To accept my wager when she would have the upper hand from her perspective; she is either confident, arrogant or stupid. She could have said "You're in no position to make demands."
...
I dodge to the side and behind a bookshelf, narrowly dodging a large blast of fire.
She is currently using fire, which means she's trying to trick me into using its weakness weapon, water. If she can trick me into using that, then she'd destroy me using Earth.
Understanding this, I turn the corner with my own sorcery prepared to be fired off.
As predicted, she was in the process of launching a conjured slab of rock at me.
"Black Wood - Growth"
A tree with black bark sprouts from the floor, falling apart instantly while as the rock hit it. Of course it failed to do anything more than halt the attack. This is a result of me not having practiced with the Wood Element before.
Before I can begin another counter spell, she follows up.
"Summoning of Flame - Agni!" she shouts out.
The summoning circle was complete and before her was something that I could best describe as a foreign creature has materialized. A red skinned and male humanoid, gaudily dressed, with seven hands, two heads, three legs and seven flaming tongues. In one hand, it holds a sword. It is mounted on a red ram who is also dressed with no function other than to glorify itself and its rider's appearances.
It raises its sword above its head, and with a glimmer of light, balls of fire fly out of it by the dozens. The fire balls themselves have no exact direction, and they fly in many different directions, mostly towards me.
I dodge to the side of the first several fireballs. However, this puts me in the path of some of the others. I twist my body, causing the flames to pass by me, but not without being so close that I can feel the air near me burning.
A second wave of fireballs come out of the sword. I use the brief gap in time between the two sets to leap behind a desk, using it as shield.
However, its catches on fire almost immediately. I begin to set a spell as a trap.
"Turn Spell." My next spell is set.
The desk that serves as my shield falls apart as it is incinerated. Agni is preparing a third wave of it's fire.
Out of the dozens of fireballs that were brought forth, only a fraction were about to hit me.
I feel my sleeve catch on fire as one of the flames was unaffected by deflection. However, Agni's roar in pain indicated that I was successful in causing all of the remaining fireballs that would have hit me to hit Agni itself.
Of course, if the fire could hurt the fire deity, then it must have a reduced affect. I wave my arm, weakening the flame on my sleeve enough to safely smother it. Looking back at Agni-
"OOF!" My back hits the chair which falls over from my weight.
I refocus to see the Ram. It's bringing its head down and sprinting! I can't let it hit me!
My roll to the side is a success.
If I go down this isle of shelves, it will follow me. While there will be no escape for me, neither will there be a room for it to dodge.
I immediately run down the isle in the opposite direction while beginning a spell incorporating Water. It didn't take long before Agni came to the mouth of the isle.
"Dark Water - Blast." I lift my hand and fire a concentrated burst of darkness-infused water.
Like all other darkness infused elements I use, Dark Water is that of the named element but has increased destructive properties. Induced fear and additional pain are also common side effects of being stuck by this form of magic.
So it isn't a sunrise that Agni's mount roared in pain and collapsed, causing Agni to fall with it. I fire off off three more blasts, while aiming for Agni, as fast as possible.
Were you trying to use your sword again? Good thing I acted when I did.
The blasts of Dark Water are causing him to scream out as his flames are doused. He dematerializes into the air, and I can no longer sense his presence. Whether he was destroyed or the link in the summoning was broken, the fact remains that he was defeated and disappeared. But it isn't over yet, is it?
"Summoning of Wood - Sylphae!" Knowledge shouts. The magician was already completing another summon, using my fight with Agni as a means to delay me.
Wait, I've heard a magician use that same creature as a Wind type, but the magician here uses it as a Wood type?
Why didn't I notice that before! The foreign Wood Element and the native Wind Element are the same (excluding the obvious differences). That said, if I'm fighting something that is weak to Wood, I could just use either my Dark Wind Element magic. Since there is no natural wind in this library, my oneness with the wind would not work as effectively as a combat means. I suppose I could use it to absorb electrical and redirect blasts, but I don't recall Ms. Knowledge having any lightning based spells.
