INTERMISSION
The Power to Oppose Injustice
Dust and sand whirled and whipped in front of Glenn. Beyond it he saw a fire dragon, covered in reddish-brown scales. By his estimate, the creature was a little bigger than a bull. While this type of dragon was considered lesser, that didn’t mean he could be careless. One swipe of its claws could easily prove fatal.
And as its name implied, it could breathe fire.
“Snap out of it, Glenn.”
Something poked his cold, sweat-covered back—it was the staff of his master, Louis Miller. As part of his combat training, Glenn had joined the Barrier Mage on a mission to slay this very beast.
Before becoming one of the Seven Sages, Louis had been the leader of the Magic Corps. He was one of the top-five dragon slayers in the kingdom. A fire dragon or two were easy prey for a man like him.
Glenn was just an apprentice, however, only fifteen years of age. A fire dragon was too much for him to handle—on his own, at least.
But reality, like his master, was cruel.
“Start chanting already. Or do you plan to charge the dragon unarmed? Because if so, I can simply throw you at it.”
The man’s tone made this sound like a joke, but Glenn knew his master would do it. Frantically, he began to chant a spell. Unfortunately, his nerves tied his tongue into knots, preventing him from reciting the words properly.
How close was the dragon? What was the ideal angle to the center of its brow—its weak spot? This was a moving target, so the optimal solutions kept changing. Doing all those calculations in such a hurry and using the answers to weave his mana was more difficult than he’d imagined.
The fire dragon, noticing his presence, stomped toward him.
“Ah… Ahhh!”
Glenn cried out in fear, but his master’s staff prodded him in the back again. “Don’t stop chanting.”
“B-but it noticed me!”
Louis sighed in annoyance, then uttered a brief chant. There was a loud, shrill noise.
The fire dragon stopped as though an invisible wall were blocking it. Louis had put up a barrier.
As the man’s title implied, Louis excelled in barrier techniques. His favored tactic was to pin down his targets with a barrier, then hit them with all the attack magecraft he could muster.
“It stopped moving, see? Now chant.”
“B-but if I attack it now, then…”
When attacking something through a defensive barrier, you needed to work a remote formula into your attack spell and set it to trigger on the other side. Otherwise, the barrier would simply block it.
But Glenn couldn’t use remote formulae. They were too advanced. And if he simply fired something, it would hit the barrier, not the dragon.
Louis sniffed as though he saw right through Glenn’s hesitation. “I’ll disengage the barrier when you attack.”
Hastily, the boy resumed his chant. A large ball of fire appeared in front of him, just about big enough to wrap your arms around. He took careful aim, then unleashed the fireball.
“Gooo!”
The flames shot straight for the dragon’s brow. With perfect timing, the barrier holding the dragon in place dropped, and the fireball struck the beast right between the eyes.
While Glenn’s accuracy still left a lot to be desired, his power did not. A clean hit to the brow was enough to deal a mortal blow.
The fire dragon shuddered, then collapsed to the ground.
Louis, already done chanting a second spell, waved his staff. A spear of ice appeared above the creature, then lanced down, skewering it through the brow.
“And that’s that,” he said.
Glenn threw out his arms and legs and sat down on the ground. “I’m exhaaausted…”
“You used one attack spell. What do you mean, you’re exhausted?”
“We just took down a dragon. That was a lot of work. And pretty scary, too, you know.” The boy frowned.
Louis looked down at him like he was a senseless toddler and shook his head, sighing. “Listen to me, Glenn. You are young, and many difficulties still lie ahead of you. When you encounter one, remember what I am about to say.”
He put his hand to his chest like a saint reciting scripture.
“Most troubles can be solved through money or violence.”
Louis seemed like a very classy man—right up until he spoke. He said things like this with absolutely no sense of shame.
Glenn stayed where he was and narrowed his eyes at his master.
“Is that what the Seven Sages are all about, then? Money and violence?” he asked.
Still smiling, Louis brought his fist down on Glenn’s head.
He might be elegant in appearance and slender in build, but the Barrier Mage was awfully strong in a fistfight. Glenn was certain his punches hurt more than some attack magecraft.
Louis looked down at his apprentice as the boy rubbed his head. “If you don’t want to accept such injustices, then build your strength. Injustice swoops in without warning. It won’t give you any opportunity to negotiate.”
These were the words of a strong man who had already faced countless injustices and repelled them. And Glenn knew all about injustices. They’d battered him like a storm would a ship—until the next thing he knew, he was Louis’s apprentice.
In a way, this very situation was an injustice in Glenn’s eyes. “So if I don’t want to lose to a totally unfair master, I should either win him over with money or outdo him in violence, right?”
The bringer of injustice smiled at him and raised his staff. In a panic, Glenn quickly fled the scene.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login