Chapter 50
Soon after, as I watched the children begin talking among themselves, I slowly lowered myself onto the platform in the center of the village.
“Heave… ho.”
An old-man-ish grunt slipped out on its own. With my face feeling slightly warm, I looked at Sir Estelle.
Sir Estelle silently met my gaze, but did not say anything in particular.
Wasn't she embarrassed or angry that her words had been directly refuted?
“Hmm….”
I wondered what I should say. After pondering for a moment, I scratched my cheek and asked,
“Was there perhaps some flaw in what I said?”
“…Are you trying to make fun of me?”
“No, it's not that… This is only a guess, after all. I do think I have reasons for it, in my own way… but there might be some secret about Jakma that I don't know. Or perhaps some personal detail about him that doesn't fit my deductions. So I might be wrong….”
“….”
“…Well, that's all. Ahaha.”
Though I had rambled a little, I ended with an awkward laugh.
Estelle, who had been quietly watching me, muttered,
“…Unfortunately, no.”
“Is that unfortunate?”
“It frustrates me, but your deduction is perfect. He was a master capable of using Bluebird Magic, had an above-average amount of mana, and was a highly skilled man.”
“So he knew Bluebird Magic.”
Bluebird Magic is a high-difficulty, high-tier spell among the magic used to control familiars.
It would be fair to say that anyone who could freely wield Bluebird Magic could subjugate and use any creature as a familiar, provided they had enough mana.
In other words, my deduction was correct: he was subjugating dozens or even hundreds of trees as familiars at the same time.
“That man was a subordinate directly under my command, personally selected by me back when we were in the training corps.”
“…I see.”
“I thought I knew him better than anyone except his family. Given his astounding mana manipulation, which allowed him to control the moisture flowing inside plants and use them like his own limbs, I thought controlling an entire forest might not be impossible.”
As Sir Estelle spoke to me, her expression soon hardened, and she muttered quietly,
“I can hardly understand why he made such a foolish choice.”
“….”
“Anyway. I don't think there's anything else I can do to help.”
Sir Estelle rose from the platform, leaning on her cane.
“If you need any other help… or once the mission ends safely, feel free to come find me anytime. Until then, I'll remain in this village.”
I watched Sir Estelle hobble away for a moment, then turned toward the children and said,
“…It looks like you've finished making your plans.”
“Yes!”
Miriam answered confidently and energetically, placing both hands on her hips.
The other children nodded as well, and I braced myself against the platform and stood up.
“Well then, shall we hear the plan?”
=
The next day, in the middle of the night, beneath a bright half-moon.
It was a night that was neither too bright nor too dark, but just right.
Instead of sleeping, Estelle lay diagonally across the roof of the house where she was staying, bundled tightly in her clothes as she gazed up at the sky.
‘…What am I doing?’
The situation was this.
She had already attempted to subdue Jakma and failed, so that counted as one failure.
If Class E succeeded in subduing Jakma, that would be the end of it. It would be her defeat.
But if Class E failed, it would be her turn again.
It wasn't a proposal she had come up with. It was a proposal that Haru, Class E's dedicated instructor, had offered to her instead.
By any common-sense reasoning, there was no possible benefit to them in accepting it.
Judging from the circumstances, she was the one who had taken their mission away. She had acted independently, without an assigned mission, in order to judge him personally, whereas they had come here after formally accepting a citizen's request and being officially assigned the mission of carrying it out.
‘What could they be thinking?’
That was precisely why it seemed even more suspicious. That was why she had broken her own rule of going to bed at a fixed time and decided to secretly watch them carry out their mission while lying on a rooftop in the middle of the night.
“…Bluebird, Bluebird.”
Estelle whispered as she chanted the spell. She had not yet mastered familiar magic, so she could only cast it by reciting a long, sustained incantation like this.
It was also a beginner's chant, drawn out at length in the form of a song. Despite holding the lowest position among the Rounds, her ability to control mana was not particularly impressive.
‘Unlike Haru, anyway.’
Haru's bizarre feat of casually pulling out a thread of mana without a chant and weaving it into a Bluebird, as though it were nothing extraordinary.
Estelle felt a little sympathy for the Class E students who watched that spectacle without batting an eye.
She was even worried that they might wet themselves when they later learned just how nauseatingly nasty and difficult Bluebird Magic really was.
