WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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Chapter 771: Even Spells That Cannot Be Seen

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The Apostle did not think the situation had reached the point of crisis, but the collapsed wall made it clear these were not foes to be dismissed lightly.

He raised his hand. Two women stepped forward from behind him, each with gleaming eyes.

"This is only the second time it's come down since this place was built," one of them said.

She stood to Enkrid's left. Her eyes were blue. More precisely, they looked as though blue stones had been set into them. There was no outline of a pupil, no pupil at all, only a pale blue light flickering faintly.

Described in words, it might sound almost striking. Seen up close, it only looked monstrous.

If someone had done that to themselves as a fashion choice, that was a special kind of madness.

Enkrid read the momentum coming off the two women.

Witches.

He was right. They were also behind the strange rumors about the crystal prison.

It was not only their eyes. Parts of their bodies gleamed like inlaid stone as well. The talk that had floated through the village about being locked in a crystal prison had meant becoming a plaything of these two.

The wall of vengeful spirits dressed in thorn-wood burial shrouds had fallen. But the master of Black Lightning, the keeper of the crystal prison, and the one responsible for all of this still remained.

"I'll make you part of my collection."

The red-eyed witch had been quiet until now. She stared at Enkrid, then said it out of nowhere. It meant she liked the look of him. For a brief moment, no one on either side spoke.

This was about the point where Sinar should have cut in with something sharp, but she had her hand on her Leaf Blade and her eyes fixed on the corrupted spirit.

Ropord found the silence awkward and filled it.

"Even witches fall for that charm."

Everyone looked at him. The kind of look that asked what was wrong with him.

"...Are you filling in for the Barbarian now that he's gone?"

Fell scolded him. Ropord regretted saying anything and fell silent. Saying more would only hand them something to use against him. No point leaving that kind of opening.

Enkrid blinked once.

Charm was one thing, but "fall for"? He had never seen either of these two witches before in his life.

He shifted his gaze back to the front and answered calmly.

"...I'll pass."

"Sure. See you in a bit."

The red-eyed witch said it with complete confidence.

"Who was the first?" Ruagarne asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

What had prompted it was the witch's comment from a moment ago, that this was only the second time the wall had come down. That had caught her attention.

Someone else had thought to bring down the wall before her? Curiosity was what moved Frog's tongue.

The castellan looked at Frog and silently promised to roast and eat her over a fire. The castellan waved a hand.

At that gesture, from behind the corrupted spirit came a chilling sound like a blade being drawn across a whetstone, a long scraping rasp. Then something resembling a golem rose, clad in crystal armor and carrying a crystal sword.

The crystal was murky and deep black. It was the same one that had blocked the Throwing Spear Enkrid had hurled, and up close he could see it was not black armor at all, but crystal the color of pitch.

Smaller than Audin, but it looked faster for it.

"Fools who got drunk on omnipotence and came looking for their own graves," the castellan said.

Enkrid did not answer. Instead, he lifted Duskforge and swung it through the air.

To anyone who did not know what they were looking at, it would have seemed random. Why swing a sword at empty air?

To an ordinary person, that would be the only conclusion. But there were no ordinary people here.

Everyone present felt it. That swing had cut something invisible.

Ping.

There was no actual sound, but the blue-eyed witch felt something like that ring out from inside herself.

"You..."

She had secretly begun casting a spell to spread a curse a moment ago, but it had been severed midway through its casting.

One sword stroke through nothing, and it was gone.

By any logic she knew, that was impossible. The blade had only cut air, and her spell must have been disrupted by another Mage. That was the reasonable answer. Or there was some artifact or enchanted tool that blocked spells.

That made more sense. The sword stroke had to be a coincidence.

It had to be.

"Mine too," the one beside her said.

Enkrid had just raised the sword he had brought down. At the same instant, the flow of magical power died.

It had not broken apart from the inside due to interference, nor been contaminated by something foreign. The spell itself had been severed. Whether that was even possible was another question entirely.

