Sora spent most of the voyage deepening his understanding of the world using books from the library, so he knew that Albion was a country floating in the sky.
Its territory was supposedly even larger than Tristain's, and the enormous floating island was saturated with high-grade wind-element magic crystals, which allowed such a massive landmass to remain suspended in midair.
Just as the water spirit dwelled within Tristain, the wind spirits were said to inhabit the air currents between Albion and the continent of Halkeginia.
These wind spirits, able to move freely through the sky, were likely the freest among all spirits. Fortunately for humanity, they preferred the fierce high-altitude winds and rarely played in human lands—otherwise, the entire human world would be in constant peril.
Sora, Louise, and Wardes were heading to Albion to retrieve Anrietta's letter from the crown prince.
To reach Albion, they needed to take an airship driven by flight magic. After traveling a day and a half together, they arrived at La Rochelle, a port city in Tristain from which ships departed for Albion.
La Rochelle was a city born of magic.
A Square-class earth mage had spent thirty years carving rooms out of solid rock and opening streets through the stone, creating this sky-facing port city from nothing.
Because of his monumental achievement, the kingdom granted La Rochelle to that great mage as a fief. Half of the city's tax income went to the royal family, and the other half to the mage's house.
"What an amazing person," Sora murmured, looking at the bustling streets and trying to imagine this place as nothing more than bare plateau rock.
To reshape nature single-handedly like this was something only a truly great mage—with iron will—could accomplish.
By the time they reached La Rochelle, it was already afternoon.
Passersby stared with a mixture of curiosity and fear at Wardes' imposing griffin.
The three of them first found an inn and settled in.
"The airship to Albion departs tomorrow night. We'll rest until then," Wardes said after arranging the rooms and buying the tickets.
"Got it. You're the expert here anyway," Sora replied casually.
"Hey, Louise, let's go look around," Sora said, turning to her.
"Oh?! Okay—okay!" Louise said, brightening at once as she followed him out of the inn, leaving Wardes alone.
The polite smile Wardes had maintained on his face vanished the moment the two left.
A cloaked woman approached and sat down beside him.
"It appears you failed to keep Louise close, Viscount Wardes," the woman remarked with a small smile.
Wardes frowned and glanced at her. "Didn't I tell you not to approach me here, Fouquet?"
The woman carelessly removed her cloak, revealing a beautiful face framed by long blue hair.
It was Fouquet—the thief who, by rights, should have been imprisoned in the royal dungeons.
"That swordsman might become troublesome. Want us to take care of him?" Fouquet asked with an easy smile, rubbing her hand across her neck in a cutting gesture.
Wardes considered it.
With a Triangle-class earth mage like Fouquet assisting him in a place like La Rochelle, whose terrain naturally favored earth magic, they could probably kill the swordsman with ninety to a hundred percent certainty.
But if the swordsman died, would Louise abandon the mission?
If that happened, he wouldn't get the chance to see Prince Wales.
Wardes shook his head slightly. "Not yet. We wait until Wales is located."
"Is that so…" Fouquet sounded disappointed.
"You have a personal grudge against that swordsman. See that it doesn't interfere with our plans," Wardes said, giving her a warning look.
"How would I dare? The one above us is… Void."
The final word was spoken very softly, laced with both reluctance and fear.
Fouquet downed her drink and slipped away from Wardes.
"I won't kill him," she muttered to herself. "But roughing him up a bit is fine."
"Do as you like," Wardes replied coolly, sipping from his own glass.
Meanwhile, Sora and Louise wandered leisurely through La Rochelle's streets.
As a major port, the city was no less lively than the royal capital, and it featured many special imports from Albion.
They saw all kinds of wind-stone-based toys and tools:
A heavy blanket that allowed a person to float slightly (woven through with numerous wind stones);
A stone cylinder that produced a soothing breeze (powered by a wind stone at its base);
And, displayed behind glass, an extremely expensive luxury outfit that allowed the wearer to fly—priced at a staggering fifty gold coins.
The shopkeeper explained that it had been made in cooperation with spirits, and that the "stones" woven into it weren't mere wind stones, but wind magic crystals.
Even in Albion itself, very few such garments were ever sold.
Sora looked from the flying outfit to his own purse with a wry smile. He had less than ten thousand in savings.
Even though Louise came from a ducal family, her personal monthly allowance only amounted to a few hundred gold coins.
I'm really broke, Sora thought.
He tore his gaze away from the flight clothes and gently tugged Louise's sleeve, pulling her out of the shop before he could be any more tempted.
He couldn't afford the flying outfit, but Sora still picked up a few practical items.
He bought three single-use enhanced wind tubes—devices that could unleash a powerful gust strong enough to blow a person off their feet—for fifty gold coins each.
He also purchased a pair of boots inlaid with wind stones that offered a degree of buoyancy, making the wearer more agile. Those cost him a painful thousand gold coins.
