“Lululee, is our leader alive…?!”
“H-he’s alive.”
Running up to Jade, Lululee checked his breathing. Lowe could also hear Jade’s labored breathing. It was accurate to say he was breathing, but just barely.
If only they had come earlier, this never would have happened—Lowe regretted his earlier decision. After Jade and Alina had vanished via the crystal gate, Lowe and Lululee had left the arena to find the vanished pair.
“I’ll heal him! I swear it…!”
Hearing that vow from Lululee, Lowe turned back to Gald. The scene in front of him made him feel anger and frustration beyond words. While maintaining his composure so as to not be swallowed up by those feelings, he glared at the man before him.
“…Gald…”
“Hey there, Lowe. You took your sweet time.”
By the time Lowe’s ears picked up on the slight whizzing in the air, Gald was already right in front of him, thrusting out the same knife he’d used during the match.
“Ngh!” Lowe just barely blocked it with the rod he drew from his waist. Their weapons rattled as they struggled against each other.
“Hey, how long are you gonna keep swinging around this toy? If you mock me, I’ll start playing for keeps.” Blowing a sigh like he was bored, Gald backed off from Lowe for a moment. “C’mon and bring out your old weapons. I’m not interested in some cowardly ‘ranged attacker adventurer.’”
“…” Lowe fell silent, unable to reply.
Gald furrowed his brow sullenly. “Oh, okay, okaaay. Then I can take that as you accepting your death!” Furious, he summoned blue flame in his hand. Then he flung it in a rage—at Lululee, who was busy healing Jade.
“…!” With an unconscious click of his tongue, Lowe raced out toward Lululee. The instant he released his rod, a pair of knives slid out from both his sleeves. Grabbing the pair of blades in a reverse grip, he quietly muttered a spell. “Flama.”
Soundlessly, blue flames burst out from both knives. They flickered once, then followed the will of their caster and covered the blades of the daggers.
Lowe circled around into the path of the blue balls of flame and sliced them with his twin blades, which were wreathed in the same blue flame.
There was a quiet sizzle as the flame balls flying toward them just slightly singed the sleeve of his robe, then scattered.
“…Huh?”
Puzzled, Lululee blinked.
“Lowe…what is it? That spell…”
“…” Lowe didn’t answer Lululee’s question.
Gald whistled to stir the pot. “It’s the Dark Guild’s forbidden technique, healer girl.”
“…Huh…?”
Lululee looked at Lowe questioningly, but even then, he remained silent.
Flama.
It was a powerful fire spell, backwardly compatible with the more commonly known fire spells. Heightening the firepower to its highest intensity would make it cauterize wounds and keep them from bleeding. If this flame enveloped a target, they would be annihilated entirely, making it perfect for assassination.
It was one of the forbidden magic spells that the Dark Guild devised over the course of many long years, and its power rivaled that of Sigurth skills.
“Forbidden…technique…?” Lululee’s shocked voice rang out through the arena. “H-how would Lowe know the Dark Guild’s forbidden magic—?”
“Nooow then, why would Lowe know forbidden techniques? I wonder. Huh, Lowe?”
“…Lululee, leave Gald to me and focus on healing our leader.”
“B-but…” Lululee fixed her anxious gaze on him.
He knew that telling her to focus on healing their friend in this situation was an unreasonable request, but Jade’s life was more important than his own excuses or explanations. “Please.”
“…Got it.” Lululee nodded, and seeing her turn back to Jade, Lowe turned to Gald.
“Hmm, but now I know for sure,” said Gald. “You still haven’t had your memory of forbidden techniques erased. So that means you haven’t completely cut ties with the Dark Guild.”
“So what? You’re a pact-breaker now; it’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Well, I guess that’s true.”
“Leaving the Dark Guild and even becoming a dark god—the hell are you trying to do?”
Lowe desperately racked his brain as he tried to buy time.
The amount of flame from Gald’s spell is clearly beyond what a normal human can summon…
Because Flama was so powerful, there was a limit to the amount of flame you could summon with it, and even those with greater magic powers could only produce a fireball the size of a small stone, at most. For that reason, it was most effective to wrap the spell around a weapon or body part, giving you more surface area to work with.
But the Flama arrow that had pierced Jade had been huge. Just forming something like that would take an enormous amount of magic power.
Lowe glanced at the mark of Dia on Gald’s forehead.
It must be from the god core he swallowed… I’d lose in a straight fight…
“What am I trying to do, you ask?” Gald paused there. He dropped the cackling, joking laughter and muttered with a serious look, “Lowe, have you never questioned it? Why skills exist.”
“Huh…?”
“Why did mages lose their status?”
“…”
Two hundred years ago, at the time when adventurers had crossed the ocean and moved to the Helcacia continent, the magic had been a rare and great power. Black mages, who made use of natural phenomena through magic, and those who used healing white magic were highly valued.
And since they possessed these techniques, they naturally came to the shores of Helcacia as adventurers themselves.
But over the course of years, those who moved to Helcacia began manifesting skills one after another, reducing the status of mages. They came to understand that the power of skills was greater than that of magic.
People with skills were sought after, and magic wound up a product of a bygone era. The people who could only wield magic were left behind, while the mages who had skills could finally call themselves adventurers with pride. The same sort of thing had happened to healers, too.
“Even though people claimed the age of magic was over, there were people who chose to be pure mages, without relying on skills. In skill supremacist Helcacia, those people independently devised forbidden techniques to take back the mages’ status, carving out a position for themselves as assassins,” Gald muttered, his words laced with unconcealed resentment.
“To put it bluntly, that means the only thing left was dirty work nobody wanted to do, like killing people for money. Hey, why do you think that is? Why is it that we mages were chased from public life, given no way to live other than playing the bad guy?”
“…”
“It’s all because of skills…! It’s because skills manifested two hundred years ago that the balance of powers fell apart…!”
Gald’s voice trembled with the intense resentment he’d shown flashes of before. Eyes flaring wide, he muttered in a low tone, “I won’t forgive the god that granted people skills. I will bring this continent back to normal…back to that time when magic was king…!”