Chapter 5

Chapter 5

 

THE SOLDIERS SHIFTED to form a ring, and in its center I stood alone. Clara, Elisabel, and the others were waiting outside of that circle. In front of me were the three “suitors,” including the new captain and the battle slave, with the court sorcerer lagging behind.

I guess the military captain and the sorcerer made sense, but it was pretty hard to believe that the battle slave was a suitor. “He was probably selected by my stepmother,” Elisabel explained coolly. “That’s because there are no especially strong fighters in the knights led by my half-brother Agveil. Consider him a stand-in. Someone else’s champion.”

“Let the duel begin! The winner will receive my daughter, Elisabel Roney Filsandia.”

“Woo!”

“Grrr…”

The courtyard grew quiet. The captain prepared himself, gripping his spear; the slave slung his axe over his shoulder. The eyes of the captain looked fully prepared for combat, while the battle slave…well, he just looked bloodthirsty. The sorcerer behind them held his staff calmly.

“Langer be praised!” The duke called out the name of the god of war. It was our signal to start the duel.

“Rrrgh!”

As expected, the battle slave rushed me immediately, brandishing his double-bladed axe. The captain was one step behind him. The sorcerer pointed his staff toward me and let out a short shout: “Dark Cage!”

“Huh?”

An endless number of black pillars appeared around me. The pillars connected above my head and trapped me like a birdcage. Wait a second! I thought he would have started with some sort of sorcery like Calm Sounds to try and silence my incantations.

“Gaah! Hyah!”

“Yaagh!”

The battle slave deftly swung his axe through the gaps in the Dark Cage. However, my familiar Invisible Demon was blocking that nicely. The captain charged in next, thrusting with his spear—but it was just as ineffective.

Due to the severity of the situation, I summoned three Invisible Demons that day. From their perspective, both warriors were stabbing the air with their weapons only to find intangible resistance.

“Wh-what’s going on?”

“Why don’t the slave and captain move?”

In Filsand, strength was probably synonymous with trustworthiness. The incomprehensible situation facing these two warriors led to uneasy chatter among the soldiers.

“How did he use sorcery inside a cage that blocks magical powers?! It must be some strange materia or magical focus!” The sorcerer twisted his clean-shaven face and yelled out another incantation. “Dark Spear!” The way he flowed from one sorcery to the next really showed why he was qualified to serve the duke.

The cage I was trapped in disappeared. Instead, a spear wrought from pure darkness shot out of the end of the sorcerer’s staff.

Now that the weird cage is gone, it’s time to move. I activated the effect of the Fly spell that I’d chanted in advance and flew seven or eight meters into the air.

“What the?!” the sorcerer cried in surprise. His dark spear pierced the ground where I had been standing mere seconds ago. Something like a poisonous mist spewed out from the point of impact.

“Argh…!”

“Gaaah!”

The captain and slave had finally escaped from the Demons’ restraints, and looked up at me in frustration. There was nothing more they could do if they only had close combat weapons.

“This…this is it! Valvord Galeiza!” The court sorcerer raised his staff with both arms as he yelled. The staff shined blue, and its length started to charge with thunder. He floated up in the air, grasping his staff, which had transformed into a spear of lightning. As I flew at him, he remained steadfast, pointing his crackling weapon straight at me. It was pretty amazing sorcery, but I was prepared.

KA-BOOM!

There was an explosion about halfway between the sorcerer and myself. The magnitude of the blast was substantial, and it dispersed into lightning instead of flames. It was probably capable of blowing a gigant to pieces. The soldiers below were scrambling to get away, too. But I was unscathed. My Mana Shield was working nicely.

“What?!”

“N-Nathan’s sorcery…!”

“You must have somehow armed yourself in advance!”

Under the D&B rules that governed my spells, spears made from sorcery were not deemed to be magic. Therefore, Invincibility, which defends only against magic, was not effective against sorcerous attacks. However, the simplest defense spell, Mana Shield, was an invisible barrier that automatically reacted to any attack. My guess that the type of attack was irrelevant turned out to be correct, so it could even defend against a spear made from sorcery.

