The witch who had appeared out of nowhere was floating in the air, looking down at Cassian and the other intruders.
“J-just how did you get in here……?!”
Her voice trembled so much it was hard to believe she had just sent a boulder the size of a person flying.
But contrary to the clumsy impression she gave on the outside, what Cassian saw through his mana sight was nothing short of terrifying.
“What… what is that……?”
An immense amount of mana, enough to visibly distort the flow of mana around her.
It did not quite reach the mana his master had once shown him as the benchmark for an archmage, but it fell only the slightest bit short.
In other words, if judged purely by mana, the being before him was on par with an archmage.
Then again, he had heard she had overturned that vast field in an instant, so perhaps it would have been stranger if she were anything less.
The problem was that Cassian himself had to face her now.
“……Stay back.”
When Cassian gestured slightly behind him, Iliana nodded and put some distance between them.
Then Cassian pulled the staff he had dropped while rolling across the ground back to him with telekinesis, and slowly aimed it at the witch above.
‘……Can I win?’
At any other time, he would have reached the conclusion in his head without the slightest hesitation that he could. But the answer echoing through Cassian’s mind now was “no.”
To begin with, the difference in mana was far too vast. By a rough estimate, even judging purely by quantity, she had four times his own—perhaps five.
That alone was despairing enough, but when he looked at the stones orbiting around the witch, even her manipulation was, if only slightly, more skillful than his.
The only variable he had were the spells he had learned from his master, but whether they would work properly against an opponent with this much of a gap was questionable.
Just as no matter what he did to his master, he could not even touch a single strand of his hair, a sufficiently great gap could turn variables into constants.
So, Cassian alone would never be able to win, no matter what happened.
But.
“She’s nothing short of a monster……”
Draut approached and stood side by side with Cassian, aiming his staff at the witch as well.
“So it’s not like we’re going to run away, right?”
Heiken passed Cassian and stood in front of him, his back to him.
“Let’s give it everything we’ve got.”
Behind them, Bella stood with her hands lightly clasped together, as if supporting the three in front.
And beside her, Iliana raised both hands slightly and deployed a faint barrier as if to shield Bella.
“Right……!!”
Strictly speaking, the three of them together might only be equal to Cassian, but Cassian felt an inexplicable reassurance from them that went beyond that.
Meanwhile, as for what the witch had been doing all this time without doing anything at all—
She had fixed her gaze on one spot, her face pale blue, trembling even harder than before.
“S-s-s-s-sacred crest……!! D-don’t tell me there’s going to be another Great Subjugation, but the Matriarch definitely said that would never happen again……”
At this point, it was fair to say she was not merely frightened, but practically in a panic.
Her gaze was directed at the small emblem drawn on Bella’s chest.
That emblem, symbolizing the Holy Council, had represented the Church’s authority since ancient times.
Only then did Cassian recall something his master had once told him.
Long ago, there had been a large-scale subjugation of witches by the Church, and after the number of witches had drastically decreased, the Church had become an object of terror to them.
If so, then now, while she was panicking and showing an opening, was their greatest chance.
“Good……!”
Cassian drew up mana from his body with all his strength and gathered every bit he could, manifesting the spell he was most confident in.
Pale blue sparks gathered at the tip of Cassian’s staff with a crackling sound, then surged toward the witch at a speed no human could ever perceive.
―――Crackling!!
The arc discharge sliced through the air and reached the witch in an instant, colliding with the mana barrier around her.
―――Boom!!
“Kyaaaah!!”
With a fierce explosion, it succeeded in shooting the witch down from the air.
The witch, struck indirectly by the arc discharge through the explosion, could no longer maintain her flight magic and began to plummet toward the ground.
However, just before she hit the ground, her body floated up lightly by some principle Cassian could not discern, and she landed softly.
In the meantime, without giving the witch a chance to recover, Heiken’s attack followed.
Just before Heiken’s sword reached the witch, the earth spells Draut had fired struck the ground around her, raising a thick cloud of dust.
―――Kaaang!!
Immediately after came the sharp sound of metal.
‘……Metal?’
If he had cut a person, normally there would not be a metallic sound.
Just as Cassian thought that, the dust settled to the ground in an instant, revealing the scene within.
The staff the witch held in one hand had blocked the staff Heiken had swung with both hands and all his strength.
And perhaps because the impact just now had brought her somewhat back to her senses, although she was still trembling, there was no longer any fear or hesitation in her eyes.
