Episode 26. A Certain Encounter
The trap strategy worked tremendously!
The massive body of the Minotaur, which had shaken off Eden and been rising by brute force, sank back down to its waist in an instant.
“Princess, amazing!”
Silvia immediately flattered Rike without missing the opening.
Binaeril also tossed a thumbs-up toward Rike.
Rike, who had showcased a powerful spell, looked a bit winded.
With trembling legs, she propped herself up on one knee and barely managed to respond to the two with a smile.
Binaeril and Silvia also let out sighs of relief and gathered around Rike.
“What should we do now?”
“Ordinary attacks won’t work. In the end, Rike’s magic will only buy time too.”
They needed a decisive move to bring it down regardless.
“It’s so tough that ordinary attacks don’t work.”
“If we can’t wound it with external force, should we strike from the inside?”
‘Wait, a strike from the inside?’
Binaeril gained some realization from the words he himself had uttered.
The Minotaur of Scala was not a monster.
It was an artificially created gargoyle.
Artificial constructs of this sort usually had a core inside their bodies that supplied power.
“Don’t gargoyles usually have a core inside their bodies?”
The quick-witted Rike immediately understood Binaeril’s words.
“Yes, that’s right. There should be a core that engraves commands and supplies power. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Then we just need to destroy the core? But how?”
“First, if there’s a weakness, we have to find where it is. Rike, can you see it?”
The core would be emitting stronger mana than the other parts of the Minotaur.
And when it came to detecting mana, no mage in Elfenbein could match Rike.
“Yes… I can feel mana between the neck and solar plexus, around the area between the collarbones.”
“Got it.”
“What are you planning to do?”
It would be best if they could easily inflict direct damage to the core’s location, but—
chanting a spell capable of striking from inside the enemy was still beyond the abilities of Binaeril’s group.
“I have to somehow wound it.”
“A wound that pierces that thick skin and reaches the core? That seems impossible.”
“No. Even if it’s very small, as long as I can make a wound, it’s enough. I’ll handle the rest somehow.”
Binaeril had once read in a book about how stonemasons broke rocks.
If weak spells were combined, they too could gain the power to pierce through rock.
“Wound it near the chest. Please.”
Silvia looked at Binaeril’s expression and nodded.
Whether they liked it or not, the most skilled of the three was none other than Binaeril.
The Minotaur trapped in the pit swung both arms wildly and smashed the surrounding pillars.
It seemed furious.
Silvia narrowly dodged the Minotaur’s arms and began planting kicks in various parts of its body.
She couldn’t land a proper blow, but it was enough to draw the creature’s attention.
“I have to go too.”
Binaeril’s slash was also useless against the monster’s hardness.
But if the goal was simply to make a wound, there was a more efficient method.
“If a plane won’t work, use a line; if a line won’t work, use a point.”
Binaeril chanted a spell.
“Arrow of mana that pierces.”
The piercing magic that stabbed and penetrated objects was merely a 1st-tier spell.
But Professor Pierre Blansho had shown them before—
that the power of a spell, regardless of its tier, varied greatly depending on the caster.
Binaeril sharpened his imagination keenly. And he concentrated that image back into a single point.
Kiiing—!
He could feel the mana arrow, beginning to take form, vibrating from the tempering of his mind.
Silvia, who had been glancing at Binaeril’s actions, jumped above the Minotaur’s head to make it easier for him to aim.
The Minotaur spread its chest wide, trying to snatch her with its palm.
“Now!”
One-Point Breakthrough.
The mana arrow Binaeril fired struck beneath the Minotaur’s neck.
It now looked more like a single thread than an arrow.
“Krrraaaaang!”
The creature let out a pained groan.
Stone dust scattered, and when the dust settled, the creature’s chest was revealed.
“Damn it!”
Silvia let out a cry of frustration.
The gargoyle’s core still hadn’t been revealed.
“Can you do it one more time?”
She shouted the question, but Binaeril was already chanting a different spell.
“What are you doing?”
That was the spell he had randomly fired at Silvia during the tournament finals.
A spell with no real offensive power—just throwing a lump of water.
Binaeril threw that, too, toward the Minotaur’s wound.
Binaeril didn’t rest for a moment.
His head spun a little from imagining different types of images in succession.
But this was the last one; he couldn’t let his tension drop until the end.
Lowering his stance, Binaeril leaped right into the Minotaur’s embrace.
The two girls screamed at the perilous act.
The Minotaur swung its right hand toward Binaeril.
“Eden!”
A stone wall shot up from the left and blocked the monster’s attack.
Having accelerated his leap, Binaeril stretched his hand directly toward the creature’s wounded, wet solar plexus.
“May this chill freeze all things!”
The small groove carved in a diagonal line was full of the water Binaeril had thrown.
At the fastest speed he could muster with his concentration, he rapidly froze that water.
And expanded it.
‘Reach!’
Like the roots of a giant tree, the water Binaeril touched spread through the monster’s interior and finally reached the core.
As the distance closed, Binaeril could sense it too.
Here, this was the creature’s core!