From around the corner of the isle's end appears a something that looks like a fairy. She is female and almost transparent. Her body is both slender and graceful with large, glistening eyes and huge wings.
By substituting Fire for Metal when against Wood and substituting Wind for Wood when against Earth, I can conserve magical energy much better.
"Hell Fire - Fireball" Black flames are launched from my hands and at the fairy like woman. However, her reflexes allow her to change direction in mid air fast enough for her body to only be grazed by the flame.
Of course, the grazing itself is painful, as can be heard from her high pitch scream. She's clearly a tough one as she quickly forces herself to stop and flies upward while producing wi-wood power.
On closer inspection, it truly isn't wind. However, that doesn't change that I need to use Fire against her. I begin charging the magical energy while speaking the arcane incantation and making hand motions.
She begins launching leaves from her being, a large number of fast, magically charged leaves.
"Hell Fire - Wall of Fire." I conjure a thirty meter by thirty meter wall of black flame in the path of storm of leaves.
My ears pick up a sound, below me? When did she drop from that high altitude?!
She reaches out with her hand as energy spirals in her palm. I reach out with my own hand, conjuring another Hell Fire spell.
Before her hand palm can hit my stomach, my longer arms allows my own palm to to slam into her head, but it's still too close for me to avoid the contained Wood energy!
"Hell Fire - Fireball," I speak.
As her Wood magic tears at my stomach, my hand launches the burst of destructive energy into the woman's face. As I stagger back, the wind youkai screeches since her head is being set ablaze fire by the black flame.
I place a hand on my bleeding stomach wound. I should be able to heal from this, but given my lack of physical energy, I won't heal immediately. I'll need-
"Dual Summoning - Water and Metal!" It was the young voice of the magician, again.
I can't see her, and she probably has a general idea on where I am. I need to figure what to do to counter act the next two summons she throws at me.
"Princess Undine! Silver Dragon!"
And that is my message to flee away from where I can sense the two significantly large magical energies.
It takes me awhile of weaving between book shelves, but I can tell that I'm making progress in putting distance between myself and them.
I come to a new area which somehow feels different from the rest of the library. I couldn't put my finger on it...the only thing that remotely smelled like this was my parents' bedroom.
"Dark Wind Summon - Air Boar," I call out. In front of me appears a boar. We, the Tengu, used to have many boars like this. I am surprised to know that I may need it now.
"Off you go, find a go place to hide until you can ambush either the Metal summon, the Water summon or the magician I am fighting."
While I would not say that this boar is intelligent, it is smart enough to understand me.
As it leaves, I begin to prepare two spells as I search the area for geographical advantage, one Hell Fire Spell and one Black Earth Spell.
Wait, what's this on the floor?
Upon closer inspection, there is a spell symbol engraved onto the floor as if to insure that the spell could be used multiple times for years on end. This particular spell requires that someone puts magic into it to activate it. That said, this spell isn't a trap, but rather a trigger point.
Analyzing the structure of the spell, it's supposed to conjure something in the ground (or ground like area) for the purpose of summoning it. Then the conjured object performs a specific task.
Perhaps she intended to be standing here and cast the spell on me.
"There you are! Undine, Silver Dragon, kill him!" I turn and see that the purple girl has found me. She is being flanked by a woman who somehow looks like she's made of water yet is still fleshy, and what appears to be a typical dragon with silver skin.
"Black Earth - Magic Stone," I say. I begin transmuting the ground, black pebbles form in front of me and fly out at the water woman whom I assume is Undine, striking her hard. I follow up by casting my other prepared spell at the Silver Dragon as it flies at me.
"Hell Fire - Blast." The flame hits the dragon's face directly, causing it to crash into the ground and twitch from the pain.
The magician raised her hand and spoke another incantation.
