Thin white clouds snaked across the blue sky, under which my master, silver in color, smiled.
“You can now take your first step to becoming a phenomenon,” she said, offering me a hand.
Under the azure sky, I lifted the corner of my mouth and took that first step.
My master was relaxed as she ate an apple on top of a tree.
And as she did, I—
“Ngggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghh!”
I was in a sparring match with a mysterious girl.
Her blade was black, and her dagger was curved.
Generated with Attribute: Darkness, the dagger shimmered in the air.
The girl had suddenly come charging at me, filled with intent to kill, and her face was hidden under a fox mask. She continued to shift her weight strangely while searching for an opportunity to tear my sword away from me.
The fog was draining the magic from me; my blade wavered, and I felt half dead.
Wh-what was going on…? I had stable control of my magic power until a minute ago…but it was out of control again… What was with this fog…?!
Suddenly, the blade in front of me disappeared.
“Whoa!”
My strength flowed forward, and the sword of light drew an arc.
Fox girl dodged my sword and slammed her fist into my solar plexus.
Taking the blow straight on made me feel like vomiting, but I held back, grabbed her fist, and tried to throw her in the air.
With a smooth move, she grabbed my right hand and said—
“Will you stop trying to put on this circus act on my arm?! I’ll charge you for attempting to host a show!!”
She was incredibly balanced and stood upside down on my right arm.
She didn’t weigh a thing.
The fox girl felt fluffy, as if the dust in the air was standing upright on my arm.
The console glowed at her waist.
Console: Connect—Operation: Gravity, Change: Gravity.
Activate Gravity balancer.
She gently extended her toes in the air, spun around like a ballet dancer—and then slammed her toes into my temple.
“It’s time to fight back.”
Barely managing to defend myself with my right hand, I turned my wrist and grabbed her ankle.
Then I narrowed my eyes, concentrated on a single point—and watched the trajectory of a sword flashing by.
In that instant, my hold became a tight grip.
She crossed her arms and drew her sword, then swung upward in a reverse stroke.
The trajectory flowed beautifully—and then a stuffed teddy bear suddenly appeared and blocked it. Stunned, I immediately moved back.
A supernatural tengu creature and a girl wearing a mask suddenly appeared, holding up magic devices. One of them must have generated the teddy bear.
First, a fox, then a tengu, and finally, a girl in a mask? What was going on here? I wished we could stay consistent with the theme without a Sunday morning cartoon character showing up to save the world.
“Oh dear, Hiiro. You have your hands full, being attacked by one mysterious assailant after another.”
“No matter how you look at it, these characters must be those holy archers.”
I saw the girl wearing the mask smile and wave a hand in front of her face.
The tengu and the fox girl standing next to her nodded, then betrayed the masked girl, who jerked back. The move alone showed how shocked she was (she was a real pro).
“You have to solve the mystery of the fog, or it will be tough for you even to start confronting them. Now then, how will my beloved apprentice escape this predicament?”
I moved back from them and hid behind a tree, then fired an invisible arrow in my safety zone, aiming at the masked girl.
“?!?! ?!?! ?!?!”
Panicked, the girl did a tap dance, dodging the arrows as she moved about like a cartoon anime character.
“……”
The tengu and fox girl stood stock-still and watched the scene unfold.
Not only did they refrain from helping her, but they also pretended to push her accidentally so an arrow would hit her. This backstabbing gave me an idea of the relationship between the threesome.
It appeared that the tengu, fox girl, and the masked girl were helping me train.
They had to be preparing me for my fight with Chris Esse Eisbert.
The tengu and the masked girl activated their magic generation, re-creating Chris’s high-speed generation maneuvers, while the fox girl launched a close-combat attack with a clear intention to kill me.
The terrifying thing was Chris’s speed, which they anticipated to be equal to the speed of the two of them combined.
It was a lightning-fast generation technique carried out with barely conscious thought, which was why they had also considered simultaneously launching a close-combat battle.
The moment they attacked, a flash of purple light flashed past the corner of my eye.
As they launched their blows, they used purple LED pocket lights to radiate the light directly into my face, and I reflexively turned away.
“What’s with this light?!”
“It’s a reproduction of Alpha Aquilae synchrotron radiation. A purple light is emitted when a magic operator moves in a medium and the speed exceeds a certain level. It’s a radiation phenomenon we’ve seen occur when Eisbelet generates at high speed, which she’s known for,” my master explained as she munched on dried sweet potatoes she took out of her pocket. “There is no sign whatsoever of any preliminary movements when she generates her magic. Changes occur in the body when a person takes any action—in the pulse, as sweat, as habitual moves, as body temperature, as gestures, as eye movements, as breathing, as saliva volume, or as dilations in the pupils—but through her tremendous training, she has eliminated them all. No one can achieve a result like that unless they continue to kill their reflection in the mirror. By the time you become aware that Chris is standing stock-still, Hiiro, a dump truck she’s generated would have rammed into you from behind.”
I was speechless. My master swung a piece of dried sweet potato between her fingers.
“But when Chris generates something, Alpha Aquilae occurs. It’s the downside of generating too quickly. There’s a fraction of a second between the time the Alpha Aquilae synchrotron radiation is generated and the time she makes some substance. To survive when you fight her, you have to use that fraction of a second and take evasive action the moment you’re exposed to the light.”
“…Master. Are you the type of person who reads the word impossible when it’s written somewhere as possible?”
“Magic, Hiiro—,” she said, thrusting the tip of a dried potato into the side of an apple, making it poke out from the top of the fruit, “is a technique that allows you to read the word impossible as possible.”