If things had gone on like that, the pixie would have been cleaved clean in two and fallen to the ground.
But something happened that forced him to twist his body, and he had no choice but to dodge.
In the spot he had just vacated, a disc of ice more than three meters across appeared and crashed down.
Had he not moved, the block of ice falling from that height and with that weight would have broken even a bull’s back and killed it instantly.
The man ignored the pixie and the harpy and turned his gaze instead to the distant woman who had made the ice disc suddenly appear near him.
She sat on her horse, staring at him.
In front of her on the saddle, a girl who looked about nine was seated sideways like a child, and with one hand the woman was pressing down on the girl’s head, while in her right hand she had drawn her staff and was aiming it at him.
Needless to say, they were Gladeborah and Rimgaile.
Gladeborah looked at the man and spoke.
“Detecting the manifestation of a Cryodisc with nothing but instinct and dodging it… that is impressive.”
The man paid no attention to what Gladeborah said and immediately started running toward her.
At the same time, the cryodisc he had just dodged suddenly began to move on its own, rose into the air, and attempted to strike him from behind as he ran.
The man rolled with his sword in hand and managed to avoid it.
Gladeborah’s next spell followed.
“Spin.”
The cryodisc no longer merely moved through the air; it began to spin at high speed and started to chase the man.
The white-clad man’s movements grew even faster.
Gladeborah’s brow furrowed.
He carried a sword, but he was clearly not a warrior.
Even so, the physical reactions and speed he displayed were far beyond what one could call ordinary.
‘Surely he isn’t a warrior walking around without the grade insignia that marks his status?’
Under Imperial law, all MOW are required to wear the epaulets that show their grade.
Depending on the situation, they may cover them with a cloak or similar garment, but the rule is that they must be worn in such a way that they can be shown at any time.
Mages usually do not wear epaulets, but they can be distinguished by their hats.
Therefore, a warrior without epaulets was almost unthinkable; anyone who went without them was usually someone who had thrown his life away already.
Yet there was something about this man that made it hard to believe that was the case.
Still, the fact that she could not fully grasp every detail changed nothing in the midst of battle.
Her chant continued.
“Sharpening.”
The rim of the disc thinned, its edge honing itself into a blade.
The white-clad man could no longer simply keep dodging.
The disc, whose passes he had been avoiding by the slimmest of margins, now moved faster.
As its outer edge turned into a sharp ice blade, air resistance dropped and its speed crept up.
That slight change was enough for the disc, which he tried to evade with the same movements as before, to finally draw blood.
The cut was less than a centimeter deep, but crimson spots seeped through his white clothes, and he had to move even faster.
The faster he moved, the more quickly his strength would burn away.
Even so, the man kept pressing in on Gladeborah.
With a young girl seated in front of her on the saddle, she could not move freely and cast spells at the same time.
She needed to finish the fight before the enemy closed fully into striking distance.
Whether she left Rimgaile where she was or took her along, both choices carried their own dangers.
If she left the girl behind, the child might be taken hostage or killed; if she took her along, it would be difficult to face the white-clad man, whose physical abilities seemed roughly those of a Tier-4 warrior.
And there was no guarantee that a man who did not even wear an epaulet would honor the customary law that protégées must be protected.
Gladeborah poured additional spell points into the ice disc, reinforcing it further.
“Serrated.”
Parts of the sharpened rim folded inward, reshaping into jagged, shark-like teeth.
In that form, the disc continued to chase the man.
He weaved past the spinning, saw-edged disc and kept closing in on Gladeborah.
But at that exact moment, the harpy and the pixie lunged together.
Their attacks aligned with uncanny precision, splitting his focus—and costing him his chance to advance.
If he had pushed forward regardless, he would have lost an eye to the pixie.
Then, sensing the change in the disc, he judged it dangerous.
Perhaps it was already too late to dodge.
For the first time, he chose not to evade, and instead struck the disc with his sword.
Gladeborah blinked in surprise.
‘It didn’t cut?’
Unlike the earlier version, which had only a sharpened edge, this one had fully transformed into a serrated blade.
An ordinary steel sword would have been sheared apart.