"Earth - Rage Trilithon!" Yellow energy formulated in front of her. It began to condense into a great number of orbs. Although they were made of energy they were a solid as strong rock, the number itself I did not bother to count as I was too busy preparing my own spells to counter it.
"Dark wind - Whirlwind." The wind I normally use as a natural power of a Tengu is clear. This wind however is dark. It circulates and produces a powerful cyclone roughly 10 feet wide at the base, 30 feet wide at the top and 30 feet tall. I can feel my body taking the excess wind created into itself. The whirlwind cuts apart the solidified energy. Miss knowledge is already preparing a counter attack.
If I had trained in that spell more, I would have torn through her with a larger whirlwind. But my stock in my own non-magical wind manipulation made my training in the Dark Wind Element less than useful. It wasn't a bad thing under most circumstances, but the lack of training makes for waste of magical energy. Because of that, I might run out of magic at this rate.
Wait, that spell on the floor is so prepared that it's only needs a little bit of magical energy to be used.
I send a small amount of my magic into the circle and aim my finger at Ms. Knowledge. Since the summoned object should not be a restorative or a buffer, I know the magician will not receive significant help from the summoned object. And if it's offensive, then my gamble was worth it.
"Patchouli's Purple Tentacles!" I call out, casting the spell.
I find myself being hit in the chest by a brightly colored, magical blast that has no spoken name and find myself landing on my back. This accumulation of injuries is a sign of my weakening. But thankfully, I had already finished casting the spell.
"What?" Knowledge's eyes widen as she says this. The ground beneath her feet breaks, and out sprouts several long, purple tentacles. They begin grabbing her.
"No!" she screams as she struggles against them. Of course, given how often I hear women complain about slimy objects, her hysteria is expected given how slimy the tentacles grabbing her are.
I don't know how long that spell will hold her, but I hope it will hold her long enough for me to destroy her two servants and formulate a counter against her. I start to prepare another Black Earth spell as I take off to the nearest-
I leap out of the way of a high pressure, water blast. The water woman is resuming her attack run and fires off high pressure water streams, cutting through the hard wooden floor. As she flies after me, I run and leap out of her path.
"Quit dodging!" Undine orders. You know, that's such a stupid thing to say. If you're trying to kill someone, why would they want to hold still for you?
I run down another isle, and as predicted, she follows. It it thanks to that prediction that I am prepared as I cast a Black Earth spell.
"Wall of Stone!" Out of the floor, a wall of black rock shoots upward and hits the Water spirit, inflicting pain and injury to it.
She'll probably survive that, so I need to put as much distance between myself and her as possible so that I can begin setting up another set of spells. Speaking of which, I should have attacked Knowledge while the tentacles were subduing her.
I run down the isles as I had been doing before, turning past a corner.
...
I turn my head as I sense something go off.
It is a spell, but setup as a trap. I must have triggered it, but the problem is what have I set off?
I feel an increase of heat in front of me, I turn my head see what my ill luck has wrought. There is a wall in front of me. And judging from the magic formula, sound of flames and heat, there must be one behind me, one to my left, one to my right, and one above me. The spell "Wall of Fire," repeated 5 times. They were positioned specifically to box me in.
An easy solution. I just need to use another Dark Water spell to destroy it.
No, a Water spell is exactly what she expects me to use. And so she'll probably have set up some sort of trap based on defeating Water, like a Wood spell to absorb the Water spell or an Earth spell to counter act it and be fueled by the fires of the Fire spell.
That said, she also probably knows that I'll counter with its weakness weapon and prepared specifically for that. If that is the case, then I truly can't escape as Fire will defeat it or absorb it.
If I make a hasty decision, I'm liable for making a miscalculation which will result in my defeat or even my death. My miscalculation to my superior ability being enough to overcome the trained guardsman results in me being too injured to fight at my peak here. My lack of suspicion of Koakuma allowed her to drain almost all of my physical strength, and my fleeing when Knowledge was attacked by the purple tentacles has me lose what may have been the one chance at ending this fight before it turns into a drawn out endurance contest. I cannot let myself make such a mistake again.
