'Just how in heavens did it come to this?'
Sylvie breathed heavily while hunching deeply.
Just the last few exchanges were so tiring, she could hardly keep her body upright.
It was the worst scenario for a sorcerer like her. A match against a heavy-armored yet agile opponent.
"Why?!" Sylvie shrieked only to spit out a mouthful of blood.
Just a few exchanges with Unno were enough to bring her beyond the level of mere exhaustion.
By all means, this was one of those 'true, life or death fights' that she'd heard so much about back in the preschool.
Over and over again, her instructors drilled into her head just how brutal and dangerous the outside world was at times… if not most of the time. It was something she was well aware of and what she constantly kept in mind, at all times.
But what the other party did…
"Tsk, I nearly forgot how annoying it is to fight mages," Onno spat out from below his heavy helmet, an easily removable piece of armor that he kept on throughout the long journey.
While not in as bad of a state as Sylvie and definitely far better than Duffon, he wasn't perfectly fine either.
A huge, black sooth covered his side and Sylvie managed to sneak in a hit. He was also limping on his left leg, where one of the hundreds of stone shards she showered him with managed to find a soft, unprotected spot around the middle of his shin.
"WHY?!" Sylvie shrieked out again, too tired to properly scream out.
The world being brutal was one thing. But their entire group abandoned the caravan they were hired and paid to protect, only to have the bandits likely torment and slaughter all of those whom they swore to protect…
Being brutal was one thing. Breaking faith with one's own word, though, was something else entirely, all the more when it involved the loss of innocent lives.
Sylvie could still see the faces of the people she traveled for nearly two weeks with.
Despite keeping to herself and hardly interacting with the others, she was quite observant. And while likely unnoticed by others, she did see nearly everyone in the caravan.
The young and aspiring merchant behind the whole adventure. An old trader, likely his mentor, accompanying his student in the company of his lovely wife.
A tailor and a seamstress, a young couple who was moving towns to look for a better future where their skills would be of greater value.
A pair of a mother and son, each fragile as dry stick yet struggling with smiles on their faces to help the other.
A family with four small kids running around, a hired team of ten 'mules', the muscle hired to move and maintain the cargo, the drivers, even a priest…
"Shit!" Knowing no greater curse, Sylvie gritted her teeth and tightened her hold over her staff as she raised her eyes to her opponent.
Putting Duffan to sleep exhausted quite a lot of her mana, only for her to then face her nemesis, the perfect opponent for the class she was using.
A heavy warrior.
"Haaah…" Unno sighed and shook his head before affixing his spear onto a special hold on the side of his shield. "You are too nosy."
Unno's stance suggested a slow, warded advance… And yet, the man rushed ahead with all his might, catching the girl off-guard.
'Damn it! React!'
Hurrying herself up, Sylvie shook her staff to the side, using the manadust residue tracing the path of the staff's catalyst to pump her mana out and manifest a fourth-grade spell.
Unno advanced at a break-neck rate, closing the distance faster than Sylvie could react.
Still, she was an existence nearly reaching into the sixth layer of magic!
"Release!"
Enriching the magic compound with the tonal aspect, Sylvie fired off a salvo of exploding blades of stone, each made up of a fire-core and then a cracked, stone surface. All of them shaped in a stretched diamond form, all heading for the same target.
"Fucking mage…" Unno muttered under his nose, stopping his advance and planting the bottom of his huge shield into the ground before kneeling down and hiding behind it.
Before the barrage could end, Sylvie had already manifested another manadust trail and infused it with her mana, holding the activation of the vocal component as she waited for the perfect opportunity.
Thump!
ThuThump!
Thuthu-thump!
The barrage of stones fell upon Unno's shield… Only to do the man hidden behind it absolutely no harm.
Without the exterior breaking, the fire-core inside didn't activate either. And with no mana interfering with it from within, there was no agent for it to burst out of its shell.
In other, simpler words, a miss.
Unno raised up from his knee…
"Go!"
Using the shortest vocal component she could think of, Sylive activated her counter to the man's heavy armament.
