NOVEL WEB Chapter 163
The blood flowing from his head trickled down his cheeks and chin, dripping onto the floor.
His collar was already stained red, as if he had hit his head hard on debris falling from the ceiling, and his forehead was also slightly cut.
Seeing Froy so badly injured for the first time, her mind went blank for a moment.
‘Suddenly… why?’
Only this one question kept echoing.
Seeing his navy blue formal attire, which they had fitted together at the clothing shop, now darkened with blood, she seemed to hear a faint, chilling ringing in her ears.
“Y-young lady, over there…”
At Eola’s flustered voice, Rosha slowly turned her head towards the culprits behind this situation.
The magician, already an acquaintance of hers, waved casually.
“It’s been a while. About two weeks since you shot that bullet into me at the Moon Altar?”
“Why don’t you mention what happened before that? You died once by her hand. Your lab was blown up too.”
“Shut up, that was years ago, why are you still bringing it up?”
At the magician’s irritable attitude, the sniper who seemed to be his companion snickered.
It was a woman with short hair, wearing transparent goggles and holding a long rifle.
‘…It’s the sniper I saw once before.’
She had appeared with the late Count Nigel before, but quickly disappeared with the excuse of having no vanguard.
Seeing the sniper’s very modern-looking attire, she inwardly thought that what was bound to happen had finally come.
‘No wonder… I thought it was too peaceful.’
She suppressed the anxiety that was gradually amplifying in a corner of her mind.
She had to somehow set things right before they got any worse.
“Hey, woman. No need to be so tense. What use would it be for us to kill those humans? Killing them would be of little value, just a waste of energy.”
“…Then? You’re saying you’ll let them live?”
“That’s right. But only if you come with us. We heard news that there’s a huge bounty on you in paradise.”
“…”
“You’d better decide quickly. Those humans are still alive, but if we leave them with their consciousness suppressed for too long, their minds will collapse and they’ll end up neither dead nor alive.”
Suddenly, she felt a heat in her eyes.
Rather than from overusing her ability, it felt like her eyes were bloodshot from being overwhelmed by extreme emotions.
Naturally, the magical power she possessed also began to move around, led by the currents dominating her entire body.
“Oh? It looks like you’re secretly raising your magical power, stop that right now. Do you want to see those humans die one by one?”
Though the magician blabbered like this.
Rosha was in a state of concentration far more powerful than when Cassis had been in mortal danger before.
‘…I’m going to burn them as if they never existed.’
If they were worried about the hostages’ safety, wouldn’t it be better to quickly take care of them so the villains couldn’t do anything to the hostages?
From what her eyes could see, it was certainly possible.
————!
In an instant, the air burned white.
A heat that seemed like it could vaporize even steel in an instant boiled up, and the atmosphere vibrated and bubbled.
The air was so hot that the surrounding area was severely distorted.
“Damn it…!”
Aghast at the sudden phenomenon, the villain hurriedly raised a protective barrier. At the same time, he scattered freezing magic all around to cool the heat.
Hiss-!
As fire and ice met, white steam billowed up to the ceiling.
Of course, that alone couldn’t cool that heat. The range of the heat haze distorting vision didn’t diminish at all.
It was then.
‘…Hm?’
For a moment, she felt a sense of incongruity through the heat haze.
As she hesitated for a moment at that indescribable feeling.
“Ha, hahaha!”
Surprisingly, in that interval, the magician who had managed to withstand the heat with his protective barrier and freezing magic burst into hearty laughter, intoxicated by his own skills.
It was an incomprehensible, unbelievable result.
‘…What? Was there a problem with my magic?’
Why is he still alive?
“Hmm… this is strange. Your magic just now was something that absolutely couldn’t have been blocked by the hastily raised protective barrier he put up. But this…”
Watching ten people collapse to the floor like puppets with cut strings as retaliation for what just happened, Koko muttered quietly.
“This phenomenon that defies common sense, this feeling, this sensation… it’s an illusion.”
An illusion?
‘Is it that guy’s doing?’
The domain I experienced from him before was ‘anesthesia’. Given that it’s a domain related to the mental realm, it seemed he might have some expertise in illusions as well.
But…
‘It doesn’t seem like he did it.’
Rosha took a deep breath while calmly settling her pulse.
Once she became aware, something was definitely off.
“…”
[The Guiding Lantern] inherent in her eyes shows the truth only when one calmly observes oneself and looks at the world.
As she felt suspicious, at some point her eyes saw things faintly glowing with a golden light. These were things she hadn’t been able to see properly before because her vision had narrowed due to being flustered.
The imperial banners attached to the pillars.
A small sculpture in the middle of the banquet hall.
The flower pot on the platform.
To an unknowing person, they would just be ordinary objects.
But to Rosha’s eyes, she now felt that these were things that had to be there, components forming some kind of formation.
“…It’s a formation.”
“A formation? Ah, now that you mention it, it does seem so. It looks similar to the one in the Emperor’s bedroom.”
A formation was a barrier set up to protect a specific space from intruders.
There was also a thick theoretical book called
Naturally, someone must know how to set up formations.
‘…Illien. Right, as a prophet, there’s no way she wouldn’t have predicted that these guys would attack.’
I heard that the God of Prophecy greatly favors Illien. There must be some other thought behind this.
As she was slowly organizing her thoughts like this, at that moment.
Swish-
Like wind brushing over a reed field, she felt something intangible sweep across her entire body.
It felt as if a large bubble that had unknowingly enveloped her whole body had suddenly popped.
Her ears became muffled as if submerged in water, then suddenly everything became clear as if she had come out into the world.
And then, someone turned Rosha around.
“Are you alright?”
Along with a faint smell of blood came a familiar scent.
Rosha blinked rapidly as she looked at the black-haired man who seemed to have hurried over, catching his breath.
She even rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, but she wasn’t seeing things.
‘He was definitely on the platform earlier…’
No, it doesn’t matter anyway.
Though he had bled a bit, confirming that he was safe, relief washed over her entire body.
It felt like she could finally breathe properly without being conscious of it.
“You must have been very surprised. Since you came in while the formation was activating…”
Before Froy could finish speaking, Rosha hugged him tightly.
She could feel his vividly alive body. It was an unbelievably warm temperature.
After stiffening his body in surprise for a moment, Froy carefully placed his hand on her back and patted her.
The regular rhythm gradually calmed her.
‘…Maybe.’
In that overwhelming sense of stability, Rosha felt a faint throbbing and thought.
‘Maybe I was never affected by allure magic in the first place.’
The possibility she had been trying not to be conscious of until now began to sprout little by little, very little by little, in her mind.
“Have you calmed down a bit now?”
“…What happened?”
Froy smiled faintly at Rosha’s mumbling and answered frankly.
“Last night, Her Majesty the Emperor foresaw this attack. So we painstakingly set up this formation behind the protective barrier surrounding the banquet hall.”
His explanation quickly continued that the formation was set up by the Magic Academy, and that she had just experienced the illusion that the attacking magician wanted.
In a corner of the banquet hall with its collapsed ceiling.
Glancing at the silent magician standing still, he suddenly blurted out:
“Isn’t this good enough?”
“What?”
“It means we didn’t go through over twenty trials while you were asleep for nothing. What do you think?”
At his tone subtly seeking praise, she found herself smiling slightly without realizing it.