I couldn’t help but worry. She wasn’t a swordswoman by nature. I honestly doubted that she would understand the delicacy with which weapons were wielded. That said, we were confronted with the reality that we couldn’t deal any damage to Id Invicius. We had to try everything we could.
If our mana-fueled strikes failed, she could just undo whatever spell she’d cast on our swords. I’d seen magic meant to boost physical capabilities before, but I’d never heard of applying it to a weapon. Still, if Lucy was saying it was possible, it had to be. And if she could amplify them, she could also reverse the process to return them to normal.
“Hmm... Just as I thought, the residual mana ratio is just as it was,” she muttered, touching each sword.
“Residual mana ratio...?” I parroted.
I couldn’t see mana, so I had no idea what was going on, and her words seemed nonsensical. If I took it literally, the ratio of mana that remained in the weapon was good. Not that this makes sense either. I wonder if they teach this stuff in lectures at the institute.
“There’s no point giving you a detailed explanation right now,” Lucy said. “Here, try it out.”
“You’ve got a point. Hmmm...”
She couldn’t start a lesson in the middle of the mountains, so I chose to just accept what she was saying. And though I was still curious, knowing the inner workings of this was a low priority. So, I focused only on the result. I took a look at my sword, but I couldn’t sense any differences. My concerns about the weight and center of gravity changing had been unfounded.
“Um, how long does this...amplification...? How long does it last?” I asked.
“With your weapons, about an hour,” Lucy answered. “It typically disperses in just a few minutes, but with such nice materials, it lasts longer. Normal iron wouldn’t work this way.”
“Hmmm...”
Since I couldn’t tell the difference, all that was left was to actually try it. I had no idea what kind of result to expect. But if this enhancement was going to be effective against our foe, then one hour seemed like plenty of time to finish things. We’d never expected the fighting to last that long, and if it did, we would likely be defeated.
When not at war—in a battle between small numbers—it was pretty much impossible for the fighting to last an hour without a victor. Beyond just the question of winning or losing, you had to consider temporary withdrawals and such.
But in this case, Id Invicius was invisible, so we had to find it before we could fight it. However, Lucy already had a grasp of its tail. If this went on for an hour without being settled, we were pretty much guaranteed to lose—that would typically imply a situation where we were somehow holding out and waiting for defeat rather than pushing for a victory. I wanted to avoid that. If we ended up in such a situation with this group, then maybe it was just better to quickly give up on the whole endeavor.
“One more thing,” Lucy said. “Its limbs are covered in mana. Don’t let it hit you at all. It’s strong enough that metal armor will be rendered meaningless.”
“Thanks for the warning...”
Mana could be applied to both offense and defense. That was easy for anyone to imagine. Both Surena and I had fallen victim to it. I could’ve guessed that armor was useless, even before hearing it from Lucy.
Just as Lucy had amplified our weapons with mana, Id Invicius had done the same to its body. Those vicious claws were drenched in mana. I had no intention of letting this battle draw out, but it didn’t seem like it would either way. Our party was made up of some of the strongest fighters alive, but even so, a careless misstep could crush us all in an instant. It’s a seriously unappealing prospect.
“Right, next...we go that way,” Lucy said, straightening up and pointing in the direction Id Invicius had probably gone.
“You really can tell...” I muttered.
“Of course. It leaves quite a dense trail.”
If I had to guess, she was referring to vestiges of mana. There was definitely a lot of guesswork going on in my head when it came to this magic stuff. Even if Lucy was utterly wrong, I couldn’t really complain. But considering how confident she looked, it was hard to picture a future where she was wrong. I still had a long way to go before I could act with such confidence in any situation.
“I’m glad you can track it,” Surena said. “Master, let’s hurry onward.”
“Y-Yeah.”
Surena strode forward, and I followed in a fluster. Both she and Allucia really trusted everything Lucy said. I did too, but the degree of trust was somewhat different. Unlike me, the two of them had interacted with wizards plenty of times before this. Though the two couldn’t use magic themselves, they had far more knowledge about people who could.
I had too little experience teaming up with wizards. That was why I was having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I’d worked with Ficelle before, but that had been in a face-to-face clash in a confined space. I didn’t know what magic could provide beyond simple firepower.
Well, even ignoring the fact that Lucy towered above all others, having a wizard who could adapt to all kinds of situations was pretty useful. I could understand why Liberis invested so much into discovering and raising wizards. Maybe one day I would fight shoulder to shoulder with Mewi. That was an extremely interesting and enjoyable thought, but for that day to come, I had to survive this day of days. So, I focused my attention on the task at hand.
“Straight that way. Mm... A little to the right, I think.”
“We probably can’t get through that way. We’ll have to take a detour.”
Navigation duty had shifted from me to Lucy, but she was only tracking Id Invicius’s mana and didn’t give much thought to the route itself. Every now and then, we had to deviate from the straight-line path to our target.
If we tried really hard, we could probably have done without the detours, but that would’ve left us utterly defenseless—I wanted to avoid having to scale any steep slopes or sheer cliffs. If we were attacked in a position like that, no real counter would be possible.
I didn’t claim that Lucy had a lack of combat experience. If anything, she had far more than the rest of us. However, the experience accumulated by swordsmen was just different. Our approach to battle couldn’t be compared to the way Lucy could handle threats from all directions, at long range, and with her bare hands. So, if we followed her directions to the letter, she would be the only person capable of putting up a fight. That would be problematic. Not only would we be incapable of protecting her, but we wouldn’t even be able to protect ourselves. It would be impossible to react to Id Invicius’s attacks without a stable foothold and clear sight. At the very least, we needed space to dodge.
Several minutes after following Lucy’s guidance and making small changes to the route, I sensed something clearly abnormal in this space devoid of life.
“Hm...?”
“Someone’s there,” Surena observed.
“Ooh, and who might that be?” Lucy mused. “To think that other people would be all the way out here.”