Abruptly, Sullivan’s body swayed, then pitched forward. He fell flat on his face with a resounding thud, and his sword fell uselessly from his hand and clattered onto the ground.
“Huh? Out in just one hit?” Shannon said, bemused.
Gaine and his goons had been smiling, but their expressions rapidly turned grim. Shannon had used a simple spell in her one-on-one match against Sullivan: Air Cannon, an all-purpose attack.
“Uh...?” Gaine couldn’t seem to find any words.
Looking quite pleased with herself, Shannon blew on the tip of her wand and put a hand on her hip. “Thing is, I’ve actually been studying magic for over a thousand years.”
“A thousand?! D-Don’t insult me! Hey, Sullivan! Get up!”
Sullivan, however, had taken Shannon’s magic straight to the gut in a clean KO. His open eyelids showed the whites of his eyes, and drool was leaking from his mouth.
“What is she?” one of the lackeys asked hesitantly.
“Are all mages like that?!” another cried, panicked.
“Sh-Shannon?” Sarah stared at her in astonishment, unable to comprehend what was unfolding before her.
Gaine trembled with rage. The veins in his forehead throbbed. He drew his sword and turned back to Shannon. “Everyone! Kill her!”
His lackeys roared, and just like that, the melee began. The grunts surrounding them all jumped at Shannon, but one by one, she countered them with her knowledge of self-defense. As she blasted them beyond any hope of recovery, they cried out in outrageous ways.
“Ugh!”
“Ahhh!”
“Oh!”
“Ow!”
“Oof!”
“Gaaah! My back!”
In addition to using hand-to-hand combat for short-range attacks, Shannon sprinkled in some magic for long-distance shots. She didn’t give the grunts any openings against her.
The man who had been holding Sarah captive joined the fray too, and Sarah—the bandits’ original target—was freed. She didn’t leave the battlefield, though. Even trembling like a leaf, she watched the fight with great interest.
It wasn’t long before most of the men had collapsed—out of breath, bodies and spirits wounded, no match for Shannon’s combat skills. A heap of goons lay sprawled across the ground like a rug.
“Th-That girl is crazy!” one groaned.
“How’d she d-do that?! I thought being a mage was a desk job,” whined another.
“Honestly...she can’t be a teenage mage. She’s more like an expert old hag— AH!” The man who said that got a clean hit to the face with a stone. It knocked him back, and his nose broke with a burst of blood.
“That’s what you get for calling a girl an old hag!” Shannon called.
“Shannon...” Sarah’s voice was full of wonder. “You’re awesome! I’ve never seen a mage fight like this... You’re so strong! Who in the world are you?!”
Shannon laughed and said what she always did: “I’m just a traveling mage!”
“But, like, not even a traveling mage could be this strong...”
“For all you know, I could have been just a fighter back in the day!”
“You don’t even look like a mage—just a brawler!”
“Aw... Well, I would be cool as one of those too!”
Shannon smiled, elated...but Sarah’s face froze. Her gaze was no longer on Shannon. Instead, it was pointed behind her.
Behind Shannon, there came a roar. “Sucker!” a man yelled, and then—shink!—a shock jolted through her body as something sank deep into the left side of her back, through her robe. Gaine stood there, riddled with wounds and clutching a bloodied knife in his hand.
“SHANNON!” Sarah screamed.
The man chuckled breathlessly. “How about that? I did it! I’m... I’m stronger than you!” He tossed aside the bloody knife and let out another roar, this time in triumph—he was certain that nothing stood in his way now. But...
“Ugh, that hurt,” Shannon whined.
Gaine gave a start. “Huh?”
“You put a hole in my robe,” she pouted, turning her head to look at the tear in the back of her clothes.
“H-Hey, wait... I stabbed you in the back. Why aren’t you screaming?!”
“Hmm. Sheer willpower?”
“That’s impossible! You’re a monster—”
Shannon waved her wand and summoned a strong wind that steadily pushed him back. He grunted, struggling to endure the tempest, but the force of the wind was too much; it even yanked his skin back.