“A higher level of sorcery than mine? How can you possibly defend against my Thunder Spear?! What manner of trickery is this?!” Clearly, I’d struck a nerve with the court sorcerer. I suppose in a way I was cheating, but I couldn’t afford to lose this duel. Sorry, not sorry.

After flying a bit higher, I started chanting a spell. “As a consequence of this spell, thunder and storms and oceans will transform. I will create a mighty blue dragon in this space under my command for a duration of thirty minutes. Create Monster: Any!”

“Wh…what the hell…?”

“Grrr…!”

“Impossible…!”

As soon as I finished chanting the spell, the sky above me began to swirl. The air slowly rippled from nothingness to a thick, syrupy, swirling aura. The two warriors and sorcerer stood petrified. Out on the terrace, the duke and his party were shrinking back, as were the soldiers that enclosed our contest.

The next bit wasn’t strictly necessary, but I felt like putting on a show.

I bellowed: “Come forth! Huge blue dragon!”

A giant shadow emerged from the distorted air. The shadow grew thicker, resolving into a black mass of darkness, which then grew and twisted, spreading out and taking shape.

“Raaargh!”

A long neck, tail, and wings appeared. The massive body was wrapped in blue scales. The huge blue dragon that appeared was a Level 32 monster.

 

***

 

Ild shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up at the sky.

“Wow, a blue one this time?” he asked gleefully.

“It’s rather elegant,” said Clara.

“That’s our Margilus!”

Outside the circle of Filsand army soldiers surrounding Geo and the other combatants, the Getaeus delegation watched from a spot by the castle wall. They were completely relaxed looking up at the blue dragon. Before entering the Stalwart Castle, Geo had spent a frankly irritating amount of time casting spells, so they knew he was prepared. They weren’t worried about him in the slightest.

“A-amazing…” The only person in this group who’d never seen a dragon before was the dumbstruck Elisabel. “There’s no way Lord Margilus would point that dragon at my father, is there…?” She was already imagining the worst.

“There is no way he would do that.” Clara patted the pale-faced young girl on her head. “That man always does everything in his power to win without harming a single person.”

“I-Is that so? Er…”

Clara gazed at Geo, her hand still on Elisabel’s head. He was maneuvering a giant dragon while deflecting sorcery. Her blue eyes looked at him with deep admiration and pride. Elisabel had noticed one more thing: As Clara stared up at Geo, she gripped her staff so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.

Elisabel couldn’t figure out if the emotion that tightened her grip was pain, anger, or pity.

“Clara, you—”

“This is why he needs me to do my job. Like this!”

“Agh?!”

Clara suddenly tackled Elisabel, bringing her to the ground. A single arrow whizzed by, passing the exact space where Elisabel’s chest had been just a moment earlier.

 

***

 

The court sorcerer, Nathan, was trembling with fear.

He’d expected the wizard named Geo Margilus to have extraordinary powers. He knew, because he was unable to brush away the many, many reports from the spies he’d dispatched throughout the realm. They spoke of a wizard who dropped meteors like it was nothing or casually summoned giants. It was too much to attribute simply to trickery and illusion. That’s why he guessed that the reason was something like possession of an unknown high-level materia or a massive amount of maleithrilin.

But I didn’t imagine this… I don’t sense any mana at all… I don’t see any sign of enchanted items or maleithrilin…

Geo had stopped Filsand’s two strongest warriors with something invisible, blocked his own sorcery with some sort of unclear means, flown into the air and made a dragon appear…out of thin air. If he had materia or maleithrilin, Nathan would have sensed their mana. But he sensed nothing at all.

“It doesn’t make sense… It’s impossible…” It wasn’t only the court sorcerer who was staring dumbfounded at the dragon, which stared back down with utmost calm.

The most important people in Filsand stared as well. They watching the duel between fiancé and suitors from the terrace in front of the keep’s main gate, mouths agape.

“I-It can’t be… There’s no mana…no mana at all…”

“Eh heh…eh heh heh heh…”

As a sorceress herself, Alaine, first wife of the duke, was in shock. She sat on the floor, clutching her son, Agveil. The white-haired prime minister couldn’t do anything but gasp, a look of deathly fear on his face. He was clutching his chest with one hand so hard it looked like he was desperately trying to make sure his heart didn’t stop beating.

