“U-Umm...are you Prince Alfard?”
“Yeah. I guess if you know who I am, you’re not lost travelers,” Alfard said, narrowing his eyes warily. His intimidating stare was at complete odds with his rustic farmer’s appearance. Still, it was hard to feel nervous when he looked like he’d just gotten done plowing fields.
“W-We came looking for you at Queen Anya’s request.”
“Hm?” Alfard mumbled, cocking his head. His expression made it clear he was wondering why she’d asked outsiders to look for him. He cast his gaze over Miledi, Meiru, and Laus, scrutinizing each of them in turn. His eyes stopped on Meiru for a moment, but then when Laus turned to look at the log cabin, Alfard suddenly closed his eyes and there was a huge explosion.
“Huh?”
“What the—?!”
Miledi and Meiru turned in surprise to see that Alfard had punched Laus, who’d brought his arms up to guard the blow. However, the force of the punch had knocked Laus back into a nearby tree.
“Tch, I recognize that face. You’re the Holy Templar Knights’ commander.”
Alfard’s mana started swirling around him as he prepared for battle.
“Wait! I don’t serve the church anymore! I’m part of the Liberators, an anti-church organization!”
“Hah, you expect me to believe the church’s strongest knight joined a rebel group? I’m not that stupid. Besides, you were about to cast magic on the house, weren’t you?”
Crap, he saw right through me... Laus thought, gritting his teeth. It was true that he’d tried to use spirit magic on the house, as he’d sensed two people inside it. One of them is probably Alfard’s lover, but who’s the second? Did someone sneak into his house while he was distracted?
The problem was, Laus hadn’t expected Alfard to notice him using spirit magic. He was as sharp at sensing the flow of mana as Miledi was, it seemed.
“Wait, this is all a misunderstanding, Your Highness! Please listen!”
“You sound just like the guys who tried to kill my wife!”
A second later, thousands of fireballs appeared all around Alfard. Each one had been highly compressed and boasted immense power.
Alfard’s magical prowess was nearly a match for Miledi’s...and that wasn’t all either.
“Seriously, calm down,” Meiru said, attempting to summon up a water barrier. There was plenty of water in the streams and springs nearby, so she figured she wouldn’t have any trouble.
“Huh?!”
However, the water rebuffed her mana, denying her the ability to control it.
“This is my territory, remember?”
A skilled fighter used the terrain to their advantage. Alfard knew that, which was why he’d made sure all the nearby terrain worked in his favor.
Meiru’s expression stiffened as he then launched his barrage of fireballs at the group. At the same time, a group of earth golems rose from the ground and grabbed the party’s legs, while branches and vines shot out to restrain their upper bodies.
It was at this point that Miledi and the others realized that he’d permeated the entire region with his mana, transforming it into his zone of control. No one else’s mana could affect anything around here.
Meanwhile, Alfard could control the terrain as easily as Lyutillis manipulated the forest back in Haltina.
“We’re sorry about what Lau-chan did, but he didn’t mean any harm! I promise!”
“I see. In that case, you wouldn’t mind if I ran away then, would you?”
“We would!”
The Liberators were short on time. They couldn’t have Alfard vanishing on them. Realizing she didn’t have much of a choice, Miledi activated her gravity magic, knocking the barrage of fireballs down to the ground.
Alfard stared at her in shock, but he quickly recovered from his surprise and placed a hand on the ground.
“Thunder Snake.”
Snaking bolts of lightning shot out of every water source, assailing Miledi and the others from all sides. The three of them quickly deployed barriers to protect themselves, but they couldn’t ward against the lightning attacks coming from the plants and golems restraining them, so they stiffened momentarily as lightning coursed through them.
Alfard had immediately analyzed the properties of gravity magic and had attacked with the element Miledi had the hardest time defending against. He then followed up by wrapping sharp branches in fierce winds and launching them at Miledi and the others. The branches were coated in sap that looked rather poisonous as well. He truly was a master of combat
The vampire prince was using exactly as much strength as he needed to launch pinpoint attacks to keep his enemies at bay. Any regular foe would have been instantly neutralized by him, but of course, Miledi, Meiru, and Laus were far from regular.
Miledi instantly knocked the needles down with gravity magic.
“Sorry, but we’re kinda desperate here! The fate of the world’s resting on us!” Laus shouted, hitting Alfard with a Soul Shock that temporarily staggered him.
“I’m starting to get a little angry,” Meiru said, summoning her own water from her Treasure Trove and forming a water prison around Alfard. Technically, their employer had said they could bring Alfard back by force if necessary...so they could be a little rough as long as they didn’t do any lasting harm. However, it seemed Miledi and the others would have to get more than just “a little rough.”
“Tch, you guys sure are tough,” Alfard said.
“No way!”
He dispersed Meiru’s water prison with ease. Not only that, but he did it by completely dismantling Meiru’s spell rather than countering with one of his own. All spells had a core, which served as the focal point and sort of blueprint of the spell.
Alfard had figured out exactly where the core of Meiru’s spell had been in an instant, then destroyed it.
Miledi could see now what Morgan had meant when he’d said Alfard was insanely strong. Destroying a spell’s core wasn’t something that could be done with just good intuition, after all. You needed a deep understanding of magic, as well as a ton of training on top of that before you could destroy spells quickly enough to be of any use in combat.
Miledi and the others were so shaken that they momentarily stopped their attacks. Taking advantage of that opening, Alfard summoned a sea of blue flames above him. He’d taken the strongest fire spell, Azure Blaze, and combined it with Conflagration Storm to create an endless wave of fiery destruction. This new spell was called Azure Conflagration.
“Wait, hang on, if you fire that off, you won’t come out unscathed either!” Miledi shouted in a panic.
In fact, Alfard would probably be the only one to get hurt by it, since the Liberators all had a few tricks up their sleeves to stop something like that.
However, Alfard just shook his head and said, “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt much.”
Is this just a bluff? Or is it a distraction while he prepares something else? Miledi thought, feeling momentarily relieved.
Grinning, Alfard added, “Or at least, it won’t hurt me much.”
“What about us?!”
Alfard swung his arm down, casually flinging the sea of fire at Miledi and the others. The surrounding forest was vaporized instantly. Steam rose from the streams and springs, while the air burned so hot it killed all living creatures in the vicinity.