“Understood. I expect great things from you.”
“And I’ll do my best to meet them.”
Lefille met Gallio’s formality with modesty. Once their brief exchange was over, she turned back to Suimei.
“Suimei-kun.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“This will be backtracking a bit to our previous conversation, but will you be alright? If something happened in the last fight, there’s no need to push yourself. It would be better to fall back.”
The root of her suggestion was concern over Suimei’s magic not being effective. For Suimei, as a magician, the safe choice would be to leave this to the Lefille and the others. But there were more enemies than before this time, and it wasn’t as certain that victory would be on their side. He couldn’t possibly just stand by and watch under these circumstance. The adventurer standing next to Lefille echoed her concern.
“Yeah, will you really be alright? You just used some seriously powerful magic, too. Are you not tired?”
“I’m alright. I still have plenty in me.”
“Plenty, huh? If you overestimate your power and stretch yourself too thin, that’s a fatal move, you know?”
“I appreciate the warning.”
Suimei gave a blunt but polite reply. He wasn’t about to cause a scene over people being concerned for his safety. The adventurer was still looking at Suimei suspiciously as Lefille continued the conversation.
“But Suimei-kun, what about your magic? If it isn’t very effective against the demons, then...”
“Yeah, I’ll manage somehow on that front.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“I have many more magicka than what I used just now. If the system of magicka I used before didn’t work, that only means I have to keep testing systems until I find one that does.”
“Systems... of magic? You mean attributes?”
“Aaah, right... Well, in short, I have a lot more up my sleeve.”
Lefille tilted her head to the side in confusion. An invisible question mark was hanging above her head, but there was no time for Suimei to clear everything up. Instead, he gave her a vague explanation. It was true that the type of magicka Suimei had used was poorly matched against demons. However, that wasn’t a fatal flaw for him. Magicka from his world was classified into different magickal schools as systems—evidence that the origin of magicka there was not such a simple thing. The peak of magic as defined by this fantasy world would clearly be considered something far different than back home. In Suimei’s world of advanced civilization and science, there were an untold number of mysteries.
Kabbalah, star divination, and sorcery were systems of Suimei’s world. Other famous systems included alchemy and the magic used by witches—witchcraft. There was also the group magicka systems of Occultist Taoism, the violent branch of Esoteric Buddhism, and the largest system of magicka on the continent—wizardry. Just counting the ones that Suimei had confirmed himself, there were over thirty systems. Even within these, they could still be broken down further into attributes, sequences, and effects, which led to a staggering number of magickas.
And with so many of them, there were inevitably magickas that Suimei couldn’t understand. But even discounting what he couldn’t use, there had to be something among the magickas he knew that would work against demons. According to his running hypothesis, exorcism and holy magic seemed like viable options.
But even then, Suimei’s magicka being ineffective against demons wouldn’t mean the end of the road for him. Even if he exhausted all the magicka systems he knew and couldn’t find anything that worked better, he could always power through with sheer force as he’d done before. Suimei wasn’t too worried.
If twenty demons came this time instead of ten, he would just have to use that many more spells. That’s all there was to it. Suimei’s actual problem now was the lingering possibility he’d have to put his full power on display in order to take care of things.
If it comes to it, I’ll have to ignite my mana furnace. But I’ll try everything else that I can before that.
In an emergency, he wouldn’t hesitate to abandon his experimenting and use his full power. He knew he would regret it if his stinginess drove the current predicament further into the corner. He didn’t want to be responsible for such a foolish, easily preventable outcome.
“The same was true before, but you sure are calm, Suimei-kun. In this kind of situation, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to be behaving like the other escorts are.”
“Can’t you say the same about those two adventurers you know?”
“Even then, you’re different. Unlike them, you’re not showing a single sign of fear.”
“That so? I could just be putting on a brave front, you know?”
“How brazen.”
Lefille saw straight through his little bluff. Suimei then replied more seriously.
“Well, even if I lose my composure, it won’t help any...”
As Suimei shrugged his shoulders, Lefille gave him an incredulous look. It was a bit refreshing in such a tense situation.
“You’re quite unusual. You go along with just about anything, but never show your real hand.”
“That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m a mage, after all.”
“If you keep acting like that, I’ll just want to tear off your mask even more, you know?”
“Hmm... And how will you do that?”
“Hmph. I’ve always got my sword...”
“Oooh, oh no... Lefille-san is scaaary.”
Suimei started trembling in an exaggerated manner, and Lefille gave him a broad grin. The two of them were just joking around as if there were nothing else to worry about. Gallio gave them something of a concerned look.
“Grakis-dono, do you not need to make preparations like the others are doing?”
“I don’t. I have this, after all. As long as I have my sword, I’m always ready.”
“...Understood. But do be careful.”
Lefille was quite casual about the whole thing, but Gallio looked dead serious. He had been a bit of a mess earlier, but he was still the leader of this caravan. As a traveling merchant, he was a practical, levelheaded man, and that served him well.
