Chapter 42
Looking back on today, Iris Webern could only say it had been a terrible day.
Iris had gone out of her way to travel from her remote territory to the great city of Lyon to address the frequent monster attacks.
She had some expectations, too.
Perhaps they could make even a little progress on countermeasures at a meeting of the assembled nobles.
But the meeting was useless. It seemed the nobles who attended had mainly come to make a racket at the party.
And when she secretly followed the foolish-looking noble sons to see where they were going, it turned out to be a suspicious place.
Urtos, the duke's heir she'd met there, was truly awful.
With a maid whose face was bright red standing behind him, he'd said, "I'll make you my mistress."
She'd reached her limit.
――Those words were a land mine for Iris.
Her birth as the child of a concubine.
She'd worked desperately all this time to overcome that stigma, and Urtos's words seemed to mock all her efforts.
She couldn't help thinking, "Has the 'pride of the nobility' fallen this low?" and even lashed out at him.
Then Iris, unable to bear it any longer, left the city and passed through Hafen Village, where she'd been so warmly received.
She greeted the villagers and said goodbye.
Since it was already so late, she regretted not getting to see Zeke, the boy from the neighboring village she'd befriended during her stay, one more time.
And so Iris had been planning to return to her territory.
――But,
A short while after she left the village, the carriage Iris was riding in was attacked by a group of strange men, and by the time she came to, she was in this hideout.
◆
They had brought her to a facility inside a cave.
In front of Iris sat a languid-looking man with his eyes closed.
(I can do this.)
Despite being in a desperate situation, Iris thought so.
The man was off guard. The others who had been with him had hurriedly gone somewhere, saying, "Some strange guy showed up at the destination."
Iris, pretending to be unconscious, had calmly observed her surroundings.
(I'm sure I can do it...!)
Iris had a fair amount of confidence in her own strength.
――Magic had different tiers.
A student could use basic First-Tier magic after attending the academy for a little while.
They said that being able to use Third-Tier magic by the time you graduated from the academy was a respectable achievement.
Iris's strongest available magic was Third-Tier 【Flame】 magic.
That's right.
Thanks to her extraordinary talent, Iris had reached the point where she could wield Third-Tier fire magic before even entering the academy.
A mass of talent, honed through relentless training. That was Iris.
(――My flames will pierce through anything.)
She carefully surveyed her surroundings.
The rope binding her had already been cut.
And she had carefully and cautiously built up the magic power inside her body.
All that remained was to find an opening and unleash her strongest attack.
Yes, the moment to strike was――
(Right now!!!)
She slipped free of her restraints and charged forward.
Iris closed in on the man, who still had his eyes shut.
She began chanting.
Her body's magic power flowed into the spell formula.
"Exclusive Blood / Exploding Scatterblossom――"
A Third-Tier spell of the 【Fire】 element.
【Fire】 magic was known for its high power to begin with.
And this spell, which Iris excelled at, had a shorter effective range than a First-Tier Fireball, meaning she had to get close to her target, but its power was tremendous in exchange.
"Hm?"
The man finally opened his eyes.
Too late.
It was already all over.
――But,
"……!!!"
In that instant, a chill ran down Iris's spine.
She recoiled as if struck.
"Oh, you noticed my magic."
"…What is…?"
Honestly, nothing about the man's appearance had changed.
He was still sitting just as before.
But Iris, gripped by an intense sense of foreboding, instantly changed her course.
"Well, well. Impressive. Very impressive, young lady."
The man clapped as he spoke.
"If you'd been two seconds slower to react, that lovely skin of yours would have been cut by now."
"Thank you."
As she said so, Iris desperately tried to think.
The man rose lightly to his feet.
Iris narrowed her eyes.
There was nothing unusual about the area around him.
A black shadow had formed around the man――
(…A shadow???)
Something was wrong.
A sense of unease.
Looking closely at the shadow, she saw that the one at the man's feet was writhing like a living creature.
"……!!!"
"My magic works as an automatic defense. It's convenient, but... the downside is that it can slice people to pieces before they even realize it."
She wanted to say, "That's impossible."
There was no way something like that could happen.