Which meant the white-clad man’s weapon was at least as durable as ebonyum.
Then she would simply have to push harder.
She began her incantation again. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“Indentation.”
The rim of the disc changed once more.
If the Serrated spell had shaped the edge into “saw teeth,” the Indentation spell turned it into the shape of “gear teeth.” As the edge grew blunt in parts, the sharpened tips of the teeth, now with nowhere to go, were suddenly forced away from the disc.
For a brief moment, the fragments separated from the disc hung suspended in midair.
In that same moment, as she spoke the spell “Missile,” each individual tooth fragment was launched away, propelled by the disc’s rotational speed.
Whether it was truly impossible to dodge or not, the fact remained that holes were punched all over the man’s body.
Since they had sprung from a rotating disc, the fragments flew off in every direction, but with nothing else around them, he was the only possible target, and some of them were bound to hit.
Small holes opened across his white clothes, and blood seeped out.
“It’s not over yet.” With those words, Gladeborah’s chant continued.
“Twin Serrated.”
The edge of the disc split apart, its rim dividing into two.
The outer ring stretched and separated, forming twin serrated rims, each lined with its own row of razor teeth.
Still spinning at high speed, the doubled disc continued to chase the man.
Bleeding, he narrowly evaded it, at times knocking it aside with his sword.
Gladeborah’s staff flared with light once more as she intoned another spell.
“Bifurcate.”
This time, the disc itself split cleanly in two.
Though each half was now thinner, it was as though two identical discs that had once been fused together were now perfectly separated.
Then each began to expand, swelling back to its original size.
Two ice discs, each rimmed with sharp, saw-like teeth, spun violently as they attacked him in tandem.
At last, the man gave ground and turned to flee.
He dodged and deflected in quick succession as he retreated, until he reached the spot where Skelvis’s decapitated corpse lay.
Without slowing, he seized the body one-handed, tucked it under his arm, and ran.
When the man tried to use both the corpse and his sword to block the incoming discs, Gladeborah hastily withdrew them.
There was no point in defiling the body of a civilian victim when it would not even result in a meaningful hit.
Even while carrying the corpse, the man ran at a staggering speed and quickly moved beyond the range at which Gladeborah could direct the discs to attack.
Realizing this, the man looked back at her and then began walking away slowly.
Then, carefully adjusting his grip, he tucked Skelvis’s headless body more securely under his arm and backed away step by step.
Gladeborah simply kept her staff trained on him and watched him withdraw.
The man continued to fall back, keeping wary of her staff, the two spinning ice discs it had controlled, and the pixie and harpy circling in the air around them.
Only when he had retreated to a distance where neither the discs nor any other method could realistically bridge the gap between them did the man turn his back and dash into the forest with the corpse still in his arms.
Gladeborah ordered the harpy to gain altitude and shadow him from above, and had Rimas ride his horse over to her.
Then Rimgaile asked:
“Are you just going to let him run away?”
“My total spell points are ten.
But the spells I used in this fight required twelve points.
In other words, if that man comes back now, I will have to fight to the death with all my points already spent, while carrying the handicap of having to protect you—and even then, I cannot guarantee the outcome.”
Rimgaile was curious how she had managed to cast spells whose total cost exceeded her stated ten points by two, but there were more pressing matters at hand, so she refrained from asking further.
When they finally drew close to Rimas, Rimgaile immediately dismounted and hurried over to him.
“Rimas, are you all right?”
Rimas still could not say a word, then suddenly burst into tears.
He yanked Rimgaile toward him by the shoulders and started pounding weakly on her back with both hands.
In the end he pulled her into an embrace and went on hitting her back.
Because his blows were feeble, they did not hurt at all, and Rimgaile simply let him, stroking his head as she endured it.
Then Rimas abruptly pushed her away, fetched the severed head of his father that the white-clad man had left behind, and cradled it in his arms.
He did not care that the blood soaked into his clothes and stained his hands; he simply held his father’s head and wept.
Watching this, Gladeborah called the pixie back and summoned the harpy as well—the one that had been circling high above, tracking the white-clad man from the air.
Then she spoke to the pixie.
“Fly to Whitestone at full speed.