“N-now…… I really won’t hold back anymore……”
Then, through his mana sight, Cassian noticed mana surging beneath the witch’s feet.
And before Cassian could even open his mouth, a small magic circle was drawn on the ground. From that spot, a sharp stone spearhead shot up and pierced Heiken’s abdomen.
“Guhak……!!”
“H-Heiken!!”
With his abdomen pierced through, Heiken’s eyes bulged as he struggled to break free. But as the stone spearhead soon returned to earth, he lost consciousness and collapsed on the spot.
“You bastard!!”
Draut shouted and swiftly completed a spell.
As two magic circles drawn on the ground vanished, enormous rocks appeared, each easily twice the size of a person.
When Draut lightly swung the end of his staff, the rocks that had risen surged over the ground like a wave and charged toward the witch.
However.
―――Snap!
The witch raised her right hand, the one not holding the staff, and snapped her fingers. The wave of rocks that had been advancing with tremendous mass turned into earth on the spot and returned to the ground.
And.
“Eek?!”
The spell Cassian had cunningly hidden within Draut’s magic, which had not been erased by that, was revealed.
It was a stone spear almost identical to the one the witch had just used.
The witch quickly deployed defensive magic, but Cassian’s spell was at least stronger than a hastily improvised defense.
Beyond the shattered defensive magic, she twisted her body and barely managed to avoid the spear.
“Tch……”
Cassian had aimed for an opening in his own way, but because it was something he had imitated on the spot, it lacked power, and more than that, his opponent’s reaction had been too fast, so he had missed.
But that would only have been a bonus if it worked. What Cassian had been aiming for was creating an opening.
His master had said that if someone lost consciousness, even a human body could be treated like any other object.
Just as he had said, Cassian lifted Heiken’s fallen body with telekinesis and quickly brought him in front of Bella.
“Heiken!”
Bella quickly placed one hand on Heiken’s collapsed body, brought her other hand, clenched into a fist, to her chest, and began to pray.
If they had made one move on this side, then next it was the other side’s turn to make one.
While Bella healed Heiken, the witch drew up her mana, floated hundreds of small stones into the air, sharpened them, and fired them down from the sky.
This time, Iliana stepped forward.
When Iliana stretched both palms toward the sky, a barrier that blocked physical force formed.
If it had been a large attack, it would have broken through, but because each individual strike was weak, the defense Iliana deployed was enough to block them.
“Phew……”
In the meantime, Heiken, his wound healed, drew a spare sword and stepped forward again.
Astonishingly, the penetrating wound that had left a hole through his abdomen had vanished cleanly, with only his broken armor showing any trace of it.
And so, the situation had returned to how it had been before, a back-and-forth struggle.
……Or so it would have been nice to say.
“Ugh……”
At the voice that came from behind him, Cassian moved his eyes slightly and glanced back.
At that moment, Bella lost her balance and fell on the spot.
“A-are you all right……?!”
Iliana hurriedly tried to support Bella, but lacking the strength, Bella collapsed onto the ground.
“……She’ll be fine. She probably just used too much power.”
Draut answered as though it was nothing serious, but from the look on his face, he clearly thought it was a disaster.
And no wonder.
They had lost the priest who could restore injuries in an instant.
And from just a single blow.
Cassian also clenched his teeth at the battle situation, which had instead turned even worse.
From what Cassian could see with his mana sight, the witch had barely consumed any mana in the exchange just now.
On the other hand, Cassian himself had used roughly twenty percent of his mana. That meant if they had about four more exchanges like that, his mana would run dry.
Of course, if he fled at full speed with only Iliana, escaping itself seemed possible.
But that would mean leaving these three behind, so it was truly a last resort.
It was only a very small possibility, but he had been taught never to abandon the thought that he could do it anytime, anywhere.
“Phew……!”
Cassian took one deep breath in and out, then drew up his mana again.
And just as he was about to manifest a spell—
“No―――!!!”
A child’s voice, clearly out of place on this battlefield, rang out.
“Sven, no! Come back!!”
The voice that followed was not the witch’s, but another woman’s.
When Cassian turned his gaze toward the direction the voice had come from, he saw a boy a little smaller than himself running out of the tree house and toward them.
And behind him, a girl who looked a few years older than him was standing right in front of the tree house door, at a loss and fidgeting anxiously.
Wondering what on earth was going on, even the mana he had drawn up subsided.
The boy stood in front of the visibly flustered witch, spread both arms wide as if to block their way, and shouted.
“You can’t fight!! You promised!!”