CH 9

3-9 Is The Enemy of an Enemy, an Ally

For the first time in my life, I was in a foreign country under a clear, cloudless sky. I stretched out my relaxed body in the pleasant sunshine. I rubbed my eyelids as if I had just woken up from sleep and looked up. A breeze that shook my bangs blew across my face. The bewildered screams coming from the figures I had followed with my eyes were gradually taking on a tone of excitement.

Three days had passed since I had been assigned to teach the magic of flight to Paula, the girl I had met in Raphia.

“…… Sure, it’d be more convenient to be able to fly, but will it work that well?”

“It doesn’t work right away, that’s why you have to practice.”

“That’s true, but ……”.

At first, Paula was reluctant to agree, but when I explained the necessity of the escape plan from Raphia that Hazel had mentioned, she broke down like a child who has just eaten something she doesn’t like.

The task of escorting hundreds of inhabitants with only four people would probably be much more difficult than we had imagined.

In terms of distance alone, it would be a two-day journey for an army march, but with women, children and the elderly, it wouldn’t go as planned.

Furthermore, the path too. Impact of the destruction of the border had a variety of negative effects on the earth and the magical air was poisonous to those who had no resistance. The paved public road has turned into a bad road and since we don’t have any knowledge of the land, we have to leave all the guidance to Paula. Whether or not she could fly would make all the difference in the world.

“Sage! Look!”

Immediately after waving her hands in the air, Paula began a vertical drop from above my head. The magic is probably still incomplete and she is squinting thinly as if she can’t stand the pressure.

The magic of flight is difficult. Even though it belongs to the high level of magic that manipulates the invisible element called wind, it’s still very difficult.

Even if you don’t have a talent for magic, the sight of a bird soaring freely in the sky is something that everyone yearns to experience at least once. It’s a magic that is synonymous with wizards.

However, most of the time, while maintaining the wind that lifts the entire body, it changes direction up and down, left and right, changes your posture, rapidly accelerates and decelerates, turns your eyes to the difficult task of not dancing wildly, increases speed and altitude, and you have to simultaneously deploy protective magic from there, another magic ……. The degree of freedom is so high that there is no end to what you can see above.

Perhaps, the figure floating in the sky is taken too lightly and the difficulty of actually doing it from the appearance is not exposed. One after another, learning applicants are crushed by reality. Even the court mages of Fermina vomit blood behind the scenes of glamorous events, because it’s an extremely troublesome magic.

–It should’ve been, but this girl, Paula, had an uncanny ability to endure.

The thick magic of this land. Even if you subtract the fact that she’s familiar with the air land, she still has talent. Because she survived that incident and defeated the monsters that even the holy knight candidates couldn’t defeat on their own.

“… She’s good.”

Chris said that when looking at the magic power of others, her cheeks loosen without her realizing it. As I continued to look up at the sky, her speed that should have slowed down began to accelerate as she neared the ground. My suspicion turned to certainty when I saw that Paula’s eyelids were completely closed as she fell.

“Paula!”

At the same time as she fell, magic power covered her entire body. Several kinds of magic gushed out from the palm of her hand that was stretched above her head, blowing away the wind magic that covered her as she descended, enveloping her body and making her float gently in the air. I caught her body floating in the air and checked her complexion.

“Hey, are you okay, ……?”

The voice of concern was cut off there. Her glance seems to be faint and if you look closely, there’s a slight gap in her eyelids. Whether she noticed this expression or couldn’t hold it in, she stopped acting and let out a laugh.

“Ku…Ahahaha! That worried face—–“

With a hateful laugh, Paula fell through the gap between my hands. She shouldn’t have had time to use wind magic shortly after she reached the ground, but she seems to have managed to do something by somersaulting. She’s a lucky girl.

“What’re you doing? It’s dangerous!”

“No, I was just angry……”

When I stepped down near Paula, who was ranting on the ground, the anger that had made my hair stand on end disappeared and she quickly held out her palm to me.

“Hey, let me have a drink of that. The little bottle you handed to Chris. It’ll help you get rid of fatigue, right?”

I wondered if she had spotted it when I handed it to Chris in the infirmary. She pointed at my waist as if to say that it was useless to play dumb.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“…… It’s not a panacea. If you use magic too much while your mental strength is depleted, you’ll eventually become a cripple.”

“Well…… Let’s take a break and have some lunch. I’m a little tired…….”

Having said that, Paula laid down with her back on the ground.

The language and character may not make you feel that way, but the fatigue that seeps from the edges of her mind is still hard to ignore. It doesn’t matter how talented she is, she’s been using magic for so long that it can’t be helped.

I haven’t heard the exact age of this girl, but unlike Marie, I’m sure she’s just as young as she looks. Taking into account the fact that Hazel, who was a boy, seems to be her brother, it’s possible that under the rules, she’s not even allowed to wield a sword.

“Hey Sage. Will you accept his request?”

Paula lying on her back with her hand on her forehead muttered something like a soliloquy. The tone of voice was heavy, probably not only because of fatigue.

“I’ll accept the first one. What we’re doing now is part of the preparations, so we won’t make a decision until a little later……”

“And the second?”

The pursuit without pause was probably because that was, of course, the real question.

“I don’t know about that.”

“I see, well, I’m sorry……”

In the end, he never talked about the request again, nor did he tell us how or why.

“We, who’re called gods, also have various troublesome circumstances.”

Lute said so, but I couldn’t understand why I was told to ‘Kill a dragon’ and I couldn’t immediately say yes. Since it’s unclear whether or not we’ll come across each other in the first place, the current amount of information left me no choice but to be silent.