‘A rookie magic knight whose name, identity, and family are all unknown… becoming the dedicated instructor of the academy's practical class.’
Estelle realized the reason the moment she saw her Bluebird Magic.
If someone were asked to name the greatest magic knight in this country, everyone would give the same answer.
The Moonlight Knight, Ludwig Grace.
The current headmaster of Manus Academy and heir to the royal family's Moonlight Magic.
The foremost of the nine knights known as the Rounds, who could stand alongside the king.
And in her entire life, Estelle had seen only two knights who could be compared to him.
She had seen one of them during the Seven Years' War.
That knight's name was Rex Tenil. He was the adopted son of the Tenil family, a man known as the hero of the Western Front.
And she had seen the other just yesterday.
Estelle felt the same presence from Haru that she had felt when she first saw Rex.
‘For a mere knight with no reputation, no family name, and nothing else to her name to be selected as the dedicated instructor of Manus Academy… there must have been a reason she was worthy of it.’
Because Ludwig's eye for talent could not possibly be wrong.
Estelle thought this to herself as she slowly drew out threads of mana and wove them into the shape of a Bluebird.
Slowly, one stitch at a time, weaving the thread horizontally and vertically in alternation, like knitting.
-Flutter.
At last, the completed blue bird gave a small flap of its wings and chirped.
Estelle let the bird leave her fingertip and slowly closed her eyes.
Through her closed eyelids, the blue bird's airborne field of vision overlapped with her own.
‘Let's see just how capable Class E of the practical class really is….’
The first person to enter the Bluebird's vision was a girl.
She looked timid, with brown hair cut into a bob at shoulder length.
‘Her name was Roxanna, wasn't it?’
But something was strange from the very beginning. The girl who had clearly seemed timid and hesitant was panting heavily with two enormous fireballs blazing in her hands.
‘What the hell, like some kind of pervert….’
Just as Estelle muttered in disgust, Roxanna's face brightened as she hurled the two fireballs into the air.
-Fwoooosh…!
The two fireballs spiraled upward into the sky, then transformed into birds of a bizarre shape.
Each fireball became a bird. But each was only half a bird, with just one wing.
Two birds shaped as though a single bird had been divided in half became entangled with each other in midair.
‘That magic is definitely….’
Estelle searched through her old memories. She distinctly remembered that there had been a knight from a collateral branch of the Gatling family on the Western Front.
‘I remember now. Barrage Magic, Paired-Wing Firebird.’
The paired-wing bird.
A bird from Eastern legend whose male and female each possessed only one wing, one eye, and one leg, making it impossible for either to fly alone.
Thus, they had to find a suitable partner and flap their wings together before they could finally take to the sky.
Paired-Wing Firebird, the magic modeled after that bird, was a spell that bound together and launched two stocks' worth of fireballs transformed into the shape of the paired-wing bird.
Its speed was far beyond imagination and its range was long, making it ideal for secretly ambushing an opponent.
It was a secret art among Barrage Magic, which was said to embody firepower itself, requiring delicate mana control that seemed ill-suited to such magic.
‘But in the end, it's still Barrage Magic. Besides… that spell doesn't have any tracking function.’
How was she supposed to find and intercept the man hiding somewhere in Black Earthworm Forest…?
‘…Huh?’
But something about the Paired-Wing Firebird seemed strange.
Instead of searching for its target, the Paired-Wing Firebird flew high into the sky and simply charged straight toward Black Earthworm Forest.
‘Could she be planning to slam it into some random spot?’
Estelle thought. But, contrary to her expectations,
-Kwoooom!!!
The Paired-Wing Firebird dove straight into the ground and slammed into the very center of Black Earthworm Forest.
The two intertwined fireballs resonated with each other, creating an explosion more than twice as powerful as one stock's worth.
‘Is she trying to set the forest on fire and lure him outside?’
Estelle thought so, but shook her head.
‘Naive. If he were someone who could be lured out by something like that, I would have caught him already.’
Above the forest blazing bright red, writhing tree roots rose up and pounded the burning area so violently that each impact sounded with a thud.
Birds flew above the forest, chirping, and the fiercely raging flames slowly began to die down.
The fire was so intense that it would not go out immediately, but they should be able to put it out before the rest of Class E arrived.
