“Hah!”
It only took a few seconds, or maybe a little longer. But in the end, Id Invicius’s chest was an atrocious mess of diced meat. Quite frankly, if it’d survived that, we wouldn’t be able to classify this thing as a living creature. That was how ghastly this scene on the desolate mountainside was.
From what I could tell, it was definitely dead. However, tension remained in the air for a moment due to how nonsensical its abilities had been. Even if this was something that would normally kill a monster, logic hadn’t really applied to this thing.
“It’s over?” Lucy asked. “Oooh, its mana is melting away... Ha ha ha! Well done, all of you.”
And seeing the battle from an angle we swordsmen couldn’t perceive, Lucy unraveled all the tension with her declaration.
“Aaaah! I’m beat...”
Now that I was convinced we’d won, all the strength left my body.
“Yo!” Lucy called out to me. “Good work.”
“It really was a lot of work...”
I was utterly exhausted. While part of this was physical fatigue, I was also mentally drained from challenging a foe who’d defeated me once before. That said, those thoughts had evacuated my mind during the latter half of the battle. I was more calculating than I’d thought.
“We...did it?” Surena muttered.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “We—no, you won, Surena.”
She’d been the one to deal not only the finishing blow but the last series of blows. We’d gotten a tiny moment of reprieve since the battle’s end, but not enough to really even collect ourselves—even so, she wasn’t gasping for breath at all, which gave us a glimpse at her superhuman stamina.
It would be unreasonable to ask me to try to do the same. I would’ve definitely run out of breath while slashing like that. And that fact had nothing to do with my age—it was a simple difference in natural constitution and in style.
With its chest a mangled mess, Id Invicius showed no signs of moving. All hope would’ve been lost if it’d managed to get up despite those wounds, but Lucy had declared it dead, so there was no need to worry. Still, nobody here was crass enough to let out a victory cry. With Id Invicius’s death, silence fell over this region of the Aflatta Mountain Range, creating a strangely calm atmosphere.
There was something weird about the whole thing. It really didn’t feel right to shout “Yeah! We won!” Frankly, I wasn’t that energetic of a person to begin with. The mood was somewhat similar to the ending of my bout with my dad.
This was a clear victory. And even though we’d gotten Lucy’s aid, it was still a dazzling triumph on our part. Yet despite this, we refrained from cheering. Everyone present shared this feeling. We’d overcome an intense foe, but the relief from surviving the danger was more prominent than any joy from winning. I guess it’s a little hard to explain...
“Joshua, Misty, thank you,” I said. “Good job working with me on the spot like that.”
“It was nothing,” Joshua said. “I wouldn’t be a swordsman if I weren’t capable of at least collaborating in the midst of battle.”
“Master Joshua’s skills naturally shine under the light.”
We probably could’ve won with just the team of me, Surena, Allucia, and Lucy, but these two had helped give us that last push. Their replies to my gratitude were filled with their own sense of pride.
This was a world where those who couldn’t make a snap judgment in the heat of the moment ended up dead. Joshua was alive today because his mind was quick in a crisis—that was how he’d survived such a harsh environment.
“Anyway, that was a bit anticlimactic,” Lucy muttered casually.
“Uh-huh...”
I couldn’t muster the energy to argue with her. The world she saw was just too different from the rest of us. Maybe it was more the difference between swordsmen and wizards than anything on an individual level.
Even though it would be hard to produce more heroic figures like Lucy, if humanity’s standards could be dragged up to her level, the world would probably be peaceful. Well, new conflicts could arise from that elevation in power, but at the very least, humanity would no longer need to fear monsters. Beasts like Id Invicius were impossible for swordsmen to challenge on their own—even if Id Invivius’s power was a rare abnormality, it was best to cull such monsters when possible.
“Oh yeah, you mentioned its trick being child’s play...” I remarked.
“Ah, that? Well, from your perspective, I’m sure the thing looked impregnable,” Lucy replied.
It was like we were looking at completely different things. What was child’s play to her was an inexplicable phenomenon to us. I’d ignored her comment during the battle, but now that we had room to breathe, I couldn’t help but ask about it.
“I can partially reproduce it if you want,” she added. “See?” Lucy held up her right hand, and shockingly, it gradually disappeared.
“Hm? Whoa!”
Seriously? It’s totally invisible. Magic’s crazy. I doubted all wizards were capable of this, but if such technology were ever fully developed, swordsmen would become pointless. I was really starting to get anxious about whether swordsmen had a place in the future of this world, even if it wasn’t an immediate problem.
After maintaining the spell for a few seconds, Lucy undid the magic and took a breath. “Phew... That’s pretty draining. Not even I can conceal my whole body while running around. Doing so would require a constant expenditure of a vast amount of mana, leaving a notably visible trail. Using that sort of trick is meaningless against wizards and any monsters capable of manipulating mana.”
“Hmmm...”
This was a spell that exhausted even Lucy after a few seconds of use. It seemed it was pretty much impossible to keep it up constantly over the entire body using a human’s capacity for mana. This could have been the reason behind Id Invicius’s strangely cowardly behavior. Its skill was useless against anything that could perceive mana, and that wasn’t restricted only to humans.
From what I knew about magic, I could guess that there were far more monsters who could manipulate mana than there were wizards. Lucy had once told me that, of the vast amount of magic in this world, what had been unraveled and reproduced as wizardry wasn’t even ten percent of the whole.
That was why Id Invicius had been careful to suss out whether its prey could see mana—it only challenged those who couldn’t. That could explain why it’d been so skittish, though we couldn’t know for sure. After all, it was dead now, and we wouldn’t have been able to ask it even if it were still alive. The truth of the matter remained buried in darkness.
“Anyway, its colossal mana pool is of particular interest to me,” Lucy said. “Now then, how to bring this back...?”
“You’re set on hauling this thing back with you?” I muttered.
“Of course. What do you think I came all this way for?”
“Figures...”
I wanted to tell her, Just say you came to save me and Surena, even if only for appearances’ sake, but this was typical Lucy behavior. Besides, Joshua and Misty were still here. They didn’t know all the details, so there was no point in giving them too much information.
“In that case, we can have the guild form a collection team,” Joshua suggested. “Lysandra, you can make the request during your report. Misty and I will stay to preserve the scene.”
“That’ll help...” Surena said. “Are you sure?”
“We aren’t particularly worn out. We can last out here a few days. Besides, it’s not a bad thing to have Liberis’s bigwigs owe us a favor.”