Rem watched the short mage coming from the left widen the distance and circle to the side.
He moved as if to encircle. Rem matched him, stepping to block the front. Then the mage widened the range even more. The intent was to pull him a little away from the party. Rem knew it and still obliged.
The mage wrapped in silver plate specialized in unleashing invisible spells.
His epithet was "Invisible Death."
The mage took up the spot he wanted, gauged the distance, and with a spell called Invisible Hand targeted Rem's ankles. If a swordsman's feet are bound, his strength is halved. It's a commonplace tactic.
However inexperienced or arrogant they might be, they still knew how to fight.
The problem was that their opponent had gone beyond expert into mastery of battle.
Rem lifted his left foot. The Invisible Hand swept the place his foot had been.
Dirt spattered as the ground popped. Rem gave a faint grin.
This bastard really does petty crap, huh?
Such a smile would not be amiss.
The barbarian's face was visible even to the mage's eyes.
"Smiling?"
Smile now—soon you'll have tears and snot running down your face.
The distance was just right. About fifteen paces. A mage who had reached the stage of tacit consent and Tacitus cast without a word. He did so.
Forming a seal with both hands, he snapped his fingers. This time it was invisible arrows.
Swish.
With the sound of air being cut, something sharp came flying.
What was amusing was that Rem, having handled sorcery since childhood, was extremely adept at dealing with "invisible somethings."
He likely had more experience with this sort of fight than even Jaxon. Rem raised his axe and swung.
Bang—
Air burst and the invisible arrows shattered. The fragments of the broken spell could not be seen. The mage mixed in one more trick here.
The shattered fragments flew back toward Rem.
"A spell designed assuming it'll be blocked."
The mage was sly. He enjoyed attacking with twists and double twists. He'd learned it from Esther.
Rem's arms moved busily.
Whooom, dududududung.
With high-speed axe work, a shield seemed to form in front of his body. The arrow fragments struck it, broke, and scattered.
Inside his helm, the mage twitched his brow.
He blocked that? Fast hands.
That thought came to him.
Rem, for his part, thought this bastard was truly good at petty tricks.
"If you need help, you can say so."
From behind Rem, Jaxon spoke. Seizing something by feel was Jaxon's specialty. Hence the comment. Of course, on closer look it was nearly mockery.
Saying that to Rem at all—what is it if not mockery?
"If you butt in, I'll neatly split your head too."
"I think I split heads more neatly than you. If you need that, say so and I'll help."
Rem smiled as ever and said:
"I'm the man who can split a human head the most beautifully. That's me."
He used the tone because he remembered what Esther had said earlier.
When this fight ended, Esther might seriously heap curses on Rem.
"As you please."
Jaxon said and withdrew. He hadn't intended to help from the start. He became a spectator. He'd started it himself, but after that there was no place to cut in.
"These punks?"
Caged in his silver plate, the mage burst into anger and chanted. His tactics were as simple as could be: widen the distance as he pleased and attack with Invisible Hands and arrows and blades. In short, buy time without letting him close.
The plate wrapped around his body was also for protection. He began another new spell at once.
"Buy time."
Rem quietly watched his opponent, appreciating the tricks he worked.
"Preparing one big shot?"
It wasn't hard to read. Does the mage always attack with twists? No—at this level there was nothing tactically twisted.
"Compared to that annoying orthodox swordsmanship—"
This was far straighter, wasn't it?
Enkrid's deceptive sword was a compendium of vexing tactics that exploited psychology and reaction.
So sparring with Enkrid and then meeting a guy like this, he felt positively at ease.
Rem narrowed his eyes. Looking closely, he could faintly see something laid over the surface of the plate.
"A warding spell or something."
Just as Ragna had learned by watching murdering spells, Rem too had watched and learned.
He spun his sling. Whiiing—before there was even time for a single breath, a rapidly rotating disk formed above his head.
He cast the muscle-augmenting sorcery called Beast's Heart. Taking that strength, he rotated on his arm as an axis with full force, and preparation was done almost at once. Rem flung the projectile as it was. Using his arm like a whip, he extended, feeling the sling's rotation. A round projectile packed in a leather pouch flew.
