Chapter 144
'M-magic battles... I know about them in theory. But... but to think I would...!'
Cyril spoke to the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉, which was muttering to itself in his hand, with a touch of surprise.
"Is this your first time actually seeing a magic battle?"
'Magic battles are a relatively new technique. And none of my past contractors have ever been fool enough to drag me somewhere this dangerous! I am an ancient magical artifact, you know? A one-of-a-kind treasure!'
Cyril simply replied, "I see," to the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉 as it loudly ranted and raved.
Of course, Cyril understood the value of the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉. But His Highness, whom he revered, had told him to fight while wearing it.
(His Highness believes I can win without damaging the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉.)
Cyril quietly resolved to meet that expectation with all his might.
'Well, um... I commend your courage in making it this far and challenging the 〈Thorn Witch〉...'
"Of course. I'll deliver results, too."
'O-oh... Oh dear...'
The 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉 mumbled and muttered in Cyril's hand, but he cleared his mind and focused on Raul, standing before him.
Raul Roseburg, the fifth 〈Thorn Witch〉. One of the Seven Sages, who stood at the pinnacle of this country.
A descendant of the legendary great witch, the 〈Thorn Witch〉, and the holder of the greatest magical reserves in the country.
If Cyril had gone into this without knowing anything beforehand, he might have despaired at the sheer recklessness of it.
But Cyril knew some of Raul's tricks. That meant there was room to come up with a strategy.
"I-I hereby declare this magic battle... b-begun!"
Monica stood before the magic circle and made the announcement in a strained voice.
The magic circle glowed faintly as magic flowed into it, and a barrier began to envelop the area around Cyril and the others.
The barrier didn't cover a particularly large area. Enclosing the entire forest would take more magic to maintain and make the battle drag on.
"The barrier's range is equivalent to a Class Four barrier, and its strength is equivalent to a Class One barrier. The time limit is one hour. The first to run out of magic—or the one with less magic remaining—loses."
Monica's anxious expression vanished.
That was proof she was concentrating on her magic.
"Barrier deployed... fixed in place. All sections one through sixty-eight have activated without issue. Aike, support me."
"Understood."
Isaac knelt and touched the outer edge of the glowing magic circle with his fingertips.
Confirming that he had begun supporting her, Monica called out in the loudest voice she could manage.
"B-begin!"
At her signal, Raul began chanting. Cyril stepped back a little and recited a shortened chant.
Their spells activated at almost the same time.
Raul tossed rose seeds forward. The moment they hit the ground, they grew at a terrifying speed, their vines tangling together to form a wall.
Several of the vines writhed like snakes and lunged at Cyril.
He blocked them with a wall of ice that appeared before him. The vines that touched it stuck to the ice and stopped moving.
"Nice work, Cyril!"
Raul called cheerfully with a laugh. Cyril had no room to banter with him.
Keeping the ice wall in place, Cyril used a shortened chant to create ice arrows and sent them toward Raul.
As the arrows rained down from above the thorn wall, Raul calmly poured magic into the thorns.
That alone made them grow even further, encircling Raul.
'Hey! That isn't doing a thing to him! You're going to be at a greater and greater disadvantage!'
The 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉 was right.
Once Raul's thorns were activated, he could control them freely until his magic ran out—and Raul's magic was all but inexhaustible.
The longer the battle went on, the more the thorns grew, and the more vines he could devote to offense and defense.
"I'm sorry, but keep quiet from here on. You're interfering with my plan."
Cyril watched the thorns while maintaining his ice wall.
The first spell that came to mind when a mage needed to protect themselves was a defensive barrier.
But defensive barriers were by no means easy spells.
Mages who had studied magic all agreed: barriers were "harder than they look."
Defensive barriers required an understanding of complex magical formulas, advanced magic control, and a certain amount of magical power.
As a result, more than a few mages couldn't use barrier magic.