“…… If it’s okay with what I know, do you want me to explain more about those two?”

“No, I think it’s something you’re not comfortable talking about.”

“It’s not like that. I’m sure you really feel uncomfortable saying no, but there’s a reason I want to say it.”

“I can tell from the atmosphere and the magic that there is a reason, but I don’t understand what the request is.”

“Aside from my older brother, I don’t know about Lute. Then, after returning and joining Chris and Marie ──.”

Paula laughed and tried to get up, but her feet shook with a sound like the rumbling of the earth.

“The enemy?”

“Ahh…….”

Sage who was posing ahead of Paula let out a dumb sound. A thin line of sight from his dry, light-tinted eyes clung to the gate without force.

“What’s that ……?”

The iron gates, whose weight I couldn’t even begin to guess, slowly began to open, making a heavy bass sound that shook the pit of my stomach. Eventually, Marie and Chris slipped out of the gap in the slightly open door. Marie, who was about to come out, noticed the door that hadn’t closed by itself, turned around and pushed it shut as if she were closing the door of a house.

“You know, you keep talking about Lute, but is the girl okay? Isn’t it strange……?”

“You’re being rude. Marie is a smart muscle.”

“…………”

I think I’m not very good at diverting the conversation. My conscience hurts even more because Marie runs up with an innocent look.

“Thank you for your support. Lunch is ready, shall I prepare it right away?”

“Yes, I think so. We were just talking about taking a break and going home.”

The reason was that Paula was the only one who possessed the magical device to open and close the gates, but now that Marie had physically solved the problem, there was no need to be reserved anymore.

“Marie, the castle gate, though. ……”

Paula spoke bitterly and Marie, who had unloaded, opened her mouth after two or three blinks.

“Shouldn’t I have opened it……?”

“I didn’t assume that you’d open it manually. …… No, I didn’t mind you doing so but, well whatever.”

“I’m sorry. I heard that it takes magic to open the gates, so I thought it would be better to open them manually.”

“Yeah…..I’m saved……”

Paula managed to swallow the fact that she was arguing the wrong point and shut her mouth tightly. It’s a door that opens from the outside, so if there was no handle, we might have been locked in, but for now, let’s keep quiet.

“….So what’re you making?”

“We can’t do anything too elaborate here, so we’re just going to skewer the fish we caught.”

As soon as she said that, they both put down the pots they were carrying. Marie opened that door with one hand, but I guess it’s no longer worth bringing up.

“Paula, can I have some of that dead tree?”

“I don’t need to be asked, but I think it’s okay. The owner doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Then I won’t hesitate.”

Collecting dead trees from the ground is not so good because of the dust that gets caught in them. On the other hand, if you take a dead tree that is still standing, it’s easier to get rid of the extra stuff.

As I raised my right hand to the nearby tree, Paula sneaked up on me.

“…… it’s nothing interesting. Just chopping wood.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Just do it.”

Many wizards have a researcher’s temperament. Rather, they can’t do it otherwise. The more wizards who are able to combine their qualities with hard work, the more curious they become.

“…………”

When I looked at her, I saw that Chris had also stopped preparing the meal and was watching. It’s really hard to do, but I gave up and put all my strength into my right hand.

With a short sound of wind, the wind magic shot out and cut off the trunk of the thick tree I had aimed at from the root. The passing wind changed its shape and tore through the space again and again, as if to support the broken trunk. The wind blew even louder at the end, carrying a bundle of firewood that was chopped into pieces and delivered it to Sage.

“Hmm… wind magic is great. You can’t see it from above, but It has a lot of applications”

“Is there any reason why you didn’t use more than one wind blade at a time?”

“It’s easier, but it also wastes a lot of magic power. ….”

Each of them seems to have a deep reason, but there’s no particular purpose other than temperance.

“But it’s no good. It requires a lot of magic power to control the wind that’s ejected and it’s hard to use any other magic during that time.”

“It was fun to watch though.”

“I guess so. Maybe we can make a little money from the spectacle.”

I lifted one dead tree’s worth of firewood and tossed the ones that looked good to Marie. She tied the rest up with string and held it out to Paula.

“You’ll need the rest inside, right?”

“Yes, yes. Thank you for making my life easier.”

I cast a fire spell on the pile of wood. As the sound of the wood burning became louder and louder, the savory smell and the fat dripping from the fish on the skewers stimulated a hunger I hadn’t really been aware of.

“…………”

I sat down without anyone’s help and the silence surrounded only by the sound of the fire drowned the atmosphere. It was time to start talking.

“Do you two have a minute?”

“Yes, what’s it?”

Chris replied cheerfully and Marie proceeded to prepare the meal in silence.

“Paula is going to tell me more about Hazel and Lute.”

“Is that so……. Oh, let’s eat.”

Chris, who had been handed a skewer, repeatedly made the motion of biting into it hotly, parting her lips and blowing on it. As I separated the words and locked my gaze on her, Marie offered me the same thing as if she had been watching me.

“Here you go.”

“Hmm. Sankyu(Thank you).”

Chris looked at the exchange between Sage and Marie, who had slightly different tones of voice and a complicated expression appeared on her face through the fish.

“……… So, to the point.”

Paula swallowed her breath, which had been disrupted by the training and started to speak. She looked around to get consent to listen.

“Tell me about it. It’s hard to act without knowing who the client is.”

“All right. He’s a…”

“By “he,” do you mean me?”

The wind calmed down and a chill like a snake crawling caressed my neck. I put my hand on the hilt of my sword and turned around.

At the end of my line of sight, Lute, who was the subject of the story, was standing with a smile.