Chapter 21
Agatha closed the distance to Hubert, sliding the mop through her hands and thrusting it forward.
It was not the motion of someone simply relying on brute strength to swing a spear; she knew exactly when to put her strength into it.
Hubert kept Agatha at bay with ice arrows, then leaped backward.
At that moment, a knife flew in from right beside him. It was Isaac's throw. Having anticipated it, Hubert crouched on the spot and dodged the knife.
He would have preferred to use a defensive barrier, but with the magic-disrupting tool active, Hubert, like Monica, could not use magic. All he could use were the magical tools he had on hand.
(...So the knife was a decoy.)
Hubert rolled his eyes toward his immediate side.
Isaac was already closing in. He lashed out with a roundhouse kick from one long leg.
(No way I can dodge this, huh?)
Hubert raised his right arm to shield his head. Isaac's heavy kick made not only his arm but his shoulder creak ominously.
Hubert rolled across the floor, sprang up, activated his magical tools, and kept Agatha and Isaac at bay with lightning and ice arrows.
"Mm-mm-mm... Nice moves, huh?"
Isaac's kick had not broken Hubert's arm, but it would probably be useless for a while.
He had heard that His Highness the Second Prince Felix Ark Ridill had also excelled in swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat.
At the time, he'd assumed the instructors were merely currying favor with royalty, but Isaac's movements were sharper than he'd expected.
"As expected of the famed Duke of Crockford. He's trained his dog well, hasn't he? Quite a hunting dog, huh?"
Isaac, who had been called the duke's dog time and again, smiled.
His eyes, however, were cold enough to send shivers down one's spine.
"Did you think mentioning that man's name would make me lose my temper?"
"Didn't it?"
With a mocking grin, Hubert turned the thought over in his mind.
Hubert's small talk was not mere provocation. It also bought him time to assess their fighting strength.
Hubert Dee loved hunting. He analyzed his prey's movements, lured it into traps of his own devising, and finished it off. He spared no effort for the sake of that moment.
(Monica is out of commission. The orange-haired young lady is out of the fight... Isaac Walker. He's better at hand-to-hand combat than I expected. His long limbs give him plenty of reach. His knife-throwing skill is pretty impressive, too. Whenever I put distance between us, I need to watch his hands.)
And the woman gripping the mop—the maid, Agatha—was someone he needed to be just as wary of as Isaac.
Despite the mop being so different from a spear, her shifts in center of gravity were perfect. And the skill with which she had rescued Monica by a hair's breadth was not something one could acquire by merely dabbling.
"Was the mop woman from Kerbeck? ...I see. People from a land that's fought dragons all this time are brave and fearless warriors—even the women, huh?"
Agatha kept the mop at the ready and answered without letting down her guard.
"It is true that I am from Kerbeck. However, the spears of Kerbeck are primarily throwing spears for killing dragons. The spear technique I learned is based on a foreign style specialized in fighting people."
No wonder she was the perfect bodyguard for her young lady.
If this woman named Agatha had been a warrior specializing in fighting dragons, she would not have been much of a threat. Fighting dragons and fighting people were two very different things.
(This woman is used to fighting humans. Her long weapon gives her reach, too. She's not prey I can finish off easily.)
There were two pieces of big game in front of Hubert now.
But Hubert had not the slightest intention of tucking his tail and running from such impressive prey.
"Good, good, good! Ah, this is good—the best! This is getting fun!"
To Hubert, the 〈Silent Witch〉, the nation's greatest mage; the Duke of Erin, publicly the Second Prince; and the maid clutching a mop were all equally prey.
Monica and Hubert were nothing alike, but they did share one thing.
Just as Monica became equally merciless toward anyone she designated an enemy, Hubert was equally merciless toward anyone he designated prey.
It made no difference whether they were royalty, one of the Seven Sages, or a woman or child.
Isaac and Agatha watched Hubert lick his lips with looks of disgust.
Hubert savored even those disgusted looks as he activated the magical tool in his ring.
