The white horns, the bluish skin, the limp wings that looked as though draped like a cloak, and the oversized hands that seed disproportionate to the body.
The Great Commander, Mikael, appeared on the hill at the far back of the battlefield where Bell and Grisha were standing.
‘...Since when?’
Mikael had captured the rear of Grisha and Bell with a surprisingly simple thod.
While Great Commander Maltiel was causing a commotion targeting the neck of the boy nad Bin, Mikael had dug a tunnel underneath them.
It was a ridiculously simple thod, yet neither Bell nor Grisha, nor anyone else, had realized it.
When the white-haired boy was attacked, everyone's attention had been focused on protecting him.
It was, of course, completely understandable. Less than 90 seconds after entering the battlefield, the swordsman who had killed the Great Commander was none other than the boy who was expected to grow into a monster of the sa level as that swordsman.
He was the kind of boy that everyone would risk their lives to protect without a second thought.
“Surround us with light, and drive away the darkness...”
Grisha began reciting her prayer late. A faint light enveloped the two of them, but the light gathered in Mikael's hand was already fully expanded.
“Well, from here on, it's completely unknown.”
The perfectly laid plan had been overturned, and the trap had a hole in it.
‘...There was no chant, no invocation of a spell's na. The focus was on the activation ti, not the power.’
Bell’s ti seed to slow down.
‘...Even though the magic na and the incantation were omitted, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} the Great Commander, especially Mikael who specializes in magic, is casting this. If I take it head-on, it will be a certain death without question.’
In that split second, thoughts raced faster.
‘Damn, the distance is too close. No matter how fast I move, escaping out of range is impossible.’
I calculate the possibility of running away.
‘Can Grisha finish the prayer in ti? It doesn’t seem like she’s even halfway through it.’
I calculate Grisha’s chances.
Bell, an 8th Circle Wizard and a strategist close to the commanding officers of the Allied Forces, was frantically burning through his ntal energy.
Even with death looming right in front of him, Bell’s mind didn’t freeze. He kept calculating the best possible move, relentlessly thinking.
‘The best move is for Grisha to finish the prayer and successfully deploy the shield before the explosion hits us.’
But the chance of that happening was, in Bell's judgnt, too low.
The 'miracles' used by clergy were fundantally different from the magic used by wizards in terms of structure.
While wizards could omit incantations and spell nas in exchange for power, priests had to recite the prayer to the very end, no matter what, to perform a miracle.
‘...In the worst-case scenario, I’ll die right here, caught in the explosion.’
Bell, the wizard, was not the type to overly cherish his own life. Having sacrificed countless lives for the greater cause, he viewed his own life as little more than a pawn to be discarded for the greater good.
Thus, his judgnt that the worst-case scenario would be ‘his own death’ wasn’t an emotional decision. He didn’t have much attachnt to life anyway.
‘If I die, an unprecedented disaster will happen that has never been recorded in history.’
The magic Bell had cast around Bellarand was a type of magic that distorted the concept of ‘space’ to the mage’s will.
He montarily carved out the space connecting the inside and outside of the barrier, creating a state where no object could pass in or out.
Unlike typical ‘solid wall’ barriers, this concept was entirely different. If one couldn’t approach the concept of space, no one could leave Bellarand.
At first glance, it seed invulnerable, but this magic had three huge, hidden flaws.
First, the wizard had to place a scroll filled with mana at the very point of the barrier’s apex and infuse it with mana over a long period of ti.
Because of this flaw and requirent, Bell had to risk infiltrating the enemy’s camp and hide the scroll, a dangerous mission in itself.
The second flaw was that deploying and maintaining the barrier was incredibly difficult.
Bell’s brain cells were lting in real-ti while maintaining the barrier, and without Grisha standing next to him to keep restoring him, the barrier would’ve collapsed in less than 30 seconds.
The last flaw was the complexity and inconvenience of the magic’s procedure.
Most barriers, while requiring effort to deploy, didn’t pose great risks in terms of maintaining or deactivating them.
However, the barrier surrounding Bellarand was a high-level spell that was fundantally different from simpler barriers.
Even deactivating the barrier required precise procedures and correct calculations.
It was necessary to ‘re-seal’ the cut ‘space’ back into place.
“...Shit.”
To the untrained eye, magic might seem endlessly convenient and simple, but in reality, it was a rational and logical discipline.
If there’s a huge advantage, there is always a corresponding major disadvantage.
The barrier Bell deployed around Bellarand was close to invulnerable, but it required complicated and tedious procedures.
What would happen if the wizard who maintained the carved space couldn’t restore it before dying?
‘A disaster will occur.’
The front and back, the top and bottom of the inside of the barrier would twist, and in the worst-case scenario, everyone inside the barrier might be trapped for life without being able to leave.
Naturally, Maltiel and Mikael couldn’t know these intricate details.
They simply made a reasonable guess that ‘if such a powerful barrier exists, there must be a corresponding risk,’ and their assumption was that ‘Bell Artoa wouldn’t let the swordsman and the boy get involved in that risk.’
‘Inside, not only the swordsman but also Bin is here. I cannot let them get caught in this.’
And that prediction was spot on.
‘It doesn’t matter if I die. Soone can take my place. But those two...’
Bell abandoned his attempt to retaliate against Mikael’s attack and focused all his attention on reconnecting the space that had been severed.
There was no way he could think about deploying a shield.
He had no ntal energy left to allocate to that. The amount of calculations his brain could handle was limited, and his mind was already lting from maintaining the spatial magic.
