novelraw Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Right after that.
“Who are you, really?”
Instead, Banshi spat out the very question I should have been asking.
The twisted Banshi’s hair color began to change.
Her red hair vanished, turning into a completely pure, delicate white.
Even her pupils faintly faded into white.
“Why do you have that color…? And even your eyes….”
That was unmistakably the color of a Flewd Elementalist.
And one that could be considered at the level of a 6th Circle Mage.
At the same time, seven elemental spheres manifested before her face.
“No matter if you’re a Double Caster, you’re just a 1st Circle. So how can you sense that! Ah, right. Now it makes sense. The reason you called me here separately was to capture me, wasn’t it? Since when have you been watching me?”
“What?”
Banshi kept throwing out incomprehensible nonsense.
Who was watching whom?
And she was the one who approached me first.
“What are you talking abou—”
And then the seven elements she had manifested.
Flewd, fire, water, light, darkness, earth, and wind spheres attacked me indiscriminately.
I deflected them one after another with the six Fire Balls I had already summoned.
“A 1st Circle not only having six mana but using those six to fight against seven? Are you also Ed Etar’s dog? No wonder—ever since you claimed to be a Double Caster of fire and darkness, I knew something was off!”
Why would the words “Ed Etar’s dog” come out of Banshi’s mouth?
That was what I should have been saying…
“……?”
“A Double Caster born for the first time in 500 years, and why is it this school of all places, and with the same elements as the Headmaster and Vice Headmaster? The answer is simple. You were a Double Caster trained by the Headmaster and Vice Headmaster. Why? To kill me, a Flewd Elementalist!”
What on earth was she so confidently certain about?
Did she not know that Double Casters couldn’t be created through training?
Or… did that mean Double Casters could be artificially produced in this era?
Despite all the nonsense, one thing was clear—Banshi spoke of Etar as if he were her arch-nemesis.
“Die! Ed Etar’s dog!”
Having already lost her reason, she further strengthened her magic.
The six spheres she had manifested changed shape, swelling to a massive size.
Magic powerful enough to fill this entire dueling arena.
The water element turned into a sea, and the fire element combined with water and wind, transforming into a sea of fire and firestorm that charged straight at me.
At the same time, all sides turned dark—I could see nothing, hear nothing.
She had completely blocked my vision using the dark element.
A superior version of Dark Space.
‘This is dangerous.’
I had expected at least 3rd Circle, but she was beyond that.
How could such a young girl manifest magic of this level?
And how could she wield the Flewd element?
And why would such a girl harbor hostility toward Etar?
Especially, why would she believe he was monitoring her and trying to kill her?
I had to uncover all of it.
‘First, I need to neutralize Banshi’s magic.’
I had planned to keep hiding that I was a Flewd Elementalist, but she was one too.
If I used half-measures, I would be the one overwhelmed.
I stretched my hand toward the darkened void.
“Orbization.”
Kuuuuuuuung—!
The Flewd element began gathering in the air, forming a sphere.
Its size soon grew to the maximum, appearing before me like a massive white full moon.
Orbization was magic on the level of a 9th Circle Mage.
A spell that manifested an Orb—a magic tool used by mages—through pure magic alone.
Its effect was to maximize the inherent nature of the element.
For example, if one Orbized fire, merely standing near it would engulf everything, even people, in heat strong enough to melt them.
The Flewd element I wielded was the root of all other elements.
Therefore, with a Flewd Orbization active, every element except Flewd was absorbed and couldn’t manifest, and even already-cast magic was nullified.
“You… no way, that’s…”
All the magic Banshi had cast was consumed by my Orbization.
The firestorm and sea of fire rushing toward me disappeared, as did the darkness.
When my vision cleared, I could see something transparent covering Banshi’s entire body.
“Invisible Arm, huh?”
A 6th Circle spell where the Flewd element was wrapped around the caster like armor to defend against magic.
Since it used the Flewd element, it could block every elemental spell—making it the strongest defensive magic.
The fact that she had even equipped Invisible Arm meant she truly intended to kill me.
Banshi seemed shocked, her eyes wide, unable to speak.
“Judging from your reaction, you know what Orbization is. But how is someone who can cast 6th Circle magic stuck in 1st Circle? And you’re even a Flewd Elementalist. I heard Flewd Elementalists had vanished.”
“How… how can you be a Flewd Elementalist like me…? I’m the only survivor of my family… And you even used Orbization, a 9th Circle magic… You’re not Ed Etar’s dog…?”
“…Family?”
A family name spoken by a Flewd Elementalist.
Combining the two, only one place came to mind.
“You… you’re from the Emmet Family?”
“……”
Banshi said nothing.
Which all but confirmed it.
The Emmet Family was the only Flewd element family.
But they had no high-circle mages.
Even by the standards of my past life, their family head had barely been 6th Circle, so they hadn’t been particularly famous.
To establish a family, the head needed to be at least 7th Circle, but the Emmet Family had been allowed to form simply because they possessed the rare Flewd element.
“I see. Now it all makes sense. When we sparred, I felt something like the wind element inside your Fire Ball—so that was because you were a Flewd Elementalist.”
The mystery of why I sensed an element other than fire, despite her clearly not being a Double Caster, was solved.
“But you say you’re the only survivor? Does that mean the Emmet Family has been wiped out?”
The student I had mistaken for Etar’s spy seemed to be holding a far greater truth.
From what Banshi said, it sounded as though the cause of the Emmet Family’s destruction was connected to Etar.
The way she kept calling me “Ed Etar’s dog” made it even more suspicious.
I pressed into that point.
