Breath of Ruin
Oscar looked around.
The basement that usually struck him as uselessly spacious felt cramped today.
...I'm nervous, aren't I.
Which was fair enough. His opponent was a 7th-level high knight.
He took a small, deep breath and called to mind what he had to do—namely, keep the Commander from rampaging until Theodor came back to his senses.
Anything that happens in this basement will be next to impossible to detect from above.
The space itself had originally been a secret vault, laced with layer upon layer of protective spells. Which made it all the more vital that he not let the Commander escape from here.
If anyone were to see him as he is now—a demon-possessed body—everything Lloyd and I have worked for would turn to dust.
Gripping the sword of wind tightly, Oscar spoke.
"It's cold out there. Why not stay down here in the warm basement with me instead?"
"Grrrh..."
Commander Theodor drooled from the mouth like a rabid animal. The demonic energy smoldering up from his body writhed again and again, coiling like a living thing.
No doubt it was throwing a desperate fit of mental domination, determined not to release its host.
"...Guuuh."
The Commander, glaring at him with a ferocious face, bolted down the corridor.
KWAAANG!
In the blink of an eye, the man was right on top of him. A shockwave of such magnitude crashed through the basement that the sword of wind nearly scattered into nothing.
Fast!
But this clash had yielded one piece of useful information: the berserk Commander's attacks were hopelessly monotonous.
Not a single technique among them.
To put it another way, watching him now was like watching a child stuffed inside a high knight's body. None of the swordsmanship he must have honed over a lifetime to reach his rank was anywhere to be seen—he was simply swinging his blade with brutish abandon, powered by nothing but overwhelming demonic output.
Even so...
His wrist nearly twisted out of its socket. Oscar eyed his tingling wrist warily and fell back, putting distance between them.
I'd better avoid close quarters at all costs.
Which meant it was time to fight the way a mage is supposed to fight a knight—hold the distance, and suppress the approach. Drawing up his mana, Oscar seized control of the flow of air around him in an instant.
Thud. Thud.
His reason drowned, Theodor was shambling toward him one heavy step at a time, dragged along by pure instinct.
"..."
Those hollow sockets held nothing but madness. His reason had already sunk so deep into the darkness that he could no longer hear his own voice—devoured whole.
Oscar's lips twitched.
"Please forgive me if this gets a little rough."
The moment the words left his mouth, he hurled the sword of wind straight at his opponent. Just as Theodor's eyes flashed and he moved to knock the blade aside—
"Spell reconstruction."
Oscar's fingers wove rapidly through a sequence of hand seals. At the same instant, with a low whuum, the scattered sword split into dozens of ribbons of wind that streamed past Theodor.
"Guuh?"
The moment he gave a faint, puzzled reaction—CLINK!—a shackle clamped itself around the wrist that gripped the flower-stem hilt.
"Grrrrrrrh!"
Startled, Theodor yanked his arm frantically, but the shackle permitted no movement whatsoever. Clink, clink! Every pull only cinched it tighter around his wrist, gifting him fresh pain for his trouble.
"Shackles of Wind."
Three more shackles materialized out of thin air and flew in, binding his remaining limbs as well.
Whew. Oscar let out a faint sigh of relief.
Spell reconstruction—first time in a while, so I was worried I'd botch it. Thank goodness.
The technique unraveled a completed spell in reverse, then used that very mana as the foundation to build an entirely different one. Simply deconstructing a spell was already extraordinarily difficult—doing it mid-battle? Naturally, anyone on the receiving end had no choice but to take the hit wide-eyed and slack-jawed. If rock-paper-scissors were the analogy, it was waiting to see what your opponent threw, then changing your own hand afterward.
If he's weakened down to 6th-level like I predicted, this should be enough to hold him.
Please, let it pass without incident... Oscar stared at his opponent with tense eyes.
"GRAAAAH!"
Then, stripped of his freedom, Theodor began shaking his body wildly in every direction. Clank, CLANK! Each time, the shackles pulled taut with a sound like they might snap at any second—but they held.
Did it work?
Just as a thread of hope kindled in Oscar's watchful eyes—
"Guuuh, GRAAAAAH!"
An explosive surge of demonic energy burst from Theodor's body. It flooded the corridor in an instant, stealing Oscar's breath and leaving his head swimming.
"Kgh!"
Cold sweat streamed down the forehead of the man struggling to control the Shackles of Wind. His stomach churned; his vision swam. Worse, he felt as precarious as someone clutching a set of reins that might snap loose at any moment.
Come on. Hold.
His plea went unanswered. The demonic energy wormed into the sliver of a gap left by his blurring consciousness.
PAANG! Theodor shook himself even harder—and at last, one of the shackles binding his wrists shattered.
The sound of bursting wind tore across his eardrums, and in the same breath Theodor swung his freed arm.
"GRAAAAH!"
Demonic energy gathered in his knife-hand carved through the corridor's floor and ceiling as it flew. The instant Oscar threw himself aside to dodge—
CRUNCH!—with his free hand, Theodor tore away every remaining shackle, and his new stance was suddenly right in front of Oscar's face.
"...!"
