi painfully awkward, and Blow let his gaze rest on the pair for a moment.
"Come to think of it, Linne."
"Yes! Boss."
"You were practicing with Hervena yesterday, weren't you? I went to see her and couldn't even catch her face."
"Y-yes! I-it was an incredibly g-good time."
"Was it?"
Interest flickered, and Rachel turned toward her.
"Hey, Linne. What was Hervena doing yesterday?"
"A-ah... S-Senior told me not to say."
"The match starts in a minute anyway. It'll be fine, won't it?"
Linne held out as long as she could, but Rachel's bright, hungry eyes won. In the end she opened her mouth.
"I-I used all the m-magic I wanted to use. S-Senior canceled my spells."
"Canceled?"
"Yes. Inverse Calculation."
Every face around them went stiff.
Rachel, who had no real idea what that was, tilted her head and shifted her eyes to Skadi.
"Hey. Lady Hetaya."
"What?"
"What's Inverse Calculation?"
"You crush the magic circle before the other person finishes casting."
"Ohhh. I think I saw Yelich use that, way back."
"It's fairly advanced magic, and the activation is finicky, so people hardly use it. Not in a duel."
"Why?"
"The mana cost is enormous. Terrible value."
"Even for canceling low-tier magic?"
"Yes. From low-tier up through advanced, the mana Inverse Calculation eats increases exponentially."
Rachel's eyes sparkled.
"The world of magic really is profound."
"It isn't very practical in a duel. You'd be better off just slamming them with some other spell."
"Can it cancel everything?"
Skadi turned it over for a moment, and Linne, listening from behind, answered in her place.
"W-with beginner magic that doesn't take long to c-cast, the cancel actually gets cut off."
"And?"
"I-if you m-misread the spell, you just burn a mountain of mana and nothing happens."
"Yeah? Then we're good."
Rachel stretched both arms overhead as she said it.
...Good how, exactly?
More puzzled than reassured, Blow and Skadi met each other's eyes.
Before them, Aurora was casting an amplification spell once again.
Just before Aurora declared the start.
Talking with Yulia had turned Hervena's stomach inside out, and she was fighting to drag her composure back into place. Then she altered the plan she had drawn up for the duel.
Originally she had meant to let Yulia cast a few spells in the opening. They were business partners of the young master, after all. Better, she had thought, to keep things pleasant.
What Yulia had just said to her wiped that thought away completely.
It raked her insides raw, practically begging to be killed for it. Answering a plea like that was only human, wasn't it?
Even now Yulia was looking her up and down with eyes that had all the time in the world.
The look left Hervena dumbfounded. She clicked her tongue and shook her head.
...The Black Bridge Gathering. She watched me do that to Rebecca, and she still has this much room to spare? Is she an idiot, or is she only pretending?
The thought had barely formed when Aurora's right arm rose into the air.
"Begin!!"
"Waaaaah!!"
A cheer burst from the stands. Hervena folded her arms and regarded Yulia, standing a good ten meters off.
...Go on. Do whatever you like. Try that piece-of-shit axe, if you want.
As if she had read the thought, Yulia brought her hands together and began to cast alongside her spirit.
Hervena, who had drawn her own spirit, calculated the forming spell in a flash and lifted her right hand.
Yulia's magic circle, blazing indigo, was overrun with violet and snuffed out.
"D-did she just put Inverse Calculation on Senior Yulia's spell?"
"But her casting speed is the best in the school..."
"So Hervena really has been going easy on her in the magic workshop all this time."
Yulia heard the voices from the stands and smiled as if she had expected them. She swept her hair back and spoke to Hervena.
"This is a first... Shall I call it unpleasant?"
"As expected of a young lady. You read my intent exactly."
"Hervena, do you not understand when someone speaks kindly? Hervena? I clearly just—"
"And if I don't speak kindly, what are you going to do about it, Senior? No. What can you even do to me?"
"......"
"Up here on this dueling ground—what can you actually do?"
Hervena's eyes burned as she said it.
Yulia's gaze narrowed. Letting her violet mana spill free, Hervena added,
"Oh, did I touch a nerve? Then I'll behave."
"No. A duel is a duel. Do as you like. I'm not the sort to hold what happens in a match against someone. And..."
The voice that had been nothing but soft hardened all at once and rang clear across the arena.
"Thank you for being made the way you are. Hervena. For giving me an opening."
"What is that even supposed to—"
Yulia said nothing more. She brought her hands together and cast.
Indigo circles died as fast as they were born. Hervena shouted, her voice bristling.
"I asked you what it meant!"
"You ought to study a little literature, Hervena Westriver."
Cast and cancel went on several times more. The murmur in the stands watching it swelled by degrees.
"At this rate, isn't Senior Yulia not going to land a single spell?"
"This isn't very fun."
"Come on. They're both just feeling each other out."
Blow swallowed dryly, eyes fixed on the arena, and asked Rachel beside him.
"When did you say it would start?"
"Mm. About now, probably?"
Skadi clapped her hands together with a sharp smack.
"She was keeping time. Senior was."
The instant the words left her, two magic circles unfolded at once in front of Yulia.
One was canceled. The other poured out a brilliant indigo light.
The murmuring stands fell quiet all at once. For the first time since the duel began, Inverse Calculation had failed. Hervena stepped toward Yulia, head tilting.
The cast was fast. A basic spell? Even so, a casting this quick is rare.
