Frankly, undoing the magic lowered our odds of success. Both Surena and I understood that, but this experience was still strangely refreshing. While we’d talked, Allucia had taken charge of keeping Id Invicius in place. Joshua and Misty were putting in work too, but their attacks didn’t even cause the monster pain. I should commend them for keeping it in place like that.
“Hmph!”
“Graaaah!”
I leaped out in front of the monster and struck with an attack that had plenty of force behind it. Normally, this would have been a splendid hit, but the feedback in my hand didn’t match that expectation. Id Invicius was terribly tough—it felt like my blade had struck something immeasurably hard. Things were a lot better now that my opponent wasn’t vanishing, but this wasn’t a battle I could win through attrition. I had to find some way of breaking through its defenses. However, I’d just relinquished one means of doing exactly that.
“Master?!”
“Don’t mind us!”
Seeing my sword bounce off, Allucia turned pale. I could understand her panic. After all, my attacks had just been working moments ago. However, Surena and I were doing this intentionally, so there was absolutely no need to worry about us. Fretting would have put Allucia off her guard, and I didn’t want that to happen, so I’d quickly dispelled her fears.
“Haaaah!”
Surena followed up with an attack of her own, but it, too, was perfectly repelled. That would typically cause her to lose her balance, but she managed to hold her ground. Her core strength was astounding. I definitely couldn’t pull off the same thing. A swordsman’s goal was to cut down their opponent with swift and powerful strikes, and Surena had indisputable skill to accomplish both those aspects at such a high level. But such skill wasn’t enough here.
“Tch! Still not getting through...!” Surena spat, unable to hide her irritation.
Hmm, what to do? In the worst case, Lucy could take care of it for us or reamplify our weapons. That would be a pretty lame way to finish things, though. Going for its existing wounds was a valid tactic, but I didn’t really want to resort to that. It would make undoing the magic on our weapons meaningless.
“Allucia! Take over for a bit!”
“Right!”
We had to somehow get our blades to work, and to do that, we needed information. Observation was the best way of achieving this. So, I apologetically left the front line to Allucia.
Our attacks had only started working because of Lucy’s magic. Its defenses hadn’t been peeled away. There was some kind of trick to it, so there also had to be a valid way of getting around that trick.
If magic amplification allowed us to kill it, that meant it had magical defenses. In other words, Id Invicius’s entire body was probably covered in mana. Its invisibility would be impossible without mana too.
Top-class swordsmen were facing off against it now—though it was a bit embarrassing to count myself among them. Our weapons were all very well made. Was it truly possible for Id Invicius to negate all that firepower with mana alone? That was how it seemed. However, I questioned whether it was possible to cover every inch of its body for such a long time.
“Hmmm...”
There was one other thing of note: Even before Lucy broke its invisibility, it’d only revealed itself during the moments it attacked. You’d think it would have been more efficient to attack while invisible. There had to be a reason it couldn’t.
Did it have to ration its mana? Was that how it worked? I couldn’t understand any of that. I wasn’t a wizard. However, in battle, there was always a reason the most logical approach wasn’t used. So what could it be? Finding that out was the key to defeating Id Invicius. Of course, I had no real evidence to base this theory on, but the intuition I’d developed from wielding a sword for many years was telling me that.
I watched the battle a while longer without saying anything. Had I been fighting on my own, this would’ve been impossible, so I had to make full use of this opportunity. Id Invicius possessed tremendous mana and used it in an outrageous way. But it couldn’t do two things at once. Did it not have enough mana to maintain its invisibility and its absolute defense?
No, that wasn’t it. During our first encounter, my sword had struck home after it’d fully turned invisible. Despite this, I hadn’t cut it at all, so it was safe to assume that it could do both at once.
So why did it only reveal itself when it attacked? There had to be some kind of logic behind that. Was it a matter of compatibility between its two skills? Or was it forced to concentrate its mana to protect one specific spot? Maybe it had to devote so much effort to being invisible that it couldn’t maintain it when using its mana to attack. Lucy had mentioned that its limbs were covered in mana. Maybe its defenses weakened only when it attacked.
“It’s too focused on defense—that would be the most logical conclusion, but...”
That was the limit to what I could glean given our current information. All that was left was to observe it based on that assumption. That said, Id Invicius was just plainly huge and agile. It wasn’t easy to spot anything out of place in its movements. And this wasn’t a beast I was familiar with—I was basically seeing it for the first time.
“Ah! I get it...”
After spending more time on observation, I finally figured something out. As it took on multiple opponents, it was obviously getting wounded. Allucia’s sword was still amplified by magic, so as long as it reached its target, her blade cut flesh.