“Now then, it’s about time.”
“Seems so.”
Suimei had made an incredibly vague statement with no context, yet Lefille immediately agreed without any hesitation.
“...?”
Gallio seemed confused by their exchange and cocked his head to the side. But he got his answer when the mage girl at the front of the group suddenly started yelling.
“Everyone! They’re almost here!”
Between the wind and the movement in the woods, the trees began rustling. There was a silent tension in the air, like the calm right before the storm of war. One of the adventurers yelled at Gallio, who was still milling about in confusion.
“Yo, Gallio-san! Fall back already! The fighting’s about to start!”
“V-Very well! I’ll leave the rest to all of you!”
After being barked at by one of the adventurers, Gallio gave a flustered reply and ran off to the back. As the escorts all finished their preparations and took their positions, a group of demons appeared in the sky and immediately rushed down towards the convoy all at once. Their mana presence was great enough that some of the escorts noticed and looked up.
“They’re right above us too!”
A mage shouted a panicked warning to the rest of the convoy. The demons were making a perfectly timed surprise attack from the air. Reading the danger of a simultaneous attack on two fronts, Suimei prepared his magicka. And just at that moment...
“In that case...”
Suimei heard Lefille mumbling to herself in a cold voice, but what happened next was nearly impossible to believe.
“Wha―?!”
All of a sudden, Lefille was surrounded by a glittering red light. It was like her aura was pouring out of her body. The darkness of t
he forest was pierced by the brilliant crimson light she was radiating. An immense power that wasn’t mana was overflowing from within her. It enveloped her body, sword, and the very air around her.
“HA!”
She swung upward as if to cut down the very sky. There was no way she could reach their airborne enemies from here, even with her enormous sword. She caught only air with her blade, but the slash cast a brilliant red arc into the sky that flew straight towards the demons. But Lefille didn’t stop there. She kept moving her sword, fluidly following one swing with another.
She unleashed a squall of red slashes, each rushing towards the incoming demons overhead. The demons weren’t expecting such an attack, and fell one after the other. They couldn’t escape the ominous storm of slashes assaulting them any more than they could the wind. In the blink of an eye, they had all been reduced to corpses.
“Wha...?”
Suimei’s surprise escaped his lips. It was a one-sided slaughter. A pure massacre. It had all happened so fast. And the cause was without a doubt that bright red light.
“Hey, wait a sec, that’s...!”
When Suimei suddenly grasped what the source of the red light may have been, he was at a loss for words. Surely he was mistaken. It simply couldn’t be what he thought it was. In stark contrast to Suimei’s surprise, the adventurer and mage—who had been watching Lefille without being able to follow her movement—began shouting joyously.
“Amazing!”
“Did you see that?! It was just like when she cut that ogre in half, right?!”
“...It was? Lefille has done the same thing before?”
“Huh? Yeah, she sure did... Something up?”
The adventurer knit his brow at Suimei’s question. He must have thought Suimei was a little too stunned at this turn of events. It should have been cause for celebration.
But apparently this was the same power Lefille had used to defeat the ogre. That helped Suimei start to make a little sense of things. With this, most any enemy would fall before her as easily as the demons just had.
“Um, is something wrong? Are you feeling ill?”
“N-No. Nothing’s wrong, exactly, but...”
Suimei was simply too shocked. His mouth and his brain were hardly functioning. The armored adventurer then glanced behind him and started shouting commands when he suddenly remembered they were in the middle of a battle.
“Hey, we can’t just sit on our asses here! We’re going in to cover her!”
“Got it!”
His party as well as the other adventurers and mercenaries around all responded in unison. Lefille, still clad in her red light, was cutting down more demons.
Unlike everybody else who seemed to be in high spirits, Suimei was standing stock still in place. It was as if he wasn’t moving at all, or rather that he couldn’t move at all. He was simply entranced by what was happening before his eyes. He was fascinated by that red light.
It was very likely that in his world, the power that she manifested was known as telesma, a form of spiritual power. It was completely different from mana or aetheric. Its power came from spirits, beings like angels and devils. As such, it could easily surpass what ordinary humans were capable of. It was classified as a higher order power, but its destructive potential wasn’t the only reason it earned that distinction. Roughly speaking, it was a power that existed on an entirely different plane from physical and magickal strength. It was practically unfathomable. It was a ridiculous power that could interfere with anything in existence.
Did she transform into a spirit? But Lefille is human... No, wait... If that’s not it, then were her body and soul part spirit to begin with...?
In her current state, Lefille wasn’t just borrowing the power of spirits. No matter how he looked at it, she was directly manifesting the power of a spirit. That was why Suimei was unable to compose himself. According to what he knew, it was absolutely impossible for a spirit to manifest in the physical realm like that.
