Gald shrugged as if to say this discussion was over. “Aaanyway, I’ve been talking too much.” His mood took a light turn, and he suddenly touched his right hand to the ground.
“Glassis,” he chanted, and as he did, walls of ice shot up around the arena.
Was he planning to shut them in? Lowe immediately sliced at the ice walls with his twin daggers wreathed in Flama, but the thick ice didn’t budge at all, repelling his blades.
Flama doesn’t work…?! Is the ice strengthened by the god core…?!
Flama was powerful enough that it would burn even a Sigurth skill. If it wasn’t working right now, it followed that Gald’s regular magic was more powerful than Sigurth skills. With a quiet click of his tongue, Lowe took a fighting stance in front of Lululee.
“Wh-what’s going on…?!” Lululee panicked, looking around at the ice walls rising around them, covering Jade protectively. Soon enough, the ice walls made a ceiling, enclosing them in the blink of an eye.
“Hey, Lowe…it’s been a while. Show me…your skill.”
As Lowe stood there frozen, Gald approached him.
“!”
Lowe just barely dodged the blue knife that Gald thrust at him, then took a big step back. That was when Lowe realized. Gald was after—
“Lululee!”
The next thing Lowe knew, Gald was grabbing hold of Lululee by the neck and lifting her into the air.
“Hn…kuh…!” Lululee scratched at Gald’s hand like she was in pain, but his hand didn’t so much as twitch.
“Hey, c’mon, hurry. Use your skill, Lowe. She’s gonna die, y’know?”
“…”
“Use your skill? How about you show your friends if your skill is really impossible to use in a closed space?”
Unable to decide how to proceed, Lowe just stood there for a few seconds.
Seeing him like that, Gald snorted. “Well, if you’re gonna abandon her, that’s fine by me.”
Gald lit a blue flame on the knife in his other hand. He drew it closer to Lululee and—
“—Skill Activate!” Lowe yelled instantly, without having been able to reach any clear decision. He knew what Gald wanted—to make him use a skill he couldn’t deploy in closed quarters. But if he hesitated now, then Lululee would die.
Lululee looked at Lowe and desperately shook her head. Heedless, Lowe yelled, “Sigurth Ashinu!”
Once activated, Lowe’s skill swept through the room, sweeping up the blue flame around his knives.
A human’s amount of magical power could produce a small stone’s size Flama at most. But Lowe’s skill would multiply that Flama. While growing at an incredible speed with a bwoosh, the flames bloomed in search of an exit, spreading and spreading, ignoring the will of the caster, burning up everything—
No. The multiplied blue flames converged on a single point, as if sucked toward it. Just like a tamed dog, they settled into Lowe’s right hand.
“…?!” Lululee’s eyes widened. It was obvious why—Lowe had always told her and Jade that Sigurth Ashinu was a difficult skill to control and that he couldn’t use it in small spaces. But now Lowe was using that “uncontrollable” skill just fine in this small, enclosed space.
Sensing Lululee’s confusion, Lowe unleashed the Flama, which was continuously multiplying and condensing in his hand, at Gald.
With a blazing whoosh, the giant blue flame launched toward Gald.
It was so powerful, the recoil felt like it was going to tear his arm off. Lowe quickly supported his casting arm with his free hand, bracing his legs on the ground. The Flama he had unleashed was like a massive dragon. Guided by Lowe’s will, it snapped at Gald’s arm as the enemy mage strangled Lululee, tearing off his limb.
“Agh…!”
The pain made Gald release Lululee.