Frieren did not answer immediately.
She tilted her head slightly, as if listening to a message carried by a distant wind, and only spoke after several seconds had passed.
“Ten li outside the city, there is indeed a massive mana signature spying on us.” She paused.
“It’s very strong.
Most likely Aura.”
The gravity of the situation pricked the Count’s consciousness like a needle.
He snapped his head up, his bloodshot eyes locked onto Frieren’s long white hair and pointed ears.
A half-forgotten legend began to take shape within his despair.
“Frieren…
a white-haired elf…
that appearance…
Could you be the mage from the Hero’s Party—’Frieren the Slayer’?”
Frieren gave a slight nod.
Hope, like a spark erupting from dead ashes, flared in the Count’s eyes.
He stumbled forward half a step, his voice raspy and urgent.
“Lady Frieren!
Please…
please save this city!
Compensation?
You can have whatever you desire!
This city cannot endure any more suffering…
Those fallen guards, I…
how am I supposed to face their families…” By the end, his voice was little more than a sob.
Frieren’s group fell into a heavy silence.
Stark shifted his feet uneasily, Fern pursed her lips, and Kan looked toward Frieren.
A few seconds later, Frieren turned around and headed straight for the city gates.
Just as the group stood there stunned, she stopped.
Without looking back, her voice drifted over them, calm and detached.
“Aura’s magic is ‘Amsel,’ the Magic of Obedience.
she can forcibly control others.
The only possibility of breaking free through sheer will is something she preemptively eliminates through ‘guillotine’ decapitation.
It’s troublesome.”
“I will go alone.
If you follow, you’ll just be used as hostages.”
She turned her head slightly, her gaze sweeping over them from the corner of her eye.
“Stay here and help the residents with the reconstruction.”
With that, the white-clad figure vanished around a street corner.
The light of hope in the Count’s eyes was fully ablaze now.
He opened his mouth to speak, but ultimately just bowed his head deeply.
“Esteemed heroes,” he said, trying to straighten his hunched back, “please follow me back to the castle to rest—”
“Fern.” Kan suddenly reached out, catching the purple-haired girl as she was about to follow the Count.
“Yes?”
“Just now,” Kan stared at her, his expression so serious it felt a bit forced, “you definitely wanted to laugh, didn’t you?”
Fern blinked, a flicker of embarrassment crossing her face at being caught, but she quickly regained her composure.
“I did not.”
“You did,” Kan insisted.
“Anyway, Lady Frieren already promised to teach me.
Why don’t you teach me the *real* Flight Magic right now?
If you do, I’ll forgive you.”
Fern looked at Kan’s “I’m not letting this go until you teach me” expression and sighed.
“Can’t we wait until we return to the castle?”
“No,” Kan said firmly.
“Teach me on the way.
Explain it as we walk.
Please.”
There was a mix of urgency and a kind of desperation in his eyes that Fern didn’t quite understand.
Perhaps it was the sincerity in that “please” that worked.
Fern remained silent for two seconds, then nodded.
The road to the castle was neither long nor short.
Fern’s explanation was clear and concise; she lacked Frieren’s metaphors steeped in a thousand years of experience, sounding more like she was reciting definitions and key points from a textbook.
Kan listened with extreme focus, constantly cross-referencing her words with the “wrong” feeling he had experienced while using his previous levitation spell.
Just as they stepped onto the last few dozen meters of cobblestone leading to the castle, the system notification arrived as expected.
[Detected: Fern has imparted the secrets of Flight Magic to you.
Learn?] Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
[Yes.]
[Learned: Flight Magic Lv.1]
Almost the instant the skill appeared in his status bar, the “Lv.1” text blurred and flickered, as if something long-suppressed was breaking out of its shell.
[Flight Magic Lv.1 → Lv.2]
Kan: “…”
*As I thought, that white-haired old-timer had me going down the wrong path for way too long.* He felt a complex mix of emotions.
“Lord Count,” Kan suddenly stopped, calling out to the Count leading the way.
“I have some private business to attend to, so I won’t be coming along for now.
Also, where is the city’s magic shop?”
The Count ordered a guard at the gate to escort Kan.
Kan nodded to Fern and Stark, then turned and walked away at a brisk pace.
Naturally, Kan intended to go and see that “excellent violinist” for himself.
Aura the Guillotine.
One of the most powerful demons still walking the world after the Demon King’s death.
A member of the Seven Sages of Destruction who possessed the Magic of Obedience.
With Frieren’s restrictions, he couldn’t move against humans, so how could he possibly miss out on the fight against Aura?
Kan’s heart beat powerfully in his chest.
Knowing the plot was his sole and greatest advantage.
He remembered clearly that Aura would lose—defeated by the ironic backlash of her own magic.
But that was a “backlash.”
If he could complete the kill in that brief window after the backlash occurred, when her soul was bound by the scales and before Frieren could utter that command to “commit suicide”…
His throat felt a bit dry.
Kan swallowed hard.
Fortune favors the bold.
He had to seize the opportunity to utilize his meta-knowledge.
One had to remember that while a successful extraction only affected the final evaluation by about one grade—meaning if you extracted without doing anything, you might still get a “Desolate Grade” rating—the items brought out would grant Evaluation Points to exchange for powers gained within the Collision World.
However, the thing that truly dictated the final evaluation was what one actually *did* within the Collision World.
If he could take down one of the strongest demons left since the Demon King’s era, his rating…
Kan grew excited just thinking about it.
