—One week later.
We were in a carriage on our way to the Thunder God Emperor Festival preliminaries.
Two carriages had been arranged to take us to the venue, and this one held me, Maria, Anastasia, and Merlin as our chaperone.
The other one had the two boys from our class.
“Still, a special match venue? We really didn’t need to go that far, did we?”
“Well, it is a festival.”
Merlin cleared her throat with a little ahem.
Today’s venue needed a lot of open ground, so they’d apparently borrowed the training grounds of the national Order of Magic Knights… which seemed like a lot.
Equipment-wise the academy’s own field would have done fine, but the whole student body was coming to watch, and that’s what settled it.
The main tournament, incidentally, would be held in the colosseum on academy grounds.
“And a carriage, too… Isn’t that a bit much? We could’ve just walked. It’s not far.”
“Being class representative is an honor. Those with ability receive treatment to match… and that, too, is part of an education.”
“Except in our class it turned into nobody wanting the job at all.”
Merlin gave a wry smile at that.
“There’ve been rather a lot of that sort lately. It’s a fine thing for peaceful times to continue, but peace does make people soft.”
We both shrugged at each other, good grief written all over it. Seems we came away from watching that spineless lot with exactly the same thought.
Then Maria, sitting beside me, spoke up.
“By the way, Ephthal? The other day, the way it worked out, you saved me. Right?”
“Yeah. That’s more or less how it worked out.”
“Being in someone’s debt, one-sided like that… it doesn’t sit right with me.”
She held up one finger.
“So. As thanks, I’ll grant you one favor. Anything. Go on, say it.”
“I mean, springing that on me out of nowhere…”
Where does this kid get it from… honestly.
Then again, ‘out of nowhere’ is extremely on-brand for Maria.
“…I’ve been thinking about it this whole time. How I’d pay you back. You saved my life, so obviously I have to get serious about it and… do all sorts of things. Anyway, that’s how it is, so I’ve made up my mind. You really can ask for anything.”
Maria’s expression was dead serious, and I shrugged. She really is earnest, huh.
“I didn’t save you because I wanted thanks. So I don’t need any of that.”
“But then I don’t get to settle up, do I? Having something handed to me one-sidedly… no thank you. If I leave it here I’ll never be able to look you in the eye again, and I hate that.”
Earnest… or maybe just hates losing.
And that was when Merlin turned a challenging little smile on her.
“Well now, student Maria? I could not help overhearing… you said you had made up your mind, did you? I do not admire the casual use of such words.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“For example. If Ephthal told you to share his bed, what would you intend to do? Making up one’s mind… can include that sort of thing as well. Which is precisely why one should not say it lightly.”
Maria took that in, then looked me dead in the eye.
“Hey, Ephthal. Do you want to sleep with me?”
And it wasn’t just me—Merlin and Anastasia both went “Eh!?”
“Do you… want to sleep with me?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Silence descended.
The air in here has gone strange, and Anastasia has frozen solid, and Merlin herself is doing an ‘Er, hang on!?’ face.
Good grief. I knew elves took their obligations seriously, but committing to that level over a thank-you? That’s a bit much. And Merlin—what exactly do you plan to do about this atmosphere you’ve created?
“No. My favor is not going to be something that backs you into a corner like that.”
Merlin cleared her throat once and tried again, her tone the very picture of a patient tutor.
“W-Well, then. Student Maria. That you are prepared to go as far as sharing a bed… I understand. However, what if it were not a single night? What if you were told to become his lover, or to marry him? Making up one’s mind means, in other words—”
Maria cut her off halfway and looked me dead in the eye again.
“Hey, Ephthal. Do you want me to be your lover?”
And once again, it wasn’t just me—Merlin and Anastasia both went “Ehhhh!?”
“Do you want me… to be your lover?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Silence descended again.
No, no, no. The air has gotten even stranger, and Anastasia has been frozen so long she’s basically statuary, and Merlin herself is doing an ‘Er, hang on, hang on!?’ face.
“Like I said, I’m not going to ask you for that. And besides, that’s not something that belongs in the category of thanks or favors in the first place.”
Maria shrugged, looking genuinely let down. “And I’d made up my mind, too…”
Why does she sound disappointed. How exactly am I supposed to take that attitude?
“By the way, Ephthal?”
