She Professed Herself The Pupil Of The Wiseman (LN) - Volume 11 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13

“SURROUNDING THEM sure makes things easy,” Soul Howl chuckled.

“Doesn’t it? Fine work, if I may say so myself,” Mira boasted.

A mere five minutes after the Protectors had appeared, the five had been reduced to just one.

The Protectors’ greatest strengths were cooperation and fusion, but the ashen knights’ encirclement negated those. However fast the Protectors were, they couldn’t break through the holy-knight-enhanced defenses of the ashen knights. The Valkyrie Sister in charge of each squad would hardly let that happen.

As a result, each Protector was forced to fight a Valkyrie alone—and was defeated. Most of the sisters finished their work and returned to the battlefield; the only one stuck fighting was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the youngest sister, Christina. She was in a deadlocked battle with her Protector, which shot pebbles wildly from its arms.

“It’s firing too many!”

Those pebbles were this Protector’s weapon. Christina could defend herself using her shield, but the closer she got to the Protector, the harder reading its attacks’ trajectory became. Furthermore, both the Protector’s arms could fire from different angles, making it impossible to evade the projectiles from both arms at once. Christina was stuck waiting for an opening from just barely far enough away to defend herself.

“Aww! My sisters are already done. What do I do? I’m gonna be in so much trouble!” Christina realized that, if she struggled here, she was sure to get a scolding from Alfina later.

If Christina had used the ashen knights waiting around her, she could surely have finished this in no time. The reason she didn’t was that her sisters hadn’t. If they knew she alone had relied on the ashen knights—on Mira’s power—her training would surely become more intense, which was her chief worry.

The same would happen if she kept wasting time, though. Desperately wanting to avoid special training, Christina resolved herself. 

“I hate it, but it’s my only choice…” she murmured.

Shield at the ready, she raised her sword behind her. It was then that her shield turned into light that enveloped her. She’d wanted to show off this new technique in a more fitting, flashier situation. As she rushed forth, however, she screamed an even more heartfelt desire: “I don’t want special traiiiiining!”

Christina’s new technique was truly like a ray of light. She deflected incoming pebbles as her sword traced a bright arc through the air, then sliced the Protector in half with just one swing.

“…Phew. It’s all right! I think I made it in time! Surely…!” Christina turned from the felled Protector to the Machina Guardian. Confirming that nothing major had happened in her absence, she repeated herself, as if praying, and took her ashen knights back to the front line.

Spotting that instant burst of brilliant light, Mira piped up excitedly, “Ooh! That was a new move, wasn’t it?”

“And it killed a Protector in one blow,” added Soul Howl. “Not bad.”

“Sure wasn’t, sure wasn’t!” Mira replied. Soul Howl’s words improved her mood, especially because her eyes had been glued worriedly to Christina’s fight the whole time. Now Mira glowed like an old man who’d just seen his granddaughter praised.

In fact, Mira was so gleeful, she couldn’t help complimenting Christina’s work. “Very good. That skill was fantastic.”

“Th-thank you!” Either surprised by the sudden compliment, or simply not expecting to hear Mira’s voice, Christina sounded oddly nervous.

***

The battle raged on, and damage increased over time. Mira and Soul Howl took turns hiding behind the wall to recover mana with Cerebral Flux, throwing out powerful spells whenever they could, but Mira’s army was finally under 40 percent of its original size. To make up for that, Soul Howl erected dozens of cannon-fortress golems on the field to support the Valkyrie Sisters and their army from more varied angles. Issuing them all orders left him extremely busy.

About an hour after the Protectors had appeared, the Machina Guardian’s eyes turned from green to gold, and it unleashed a Rampage, sweeping everything around it away. Seeing that, the mages prepared for the next phase.

“Ah. It’s down to forty now.”

“Next up’s the leg gimmick, right?”

First off, Mira ordered her full army’s retreat. The five seconds after a Rampage were an ideal opportunity to deal a lot of damage at once, but Mira abandoned that opportunity and told her troops to fall back.

