“Y-Yes!” I concentrated magic power at my feet and, as instructed, thrust up a barrier wall from below to block the chimeras.
“Huh?” Why had a thick wall of frozen earth appeared instead?! Was this unintended magic triggered by excessive mana?! I couldn’t help but let out a dumbfounded gasp.
“Oh dear! Hee hee, it seems we’ve been sealed away with the clione!” Lady Robur laughed. And we weren’t just within the clione’s space, but it was separating us from the pope and the demon!
“I-I’m sorry!” I cried. “No, why?!”
Lady Robur’s expression was like a grandmother watching over her grandchild—a gentle smile that seemed to say even my failure was endearing. It was agonizing! Because it wasn’t just the clione we were trapped with, but also the chimeras from the other magic circles.
“I’m sorry!” Unable to bear it, I apologized again. Was it the echo from the enclosed rock walls? My voice sounded double in my ears, but I couldn’t care less about that now. For a moment, I even thought about how childish my voice sounded as the echo bounced back to me.
“Oh dear, it’s all right,” said Lady Robur. “You just got a little too enthusiastic, didn’t you?”
She gazed at my face, completely composed. Wait, but our eyes weren’t meeting... I followed her gaze again. She was staring at my head—specifically the top of my head—smiling and nodding knowingly? The void I’d sensed from her just moments ago had now transformed into a gentle, grandmotherly aura.
“This is troublesome. However, the young lady who came to assist you seems both inexperienced in magic and lacking in situational judgment.” It was the pope’s voice—he was using magic to send it directly into the space we were in, perhaps because the rock wall separating us was too thick for us to hear him otherwise.
But I’m sorry to say, Your Holiness, you don’t seem the least bit troubled—and your judgment of the situation is correct! Because right now, I’m acutely aware that I’m frantically panicking!
The pope’s voice was still coming through via magic. “Hmm, it’s quite hard... Is this frozen ground? Trapping yourselves along with the chimeras is a rather poor move, you know.”
What I’d intended to do was shield myself with an earthen wall to block any magic attacks the pope or the demon might launch, then, suppressing my presence, wait for the right moment to break away from the wall! My scheme had been to make them think I was moving while maintaining the wall, but I’d actually take Lady Robur and completely bypass the two of them over there!
Could it be something about this place? There were numerous magic circles throughout the room, and this spot had to be magically engineered too... Either way, there was something mocking in the pope’s voice. It was completely different from the way he’d sounded at the Academy’s entrance and graduation ceremonies. There was no sign of that melancholy aura that had sometimes drifted from him.
Of course, I’d never personally spoken to him before. I knew I’d just arbitrarily built up this image of a gentle, benevolent pope. But this was far too big a difference! This hidden side of the pope was terrifying!
“His secret psycho side is really kicking into high gear,” Lady Robur said with a sigh. “Talk about gap appeal...”
Wait, Lady Robur?! Why on earth was she still smiling dreamily at the thing she’d called a clione...?! Wait, no! As someone who dreamed of publishing my own novel someday, I should learn from the lady’s attitude! This was what it meant to be a best selling novelist!
“Shall we let the chimera the young lady named ‘clione’ move freely now?”
“What a sudden, tense turn of events. He’s got guts,” Lady Robur said. The expression on her face was like a curious child’s...
Nope! I’m sorry! I can’t make a face like that at a time like this!
A bad feeling was making my spine lock up. I desperately clung to Lady Robur’s hand, still clasped in mine, clinging to its warmth to stave off the terror. Right now, it was just a drifting buccal cone. If those tentacle-like things started closing in... No way, no way, I couldn’t handle this anymore! S-Someone... Ah, right!
Just when I was almost considering deactivating the wall, I remembered the staff I’d been clutching like a lifeline.
“Oh my, what’s this?” Lady Robur held out her hand.
I understood her intent at once and handed it over. “The first prince gave it to me,” I said. “He told me to use it if anything happened while I was with you.”
“Is that so?”
Huh? It had felt for a moment as if the magic power stored in the staff had boiled up like water... I couldn’t see it, but I’d sensed it.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Lady Robur tutted. “This won’t work, I’m afraid. The circuitry’s burned out.”
I couldn’t quite grasp the lady’s words, and a foolish sound slipped out. “Huh?”
“It seems the original circuitry was modified, so perhaps it shorted out naturally...?”
“Huh? U-Um... It won’t work?”
“It seems so.” The smile that spread across her face seemed somehow...knowing?
