Chapter 52
The bat-faced mage, clinging tightly to Ohinata and keeping watch, was sensitive to magical power, so the Blue Witch couldn't approach. Even if she backed away and tried to snipe the mage with magic, the mage would sense the movement of her magical power and dodge. The mage was that sharp.
But Handa Sakunosuke's dynamite suicide attack was purely physical, with no magical power involved at all.
Consequently, the explosion that tore through the room's wall was a perfect surprise to the bat-faced mage, whose attention was diverted completely.
The Blue Witch, who had been hiding behind the university's central tower clock, moved swiftly when presented with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
She aimed Cuanos at the bat-faced mage. But even though the mage had finally let the guard down, the distance from Ohinata was far too short. What if she caught Ohinata in it?
That hesitation was removed by the intervention of a third party.
Something tiny, extremely difficult to see and barely perceptible, flew through the hole the explosion had opened in the wall, body-slammed the bat-faced mage, and sent the mage flying.
The Blue Witch clenched her fist without thinking.
She wasn't the only one who had been lying in wait and watching for an opening.
As the bat-faced mage crashed into a pile of projectors and printers, the Blue Witch chanted her finishing spell along with the cold murderous intent she had been suppressing.
"That spear was made from ice, snow, and sorrow."
A pure-white trident of compressed cold formed instantly and shot straight downward at superhuman speed, leaving afterimages and outrunning the sound of its passage.
In the very next instant, it pierced through four floors and impaled the bat-faced mage in a straight line from head to groin, pinning the mage to the ground and killing the mage instantly.
All at once, the university grew noisy.
Her first attack had given away her position. Until she killed the wielder of the rampaging magic, Cuanos would be unusable for a while.
The Blue Witch first and foremost wanted to go help Ohinata, but then she noticed that a small figure was dragging Ohinata down the hallway at considerable speed, pulling Ohinata away from the fiercest part of the battle.
It was such a wonderful job that she could have kissed them. Once she had finished wiping out the enemies, she definitely wanted to thank them.
But the cleanup came first.
She quickly surveyed the overall situation. The Arataki Group's boss had taken the dynamite blast at point-blank range, but was still alive and trying to rise from the center of the explosion.
"Freezing Javelin"
With Cuanos at her hip, the Blue Witch fired off magic barehanded to keep the boss pinned to the ground, then sprang out from behind the clock and leaped high into the air.
Her destination was the campus store on the first floor of the south wing, where the wielder of the rampaging magic and the two witch guards were located.
"!? Sis, get back! We are the fortress!"
Since she had moved so dramatically, of course they noticed her.
When the red-haired guard witch chanted a spell, a brilliant, sturdy, translucent barrier appeared in midair directly in front of the witch and blocked the way.
The Blue Witch twisted in midair, kicked off the barrier, and landed on the ground in one swift motion.
"Boil, my blood!"
Then, from a low stance like a beast's, she exploded forward, forcibly kicked through the barrier, knocked the red-haired witch down, and straddled the witch.
As the guard desperately tried to chant something, the Blue Witch shoved the muzzle of her sidearm into the guard's mouth and pulled the trigger, while firing barehanded magic into the back of the rampaging-magic witch as that witch frantically tried to flee.
"That spear was made from ice, snow, and sorrow."
In the time it took to blink, the rampaging-magic witch was pierced through the heart from behind and became a grotesque object of death, hoisted above the ground.
For all that she had gone to the trouble of bringing guards, the witch was frail by witch standards. The magical power the Blue Witch had been building for a second shot was instead used on the guard, who was vomiting blood and barely conscious.
"That spear was made from ice, snow, and sorrow."
The guard, unable to speak after taking five bullets point-blank in the mouth, died when the white trident crushed the guard's head.
Three witches and a mage had died in little more than ten seconds.
Only two remained at the university.
The Blue Witch gripped Cuanos once more and let her frigid magical power surge.
An enormous amount of magical power overflowed from the Blue Witch, and a wave of white frost spread across the university.
The Ice Queen reigned.
The Arataki Group's underlings, who had gathered in groups all across the grounds, fell into a panic and tried to flee ahead of one another.
But several members of the cluster of underlings trying to escape in a clump were blown into the air all at once.
Parting a crowd of underlings frozen with fear and unable to move, the bald mage known as the young boss appeared with shoulders squared.
Was that supposed to be a magic wand? The mage pointed a crude weapon—nothing more than a magic stone attached to a piece of wood—at the Blue Witch and shouted with a demonic expression.
"Woman! Don't think you'll make it back alive! From the great chasm in the earth, come..."
"Freezing Javelin"
The Blue Witch interrupted the incantation of the foolhardy young boss, who had exposed himself by issuing a challenge, with a precisely aimed rapid-fire shot.
Ice-spear magic was exceptionally versatile, with its short incantation, power, efficiency, range, and speed all highly refined and well balanced. Combined with the Blue Witch's superb control over magical power, every one of those qualities was elevated even further, including its accuracy.
The young boss tried to dodge the ice spear, but couldn't quite avoid it. It struck the young boss in the cheek and interrupted the incantation.