Cyril could use it, technically, but when he needed to defend himself in a hurry, he was more accustomed to an ice wall, and it was easier to maintain.
(And Raul probably... can't use defensive barriers.)
During the Pea Incident, Raul hadn't seemed to use a defensive barrier.
There was no reason for Raul to use one in the first place. He had high regenerative abilities and convenient thorns he could use for both offense and defense.
But the Thorn Fortress had a fatal weakness.
The same could be said of an ice wall, but unlike a transparent defensive barrier, an ice wall or Thorn Fortress obstructed one's view. In short, they made it harder to land an attack. Detection and search spells could get around that, but fighting while sensing your opponent was a technique for magic-battle experts—and Cyril couldn't imagine Raul doing that.
(The denser the thorns get, the harder it should be for Raul to see where his opponent is.)
Leaving the ice wall in place, Cyril moved as if to hide in the shadows of the trees.
All the while, he chanted in a low voice and continued firing ice arrows. However, he used remote magic, making it appear as though the arrows were coming from behind the ice wall.
Cyril's plan was to make Raul think he was behind the ice wall, circle around behind him, and catch him off guard.
That was why it would be a problem if the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉 gave away his location with its chatter.
Trying not to make a sound with his footsteps or let Raul hear his chants, Cyril kept one hand over his mouth and continued chanting softly.
Controlling remote spells while moving was even harder than he'd imagined. Just moving caused slight errors in the calculations of his position coordinates.
So he stopped for the few seconds it took to cast a spell, then moved again. Repeating the process over and over, he circled behind Raul.
After making his way to Raul's rear right, Cyril narrowed his eyes and studied the thorns.
Even Cyril, whose eyesight wasn't very good, could clearly see that although thorns had grown behind Raul, there were far more gaps than elsewhere.
The second flaw in the Thorn Fortress: unlike a defensive barrier, it was impossible to keep it from having gaps.
(Now!)
Cyril knelt and touched his fingers to the ground as he chanted.
A thin tendril of ice crept along the ground from his fingertips toward Raul. Distracted by the ice arrows raining down from above, Raul didn't notice it approaching from below.
The icy tendril slipped through a gap in the thorns and touched Raul's boot.
(Activate!)
Cyril sent magic through the thin icy tendril, and it began to crawl up Raul's leg.
At last, Raul noticed and cried, "Whoa!?" But it was too late. Hard ice covered him from the knees down.
"C-cold! But, well, it's gentler than getting pierced by an ice arrow! Though it's still cold!"
Raul flailed his staff pointlessly and yelled.
Cyril didn't respond. He poured in even more magic.
If he froze Raul's whole body like this, Raul would be unable to move, and the magic battle would end automatically.
Raul might catch a cold tomorrow, but that was better than the pain of being pierced by ice arrows or spears, so Cyril hoped Raul would forgive him.
"Oh, huh? My magic's going down all over! That counts as damage, does it? Whoa, that's quite a chunk! Cyril, you're pouring a lot of magic into this, aren't you!?"
If this were a real battle rather than a magic battle, even a weak attack spell could kill an opponent if it struck a vital spot like the neck or heart.
But inside a magic-battle barrier, the amount of magic left determined the winner.
And in a magic battle, the more magic an attack spell contained, the more of the opponent's magic it could deplete. That was why Cyril had poured a great deal of magic into this attack.
He had poured it in.
"There we go."
Raul touched the ice that had risen as far as his abdomen with his staff.
The next moment, the ice covering his lower body shattered into pieces.
"Impossible...!"
Cyril let out an involuntary gasp.
Raul didn't use fire magic. So if Cyril froze him in ice, there should have been no way for him to counter it.
But Raul had directly interfered with Cyril's magic and destroyed the spell itself.
Cyril had no way of knowing this, but Monica could do something similar.
Monica did it by using her exceptional calculation skills to read an opponent's magic formula and seize control of it.
Raul, on the other hand, had used his vast magical reserves to crush Cyril's spell itself.
