Sora spoke with absolute confidence as he swung his Shinsou forward with a flash of black light. Immediately afterward, a loud, cacophonous noise like a hundred ceramic vases shattering resounded throughout the duke’s garden. It was the sound of Jijinbou’s Fortress spell being shattered into a million pieces by Sora’s ranged Gale attack. The shards of the broken barrier fell to the ground and disappeared like melted snow. The old man’s eyes went wide—his toughest shield had been destroyed with a single swing of Sora’s blade.
But Jijinbou didn’t have time to be shocked. Ahead of him and his destroyed barrier, Sora lunged forward with his blade drawn. Jijinbou had his back against the mansion’s wall, so there was no room for him to jump backward and evade. Instead he used Shizuka, his biwa, to block. The moment both Shinsous clashed, Shizuka let out a piercing howl of anguish. It was the Shinsou’s automatic counterattack, and its power was several times greater than the attack that had sent the duke and his daughters to the floor.
A normal opponent’s eardrums would have ruptured, with blood spraying out of their ears, but Sora calmly endured the assault. In fact, he paid it no mind whatsoever. Just as he had guessed, Shizuka’s reverberation didn’t work on opponents with enough vigor. In fact, instead of injuring Sora, Shizuka itself began to crack.
Realizing that he’d lose if the clash between Shinsous persisted, a peal of shrill laughter escaped Jijinbou’s throat. “How truly amusing! To think that I was about to torture Miss Claudia Dragonaut to my heart’s content only to end up in a difficult situation myself! Indeed, life doesn’t always turn out like you expect, which is what makes it so enjoyable! Very well, then. If that’s how you want to play it, I suppose I can get serious!”
Jijinbou shrieked eerily, almost like a bird, and Sora was immediately blasted backward as though an invisible hammer had slammed into him. Jijinbou had struck him with a powerful vigor cannon at point-blank range. If Sora could execute a vigor cannon when he was just a beginner, it wasn’t surprising that Jijinbou could too. Sora received minimal damage, but that hadn’t been Jijinbou’s aim in the first place. He’d just wanted to put some distance between them.
Before Sora could even get up, Jijinbou began casting his next spell. “O one million horsemen of steel and iron, may your wounded bodies and weary bones take refuge within these walls!”
His incantation was as fast as it was precise. As the magic took shape around him, not a bit of his mana was out of place. Had another mage been present to watch, they would have correctly recognized that Jijinbou’s mastery of his mana had reached Sage Lord level.
“Even after your iron, food, and water have all run out, this fortress’s flag will continue to fly. Gather, rank-and-file soldiers, and swear revolution! Amass roof tiles to build these walls, and bore through hills to form these trenches! Here lies your impregnable stronghold—Fortress!”
The moment he finished chanting, the black walls—no, the walls of a fortress—appeared to surround him once more. Their thickness, height, and resilience were all on a different level from the wall Sora had just shattered. It was literally like a miniature fortress had appeared around the old man.
“This is my ultimate shield! With all the mana I’ve put into these defenses, don’t think you’ll pierce them as easily as before! Now your attacks won’t reach me, but mine will reach you, young ’un!” Jijinbou chortled with joy. “Now, I believe you said before that you had no reason to be afraid of me? Don’t tell me you honestly thought you could win with such a half-baked understanding of my power! In that case, I’ll have to award you a five out of ten! It’s true that my Shinsou doesn’t work on the monsters in Onigashima. Nor does it work on the other Banners and knights of Seirin who’ve awakened to their Shinsous. But I’ve got another technique as a work-around. Whoever said my Shinsou had just one ability?!”
Jijinbou immediately began chanting a second spell.
“May the trees rot! May the grass wither! May the earth decay!”
At the same time, another unfamiliar voice began chanting a different spell. “Your blood boils, your hair is set aflame, your eyeballs melt in their sockets!” The voice was coming from Jijinbou’s Shinsou, Shizuka. The long-necked, grotesque biwa in his hand continued to shriek the incantation.
“Dance, embers of destruction! Spread, miasma of disease!”
“Your castle in vibrant flame, its furniture made out of skulls! The flag of treason flies high! The assassin’s dagger takes its sacrifice!”
Double casting. That was the other ability Jijinbou’s Shinsou afforded him.
“Fester! Bloat! Decompose—Abscess of Rot!”
“May those eyes and hands become the flame to immolate your enemies—Princess Blaze!”
Once Jijinbou finished his incantation, a Category 7 earth spell activated. Decay rapidly began to spread out all around the old man as the soil in the duke’s garden became muddy, emitting squelching noises. Jijinbou’s spell had manifested a Sea of Rot in the duke’s estate. Even the neat cobblestone path leading from the mansion’s gate to the foyer became clumpy and muddy, like clay. The verdant, neatly trimmed grass withered and turned dark purple, and a putrid stench blanketed the area.
The duke’s attendants cried out in panic and confusion as the estate they worked so hard to maintain continued to decompose. The ground gave way, becoming a bottomless swamp. Everyone on top of the ground started to sink into the soggy earth. Even if they had managed to squirm free, the entirety of the duke’s garden was already infected by the old man’s magic. There was no escape. The more they struggled, the deeper they sank and the less they were able to move.
Sora was no exception. What’s more, over ten raging tentacles of flame from Shizuka roared as they shot toward him. If Sora had only had himself to worry about, he could have strengthened his body with vigor to leap out of the way in time, but the duke and his daughters were behind him. If he evaded, the flames would hit the helpless family. And from the scythe-shaped grin on Jijinbou’s face, Sora could tell it had been deliberate.