Simplified, I need to put more thought into my actions.
Looking at it, if I fight Element magic with Element magic here, she probably will kill me since it's her specialty.
But magic is not limited to the Elements; regardless of which set of elements you follow, sometimes you can use categories that are structured differently. Although one can claim that my "Detect surface thoughts" spell is a Void spell, the fact is that it isn't. If someone who strictly follows the element principle and wants to use it, they have to use the Void, but I am not strictly following the that principle.
When one looks at it in this perspective, there are many spells one can use without fear of complications because of the Element systems.
Of course, out of all the spells I know, only one can get me out of this.
...
"Magic, a wonderful thing," I speak to Ms. Knowledge, wherever she is hiding. I begin moving my hand as if I was writing the character "mu" on an imaginary medium.
"With it, the physically weak animals can become as powerful as the youkai who prey on them. And with it, the youkai magician can go from being as weak as a fairy to as powerful as an Oni."
As I speak, I rely on my ears to tell me if she is approaching. She will be if she is curious about what I am saying. Of course, this would be less than ideal if she had a long ranged spell or a remote casting prepared.
The vibration in the ground, I can tell that she is to my left some dozen feet away.
I need to only sacrifice the smallest speck of iron to use this spell. And the steel blade on my back contains such material. I wave my hands for the purpose of the casting the spell and speak its effect.
The preparations are complete, and I trigger the spell-
"So let us see what happens when we turn that magic off."
-by speaking its name.
"Anti Magic field."
There is no glorious explosion, no odd screech sound with the shattering of glass, no odd static accompanied by vibrations, no blackness, and no fizzling.
Like life in nature, the elemental power that would have killed me is killed without a glorious end. A death as silent as a ninja's assassination. And as the magic is rendered to being little more than sub-elemental particles, before me stands the shocked devil woman.
I give no quarter to her. Even in my weakened state, I am still faster than her. She is engulfed by my field that renders magic to zero worth.
She tries to cast a spell, but nothing happens. Such is expected when all magic in an area is nullified.
Wait...I can feel my body's strength returning! It's slow, but not stagnant like it was before. Delayed reaction? No...it started about the time I activated my Anti-magic field. Which means there is a good chance that a spell was used on me to keep my physical strength from returning.
If the spell requires concentration to use, all I have to do is knock you hard enough and the spell will break!
(This is the second time today, why am I physically hitting beautiful women? I hope that, if by the off-chance that I get married, I do not become an abusive husband.)
Koakuma is terrified, but I do not halt as I slam my hand into the side of her neck, aimed specifically to knock her out.
She collapses to the ground.
As my Anti-magic field deactivates, I can feel that my strength is returning, albeit still slowly. With Koakuma knocked unconscious, her remote strength draining spell has disappeared as I had hoped.
One down...three more to go.
"There you are!" I hear the water summon speak. I turn my head to see her down on the other end of the isle.
She is flying in my direction. I begin to make hand movements for my trap. I am already finished casting it when Undine fires her water attack at me.
"Turn Spell."
Undine screeches as I cut her in two with her own high-pressure stream of water, and grazing the skin of the Silver
While the water will serve to heal her, the pressure damage is enough to make the wound stay open. The Silver Dragon flies past her and at me, but I am able to cast spells faster thanks to removing Koakuma's interference.
"Black Lightning - Chain!" The initial strike is nearly identical to my standard Black Lightning Spell aside from being stronger, but that is just the initial strike. The spell's lightning jumps from one target to the next after that, doing roughly half the amount of damage.
The metal on the body conducts the electricity. The body of water conducts the electricity. Both Undine and the Silver Dragon scream and roar in pain respectively, the latter hits the ground. I leap and roll to the side to dodge the dragon as momentum carries it across the ground.