Her army reacted swiftly. Under Alfina’s leadership, the squads distanced themselves from the Machina Guardian without breaking rank. Eizenfald also backed off, keeping a close eye on the raid boss. There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation in their movements; despite this ideal chance to attack, they all promptly obeyed Mira’s orders. That proved their absolute faith in her. 

Mira’s troops watched the Machina Guardian cautiously from about fifty meters away. The raid boss recovered from Rampage’s recoil. Immediately, the second set of back legs on either side of its body fell off. The limbs were giant, measuring twenty meters long and three across.

“There they are!”

“This is just sad.”

Before the eyes of Mira and Soul Howl, ten Protectors burst out of each fallen leg. The twenty Protectors gathered beneath the Machina Guardian. This group would be more difficult to deal with, since they started close by. Many raids had wiped out on this phase back when strategic information was less plentiful.

Now, though, they knew all that information. Mira and Soul Howl had been through this situation many times.

“Now!”

Upon Mira’s signal, Eizenfald unleashed dragon breath upon the Protectors. Then Elezina fired an enormous arrow of light toward the same point. The attack didn’t end there; every castle-wall cannon, as well as the cannon-fortress golems, fired at once.

All these attacks engulfed the Machina Guardian as well, creating a massive explosion of flames that shook the very air. Light spread instantly, followed shortly by a boom and heated wind. It was such an awesome torrent of destruction, it might’ve vaporized anything nearby.

Even amid this, Leticia continued to sing. Despite the noise, the sound still reached all ears clearly. Truly, the power of the spirit of song was amazing.

“C’mon, Elder. Can’t you do something about her?” Soul Howl complained.

“…She has her own free will,” Mira replied dismissively.

In front of them was an apocalyptic scene, but Leticia seemed wholly ignorant of it. “Okay, here comes my next song!” she announced gleefully before singing again. She didn’t exactly fit in a raging battle.

Mood aside, though, the fight was going well. When the light and smoke cleared, the mages saw the Protectors were greatly damaged.

“Three left, hm? How stubborn.”

“Nothing we can do about that. However much we focus our firepower, we can’t reach Lu-man—uh…Lumi’s raw power.”

“Fair. Maybe we should be satisfied that we insta-killed seventeen of them.”

When the Machina Guardian’s health went under 40 percent, twenty Protectors emerged. After much trial and error, players had determined that the ideal strategy against them was to blast them with as much firepower as possible while they were gathered together.

There were many methods, but the most reliable was for a sorcerer to use wide-range magic. When the Nine Wise Men had cleared this boss, Luminaria naturally played that role. The spell she’d used was explosive magic, and it required the longest cast of all the ultimate sorcerer spells. It obviously obliterated all the Protectors in one blow.

Their current focused attack was nothing to scoff at, but it still couldn’t compare to Luminaria’s power. Amazed again by her comrade, Mira quickly analyzed the situation and gave her next order.

In that instant, amid the faint remnants of the blast, another figure danced behind the Machina Guardian: First Pupil, heroically riding his trusty steed Pegasus. “I’ve been waitin’ all my nine lives for this chance!”

He’d gotten so used to his job setting up the Bound Arcana, he’d had time to play games with Pegasus. When he appeared, some kind of win-loss record was written on his sign. Of course, First Pupil’s losing streak was staggering.

“Eat this!” Under his new orders, Cat Sith hurled another of the stones Mira had given him—a blasting stone—as hard as he could, seemingly letting off steam.

Stuck dealing with Alfina and the rest of the army facing it, even the Machina Guardian couldn’t immediately react to Pegasus’s sudden speedy charge from behind. The blasting stone the feline threw slipped past the raid boss and directly under the Protectors, who were too scared to move after the sudden bombardment.

Immediately, the power within—wind—was unleashed. Gales rushed from the point of impact and blew the remaining three Protectors away.

“Good. It looks like it worked.” Having confirmed that, Mira gave another order. 

The third, fourth, and fifth sisters acted swiftly. The blasting stone’s wind had launched the Protectors a distance away from each other, leaving them unable to cooperate. The sisters’ ranks surrounded them quickly to keep them separated.

