20, Month Fall-Amberine, Year Elizabeth 402

06:55, Elizabeth Magic Academy

 

Mary quickly cast Light Heal once more toward Wilson. Unlike when she was healing Thomas, the spell was still effective. The wound closed down at the light of the spell and blood returned to the boy’s pale face.

“GUH!”

Wilson coughed out a mouthful of blood before quickly rolled on the ground, dodging the upcoming follow-up attack.

The place where he was before was stabbed by the hand of the shell almost immediately after Wilson rolled away. The might of the hand was immense. Even Mary, who was at least 20 meters away, could still feel the ground shaking.

Luckily Alice intervened with another spell to create more breathing room for Wilson, otherwise, he would have to deal with the shell even while he was lying down.

“This thing is too powerful for us!” Wilson shouted. “How about we try to make a break for an escape? I don’t think we could handle it with just us.”

Mary, while agreed, didn’t voice her opinion immediately. She looked around the blood-red area and shook her head slightly. “I don’t think we could get out of here. At least not easily,” she said.

“This space is probably cut out from the other part of our world,” Alice said. “There is no one at all despite it is almost 7AM already. Not only that, the commotion we make should alert teachers in the area already. The fact that there is no one here to support us yet means that the other doesn’t know about this place at all.”

Wilson nodded. He got up and forcefully gulped the remaining blood in his mouth. “Do you girls have any plan? Or will we just try to make our last stand heroically?”

“What!? No!” Mary yelled. “Alice… you sure have some plan, right?”

Alice’s face turned serious. She cast Ice Shield to block another attack of the shell toward Wilson and began considering her options.

The first was to escape.

This is probably the most logical option they could make. But could they? The girl shook her head at the question. This place surely had some restriction spell placed on it. To break through it would require a spell to undo it or even destroyed it.

The other option was to fight.

This option also didn’t look too good either. From the previous engagements, Alice concluded that the shell was much more powerful than any foes she had encountered so far. The power of it probably reached at least nonagon-level if not more.

In front of them, there was a mountain, and behind them, there was a wall.

Both options were out.

Do we just fight to our last battle heroically?

Alice shook her head again. She would probably think that for sure if not for the last lecture sage Khun gave, the cycle of water.

There was a legend that humans would have more power in the life-and-death situation. Some claimed they would break through more easily during the fight. Alice was skeptical about it. But if it was the truth then, she would need it now.

“If I could understand his words from before…”

Wilson heard her words and his face became harden as he also didn’t understand most of the content. While he didn’t like to leave things to luck, he also knew that this was probably the only way out for them.

“Just think of something then!”

 

---

Wilson blocked another hand strike with his sword. The power of the hand was probably too great for his sword, sure. But it would be hundredth time better than taking it with his body.

“Hah!”

He roared with vigor and a black flame burst forth. Unlike dealing with the demon, though, the Purgatory Flame proved to be no effect on the shell at all. It was just a slightly more powerful version of flame.

But there was nothing else he could do. The only way to even block a strike from it would be to use everything he had.

Wilson’s face turned pale after blocking the attack, but he didn’t panic. He calmly took three steps back to dispel the force and adjusted his posture. And then—

“Die!”

He sprung into an attack motion.

An attack even in such a disadvantageous position would be no different than suicide, yet Wilson still chose to do it.

That was he knew that just defending wouldn’t change anything. Sooner or later his and Mary’s mana would run out. That was why he opted to do something else, even if it seemed too stupid.

It was as if his courage had ignited the fire inside his body, his flame shone even more brightly even in the bleak situation.

The Purgatory Flame rushed out from his heart into his right hand and, finally, his sword. The dark flame reached out to the sky for at least ten meters, creating a scene of a sword piercing the heaven!

This attack contained the boy’s soul and his burning passion. “Take this!” Wilson roared as he slashed down with his sword.

But—

Clang!

It was a sound of metal clashing against each other.

The shell used its left hand to block the attack. The action of it was simply as if it was just stretching.

“You…!”

Wilson gritted his teeth, but he wasn’t in despair. He had already prepared for this, after all. The boy knew that his attack was probably too weak to cause any actual damage to it. He had already planned for it, yet he still felt frustrated.

Time and time again, the world kept reminding him that he was weak.

“…!”

It was then he noticed that the shell didn’t simply block his sword. It was gripping hard at it. He tried withdrawing the sword, but it was useless. Their strength disparity was just too great.