It feels that way, the blue-eyed witch thought.

Enkrid looked at the two of them and thought something else.

This is getting easier.

His experience cutting Walking Fire while repeating today, his earlier experience cutting fireballs, and the time he had spent alongside Esther.

All of it had compressed into this moment. Now Enkrid could cut even a spell that could not be seen.

Jaxon, always the most sensitive of them, had felt more clearly than anyone else what Enkrid had just done. He asked,

"Did you cut it?"

"Yeah."

Enkrid's answer was brief.

"...What..." the blue-eyed witch said.

When a Knight fought a witch, the Knight had the advantage. A swordsman's strikes were more effective against one opponent than against many.

But there were situations where a witch or Mage held the edge.

When they could cast prepared spells in a place they had prepared for exactly that purpose.

This was one of those situations. For the two witches, this ground was their own front yard. Tools that aided their spellcasting were buried all through the surrounding soil.

This had nothing to do with the thorn-wood wall coming down. That wall had been a gift to begin with, not truly theirs, and its absence actually made spellcasting simpler. The conditions were good in more ways than one.

"Red Foot!"

The red-eyed witch was not easily convinced.

The same thing had happened twice now, but she still did not readily believe it.

Cut a spell?

From what she had overheard between the collectible she had singled out and another candidate for the collection, cutting a spell seemed to be treated as established fact. But all of it could still be coincidence or a trick.

She called the title of the demon she served and spread her magical power outward. The artifacts buried throughout the ground responded.

The air trembled.

Above Enkrid's head, a great round circle formed in the empty air. Red light flashed inside it. A thundercrack followed a breath later. Lightning, but not ordinary lightning. What fell was fire-lightning, a forbidden art.

It was a spell that required significant preparation and a Sacrifice to cast.

For this one spell, the red-eyed witch consumed three of the tools she had buried to assist her casting. Three artifacts somewhere in the earth below would have crumbled to dust.

She did not spare the Sacrifices she had prepared. Even so, the result she wanted did not come.

"...Ah."

A breath escaped her, touched with feeling.

Her chest, hardened like stone through repeated modification, trembled faintly beneath the black leather clothing of strange, clingy material.

The red-eyed witch remembered something she had forgotten, something she had never needed until now.

It was an emotion called fear.

* * *

The sky split open. An instant before the red light fell, everyone reacted.

None of them were ignorant of how to deal with a spellcaster.

When a spell manifested and took form as a phenomenon, the most basic rule was to get out of its range and avoid it.

But the spell cast by the red-eyed witch was a forbidden art that accounted for exactly that response.

If Walking Fire was a fire that lasted a long time, fire-lightning was a fire that killed in an instant.

It was a forbidden art because its Sacrifice was a Shaman who could read the stars, more precisely, an intelligent being with spirituality used as a reservoir of magical power while its life force was burned as fuel.

It was also a spell too fast for a Knight to dodge, no matter how quickly they moved.

For her, this had been one of her trump cards, drawn without warning.

Better to use it and regret it afterward than die hoarding it.

The red-eyed witch was not just a witch. She was used to fighting. She knew how to battle. That was why she had cast a forbidden art without hesitation, one that would burn even a Knight down to the marrow if it landed.

The moment before the red-eyed witch opened her mouth, Enkrid's thinking accelerated. Not on purpose.

Once again, his Will had reacted on its own. Why? The answer came the moment he asked himself. It came so quickly because he had already known before the question had even formed.

"Whatever they have prepared, every spell has a sign before it manifests. That sign can be a spoken word or a hand gesture. Occasionally, it manifests without gesture or voice, but what matters is that magical power moves. If you can feel that movement, you can know it beforehand."

Those were Esther's words. She had also said that a Mage's battle was a contest of how well each one could conceal that manifestation of magical power, and that there were many ways to cast a spell so that even knowing it was coming did not mean you could stop it.

