“Sorry. Let me correct myself. The truth is, I love you. I have secretly adored you all this time. So could you overlook this just once?”
“Hehe. How shameless. Unfortunately, it is already too late!”
‘Damn it. What kind of development is this all of a sudden?!’
FWOOSH.
—First Tier.
—Haste.
The spell Jaes instinctively cast in response to Miya’s sudden hostility was Haste, the First-Tier acceleration spell he had been practising relentlessly.
BOOM.
Thanks to the slight increase in his speed, Jaes managed to evade Miya’s unexpected ambush.
She gave him an alluring smile, along with an approving gaze that seemed entirely at odds with her hostility.
“Oh? You have only just begun learning magic, yet you managed to cast a spell so quickly and accurately in a crisis like this. That is rather impressive.”
“I have never been the sort to learn anything half-heartedly!”
“Hehe. How commendable. Then shall we see what little tricks you can perform before the Orb’s effect wears off?”
—TAP.
‘……As I thought. Is this curtain of pitch-black darkness some kind of spell that blocks all signs of activity?’
Even after seeing this unfamiliar side of Miya, Jaes maintained a calm facade and began thinking as quickly as he could.
‘First of all, Haste was successful.’
Over the past week, Jaes had devoted himself almost exclusively to mastering Haste, painstakingly interpreting the meaning of every last passage in the Basic Magic Spellbook’s incantation.
As he had explained before, the main reason was that Haste was an ‘acceleration’ spell. With Mir’s timer function, the only reliable tool currently available to him, he could objectively compare and analyse how changes to the incantation affected the spell.
At the same time, however, he had also chosen it in preparation for an emergency like this.
Speed was ultimately a relative concept.
In other words, even if Haste was only a First-Tier spell, increasing his own speed would make the passage of time around him feel relatively slower, giving him an advantage in the speed of his thoughts as well.
First-Tier spells were supposedly used throughout everyday life. Even if he had attempted to learn an offensive spell, it would have been extremely difficult to master it well enough to protect himself in such a short period.
In that case, an acceleration spell that could buy him even a little more ‘time’ and allow him to flee faster—in other words, Haste—was the most efficient choice.
‘……Urgh!’
Thanks to that decision, Jaes narrowly managed to evade the sharp object Miya swung at him while continuing his train of thought.
Despite his desperate efforts, however, she still showed no sign of losing her composure.
“Hmm. This truly is surprising. Even if it is only Haste, seeing you wield it so skilfully after a mere week makes it seem like such a waste to kill you.”
“Then could you follow your own words and simply let me live? What exactly did I do wrong?”
“…Heh.”
Miya chuckled at Jaes’s sarcastic remark before offering him a kindly explanation, as though she were showing him mercy.
“Your crime, I suppose, was being far too meticulous. I let my guard down because you claimed to know nothing about magic, but you remembered every last passage of the incantation I showed you. I admit that it was my mistake for allowing my curiosity to get the better of me, but that puts me in quite a difficult position, does it not?”
“Are you talking about that incomprehensible passage that was different from the ones in the spellbook I read? What was so important about it?”
HEH.
“As you said, the passage itself does not mean very much. However, someone knowledgeable might recognise it as evidence that I am from the Kris Empire. It is a sort of habit that is almost never used here in the Kingdom of Le Mans.”
“……!!”
“Would it not be troublesome for me if Jaes carelessly ran his mouth and caused someone to suspect the identity I have hidden so carefully? Fortunately, it has only been a week since you arrived here. Even if you disappear now, everyone will assume that you fled or vanished because you could not endure working at the Mage Tower, just like your predecessors.”
“Are you saying that you are actually a spy from that Kris-whatever Empire?”
Miya nodded lightly.
“You could say that. It is always necessary to keep track of the people surrounding someone like Duke Ailin.”
“……I suppose asking you to spare me in exchange for my silence would be pointless?”
“Of course. What reason would I have to trust you, Jaes? It would be much cleaner to dispose of you here. It is a little regrettable, since you were quite an interesting subject.”
“Would causing this much of a disturbance not make it more likely that you will be caught?”
“Hehe. Do not worry. The Orb of Shadow I deployed here has no other effects, but it is a high-level barrier that completely prevents any presence or disturbance within it from reaching the outside. There is no need for you to worry on my behalf.”
‘Damn it. So I was right.’
Just as coding sometimes contained quirks that held no particular meaning but revealed the habits of a specific person or group, it seemed the Magic Language used in incantations had similar tendencies.
‘So that passage I could not understand was nothing more than a kind of comment, and I was unlucky enough to notice it. That is why I ended up in this situation?’
Thanks to Miya’s excited prattling, apparently prompted by her certainty of victory, Jaes now understood the situation.
But that was all.
Until a mere week ago, Jaes had known absolutely nothing about magic. There was no method by which he could suddenly defeat Miya here.
SWISH.
Nevertheless, Jaes struggled not to panic. He calmly gathered his thoughts.