A mage's greatest weakness was the time required to chant a spell. That was why mages were vulnerable when an opponent closed the distance.
But Hubert's weapons were magical tools. Like Monica's incantationless magic, they could be activated instantly and fired in rapid succession without chanting.
"Now, can you dodge this?"
Ice arrows rained down on Isaac, while lightning arrows descended on Agatha.
Both sets of arrows could track their targets for a short time. They were not something one could dodge easily.
But Isaac picked up a chair lying at his feet and used it as a shield against the ice arrows. Keeping the chair between himself and Hubert, he closed the distance.
...This prince intended to attack Hubert with a chair.
Agatha, meanwhile, held the mop tight against her body as she kicked off the floor like a dancer, dodging the lightning arrows. Despite their tracking ability, she avoided every one.
Agatha closed in as she dodged the arrows and aimed the mop at Hubert's brow. Her movement was far more beautiful than the prince's as he wildly swung a chair with murderous intent.
Isaac's chair and Agatha's mop came at Hubert simultaneously.
Hubert gave a wide grin and looked in a direction completely unrelated to either of them.
In the direction of Hubert's gaze were Monica, crouched on the floor, and Isabelle, who was beside her.
Isaac and Agatha's expressions changed as they realized what Hubert was plotting.
"You can't abandon your precious, precious master, can you?"
Hubert raised his ringed hand, his lips curling into a vicious smile.
The ring gleamed, and a dozen or more lightning arrows appeared above Hubert's head.
They were aimed at Monica and Isabelle.
"Monica!"
"My lady!"
Isaac and Agatha sprang in front of the lightning arrows, shielding their respective masters.
The slender lightning arrows rained down like gold, trying to pierce Isaac and Agatha—but...
"...That's far enough."
Every arrow that had been aimed at Isaac and Agatha was stopped by an invisible wall and dispersed.
(A defensive barrier? How? The flow of mana is being disrupted, so even one of the Seven Sages shouldn't be able to use magic right now—)
Hubert stared at Monica, who was being supported by Isabelle, and opened his eyes as wide as they could go.
The person Isabelle was holding close was not Monica. The cloak was Monica's, but a closer look revealed a village child Hubert had overlooked earlier.
Isabelle's body had blocked Hubert's view, leaving him unable to see even half of Monica. That was why he had not noticed the switch.
(...Then where's the real one?)
When Hubert turned around, he saw lightning arrows deployed all around him. These were different from the ones created by his magical tools.
Standing behind Hubert was Monica Everette, the 〈Silent Witch〉, gripping a magical-tool knife.
Monica had lent her coat to the village child, then moved while Isaac and Agatha were fighting and deactivated the magical tool Hubert had set up.
She had probably done it while dragging her injured leg and crawling across the floor.
"You've got plenty of guts, huh?"
"...Today, I'm a cool master, so..."
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
Hubert had never heard that Monica had taken on a disciple, but apparently she had no intention of crying and running away today. Even though she was terrible with pain and fear.
"By the way, how many seconds did it take you to disable today's dummy spell formula?"
To rewrite the effects of a magical tool, one first had to disable the dummy spell formula embedded within it.
During the magical battle two years earlier, Monica had disabled the dummy spell formula Hubert created in under five seconds.
Learning from that experience, Hubert spent several years creating an exceptionally complex dummy spell formula and built it into the knife, a magical tool.
Monica had needed one minute to disable the dummy spell formula created by Louis Miller, the 〈Barrier Mage〉.
One might therefore expect disabling Hubert's dummy formula to take thirty or forty seconds, but...
"Um, today's took... ten seconds."
"Ha! Ah-hahahahaha!!"
Hubert laughed as if frustrated, yet also with genuine delight from the bottom of his heart.
Hubert sincerely wanted to finish off the 〈Silent Witch〉 with his own hands.
But he didn't want her to be an easy kill, either.
He wanted Monica to remain an incomparably monstrous being beyond anyone's reach.
"You really are the best, my queen!"
Lightning arrows poured down on the laughing Hubert like rain.