[V5C10] Unconstrained Wind
Translated by Jodas 5: The Magic Battle—Finn had been knocked out.
The moment he realized that, Wren bit his cheek.
(Damn. Had I managed to hit him with that tube…)
Swatting the tube back just as it activated — that was a suicidal attack.
Through the drawing board, the ball of lightning surely must have caused Finn a fair amount of pain and damage.
(Then Frederik must have blown Finn away with wind to stop him from being hurt too much by the ball of lightning… Damn. He’s still holding back on us! No, the self-reflections can wait until after. I need to think of my next move.)
After coming into contact with the ball of lightning, Frederik’s feet slammed to the ground. His flight magic had been temporarily disabled.
Finn’s valiant sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. The tube that Wren had thrown and Finn had deflected had definitely done some damage.
He could not allow this brief opportunity to pass.
Oliver and Tia were flying high in the sky. It would be a bad idea to call those two back to the ground.
In the time it would take for them to fiddle with the carrying strap, they’d be attacked. Most importantly, Oliver hadn’t brought his spear, so he had no means of engaging in close-quarters combat with Frederik.
As he hesitated, he saw a cloak billowing.
Pointy-hatted Roswitha was taking her move.
“Thine irrational devotion, the rain which dwells within thee. O thou fish who hast lost thine arms… Burrow through!”
Roswitha drew three small sticks from her billowing cloak and lobbed them at Frederik.
The sticks became enveloped in water, taking on the shape of fish that bore down on Frederik.
(She thinks fast. Thank goodness…)
Roswitha’s fish of water became weaker the further they drifted from her, so they wouldn’t be able to draw out much power if they attacked Frederik while he was flying around.
However, at this distance, they should be able to do considerable damage.
Frederik realized he would be in trouble if he got hit by these. He swung his spear, wreathed in wind, to intercept the fish.
A blade of wind cut through the fish… Or so he thought, but the fish soon regained their shape.
(Wow, Roswitha’s magic really is so much more powerful than our inscription magic could ever be.)
On top of that, Julius chanted, sending out a number of flame arrows. Rather than fly directly, these were intentionally sent arcing up into the air. Intending to rain down on Frederik from above.
Doing so, he could avoid having his flame arrows accidentally hit the fish of water, rendering both attacks useless.
Beset by fish of water in all directions, and flame arrows from above, Frederik nonetheless attacked with his spear.
Generally, Julius and Roswitha tended not to get along very well, but these two were still the Apprentices’ greatest combat assets.
When the two of them attacked at once, they had to divide responsibilities so as to not interfere with each other’s attacks.
They reached an agreement where Roswitha would attack Frederik horizontally, while Julius would attack from above.
(…In that case, the only thing left for us to do is below.)
Wren hurriedly slapped a sheet of paper on his drawing board and put his pen to work.
“Gerald, Rukiye, roll the tubes at Frederik’s feet!”
“Roger!”
“Got it.”
Wren, Ella, and Sophie wrote their inscription magic, while Gerald and Rukiye packed them into tubes, poured mana in, and threw them at Frederik’s feet.
Some of them went off at the wrong timing, and some failed to go off at all due to incomplete inscriptions.
Regardless, simply tossing the tubes worked to pin him down.
(Before Frederik can reactivate his flight magic, we’ve got to wear him down…)
Frederik cut through the fish of water with his spear, and twisted his body to dodge the flame arrows raining from overhead. He danced nimbly so as to avoid coming into contact with the tubes rolled under his feet.
But despite his best efforts, he couldn’t evade everything perfectly. Some of the attacks grazed Frederik, and the tiny bits of damage added up.
As Frederik dealt with the fish of water using his spear, he muttered under his breath.
“You’re late.”
Wren initially assumed Frederik’s muttering was directed at the Apprentices, mocking the speed of their attacks.
But then, Tia shouted from overhead.
“Wren, they’ve caught up to you!!”
Wren suddenly realized the true meaning of Frederik’s muttering. Those words were directed at his two partners.
Showing themselves from behind a tree were the axe-wielding dark-skinned young man named Rikard, and the silver-haired woman Helena with her staff.
Water emerged from Helena’s staff like a serpent, winding its way to crush Roswitha’s watery fish.
The serpent of water caught the fish and lifted them up, using them as shields against the hail of flame arrows.
At the same time, the ground around Frederik rose up, and the tubes rolling across the ground were sent flying away.
The fish of water and arrows of flame dissipated.
The tubes rolled off in a direction where no one was standing, and harmlessly activated their lightning balls.
“We came to save you, but instead of thanking us you just complain… Ah, it’s so sad. It’s just so sad….”
“You’ve taken more of a beating than I expected, Frederik.”
Stepping out from behind the trees were two of Frederik’s fellow Extermination Office mages.
— Helena and Rikard.
Helena held her staff, while Rikard held his axe.
