Chapter 261 - Episode Eight - Ruinous Sorcerer Ruin (1)
It’s been nearly a week since we left by carriage.
At the moment, Mea and I are in the middle of asking Elia to help us move along the eastern-most coast of the Dinrat Kingdom.
“Sir …… Somehow, there’s something amazing ……”
In the carriage, I had been reading over and over again from the Great God’s Treasure Book, but when Elia told me this, I looked out from the carriage and looked ahead in the direction we were going.
Ahead of me, I saw a mysterious giant structure floating in the ocean, glowing blue.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had never heard of such a building in the Fage territory.
I asked Elia-san to help me get closer to it.
As we closed the distance, I began to see a number of people lying near it.
Clearly, this was no ordinary situation.
I could see that the ground around the area was partially gouged. It seemed that there had been a very fierce battle.
“I think it’s better to report this to the lord …… instead of getting too close to them.”
Elia mutters.
Indeed …… it might be better that way.
I have Mea with me now.
I don’t want to put Mea in any danger.
Last time, I had to escort her to the far end of the Witch’s Tower, but that was like an accident. It’s a no-brainer.
“…… That’s, right.”
It seems that some of them are quite seriously injured, and perhaps the person with whom they fought is also hiding nearby.
Since we don’t know the identity of the fallen people, we can’t risk approaching them without thinking.
The group of people lying on the ground also looked suspiciously …… and, as I thought about it, I realized that they looked familiar to me.
“Oh, Peter-san’s men ……! That means ……”
If I searched carefully, I could see a person wearing a more ostentatious robe than the others, with a mask covering the upper half of his face.
No doubt, it was Peter. He seemed to have been pinned to the ground with a stake driven through his body.
The way the stake mercilessly pierced through his thin, skinny, slightly bony arms and legs was too painful to watch.
“C-Cruel …… Why did you do that?”
“…… The last time I saw you, Abel, didn’t you pop off his ear or something?”
That was an accident.
It’s worse to have an earring that explodes.
“Is Peter …… the high-ranking guy from the church who used to come to Palgas Village?”
Elia asked, and I nodded my head.
“Yes, he is. We actually kind of hit it off and got along …… but I don’t know why he’s in such a mess here.”
Perhaps it has something to do with that huge blue structure.
I’ve never heard of a building like that being located in or around Fage territory.
That location is quite close to one of the candidates for the coordinates listed in the Great God’s Treasure Book.
Perhaps the coordinates given by the Great God’s Treasure Book were those of that huge structure.
From the looks of it, the structure itself seems to be made of spirit.
It was clearly not just a building. We should assume that it was something related to the Kudor Church.
It’s different If it’s just a bunch of suspicious people, but if it’s someone I know, I can’t just leave them there.
I asked Elia to help me get closer to the huge structure.
“I’m sorry …… for always having you accompany me to dangerous places ……”
I bowed to Elia.
“No problem. I never get tired of looking at Sir. …… In a way, I feel safest when I’m near Sir ……”
“I-Is that so ……?”
In the middle of approaching the mysterious building, a girl appeared from behind a large rock near Peter.
She had pig-tailed blonde hair and deep dark circles under her eyes.
She was clad in a white robe with a red shadowgraph of a scale on her back.
She looks young, but it is hard to tell how old she really is. The tips of her ears are pointed. Like Rinoa, she is a Noir.
The Noir spend their entire lives in the form of children, so their age cannot be determined from appearances.
She was dressed differently from Peter’s men, and only one of them was completely uninjured.
The fact that she was close to Peter and not helping him seemed to indicate that she was keeping an eye on Peter to make sure he did not escape.
In order to clarify the situation, it would be better If I make the first move.
I asked her to stop the carriage, got down on the ground, and shouted to Peter.
“Peter-san!”
When Peter saw me, his face tensed up and he moved his mouth weakly.
“Of all the people, w-why is that girl here …… I-In my time of weakness, curses ……”
…… Pe-, Peter-san?
The blonde-haired noir glances at Peter, then quickly turns to me and raises her larger-than-herself large staff in her hand.
“…… Rupel told me to kill any outsiders that came my way.”
She whispers something in a low voice, and then begins to chant a spell in the spirit language.
“Flame, form, ball”
A large magic circle emerges with the Noir girl in the center.
A ball of flame appeared on the extension of the wand, and it swelled endlessly.
In no time at all, it had grown into a huge flame, perhaps five meters in diameter.
Peter looked up at it and let out a near scream.
“N-No way ……! There’s no way you can do that kind of magical weapon-grade magic in just a few seconds!”
“Disappear.”
The Noir girl lowered her wand, and a huge mass of flames fell towards me and the carriage.
“Wind”
I waved my wand, disrupting and dispersing the oncoming blaze with a minimal amount of wind.
The ball of fire lost its shape, and small sparks of fire fell to the ground, avoiding me and the carriage.
The Noir girl stared at me, her eyes wide open.
“H-How…… this ……”
“It’s just big. It’s not very coherent, and it’s incomplete as magic.”
She tried to simplify the magic circle and the basic shape of the fireball’s magic circle, and it looked as if she had stripped it down to the essentials.
It seems as if the author wanted to create a magic circle by himself, but gave up halfway.
There is no major damage, so it will probably work, but it’s not something I would bother to use in a real battle.
The control of magic power is also clearly too poor.
The magic power’s size itself is much larger than normal, but I’m not sure how much of an advantage it is.
When I was a kid, I could usually handle magic on a larger scale than that.
I don’t think it’s a level good enough for a sorcerer to go into battle.
The person who staked Peter to the ground was probably someone else.
She doesn’t seem to be a combatant. If that’s the case, then what was she still here for ……
The Noir girl narrowed her eyes slightly as if she was observing me, and tapped the ground with the tail of her staff.
“The Marren tribe …… I see, the Dinrat royal family was already on the move. He said it was up to thirty percent, but …… I had no choice.”
The Noir girl thrusts her staff into the ground, removes it from her hand, and extends her arm.
She then shook it at an angle and dropped the bangle, which looked like a lumpy piece of magical ore that didn’t fit her petite body, to the ground.
From the looks of it, it seemed to be a special metal that had been transmuted from the Arogua stone.
Rather than being a medium for magic, it seemed to have been made for the purpose of interfering with magical power.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had to use 50 percent of my strength outside of training ……”
The Noir girl’s face changed from its previous indifferent atmosphere.