Looking down at the scene, Estelle thought,
‘Was this… below my expectations?’
Just then, something brushed past the edge of her vision.
“Aah─ aah─ aaah─!!”
“Whee, hahahaha──”
As a long-drawn-out scream rang out, Estelle stared intently at the thing in the distance, then suddenly widened her eyes and looked down in the opposite direction.
Focusing her gaze on it as best she could, Estelle opened her eyes wide and shouted,
‘…A catapult?!’
Estelle blinked repeatedly and muttered,
‘Did they just launch a person with a catapult?!’
Class E had reasoned as follows.
Since they had to go to the ground, they would inevitably be attacked by the murderous plants.
Then someone suggested going somewhere the murderous plants could not attack, and the four of them soon converged on a single conclusion.
If going to the ground was impossible, they could go through the sky!
They would set fire to a random spot in the forest to draw Jakma's attention, then lure him over so that he would control the trees near the fire and put it out.
Then they would use a catapult to hurl the remaining team members into the sky and launch a surprise attack from above.
It was a concise, flawless plan with not a single opening.
‘In theory, anyway…!’
Throwing people with a catapult? They had to be insane.
Forget landing properly; they would be lucky if they didn't fall headfirst, have their heads smashed open, and die. Even breaking both legs would count as good fortune.
And that wasn't all. Fine, suppose the idea of traveling through the sky instead of along the ground was sound.
How were they planning to find Jakma and ambush him from above a forest covered in densely packed trees?
Even if they found him, wouldn't it all be for nothing unless they landed precisely on top of his head?
If they landed somewhere random in the forest without securing Jakma's location, that would be a true act of suicide.
Because murderous plants would descend on them from every direction.
-Piiiii──
At that moment, a long birdcall rang out above the Bluebird's head.
A blazing flame left a long afterimage as it split the sky and flew toward the children.
It was a second Paired-Wing Firebird, far larger than the first.
‘It can be made that large…?’
Estelle was stunned by its size, but only for a moment.
“It’s here!”
“Catch it quickly, unless you want to fall headfirst and die!”
The black-haired boy suddenly shouted, and the gray-haired girl reached out a hand covered in thick leather gloves.
“Aah, it’s hottt!!”
“Please bear with it, and keep your voice down…!”
“You know we’re all dead if we drop it, right?!”
“I know, but what am I supposed to do about it being hot?! You catch it!”
At her companions' urging, the girl shrieked loudly.
Her name was definitely Miriam.
She was gripping the flaming bird's leg tightly with her gloved hand.
However large it was, carrying three people at once was apparently too much for the Paired-Wing Firebird, and it circled around the fire while slowly descending.
“A little to the left. No, too far. A little to the right, then up….”
The black-haired male student hanging at the very bottom and repeatedly muttering as he looked down suddenly shouted and pointed toward the ground.
“Found him!!”
The children all looked toward the tip of his finger, and there they saw a person.
‘Jakma…!’
A man with both hands buried in the ground, feeding mana through the roots of the plants.
Even without those distinctive features, the mere fact that someone was alive and well in this forest meant that he had to be the target of this mission and the mastermind behind the Black Earthworm Forest incident.
The blonde-haired girl drew a pair of tomahawks from her waist and shouted,
“On three. One, two, three!!”
“Hng…!”
“Hyaaaah!!”
The gray-haired girl shouted as she released her grip on the Paired-Wing Firebird, and the three of them fell simultaneously toward the top of Jakma's head.
“What the hell!?”
Jakma, who had been controlling the plants with both hands buried in the ground, shouted too late. Small bolts of lightning crackled down over both his shoulders.
-Kkrrrack!!!
Two lightning-wreathed tomahawks lodged themselves in his shoulders.
“Ugh…?!”
“Secured!!”
Before he even had time to scream, the gray-haired girl and the black-haired boy came crashing down on him from above.
-Kwoooom!!
Miriam transformed only the parts of her body below the forearms into wolf-like forepaws and slammed Jakma's head against the ground, while the black-haired boy's chain sword tightly coiled around his entire restrained body.
‘This is impossible.’
Estelle stared blankly at the entire scene and muttered,
‘They really did it. And so easily…!’
And so, Class E's second mission came to an end.