[155] The Second Encounter (4)
When Marsha fired the acoustic cannon again, Shirone clapped both hands over his ears. In that moment, nothing was more effective than simply covering them.
"Waaaargh!"
But Shirone's plan spectacularly misfired.
A sound cannon of a power far beyond the previous one punched through the back of his hand. If he hadn't covered his ears, his eardrums would have burst.
"Phew, don't underestimate your sister. I may not have gone to the Academy, but I can at least handle sequenced spells."
By the magic society's standards Marsha was an outsider who hadn't attended a magic school, but she was a veteran who'd taken down countless mages. It wasn't an exaggeration to say she'd learned the practical theories of combat through experience.
"The Banshee's Wail."
As Marsha set the Spirit Zone vibrating, a strange, drawn-out tone filled the room.
Shirone sprang up in alarm. He couldn't see—the world went pitch-black, as if someone had smeared ink across his retinas.
'What is this? What kind of magic is this?'
Sound mages travel the world collecting all manner of noises. Among them, the Banshee is a winged humanoid monster from highlands, noted for its female upper body. It fires a sharp ultrasonic frequency that blinds prey before devouring it; Marsha had used sound magic to replicate that exact register.
Shirone grew anxious. He couldn't use the Spirit Zone to locate his opponent.
The cramped room made the echoes dizzying, and Marsha, as the epicenter of the waves, could only be perceived by sound.
While Shirone's senses were being numbed, Marsha had already come up beside him. She thrust her palm toward his ear. At that distance, a direct hit from the acoustic cannon would stop his brain from functioning.
'Goodbye, Shirone.'
At that instant Shirone's Zone shuddered violently. Marsha—alert to the danger with sonar-like sensitivity—immediately stepped back. At the same time a blinding burst of light exploded outward, hurling the room's fixtures aside.
Shirone squeezed his eyes shut and whipped lasers in every direction.
Sweeping the lasers quickly wouldn't have much effect, but Marsha—who had confirmed their power at the first gate—crouched down beneath a desk.
Hidden behind cover, Marsha couldn't see ahead. But using her sonar search she could sense exactly what Shirone was doing.
'Huh?'
Her heart fell. Shirone was training a photon cannon point-blank at her.
How—? In such a small room, the echoing Banshee's Wail shouldn't simply vanish.
Marsha remembered how the lasers had wrapped the room.
'No way… did he cut the sound?'
Sound vibrations aren't easily disrupted by ordinary magic. But with a high-efficiency, energy-amplifying laser, it was possible to slice through sound waves.
Marsha didn't understand lasers, but Shirone knew the principles of sound. That difference in practical knowledge was precisely why academies teach so many disciplines beyond one's major.
"Damn…!"
Shirone flung his eyes wide and fired the photon cannon where Marsha stood. At the same moment Marsha sprang out like a flying squirrel and rolled aside.
KRAAANG!
A heavy orb of light punched through the wall and shot outward.
* * *
The fight in the forest looked like warfare.
Freeman's men clearly didn't understand the cost of magical rounds. Carelessly unloading them, they'd wrecked the surrounding landscape.
Yet it was they who were being driven into a corner. Their numbers had dropped from twenty to seven, and they still hadn't found Amy.
"Damn it! Where the hell is she?"
"There—there! She just passed over that way!"
Burning rocks flew from the depths of the forest. One struck a gunner in the back of the head; even with his schema active, his consciousness was blown away.
"Damn it! She's using fire-type spells on purpose."
"She's like a demon. She moves so fast and her accuracy is insane."
For a gunner, mobility and accuracy are everything. Amy overwhelmed them on both fronts.
She could stably use Fly magic, and her targeting was near-perfect because she possessed the crimson eyes.
"Phew, are there six left now? No—seven, counting Freeman."
Amy lifted more stones into the air. They heated red and then flared like molten lava.
Just as photon magic has photonization theory, fire has ignition theory—Ignite—the foundation of fire magic.
Ignite's flames fall into five main types: Heat, which generates warmth; Flare, which produces flame; Burn, which ignites objects; Blaze, which scorches wide areas; and Buster, which causes explosions.
Heating rock into burning stone with the Burn-type flame is called Fire Call: a spell that scorches rock into molten matter and hurls it like lava.
For a fire mage, the Burn line is crucial because it compensates for fire's innate lightness. It was perfect for dealing with a gunner running a schema.
"Shall we go again?"
Amy shot into the sky and unleashed Fire Call without mercy.
Compared to a meteor strike it was child's play, but from the receiving end it was terrifying.
"Up there! Pour it all on!"
The gunners raised their guns and fired magical rounds skyward. But Amy—who adjusted for error using a backed-up self-image—toyed with them in evasion and precision.
Anyone can learn Fly magic, but keeping balance in an atmosphere that changes by the moment is no simple feat.
Still, Amy hovered as if suspended. Her eyes, rapidly backing up her self-model, flashed crimson in quick pulses.