Even as the young boss looked incredulous and tried to chant the spell again, the Blue Witch mercilessly followed up with another attack.
"That spear was made from ice, snow, and sorrow."
The magic, its power amplified by Cuanos, once again left behind an impaled corpse.
The underlings who witnessed the one-sided massacre completely lost the will to fight.
Some wet themselves, while others prostrated themselves and began begging for their lives, weeping in terror.
The small fry could wait.
The Blue Witch walked toward the last remaining mage.
After Handa Sakunosuke's suicide attack, the Blue Witch had fired a single shot to keep the boss at bay. But while ice-spear magic was effective for suppression, it was not a spell capable of dealing a fatal blow to a mage.
The boss should have gotten to the boss's feet long ago and attacked her with magic or fists.
Facing the boss again, she could clearly see the severity of the wounds.
The front of the boss's body was blackened and swollen red, and the jaw was mangled beyond recognition.
No magical support had arrived—accurate pronunciation was impossible with that jaw.
The boss showed no sign of wanting to flee from the approaching Blue Witch. Dragging a battered body along on legs that twitched irregularly, the boss was instead coming toward her one step at a time.
As with the young boss, the members of the Arataki Group had high fighting spirit—at least the witches and mages did. The boss strode forward with a boldness impossible to imagine from a defeated commander, pointed at the Blue Witch, pointed at the boss's own body, and raised both fists.
Unable to speak, the boss had no choice but to convey the boss's intentions with hand gestures.
The Blue Witch understood the meaning perfectly.
The boss wanted to fight her one-on-one, with their fists.
But there was no reason whatsoever to accept such a demand. The Blue Witch walked within the trident spell's guaranteed-hit range, aimed Cuanos, and chanted a spell to finish off the half-dead man.
"That spear was made from ice, snow, and sorrow."
The ice spear shot forward at a speed too fast for the eye to follow and struck the boss.
However, it did not pierce the enemy, merely lodging shallowly in the body.
The boss staggered badly, but pulled the spear from the chest and threw it aside before coming toward the Blue Witch one step at a time once more, a murderous intensity radiating from the boss.
"…!?"
The Blue Witch grew wary and furrowed her brow.
The impact had felt wrong.
It wasn't simply that the boss was tough.
It was as if the magic wasn't penetrating properly. As if the boss had resistance to magic.
As the Blue Witch intently observed the approaching boss, she felt something strange—and then realized what it was.
The boss was probably the same species as she was.
The magic the boss knew was different from hers, but like her, the boss had no heart and possessed a high resistance to cold. That was simply what their species was like.
Even strengthened by Cuanos, her freezing magic was proving far too ineffective.
The resistance did not nullify the magic, so she could probably kill the boss through brute force.
But the Blue Witch chose another method.
She walked up to the infuriating, anachronistic fossil of a half-dead man who wanted a one-on-one fistfight as the finale to his life and grabbed both hands.
The boss grinned ferociously with a burned face, put all the boss's strength into the grip, and tried to overpower the Blue Witch.
The boss's strength was tremendous, rivaling or even surpassing the Dragon Witch's. Under that tremendous force, the ground beneath their planted feet caved in.
But she had no intention of obligingly playing along.
The Blue Witch chanted a spell while grappling with the boss.
A spell of unparalleled power, though it required contact, a lengthy incantation, and an enormous amount of magical power.
"Boil, my blood, my anger. I shall wring every last drop of your blood from you and offer it as atonement to my ancestors."
The blood magic was cast, and a horrifying red mist clung to the boss.
The boss groaned while vomiting blood and desperately trying to resist through control of magical power.
But there was no chance against the Blue Witch.
The feeble resistance was torn apart like paper. Magical power and blood spurted from every opening in the body and every wound, leaving the boss dried out like a dead tree before dying.
After catching her breath, the Blue Witch noticed the students and professors watching her from a distance, holding their breath. It seemed the crowd still hadn't processed that the situation was over.
She didn't care. Only Ohinata mattered.
With that in mind, the Blue Witch laid Ohinata down at the base of the water tower and was about to go to the small figure hopping up and down to get her attention when she suddenly remembered Assistant Professor Nanase's words.
If she was going to move forward with her eyes on the future instead of the past, she couldn't limit herself to being friends only with Ohinata and Dairi.
This time, the Magic University had united to deal with the crisis.
There had not been a single traitor.
Everyone had given it their all in their own way.
They could be trusted.
The Blue Witch stopped, turned around, and raised Cuanos toward the crowd watching her in response.
"Rejoice! The Magic University has been liberated! You did this!"
With a tremendous cheer erupting behind her, the Blue Witch hurried over to Ohinata.
The major witches and mages of the Arataki Group who had attacked the heart of the Tokyo Witch Assembly had all been wiped out.
Only a few witches attacking various parts of Tokyo from multiple directions remained.
But the Dragon Witch would gladly mop up the remnants while hunting for magic stones. If the Dragon Witch had trouble, the Blue Witch could help.
The head of the Arataki Group was dead. There was no one left to hold the organization together.
With the Blue Witch and her allies bringing the Magic University under control, the Arataki Group's attack on Tokyo was, for all intents and purposes, over.