Undine quickly picks herself up only to be rammed by the boar I had summoned.
Since I an inefficient in both Dark Wind and Black Wood, I will let my summoned beast deal with the water princess. I turn to see the Silver Dragon getting back on its feet.
I am already making the needed hand movements, but the dragon is already closing the distance. I ignore the pain and extend my hand as its claws impale me.
"Hell Fire - Fireball," I say. The explosion of flame is a direct hit.
...
...
I open my eyes to find myself staring at the ceiling of the library. I can tell that I have several open wounds and am on my back.
Tilting my head to the left, I can see that the Silver Dragon is on the ground, disintegrating. Tilting my head to the right, I see the boar I summoned, approaching me.
It looks worse for wear with so many cuts on its body. It looks like it can fall apart at any moment.
"I'll reward you this is over," I say as I pull out my magical energy from it, making its position here no longer sustainable and thus dispelling the summon.
The boar poofs and disappears, leaving black air behind which breaks apart into nothingness.
I stay there on the ground, biding my time until I am either healed enough or cannot wait any longer for the magician to-
I hear her foot steps, and so I get on to my feet. I turn my head as seen the familiar sight of lavender pajamas.
The purple haired girl, she looks...terrified? Shocked? Her clothing seems ruffled, like she was in a close-quarters fight. She is also covered in slime and reeks of something awful.
"Whoever Patchouli is must have been a genius to create a spell that could be used so easily," I comment. Her facial expression turns from shock to anger.
"Flattery will get you nowhere, cur. I did not invent that spell just so that my enemies could use it to stall me in a fight."
So Patchouli is her name. Is that Patchouli Knowledge or Knowledge Patchouli?
"Your familiar has been dealt with, your summoned servants defeated, and your traps destroyed. Are you earnest to quit?" I ask.
"Never!" she screams. Her hand motions appear similar to what I make when casting a Hell Fire spell. Upon recognizing this, I begin to to formulate a counter spell in my head and make the hand motions accordingly.
I may be at risk of burning out my body, but my hand movements are faster.
"Fire - Radiance!" This fire spell is much like the attack that the Agni used earlier; its primary difference is that this spell has many times more the number of fire balls. I slam my right foot into the floor and drag it back as part of the somatic component. At the same time, I finish the hand motions for my counter spell.
"Dark Water - Flood!" Black liquid that functions identically to water spews out of the ground in large quantities as a fountain of water is between me and the fire spell; it acts as a shield and dousing all of the red energy.
Wooden pikes sprout from under the water, one impaling my leg!
Water feeds Wood!
Within seconds, the flooded library transforms into something much...greener. Plants and trees are sprouting from under the black water.
She's using my spell to fuel hers! The plants are producing the essence of the Wood Element, and she's taking it into herself to cast a Wood Spell!
"Wood - Triple Heightened Sylphae Horn!"
"Counter Spell - Heightened, Quickened Fire Ball!"
The Wood spell is too strong to be overcome even by the darkness infused magic which contained its very weakness. The wood is set ablaze, and the contained energy is unleashed as they press into each other.
The resulting explosion rocked the library.
I fly backwards, I can feel my back hitting something.
"I'm not done yet! Earth - Trilithon Shake!"
Rocks are flying at me. No, not rocks...boulders are flying at me!
I will not waste my time trying to beat it with poorly constructed Dark Wind or, even worse, Black Wood. This leaves me with the option of scrambling to my feet and leaping out of the way.
The boulders fly past me, wrecking the floor and shelf around where I was. I should be safe-
The shelf I leaped behind busts as a boulder comes crashing through it, striking me!
Yeah, I should have figured that they could be aimed.
I feel myself hit the floor. My arm is mangled by it being the part hit directly by the boulder.
...Are there no more boulders?
"Water - Bury In Lake!"
"Turn Spell!"