Each exchange of fire whittled the enemy down by one.
When only two of Freeman's men remained, Amy poured the rest of her Fire Call down.
This time she didn't need precise aim. Flaming stones thudded into the heads and backs of men turning to flee.
Only then did Amy cancel Fly and land in the clearing.
Twenty gunners annihilated in an instant. Only Freeman remained.
"The men are dead and your expression hasn't changed. Cold, aren't you? Or a coward?"
"If disliking fighting makes someone a coward, then maybe I am."
Freeman's words made Amy frown. If this was psychological warfare, it was a skilled play.
Freeman, however, didn't care what she thought.
—He's coming. Coward Freeman is coming.
—If you make Freeman cry, Marsha will come. Like some idiot who needs a woman's help.
Recalling old memories, Freeman suddenly spoke.
"Let's stop."
"What? What did you just say?"
Amy was stunned. They were on the brink of victory, and he suddenly wanted to stop. It was also disrespectful to the men who'd risked their lives.
"I'm worried about the captain. I think I should go. I don't want to see her collapse."
"Hah. Nobody wants to lose. You should've lived right from the start."
"That's not it. She must never be defeated. Even if it costs me my life."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Freeman didn't answer Amy's question. He muttered to himself, speaking only his own thoughts.
"The captain is strong. Friends might die."
"Hah, Shirone's stronger. He'll never lose to some woman."
"How sentimental. Trusting your man is fine, but you'll regret it."
Annoyed at being mistaken for a lovestruck fool, Amy clenched her fist and shouted.
"Give me a break. And I'm stronger than Shirone, you bastard. I'm not letting you go—so fall down right here."
"Is that so."
Realizing the negotiation had failed, Freeman grabbed two guns and activated his schema.
His figure, watched by Amy, blurred like an afterimage and vanished.
Amy couldn't react in time. But when the Zone picked up movement behind her, she twisted her body in a rush.
Freeman's kicking foot brushed her jaw. Amy bit down on her molars in frustration.
'Damn… I messed up!'
As a gunner he should've fought at range, yet he'd closed for melee—his thinking wasn't like his men who relied only on magical rounds.
"Hah! Now I'll get serious!"
As Amy corrected her stance, Freeman leapt and fired a rapid barrage of magical rounds. Explosive fireballs fell toward Amy like dotted lines.
But Amy unleashed a flurry of Flame Strikes and neutralized them all.
Matching a point and a line across an infinite coordinate is extremely difficult. Their precision was nearly even.
They collided again on the ground in a close-quarters firefight. In true close range, the gunner had the advantage.
"Then…!"
Amy cast the defensive Fire Mist. A hot wind blew and reddish smoke wrapped the area like a gas cloud.
When Freeman moved out of the mist, Amy launched a final volley of Flame Strikes to finish him. Ten or so flaming spears slammed down, scorching the air.
Paff-paff-paff-paff-paff!
But it wasn't over. Freeman kept teleporting and spamming spells, circling her relentlessly.
As dozens of Flame Strikes converged on a single point, Freeman opened his schema with wide eyes.
One of the ocular techniques: Compound Eye.
The scene Freeman saw fractured into shards, like an insect's vision.
With that individually analyzed information arriving, Freeman's waist bent and twisted like a willow.
The chain of Flame Strikes passed by without so much as brushing his collar, intersecting one after another in time.
Amy realized this was no ordinary trick. Not on the level of crimson eyes, but clearly an ocular technique specialized for gunners.
She changed tactics and slipped into the forest. Against a top-tier gunner, she had no business trading blows up close.
But Amy had another specialty: sniping. She moved to a point three hundred meters away and watched Freeman. Calmly, she saw him open his cylinder and change magical rounds.
'Hmph. Let's see how long you can take your time.'
Amy shifted her target-type Spirit Zone into sniper mode. The Zone extended in a cone, zeroing in on Freeman's face.
Because of the nature of Flame Strike, its power increases with distance—an air tunnel forms, an effect tied to wind magic.
Using air pressure, a flying object accelerates the farther it goes. A Flame Strike fired from three hundred meters would deliver nearly four times the power of a short-range shot.
As Amy cast, the flaming spear was sucked into the air tunnel and hurled toward Freeman.
At two hundred meters, Amy thought it was over. At the current acceleration, the final hundred meters would be traversed at more than four times the speed of the previous two hundred.
Freeman couldn't possibly react.
As expected, he didn't move. But Amy was horrified—the Flame Strike slammed into the ground far short of Freeman.
'Did I make a mistake?'
In that instant she felt it: a strange sensation seeping into her mind.
"Anti-magic…"
Freeman's gun was clearly enchanted with anti-magic.
She felt it as only about a three percent effect, but at three hundred meters that tiny influence would balloon into a massive error.
Anti-magic was dangerous for her. It directly affected the Zone, so even her crimson eyes couldn't compensate.