By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 13 - Chapter 11

Chapter 8, Episode 11: Battle against Remily

“Let’s rest around here today,” Sever announced.

After exterminating the large horde of Undead, we resumed our march to the City of Lost Souls, only to encounter wandering Undead monsters with great frequency. Seeing how we’d spent a considerable amount of time on the horde, we had decided to camp one stop earlier than we had hoped to reach this day.

Marching in the dark was dangerous enough without the added threat of more active Undead. Since we weren’t in a hurry, I was happy with Sever’s call. None of the others objected either.

“Remily?” Sever called.

“You got it. Hey, Ryoma, do you want to see a neat spell?” she asked.

“Yes, please!”

“Here goes. Holy Space,” Remily chanted.

A moment later, I sensed more magical energy than I had sensed from any of her previous spells, accompanied by a faint glow. The ball of light and energy expanded past the campsite until it formed a dome reaching the edge of our defensive perimeter. Perhaps because of Remily’s magic filling the dome, it almost seemed like the air was cleaner within it.

“Holy Space is an intermediate Light spell,” she explained. “It creates a temporary boundary that Undead monsters can’t cross. The likes of zombies, skeletons, and wraiths would evaporate on contact. It’s useful protection for camps in places like this. It’s worth noting that your skill determines the range and duration of the spell—and some stronger Undead may be able to force their way in. The spell would weaken them, but a breach in the space would drain its magical energy quickly, soon rendering it useless. If a powerful Undead comes in, you have to deal with it right away. So the spell isn’t impervious—that’s very important. Try to camp in the safest spot you can find anyway. As for practicing this spell... You better just give it a try, Ryoma. Just a large enough space for you to lie down in, if you can.”

So I gave it a try. With Light magical energy, I defined the boundary like I usually did with barrier magic—imagined filling the space with that magical energy—and incanted, “Holy Space.”

While the spell activated, I found it more difficult to wield than barrier magic. If an ordinary barrier spell was a solid wall that contained the magical energy within like water, this spell was like a porous cloth that water kept seeping through. I would have lost my grip on the magical energy I was trying to contain if I hadn’t been careful while I cast the spell.

The spell did look like a success. “What do you think?” I asked Remily.

She seemed troubled for some reason. “You did it, albeit with some rough edges. Congratulations. It’s great that it’s so easy for you to learn new spells, but I don’t feel like much of a tutor... This is supposed to be the most difficult intermediate Light spell to control.”

“I already knew how to use some barrier magic, so I just applied the same principle,” I explained.

“All spells use an element of magical energy to produce a desired effect. Spells with comparable forms or uses can work similarly. Magic was only separated into elements and categories to make teaching it easier. No need to get stuck in that mindset. Especially since you can already think outside the box,” said Remily.

Ever since I had first come to this world, I had always been impressed by the convenience and freedom of casting magic, so when Remily explained that all spells worked essentially the same, it really clicked with me.

“Now that I’ve shown you Holy Space, let’s set up camp,” she said.

“Our night won’t be very restful if we’re exposed to the elements, with or without the Undead,” Reinbach said.

“Indeed,” Sebas agreed.

I turned to set up the tents when Sever said, “Ah, Ryoma—we’ll set up camp if you don’t mind setting up a series of walls around our perimeter with Earth magic. I would like to reinforce Remily’s spell with physical impediments.”

“Of course. I don’t mind, especially after what we’ve seen,” I said. “How wide or tall?”

“About an arm’s length wide, up to my waist or so. Any larger and we won’t have many openings to fire magic at our enemies. It’s better to slow a potential approach and limit a path for any intruders rather than block them off completely,” he explained.

“Perfect. I have just the slimes for the job, so that won’t take long.”

“We’ll help as soon as we set up camp. Don’t push yourself,” Sever said. His request was easy enough to meet that I didn’t expect to take long at all.

First, I pulled out stone, spider, wire, sting, metal, and iron slimes from the Dimension Home. I took what was now an army of ten thousand-plus stone slimes to a nearby cliff. One Earth spell and I’d reduced the wall to a pile of rocks.

“Dig in and grow big!” I called out. The stone slimes swarmed the rocks. If they hadn’t been moving, I would have had a hard time picking them out from the rocks. Leaving them to their task, I returned to our campsite.

Stone slimes, as their name suggests, had a mineral body. Just like other species, they used the nutrition they intake from meals and multiply. But I had discovered that stone slimes—if told not to multiply as they eat—could grow from the size of a pebble to the size of a rock too big to hold in one hand.

