“Let’s! Go!” Boldow roared.
One by one, the knights in their first-rate armor fell before the farmers’ homegrown sword techniques. The Goddess couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Impossible!” she cried. “That’s the strongest army humanity has to offer! This can’t be happening!” And yet, impossibly, it was. The Goddess’s divine eyes would not deceive her about something like this.
There must be some sort of explanation, the Goddess thought. She looked up and down the battlefield, searching for some sort of clue, until finally she noticed that the men of the militia all seemed to be enshrouded in a powerful magic aura. It didn’t seem like the spell originated with the men themselves. Someone must have been casting it from behind the ranks of battle. She followed the threads of sorcery, and who should she find but the very object of her hatred herself, cheering for all she was worth.
“Go! Go! You can do it!” Kanata cheered, her voice carrying a potent enhancement spell, empowering the militia far beyond the buff given to the knights by the Hero’s Morale ability.
“It can’t be!” the Goddess wailed. “It simply can’t! The Hero’s Morale ability is meant to be the strongest enhancement magic to exist in this entire world!” Kanata must have created entirely new theories of magic, not relying on the Profession system, enabling her to design hitherto impossible spells. The Goddess trembled in fear. “That girl is a monster...”
“Is it just me,” said one of the militia youths, “or are we all fighting way better than usual today?”
“You’re right,” another agreed. “But I always feel my best with Lady Kanata cheering for us!”
“Lady Kanata’s the best! Even if she is a bit of a weirdo.”
“You got that right! She’s kind and beautiful, and works hard for all of us. She is a bit of a weirdo, though.”
The militia was having such an easy time with the battle that they were chatting cheerfully with each other as they cut down knight after helpless knight.
“Hey!” Boldow chided them. “Don’t go around calling my daughter a weirdo! She’s a precious, adorable girl who takes after me and Leksi!”
“Yeah, true enough.”
“She gets her weirdness from you after all, Lord Boldow!”
“Yuh-huh! Fortunately she’s got Lady Aleksia’s blood to cancel it out!”
“You punks!” Boldow snapped. “Running your mouth about this and that! I’m gonna have the lot of you found guilty of disrespecting your liege lord!”
It hardly sounded like a proper conversation between a lord and his subjects, but the militia’s coordination was absolutely perfect. It was clear that their training had not been in vain.
“Theodoric, what are you doing?!” the Goddess hissed. “Your army needs your command!”
As if he could hear her voice, Theodoric chose just that moment to make his next move, sending the powerful companions assembled for him by the Goddess herself into the chaotic melee to which the battle had devolved. The Temple Knights that formed the bulk of the army were strong, but these individuals were among the mightiest representatives of humanity.
“Ha-hah!” A man leapt onto the scene, easily vaulting over the Temple Knights’ raised lances. He was an enormous, muscular, hairy man, hefting a sword that was oversized even for him. At a glance, he almost looked like some sort of apelike magic beast. “Now, taste the power the Goddess gave me! The strength of the Divine Sword!”
“Kee hee hee!” Another man laughed wickedly as he arrived on the scene, using magic to fly through the air. He stroked his goatee, a sadistic smile playing on his face. “My magic is so powerful I hardly get the opportunity to put it to use! I’ve been itching to try out all these spells I’ve learned from becoming a Sage. You will make excellent targets!” Magic power the likes of which few men could hope to match swirled around his raised right hand. Whatever spell he was preparing to cast must have been awesome indeed. Even this militia, with its first-class training and empowered by Kanata’s powerful support magic, would surely be unable to contend with this duo.
“Fools who would defy the gods!” the Divine Sword bellowed. “You’ll be nothing more than a stain on my blade!” He swung his sword, intent on reducing the militia to mincemeat. He should have had no problem, but...
“I will not!” Boldow said, deftly meeting the Divine Sword’s attack with his own sword. “In the first place, you should try not to get stains on your sword! Even a useless rusty one like that!” Boldow’s attack cut the Divine Sword’s weapon in two right above the hilt, its blade sent flying.
“N-No way!” the man said, watching dumbfounded as his sword spiraled overhead. “My sword! Gaaaah!!!”
The flat of his blade came down hard on his own head, knocking him unconscious.
The Goddess was at a loss for words. “He defeated my chosen Divine Sword...?!” It beggared belief. She had made that man Divine Sword because of his peerless ability. How could he have lost at swordplay?
Who was that man?
“Leksi!” Boldow called out toward his family, waving with a big grin on his face. “Leksi, did you see that?! I looked really cool there, didn’t I?!”
“Miserable idiot,” said the flying Sage as he aimed a spell from overhead at Boldow. “Still, I must thank you for looking the other way in the middle of a battle. Now, be reduced to ash!” He launched a massive ball of scorching flames Boldow’s way, but before it could reach him, it was stopped by a barrier of water.