“Dragons don’t just appear out of nowhere…! This is neither sorcery nor conjuring… It must be inherited from the ancient kingdom of the gods, or a new technology from Shrendal…right?”

Although he was shaking, Agveil remained relatively calm. He was desperately trying to stand strong after seeing his normally ice-cold, high-handed mother in this vulnerable state.

And then there was the duke of Filsand.

“This…this man…! Is this really the power that I’ve been searching for…? If it is, then…then…!”

Only the duke showed no fear toward the dragon. He gazed upon both the beast and Geo with wonder and amazement, taking it all in. He grinned from ear to ear, ablaze with fiery ambition.

 

***

 

“Garrgh?! Greee!”

“Damn it, this isn’t what I signed up for… I don’t have a chance against this!” Probably experiencing the most fear out of anyone on the Filsand side were the battle slave and captain of the duke’s guard. Both stood directly below the blue dragon. The slave, who’d worked himself into a feral, animalistic frenzy, now curled up in a ball and screamed. Beside him, the captain froze, paralyzed with fright. It took everything he had to just keep his eyes on the dragon.

 

***

 

“She’s here!”

“G-got it!”

“Miss Elisabel!”

“Yeah! Let’s do it!”

Ted and the new recruits quickly put up their shields, building a wall around Elisabel and Clara. Ild also hid behind them, while the dwarves stood facing out, crossbows loaded.

“There! Falbolza!”

Clara swiftly picked out where the shooter was. From her position atop Elisabel, she aimed her staff at a window in the castle wall.

There was a row of several such windows. Behind them, archers seemed to be lurking.

“Wha?!”

Clara’s fire arrow soared, striking an archer holding a mounted crossbow right in the head. She’d probably adjusted the strength of the arrow, because they could see the still-living archer, hair aflame, running away desperately.

“Yah! Shoot! Get ’em!”

The dwarf warriors aimed their special Axeholm crossbows. They followed up Clara’s flaming arrow with arrows made of steel. The thick bolts loaded in their crossbows were far more powerful than those made for humans, and while some struck the archers, those that missed embedded in the castle walls, a testament to their strength.

There was a lot of commotion as the remaining archers fled. They probably realized that it wasn’t possible to assassinate Elisabel through the wall of shields. Still, it was impressive that they even tried to execute an assassination while there was a massive dragon floating in the air above them.

“Hah! And don’t come back now!” Clara, on her knees in order to shield Elisabel, lifted the corners of her lips in a competitive smile. Elisabel was mesmerized by her beauty for a moment, but soon snapped back to reality.

“Miss Clara! Everyone! Are you all right?!”

One of the dwarves brushed himself off. “Heh. This ain’t nothin’!”

“We wouldn’t be able to face Margilus if we let something happen to you.”

Ted, the recruits, and Ild offered smiles of relief. Needless to say, the dwarves were also unscathed.

Clara helped Elisabel up. “We figured that the aristocratic faction would try to eliminate you at some point. There are savages everywhere.”

“The aristocratic faction… That means my stepmother and half-brother Agveil. It’s true… With me out of the picture, Agveil will be the only potential successor.”

“Well, that fool’s plot ends here.”

“I wonder,” Elisabel frowned. She didn’t think it would be so easy to suppress the desires of those seeking the power and wealth of Filsand and the Stalwart Castle.

Clara looked up at Geo again. The defense against the assassin hadn’t even taken a minute. The dragon was slowly flapping its wings up and down, at the end of some aerial maneuver.

“Yes… It’s neither elegant nor perfect, but he’s right. When the times call for it, this is the true role of a wizard: to cast aside the common sense and reason of the mortal world.”

The blue dragon roared. A blinding bolt of lightning shot from its mouth. Clara looked like she was thoroughly enjoying watching the dragon mow down the suitors and soldiers on the ground, as well as watching the middle-aged man who controlled that dragon.

 

***

 

At first, I looked down on the panic of the Filsand camp with a bit of regret.

But when I saw that Clara and the others were being attacked at the edge of the courtyard, my blood froze. Although I was thoroughly relieved to see the way they handily counterattacked and drove off the assassins, unfortunately, my impression of Filsand worsened.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to make sure that you can never do that again.”