'A concentrated gale… Perfect to throw him away if he insists on using that dumb shield!'
The mana construct flared up… Only for Sylvie to spit blood once again as she fell down to her knees.
As it turned out, the mana component of her spell exceeded her current reserves. A slight and stupid mistake that she would get scolded for back in preschool… And a fatal opening in a real battle.
With more mana than she had to offer now trying to leave her flesh to activate the spell, Sylvia felt her insides rearrange, shift under the great pull of the mana she was so attuned to…
Grab!
Before the girl could recover from the rebound of the failed spell, Unno grabbed her by her throat and raised her up in the air so that her feet wouldn't reach the floor.
Choked, Sylvie desperately attempted to break the man's one-handed hold with her fingers, clawing, pulling and even attempting to turn her head and bite those vile fingers off…
But Unno didn't buckle.
With the two hate-filled stars of his eyes shining from below the man's thick, metal helmet, Unno stared at the breathless girl. A vile satisfaction grew in his stare as Sylvie struggled harder and harder… while her movements only grew slower and weaker.
"That's what good girls get out in the world…" Duffon cussed, appearing from the side.
The light in Sylvie's eyes dimmed a little.
'So even if the spell worked…'
Even if the spell worked, if Unno didn't discard his shield as he did to rush to her side when she flunked if all of those things happened…
Duffan had already managed to break free from the sleep spell. And as her last spellcrafting attempt proved, Sylvie was empty. She had no more mana left, turning into a mere husk of the great, almost sixth-circle mage.
'Is this why he wanted us to run for so long?' Sylvie thought as the lack of air started to sprout the seeds of panic all over her mind…
But what good would that panic do? She was already so tired and sleepy…
It just felt like a better idea to just go to sleep and think about resolving this problematic situation…
Thud….
Only the rapidness of the move and its suddenness allowed Sylvie's fleeting attention to lock onto…
A foot.
A foot that someone firmly implanted up Unno's cheek, as if they wanted to knock both his heavy helmet but also his chin off the man's face!
A kick from below, where Sylvie's suspended body limited Unno's vision. A kick powerful enough to make Unno relax his grip over her shoulder, allowing her airways to serve their function and rush fresh air up Sylvie's starved lungs.
And a kick powerful enough to lift Unno, in all of his heavy armor, up a few feet in the air…
Just high enough for his head to cross the boundary marked by the blurry shine scattered in a half-circle over the top of the carved-out road.
As if on cue, a massive horde of monsters rushed ahead, stepping upon the barrier as if it was perfectly solid and revealing the true reason behind the road's weird structure.
From above, the barrier covering the road was impenetrable. But from below, as proved by Unno's head…
The nearest monster, a cockatrice of some sort, snapped at Unno's armored head… Only for its beak to cleave cleanly through the metal and crack Unno's skull open like some sort of fragile nut.
In its rush, before the monster could take more than just one bite, the horde rushed all over the place, all of the monsters desperately fighting to get to Unno's remains and snatch a piece before others would fully devour him.
"Wha…" Duffan took a step back, staring at the bloody scenario with his eyes wide open. Then, as he turned his head back to whoever kicked Unno up…
Smack!
A small hatchet buried itself right across Duffan's face, almost deep enough to cover its handle. Hit critical enough to sever the line of Duffan's life in an instant.
The entire thing lasted maybe two instant. Not enough time for the breath-deprived girl to even notice they were under attack. Yet, as the life-giving oxygen once again flew into her heart and then saturated her blood, she finally managed to catch sight of her savior.
The moment her eyes laid on the man's face, though, Sylvie froze.
He was staring right back at her. And as if not to waste time, he already had an extremely ugly-looking, huge knife brandished in his hand while he approached her without as much as a single word of concern or even a smile of encouragement?
'No…'
Somehow, Sylvie's body just relaxed.
While she struggled against her former companions, she still sensed the ray of hope somewhere. A slim chance that an opportunity to turn the tables would present itself to her.
But against the relatively simple-looking man bathed in the blood of his two victims… her body simply gave up, as if she was a powerless prey bred and born only to be slaughtered by his hand.