Chapter 401: Haruhime's Brand-New Magic (Patreon)

Ryuu was getting stronger the longer they fought.

Her stats were climbing across the board, fast enough to see with the naked eye as the battle went on.

The Elf girl's stride had once stopped, then started moving again. Now it had taken form and become endless "growth," and even more than that—

Isagi realized it.

Ryuu was gradually "approaching" him.

Ais's Yearning had been different. The golden-haired girl used a Strength uniquely her own to mimic him, deliberately. But that was only resemblance, never the whole of it.

Ryuu's case was completely different. At some fundamental level, she was closing in on him. Of course, it was the "him" that she saw, the "him" she believed in her heart.

First, there was [Technique].

The starry thin sword that had been a wooden blade had fully transformed into a Far East-style longsword. She was almost within arm's reach, pressing toward him without pause and swinging the weapon in her hands.

[Craft] was the method of cutting the opponent while avoiding being cut. The more refined it became, the subtler and purer it grew, delivering the blade in ways and from angles the opponent never expected.

Before, whenever Isagi fought someone with a longsword in hand, he could slip into that empty "realm" with ease, even without the Land of Reeds Character Card, since he had long since reached Lv.8. Except for the opponent's weapon and his own, nothing existed. The world shrank to two blades attacking and defending.

In a world that pure, Isagi could sense a great many things, and the most important was the opponent's next "move." It wasn't prophecy or future sight. It was pure perception. Experience, habit, how the body was used—details everywhere converged in his mind and pieced together a picture of every move the opponent could make in the next few seconds.

Because he knew them all, he left no openings. "Close combat" was nothing more than dismantling each other's moves one by one. As long as you knew how to dismantle them, there was no problem. As long as the opponent's blade came along familiar paths, there was no problem.

What people feared most was always the unknown. Swords were exactly the same.

And now, Isagi found that he was gradually becoming unable to predict Ryuu's longsword. It wasn't magic or a skill. Her weapon wasn't growing longer and shorter, and his perception wasn't being warped to make her attacks more complicated. It was purely this: her craft had risen to the same stage as his.

It was the same classic question. If two Sword Saints used the same craft and two identical blades, could one decide life and death between them? This wasn't spear against shield. It was sword against sword.

The answer was yes, of course. Equal craft meant each could launch attacks the other couldn't predict. Seeing through an enemy completely only ever happened when someone with higher craft faced someone with lower. If they were evenly matched, the attacks became unpredictable.

That was exactly what Isagi felt now.

Ryuu's skill with the blade had almost caught up with his own?!

Unbelievable. Even Ais hadn't managed that. And it didn't stop there. Her stats were still growing.

Seen from a third party's point of view, the scene had become absurd, almost ridiculous. An earthquake? The sky collapsing? The deafening roar left Haruhime and Heith with their hearts in their throats. Neither of them could track Ryuu or Isagi with their eyes. Never mind their movements. Just finding where the other was had become hard.

What the hell?!

She'd heard before that Lv.8 was wildly different from the other levels, especially once they started using that thing called the "power of wishes." Now that she was seeing it in person, she understood the gap was freaking huge!!

Haruhime was a different story. The fox girl had never been good at fighting. She was pure support, and she was only Lv.6, so it was natural that she could only watch the spectacle. But Heith had actually come with a bit of "confidence." She was Lv.7 now, and she hadn't neglected her training. She'd always kept up a certain level of close-combat ability, so surely she wouldn't be too far behind Isagi and the others.

The result was that she was completely "helpless." Just watching chilled her to the bone.

From where Heith stood, all she could see beneath the dark sky in the distance was brilliant starlight and the afterimages of a boy with a nearly Great Dragon-like black silhouette. They seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. The two collided along trajectories that followed no pattern at all, repeatedly "existing" between the sky and the ground.

That was right: to Heith, they merely "existed." Her eyes couldn't keep up with the girl and the boy, so their figures seemed to be everywhere, like frames of a scene frozen one by one.

Even more violent was the sky itself, which looked ready to fall. It was filled with wind and thunder, blazing red heavenly fire, and giant curtains of ice that were crushed to pieces again and again. She couldn't tell whether the magic was Isagi's or Ryuu's.

On the other side, the ground was just as real, battered into one crater after another. Dense cracks spread outward like spiderwebs, as if the whole terrain might be changed for good.

Won't this turn into a basin or something afterward?

Heith pressed her lips together. She finally understood why Isagi and Ryuu always went so far away to test their strength at Dragon Valley. It was outrageous. She'd heard it all the time before, but it hadn't felt real. You really did have to see it for yourself.

She shook her head. After trying hard for a long while, Heith gave up in the end. Just as Isagi had said, she'd understand the strength they were showing now once she reached Lv.8.

Come to think of it, could she even reach Lv.8? She felt uneasy about that, because apart from Haruhime, a pure support, she was the lowest-leveled member of the whole party. And as for talent, she'd always known she wasn't the best healer. Never mind anyone else, there was still Airmid over at Dian Cecht Familia. That girl was only Lv.2 and already that amazing. Heith couldn't imagine what she'd be like at Lv.7... no, at Lv.8, like Isagi and the others.

So was she just plain lucky?

Her thoughts drifted far away, while on the other side, the fight between Ryuu and Isagi went on.