In the modern world Suimei was from, the beings classified as spirits—angels, devils, gods, and even evil gods—had been supplanted by the rapid development of science. Their existence had essentially been denied. In ancient times, such spirits came into being simply by being named. They existed on another plane, and came into this world when they were called. In the rare cases that they went unnamed, they remained rulers of their own plane.
To harness a spirit’s power, one would have to wield a special technique to communicate with it and form a contract. And even after doing so, they would be able to manifest only a small portion of its power. So for Suimei to see this girl unleashing such power completely uninhibited, he was utterly shocked.
If he had to make a guess, in order for her physical form to be firmly rooted in this plane and still wield such power, she would have to be half human and half spirit. It was extremely unusual. Even though it made sense logically, it was practically unbelievable. Yet something inside of him was telling him that had to be it. To think such a ridiculous being could just quietly exist here... It truly was a fantasy world. However...
“No matter how you look at it, being a literal spirit is way too cheaty...”
Suimei finally managed to shake off his astonishment and was now just half exasperated. The situation before him was just that confounding.
“Is that all?!”
Lefille howled at the demons as she blew them away. In her rampage, she was draining even their will to fight. The remaining demons were shaken by her thunderous cry, and began to show signs of hesitation in their attacks.
“Alright! Follow after Lefille! Keep up the pace and take out the last of them!”
At the adventurer’s orders, the rest of the escort rallied behind him. They now had the upper hand in this fight. Victory was a foregone conclusion now. After cutting down the last few foes in front of them, they would be free from the fighting. That’s what everyone was thinking, but it was too soon to celebrate.
“W-Wait! Something is coming! With terrifying force!”
Someone in the group sensed mana moving in the distance and yelled a flustered warning. The mage girl then raised her voice to grab everyone’s attention.
“Wh-What is this?! Everyone, please be careful! An enormous mana presence is flying this way!”
A violent roar echoed from behind the demons, and it was only getting louder and closer. It was as if something big was plowing through the air, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. It felt dangerous even to Suimei. The amount of mana it was emitting was incomparable to all the other demons they’d encountered so far.
Tch, gimme a damn break. It was looking like this was going to end quietly and everything...
Suimei cursed to himself in his mind with a bitter expression on his face as the dangerous presence closed in. Lefille turned back to the other escorts.
“Everyone fall back! It will be here soon!”
Just as she yelled to them, the dangerous presence that had quashed their hopes of an easy victory burst through the woods, mowing down the trees in its path. With an earth-shaking roar, the demon landed violently right in front of them. Pulling its fists out of the ground, it stood up straight in a perfectly relaxed manner.
It stood nearly two meters tall, towering over the other demons in stature. Its legs and arms were like logs. It was like a brute, pure and simple. The very incarnation of violence. Its muscular appearance alone suggested that strength meant everything. Its combat prowess was obvious just looking at it. The sight of it would strike fear into the heart of anyone. This creature was truly a demon. Its figure was humanoid, but none of its features were actually human. And at last, it spoke.
“...Hmph, finally found it, huh?”
Just what did it mean by “finally?” Suimei couldn’t grasp the implication from just that much. And as he pondered that, the rest of the escort began to panic, completely overawed by the sudden appearance of such an overpowering presence.
“Wh-What... is that
? It’s much bigger than the others...”
“S-Such dreadful power! It’s nothing like the other demons...”
They were all prepared to flee on the spot. But their reaction was only natural. The oppressive aura the demon radiated was like a poison to humans.
Tch, hey now... This thing’s seriously on a different level from those small fries...
Before this demon, even Suimei began sweating nervously. He had yet to grasp the strength of demons in general, and now an extremely powerful one had presented itself without warning. It stood there like a tiger sizing up its prey.
“However, it’s different from what I heard. Could it be the intel was bad...?”
The demon seemed perturbed about something. There was a tinge of bewilderment in its voice. After a moment’s thought, it spat on the ground in irritation, pulled itself together, and took in a deep breath.
“Whatever. It doesn’t change anything. Hear me, humans! I am Rajas, one of seven demons who was entrusted by our glorious leader Nakshatra with an army! Meeting me here spells your inevitable doom! You’d do well to quietly accept your fate at my hands!”
The very air seemed to shake from the boom of his loud voice. It was like a shock wave, and it drove the trembling escorts further into the depths of fear.
“Eek...”
Someone let out a terrified gasp, but everyone present was pale. Internally, they were probably all gasping too. This situation had become just that hopeless.
“...”
Lefille, who was standing nearest to Rajas, hadn’t moved a muscle. She was just hanging her head as if she was enduring something, and gripping her enormous sword firmly in both hands. Something was clearly wrong. Could the pressure of the demon also be affecting her? She seemed to be reaching her limit. The anxious gazes of all the escort fell on the girl who had taken the lead in the fight until now. And when she finally broke, Lefille’s emotions violently burst out.
The Magic in this Other World is Too Far Behind! Volume 2 Page 14