She was still calling up every spell Yulia might use when her eyes caught the indigo glitter on Yulia's hand—and on the battleaxe waiting far across the arena.
Yulia breathed the words, almost too soft to hear.
...What is that?
The moment Hervena tilted her head at a spell she had never heard, Yulia lunged.
"Waaaaah!"
Leaving the gasp of the stands behind her, Yulia Edfolk charged in a straight line. There was no need to hand her the distance as well. Hervena summoned a violet circle along the path she was running.
A fissure split the arena floor, and a wall of earth two stories high surged up.
Yulia did not go around it. She took it with flight magic, leaping.
...Probing?
Hervena fixed her eyes on the girl who had taken to the air. Contrary to every expectation, Yulia was already gliding straight at her.
She did not miss the movement. Just as she was building a flame circle to burn her outright, another spell name she had never heard burst from Yulia's mouth.
With the incantation, Yulia's right hand seemed to flash indigo.
The battleaxe resting on its stand far away was dragged in a straight line toward her. It came smashing through the earthen wall with a tremendous crash, and the shaft arrived precisely in Yulia's right hand.
She seized it in both hands without a pause. Her body tipped in the air for an instant. Then she braced the axe on her shoulder and curled herself downward into a round arc.
"Hup!"
With that cry the enormous axe drew a vast semicircle and came crashing down toward Hervena.
It felt like the claw of some giant beast descending. Hervena's pupils shrank, and the words slipped out before she knew it.
"If that hits, I'm dead."
She scattered the flame circle she had been about to cast and formed a shield of mana instead.
And then—
A boom like blunt weapons colliding rang through the entire arena. Mouths fell open in the stands.
Summoned in a rush, Hervena's shield lacked hardness. Yulia's axe bit into it and was plainly cracking it, and the moment Yulia saw that she twisted harder, loading every ounce of weight she could onto the blade. Cracks shot out in every direction across the violet shield with a sharp, splintering sound.
"Huh?"
Hervena's thoughts stopped cold.
Everyone, herself included, could only expect Yulia to raise the axe again and smash the shield apart. Contrary to that expectation, Yulia let go of the shaft and brought her hands together.
An indigo circle formed at her mouth, and indigo flame hot enough to burn skin clean off roared toward Hervena.
Hervena tried to meet it with water-attribute magic, but the cast would not come together. Part of Yulia's fire reached her arm. Where the flame touched, violet—the color of her own mana—coiled and clung.
"Fuck."
Her face twisted at a sensation she was feeling for the first time.
Blow, seeing her struggle for the first time, gaped before he knew it.
"Did Hervena's mana just blow back on her?"
"First time I've seen it."
"At that level her mana must be cooked to hell."
If even Skadi and Blow, closest to Hervena, were marveling, the fifth- and sixth-years in the nearby stands were in a frenzy.
"Go!!"
"Waaaaah!!"
Through it all Hervena fought to stay calm and poured everything into opening the distance with flight magic.
That damned axe is heavy. She won't be able to follow right away...
She glanced back, and the sight of Yulia drained the color from her face. Yulia had left the axe driven into the ground and was already closing on her.
Yulia leapt, and in the same instant her hand lit indigo once more.
The axe was dragged up off the ground toward her again.
Hervena ground her teeth and thrust out her right hand.
Violet force gathered around the axe flying into Yulia's hand. The descending weapon stopped dead, and Hervena murmured, barely loud enough to hear.
"You think I'll fall for the same thing twice?"
Yulia, as if she had expected exactly that, simply left the battleaxe hanging in the air and smiled.
"It was heavy. Thank you, Hervena."
Free of the axe, she flew at Hervena as before and cast. This time Hervena's eyes sharpened, and she read the circle.
The indigo circle collapsed.
Having barely canceled the spell, Hervena pulled away.
The heavy battleaxe drove into the earth with a thud that shook the ground.
Yulia caught her breath where Hervena had been standing a moment before. Hervena looked at her own right arm and narrowed her brow, displeased with what she saw.
From the moment Yulia had charged to the end of that exchange, the time elapsed was barely one minute.
Only then, from stands that had struggled even to follow with their eyes, came breath—and cheers.
"Waaaaah!"
"What was that just now?"
"Senior Yulia swung that axe with those thin arms?"
"Hey, did you see Hervena take the backlash?"
"Haah. If she lands that axe properly even once, even Hervena would burn through almost all her mana."
"Even so, Hervena was incredible in the middle of it. Did you see her stop that huge axe for a second with Kinesis?"
"And wiping it out with Inverse Calculation!!!"
"Monsters. Senior Yulia casts that fast, and she still thought up a counter in that span."
Right. I thought Sylph's Blade would land.
While Yulia was catching her breath, something someone in the stands said stuck in her like a thorn.
"Even doing all that, Senior Yulia still can't handle Hervena."
A bitter smile spread at the corner of Yulia's mouth.
Hervena, composure recovered, came toward her one step at a time, smiling with an eerie calm.
"Already finished?"
"......"
"Then this isn't any fun."
Yulia lifted her head for a moment and looked toward Blow.
His eyes were still shining as he watched her.
....Watch closely, young master. This is only the beginning.
Yulia shut her eyes, opened them, and brought her hands together once more.
Indigo light began to coil along a longsword—slight, almost delicate, beside the axe that had hung upon its haft.