As my feet continued to sink into the rot, the tentacles of flame streaked toward me.
“Now I see,” I muttered to myself. Jijinbou had protected himself with a Category 8 defensive spell as resilient as any normal fortress, then used his Shinsou to attack with two spells at once. In other words, his fighting style was to hide behind his defenses while taking out his enemies. Just hearing his chants was enough for me to tell that even without using his Shinsou, he was already an incredibly skilled mage capable of casting extremely powerful spells. And by adding his vigor and Shinsou to his repertoire, he guaranteed that no regular mage would be able to stand up to him. In fact, with power like that, he could probably take on a whole army by himself.
The force of his Category 5 fire spell, Princess Blaze, was also tremendous. It was the same spell Miroslav had used against me back in the cave, but her flames had been much thinner, and there had only been three or four tendrils. Yet Jijinbou had fired over ten tentacles at once, each of them thick like a pillar, and they were approaching at a much faster speed. If even one of them hit me, my body would probably burst into flame and be reduced to ash in an instant.
But so what?
Just before one of the pillars of flame reached me, I cut it down with my Shinsou. The roaring mass of fire was eliminated in an instant. Not severed, eliminated. Like an invisible monster had swallowed it whole. I didn’t so much as feel a hint of heat on my face. A faint burnt smell reached my nostrils, but that was all.
I swung my blade again, snuffing out a second, third, and fourth tentacle. My legs might have been stuck in the mud, but as long as I could swing my sword, it hardly mattered. I continued eliminating the flaming tentacles one by one as they approached me, and after I got rid of the twelfth, the attack was completely nullified. After confirming as much, I stabbed my sword into the ground while I was at it, absorbing the rotten mana poisoning the ground into my blade. Getting rid of the miasma wouldn’t restore the earth to normal, but at least now the others wouldn’t sink any farther into the mud.
Jijinbou’s eyes were wide with shock, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed. And when he spoke, his voice was laced with surprise and confusion. “Hee...hee hee! I see, I see! So your Shinsou has the power to absorb, and your techniques are all specialized for absorption! That’s how you were able to shatter my Fortress earlier, no? Hee hee hee! That means your Shinsou is the natural enemy of a magic user like me!”
He began strumming his lute furiously.
“However! You need to swing your sword to use that ability, don’t you?! So if I attacked you from all directions, you wouldn’t be able to withstand it, would you, young ’un?! And you probably have a limit to how much mana you can absorb. You’ve already absorbed the entirety of my Princess Blaze, so I wonder how much more you’ll be able to take in! If your body takes in more mana than it can handle, it’ll explode along with the mana inside! And now that I’ve discovered the trick to your ability, I’ll do my duty as a priest and guide you to the circle of hell reserved for gluttons!”
Shizuka began chanting again, its intonation chilly as its voice resounded through the night sky. “Eri Eri Urus Eri Urus! Protect the pretas, keep the vengeful apparitions safe! The demons howl with joy tonight!” it screeched. The voice sounded even more pained than before.
A Shinsou was the manifestation of an Illusory Blade user’s Anima. Though it wasn’t “alive” in the human sense, it did exist as a being, so it most likely had a will of its own. As Jijinbou continued to make his other half suffer, he was all smiles.
“First, let this old man impart some wisdom upon you, young ’un. What this world calls ‘magic’ is actually a sanitized version meant for human use. For instance, this Fortress magic is a sanitized Category 8 earth spell, and my Shinsou’s Princess Blaze earlier was a sanitized Category 5 fire spell. However, there are surprisingly few mages out there who are aware of this.”
He went on to explain that magic was an otherworldly force, and the logic it operated under did not apply to this world. Normally, this would mean it would be beyond human grasp; however, long, long ago, a group of summoners had made a pact with a demon in order to modify powerful offensive magic for human use, and through the techniques they’d passed down, humanity had unlocked the ability to use magic. This was “sanitized magic,” or “sorcery.”
“Put simply, what we humans know as magic is a heavily modified version, meaning an original version has to exist as well. And we exceptionally powerful mages call this original power ‘eclipse magic.’”
It was magic that humans were never meant to wield. Therefore, one needed a superhuman amount of mana and vitality to control it. For demons, the amount was a drop in the bucket, but a normal human body couldn’t endure such a burden. Therefore, when a human used eclipse magic, it forced an irreversible mutation. In short, the more a human used eclipse magic, the less human they became.
“Most people know of the existence of vampires and liches, but did you know some of those creatures used to be human? They used too much eclipse magic and became inhuman as a result. But as dangerous as the knowledge of eclipse magic is, anyone aiming to become a high-ranking mage must learn it. Much as there’s no worth in a lottery where everyone wins, you can’t truly master sorcery without learning the harmful original magic.”
According to the old man, eclipse magic wasn’t even taught at the Sage Academy. If one truly wished to become a first-rate mage, they would need to discover the existence of eclipse magic and learn it all on their own. And by the time Jijinbou finished his spiel, Shizuka had nearly completed her incantation.