“Please, pierce through!”
His mana pierced the Minotaur’s hard shell and finally penetrated the core.
“Gruuuuh! Ugh… ugh……”
The creature’s movements, which had been trying to strike down the human clinging to its chest, began to slow.
Slowly. A little more slowly.
And finally, the Minotaur’s red light died down.
When Binaeril destroyed the creature’s core, an anomaly began to occur from the shattered core.
Like a drain with its stopper pulled, the core began to swirl and suck in its surroundings.
The gargoyle core expanded its reach as it devoured objects, starting from the stone Minotaur’s body to the surrounding floor, and eventually swallowed even Binaeril, who had collapsed from exhaustion.
Rike and Silvia, who had been standing a short distance from the gargoyle’s corpse, were no exception either.
The black hole that sucked in the three mages before they could respond only stopped expanding after swallowing all the dome-shaped structures they had been standing in.
Unbeknownst to the three, this was the entrance to the third test.
And within it, the three—Binaeril, Rike, and Silvia—
faced their respective enemies, whom they had never expected to face.
In the office of Albrecht Royal Palace sat a woman with long hair reaching down to her shoulder blades.
The office had originally been used as the Emperor’s space, but now his traces could hardly be found.
This was because the First Imperial Princess, who was serving as Regent, had mostly cleared away her father’s belongings.
A visitor came to her as she calmly sorted through documents.
“Come in.”
A man of an age past middle and verging on old age entered and bowed his head in greeting.
He was a man of short stature with his hair tied back to reveal his forehead.
The hair tied back showed white strands here and there, revealing him to be a man who had suffered much worry.
Regent Charlotte received his greeting with a brief raise of her hand.
He was Hans Brante, the Court Physician of Albrecht Royal Palace.
He was one of the people she trusted most in the current court.
“Lord Brante, how is Father’s condition?”
“Not very well. I think you should begin preparing soon.”
Charlotte rubbed her stiff eyes and wiped her face.
Suffering from heavy work every day, her skin and hair had suffered greatly as well.
“Is there no possibility of improvement?”
Lord Brante nodded heavily with a solemn expression.
Charlotte Albrecht was not worried about her father’s health as a daughter.
Rather, as the Emperor’s proxy, she was worried about the Emperor passing away without a clear successor being determined.
The predatory nobles of the capital would not treat Charlotte and her sister Friederike kindly even after the Emperor’s death.
“Has there been no contact from Elfenbein?”
Lord Brante, the Court Physician, was a long-time close aide of the Emperor and now also served as an adjutant to Regent Charlotte.
“I sent word, so it has likely been delivered to Dean Julio. But is bringing the youngest princess home really the right choice?”
“She can’t run away forever. At the very least, my sister must attend Father’s funeral.”
The problem wasn’t only the Emperor.
The monsters appearing in the eastern and northeastern parts of the empire were growing in power by the day.
Public opinion of the Imperial Family was deteriorating by the day, and inside the palace, predators aiming for the Emperor’s seat were swarming.
The regency, nothing more than an empty shell, was truly standing on the point of a needle.
“I only wish my sister would bring good news.”
Enrolling her in Elfenbein had been partly for her safety, but it had also been aimed at improving relations between the empire and the Magic Tower.
If Friederike returned home accompanied by outstanding mages, the situation regarding the monsters might improve, at least.
The central nobles who rejected the Magic Tower would oppose it, but from the Regent’s standpoint, it was time to make a decision.
“Understood. Please leave now.”
Lord Brante bowed his head politely as when he entered and withdrew.
Left alone, Charlotte sighed and pinned her last remaining hope on her sister.
Binaeril, sucked into the black hole, felt ambivalent emotions.
The person he had never wanted to meet, yet at the same time had thought he must meet someday in the distant future, stood before his eyes.
“Nunnaeril Dalhaim.”
The young man facing Binaeril looked exactly like him.
Silver hair shimmering with mysterious light, cold and bold eyes.
The only difference was that he was much taller and sturdier than Binaeril.
He stood with both hands clasped around a splendid ceremonial sword planted into the ground.
The treasured sword bestowed upon him by the order that loved him—the Tail Star.
Binaeril had never seen that sword, but he simply knew.
Binaeril’s older brother directed a cold gaze at his younger brother.
“To call your older brother’s name so casually. You have no manners, little brother.”
The moment he saw him, Binaeril felt the fever he had suffered throughout his short life surging up inside him again.
It was a mass of emotion that had swollen like a tumor.
Anger, betrayal, hatred, intense urges to demand answers about the past.
But Binaeril decided not to ask any questions.
Such a dialogue was unnecessary between the brothers.
Binaeril knew. Nunnaeril Dalhaim could not be here in Elfenbein.
This was an illusion. The final trial that Elfenbein’s Scala Test bestowed upon him.
He had suppressed it, but in the end, one last question overcame his will and forced its way through his lips.
Binaeril uttered words he would surely regret.
“Did you come to kill me again?”
Nunnaeril Dalhaim answered the question with a cold sneer.