His rush to learn Flight Magic earlier was precisely for this.
Flight Magic could reach heights that a basic levitation spell couldn’t climb.
On the plains below, his presence would only be a weakness for Frieren.
But in the sky?
At the magic shop, he purchased a monocular magic telescope.
It wasn’t cheap, but with the Count’s estate covering the bill, the guard didn’t say much; he had clearly received instructions.
Outside the city, the wilderness was swept by a piercing cold wind.
Kan activated his Flight Magic, his body ascending vertically.
The airflow whipped past his cheeks, the temperature dropping steadily until his breath came out in white mist.
He carefully controlled his mana output, hiding himself within the thin clouds and the gathering dusk.
Higher, and higher still.
He climbed until the castle below shrank to the size of a toy block, and the vast expanse of the wilderness was laid bare before him.
He raised the telescope, infusing it with a trace amount of mana.
His vision zoomed in.
On the plains, two tiny silhouettes stood facing each other from a distance.
One had flying white hair—Frieren.
The other was slender, seemingly holding something in her hand…
Kan held his breath, locking the telescope’s focus on Aura.
Below, the battle had reached its final movement.
Aura sneered, drawing a longsword from the hand of a kneeling, headless suit of armor.
The blade dragged across the ground, making a grating sound that set one’s teeth on edge.
“I will take your head myself.” A smile of absolute victory, almost one of delight, played across her face.
Her gaze swept over the circle of headless armors Frieren had collapsed.
“This is the first time I’ve seen anyone able to dispel my magic…
However, you’ve been negligent.
Compared to eighty years ago, your mana capacity is still only around a hundred years’ worth.”
She stopped walking, savoring her opponent’s silence.
“It seems there was no need to deliberately exhaust your mana.
I was…
far too cautious.”
Suddenly, the smile on her face froze.
She looked down at the illusory scales in her other hand.
“You’ve placed my soul on the scales, Aura,” Frieren finally spoke, her voice piercing through the wind of the plains with crystal clarity.
“To be honest, if you had continued to suppress me with your massive army, I might have been in danger.”
“Fortunately, you were very confident in your own mana.”
“That is why I can defeat you.”
…
High above.
Through the telescope, Kan saw Aura freeze.
*Now!*
He stowed the telescope and took a deep breath of the bone-chilling air.
“Have you ever heard of the technique…
the one that descends from the heavens?” he whispered to himself, unsure of who he was talking to.
The light of the Flight Magic beneath his feet extinguished instantly.
The sensation of weightlessness violently seized his entire body!
The earth’s gravity reclaimed its invitation.
The gale roared in his ears, nearly tearing his eardrums.
Kan forced down his primal fear, focusing his entire being onto the staff in his hand.
The spell for [Ordinary Offensive Magic] was pushed to its absolute limit.
An unprecedented blue-white light gathered at the tip of the staff, compressing, then compressing again.
The radiance was so intense it threatened to swallow him whole.
*Does this count…
as a kinetic orbital strike?* Amidst the high-speed descent, the absurd thought flashed through his mind.
…
“What is the meaning of this?!” Aura’s gaze shifted from the scales to Frieren’s face, her voice trembling.
“You should have noticed by now,” Frieren said, her voice remaining calm.
“I have been suppressing my mana.”
The scales were now perfectly level.
“You miscalculated, Aura.”
“Impossible!” Aura shrieked in denial, cold sweat breaking out on her face.
“There is no way I wouldn’t see that you were suppressing your mana!
Your mana shows none of the instability or fluctuations that suppression causes!”
“How surprising,” Frieren tilted her head slightly.
“Is a demon’s observation of mana that refined?
It seems Master’s methods were correct, after all.”
She paused.
“I have spent nearly my entire life suppressing my mana.”
The color drained from Aura’s face as beads of sweat rolled down.
“Rather,” Frieren continued, “this is my most natural sta—”
She cut herself off.
Without warning, she looked up toward the sky, leaving Aura with nothing but that iconic upward gaze.
Aura, however, had no time to worry about this anomaly.
Immense terror and a refusal to accept defeat gripped her.
“Don’t joke with me!
I am a Great Demon who has lived for over five hundred years!”
At that moment, the falling Kan had entered a state of profound transcendence.
It was as if he recalled the sight of Qual, the Elder Sage of Corruption, grandly wielding countless Killing Magics, and as if he could see the future where he reached for Aura’s treasure chest.
But the most important thing was seizing this exact moment!
Aura’s words were interrupted by a dull sound from the heavens, like the tearing of silk.
She instinctively looked up.
The sky turned white.
It wasn’t sunlight, but several intertwined, blue-white beams of mana as thick as ancient trees.
Like bolts of divine judgment, they tore through the clouds and the twilight, occupying her entire field of vision!
The light was so blinding that her world instantly turned into a searing white void.
She wanted to move, to run, to defend.
But the illusory scales in her hand had already—completely and irrevocably—tipped to Frieren’s side.
“…”
Her lips moved slightly, as if she were saying something.
But all sound was annihilated within the crashing blue-white tide that descended from above.
Sensing that mana, Frieren watched the eruption of the blue-white beams and activated her Flight Magic, drifting backward.
She muttered with a bizarre expression, “It couldn’t be because I didn’t teach him Flight Magic earlier, could it?
Did he get that worked up over it?
Was there really a need for this?
I was going to teach you eventually…”