“Magic Arrow.”
He cautiously cast the only other spell he could currently use besides Haste.
As Jaes completed the incantation, a single blunt projectile appeared before him.
It was something so misshapen that calling it an arrow would have been embarrassing.
“Hm? What is that? Magic Arrow?”
Miya flinched briefly upon seeing it. However, once she confirmed its crude appearance, an uncontrollable sneer quickly returned to her lips.
“Pfft, ahahaha! What is that supposed to be? Is that really Magic Arrow? Children only use that spell for magic practice, so it would not frighten me even if you had formed it properly. Besides, did you not say that Haste was the only spell you could cast?”
“That was true until this morning. But I did not spend the entire day idling around.”
“Oh? Is that so? How impressive. I will praise you for it. Are you planning to attack me with that now? Oh, how frightening. I feel as though I might flee at any moment.”
The spell Jaes had created looked clumsy to anyone who saw it, so it was hardly strange that Miya burst into laughter rather than becoming wary.
The Magic Arrow Jaes had cast truly was extremely crude.
However,
‘Whew. Now that it has come to this, it is do or die.’
Jaes concluded that ‘this’ was his only chance of surviving. He drew upon every bit of his mental capacity, slightly accelerated by Haste, and continued the Magic Arrow’s incantation.
‘……Please, let my theory be correct.’
“Yes. This is my final struggle. But do you happen to know something?”
“……??”
“As long as this world operates according to physical laws similar to the ones I know, then no matter what it is, the faster it moves, the more powerful it becomes!!”
—WHIIIIIIINE.
At that moment, Jaes’s Magic Arrow suddenly began accelerating explosively.
The Magic Arrow he had created was not an ordinary one.
―However, even when using the same spell, its performance and power can vary drastically depending on how thoroughly you understand and optimise its incantation.
Those were the words Ryujin, a Mage from the Mage Tower, had spoken to Jaes.
There was also the meaning of the Magic Language that Jaes had spent the past week analysing by connecting it to his speciality, coding.
When Jaes said that he had come to understand the acceleration spell Haste ‘perfectly’ to a certain extent over the past week, the depth of his understanding had completely exceeded anything Miya imagined.
He had obsessively and thoroughly investigated every possible detail—which words and which passages carried what meanings, as well as exactly how much of an effect each one produced.
And for Jaes, a computer science graduate student who had completed his doctoral coursework in his original world, that naturally suggested another possibility.
He could insert only the specific type of ‘acceleration’ effect he desired into the incantation of another spell and make that effect activate within it.
‘Go!!’
It was merely a First-Tier acceleration incantation, but Jaes had applied it repeatedly within the limits of his analysis, layering it according to a principle similar to that of a loop.
The result was a single magic arrow.
Just as Jaeseok had hoped, it suddenly began accelerating at a designated point, launching itself towards Miya with the force of a brilliant streak of light.
BANG!
“Urgh?!”
Jaes had no way of knowing it.
What he had just accomplished was an extraordinarily difficult and specialised technique that countless Mages called ‘Augmented Incantation,’ which allowed the advantages of one spell to be applied intact to another.
There was no possibility that Miya, who had completely lowered her guard, could have predicted it.
“……You!!”
The magic arrow Jaes had cast grazed Miya’s snow-white cheek in an instant, leaving behind a long wound and a vivid crimson trail of blood.
‘What was that just now?!’
Miya could not help recoiling in shock.
Fortunately for her, she soon realised that Jaes’s incomprehensible final attack had only grazed her. Casting aside every trace of the composure she had displayed until now, she charged directly at him.
‘I cannot afford to underestimate him. I will finish this in a single strike!’
Unfortunately for her, that plan was never carried out.
‘……!!’
A narrow-eyed man had suddenly appeared in front of her.
‘It cannot be……!’
“Hmm. What exactly are the two of you doing here?”
From the beginning, Jaes had never been optimistic enough to believe that he could perfectly aim a spell he was casting in actual combat for the first time.
There had been only one thing he focused on.
—Speed.
No matter the object, increasing its speed would inevitably amplify its power, regardless of its mass.
And what would happen if that increased power managed to transmit even a fraction of the impact beyond the barrier known as the Orb?
―The place where we live is within Lord Raiden’s Territory! That means if someone screams or if he hears the sounds of a fight, he could suddenly appear at any moment.
There was a reason Miya had gone as far as deploying a magical barrier before attempting to harm him.
Jaes did not necessarily have to defeat Miya himself.
If she was a spy who had infiltrated this place and was trying to dispose of him for fear that her identity would be exposed, all he needed to do was alert someone outside and summon a reliable ‘ally.’
FLASH!
Golden waves rippled through the air, and the narrow-eyed man appeared at the scene before anyone realised it.
‘Just as I thought. I knew you would come!’
Only then was Jaes finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.
“Raiden……!!”
“You mean ‘Lord’ Raiden.”
From that moment onward, everything was over in an instant.