Ledgetak should still be there.
Tell him what happened here.”
It was not long before Ledgetak came charging in, kicking up dust as he rode at full gallop.
Alone—if one counted only men—that is.
The pixie who had carried the message was with him, of course, as was his bear companion.
By then, Rimas was still sitting on the ground, clutching his father’s head.
He was no longer crying.
Instead, he muttered something under his breath, but no one else could understand him.
Looking around the scene, Ledgetak spotted Gladeborah and immediately asked:
“For something like this to happen—I cannot imagine what is going on.”
“On our way back, I sensed something ominous on the road behind us, so we turned around.
By the time we arrived, that unidentified man had already killed the boy’s father.
From what I can tell, he seems to have first targeted the father alone, then changed his mind and decided to kill the boy too, but I cannot say for certain.”
“What was this ominous feeling you mentioned?”
“To be precise, it was not I who felt it.
The pixie spirit I am contracted with sensed it and warned me.
A pixie’s premonitions are never wrong, so we turned back to confirm, and sure enough, this is what we found.”
“You have no guesses?
As a mage, you must understand these things better than I do.”
“I swear by mana that I have no further insight into this matter.”
By invoking mana in her oath, Gladeborah was not only saying that she did not know who the murderer in this case was, but also that she had no involvement in the incident itself.
From Ledgetak’s perspective, it was impossible to rule out the possibility that she had orchestrated all of this and was lying.
But now that a mage had sworn an oath on mana, it was certain that she had no connection to the crime.
Ledgetak had not originally suspected her of such a thing, but he understood that in matters like this, it was important to set such doubts completely to rest, and so he immediately grasped her intent.
She, in turn, addressed him.
“More to the point, you are a Ranger.
Do you have any guesses of your own?”
“Are you saying the culprit is not human?”
“He looked human.
And yet… there was something about him that didn’t feel entirely human.”
“Unless the foe is a beast or a monster, even a Ranger would struggle to draw conclusions from the scene alone.
When it comes to uncovering clues in a killing between men, the Empire’s judicial officers would be best suited to the task.
But in Chewarter—one of the frontier principalities farthest from Imperial authority—that is hardly of any use.”
“In any case, he appeared out of nowhere, killed a merchant for no apparent reason, and then tried to kill his son as well.
There is no question he cannot be allowed to roam free.”
“I doubt he acted without reason.
But whatever his reasons, they are not ones we could accept.
You mean he was formidable enough that even you, Gladeborah, found him difficult to handle?”
“With my bound pixie and the harpy I have trained, I thought I might hold a slight advantage.
However, with the child beside me, I realized I was at a slight disadvantage instead.”
At that, Ledgetak’s expression grew grave.
“You believed he would not honor the custom of protecting a protégée?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, you could have pressed the attack far more aggressively.
Perhaps he does not know the custom—but it seems he knows the saying: never assume a mage is out of options.”
“That’s one way to see it.”
As she spoke, Gladeborah slipped a hand into her robes and drew out a gemstone.
At the sight of it, Ledgetak let out a low hum.
“So, a spell gem has been reduced to a bauble.
The battle must have been fierce.”
“Indeed.
And against someone who wasn’t a MOW—how strange.”
“He wasn’t a MOW?”
“His swordsmanship was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
At the very least, it was none of the styles we were trained to recognize at the academy.
Naturally, he bore no epaulet to indicate rank.
I may be a mage, but I did not sleep through my studies.
I can say with certainty—it was not any of the established Imperial schools demonstrated there.”
“I see.
I will trust your judgment, Lady Mage.
What of his attire otherwise?
Did he wear a hat?”
“Ah—good heavens… now that you mention it.
He wasn’t wearing one.
Part of his head was wrapped in white bandages, but he had no hat.
I can’t believe I overlooked something so simple…”
“He didn’t have his hair pinned up with an ornament or anything of the sort, I assume?”
“No.
I may have missed the absence of a hat, but if he had worn a sworn knot in his hair—a knot signifying a vow of revenge—I would not have failed to notice it.”
“As I thought.
No epaulet, no hat… could he be from another continent?”
“We have nothing more to go on.”