It seemed that all three suitors and the soldiers had lost their willingness to fight. While most were petrified, frozen in place, some even ran away.

The leaders of the duchy of Filsand on the terrace were reacting in the same way as the soldiers. Among them, only the duke himself looked confident.

“Now, blue dragon! Stun Lightning!”

There was a lot going on, but I needed to rise to the occasion. I gave the order with high spirits.

KRA-KOOM!

Above my head, the blue dragon spread its jaws and spewed blue lightning bolts. It moved its head left and right, sweeping over the suitors and the soldiers along the way. There was a thunderous roaring sound and a flash. I heard the screams of the warriors and soldiers. The violence of the lightning, like a raging tornado that connected the earth to the heavens, continued until about half of the soldiers were on the ground. The advantage of this attack was that it simply stunned any targets who failed to resist the lightning attack, all without causing any damage. It was really convenient for disabling enemies in large numbers.

 

***

 

Once the blue dragon’s breath attack was over, I landed in the courtyard.

The three suitors and most of the soldiers were either unconscious or had fallen on the ground in disbelief. Both the air and the ground reeked of flames.

The dragon also landed behind me.

“First of all, does this mean that I’ve won the duel?” I spoke to the duke, standing between the frightened prime minister and his wife, in as calm and collected a voice as I could muster. I thought the decision would be quick, but the duke started coming down the stairs, his eyes sparkling.

“Lord Margilus. May I have a moment?” The duke couldn’t take his eyes off the dragon behind me.

“Wh…what is it?” I thought that if he came any closer to me, I would be overwhelmed by the oppressive aura emanating from his body. So this was what a general with a decades-long history of conquest looked like. If I hadn’t already come to know the wrath of Lade and Reyha, then I could see myself kneeling before this duke.

But I hadn’t lived the life of a great wizard until recently. Ultimately, I was still a pretender in the role. I gripped my Staff of Wizardry and steadied my trembling legs, standing as tall as I could.

“Please, let me test its might. Just once.” The duke drew his magical sword. He kept staring at the dragon. I couldn’t tell if he was challenging it in earnest, or actually hoped to fail. I had no idea what he was going to say to me, but he couldn’t very well kill me right there, so I nodded.

“As you wish.”

“Thank you.” The duke gripped his magic sword with both hands and faced the blue dragon. He had considerable power, if not quite as much as Lade. However…he proved to be useless in front of the massive, four-legged beast. It towered over him like a wall.

“Hrah!” The duke let out a battle cry. He thrust his magic sword into the base of the dragon’s neck. His attack would have easily skewered heavily armored knights and gigants. However, the sword rebounded off the dragon’s blue scales. There was a ringing of metal hitting metal.

“Erm… Hmph… I see. It’s real.”

I thought the duke would try slaying the dragon many more times, but instead, he raised his sword to the heavens.

“The duel for Elisabel Roney Filsandia has come to an end. The winner is the wizard, Geo Margilus. I, Darmund, duke of Filsand, hereby bestow upon him all the honors and rights of victory!”

I got the feeling that a marriage between Elisabel and me was drawing closer and closer to reality… There was nothing I could do about it just then, so I bowed slightly and raised my Staff of Wizardry high in the air.

“Spread the word! The legitimate winner of the duel is Geo Margilus! Anyone who threatens the safety of Elisabel threatens me, your duke, and will not be forgiven! Hear this: Anyone who does harm to Elisabel shall suffer the wrath of the great wizard!”

“Oh… I see.”

Everyone who was still conscious (except for the duke) nodded their heads furiously. The duke nodded in satisfaction and turned back to his first wife.

“Did you hear that? I support the Lord Wizard. I think you understand how things stand, yes?”

“Er… I-I understand! I understand, dear husband. My Lord Wizard! I will no longer… Or rather, I vow to do everything in my power to protect Elisabel!”

“A-as Elisabel’s older brother, I also will not forgive anyone who causes my sister harm.”

The duke’s words to his wife and second son were, in fact, a threat. His wife’s fear was especially pitiful to behold. She was probably also still frightened by the lightning, but the duke made it clear to his wife that he was completely on the side of Elisabel and me. That must have been devastating.

“Good. Now, let’s begin the welcome party.”