CRACK—
A thunderclap rang out across the clear sky, and the earth split into fragments.
Within the smoke, Viya's figure hung in midair. She called her staff to her and struck at the ground where the smoke was thickest.
A moment ago the fallen treants' bodies had snapped upright like willow withes swinging back, and their shattered wooden armor had congealed again.
"Why does this monster not die even with its core shattered..."
Viya went back over the scene. She remembered it clearly: that strike had unquestionably broken the thing's magic core, and the monster had still been able to stand back up.
ROAR—
The treants shot vines at her, the plant family's common skill 【Entangle】. Anyone touched by the thorned cords stood a high chance of being poisoned and wounded; every vine carried a venom-sac spore, and handled wrongly it would release a great volume of poisonous gas.
Viya drove her staff backward, dealt with the gas using fire magic, and with her other hand called up wind magic to disperse the poison.
Looking again at those bones on the ground, she guessed the white remains were the treants' doing.
If they weren't put down, she estimated that before long every monster in this region would be slaughtered by these creatures.
【Holy Flame】
Viya stripped the glove from her right hand, and in that instant her body was wrapped in fire.
With Viya as the center, the extreme heat ran for miles around.
Marilou, still inside the carriage, only felt her body go feverish, as though she were being roasted through. Remembering Viya's warning, she didn't dare rashly leave the carriage, and a servant brought several blocks of ice, which lowered the temperature inside a little.
At the very center of the battlefield, Viya raised a mass of orange flame in her hand and blasted it down at the treants below.
The fire, shrouded in holy light, formed a saturation strike across the whole ground.
Adventurers still on assignment nearby saw only a column of fire suddenly blaze up into the sky, and then an orange heatwave sweeping over them.
At the storm's center the enveloped treants' cores split again and again, dying and living, only to be burned once more by the Holy Flame, then revived, over and over.
Until at last, seemingly having exhausted the cores' stored energy, they slowly went out.
Viya put her glove back on, picked up a magic core from the ground that had nearly turned to charcoal, and frowned.
"There isn't a scrap of mana left in this core. Could it be that its endless revival came from prying loose the power inside the core itself?"
A monster's energy supply depends on its core, and as a monster's rank rises, the power it can call up from the core increases with it.
If the mana a Tier 1 monster can call up is a bottle cap's worth, then a Tier 3 monster's is at least a full cup.
It isn't a simple multiple at all.
Viya checked the monster's level and guessed it was Tier 4 at the very most, which by rights should have made it incapable of forcing its own core open.
Magic that forcibly draws on a core's capacity is much like a human burning blood to spend lifespan; both count as forbidden magic.
The treants' repeated revivals just now must have come from burning the core's own energy to force an extension of their lives.
Did magic like that really exist...
Viya looked at the grim white bones in the distance, her brows knotted, and after a quick sweep of the battlefield she returned to the carriage.
The moment she pulled the curtain aside she saw Marilou soaking on a heap of ice.
Only then did it belatedly occur to her that she hadn't judged the Holy Flame's range well, and the heatwave had struck the carriage.
She took off her left glove and pressed it against Marilou's face for a while. "Cooler now?"
"Really, yes. Your Holiness, you're back."
Marilou cradled Viya's left hand in delight, rather like holding a block of ice on a blazing summer day.
"Mm. There was some trouble deep in the forest, and I went and dealt with it."
"Was it very dangerous? I heard a huge explosion."
"Somewhat. I met a troublesome monster whose core seemingly can't be destroyed."
Marilou went still. She thought of the information Miss Justice had raised at the Witches' Assembly about endlessly reviving monsters, and it seemed to be that whatsit... the core that can't be destroyed.
Looked at that way, the crisis was genuinely close to her.
"Did you destroy it in the end?"
"Dealt with. I used fire to force the core apart, and if it revived, I simply killed it again."
There was some weariness in Viya's voice. Marilou nodded and politely didn't press, meaning to ask the others at the next Assembly.
She changed the subject. "It's a good thing you could handle it. Can we still make our time on the road now?"
Marilou looked at the dusk in the distance. They hadn't come far at all and it was already dark again.
"I'm afraid not. Let's find somewhere open to rest."
Viya drove the carriage toward the clearing ahead. Servants took charge of making camp, and before long tents went up one after another.
Marilou fetched skewers of meat and set them over the grill, and the sizzling, dripping skewers were enough to sharpen anyone's appetite.
Viya released flame from her right hand, roasted the meat to gold, handed a piece to Marilou and took a bite herself.
"Not bad. A bit dry."
"It's good. I can't tell good from bad."
Marilou bit into the meat, her mouth slick with fat, and Viya passed her a napkin to wipe it.
Full and content, the two of them went back inside the tent, and just as they were about to rest, shouting came from outside.
"Excuse me, is anyone there? Our caravan has been attacked. Could we ask you to help us kill the monsters?"
The voice woke Marilou, who had been about to sleep. Viya woke a step ahead of her and put out an arm in front of her, then pulled on a robe, rose and went to the tent flap.
"Don't come out yet. I'll go and look."
Viya took her staff. Marilou sat up and watched the situation outside through a gap in the tent.
Beyond the camp's edge, a busty girl in trader's clothes had her palms pressed together and was bent at ninety degrees from the waist.
"I'm with the Maple Leaf Trading Company. We ran into a pack of magic beasts fleeing through the forest just now, and they've taken our goods and the carriages ahead of us.
"If you're willing to act, our company is willing to offer a generous gift. We would absolutely not let you act for nothing."
Viya frowned. "Isn't the Maple Leaf Company a merchant house of the Rhine Kingdom next door? Why have they come to trade in our Kingdom of Velidoria?"
The busty girl scratched at her hair. "So you know of us. My name is Tifa. In fact the Maple Leaf Company was originally a Velidorian house; it was only that the wars grew so frequent afterward.
"So we moved over to the Rhine Kingdom next door. This trip back was to visit family, and we ran into some very strange monsters. They look as though they simply can't be killed.
"Our commission is simple enough: we hope you can hold them off. We'll have people specifically to deal with the goods, and you will certainly be given a rich payment."
"Where is it?"
Viya was in a hurry on the road and had no wish to meddle, but if the place were near, she could clear the risk and collect payment along with it.
"One moment. I have a map here. It's right here."
Tifa held out a map with a marker circled on it.