I’d have them grow as large as they could, then tell them to form stacks, making them into walls. Stone walls have been historically used to build bastions. Although my version wasn’t too impressive compared to the castles on Earth, I thought it should suffice to set up our perimeter. Still, I planned to set up a second series of rock slime walls that would form a circle with staggered openings. Once the general locations of the walls were determined, I began to dig holes in the ground in between where the walls would stand, setting up a pair of the metallic slimes in each hole.

“As soon as I set one up, you guys can finish them,” I called to the spider, wire, and sting slimes.

First, the spiders climbed the rods of metallic slimes and cast a web. Then, with the aid of the spider slimes, the wire slimes stretched into spirals around the spider slime silk. Once the sting slimes had attached their poisonous barbs to the wire slimes, I had a makeshift barbed wire fence.

Unfortunately, I doubted the venom on the barbs would have any effect on the Undead, since they weren’t alive per se. But the barbs themselves could slow a monster down by catching its clothes or skin. More effectively, if any monster touched any part of the fence—which was entirely made up of slimes—I would know, because I was their tamer. That information would be very useful in defending the camp.

Since our camp was no more than two tents and a bonfire, ninety percent of building the defensive perimeter took no longer than thirty minutes. After that, all I had to do was go around touching up each section of the perimeter.

“What do you think?” I asked Sever.

“Even more impressive than I expected. You didn’t need our help after all.”

“I was just enjoying the show,” Remily said. “Those stone walls that stack themselves are handy. It looked like you could easily restack or tweak them too.”

As they gave me their seal of approval, I spotted Sebas holding a tray with steaming mugs. He was standing next to Reinbach, who was stoking the fire. Apparently the tent and bonfire setup were already complete.

“Splendid work,” Sebas said to me. “Would you care for a cup of tea?”

“Thank you.”

Reinbach waved me towards a chair by the fire. “Come take a seat, Ryoma.” I obliged, and the others followed suit until we had formed a circle around the fire.

Now that I was stationary, the winds of the valleys felt harsh and cold. Fire and tea were the perfect medicine for that. “Finally, I feel like I can relax,” I said.

“Let’s rest while we can,” said Reinbach.

The party unanimously agreed, opting for an early dinner and enjoying each other’s company to rest up mentally and physically. Soon, the sun set into the valleys.

The Undead had emerged from the dark of night, much more active than they were in the daytime.

“I had a feeling this would happen...and I’m not happy about being right,” I said to myself.

In addition to the skeletons and zombies we were all too familiar with, wisps (floating balls of light) and wraiths (translucent, human-shaped spirits) flew around the campsite like moths drawn to a lamp.

While the Undead horde were growing in numbers by the second, they seemed deterred enough by the Holy Space spell that none dared cross the threshold. Still, they were a potential threat, and I would sleep much easier if we took care of them now.

“Nothing else we can do, now that they found us. Let’s get it over with,” Remily announced.

“I suppose you’re right,” I replied.

We had discussed it over dinner. Remily and I would use Light magic to clear out the swarm of Undead in case of an attack. In exchange, the two of us would take the later watch, giving us a chance to get some solid sleep. Barring some emergency befalling the camp, this should be my last job of the night—the home stretch.

“I know. Why don’t we make this into a competition?” Remily proposed.

“Right now?”

“Give us a little motivation,” she added. “Let’s see which one of us can take out more of them. Loser has to do what the winner says, just once. What do you think?”

“Well, as long as whatever you tell me to do isn’t outrageous... Wait, I’d be at a huge disadvantage in a contest of magic. I don’t have your knowledge or experience,” I said.

“What if the only spell we can use is Light Ball? Our knowledge of the spell is about even, and I think you can cast the spell as well as I can. And let’s set a time limit. If we go until we both run out of magical energy, that would give you an advantage, and if we limit the number of times we can cast, I’d have an edge because of my experience,” Remily said.

“I guess... That would make it an even match.”

“Glad you’re convinced, Ryoma.” Remily turned to the others. “Thanks for volunteering as referees, boys!”

“Very well,” said Sebas.

“Fine, we’ll play along,” Reinbach said.

“I’ll count for Ryoma, then,” Sever put in.

And so I was roped into a spellcasting contest against Remily. We walked towards opposite edges of the perimeter and faced off our respective hordes of Undead.

“Are both parties ready?” Sebas asked.

“I’m ready,” I answered.

“Anytime,” said Remily.

“Your ten minutes begin...now!”

As soon as those words came from Sebas, I set my eyes on the skull of a skeleton right in front of me. “Light Ball.”

The spell fired straight, evaporating the skull of the skeleton and piercing another Undead behind it before disappearing. With careful aim, I would be able to take out a few Undead with every spell.

“Light Ball.” When Remily cast her spell, I saw my shadow stretch every which way.