"It doesn't work on everything, but binding spells that keep you in contact for a long time aren't all that effective against me. I can usually break them by overwhelming them with magic."
Raul tilted his head and looked at Cyril. He'd noticed where Cyril was.
Cyril tried to create an ice wall at once, but Raul's rose vines got there first, coiling around Cyril's left wrist.
A sharp pain, like thorns piercing his wrist. Then came the feeling of a huge chunk of his magic being ripped away.
(How much magic is packed into these thorns...!)
Cyril formed ice arrows with a shortened chant and cut the vines.
The rose vines that fell to the ground still twitched and writhed. They were infused with enough magic to keep moving even after being severed.
Once again, Cyril felt the overwhelming difference in power between himself and Raul.
A man with enough magical power to crush every clever technique and strategy—that was Raul Roseburg, the fifth 〈Thorn Witch〉.
As Cyril gritted his teeth, the 〈Knowledge Keeper's Key〉 shrieked in his hand,
'Enough, fool! Hurry up and attack again! Defeat him before he gets serious!'
Raul looked offended by that.
"Huh!? I'm fighting super seriously!"
'What are you saying!? You haven't even used the Man-Eating Rose Fortress!'
Raul groaned, "Ugh." It sounded as if the key had hit a painfully critical point.
Cyril didn't know the spell said to have been wielded by the first 〈Thorn Witch〉: the Man-Eating Rose Fortress.
But Raul's reaction made it clear that he hadn't been fighting seriously.
"...Were you holding back against me?"
Raul broke into a cold sweat and flustered at Cyril's voice, even chillier than the magic he commanded.
"Um... Cyril, do you even realize you're the one in a pinch here?"
"You're saying I'm not worth your full effort."
"No, well, that's... I just don't really want to use that spell..."
"Spare me your excuses! If you keep holding back..."
Cyril glared with blazing blue eyes and shouted,
"I'm never speaking to you again!"
"Whaaaaaaaaaat!?"
＊ ＊ ＊
"Cyril's bad habit is showing."
Isaac chuckled wryly as he maintained the barrier.
Claudia muttered with utter exasperation,
"...Why not just call him an idiot? I will. He's an idiot, isn't he? Right, Mo-ni-ca?"
"U-um, well, Cyril-sama is always so earnest...!"
As Monica's gaze wandered, Claudia grinned as if she'd caught her in a confession.
"Exactly. Earnestly stupid."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I don't think that at all, I swear! I'm so sorry!"
Fortunately—or unfortunately—the voices from the spectators' area didn't seem to reach Cyril or Raul.
Raul clutched his head, looking thoroughly at a loss, and groaned over and over.
"I don't want him to stop talking to me... Ugh... Hmm... I can't really control that spell... Well, Monica's here, so it'll be fine."
Raul suddenly looked up and waved broadly at Monica.
"Hey, Monica! Stop me if things get dangerous!"
"Huh?"
She felt as if he'd just casually entrusted her with something terrifying.
Raul turned to face Cyril again and planted the staff in his left hand against the ground.
The chiming sound of the ornaments on his staff sounded strangely ominous.
Raul bowed his head and began chanting. Keeping his left hand on the staff, he roughly raked his right hand through his bangs.
The expression vanished from his usually cheerful face, and his vivid new-green eyes gleamed eerily beneath long lashes.
On his expressionless face, his lips slowly curled upward. It wasn't his usual bright smile, but the smile of a witch who looked down on and mocked the weak before her.
"'Young men are nourishment for flowers, young women are beauty potions, and everyone else is dog food.'"
"...Raul?"
The beautiful face said to be the spitting image of the first 〈Thorn Witch〉 addressed Cyril, who had called his name haltingly, in a voice that made no attempt to conceal its cruelty.
"'I hate the sound of people begging for their lives. Screams, on the other hand... Cry and scream until your throat tears.'"