She swung her spellblade down as I finished arranging hitogata around myself. A moment later, red-hot stones began raining down, pelting the earth. Though any that would have struck me were extinguished by my barrier, I could still feel them heating the surrounding air.
I felt a stinging on my cheek. I touched my face with my finger and found blood trickling down. It seemed that a small fragment of stone had nicked my cheek. The magic meteorites ended right as I finished healing myself with a substitution.
The knight was standing in the same spot. She must have been exhausted, as her shoulders were heaving as though she were breathing heavily. There was blood dripping down her left gauntlet, likely from getting grazed by Tengu’s Beard when she cut it. Then I saw the faint glow of light magic around her left arm. I knew what that meant.
“She can use healing magic too?” The light faded, and the knight opened and closed her fist as if checking the feeling. It appeared to have been fully restored. She’s quite the dangerous opponent, I thought to myself with a grimace.
She was using high-level magic of all six elements without any incantations. In addition, she had expert swordsmanship, immense strength, and a good sense for battle. She would’ve been a good match even for Kuroshishi-douji.
I had been attempting to restrain her from the start, but it was proving difficult. She could escape my normal methods by teleporting, and she could heal off any damage I dealt to her that didn’t result in instant death. In addition, there were too many eyes around to use any conspicuous ayakashi.
Sighing, I decided to change it up. There was one thing I had become certain of during our battle. If restraining her was too difficult, attempting a dialogue wasn’t a bad idea.
“It doesn’t look like you’re a corpse,” I said with a faint grin. There was no way she was undead, and I doubted she was a necromancer either. I silently waited for a response as she caught her breath.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” she shouted back angrily. Her voice was high-pitched, which wasn’t surprising as I had suspected she was a woman, but there was still something unexpected about it. Despite her strength, she lacked the dignity of someone with power. She sounded more like a rambunctious child.
“Huh? What do you mean?” I wasn’t sure how to reply to her question.
“I’m asking what you’re doing! Have you become an enemy?! What happened to him?!”
“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I was starting to get a bad feeling. Many beings who left the realm of human strength were left with shattered minds. Given how incoherent her words were, the knight might well have been one of them. “I’m doing exactly what it looks like. Helping the empire by stopping the undead from attacking a city.”
“Huh? Helping the empire? You have some nerve spouting that nonsense!” the knight shouted angrily. “You and the Hero need to stay out of this!”
My eyes went wide with shock. “How do you know that?” I had been certain she was working for the necromancer, but few people knew the Hero had been dispatched. That meant she had to be working for either someone in the imperial court or the emperor himself. No, I can’t disregard the possibility that she’s with the necromancer and just got the information from the necromancer’s collaborator.
At a loss, I decided to simply ask. “Who are you?”
“You’re more rude than I thought! I’m—”
Suddenly, blades of fire, wind, ice, and stone all assailed the knight at once.
“Wah!” Caught completely unaware, she was blown off the spike she had been standing on. However, she didn’t take as much damage as I expected. Judging from the flow of energy, her armor appeared to be a magic item that protected her from magic to some degree.
“Ah ha ha! I’ll back you up, foolish human!” Ren shouted from outside the field of spikes. Uncharacteristically flustered, he pulled back the blades of magic. “It would seem the War Princess is a handful even for you.”
“War Princess...” As I contemplated his words, he directed his blades of magic at the knight once more.
Blown back by the first barrage, she was hanging on the edge of a particularly tall spike, dangling over the thorny abyss below. When she caught sight of the colossal spell bearing down upon her and the elf directing it, she cried out in equal parts bewilderment and shock.
Ren’s magic bore down on her, completely demolishing any spikes in its path. It was quite strong, yet its strength significantly decayed just before it reached the knight. A column of light that seemed to be a magic-nullifying barrier glowed around her, but it was beginning to erode. Her barrier couldn’t withstand Ren’s magic.
“Argh!” With a frustrated cry, the knight disappeared. She had teleported out of the field of spikes to the side opposite Ren.
“I’m gonna report you guys!” Leaving us with those words, she disappeared once again.
This time, she didn’t reappear. Even through the vision of the crows I had flying overhead, I couldn’t find where she had gone. She had likely fled to the forest I could see far in the distance. I let out a small sigh.
“That was a close call, foolish human.” I turned around and saw Ren jogging over to me. He must not have had much stamina, because he was already sweating.
“Was that the War Princess?” I asked.
“I would think so,” Ren said with a composed smile, wiping the sweat off his brow. “It’s my first time seeing her as well, of course, but I can’t imagine such a powerful female knight would be anyone else.”
“Yeah, I guess not.”
The rumors about the War Princess arriving before the rebel army and seizing cities by herself with unparalleled strength had completely slipped my mind. I had thought she might be the rebel leader at first, but that didn’t appear to be the case, at least. However, we didn’t know anything about her, much less whose pawn she was.
I let out another sigh. One more headache for the collection.