“What are you doing?!” I turned to find that Remily had cast ten balls of light in one go, each of them finding its mark on the head of an Undead.

“It’s called parallel casting—casting multiples of the same spell in one go. Light Ball. Takes some practice, though. Light Ball.” Even as she explained, Remily continued to cast her spells...and flashed a triumphant smile.

“This is why you set no limit to the number of casts,” I realized.

“Too bad you already agreed to the rules— Light Ball,” she broke off to incant once again.

“No mercy, huh?!” I only had one shot to stay in this game: to master parallel casting myself. After all, Remily, perhaps because she was so confident in her victory, had explained the concept to me. “Light Ball... Light Ball... Light ball.”

My first attempt at parallel casting could have gone better. I was able to produce multiple balls of light from the start, but my maximum was five. When I tried to make more, I couldn’t keep their form long enough to fire them. Worse, I couldn’t maneuver the five spells independently—they all flew towards the same target. Rather than help me in the competition, this was only wasting my magical energy.

When I tried only generating two spells at once, I could move them separately but not too accurately: one wasn’t a clean hit and the other missed entirely. I felt like I was trying to draw different shapes with each hand at the same time. This wasn’t a technique I could master on the spot.

So I was forced to fire one Light Ball at a time as quickly and accurately as I could...which only let me cast two or three while Remily fired ten.

I wish I could wipe out a wide area in one shot... How can I pull that off with nothing but Light Ball? 

Even as I racked my brain, I could maintain my fast and accurate firing, one at a time. Even though I was careful to keep my guard up, the safety of the Holy Space made me feel like I was in an arcade on Earth, mowing down digital zombies...well, on easy mode, since none of the enemies even threatened to attack.

I haven’t been to an arcade since coming to this world, obviously... I wonder if they put out a new game of that one series I liked. At one point, I was way into it... You had to choose the right type of ammo in each situation, I think. Not that I was a pro at those games by any means, but I remember the grenade launcher, the machine gun, the shotgun...

This distraction made me realize something. Magic took whatever form the caster imagined. Could I improve the Light Ball spell to represent different types of ammo?

Let’s give it a shot. 

I couldn’t envision the mechanism of an exploding bullet, and I thought a machine gun might drain my magical energy too quickly, so I settled on the shotgun. A shotgun shell, if I remembered correctly, was packed full of smaller buckshot that scattered after the shell was fired. If I imagined the Light Ball splitting into a burst of smaller projectiles...

“Light Ball.”

The spell scattered like I imagined, but didn’t deal enough damage to each zombie it hit. It spread too wide, so that each “buckshot” was weakened. I tried again, using ten times as much magical energy. This time, the spell obliterated all the Undead in its four-meter-wide, fan-shaped trajectory, as well as some wraiths that were flying above.

“What are you doing?!” Remily demanded.

“Light Ball! I’m just casting it creatively!” I said, defending myself.

Since Remily was being creative with her casting, I saw no problem with my method, as long as I was only casting Light Ball. Sebas’s silence confirmed that I wasn’t going against the rules. Remily didn’t complain either, but she did quicken her pace. I’d have to keep my head in the game.

I still had plenty of magical energy left, but I decided to use half as much magical energy this time, remembering that there were many different types of shotgun shells, distinguished by the size of their buckshot. I envisioned evenly distributing magical energy to fifty pellets, similar to how I spread my magical energy when casting Holy Space. “Light Ball...!”

No good. Controlling magical energy like this was no easy feat, as it dissipated before the spell could even scatter, only taking out two Undead which were directly in front of me.

Focusing on controlling my magical energy, I kept practicing parallel casting while trying to catch up in our competition.

“Ten seconds left,” Sebas announced. “Nine, eight, seven, six...”

The countdown had started all too quickly for me, as I had lost track of time concentrating on this new technique.

One last spell, I thought. Differentiate it from Light Ball. Focus. Imagine... “Light Shot!”

My final spell turned every Undead within three meters of me into Swiss cheese, obliterating them into mist. While the spell wasn’t as powerful as my first attempt, when I’d poured ten Light Balls worth of magical energy into it, I was happy with the result—especially considering I’d only spent half that much.

“Time’s up!” Sebas declared. Satisfied that I had done the best I could and curious to hear my tally, I turned to our referee...to find him looking displeased, for some reason. “Master Ryoma, what did you say just now?”

“Just now? I just cast Light...” Oh. I realized that I had called my final spell Light Shot. I’d screwed the pooch at the last second.

“Unfortunately, I must declare your last spell to be distinct from Light Ball due to you changing its name. Miss Remily wins by default,” said Sebas.

“A silly way for me to win, but our deal still stands.” Remily wore a dangerous smile.

What is she going to have me do?