At the far end of the village, as the last magic wolf inside her Mana Perception went down, Aura ran a check over her dress.
"Good. Nothing filthy on it."
She rubbed her hands together, satisfied, then smoothed her hair — as though every waking moment had to be an argument for elegance and perfection.
"It's been a long time, Lord Aura."
Her leisure had not lasted long. A smiling figure hung in the air above her.
"And who are you?"
The instant Solitär appeared, Aura was ready.
By raw Mana volume alone, the woman was no less than her. How an actual fight would go depended on too many things — but she had no intention of losing the exchange of words.
"You wound me. We met decades ago, you know. If there hadn't been a third party present that day, I think the two of us would have gotten along wonderfully."
Solitär was playing the sentiment card. "Would you let me through?"
"This road is closed."
Solitär's smile never wavered. Aura's expression never improved.
For some reason, looking at the one who had destroyed this village, Aura thought of the Human who had clutched at her legs, begging one moment and screaming at her the next.
The woman's leg was ruined. Not enough to kill her, but enough that she could not run. Solitär would catch up to her without effort, and would almost certainly kill her where she lay.
"They're only a few Humans. If they run, let them run."
Aura let her enormous Mana spill out without the slightest restraint, all but daring Solitär to do something about it.
"One of the Seven Sages of Destruction indeed. How frightening. I'm a terrible coward, really — if you'd only step aside, I wouldn't harm those Humans at all… I'd simply tell them: run, run for your lives. The one who destroyed your village was a Great Demon of Gaderia, Aura of the Seven Sages of Destruction, the one who means to become the next Demon King."
Smile still spread wide across her face, Solitär released her own Mana in the same breath and shoved Aura's pressure back.
Aura understood then that this one had come for her specifically.
The smile blinked out of existence, and Solitär's voice went flat. "The Lord Aura of the old days — Magic of Obedience, an army at her back — she truly was magnificent. But right now, it looks like there's only one Aura standing here, doesn't it?"
With that, she hung the counterfeit smile back on her face.
"Are you looking down on me?"
Aura's face gave away nothing.
In truth, she was getting angry. The longer she looked at Solitär, the less she liked what she saw.
Solitär's reply was a thrust of her hand — Mana Scatter Magic!
Defensive Magic snapped open.
She was a seasoned Great Demon, whatever else; against the ambush Aura neither rushed nor faltered.
When the smoke from the impact thinned away, there was no sign of Solitär in front of her.
"Without subordinates around to bleed my Mana dry, your Magic of Obedience is worthless against me!"
The voice came from overhead.
In the sky, a bank of Mana swords, readied long in advance, was already falling like rain.
Aura's head snapped up. The swords hung directly above her.
And in that same instant, Aura drew out the Scales of Obedience.
Magic of Obedience!
Not aimed at Solitär — aimed at the Mana swords Solitär had released!
In the space of a heartbeat, Aura cast the Magic of Obedience on every Mana sword within her field of vision.
She thought one silent word — stop — and the descending swords halted as one.
"How is that possible?"
Control of her own Mana swords had been torn out of Solitär's grasp. The spell had gone dead in her hands.
"Magic is a thing full of possibilities. And I haven't spent the decades since I lost to the Hero sitting idle."
Aura raised the hand holding the Scales of Obedience, just a little.
Every Mana sword reversed course and tore back up into the sky.
Solitär had no choice but to spread Defensive Magic to fend them off, condensing sword after fresh sword at the same time to beat the "traitors" away.
And while her hands were full, a streak of purple leapt into the air.
Through the gap in the Defensive Magic, Aura swung one small fist — and released the Magic of Obedience on Solitär in the same motion.
While a Magic of Obedience contract is being adjudicated, Mana is briefly cut off at the source. In the instant Solitär's Defensive Magic failed, Aura's fist, carried on by momentum, smashed into that smiling face and twisted the entire smile out of shape.
The blow landed, and Aura ended the Magic of Obedience on the spot.
It was rather like punching someone in the face in the middle of signing a contract that severed magic for both parties — and then, before the signature was even finished, tearing the contract up.
A thunderous crash.
Solitär fell faster than Aura came down. Her Mana returned only as she struck the ground, and she barely managed to wrap Defensive Magic around herself in time.
Aura, whose Mana had come back soon enough to keep her aloft, looked down at her with a face empty of interest.
And in that moment, Aura remembered the years she had spent crushed under Nanoda's thumb.
She had tried everything she could think of to strip the Magic of Obedience off herself, to win her freedom and be done with it.
Only to discover that without Nanoda's consent, she simply lacked the ability to unpick her own spell from the inside.
From its very design, the Magic of Obedience left almost no room for a back door — which had trapped Aura herself as thoroughly as anyone.
Yet through adjustment after adjustment, Aura had carved out another road for the Magic of Obedience.
Stripped down, the Magic of Obedience selects the Mana of two targets, weighs which is greater, and signs an unequal treaty between them.
The stronger Mana controls the weaker!
So what if the target were changed — from a being that carries Mana, to Mana in its purest form? To a spell someone else had already released?
Practice proved it. Once a spell had traveled a certain distance from its caster, it could be stolen.
Before long, Aura grasped the principle and created a Magic of Obedience that seized other people's magic outright.
And there was more. In her determination to be prudent about sealing such contracts in the future, Aura had mastered the exact moment a Magic of Obedience was struck and the exact moment it could be cleanly broken — which meant the spell could also be used as nothing more than a way to sever both parties' Mana for a heartbeat.
Nor did it stop there. Under Nanoda's coercion she had trained her body every day and been forced through every household chore imaginable, and that once feeble frame had improved beyond recognition. These days she could even kill a chicken with her own two hands.
"How is that possible?"
Solitär dragged herself out of the crater, filthy and disheveled. Nothing in her calculations had prepared her for this — Aura without an army was supposed to be an even bigger coward than she was, and yet a single exchange had put her on the losing side.
The punch burned across her face. Half of it was slowly swelling up.
Something was trickling in her nose.
Solitär reached up and wiped at it, and two bright red lines of blood came away.
The smile was gone. She lifted her head toward that smear of purple in the night sky.
Aura, standing alone with no one at her back — was she really this strong?
High above, Aura set one hand on her hip, flicked back her purple hair, and let the corner of her mouth tilt up.
"Heh heh. I, Aura, happen to be super strong these days!"
____
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