“Yeah, I noticed. A freezing barrier.”
Right, joke’s over. I stood up immediately, tucked Maria under one arm, and dove out the window.
Merlin, for her part, took Anastasia and the driver up on the box under either arm and went out the front.
The instant we were clear, the magic went off, centered on the carriage.
Cold air rolled out and the carriage was swallowed in a hemisphere of ice in a heartbeat. Which is to say, the carriage we’d been riding in a moment ago—horses and all—was now sealed under a thin dome of ice.
Naturally, if we’d stayed inside, we’d have been sealed into an ice prison right along with it.
We were a little slow getting the driver out, so he’d passed out. He’d only lost consciousness, and no injuries… so, fine.
“M-Master! What’s happening!?”
“Ah, this is Level 5: Magic Eater… I think.”
Anastasia and Maria both went “Eh…” and went pale on the spot.
“Hey, hey, what’s that supposed to mean? Level 5 is seriously heavy magic, you know?”
“Specifically, it’s a curse barrier that strips every scrap of magic power out of whoever’s sealed inside the ice wall. Anyone half-trained ends up unable to cast for days. Merlin, mind if I ask you something?”
“Should you ask whether you may—if it is a thing Ephthal desires, then this Merlin has only two answers available to her. ‘Yes’ and ‘of course.’”
I can’t tell whether she’s joking or serious, so let’s skip right past that one.
“This Level 5 didn’t let me sense a thing until the instant before it fired. Just to be sure—same for you?”
“Indeed. And yet, while the difficulty of the spell itself is a mere Level 5… to move magic power that quietly takes a skilled person of some standing. Whether even the Four Emperors of old had such a practitioner… is questionable. I certainly could not do it.”
“Right. Casting a Level 5 solo is nothing much in itself… but that’s the part that catches.”
“Er, Ephthal? You two are talking like Level 5 is nothing at all, but casting one solo makes you an ace among aces even for a court mage, you know?”
“Then, might this be Sasha-sama at play?”
Merlin ignoring Maria completely is a little funny, and I almost laughed. Well, no time for that.
“Sasha’s hardly got the free time to be teasing us out here, though.”
“He does seem the type to enjoy a prank… but.”
True enough… I don’t know any other monster capable of this trick.
I ran a detection spell just in case, but there was no trace of anyone in the vicinity carrying magic power above a certain threshold. Nobody but Merlin.
A caster who can slip my detection… so it really is one of Sasha’s pranks?
“Anyway. It’s a good opportunity. Anastasia, Maria—watch closely.”
This spell has no habits, no color of its caster… not a trace. It’s uncanny.
It’s so textbook that building the formula this way would actually be difficult. Which brings me back to Sasha.
I couldn’t do this even if I aimed for it. Well… if Sasha set it up, there’s no clearer teaching material going, so let’s put it to use on my own grand-disciples.
I held my palm out toward the ice wall. Then, focusing, I started working on the formula laid into it.
“Master? What are you doing? Are you canceling it out with defensive magic?”
“No. I’m rewriting the formula that’s building the ice wall. Watch the flow of the magic power and you’ll see.”
“Um… I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying?”
The two of them tilted their heads in matching question marks, and Merlin gave a little laugh.
“Fledglings would not understand yet. But once one becomes a mage of our tier, intervening midway into an enemy’s formula is a perfectly ordinary occurrence.”
“…No, I genuinely don’t understand what you mean, Merlin-sama.”
“The gist is this. Fundamentally, magic is won by whoever fires first. The higher the difficulty, the longer the formula takes to build, and tactics are founded on that fact.”
“That part I understand. Master’s school is famous for its divine-speed barrages.”
“Just so,” Merlin said, nodding.
“My own byname in the academic world is the Thunder God of Flashing Chains. We prize speed above all. And there are occasions where intervening in a formula midair and collapsing it from within is faster than raising a high-level barrier to defend.”
“Formula intervention? Meaning…?”
“Meaning one does not use defensive magic to meet it head-on, force against force. One intervenes in the formula the enemy has assembled and makes a nuisance of oneself. Not merely weakening the spell—hit the right spot and you can force it to cancel outright.”
That’s a thing…? The two of them blinked at us.