Boom!
The sound of air rupturing followed.
Crash!
The projectile Rem cast crushed through the air and smashed the magic the silver-plated mage had prepared.
Silver liquid streamed over his armor. Whatever its effect, something had clearly broken. At the same time, the spell he was preparing unraveled.
"…W-what?"
"What? You thought you had the advantage at a distance I couldn't touch you from? Idiot—that's what you are."
Rem, in the words that had stuck in his mouth because he'd gotten a taste for it, jeered at his foe. The mage in silver plate fired invisible arrows in succession.
A volley poured like a downpour. Rem sprang his body sideways and evaded.
It wasn't even that difficult. Invisible or not, the number of projectiles didn't exceed a hundred. On an actual battlefield, arrows fly in their hundreds. Compared to that, this was easier to dodge.
If you don't break them, they won't shatter into fragments either.
The mage threw up invisible barriers, grates, even lobbed clumps of fire midway, but Rem dodged what needed dodging and intercepted the rest in midair.
Bang, boom, bang!
Noisy reports burst one after another. The sorcery woven into the projectiles, by its nature, suppressed spells. You could say they carried sorcery that diffused mana.
In the projectiles he was throwing now was power that stopped and suppressed whatever the mage hid in his spells.
The mage was cornered. He tried to chant a canonic spell to kill his opponent.
All this work required time—
"What? Can't hear you. What are you saying?"
His opponent gave him no opening. The mage in silver plate was reduced to frantic blocking. Then before he knew it, the opponent was gone.
"Hey—you thought I only got this far away?"
The voice came from right behind. The mage's body hair stood on end.
It was a fantastic bit of timing. He had just been hit by the projectile the brute had thrown, and the wards hung on his plate were completely spent—that gap.
Even so, in the time for a couple of breaths he could have laid a new defensive spell over his plate.
There were several spells modeled on a turtle hiding in its shell to endure. He couldn't do anything immediately, but he was confident in enduring—yet into that gap the brute wedged himself and swung an axe.
The last thing the mage saw was a gray line.
Rem swung the axe and cut off the mage's neck. He stepped his left foot out and turned his waist. The axe, to which he put such force, was also imbued with sorcery.
Crunch!
The axe edge smashed through the plate and did its job. It took the enemy's neck.
His head, helmet and all, spun in the air with a whirr and thumped to the ground.
To Rem, this was the most natural outcome. He'd been skilled at the hunt since childhood, and even now he fought Enkrid by tactics that probed for the instant's opening.
Striking a mage's neck in the gap when his warding spell had stalled was nothing at all.
Jaxon watched Rem's tricks and inwardly marveled.
"For one who casts spells, he's a natural enemy."
Of course, there was a man even worse than that barbarian.
"Why doesn't it work!"
Spewing blood in a surge, the mage of Black Mass shouted. He sent black platters, swung blades, formed coffins to bury his foe. And Enkrid cut every one of those spells. The instant they touched his Dawn Tempering, spells ended.
Murdering spells.
Even Ragna's inborn talent couldn't imitate it right away, and not even Rem, versed in sorcery, could apply it as is.
Enkrid felt the flow of mana and cut and hewed.
It was a knack Jaxon—who taught sensory arts—couldn't do, and Enkrid did it as if nothing.
In truth, no one else could have the experience of being burned by the canonic spell Walking Fire and cutting and cutting again countless times; in that sense it was only natural.
To a stranger, it would feel like peeking at the invisible talent of the man named Enkrid.
If Enkrid was pleased he could not gauge the capacity of the dragonkin Temares, then the other side felt the opposite. The mage of Black Mass was seized by terror.
"It doesn't work."
He cuts every spell I cast. And he closes the distance with a perfectly calm step.
Enkrid had no intent to frighten his opponent. He simply—
"This is interesting."
—felt keen interest in the act of cutting spells itself.
What's more, the opponent showed no sign of tiring and ceaselessly chanted the spells of Black Mass. Black iron filings clumped and took human form. The bulk, the sword in its hand, the stance—they were similar to his own.
"Your double."
The mage of Black Mass spoke, blood streaming from his mouth. Enkrid cut even that.
