Chapter 84: The Crazy Wind’s Aspect

"Boom..."

For half a second, nothing happened.

Prussia only felt a small, hard pressure under her ribs, like a pebble was pressed against her stomach.

"!"

BOOOOOOOM!!!

A hurricane tore out of Prussia’s stomach.

It went outward, peeling off roofs and folding walls flat, the dirt road lifted in one long sheet and every house within a hundred paces simply stopped being a house.

The whole street looked like it’d collapsed into itself, Rensfell’s main road was now a crater with Prussia lying on her back at its center, she’s still in one piece.

"Ahh?"

Boreas tilted his head at the rim of the crater.

"You’re still together? You’re really tough, aren’t you? But did you really think that would get me?"

He picked his severed hand out of the dirt and pressed it against the stump and it healed.

"Testing..."

He flexed his fingers, the bloody hole in his shoulder was already closing as well.

"Keke. Sword through the shoulder, that was cute."

"Hey! Ugly!"

Alpis was already running at him.

Boreas didn’t even look at her.

"Boom."

The air detonated and a rolling wall of nothing tore through the village and took everything with it like the fences, carts, half a bell tower and many trees pulled out by the roots. Alpis didn’t even see the hand, she was just spun away like a leaf in a storm.

She was a long way out before she got her head straight.

’...I can’t believe that hurt!’

Her wings burst from her back, she was already angling to dive back in when the ground bucked under her.

A curtain of stone came flying out of the dust.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

She crossed her arms in front of her face. The bullets hit her like hail on a tin roof, and every single one shattered against her hard dragon skin and fell away as gravel.

Far down the broken road, Hegor was waving at her with one huge hand.

"Hi!"

"...Is he serious?"

Something gold flashed at the edge of her eye.

...Chains, gold and silver, deathly fast, and before she could even turn they had wrapped around her arms, her waist, her legs, and pulled tight.

’Damn it, they’re separating us!’

She beat her wings and shot straight up. If she could get high enough, she could lose the fox lady, break the chain and go back for Prussia.

But the chain followed her up.

Skein stood on a broken roof far below with the gold end wrapped around her fist. Her whole body was glowing with lightning and her fox face couldn’t help but smile.

"Nowhere to go, little lizard."

She poured everything into the chain.

KRAKA-BOOOOM!

Every inch of Alpis’s body is filled with lightning until her wings stiffened and her eyes rolled. She dropped out of the sky like a stone and hit the road flat on her stomach, smoke was coming off her back.

She was trying to get up, but her arms were shaking.

Skein walked over, laughing softly behind her hand.

"And here I thought this one was the strong one."

Hegor came lumbering up behind her and looked down at the girl in the dirt with a big, happy grin.

"Hey, Skein. I hope the Boss lets me play with her after she’s dead. Ooooo, I wanna keep her, I wanna keep her! She’d make a really good addition to my collection."

"...Whatever."

...

On the other side of the village, the nuns had dragged the children behind what was left of a collapsed bakery. They crouched in the rubble with their hands over the little ones’ mouths and their eyes shut.

At this point it wasn’t about surviving anymore, it’s about staying alive long enough for a miracle.

"Mm, mm."

Boreas walked down into the crater with his hands in his pockets, whistling.

Prussia was on her hands and knees.

"Don’t bother getting up, dear. That hit was a gift. By now it’s probably turned half your insides to porridge."

He crouched in front of her.

"Don’t mistake me for some second-rate mercenary who happens to know wind magic. I have an aspect. Do you know what that means? When a mage understands an element so deeply that it liquefies, the original magic stops being what it was."

Fire becomes ash.

Water crystallizes into ice.

Those are aspects, they’re rare, and they only come at the very top of a mage’s discipline.

"That’s where I stand. And taking my airburst full on is like being hit by a giant’s hammer over and over again. So how does it feel? Are there holes in your lungs? Is your heart working every muscle it has just to push that dead blood through your veins?"

He grinned viciously.

"Frustrating, isn’t it?"

Prussia pushed her sword into the ground. Her knees were shaking and the blood on her chin kept dripping, but she stood up, using the blade as a crutch.

"...I really don’t want a lecture right now."

"Hm?"