Magic that moved on its own???
That was an absurdly advanced kind of magic.
And a moving shadow.
She had never seen an element like this in any book.
There was only one conclusion she could draw.
The corner of the man's mouth lifted.
"So you noticed Baldo's magic. What a shame. In a few more years, you surely would have made a fine opponent."
There was no doubt.
Iris opened her mouth in despair.
"――Extra-Domain Magic..."
That was the name for the most unusual kind of magic in the world.
◆
Magic――the art of using the magic power one is born with to cause phenomena that would normally be impossible.
Of course, learning magic takes time, and you need to attend a proper educational institution.
That's why many adventurers, even if they have magic power, simply use it to strengthen their bodies.
However, if you wanted to join the kingdom's knight order or serve a lord, it was still better to be able to use magic.
And so, when parents learned their child had magic power, they would have it 【Appraised】.
The appraisal revealed the child's element.
Magic also had different elements.
For example, the most common ones would be fire, water, earth, wind, and lightning.
These were known as the Five Great Elements and were highly prized. If you had one of these elements, you were considered to have drawn a good hand.
There were others, such as summoning and household magic, though fewer people had them.
And then.
These spells were organized by tier. For example, Fireball belonged to the 【First Tier】 of 【Fire】 magic.
In other words, if your opponent was a mage, you could get a general idea of their abilities from the 【Element】 they could use and the corresponding 【Tier】.
――But very occasionally, appraisal would fail to identify someone's element or produce some bizarre result.
That was what was known as "Extra-Domain Magic."
The meaning was simple.
It meant that the magic lay outside the bounds of the magical techniques humanity had acquired.
That's right.
Extra-Domain Magic was, quite literally, magic beyond the domain.
And so, learning Extra-Domain Magic was anything but easy.
For example, with a common element, teaching methods were fairly well established, and most people could reach at least the First Tier if they studied properly.
After all, the magic itself had been extensively researched and organized by tier. That was a considerable advantage.
But.
Extra-Domain Magic was different.
There were extremely few people who possessed it, and since it was unique to each individual, there were no tiers like First or Second, nor any teaching methods.
That's right.
With Extra-Domain Magic, you had to figure everything out for yourself.
On top of that, Extra-Domain Magic took a tremendous amount of time.
With common elements, plenty of people could use other elements as a secondary skill, but if you seriously tried to master Extra-Domain Magic, you had no time at all to dabble in other elements.
And even after all that desperate effort, there was no guarantee it would pay off.
They said that, fortunately or unfortunately, many people with an aptitude for Extra-Domain Magic died without ever realizing it.
That was Extra-Domain Magic.
A dud element.
But that was only true for those who hadn't mastered it.
For someone who had mastered Extra-Domain Magic, it became a truly inhuman art.
In other words, all the disadvantages up to that point were reversed.
The absence of teaching methods meant, in other words, that it offered overwhelming freedom.
Being a magic unique to its wielder meant it could become an absolute advantage in battle and in information warfare.
That's right.
The more you trained in Extra-Domain Magic, the more its strength was amplified.
◆
"So... that's... Extra-Domain Magic..."
Her breathing grew ragged.
Eventually.
"Well, time to get serious."
The man said it as if it were nothing, then licked the sword he held.
"………What?!"
"Don't worry about it. It's my routine."
Magic power erupted from the man's body.
At that moment, Iris finally realized.
The man wasn't even remotely serious.
――And that was proof of
the stark difference between Iris and the man who called himself Baldo.
―――――――――――――――――――――
Baldo
→ He was teased mercilessly for licking his blade in the previous chapter, but he's a true master who has honed his Extra-Domain Magic of manipulating shadows to its utmost limits. Never let your guard down around him. Licking his blade is his routine before battle.
Iris
→ A beautiful girl with a fiery spirit, currently despairing at Baldo's overwhelming strength. Poor thing, but also adorable.
Extra-Domain Magic
→ Late-blooming magic that takes a ton of experience points to master.
※ This is a proper villainous isekai fantasy, so of course it has things like magic lore. This isn't just a story about a muscle-brained gorilla with a ton of magic power swinging a sword around.