“But you have to hold my other hand.”
“Sure thing.”
And so, Sara held hands with Nelly and timidly stuck her hardened other hand outside of the protection field where a wolf was waiting, drool spilling from its open mouth.
“Growl. Grawr!”
“Eep!”
There was an impact, but the sound of the wolf’s teeth breaking was scarier. The wolf scampered away.
“You did it.”
Sara wasn’t really sure whether she should feel accomplished or not. On her very first day of magic training, she was already feeling rather drained (mentally, at least).
After that, Nelly went out to hunt, looking rather satisfied with herself, and Sara finished her cleaning. While she made their dinner soup, she thought to herself: It was true that she knew now that she could harden herself enough to resist a wolf’s fangs. She could most likely strengthen her entire body and not just her hand. However...
She added a little salt to the soup.
Strengthening herself to resist bites meant that she would still have to be bitten. Meaning that she’d have to be ready to be bitten at any time while she was going anywhere. That was just too much. In other words, she’d have to figure out how to use magic to defend herself in other ways if she didn’t want to get bit.
In that case, instead of strengthening her body, what if she just created a round protection field around herself? She’d allowed Nelly to influence her into starting with physical strengthening, but Nelly had also mentioned protection fields and shields and things of that nature. If she could just use something like that, the wolves wouldn’t be able to get near her.
“Your soup is as delicious as always, Sara.”
Nelly contentedly ferried her soup to her mouth that night at dinner.
“Thanks. So, I was thinking...”
Sara explained to Nelly what she’d been pondering earlier.
“Hmm. Shields and protection fields, eh? Well, if you want to keep yourself safe at a fixed location, you can use a magical tool to create a temporary protection field.”
“A temporary one?”
“Right. There are protection cases around this cottage that create the field to keep monsters out. You need to be holding a stone like this to get through. It’s called a friction stone. I completely forgot about it, but I’ll get one for you later.”
Nelly showed Sara something that looked like a clasp on her belt. Apparently, she wouldn’t have been able to leave the protection field at all earlier if she hadn’t been holding Nelly’s hand.
So couldn’t she move around safely if she just carried some of those protection cases with her? Sara decided to ask.
“Well, they are used on vehicles sometimes. But you have to fix them in place somehow, usually by leaving them on the ground. And you have to use three or four of them together to create a field, so you can use them while camping, but not while moving. I mean, I guess you could try, but it wouldn’t be very stable, so I don’t think it’d be practical.”
Gee, fantasy worlds sure were complicated.
“Well, if you want to make your own protection field, go ahead and try it. It consumes a lot of mana though, so I’ve never seen someone keep one up at all times outside of battle.”
And so, the next day, Nelly ended up keeping Sara company again for more training before she headed out hunting.
“Okay, putting it into practice, day two!”
“Growl.”
“Would you guys go away?! Ugh! You got hurt yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Growl.”
The wolf bared its fangs. New fangs, which had just grown in.
“No way... That’s gotta be a different wolf than yesterday, right?”
“It’s probably the same one. Monsters on the Dark Mountain have really powerful regenerative abilities. That’s why you have to be doubly sure when you take one down.”
“Are they sharks? They can regrow whole teeth?”
She didn’t want to know that. Now that she did, of course, there was nothing she could do about it. Sara was pretty good at changing gears.
“Oh, whatever. Then I’ll use physical strengthening, but in a bubble around me... Protection field!”
She imagined a bubble around her and strengthened its surface to be as hard as iron. It was pretty impressive that she could strengthen mana after it had left her body, no?
Seeing how proud Sara looked, Nelly took off the friction stone at her waist and drew her sword.
“Hey, hold on a second. You’re not going to—”
Clang! Sara could almost see sparks flying. She’d squeezed her eyes shut at the moment of impact, but timidly opened them to find Nelly looking back and forth between the protection field and her sword, impressed.
“D-Did it work?”
“Impressive stuff, Sara. You can’t be closing your eyes when you’re facing off with an enemy, though.”
“You’re asking too much of me.”
Sara didn’t want to face off against enemies in the first place, she just wanted to protect herself. Nelly’s standards were too high because of the things she herself was capable of.
In any case, she’d managed to successfully create a protection field.
“What were you going to do if it hadn’t worked, Nelly?!”
“It’s fine.” Nelly took out a potion with a cheery grin.
Hadn’t Sara just told her yesterday that just because she had potions, it didn’t mean she could do whatever she wanted?
“Should we see what a wolf can do, then?”
“Huh?”
“A wolf.”
“I heard you. You don’t need to repeat yourself.”
Okay, I can make a protection field, Sara thought to herself. So she should go face off against a wolf now? That was weird, wasn’t it? It was too soon.
“You should put it into practice, though.”
“I got it. I get it already.”
In the end, she’d have to try it eventually.
“Growl.”
“Growwwl.”
The wolves were clearly very excited that Sara was finally coming out. She went up to the very edge of the house’s protection field and created her own within it. It seemed the two fields didn’t interact at all.
With a sigh, Sara stepped forward. Nelly was right beside her, focusing, but not so intensely as to drive the wolves away, so she was fine.
She took another step, then another.
“Growl!”
A wolf hit the protection field. The impact was intense, but the wolf’s fangs didn’t go through the circular field.
“Did it work?”
“That’s a perfect protection field.” Nelly nodded, satisfied.
Why was the scenery tilting, then?
“If the field is a circle...”
“Growl!”
A wolf lunged at her for a body slam.
“A-Aaah!”
“Sara!”
Because round things roll.
Sara rolled down the gentle slope of the field until Nelly came and stopped her.