In that instant, gunpowder brushed past Selena’s nose, yet there was no lingering trace of mana at all.
“What, what is it! What just happened?”
Elodie, flustered as well, looked back.
An attack that slipped through her mana-sense—shocking enough on its own—but neither Frondier nor Selena had reacted in time either.
Selena said,
“It’s an old-style bomb!”
“O-old-style?”
“A bomb made the old way, using neither mana nor magi-engineering. They planted it in the ground beforehand and detonated it by some kind of remote trigger!”
A bomb has no mana, no killing intent. No one needs to approach.
“Th-then did our vehicle step on some kind of ground switch?”
Vasileo asked. A natural deduction, but—
“No, impossible.”
“W-why?”
“Because there are other vehicles besides us using this road.”
Traffic was sparse, but not zero. In fact, Selena had seen the cars that departed ahead of theirs.
If it were a simple mine that went off when stepped on, it should have already detonated under the cars in front.
But this bomb was clearly targeting them.
'We’re being watched from somewhere! From beyond the range of my senses, Elodie’s, and Lord Frondier’s!'
“Get off the road!”
“Got it!”
Riri cranked the wheel at once. The car left the neat roadway and tore across the rough grass.
Thud! BOOM! BOOOOM!!
The bombs blew the road apart in a chain. The pavement their car should have been driving on shot upward into the air.
And up ahead—
Frondier’s group’s vehicle was still on the road.
“N-no! Lord Frondier!”
Selena shouted.
The bombs were set beneath the road. If you left the road, you’d be safe for the moment.
But at the current rate of detonations, the instant you angled away you’d be caught in the blast.
—Menosorpo.
A magic circle unfolded in a flash. With it, black liquid wrapped the entire car.
Fwish!
KWOOM—!
Just before the next explosion, the car rose into the air and avoided the blast.
Up in the air, a car door swung open and Frondier stepped out.
“Who is it?”
The words were ordinary, but the voice was laden with killing intent.
Frondier steadily widened Menosorpo’s domain, flinging his intuition in all directions to find the enemy somewhere out there.
Frondier reached the same conclusion as Selena.
There was someone watching them from far away.
“Let’s stop the cars. We don’t know where the next bomb will go off.”
“Okay.”
Following Selena’s words, Riri hit the brakes.
One vehicle skewed off into the grass. The other hovered in the air.
The two cars came to a strange stop like that, and everyone scanned the surroundings.
Frondier’s eyes stung with sheer displeasure.
'Even Menosorpo’s domain can’t catch it.'
Back in Teiven and Yeranhes, Menosorpo had been vast enough to blanket an entire barrier. Yet he could find nothing now.
'They’re pressing a switch from outside this range to detonate bombs placed here...... This isn’t a matter of technique or skill. It’s a trap prepared with an enormous investment of time.'
Which meant they had waited just as long for Frondier to come here.
Information was leaking.
The realization burned, but he had to set it aside for now.
He had to break through an unseen enemy.
—At that instant.
“Ah!”
This time Elodie reacted sharply. Her mana-sense reached something.
But it wasn’t a human.
A single arrow was cutting toward them.
And the place it aimed for—
“Selena!”
Elodie cried, and Selena heard the wind’s whisper and fixed the direction.
By the time she turned her head, the arrow was right before her eyes. An ultra-fast arrow loosed from extreme range.
Too late to dodge or block.
Swiish—
The arrow pierced straight through Selena’s center—
And Selena flowed down into the shadows.
“That was close.”
Then she rose atop Frondier’s shadow.
Right before it hit, she used transfer to slip her position.
“I used the shadow I’d linked to protect Lord Frondier... for my own skin......”
“Use it as much as you need.”
Frondier said it with relief.
And then—
—An arrow that always hits its marked target,
Piiing!
The arrow that should have missed bent the air and rushed at Selena standing by Frondier.
“......Ah.”
That split-second carelessness that comes after a dodge.
An arrow boring through from behind, through time itself.
And before her stood the master she must protect at all costs.
Flaaash!
This time, Frondier’s Heukcheon shot in with eyes wide, cutting across in front of Selena—
Crackle!
The arrow pierced even that Heukcheon—
Fwush!
And skewered a body.
Frondier and Selena shouted, eyes blown wide.
“Pielot!!”
The arrow that should have broken through Heukcheon and struck Selena’s body—
Was blocked by Pielot’s body, who had flown in with superhuman movement.
“......h......uhk......!”
Pielot could barely exhale through the pain.
'Aura......!'
His body had moved long before his mind; there had been no way to think of parrying or blocking.
But Pielot always sheathed himself in self-defensive aura—something close to instinct.
The arrow punched through that aura.
It pierced Frondier’s Heukcheon, Pielot’s aura, and then his hardened flesh—the tip gleaming chillingly from Pielot’s back.
“Pielot! Don’t move!”
Carla shouted. Of them all, she was the most skilled with healing magic.
Pielot forced a smile.