“Hanging on, huh? Then how about this?!” Shannon swished her wand again, and the wind grew even stronger. The men who’d already lost their will to fight were caught up in the gale and blown away into the trees. They screamed, and then their cries ceased as they crashed and fell unconscious.
Only Gaine remained, and he’d toppled onto his behind as if his legs had given out. With an airy movement, Shannon pointed her wand at the tip of his nose. He swallowed, blinking fiercely and desperately waving his hands.
“W-Wait! Wait, please! I get it!” Gaine cried. Shannon didn’t understand what he “got,” but she could tell that he was begging for his life. “W-We won’t ever touch you guys again, I promise! Why don’t we just agree to leave things be, huh?”
His words disgusted Shannon, and she heaved a deep sigh. “Slimeball. You should be glad that your lackeys are all out cold right now so they can’t see their exalted leader like this. They’d cry,” she said. Gaine laughed nervously. “Anyway, what’s this about an agreement? We didn’t need to be tortured in the first place, so there’s no reason to ‘leave things be.’ What agreement is there to make?”
She smiled sweetly, and from her grin, Gaine learned the true meaning of fear.
“N-No, well, I mean, if we just think about it a little—”
“Anyway, I think you’ll learn your lesson better if I show you a bit of pain.” She pressed the tip of her wand to his temple.
“No, w-wait, w-we can talk abou—”
Light flashed at the end of the wand. In the next instant, with a violent zap! like a lightning strike, Gaine’s eyes rolled back into his head. He landed face up on the ground with black smoke streaming from his skull.
That was it for the bandits.
“Mm...ahh! I’m wiped out after that. Honestly, what an annoying bunch of weaklings.”
Sarah rushed over to her, panicked. “Forget about that! Are you okay, Shannon?!”
“Huh? What’re you talking about?”
“What am I— Just show me your wound!” Sarah forcibly turned Shannon around so that she could take a look at her back. There was a hole in Shannon’s robe where that bandit’s knife had gone through, and the fabric around it had taken on a brownish red color. “I thought so! We have to hurry and treat it. I have herbs...so... Huh?” Her words grew quieter by the second until they trailed away.
“What’s wro— Hey, what are you doing?!” Shannon cried. Wordlessly, Sarah tore off Shannon’s robe and then pushed aside her clothes. She traced a finger across the pale skin of Shannon’s back, and Shannon’s face scrunched up as she giggled. “Ah! Th-That tickles!”
“Hold on, the wound should be... Wait, it’s...gone? But I saw you get stabbed!”
There was no stab wound on Shannon’s back. In fact, her skin wasn’t even marred by any scars or blemishes—every inch was flawless. Sarah ignored Shannon’s peculiar giggles from the unintentional tickling and single-mindedly continued to inspect her body.
At last, Sarah came to a conclusion: “This is just like...super healing.” She paused. “No, I think there’s more to it...”
She hadn’t yet connected all the dots from Shannon’s words and actions. Then, finally, she remembered Shannon saying something about having studied magic for over a thousand years. Sarah’s brain jolted into gear.
“You can’t be... No,” Sarah murmured, righting Shannon’s clothes. “You must be.”
“Finally done, huh? Satisfied?”
“I... I think so.”
“Well, I’ll take your word for it. Anyway, Sarah, are you okay? That guy was holding your arms pretty tightly.”
Sarah waved her hands. “I’m fine. He wasn’t holding on to me for very long. What should we do about all these guys? Can we just leave them here?”
“Hmm, I guess a lot of them are blocking the road. Let’s bring them off to the side.”
“Okay. Oh, Shannon, there’s something in your hair.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Hold still a minute.” Shannon did just that, and Sarah gently put her wand against Shannon’s temple.
“Hmm? Huh, what’s the wand—”
Magic burst from Sarah’s wand, and Shannon’s eyelids started to close. She collapsed into Sarah’s arms. As her consciousness started to slip away, she heard Sarah murmur, “Sorry, Shannon. You see, I...”
But before she could hear anything else, Shannon fell into a deep darkness.