‘......This feels strange.’
Ias adjusted his grip on the spear and shield in his hands.
He had never learned the spear. He had never even held one, much less learned it.
It was literally the first time he knew what a spear felt like in his hand.
And yet—why?
‘I feel like I know this weapon’s distance.’
His field of view was clearer than when he held a sword, and his head cleared up.
It wasn’t that his spear mastery had suddenly risen. He still could not use a spear as well as the sword he had learned up to now.
It was simply like wearing clothes that fit well. The prickly, uneasy feeling was gone.
‘I can feel that this spear’s power is tremendous, but it’s a power I cannot properly handle.’
At the same time, his thinking became cool and distinct.
‘And my opponent’s skill is far above mine.’
Chuk.
Ias raised the shield high, leveled the spear to a precise horizontal, and aimed at Hermes.
‘I can’t defeat Hermes. But.’
Clench.
The foot he planted pressed the soil lightly, and by posture alone Ias fixed his own domain.
‘Let’s hold out.’
Ias took a completely defensive stance.
To someone who didn’t know, he would look like a turtle, hunched and hidden, a figure cowed and shrunk by fear.
“.......”
But Hermes’s face hardened more than ever.
‘Even if he’s a novice with the spear, his understanding of weapons is unusual. And his body is almost complete.’
If it were simply a contest of skill, a life-or-death fight, Ias would inevitably be defeated.
But Ias had no intention of that.
He intended neither to win nor to lose.
Ias, the one who guards.
‘Can I break through that wall?’
Hermes wondered for a moment, then raised his sword.
His opponent was still a novice where the spear was concerned. What was there to worry about?
He was a god. Even if he wasn’t among the gods associated with battle, with that quick movement he could easily subdue most things.
‘Charging head-on against that shield would be foolish.’
Hermes decided. He would move at high speed, confuse the eyes, and take the rear.
Before Ias grew used to the spear, he would pierce his neck.
Tat!
Hermes moved. While closing the distance with Ias, he used the field widely left and right to slip out of Ias’s line of sight at the same time.
From a far distance, escaping the opponent’s view is extremely difficult. Unlike moving the whole body, the viewer only needs to shift eyes and turn the head. It’s natural.
However—
“!”
Overwhelming speed and direction changes break that common sense.
“......Urgh!”
Kkaaanng!
Ias turned his body on instinct.
Hermes’s sword was blocked.
It wasn’t blocked by the shield or spear—it was endured by the shield’s property.
“Tch!”
Hermes clicked his tongue. Those who fail to keep up with his speed and lose him from sight grow blank for a moment, but Ias spun around quickly. A judgment close to instinct saved him.
‘I lacked striking force in slipping out of his view.’
Shwish!
Ias thrust the spear repeatedly, and Hermes, evading, opened the distance.
The shield Ias held was quite a nuisance. If it was the front, it blocked everything no matter where or how the attack came. Regardless of the shield’s area.
However, that defense could be broken. Convenient as it was, it wasn’t a shield as hard as Aegis. Put another way, right now Ias was carrying around a gigantic wall on his arm. That wall was so massive it made dodging and attacking tricky, but the wall itself could be torn down.
‘His reactions are better than I thought; forget aiming at the rear.’
Hermes changed his mind. It would be better to make an attack that exceeded that defense.
Vwooom─!
His sandals rippled lightly with mana.
Until now he had moderated his speed, thinking of direction changes; this time there was no need.
All speed, turned into force. Hermes’s eyes flashed cold.
Sst─
Kkaaaaang!!
The sound of a foot planting,
and the sound of two weapons crashing, reached nearly at once.
“Ghhhhh......!”
Ias let out a groan of pain. It was good that he’d somehow blocked Hermes’s sword, but he was being overpowered in strength.
In the midst of it, Hermes saw Ias’s power.
‘Ecleksis is flickering. Ias’s divine power?’
Ias possessed divine power. Hermes knew that much.
But Hermes himself didn’t know what it was, or which god it was from. From the fact that he didn’t know, one could broadly assume it wasn’t an Olympian god.
Even so, it was certainly strange that Ias—who was deeply involved in Olympus’s fate—would be beloved by a god not of Olympus.
‘......But it seems he has no intention of taking part in this battle.’
Hermes was in a state of possession. Since his divine power was constantly active, if Ias’s divine power activated, Pandemonium would occur.
Apparently, Ias’s god found that disagreeable; there was no sign of aiding Ias.
Or Ias himself was rejecting it.
Kang! Kaang! Kkaang!
Ias responded to Hermes’s flurry. The spear’s movements were clumsy, but by sticking to defense his motions took the shortest path, and clumsiness was solved with speed.
Metallic ringing spread from spear and sword. At that, Hermes’s eyes wavered.
‘This brat read my mind!’
He had originally intended to smash the shield’s frontal defense, but Ias was meeting his sword with the spear. Since he held a shield, ordinarily this was a choice he wouldn’t make. Knowing the shield would be targeted, he intentionally didn’t present it.
At this rate, the fight would drag on.
Just as Hermes reached that thought—
“Ah!”
A voice came from somewhere.
The direction he ought to go—namely—
“Lady Aphrodite!”
From within the swarm of the 72 Demons, Aphrodite suddenly flew up.
‘Lady Aphrodite has escaped the Pandemonium?’
That is, if so—
Elodie, Cybel, Selena, and the like—all of Frondier’s party turned ashen.
Frondier had been defeated.