Magic began to surge rapidly between heaven and earth.

Isagi stopped fighting at close range with technique, as he had a moment ago. This was a test, not a match to decide a winner. So next, the boy started using "magic."

He had already switched to the Character Card "Golden Age." With his own [Dragon's Feast] armor and a great bow forged from the materials of countless Great Dragons in his hands, Isagi instantly became a walking magic cannon. Fire, gale, frost, lightning, light and darkness—magic of every element, summoned and fired off at will.

Ryuu's answer was very simple. She attacked with the "starlight" gathered around her, and she didn't even need to chant. For all he knew, it might not even be the magic she'd used before.

Isagi could see it. Orbs of light, made of what looked like endless stars across the whole sky, started out the size of ordinary basketballs under her control. Then they split into finer barrages like raindrops, and even turned corners in midair. They sealed off the entire area around him in a full three hundred and sixty degrees, with no dead angle.

The instant they exploded, they gathered again into a colossal orb. It came together with a spear of starlight in the girl's hand in the distance, and when they were hurled at him, the dazzling curtain of light looked ready to tear through the sky. It blotted out everything in his field of view.

Incredible. Never mind the visuals. The sheer Magic alone was enough to leave anyone stunned.

At this moment, Ryuu had truly grown into a "magic swordswoman." The starlight magic circled her like a third arm, moving at her will and taking almost any shape. It could even become a "person," fighting at her side like a shadow. In close combat it felt as if he was fighting two Ryuus at once.

This was probably another imitation of his own [Soul Teardrop].

As the destruction intensified, the huge noise from Dragon Valley in the distance seemed to grow heavier and heavier. Isagi chose to stop there. He hadn't forgotten that his last fight with Ais seemed to have triggered the [Dragon's Snore], and a humanoid Great Dragon had nearly broken out of the Dragon Valley seal.

Judging by the Soul Teardrop test, those things were probably around Lv.8 to Lv.9. With his and Ryuu's current strength, two against one should be fine, but he feared other surprises. Besides, there was nothing left that really needed testing.

Except for Haruhime's "new magic."

To be precise, after she reached Lv.6, the girl's magic had changed.

At first, Haruhime had only one level-boosting magic, the "Myriad Treasure Mallet." Later, when she reached Lv.2, she gained a new Additional Magic called [Kokonoe], which let the targets of her spells go from one person to multiple. In a sense, it was a support magic that suited her well.

As her level kept rising, she used the large fortune the Ishtar Familia left behind, and her caretaker, Sister Aisha, forcibly "drilled" her. Haruhime read many, many grimoires and finally gained one more new magic, called [Soul Siphon]. It continuously stole the opponent's Stats and reinforced her own.

In theory, it was a powerful combat skill. In the course of a fight it would keep weakening the enemy while strengthening her. Combined with her magic [Kokonoe], it could target multiple enemies, draining the attributes of several at once and pouring them all into herself. The spell's description even stated that while [Soul Siphon] was being cast, her own Stats would break their limits. In other words, like Isagi, she could reach absurd numbers.

And yet Haruhime rarely used the spell.

For one thing, in actual combat she'd found that when facing higher levels, which was common in the Dungeon where Monsters were usually two or three levels above her, [Soul Siphon] was far too inefficient. Siphoning for several minutes might drain only one or two hundred points of Stats. Against ordinary Monsters there was no need to bother. Against bosses it was only barely "effective," and it took a very long time before you could tell the enemy's Strength or speed had really been weakened at all.

As for the part where [Soul Siphon] strengthened her own Stats, it might be formidable if she cast it on Isagi or Ais. But Haruhime had no combat ability at all. She'd trained with the Freya Familia, and she'd taken plenty of "beatings" in her own Familia, but what couldn't be done simply couldn't be done. It was enough for ordinary Monsters, yet against true powerhouses her fighting power wasn't worth mentioning.

So the girl's third magic, [Soul Siphon], had always been all show and no use.

Until now.

Now the girl's magic had changed. Under the Falna system, every adventurer has exactly three magic slots. But there are exceptions, mainly cases like Lefiya or Riveria, where one spell is used as several.

Haruhime was like that now. Her magic [Kokonoe] had changed. Before, it was only a "linking magic" that turned the target of her other spells from one person into many. Now, depending on the chant, it changed the effect of the spell being cast.

For example, with the new [Kokonoe], the Myriad Treasure Mallet's effect changed. Before, it simply raised Stats and enlarged the capacity of the "vessel," temporarily giving an adventurer the abilities of a higher level. Now it became "Possession."

Back at the Great Wall, Isagi and the girls gathered by the campfire and had Haruhime cast the new magic.

Then the golden-haired fox girl's body, for some reason, turned transparent and snow-white. Her golden fox tail, once the same color as her hair, grew long and white and wrapped around the boy's body, and pale azure flames flickered around him.

It looked as though Haruhime was being carried on Isagi's back. The nearly translucent fox girl wrapped her slender arms around the boy's neck and pressed against him in a rather ambiguous pose.

This is a magic for one person only.

In that moment, Haruhime understood her brand-new power. It was unlike anything before, a magic she could use only on Isagi.

And this was the fox girl's Myriad Treasure Mallet in its new form—

[Entwine].