"You're hesitating," Hishiri Adashino observed, her voice cutting through the chaos. "We cannot risk the lives of everyone on this ship on a whim."
"Captain," Wayland said, pointing toward Elena on the forward deck. "How much ammunition do those guns have left? How much magical energy do Elena and the other students have? Aside from you, the highest-ranked magus here is at the 'Ritual' level. We are maintaining a 'Pride' level ritual array while simultaneously launching offensive spells. Who do you think will run dry first: our reserves, or the thirty thousand crows in the sky?"
Hishiri remained silent for several beats, her gaze fixed on the overwhelming numbers of the swarm. Finally, she asked, "What exactly is your plan?"
"I need exactly ten seconds of relative silence."
"So you want me to silence our loudest weapons?" Hishiri's brow furrowed, her voice low and heavy with the weight of the decision. "Ten seconds... from the moment our fire ceases to the moment the swarm reaches our canopy... yes, ten seconds is within the safety margin of the Ring of the Seven. It shouldn't be enough time for them to breach the barrier."
"Thank you, Captain," Wayland said with a firm nod.
"This is a last resort, Wayland. Don't make me regret it."
Hishiri keyed her microphone. "Amelia Morse, cease fire for ten seconds. On my mark."
"Captain?" Amelia's confused voice crackled through the headset.
"That is an order. Do not question it. Execute!"
"Understood!"
The thunderous roar of the machine guns vanished in an instant. The sudden silence was jarring, causing every magus on the deck to stumble for a heartbeat, their eyes darting toward the weapon stations in confusion.
And then, as Hishiri watched with a look of growing astonishment, Wayland used a basic amplification spell to let out a series of harsh, rasping crow cries.
The diving crows suddenly pulled up, their momentum shifting in an instant.
It felt as though time itself had stopped.
"Everyone, cease your attack!"
Wayland raised his right hand high, his voice echoing across the Ocean Phantom with the power of the amplification.
The members of the twelve teams stood frozen, their attention locked onto the youth standing at the edge of the bridge.
Above him, the previously chaotic swarm had fallen into a deathly silence.
The world had returned to its natural state so abruptly that for a moment, the earlier battle felt like nothing more than a shared hallucination.
Then, the silence was broken by another series of 'Caw-caw-caw' sounds from Wayland's lips.
Hishiri's mouth twitched. The scene before her was so far beyond the scope of her common sense that she wasn't sure whether to be deeply impressed or profoundly disturbed.
After a moment, she keyed the ship-wide intercom. "All teams, cease fire. Maintain defensive posture only."
To the onlookers, it looked like a bizarre conversation between a man and a murder of crows. In reality, the dialogue was far more structured:
"Are you also crows who serve the Supreme Sovereign?"
"Who are you? How do you know that name?!"
"Know it? Two thousand years ago, I fought alongside the Sovereign. Wherever we went, the corpses of our enemies littered the land."
"You lie! There is no record of you in our collective memory!"
"Because I wasn't human then. I was a crow, just like you. In your memory, the one who taught you your formations and your magecraft... that was me. Now, disperse! This is nothing more than a two-thousand-year-old illusion. You are being used by a shadow of the past. Wake from this dream and return to your lives."
A ripple of agitation went through the swarm.
A deafening cacophony once again filled the North Atlantic air.
On the deck, the magi tensed, their hands glowing with various elemental circles as they prepared for a renewed assault.
"Don't be nervous," Wayland said with a calm smile, waving a hand toward the sky.
Once the crows realized they were caught in the resonance of a fading illusion, the spell's hold on them shattered. Their red eyes returned to their natural state, and they began to remember their own instincts.
One by one, the crows offered a final cry of farewell before fanning out in every direction, disappearing into the vast blue of the horizon.
It was a sight that many on the Ocean Phantom would likely never forget.
Wayland had resolved the crisis in a way that defied all logical explanation.
Hishiri Adashino thought back to some of the things Lord Barthomeloi had said about this youth. After a moment of silence, a small, subtle smile appeared on her lips.
She adjusted her glasses and fixed Wayland with a focused gaze. "So... care to offer an explanation for what we just witnessed?"
Wayland realized this was going to be the most difficult part of his plan.
He scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "You probably won't believe me, Captain, but after waking up from that illusion, I found I could understand the language of the crows. It's like I spent a decade studying for a professional certification in Crow-speak and suddenly passed the exam."
Hishiri shot him a dry look. "Since you already know I won't believe that, why don't you try offering a reason that actually carries some weight?"
"Well... Pascal might be able to explain it better than I can." Wayland pointed toward Pascal, who was standing near Louis in the crowd. "Pascal, you've read that paper, right? 'On the Authenticity of Illusion-Constructed Worlds' by Professor Greiseg Craig?"
"The one from the General Fundamentals department?" Pascal looked surprised. "That's a highly specialized text. Most magi only look it up if they're actively studying advanced phantasmagoria. How do you know about it?"
"Since I was a complete novice to the world of magecraft before my arrival at the Clock Tower, I've been spending my free time catching up on the archives. I've read quite a bit of the technical literature."
Pascal offered a thumb-up of genuine respect. "I'm impressed! Most students wouldn't touch a paper that dry unless they were forced to for their senior thesis. Even the ones in General Fundamentals usually avoid their own professors' technical journals if they can help it."
'Are the students in General Fundamentals really that blunt?' Wayland wondered.
He offered a small smile and turned back to Hishiri. "The core argument of that paper is that the higher the level of an illusion, the more the constructed world approaches absolute reality. In some cases, it becomes reality within the target's perception.
"The magus who cast that spell two thousand years ago was a being of incredible power. A person caught in such an illusion loses their connection to the modern world's common sense. Without external intervention, you truly believe that the illusion is the absolute truth.
"I became a crow. Therefore, I naturally possessed the ability to understand and communicate in their language. Within that world's rules, that was a fundamental truth. My consciousness simply retained that skill even after I was pulled back to reality."
"You have incredible luck," Pascal noted. As an illusionist himself, he understood the implications better than anyone. He had read the paper, but to construct a world so perfect that its rules bled into the target's soul... there were very few magi throughout history capable of such a feat.
"The probability of that happening is smaller than winning the lottery. In the modern era, you'd likely need a 'Grand' ranked magus to even attempt such a transition."
"But to cross the species barrier... that's just insane," Louis added, his voice filled with a mixture of doubt and envy. Even if he didn't see much use for 'Crow-speak,' the idea of learning a language that easily was every student's dream.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]