He had been trapped in the Pandemonium.
Only two, however—
Bael and Atena wore similar expressions.
‘Frondier lost?’
The two who knew the power of the Ecleksis Frondier possessed—
It was hard for them to understand that Frondier had lost.
All the more so because they had undergone similar processes.
‘......No way!’
And reaching a similar conclusion—
“Protect Frondier! Guard him and retreat!”
Bael’s shout.
“Catch him! Never let him slip away!”
And Atena’s scream followed.
Meanwhile, Aphrodite bent slightly as if composing herself after leaving the chaos of the melee.
She had neither the confidence of victory, nor relief, nor imposing air.
She only hunched as if to hide all of herself. A few around her found it odd, but there was no time to mind it.
And then—
“That will do.”
A voice from the sky.
Zeus had disposed of the black spear and ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ gripped his weapon, Astrape.
“I will leave not even a scrap of that body behind.”
Zeus targeted Frondier’s body, trapped in the Pandemonium.
“I won’t allow it.”
At that, Aster raised the two Excaliburs, set his feet to charge Zeus.
But Zeus, his face wrathful, said,
“How dare a thing like you spit such words.”
Grrrrr—
The instant he lightly raised Astrape,
the sky turned to dark clouds,
Rumble!
“Aaagh!!”
One of the 72 Demons was pierced by lightning and toppled.
“Did you think throwing Astrape was the only power I had?”
In truth, Zeus held Astrape.
And lightning fell from the sky.
Like heavenly punishment.
“I am the god of the sky, Hero Aster.”
“......!”
Bzzzt, bzzzzzzzt!!
This time the clouds heaved. The next lightning would not be like the last. Though you knew it was coming, you could neither avoid it nor block it,
and above all, a wave of lightning would fall that you could not endure.
“Will you protect every human here with those two swords?”
At that, Aster bit his lip.
No matter how fast he reached, he could not surpass lightning.
Even if these two swords cut Zeus, the lightning falling from those clouds would kill everyone within.
How—how should he do it?
‘The method—’
That method did not lie with Aster.
‘If I use Jujak Ascent.’
It lay with Elodie.
With her eyes and senses, she could detect all the mana-condensation points of the lightning Zeus would pour down.
It would be hard to count them all, but there was a way to respond at once.
‘If I use the Jujak Ascent’s Infernal Hell form, a storm of chaining flames can block the lightning.’
But there were two problems.
Jujak Ascent: Infernal Hell was an immense concentration of mana. Even for her, it was a tri-element combination difficult to use even once a day.
Hoping that incantation wouldn’t be detected by Zeus was absurd.
And then time.
No matter how fast Elodie’s casting, Zeus would still be ahead.
Conceal a spell from Zeus, and complete Jujak Ascent faster than Zeus.
‘It’s absurd. Impossible.’
Elodie opened and closed her innocent hands.
To save people, she had to begin her spell incantation at once, but in that instant being detected was certain. Zeus’s lightning would target her first.
[Teacher.]
Then—
Elodie heard a voice.
A transmission.
[He’s standing again.]
“!”
Elodie’s eyes widened at that voice.
Her two hands reached up to the sky.
No matter how high-speed it was, casting a tri-element combination would be late.
However—
Individual spell deployment
Wind Magic, Form 4
Area increase, spaced activation, high-speed rotation, updraft ...... name it, “Storm Poem”
Lightning Magic, Form 2
Stacking, chaining ...... name it, “Chain Lightning”
Reduce one of the tri-elements.
[......Reservation number one.]
Add.
Omit the spellwork preface.
Name it, “Hellfire”
If that one could operate as a “reservation”—
‘The moment you come, you expect a lot from Teacher!’
From afar, Elodie saw a black flame launched up toward the sky.
It was the celebratory shot her student had fired.
Spellwork fusion, focusing
Tri-element combination
Elodie Original, “Jujak Ascent — Infernal Hell.”
Just as Zeus’s lightning was about to pour down—
Kwoaaaaaaa─!!!
The storm of flames finally surged and swallowed the dark clouds of the sky.
“......!!”
Two different magic spellworks combined midair and completed as tri-element magic.
An art that had reached the pinnacle as a mage.
This was Elodie’s skill, but there was something more important.
‘Truly, such a kind and precise spellwork.’
Elodie had already seen the spellwork of Hellfire that Vasileo used.
And Vasileo reproduced it exactly without a hair’s breadth of error.
Because of that, Elodie was able to incorporate it into her own spellwork.
Perfect replication and reservation—something Elodie, whose intuition runs far ahead, could never have imitated.
‘That child is a genius, after all.’
There was a genius Elodie publicly acknowledged—a genius recognized in a different sense than Elodie herself.
A little distance from here—
“......It really is Teacher.”
Breathing hard, the boy spoke out in midair.
The moment he completed the reservation, he rushed straight here. Even this flight now was one of the reservation numbers.
“Rest is enough now.”
Vasileo’s eyes shone.
—For now, rest a while. You need the time. And after that,
—Rise again.
When the explosion happened, when Pielot was struck by an arrow, when the monsters rushed in—
Vasileo regretted being unable to do anything.
He had quivered helplessly, unable to help his teacher or save his friend.
Fear, anger, and self-loathing were mixed.
—At that time, you—
And yet even so, even when he was suddenly thrown into a cruel reality, there was something he hadn’t lost.
There was something he had learned from everyone.
“Do you think I’ll be the only one to survive.”
—I will become a mage.