Frederik swung his spear around and leveled his partners with a bitter gaze.
“…You are late, though. Can’t you at least act like you want to be here?”
Despite Frederik’s complaints, the two of them maintained stony expressions.
Neither Rikard nor Helena looked motivated to fight, but nevertheless, their presence as support made things much harder for the Apprentices.
Frederik curtailed his complaints to his teammates and called to Wren and the others in a gentle voice.
“Are you all out of plans now? I’m gonna start my counterattack now… Anyone who’s too scared, you can just take of your bracelets now, okay? I’d like to avoid giving you bad memories if possible.”
Take off your bracelets — that meant forfeiting the magic battle.
However, no one moved reached for their bracelets.
After all, Finn. That Finn. The youngest, smallest, weakest Finn. He went out there and landed a blow on Frederik.
(I wouldn’t be a pretty boy if I forfeited here!)
Frederik looked around at the Apprentices, and sighed.
“I see. Then, here I come.”
Everyone started their incantations, and it was Sevil who jumped out ahead first.
Sevil, who had finished her incantation while Frederik was bickering with his teammates, swung her magic sword at Frederik. However, Rikard caught the arc of her curved sword with the shaft of his axe.
Once Frederik finished his incantation, he lightly kicked against the ground.
Using flight magic just off of the ground, as if sliding across the surface, Frederik chose Rose as his first target.
However, Rose had already finished his own incantation.
“Take this!”
With a powerful voice, Rose deployed his defensive barrier. This time it was not his usual dome-shaped barrier.
His barrier looked as if he had built a wall in front of himself.
One weakness of a dome-shaped barrier was that it would block your allies’ attacks just as much as it blocked your enemies.
At the moment, Roswitha was standing beside Rose. If Rose were to cover both of them with a dome-shaped barrier, Roswitha wouldn’t be able to make any attacks.
That was why he deployed a wall-shaped barrier instead. However, Frederik must have known he’d do that, as he jumped high up and flew overtop of the wall.
“It’s hard to use defensive barriers in combat, isn’t it?”
Frederik’s words sent Rose into a series of panicked movements.
He was probably trying to readjust the defensive barrier he’d deployed. But, Frederik wouldn’t give him the time.
“A regular old shield would be a lot easier to wield.”
Muttering that, Frederik slammed Rose in the abdomen with the shaft of his spear.
A powerful wind blew, sending Rose’s large body flying into the distance. He wasn’t knocked out yet, but his mana reserves must have been quite drained by this attack.
After blowing Rose away, Frederik kept up his momentum and twirled his spear around.
(Oh, crap!)
Wren immediately brought his drawing board in front of himself.
It felt as if a whip had hit the drawing board, and he could feel the shock reverberate through his arms. The board alone was not enough to guard his whole body, and a sharp pain rain through his thighs.
The places where he felt that pain felt a chill as if their warmth was being taken away, before that chill extended to the rest of his body over the next few seconds.
(This is what it feels like to have your mana drained….!)
He felt an intense dizziness. This was bad. Wren was the one with the lowest mana reserves out of the Apprentices.
In a magic battle, your mana would be drained according to the damage you took. At the moment, Wren was on the verge of getting knocked out. — That meant he’d be knocked out next time he was hit, no matter how much damage it dealt.
Frederik’s attack seemed to be one that sent out numerous whips of wind. Several members of the inscription team took damage from that. Without their drawing boards as shields, some of them likely would have been knocked out.
(But now I know… Frederik isn’t good at long-range and wide-area attacks.)
Even with his low mana reserves, Wren was able to withstand the whip of wind, albeit only barely. That meant it wasn’t very powerful, nor particularly precise.
In order to guarantee a high-power attack landed properly, Frederik would prefer to attack directly with his spear.
While the Apprentices were caught off guard, Frederik had already begun to move.
He was swift to switch to his next action — That was one of the biggest differences between him and the inexperienced Apprentices.
The shaft of Frederik’s spear aimed at Sophie. Gerald jumped forward with his drawing board to shield her.
“I won’t let you!”
Gerald intended to block one strike from the spear, then close the distance and strike with the edge of his drawing board.
However, just before Frederik’s spear was about to make contact with the drawing board, he twisted his body and slipped past Gerald.
Doing so, the shaft of his spear slammed into Sophie, and a whip of wind continued onwards, towards Rose.
“I’m sorry, it seems like you two have high mana… I’ll try to make it as painless as possible, though.”
Gerald tried to guard with his drawing board again, but Frederik’s unconstrained movements wouldn’t allow that.
A barrage of wind bullets was fired at Sophie and Rose.
“Gyaaah!”
“Owowowowow, Ouch! That hurts…!”
Sophie and Rose screamed.
Rose was surely trying to deploy another defensive barrier. However, before he could get it out, Röhm’s voice boomed from overhead.
“Sophie Schwarzenberg, John Rose. Knocked out.”