The girl is struck 8 times by her own ice...but her spell is already cast and is not deactivating. I grunt in pain as I feel myself being hit by the cold spell bolts. Many, I am being hit many times. I cannot count the strikes.
Then silence.
...
"Eh...ueh..." I weakly shift my eyes to see that Knowledge is on the floor, struggling to lift herself up.
"Ue...uh...huh! Ehe! UH!" She's wheezing, gasping for air, and coughing.
"Damned Asthma, not now of all times!"
She's sick? But she was fighting me...more effectively than any other magician I have fought before (looking at magic ability alone that is).
I'm not paying attention to how I got to my feet, but I found myself approaching Knowledge's injured and sick body.
"Please wait!" Koakuma dashes out in front of me, blocking my line between.
"I know the Mistress is cruel and unusual sometimes, but..."
I place my hand on Koakuma's forehead. She knows that if I was prepared to cast an offensive spell like this, then she could very well die.
However...
I was using the touch proximity to enhance the power of the spell I used to detect thoughts.
But to find out everything I wanted to know...to find out about the kidnapped Tengu...I needed to see into the memories of this individual.
...
A little girl born from the womb of a woman who questioned the belief system of the day. This was because her religion provided supernatural and beneficial results, while the commonly accepted religion provided nothing.
The woman became a sort of immortal and offered her husband the same kind of alteration. Their child was born afterward.
But the birth of the daughter resulted in the death of the mother, whose body was as weak as a human's.
...the girl could use magic. One of the first things she did was summon the devil Koakuma.
There were people against the existence of mages, and some of them went after the girl's father, killing him. Koakuma and the young mage fled upon finding out about the father's death, evading the extremists.
They were taken in by a man, a youkai called...a vampire...and became friends with his eldest daughter.
...
Wait, these are constructed, I want Koakuma's real memories.
...
This woman was powerless. She had been the runt ever since she had been born. Her life had been a living hell, even for a devil who was supposed to be at home in that world.
It was one day when a child, by chance, summoned her as a familiar. Of course she would accept it, as a life in our world was be much better than the life she had in the land of the devils.
Kinda ironic that this woman plays prank on everyone every chance she gets, even if they're on her benefactor. And to imagine a world full of Devils...such a frightening thought.
...
There is nothing I can find on the Tengu. Either the mental blocks are too powerful or she simply doesn't know. That said, I withdraw my hand from Koakuma's head. She is still shaking in fear yet trying her hardest not to let it show.
...
She begins to speak.
"I-I know what I said about you...but I'll sleep with you if you'll spare Mistress Knowledge!"
A female offering herself to a male, chance of procreation, no strings attached...One could say that I would be a fool to pass this up.
Wait, stop you idiot! Remember your reason for even coming here! And look at her! She's fighting tears! Are you really going to harm her even further?
Besides, this may be another trick! Koakuma is a Devil, meaning there is the possibility that she can consume your life and magic if you accept!
...
"I have no intention of raping you, miss. I would like a copy of everything in the library, and I would like to sleep if you if you would not try consuming my soul. But since you don't want to do either of those, I will not bother trying to force you. Your master owes me that, so it's up to her to pay it or something of equal or greater value. I'll let you two figure it out. I have what I need...so I'll be leaving."
Although the tears remain, she is no longer sad, assuming her brightening face and her mouth curving upwards is a good indication.
But being so magically and physically drained, I am no longer caring about how she feels. I turn to leave her with her master, and I walk down towards the door that leads further into the mansion.
Author's Comments:
Thanks to Kaiser for proofreading.
Somehow, Sasuke feels too warm and fuzzy in this chapter. Hopefully you all liked this chapter more than the last one.
Also, I made the alignment poll Not-blind (How do you say it?) so that people can see the results.
As always, I would like to hear from you all as to your thoughts of my fic. Criticisms on grammar and spelling, notices, likes, expectations, etc.