“And why would I tell you anything?”
Banshi still kept her guard up against me.
But even if I told her, “I am Archis Eimer,” she wouldn’t believe me, nor did I intend to explain.
“Looks like you’re having trouble grasping the situation…”
I lifted Banshi’s body into the air using the Flewd element.
Then I brought her body close to my Orbization sphere and threatened her.
“The moment your body is pushed into that Orbization, you’ll vanish without a trace. Not even a corpse will remain. Your life is in my hands, so if you want to live, you’d better speak obediently.”
For now, the most important thing to me was what Banshi knew, and why she held such particular hostility toward Etar.
To get those answers, I used a slightly coercive method.
Depending on her answers, I might even turn this student into my follower, just as I had done with Hei and Kiena.
At the very least, this student considered Etar the greatest enemy of her life.
Banshi kept trying to manifest counterattacks, but she couldn’t overcome my magic.
She seemed like a mage whose limit was the 6th Circle.
As expected, the Emmet Family was unmistakable. One of their defining traits was being unable to surpass the 6th Circle.
“You really don’t listen.”
Just as I pressed her close enough for her nose to touch the sphere—
“Th-the Emmet Family…!”
At last, realizing she couldn’t escape, Banshi cried out in panic.
“They fell 250 years ago! There were no survivors except me! My father, the family head, and my mother, my older sister, my older brother, my younger siblings—every single one of them… burned alive in agony.”
“Burned?”
If it was fire, then…
“I saw it clearly with my own eyes—Ed Etar, that bastard, leading the Etar Family and slaughtering everyone in our family. And that bastard stood there with his arms crossed, smiling with satisfaction as he watched my family writhe in the flames…!”
“Etar… wiped out the Emmet Family?”
Two hundred fifty years ago was fifty years after I had been killed at the summit by Tyrant.
More precisely, it was the year the main academy was founded.
But what reason would Etar have had to destroy the Emmet Family?
“You look barely over ten years old right now, so how exactly did you personally see something that happened 250 years ago?”
“To enter this school, I kept taking medicine that stopped my growth. The Emmet Family also had extensive knowledge of pharmacology.”
“Why?”
“To kill Ed Etar, the one who destroyed our family! I’ll return the exact same suffering he inflicted on us…!”
Banshi glared at me as she answered.
Remembering the day her family fell, tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.
“So you prepared for admission all this time just for revenge, is that it?”
She didn’t answer.
But her expression held faint traces of affirmation.
“Then how did you alone survive? If you saw it with your own eyes 250 years ago, that means you were there at the scene.”
“Someone saved me.”
“And who was that?”
“I didn’t see the face, so I don’t remember. A white light suddenly flashed.”
She didn’t seem to be lying.
“Then the way you look now is how you looked 250 years ago?”
This time, she only nodded slowly.
“……”
So Etar committed such an atrocity 250 years ago.
Suddenly, Walfis’s words from the darkness-element class resurfaced in my mind—“A Flewd Elementalist must not be born.”
‘Does that mean he was acting under Tyrant’s orders?’
If so, then Etar must be a mage who would kill me the moment he realized I was alive.
Tyrant believed that a Flewd Elementalist was his greatest enemy, so it made sense that he eliminated the only Flewd-element family, Emmet.
But why was Etar the one who carried out the plan?
As if he were Tyrant’s personal enforcer…
And the one who fought Tyrant in my stead on the day I died at the summit was…
“Wait. You said Etar was standing with his arms crossed? Two hundred fifty years ago?”
“I saw it with my own eyes. Even that chilling smile…”
Etar had suffered severe damage to his legs when fighting Tyrant at the summit.
I had thought he’d never walk again, but perhaps he’d been treated by Tyrant, the famed pharmacologist, and sworn allegiance afterward.
“All right, then another question. Why did you think I was Etar’s dog? And earlier, you spoke as if Double Casters could be trained—what was that supposed to mean?”
“……”
But suddenly Banshi’s expression changed as she glared at me.
The tears clinging to her eyes were still there, but the sadness vanished—replaced by a gaze filled with certainty.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Tell me what you are, and I’ll answer. How are you a Flewd Elementalist—how can you manifest Orbization?”
“Did you forget? Your life is still in my—”
“No. Now I’m sure. You know nothing. That’s why you’re trying to learn from me right now, aren’t you? If I die, that’ll be troublesome for you too, won’t it? Because you won’t be able to learn anything you want to know.”
“……”
Banshi cut me off.
As expected of a mage who had lived through countless hardships for 250 years—her mind remained sharp even when her life was held in someone else’s hands.
The way she had persuaded Ever to let her duel with me now made perfect sense.
She was right.
If I met Etar, I’d learn everything eventually, but there was a huge difference between meeting him while knowing the current era’s circumstances and knowing nothing at all.
Right now, I desperately needed Banshi’s testimony.
“Fine, you win.”
I dismissed both the Orbization and the magic holding Banshi in the air.
Thud!
“Ugh!”
Banshi fell from the air to the ground, letting out a short groan at the heavy impact.
“Banshi, use that sharp mind of yours and think. The family head of the Emmet Family was Emmet Vise, right? Short, with spiky hair like mine, completely white. I used to find that rascal quite adorable.”
“……”
Fallen to the ground, Banshi propped herself up with her arms and lifted only her torso—but froze in place.
“The Emmet Family is naturally limited to the 6th Circle, right? But a Flewd Elementalist capable of using Orbization, a 9th Circle magic—who could that be? You who lived through 250 years should know.”
“N-no… it can’t be…”
And then Banshi’s eyes widened excessively, trembling.