"I’m just trying to protect these kids..."

She pulled the sword free and took a sword stance.

"White Dragon Style..."

"...Oh?"

Boreas grinned thirstily, spreading his arms out.

"Breaking Forest!"

Prussia vanished.

...Next, Boreas saw her right in front of his face, with six slashes all landing at the same moment. Six cuts, each carrying the force of a hurricane.

The White Dragon Style was created by the White Dragon Ashardalon centuries ago and taught to humans by Mercurius Pendragon. It was an overwhelming sword method that used powerful winds to cut at its fastest speeds!

But an elegant wind is nothing to a crazy one.

The slashes hit the hollow sphere in Boreas’s left hand and simply disappeared.

All six of them!

The sword winds were drawn in like water down a throat, thin and fast and swallowed whole.

"Mmm. That was delicious. Thank you."

He squeezed his hand shut.

BOOOOOOM!

It was so large that even his own ears popped.

Prussia screamed brutally. She slammed her hands against her head, blood running between her fingers, and rolled across the ground with her mouth open and nothing coming out of it but air.

Boreas shrugged and strolled over.

He kicked her in the side.

"You know, if you’d just agreed to be a good girl from the start, I’d have taken you and a few of these other nuns and been on my way. Hm? Now what I need you to do is stay quiet while I slaughter those children and everything else that has a face. Is that fine, dear?"

Prussia gnashed her teeth at him, tears in her eyes.

Her body wouldn’t move, but she tried.

Boreas stomped on her face and pinned it to the ground.

"I’ll take that as a yes."

He laid his palm flat against the back of her head.

"Boom."

Air crushed down on her, caving the ground beneath her face so hard that a second crated opened inside the first.

Prussia’s eyes were white and empty.

"Women are much better when quiet." Boreas smiled.

As for the other two mercenaries, they were about to finish off the dragon girl.

Hegor picked Alpis off the ground with one hand, gripping her entire face like she was a ladle or some other random thing from the kitchen.

Her feet dangled, and her wings hung limp.

"Mmm."

He turned her left, then right, smiling innocently.

"Oooooo, she has pretty wings. Though she’s small, she’s a little heavy. Maybe there are some organs she doesn’t need. Is that fine, Skein?"

He looked back at her with puppy-dog eyes.

Skein shook her head.

"Yeah, whatever."

"Yay!"

Hegor floated rock into his other hand and magic-ed it into a neat little dagger, pressing the tip against Alpis’s bare tummy.

...Whoosh! Two hands flew out of nowhere and grabbed both of them in the face.

Even Skein couldn’t dodge it, her lightning body was fast enough to leave afterimages, but a motion like this was beyond her.

It’s Alpis’s, and her fingers closed around their faces.

Golden runes lit up in Alpis’s purple eyes.

A flood of incantations spilled from her lips, too ancient and quick for the mercenaries to understand, like she was muttering nonsense.

Only the last words were clear.

"...Dragon Labyrinth."

First, nothing happened.

Then all they could see was a labyrinth.

An endless labyrinth, rushing through their vision so fast that neither their eyes nor their minds could keep up.

Every turn led to a hundred more.

Every wall had a door, hiding a door, hiding another door.

A killing illusion...

They collapsed with all the color gone from their eyes, panting and sweating like pigs, completely catatonic.

Their minds had been paralyzed.

Alpis stood above them, almost swaying on her feet.

"Phew... I’m spent..."

Meanwhile, outside Rensfell, a small, dusty carriage had just bounced out of the Azapita Pass.

Adonis sat in the back, peacefully swinging his legs and eating skewered meat.

Bundles of very expensive fabric were stacked around him.

"Heh. Prussia is going to go crazy when she sees the skimpy dress I have planned for her. She’ll love it."

He looked down at the box of skewers in his lap.

"And the kids have definitely never tasted these. I can’t wait to see their silly little faces."

...Buchuku, the carriage stopped abruptly.

Adonis frowned. "Huh? What happened?"

He hopped out to ask the driver and hooked.

There’s no village, just death and destruction.

Scattered through the wreckage were the bodies of merchants he’d eaten with, and of children whose names he knew.

The skewer slipped out of his hand.

"...What?"