“Well, obviously the other side fights back against your intervention with intervention of their own, in the form of defense. Anyway, worth seeing for your future studies. Do it like this and you can cancel an enemy attack without using defensive magic at all.”
So I intervened in the formula building the ice wall, overwrote it with one that generated flame instead, and steered the two into canceling each other.
The ice wall crumbled away before our eyes, and as it vanished, the mass of magic power left with nowhere to go dissolved into the air in glittering motes.
“See? Pretty, isn’t it. Anyway, that’s how you—”
““How you what!?””
They both came at me at once.
Well, this is more or less a secret art of the Ephthal school.
Fundamentally it comes up in Level 9 and 10 exchanges, in that tsume-shogi world where you’re fighting over fractions of a second.
It might well be a technique this era has no use for anymore… but still.
And it’s also very much a hit-and-hope move—the kind of thing where the other party goes, ‘Ah, I forgot to watch for that! You’d been sneaking in there!?’
And obviously, the caster built the formula themselves.
The one attacking has to start from formula analysis, so the caster already knows everything from the outset… the original caster has a vastly easier time blocking the intervention.
Which means that unless the skill gap is enormous, it only works as a surprise. Then again, being a surprise is exactly why it’s devastating when it lands.
“Anyway, I’ve been teaching Anastasia and Maria formula construction properly from the foundations, so if you go step by step you’ll get to this eventually.”
Right after I said it, Merlin nodded, proud as anything.
“Yes. Just like me… mm.”
“Still… this is bad.”
I’d dispelled the barrier, but the horses had passed out with their magic power drained. It amounted to having their life force siphoned off… so healing magic wouldn’t touch it.
“Yes, it’ll have to be on foot.”
I shook my head at that.
“No, that’s not it—I mean the other two.”
The Thunder God Emperor Festival preliminaries.
Eleven teams total were entered: five classes from the second years, five from the third years, and among the first years, only our class.
Add the student council, who get a special slot, and that made twelve.
With that many, you need to thin the field in the preliminaries before the main tournament can start.
The top four teams advance, so of course only four survive. Incidentally, the preliminaries apparently don’t require all five members.
There’s a reason for that. They’re young students, so once in a while somebody’s talent suddenly wakes up and they shoot forward in a matter of months.
And when some unmarked student who’s grown like that turns up as a sort of secret weapon, it’s entertaining. It gets the crowd going.
Some of that is Merlin’s own taste, but in any case, to stage that dark-horse feeling, they allow the preliminaries to be run with four.
And it was only ever allowed, originally. But the average of four players’ preliminary scores gets converted to a five-player figure—multiplied by five, in other words—to produce the team’s score. So somewhere along the way it became standard practice for teams to field their best four.
So we arrived at the venue and Maria went straight to the entry desk, and—
“I’m telling you, we were attacked!”
“Rules are rules.”
Well, as expected—our two remaining classmates had taken the spell head-on, and like the horses, they’d had their magic power drained and were unconscious.
They’d be useless for a while, which made registering them as players impossible too. Hence Maria going around and around with the staffer at the reception tent. Though, well… ‘rules are rules’ is a hard thing to argue with.
“Hey, Merlin? Either way, we need four minimum to get through today, right?”
“Five for the finals and semifinals, but at this point in time… that is correct, yes.”
Maria came back over and let out a sigh. “Haa…”
“No good. There’s no talking to them. I’ve got one last-resort person in mind, but getting them signed up today, right now, is impossible… I’m done looking for members. Nothing we can do.”
And then everyone’s eyes, mine included, turned to a certain person.
Merlin took all those looks and swept her long silver hair back with a great theatrical whoosh, like she’d been waiting for this.
“Well, if you all expect it of me to that degree, then it cannot be helped. Yes, this Merlin—”
She fell silent.
Then she drew in a great, great breath, and said this.
“—shall have no choice but to enter in a student uniform and a mask! In cosplay!”
Which… yeah. There isn’t any other way, so.
But Merlin… why do you look so happy about it. You look like you’re in your twenties, you know. Are you really going to go through with cosplaying a student uniform?
“Merlin. I’m sure you know this, but you’re only there to make up the numbers. You’re not allowed to do anything except forfeit.”
If Merlin actually competed, that would be cheating in every sense. Well, that goes without saying.
And so… I let out a thoroughly dejected sigh.