“This... really hurts......”
The bravado and the joke. But the cold sweat running over his body—Carla couldn’t smile back.
“Sit slowly. It’ll hurt, but we’ll pull the arrow later.”
“Yess. I know.”
Pielot slowly loosened up. Even sitting was hard.
But then—something finally entered Frondier’s magic circle.
Frondier’s face twisted.
“......Monsters.”
“What?”
“Monsters are coming from all sides. And one of a different class, right at the center of this roadway.”
The first shot aimed at Selena.
After that, as if it were the signal, enemies appeared on all sides.
Frondier’s inference was despairing.
'They know Menosorpo’s maximum range.'
What did that mean? There was no time to feel the weight of it.
They had to break out now.
“We can’t take them all. We’ll punch through one side and head straight for Karon by the shortest route.”
“Which is where there’ll be the most of them.”
Elodie spoke. She stood, for the first time in a while, with rage on her face.
“I don’t know where we got exposed, but they must not understand what it means to lay hands on us.”
“Stay wary of arrows. We learned the direction from that last shot, but there’s no guarantee it’s just one.”
Frondier said it to heighten caution, but in truth he was sure.
There was only a single archer.
'That arrow just now moved exactly like an arrow fired by Trisellakatos.'
The implication was clear.
'It has “Sure-Hit” attached.'
From the shape of the arrow, it wasn’t Iokeia. Which meant the bow wasn’t Trisellakatos either.
So this wasn’t the absurd scenario where the goddess Artemis herself had joined the enemy.
Even so, the fact that a bow with Sure-Hit was in play told him the enemy’s ability was nothing to take lightly.
Meanwhile, Carla brought her hand—laden with healing—over Pielot.
Her eyes soon tightened.
'It won’t heal.'
The bleeding wouldn’t stop. The wound was the same. When she looked at Pielot’s face, there was no sign the pain was easing.
“Pielot, I know it’s rough, but can you describe it? The pain—be as specific as possible. There may be poison.”
“......Feels like it’s tearing. Centered on where the arrow hit, continuously.”
Carla’s face went cold. If Pielot was right, the wound wasn’t closing—it was opening. Pielot’s sense was likely not wrong.
“......This won’t do. There’s a risk of bleeding, but we may have to pull the arrow now......”
As Carla checked the arrow—
She saw something.
At the end of the fletching, something very thin glinted.
'......A thread?'
Zzzzip—!
The moment Carla realized it, the thread pulled taut—
“G-GRAAAAAAAH!!!”
Pielot soared into the air. Yanked by the arrow, he was hauled unendingly toward where the archer must be standing.
“Pielot!”
Frondier’s mana seethed.
He hadn’t been in his right mind since the moment Pielot was hit, but when he saw Pielot being reeled in by the arrow, his vision went white.
If he chased Pielot now, he’d meet the arrow’s owner.
He would tear them apart before they could draw a single breath. If they had family, friends, a lover—he would show each and every one of them hell in vivid detail.
He would kill them—after keeping them alive for a very long time!
—Senior.
But in that instant.
What stopped Frondier’s foot from stepping out right now was none other than Pielot.
He couldn’t make a sound.
But as he grew distant, teeth clenched, Pielot looked at Frondier.
—Go.
“......!”
Hearing that message, Frondier could do nothing but stop.
Watching his own disciple get dragged away into the distance, he only clenched his fists, trembling.
“......Frondier, I’ll go.”
Elodie said.
“Whoever the enemy is, they’re trying to drag you in. Attacking Selena, the thread tied to that arrow, Pielot being pulled—all of it! But if it’s me who goes, it’s fine. I’ll bring Pielot back.”
“......No.”
Frondier said,
“If it’s a trap dug to target me, then no one—no matter who—can get through unscathed. The bastard knows my situation, my surroundings, my abilities, even the limits of my responses. I don’t know what he’ll pull.”
“......! All the more reason! We have to save Pielot!”
“Their targets were Selena—or me. If Selena had been dragged and I’d ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) followed, that would’ve been best for them. But they wouldn’t have predicted Pielot getting hit.”
Where Pielot was being dragged now was a hell tailored to Frondier and Selena. Not to Pielot.
Therefore—
Therefore, Frondier said,
“If it’s a trap tailored to me, hardly anyone can survive. But Pielot is different.”
“......What......?”
Elodie couldn’t believe it and asked again.
But Frondier said nothing more, and looked straight ahead.
“Are the cars still running?”
“......”
“Arald, Riri.”
Arald and Riri hesitated, unsure how to answer, then nodded.
“Good. We can’t lose the cars here. Riri and Arald keep driving; Vasileo and Carla, stay inside. It’s too dangerous. Elodie, Selena, and I will break the front—”
“Frondier.”
Elodie’s voice reached him once more, together with her mana.
“You said it once.”
Elodie made her heart go cold and said,
“If you make the wrong choice, stop you.”
“......”
“Can you say this isn’t that time?”