Whatever you mimic, you cannot copy the Will within me. With point-acceleration, his curving blade wasn't even visible to the mage's eye.
Clang!
The black knight split in two and crumbled into dust.
It was not a fight to be dragged out.
Enkrid's cuts, literally, murder spells. Thus, he is a true natural enemy of mages.
"A bastard like this shouldn't exist."
With those words, the mage of Black Mass died. Before Enkrid even swung, the mage spammed spells; then his entire body twisted grotesquely and he collapsed.
It happened as a portion of his spell-world was destroyed by mana runaway.
His forearm bent outward, the calf muscle burst, and his ankle turned so his toes pointed backward. From every hole in his face, dark red blood streamed.
Using and discharging mana up to the moment of death? This too was born of inexperience. He simply had too little experience fighting at full power. So, not knowing his limits, he dragged them out and ended up like this.
It's the kind of experience you cannot have when fighting those weaker than you.
Of course, with no way to know all that—
"He just suddenly dies on his own?"
Enkrid only cocked his head.
Hearing the sound of the fight ending on one side, Esther spoke.
"Let's finish up too."
A witch who handled snakes was a first even for Esther. Did that make it a problem? It did not.
She turned parts of her body into snakes and scattered man-beasts raised by feeding them mana.
Esther brought out Bonehead for the first time in a while. Originally a flesh golem, now it ought to be called a guardian.
Over it she wore pitch-black plate, and in both hands she gripped blunt-ended short maces.
"Fight."
Bonehead smashed and crushed the snakes' heads. Then the witch twisted both arms and summoned a great serpent.
That serpent tried to swallow Bonehead, but Esther split it vertically with Drmul's Scythe.
At a glance the matchups looked bad, but the witch facing Esther felt the gulf in skill.
"The quality of her mana is different."
Is this the Child of the Star?
The thought came to her. Of course, Esther's skill was the price of her effort. Being a Child of the Star meant only the talent of being born with mana brimming.
"Damn."
The witch hurriedly fell back. She didn't want to die here. She hid behind the one who had drawn her into Astrail.
The mage named Penadex. At some point he had appeared and looked over the three dead mages. He was cornered. He had to choose.
Would he die like this? Or flee? Could he flee? No—he could not. The skill of Esther, the Child who held a Star, had grown beyond recognition.
In Penadex's eyes, a young spirit-light clung to Esther's body. Separate from the rumor she was shrouded in a curse, compared to when he had seen her before, it wasn't even comparable. Her spell-world had widened to a dizzying degree.
"I've lost."
But he was a mage—a swindler of the world. He looked around the hall and spoke:
"Do you know what lies beyond the South?"
He posed the question and offered up all his mana. Even if he survived here, his self would not be the same as before. Still, it was better than dying.
"Eat the Child of the Star—"
—and pursue a new truth.
He chose, and he summoned.
"What do you mean 'what lies'?"
While the approaching Rem asked back, the mage's eyes turned pitch-black.
"Ggghhh—"
With a grotesque moan, the thing bent at the waist. With cracking sounds, muscles tore and bones clacked together.
Is he going to die on his own again like before? For a moment Enkrid thought as much while watching.
"He's mad."
Esther, seeing the flow of mana, grasped what the man had done.
"Greed, desire, devour—such feelings are full."
So spoke a dragonkin reading the feelings his foe had spilled.
Enkrid, stopping his spectating, abruptly swung his sword. He stepped and drew the blade. It was Oara's Connecting Blade. In an instant he closed the distance and brought the sword down.
Thud!
The blade of Dawn was blocked by a black palm. The hand was larger than a giant's—enough to grip a human face lightly.
And that sword-arm jutted out as if grown near the mage's shoulder blade, bursting through flesh as quickly as a knight's cut.
"Hm?"
Seeing black veins bulge over the forearm that had blocked his sword, Enkrid put in more strength. That is to say, he finished putting in his strength.
Rip.
The leather-like skin that had held out was cut and sliced.
"I am of the Demon Realm—gggaaah!"
The mage had staked his life to summon a vassal of a demon; yet the moment that vassal emerged, its arm was cut and it screamed.