No matter what, the barrier had to be safely deactivated.
Even with the explosion created by the Great Commander looming in front of him, Bell’s mind was fully occupied with this one thought.
Soon, a black sphere unfolded before Bell’s eyes, covering his body.
Light.
One thing I’ve learned since coming to this world is that explosions always start with a massive burst of light.
The color of the light doesn’t matter much. It could be red, purple, or blue.
Various colors of light always bring with them an overwhelming gust of wind. The temperature of the wind varies. So are so hot that they can lt steel with a single touch, while others are dry and suffocating like the winds of a desert, but don’t pose a threat to life.
The heat sweeping across my skin now was closer to the latter. My skin was weak, so I got mild burns on my face and hands, but it wasn’t enough to lose consciousness.
The explosion created by the demon tribe was far weaker and smaller than what the Great Commander could have made.
It was a hastily prepared spell, and it was so weak that even I, standing tens of ters away, could clearly see it. It seed like the magical calculations had been done hastily, as there was a trendous amount of leaking mana, and the energy gathered in Mikael’s hand didn’t seem very pure.
Even Rex, the orc standing next to , could endure it without any problem.
That’s how weak the spell was.
‘It’s sloppy.’
The first thing that filled my head when the magic exploded was that thought.
But that sloppy magic was enough.
The magic Mikael wielded was comparable to that of a 9th Circle Wizard. Even if the calculations were done hastily, the amount and purity of mana stored in his body ensured a minimal level of power.
It was magic strong enough to kill an ordinary person or two without issue.
The level of the magic Mikael was casting was at that level.
Depending on the location, ti, and situation, he could control the level and speed of his magic.
It was the kind of magic that only those who had mastered it to the extre could perform...
“Commander!”
It was a masterful move that would overturn the tide of the battlefield in an instant.
Pssh!
A sound like sothing breaking apart ca from the mud that had been hardened by fire. I turned my gaze toward the sound, thinking it was the ground breaking from the explosion, but there were no visible signs of anything broken.
Sizzle—
This ti, I heard the sound of sothing tearing.
It ca from the back of my head. I turned my head toward the sound again, but all I saw were so soldiers rushing toward the explosion’s direction, and there was no sign of anything tearing.
“Ha! This is absurd...”
Maltiel, who had kept his distance from Rex and , looked around with interest as if he found the situation amusing.
If you are reading this translation anywhere other than Novelight or SilkRoadTL, it has been stolen.
Creak...!
This ti, I heard the sound of soone squeezing a piece of cloth.
The sound ca from the space where Maltiel’s enormous wings were spread.
Soon after, a series of bizarre phenona began to unfold across the battlefield, phenona I couldn’t quite understand.
...It was as if the air itself was twisting, getting sucked into a vortex.
The soldiers who had been rushing toward the explosion began to slow down, freezing in place like statues, as though the speed of a video being slowed down, then paused.
The heat that had been blowing suddenly changed into a cold, biting wind, and I saw frost accumulating on the robe I was wearing.
Looking around, I saw so soldiers whose faces had wrinkled, their flesh and muscles wasted away, their appearance like elderly n who hadn’t eaten in decades. They were gripped by fear as they saw each other’s transformations.
‘...Spatial magic.’
I easily deduced the cause of these horrific phenona.
‘Bell, that crazy bastard.’
Spatial magic was one of the forbidden types of magic studied by almost every school of magic.
The danger when a wizard miscalculates their magic was enormous, and the difficulty level of spatial magic was so high that it was incomparable to other types of magic.
It was like walking on a 1-milliter-thin icy path while riding an elephant... No, only a miracle could make it succeed.
“Commander, what is...!”
The wizard who had made the impossible happen, got caught up in a small, sloppy explosion created by the Great Commander.
It was like a tsunami hitting a semiconductor factory mid-process.
Space twisted, broke, and tore repeatedly. The torn space suddenly shot toward the sky and then toward the ground, and the air that had been entering through my lungs was expelled out through my nostrils.
“...This is bad.”
No matter how much I thought about it, there was no way out. I had no knowledge of spatial magic.
I barely had enough ti to read books about lightning magic, so where would I have had the ti to study forbidden magic?
‘Honestly, dying would be much better. At least I could rest.’
Such pointless thoughts passed through my mind.
Whoosh!
At the sa ti, a refreshingly cool breeze brushed past my cheek, naturally, without warning.
...Wait a second.
A natural breeze just passed by? Where did it co from...
“Commander!!!”
A loud voice echoed. The voice belonged to one of the soldiers who had been frozen like a statue just monts ago. He didn’t even realize that ti and space had just twisted uncontrollably.
He ran straight toward the direction of the heatwave.
The heatwave.
The icy wind that seed to freeze everything suddenly turned back into a hot wind.
The distorted laws of physics had returned to normal. Ti started flowing again, and the vitality returned to my mind, which had thought everything was over.
The soldiers, whose bodies had aged drastically, returned to normal, and the torn, distorted space resud its place.
“...Hah, huh.”
The wind that passed by cleared the black smoke hanging over the hill.
Then, Bell and Grisha appeared in my sight.
“That was close, huh?”
“...Bell?”
Bell was cradled in Grisha’s arms.
He had lost his left leg and right arm and had severe burns all over his body.
...It seed that Grisha’s hastily deployed barrier had co too late.
The two were enveloped in a pale yellow shield, but the explosion had already covered Bell's body.
“Ah... Ahhh...!”
Grisha’s scream echoed inside the barrier.
The sky, completely unaware of the situation, shone with bright sunlight.
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