The spell completed, Sister Jihan activates the magic, causing a large magic circle to appear under our feet. I know this magic, I was right when I deduced that the magic is remote casting and area effect. If the caster were just another person, this might be complicated. Thankfully, Sister Jihan is a descendant of a certain distinguished bloodline, and those people can only use ice magic. While strong, their magic is predictable by someone of my experience.
As I cast my magic, an orb the size of a fist forms above my head. This is not my magic, it is Sister Jihan's magic. This is Frost Nova, a fairly high ranked magic, but pretty useless in a melee. I've never seen this used in battle, and the only one I know from my past life who could use this used it only once when he was angry about failing to catch fish and decided to freeze the whole lake in revenge. It can create a whole field of ice, but it takes time to do it.
If this were a battle situation, interrupting the caster's concentration would break the spell being cast. Unfortunately, descendants of this special bloodline use their magic differently. Even if the caster is killed, the magic will continue to drain remnant magic and mass from the dead body, effectively exchanging the corpse for the completion of the magic.
That's not a problem for me. My counter is perfect. As the orb of Frost Nova pulses with the terrifying sound of a hail storm, releasing a wave of frost that freezes the water in the fishbowl on Sister Jihan's desk, my spell completes. I push Aria down on the floor feeling the first pulse of the Frost Nova hitting my body and covering my back in ice. The cold makes me wince, but this is nothing compared to falling into a frozen lake when I went to search for the gold dragons.
I press Aria down with my own body, and in this position, I can feel how close we are, her breasts pressing against mine, her arms up on the sides of her head as she looks up at me. Her face is framed by the curls of her silver tresses, emphasizing her oval-shaped face, her long eyelashes that partially cover her wide open eyes, her small nose free from any blemish and her red lips that seduce and tease.
Instead of an angel, perhaps Aria can best be described as a devilish temptation. But I have no time to indulge in her beauty. I push my own silver hair aside with my right hand, get up on my knees and thrust my left hand up a few inches above my head.
"Protect us, Dome of Winter!"
From my palms, a bluish barrier spreads out. It forms a dome above us as the second pulse of Frost Nova releases more cold air into the room. The surface of the barrier immediately becomes covered in ice but the effects of the Frost Nova miss us this time and once the Dome of Winter comes into contact with the floor, we are no longer in danger. Ice is a terrible conductor of heat and therefore, it is possible to defend against the heat-robbing effects of ice magic with another ice magic.
The Frost Nova pulses seven more times before the orb in the air disappears. When the sound of hail storm stops and the waves of frost stop hitting the dome, I release the magic that holds the dome in existence. But despite cancelling the spell, the dome remains in place, which puzzles me as it should have already been dispelled.
"Ah! I see!"
As I look at the smooth dome of ice above us, I realize the reason the dome is still up. The answer is that this is not my spell. I can remove the barrier, but I can't remove the ice that accumulated before I removed the barrier. So with this knowledge, I brace myself beside Aria and kick the ice with my right leg to break out.
"How did you do that?" Sister Jihan asks without even caring that her body is covered in fragments of ice. Apparently not even the caster who should have had complete immunity to ice is spared from the spell.
"This is not the first ice magic I've seen. Were you trying to kill me, High Priestess?"
"That is impossible!"
"Impossible, yes, if you consider that everything I have said was a lie. But it is a fact that I came from the future and I saw the exact same thing many times in the last two years of my other life. The bloodlust, the mana buildup, the magic circuit that your blood completes, I have seen it a hundred times. I knew you were going to cast the ice magic before you could cast them. One grows up quickly in the middle of war, especially if it is a war of genocide."
"Even if you've seen it a hundred times, even a thousand times, you still shouldn't be able to see my magic and have enough time to prepare a counterspell to deflect it. No mage can rival my ice magic even if they were to train for half a century!"
"Bloodline of King Frost, isn't it?" I ask as her eyes widen in shock.
"Yes, I know of that. While I do not have that blood, I do have the same blessing, you see." To prove my point, I conjure a blade of ice from my right hand in a single breath.
It is a small blade, no bigger than a very short dagger, but this is all I can do with my current mana capacity. Despite draining a lot of mana from Aria, I have used up most of it to form the Dome of Winter. I'm not a real descendant of King Frost after all.
"How... the previous High Priestess examined your family bloodline. Apart from the Blessing of Starsilver, there was nothing of note in your bloodline. How can you have the power of King Frost?"
Blessing of Starsilver is actually a misleading term. There is actually no real blessing, except for the families who are able to get a lot of money from selling their daughters. You're said to have the Blessing of Starsilver if you have silver hair. When a baby is found to have silver hair, a Watcher of Starsilver will be sent to monitor the child until she completes six years of summer. If after six summers she retains her silver hair, the Starsilver Sanctuary shall then buy the child and have her brought to the Sanctuary to be raised as a priestess of Starsilver.
Initiates of Starsilver are forbidden from cutting off their silver hair until they achieve the qualifications to be a Watcher of Starsilver. For that reason, all the priestesses of Starsilver have silver hair and almost all of them have hair that reaches their waists. If an initiate of Starsilver were to cut off her hair, she would be chained atop the Tower of Repentance until her hair grew back. The faith of Starsilver teaches respect towards silver hair, which by itself is the Blessing of Starsilver.
It is different for the Knights of Starsilver. While some of them do have silver hair, they are treated no different from knights with different coloured hair. In the faith of Starsilver, men cannot become priests of Starsilver as they are impure and vulnerable to greed and lust. Despite that, their position is indispensable as the knights protect the sanctuary and the priestresses and even conduct deals with outsiders in place of the keepers.
"I can assure you that I am not your relative, High Priestess. But I know someone who is. His name is Erlesion, the first son of Duke Rarnwad. I believe you know him, High Priestess?"