Wilson swore he could see the shell sneered at him in that moment. And then it clamped down with its hand, crushing his sword entirely.

Wilson looked at his destroyed sword with his mouth agape. And before he knew it, the shell stabbed its other hand into his chest.

“Kuh…”

The boy slowly collapsed to the ground.

In the last moment, before his vision faded out, he thought back to one person, his maid.

Layla will be fuming for sure…

 

---

Alice rushed out at the moment Wilson engaged with the shell. While she was indeed in a mage archetype, her unique physique allowed her to be more mobile and more durable. She could engage in melee combat if she wanted to.

The girl did try to cast some spell to help Wilson when he was fighting, but they proved to be useless. Ice Arrow, Water Arrow, Water Ball, nothing worked against it. The shell just shrugged them off like it was nothing.

So when Wilson switched to offensive, Alice also dashed out. She knew that the attack couldn’t end in the way they hope for.

When Wilson was falling down, Alice had already reached behind him and snatched him back before he fell through the ground.

“Heal him,” Alice yelled at Mary while trying to draw the attention of the shell away. She waved her hand, and three blue orbs appeared beside her. “Go!”

The blue orbs change into three ice arrows, all of them shot toward the black shadow. They were useless in damaging it, of course, but the aim of Alice was simply to draw the attention of it from Wilson.

At the same time, she also observed the blue orbs when it changed into arrows.

After she finished casting the spell, the blue orb—the ice mana—manifested into reality and changed into an ice arrow shooting out at her target. Before, Alice just simply accepted it as a spell she cast, but after she listened to sage Khun’s words, she began to doubt it.

Why?

How?

First of all, why would a spell work the way it is?

Alice began to question the very fundamentals of the magic knowledge she had learned so far.

She thought back to when sage Khun was advising DefinitelyNotACat, when she was breaking through to become half-sage. Back then, if Alice understood correctly, DefinitelyNotACat was definitely an assassin archetype who major in wind spell. Yet, she could break through and became a sage with the Law of Death.

This proved one thing.

One could know nothing about death magic at all; but could suddenly become enlightened, and broke through to be a half-sage in the Law of Death.

The law of the world and magic weren’t related at all.

[The one who made up this whole magic and magic elements things didn’t think things through enough.]

Sage Khun’s words rang in her head once more. It was then Alice understood what he was trying to say. The magic system wasn’t necessarily the truth of the world. It was made up.

But why?

Alice looked at the shell that was chasing after her and shook her head. She didn’t have too much time to think that through yet. Her priority now would be to break through.

Water and ice are the same things.

After that, Alice shifted her focus to the water and ice elements. They are both floating around in the air, but if both of them are the same, then…

“Water Arrow!”

Alice deliberately drew in ice element and cast a water spell.

“…”

But it didn’t work. Nothing appeared after the spell completed. No, Alice felt as if when she completed the spell, there seemed to be a slight attraction force toward the water element. But as she intentionally left them out, the spell failed.

How about this then?

Alice abandoned the spell altogether. She thought back to the feeling she felt when she cast the spell.

The feeling of magic elements gathered in her body, the feeling of shooting out the mana into the spell she wanted.

Alice then gathered the ice element into her hand and—

“Water Arrow!”

Water, ice, steam, in the end, there were all the same thing. Alice could see that there was something in the air slowly gathered into her hand. The water in the air gathered and started to form a liquid state—water—in her hand.

Slowly, a water arrow finished forming and shot out. And it was much more powerful than what Alice had ever used before.

The water arrow shot out at a speed much higher than a speed of sound, leaving behind a loud boom at its trail.

“GAZ!”

The shell that was chasing her stopped at its track. The featureless face looked like it was terrified. It used both of its hands to block the arrow, yet it was still staggered back around 10 meters before it could stabilize.

“…”

Alice looked at the sight blankly. Then, it was as if something inside her mind clicked into place. The magic system was made up. A part of sage Khun’s words rang inside her mind once more. This time, though, Alice understood everything.

Magic isn’t the true path of the world. The law of the world is.

While mages were trying to perfect their magic system, they became more and more distant from their actual goal, the law of the world. Casting a spell would create a phenomenon of sage-like magic, sure. But in the end, it was something external.

To become stronger, to become a sage... one would have to start utilizing the law of the world directly!

“...This is probably what sage Khun tried to say before.”