A swordsman fighting to win would use every means available. Magic would be no different.

Swordsmanship and magic shared the same underlying principle.

When a Mage fights, the form differs from a swordsman's fight, but the principle remains the same.

A swordsman would read a gaze, momentum, a hand's movement, a foot's shift, the tension in a muscle, and from all of that trace the Attack Line.

Enkrid applied the same principle to a Mage. He felt the flow of magical power. His five senses merged, opening the realm of a sixth sense. His united senses became one and visualized themselves, allowing him to see.

Right in front of him, a black line was swaying, about to rise. It would go straight up, as if to pierce the sky. That was what he saw. Was it prediction? Was it insight? There was no need to separate the two.

In terms of Enkrid's perception, it had begun while the red-eyed witch was still saying "Red," before the sentence was complete.

To him, her words sounded like Rrrreeeed Fooooot, each syllable stretched out as though time itself had been extended. Because he experienced it that way, he could move before she finished.

His first instinct had been to dodge. There was no reason to take a hit.

The spell was difficult to evade because it came from outside his awareness. But he had already become aware of it, so dodging would not be difficult.

One thread of his divided thinking was about to lean toward evasion when Duskforge rang with a clear tone. It had reacted to his Will.

It was as though the sword was asking him something.

Dodge? Why?

The sword asked. Enkrid found he had no ready answer. In the space of that brief exchange, a few more thoughts crossed through him.

If there's no reason to dodge.

And if he stepped aside, the fire-lightning would lose its target and no one could say where it would scatter.

He had already learned the principle from cutting Walking Fire. What more was needed here?

Nothing.

His divided thoughts converged into one, his will rose, and he fed that will into his Will.

Before the witch had even finished speaking, Enkrid's left foot stepped forward and to the left.

He planted that foot and set his stance. The Will surging through him settled into his eyes and locked onto the descending lightning.

The lightning was a long red mass, blazing as it tore through the air in a zigzag. Its tip looked blunt, but if it touched anything, that bluntness would reveal the violence hidden within.

The violence contained in it was enough to reduce dozens of people to ash in an instant.

He poured Will into Duskforge once more, then set his sword against the falling fire-lightning and drew it across.

Watching from where she stood, the red-eyed witch could not distinguish the beginning of Enkrid's motion from its end.

All she saw was the man in the finishing stance of a downward strike, both hands on the grip, after the fire-lightning had fallen.

CRACK.

The forbidden art fire-lightning split in midair into two and scattered.

What remained of it flashed red in the sky for a breath longer.

Sparks flew in every direction, each one larger than a fist.

Above the night of the Cursed Ground, it was as though someone had hung a red lantern. The flickering light fell across faces, casting shadows, then vanished.

A deep rolling sound followed. It was the kind of sound that usually came just before a lightning strike, but everyone present understood.

The lightning was not going to fall. Some lunatic had cut the spell, and that was why.

The red-eyed witch's vision found the man standing across from her.

Still. Quiet. And frightening to look at. She felt as though at any moment his blade would sweep across her throat. A sword stroke that would erase her from existence was coming.

Fear fed anxiety, and that anxiety made it impossible to control the magical power that had backflowed because the spell had failed.

The power tore through her innards.

"Urk."

The red-eyed witch spat blood. It was very dark, the same color as a Demon Creature's blood.

Steam rose from around Enkrid's lips and along his forearms. He stood still.

Once when he cut the wall. Once again just now, when he cut the spell.

Twice, he had pushed his Will past what was comfortable. Right now was the moment to take a breath and steady himself.

Jaxon moved in that same instant.

A Mage was dangerous when faced head-on, but targeting their back was a different matter.

The one who caught it was the indigo-skinned elf who had been sending out Black Lightning, the corrupted spirit.

"Behind!"

The corrupted spirit's shout and Jaxon's hand movement came at almost the same moment.

Footnotes:

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