Louise, for her part, bought a few small accessories and trinkets.
The two of them headed back from the commercial district with smiles on their faces, strolling side by side under the setting sun.
Behind them, Fouquet followed quietly, a crooked smile on her lips.
Once they left the busier streets and reached a large square, the number of people around dropped sharply.
"Jerut Ess Ess Harem." [Earth Golem Summon]
Hidden in the shadow of a nearby building, Fouquet chanted the spell with full power.
The ground in the square began to bulge.
Clods of earth and chunks of stone rose and merged, forming a ten-meter-tall earth giant looming over Sora and Louise, its bulk blotting out the evening light.
"An earth giant?!" Sora drew his sword and stepped in front of Louise.
"Who's behind this? The city lord? Or someone else?" he muttered, unable to think of anyone who would target them here.
The bedrock beneath La Rochelle was far harder than the soil of the plains around the Academy.
As a result, the earth giants formed here were coated in a layer of rock-like armor.
Even a wind-fire compound Fireball couldn't easily crush them.
This was truly home ground for earth mages.
From her concealed vantage point, Fouquet manipulated the earth giant at a distance.
The towering creature looked down at the tiny figures of Sora and Louise, then drew back its massive fist and swung it downward toward Sora.
The earth giant's movements were slow and cumbersome. Sora grabbed Louise and ran back about ten meters, narrowly avoiding the crashing blow. The ground trembled violently when the fist struck.
The earth giant lumbered forward in two long strides, passed over them, and then turned to plant itself directly in their path.
The bystanders scattered in a panic, fleeing in all directions.
"Louise, hide at the side and prepare Void," Sora said. "I'll hold it off."
"O-okay, I understand," Louise replied.
She broke away from Sora and ran to the corner of a building at the edge of the square.
Sora raised his head to glare at the three-story-tall monster. "Hey, big idiot, you can't hit me," he taunted.
Fouquet ignored "Zero Louise" and focused the earth giant's attacks entirely on Sora.
"Boom, boom, boom!"
Each stomp and punch shook the entire square.
Relying on the body strengthened by Gandálfr's blessing and the water spirit's baptism, Sora dodged left and right, always just outside the reach of the giant's clumsy strikes.
Before long, however, there wasn't a single intact patch of ground left in the square—only crater after crater.
Fouquet prepared a backup spell in secret, pointing toward Sora's feet as he moved.
"G Earth Move." [Earthquake]
Just as Sora evaded another blow and was about to leap aside, the ground beneath him suddenly lurched and shook like a mattress being snapped.
"What—?!"
Losing his footing, Sora went down hard, thrown off balance by the trembling earth.
The giant's massive fist came crashing down from above, growing larger and larger in Sora's vision.
Try dodging this, swordsman, Fouquet thought.
"Fifty gold coins!" Sora cursed, jamming his left hand into his coat and whipping out a cylinder, which he pointed to his left.
"Bang!"
A violent gust erupted, and Sora was blown sideways by the recoil.
The earth giant's fist smashed into the ground less than three meters from where he'd been.
The shock made the earth jump, bouncing Sora up and forward.
Carried by the wind tube's remaining force, he tumbled twenty meters across the square.
He tossed aside the now-spent tube and raised his sword with both hands, pointing it at the earth giant.
A glorified hair dryer… but it did its job, he thought.
Fouquet urged the earth giant forward.
It stepped in and tried to stomp Sora flat.
Sora sprinted around the square, dodging each earth-shattering step. When he saw an opening, he'd dash in to swing at the giant's feet.
Delflinger was sharp enough to slice through one of its ankles—but the damaged earth giant simply absorbed nearby soil and stone to repair itself.
Unless it was destroyed by a sufficiently powerful spell, it would continue regenerating.
Louise's Explosion should be enough, Sora decided.
He stopped wasting energy on attacks and focused entirely on evasion.
The civilians had all fled by now, leaving only the earth giant and Sora locked in a desperate dance of predator and prey, weaving and clashing in a fifty-meter-wide arena like beasts in a Roman coliseum.
Fouquet was irritated.
The man's movements were noticeably more agile than the last time they had fought.
Even after so long, her earth giant still hadn't managed to land a decisive hit.
"Huff… huff…"
Sora's relentless exertion took its toll. The wounds he'd received in his duel with Wardes reopened, blood seeping through the white bandages and staining them red.
His movements inevitably slowed.
Now, Fouquet thought.
The earth giant paused, then let out a bestial roar.
The rocks composing its right hand began to shudder violently, as if something inside were struggling to burst out.
A massive punch surged toward Sora.
He retreated as far as he could while simultaneously swinging Delflinger forward with all his strength.
"Boom, boom, boom!"
The earth giant's right hand detonated, sending chunks of rock flying in all directions.