Oscar's eyes fixed on the knife-hand falling toward his head. That was no ordinary hand-blade; it carried enough destructive force to bisect a body the instant it made contact.
Flash / Blink
Instinctively, he pulled on the threads of space and moved behind his opponent—and in that very instant—
CRUNCH!
Having read the position with animal intuition, Theodor's back kick came flying in and buried itself in Oscar's side. His body went hurtling across the basement and slammed into the wall.
"Kaghk! ...Kuh, khh!"
Spitting out a mouthful of blood, he peered through his swimming vision at the figure walking slowly toward him.
So much for 6th-level...
The rampaging demonic energy had blown far past his estimate. Even comparing raw output alone, it hadn't dropped a hair from 7th level.
It's a mercy he can't use his swordsmanship anymore, but... I'm supposed to survive twenty-one more minutes against THAT?
Oscar let out a hollow laugh, rising to his feet and pushing his sweat-soaked hair back.
...Ordinary attacks won't get through to the Commander.
He was in full rampage; no ordinary pain would register at all. What's more, the superior regeneration of a demonic energy host patched up any minor wound almost before it formed.
Which means I have to put him out of commission in one blow, with overwhelming firepower.
Oscar stared at the monster striding toward him, running through every method he knew. But only a handful of spells came to mind that would mean anything against a high knight's body.
The most promising of the lot is, at best, Sound of the Wave...
Even that was an utterly different proposition than it had been against Kaya Lockwood. Back then, he had already neutralized her entire Tattoo Magic defense network through Isolated Garden.
Theodor Commander, on the other hand, won't fall for any such tricks.
He had to win the honest way, head-on. The problem was that a 4th-level mage could not smash through a high knight's body in a single strike by fighting fair.
There is exactly one way, though...
Oscar looked at his opponent. What filled his eyes now was a flicker of worry—and hesitation.
Tch. This is the one Master Ado told me not to use on people for a while.
The reason was simple: his fine control over its strength was still lacking. But Oscar trusted the time he had spent here.
Demonic energy always puts the host's safety above everything else.
In other words, the moment its host took a wound approaching instant death, it would shut down every other function and devote itself entirely to recovery. For a situation like this one—where the whole point was buying time—nothing could be better suited.
Having settled the matter in his heart, Oscar's lips moved.
"Please, endure this well."
Before long, a single stream of wind gathered before Oscar. He began folding it firmly between his two palms, pressing down again and again. Once, twice—each fold drew a threatening hiss from the wind as its power multiplied.
At last, Oscar succeeded in compressing the enraged gale—so volatile that the slightest touch might set it off—to a third fold.
This is about my limit for now.
Three folds sounded like a lot, but in theory, folding it just once more would demand sixteen times the mana. The kind of reserve that even a 7th-level mage would be hard-pressed to possess.
GOOOOOH!
Wind compressed three times over was already a devastating force in its own right—but it still wasn't enough. His opponent was a 7th-level high knight. The body the man had forged over a lifetime of sweat and blood was not going to break from a mere gale like this.
Which is why, here and now, I...
He had to go one step further. The moment Oscar resolved himself, his eyes gleamed—and the world he saw changed. The dingy, oppressive basement vanished without a trace, and a world brimming with threads unfolded before him.
With practiced ease, he pulled on five threads.
Kgh!
Five threads—just a touch beyond what his current level could handle. The backlash cinched every mana circuit in his body tight, and blood began to trickle from his eyes and mouth.
Even so, Oscar poured every ounce of his concentration into completing the spell.
Using spatial magic... fold the wind together with space itself.
CHAK! CHWAAK!
Like a sheet of thick paper folded past its limit, space itself collapsed inward—twice more. At the same time, the wind between his palms, as though it could bear no more, let out a wavering, weighty shriek.
WHIOOOOOOH!
"...Here it comes."
This was the greatest, strongest spear he could currently create.
Fusion Magic — Space and Wind
⟨ Breath of Ruin ⟩
"Gkuh!"
Unable to hold the wind any longer, Oscar opened his palms. The instant it was freed, the gale tore down the corridor after its prey with explosive fury.
Launched with enough force to bend space itself, the wind was a spear that annihilated everything in its path.
"..."
For a moment, a silence hung over the world as if it had frozen solid—and then, the very next heartbeat—
KWARRRRUNG!
Like a thunderclap, a shockwave of staggering power swept over the entire basement a beat behind.
"Hah, khh, hah!"
Caked in dust, Oscar slowly lowered his hands and stared into the dust cloud with tense eyes.
From beyond the slowly settling haze, the 7th-level high knight emerged. Theodor's body was, in a word, wrecked.
The demonic energy's regeneration can't keep up.
Crackle... crackle.
Commander Theodor stood rooted in place like a broken machine, out cold. Only after confirming that did Oscar finally exhale and collapse to the floor where he stood.
"...Whew."
Leaning against the corridor wall, Oscar closed his eyes in exhaustion. All that remained now was to wait until Theodor's demonic energy fully transformed back into mana.
Having cleared yet another peril, he breathed slowly and deeply in the stillness that had settled over him.