“I did see!” said Boldow’s wife Aleksia. It had been her spell that protected Boldow from the enemy’s fireball. “You were amazing, honey!”
The water, which had appeared like a great ocean wave out of nowhere, surged up in a whirlpool to swallow up the flying Sage.
“M-My top-tier fire magic! Gone in an instant! Gablub blub blub blub blub!!!” The man floundered helplessly as he was carried away by the force of the water.
Neither the Divine Sword nor the Sage had lasted for more than a single second. The Goddess’s fingernails dug into the flesh of her cheek as she watched one impossibility follow another. “Why?” she demanded. “What are these people?!”
Still, the Goddess had granted Professions to many more than those two. If there was no hope for victory in a one-on-one battle, they would simply have to attack as a group. Theodoric seemed to have reached the same conclusion. He gave his orders, and five more men came flying to attack Boldow and Aleksia, who had now begun to chat happily with each other.
Suddenly, there was a peal of thunder and a flash of light. A boy appeared, wielding a sword crackling with lightning. In just a few blasts of lightning from his enchanted blade, the men fell out of the sky without even reaching their targets.
“Excuse me,” said Alus. “Although to be honest, I don’t know that my illustrious father and mother truly need assistance from the likes of me...”
“Now, now, don’t put yourself down like that!” said Aleksia. “Thank you for the help, Alus!”
“H-H-Hey, wait a minute!” Boldow stammered. “That was wild! What was that?! You cast magic through your sword?! Holy crap, I wanna try!”
Alus, it seemed, had used his sword as a medium to accelerate his lightning magic in order to take out all five men at once.
In the realm of the gods, the Goddess grabbed tight the image of the battle below, peering in close.
“Why?!” she demanded. “Why?! I granted them the strongest Professions of all! How could they lose so easily?!”
And then, she noticed something.
“W-Wait...” she said. “Those three! Are they...?!”
Back when the Goddess had been making divine visitations the world over in search of strong fighters to entice with the promise of high-level Professions, there had been a scant few who refused her offer—the same three now handily dispatching her chosen warriors. Back then, the Goddess had felt dizzy at the realization that these powerful humans refusing her invitation were the very family of her hated enemy. The distress she felt then, however, was nothing compared to the emotions swirling in her heart now as she watched the army she had taken such pains to prepare dwindle before her eyes. It wasn’t just the daughter then, but the whole family who possessed such abnormal strength. Worse, Kanata herself, the very nexus of all this preposterous might, had not even taken the field. The entire army was going to be destroyed without even reaching her.
“Theodoric!” the Goddess shrieked, fully hysterical at this point. “Stop standing around and do something! Theodoric!!!”
“Raaaaaah!” Theodoric raised his voice above the combat. “Everyone! All knights! Focus all your strength and take down those three!” Unless they could do something about Boldow, Aleksia, and Alus, the army stood no hope of ever facing Kanata.
“All right then, you sorry lot!” Boldow declared. “Behold my almighty magics, the fruit of long years of training!”
“Oh, my!” exclaimed Aleksia. “You’re going to use magic, darling?”
“I don’t believe he can,” said Alus. “Father really has no magic whatsoever.”
Boldow stood with his sword in a high guard as the army closed in, closed his eyes, and began a rushed incantation. “Dragon who casts his wind from the cloudless skies! Tiger who dances amidst the sandstorm! Cross over from the world of the invisible and form a contract with me! Arise, O Tempest! Rage, O Hurricane! Strike down my foes with the hammer of wind!” he said, not even pausing to take a breath.
His eyes shot open.
“Wind Storm!” he yelled, bringing his sword down.
The force of the cut was enough to cause a whirlwind to appear in midair, scattering the oncoming army with a shock wave so powerful it looked like space itself was being distorted.
“Well?!” Boldow laughed. “What do you think of my magic now?!”
“Oh my goodness!” said Aleksia.
“I’m fairly certain that was the shock wave from your sword attack, actually,” commented Alus.
Boldow ignored his son. “There’s more where that came from!” he said. “Inferno Flare!”
“You’re just using friction from your sword to ignite the air in front of you,” Alus opined.
“Ground Shaker!”
“Now you’re striking the earth’s surface to disrupt the bedrock under your opponent’s feet.”
“Maelstrom!”
“You made an underground water current erupt using a similar technique to last time,” the boy observed.
“Why is my own son being so mean to me?!” Boldow lamented. “I’m going to cry!”
“Mean?” said Alus. “On the contrary, father, you’re producing effects beyond your typical magic, just by swinging your sword. It’s honestly incredible.”
“Meaning it is magic, right?” Boldow asked.
“Not in the slightest.”
“N-Nooooooo!” Boldow wailed, clinging tight to his wife Aleksia. “L-Leksi! Your son, he’s bullying me!”
“Now, now,” Aleksia said, patting her husband on the head. “Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.”