Victory was finally coming into view. As their forces felled each Protector, Soul Howl looked upon the battle and muttered, “So far, so good.”

“Indeed. All that remains is to beware…” Beware the laser beam. 

Before Mira could say it, the Machina Guardian moved unexpectedly. It began stomping on the ground—another Rampage. But on closer inspection, nobody was in Rampage range. Pegasus and First Pupil had already returned to the castle wall, and most of the sisters were fifty meters off. Even the ones dealing with the Protectors were a good eighty meters or so away. What was the Machina Guardian planning? 

As Mira ordered her army to be wary of any unexpected movements, the raid boss’s intentions became clear. Far up ahead, it stomped its legs and raised itself so that its abdomen faced them. Then its remaining legs grabbed the remains of its two severed ones and hung them in front of its abdomen.

The moment he understood, Soul Howl hid behind the castle wall. “You can’t be serious!”

“That’s its plan?!” Ordering the Valkyrie Sisters to switch to emergency defenses, Mira rushed to summon a holy knight in front of Leticia. After promptly mutating the knight into a holy lord and maximizing its defenses, she fled behind the wall as well.

A few moments later, there was an intense explosion in the Machina Guardian’s abdomen. This attack, launched so soon after Rampage, could have destroyed even the strongest shield. It blew away the legs hanging in front of the raid boss’s abdomen, and the resulting debris flew around like bullets due to the power of the explosion. Fragments of various shapes and sizes became hail upon the battlefield.

Using Rampage for the detonation had made the explosion even more powerful. Despite being far away, Eizenfald, the Valkyrie Sisters, and the mages’ army were still in the blast radius. Despite their defensive postures, they still took considerable damage.

The damage to Eizenfald was especially great due to his giant form, leaving his protective barrier at less than 10 percent. The sisters were able to dodge some of the shrapnel, but given the sheer quantity of it, they’d nearly lost 30 percent of their barriers by the end. Surprisingly, Christina’s skillful shield use reduced her damage to only 10 percent. She looked awfully smugly at her sisters, who’d taken three times that damage.

The real problem was Mira and Soul Howl’s army. That attack alone had cut it in half. Christina’s squad had sustained the most casualties by far; their numbers had fallen to below ten.

Christina turned around to face them confidently, but the tragedy before her left her speechless. “No way…”

As for the third, fourth, and fifth sisters’ squads, which had split off to deal with the Protectors, they’d sustained damage as well. To add insult to injury, the explosion had destroyed those Protectors, although those individual fights would’ve been an opportunity for the sisters to prove themselves to Mira, their master.

“Dumb Christina gets all the glory, showing off her new moves! I’m getting stronger too!”

The three muttered similar complaints, giving the destroyed Protectors another slash each for good measure, then returned to the main battlefield.

The Machina Guardian’s attack had even reached the sturdy castle wall in the distance. The debris had gouged countless bullet-hole-like marks in the wall, and even the holy lord’s ultimate defensive posture had left its shield heavily damaged.

Behind it, Leticia continued singing as if nothing had happened at all, looking carefree. Without the defensive buffs her songs provided, the damage would’ve been much worse. She’d courageously continue singing, no matter the circumstances; that was the spirit of song Mira knew.

Or at least, that’s what she bragged to the Spirit King.

***

“It’s a little earlier than expected, but it’s time to begin the operation.” Mira returned to the roof of the wall, which was now broken in places. From there, she looked at the battlefield, grasped the situation, and swiftly gave out orders. Meanwhile, she used the summoner skill Benevolent Touch, which healed Eizenfald’s protective barrier in exchange for a large quantity of mana.

Eizenfald’s position directly fighting the Machina Guardian was important in this long battle, and it was surely a difficult task.

“It will be difficult, but I’m counting on you,” Mira urged him gently and lovingly.

“Leave it to me, Mother!” Eizenfald replied with genuine eagerness. He was seemingly enjoying this fight; he even asked to try a few things. Mira replied that he could try whatever he wanted.

She gazed at Eizenfald, who’d begun using the draconic magic he was learning from the Great Elder Dragon in the capital, then called back the leader of the squad that had lost the most troops: Christina.