“Oh, um... Help is...” This wasn’t the time to be half-heartedly thinking about escape!
“It probably won’t come, will it?”
“No way... What should we do...?” I was stunned into a daze by how mercilessly Lady Robur had crushed my hope. Tears began streaming down my face uncontrollably.
“Now, now, don’t cry. First, wipe your tears, okay? Yes, yes, let’s take a slow, deep breath.” Lady Robur wiped my tears with a white handkerchief she pulled from her skirt pocket. A faint floral scent wafted from the handkerchief. My feelings calmed, and I took a deep breath like she told me to.
“Ah! Lady Robur!” The tentacle closest to us that had been slowly approaching touched her shoulder. I instinctively cried out and tried to pull her toward me, but my hand swung through empty air...
“Hup!” Lady Robur made an adorable little noise as she spun around, grabbed the tentacle, and flung it against the rock wall.
Boom!
For some reason it caused a small explosion?! What?!
“Just as I thought! The reviews said it tasted like gasoline!”
“What do you mean by that?!” Tasted?! Was clione even edible?! And I’d never even heard the word “gasoline” before!
“Oh my, so clione really is an unknown flavor! Don’t worry about gasoline! Now then, now that you’ve calmed down, let’s craft with it and reuse it!” Lady Robur turned back to me, this time with a mischievous grin—yes, exactly the kind of face described in novels as that of a troublemaker. “Come on, come on, hurry up and help me cover it with frozen soil.”
“I-Impossible...”
“It’ll be fine,” she assured me. “Right now, surely... Well, yes, surely the magic essence drifting in this space, influenced by that magic circle and the pope’s contraption, probably... Well, its instability will have cycled through and should powerfully assist your magic. Right?”
Right? I had absolutely no idea why she was smiling down at the top of my head right now... Just then the clione clunked down, frozen into a ball of earth. But I hadn’t even done anything?!
“Perfect, Di—ahem—Miss Linda. Not just an earth ball, lovely frozen earth ball. Now, just draw a magic circle on this, and—” Humming like an old lady playing in the sand with her grandchild, she pulled a magic tool pen from her bag and started turning the ball into a magic tool. This exceptional novelist was way too laid-back!
“Now then, let’s test it. Aim for that gouged-out spot and throw it in! The activation word is naked sea butterfly soup over rice!”
No way! The rice soup Lady Robur had served for breakfast this morning had just transformed into a scandalous dish!
“N-Naked...”
“Miss Linda, your voice is too soft.”
“Ahh! Naked sea butterfly soup over rice!” I infused the ball with magic and hurled the shameless, shameful lump at the wall.
BOOM!
“Success! The wall’s thick enough that the sound shouldn’t have reached the pope!” Lady Robur, delighted with the gouged wall, rolled a few frozen dirt dumplings toward the sleeping chimeras on the magic circles. She handed some to me and stuffed the rest into her bag.
“Now then, let’s seal off the sleeping chimeras with a wall of frozen earth!”
“Yes! Wait, what?” I hadn’t meant to say yes! In fact, I’d only just conjured frozen earth for the first time today. What was she saying now?
“I call it Operation Cover Up the Smelly Stuff!”
“Huh?! Dirt covers are one thing, but frozen earth...”
Covering up the smelly stuff meant exactly what it sounded like, right? The chimeras, in the state they were in, certainly seemed like they would give off a stench...
“Now, now. A simple earth cover would be too fragile and might get caught up in the explosion.” Explosion?! I was still scared of those makeshift explosive magic tools, and now she wanted to make more?! “Besides, look, it’s about time for the next...”
“Well then, shall we wake the sleeping chimera?” The pope’s voice echoed in the chamber, interrupting Lady Robur’s thoughts. “If you object, please remove the wall barrier promptly. Surely you haven’t fallen to the low-lethality clione?” He’d started calling the floating chimera a “clione” at some point, but the surprise of hearing it so suddenly made me squeak in surprise.
“Oh my, right here? So you do it too, Miss Linda...”
What? Why was she looking at me with such burning fighting spirit?! What did she even mean?! What did I do “too”? I couldn’t understand Lady Robur’s thought process at all! Could this possibly be some kind of rose-oriented fangirl training?!
“So this is the mind of a genius novelist...” I inadvertently muttered under my breath. Luckily Lady Robur didn’t seem to hear me.
That was when I noticed the hole spreading out below me, behind Lady Robur. Seeing the lights of the magic circles beneath the chimeras, which looked like they could vanish any moment, I hurriedly held up my hand.