The blast radius covered tens of square meters. Sora, caught within it, was pelted by debris, leaving his body covered in bruises and shallow cuts.
Then the remainder of the giant's fist slammed into his blade.
Delflinger bit into the stony mass but couldn't completely sever it.
The tremendous impact traveled clean through the sword and into Sora's body, hurling him backward.
He crashed into the wall of a house bordering the square, smashing into it with a sickening thud and leaving his body half-buried in the stone. Blood spilled from his lips.
Such a reckless attack had fully destroyed the earth giant's right arm, reducing it to drifting dust that crumbled and fell away.
But you shouldn't be able to move anymore, swordsman, Fouquet thought.
Finish him, golem.
The earth giant, immune to pain, didn't slow down.
Even without its right arm, it remained mobile. It slowly lifted its right leg and aimed a crushing kick at Sora where he was embedded in the wall.
"Explosion!!" Louise shouted.
At last, she finished the long incantation and unleashed her spell at the final possible moment.
A shaft of white light shot from Louise's wand and buried itself in the earth giant's back.
"Boom, boom, boom!!"
The violent explosion ripped through the earth giant from within.
The ten-meter-tall body burst outward, the rock and soil pulverized into dust that scattered in all directions on the shockwave.
"Cough, cough—"
Hidden in the darkness, Fouquet doubled over, coughing up mouthfuls of blood as the destruction of her earth giant struck her with vicious backlash.
That was… Louise the Zero?!
She stared in disbelief at the scene—the white light launched from Louise's wand demolishing her powerful third-tier spell.
In La Rochelle's unique environment, the earth giant should have been twice as sturdy as normal. Yet it had been obliterated in a single blast.
Thinking of Wardes' strange fixation on Louise, Fouquet began to understand.
"Are they all… monsters?" she muttered.
She decided not to continue the attack. Turning to flee, she slipped away, relying on her years of experience as a thief to evade the city guards' search.
Louise ran to Sora, face bloodless with fear.
"H-hey, Sora—are you okay? I-I'll pull you out!" her voice trembled, on the verge of tears.
She grabbed at his legs awkwardly and tugged, working to unwind him from the wall.
"Ow, ow, ow—that hurts," Sora groaned, forcing a wry smile. "Let's… wait for the others."
Louise's shoulders sagged.
"You did great. If it weren't for you, I probably would've been pounded to death just now, Louise," Sora said, praising her seriously.
"Really?" Louise looked up, expression caught somewhere between proud, doubtful, and hopeful.
"Really. You're already very strong," Sora affirmed.
Louise puffed out her chest. "Well, of course. I am amazing."
"So Sora can rely on me more from now on," she added quickly.
"Heh." Sora couldn't help but laugh. She really thought of that on her own?
"Alright. Your strength is my strength, Louise. I won't hold back from relying on you."
"Mm!" she replied, pleased.
The city guards eventually arrived.
They knocked away the broken masonry around Sora with the flats of their swords, loosening him carefully and lowering him to the ground.
After that, the two were taken in and asked to give detailed testimony about the attack.
Since they had never actually seen the caster, all they could do was describe what happened as clearly as possible.
Louise's Void Explosion, however, was written off as a Triangle-class flame spell, and no one pressed them further on it.
The pair was released around noon the next day.
When they returned to the inn, they found Wardes waiting with a stern expression.
"We're on a mission. Don't cause trouble," he said coldly.
"We were the ones attacked. It's strange too—who would target us like that?" Sora asked with an innocent look.
"I don't know. Will you be able to travel tonight?" Wardes asked.
"Yeah. I'm just a bit drained. I'll have to rely on you, Captain," Sora replied.
His injuries had worsened; bandages covered his body, and his face was pale.
Wardes smiled with quiet pride. "Don't worry. I'm a Square-class mage. A magician like the one who attacked you—I could take on two of them."
"Good. That's reassuring," Sora said before heading back to his room.
Louise glanced at Wardes, hesitated as if wanting to say something, then hurried after Sora to tend to his wounds.
Wardes also returned to his own room.
He removed his hat and sank into a chair.
"You did well, Fouquet," he said.
From the corner of the room, Fouquet stepped out, offering a playful smile. "Well, this is La Rochelle, after all."
"But Louise's magic… the one that shattered my earth giant—that was terrifying," she added, a trace of fear in her eyes.
Wardes' gaze sharpened. "Louise, huh? Just as I thought."
"Don't breathe a word about her to anyone. Understood?" Wardes said, face hardening.
Fouquet studied him. "What about Lord Cromwell?"
"Don't tell him either," Wardes replied coldly.
Fouquet froze for a moment, then let out a low, incredulous laugh. "So that's how it is. I see… Let's see where this takes you, Wardes."
"Hmph." Wardes snorted, pouring himself another drink in silence.