novelraw Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Chapter 10: Only Knows One Move
Time returned to before the exam officially began.
Fennis walked up the open-air podium amid the admiring gazes and cheers of the apprentices.
Why had so many people come!
Why were they all looking at her! Ahhh, how was she supposed to say something this embarrassing... Who, who wanted you to be my dog!
Beating fiends and cultists was way easier than dealing with these chattering little girls!
It was all thanks to that great iceberg beauty face that Fennis did not blow her cover on the spot.
What was she supposed to say next? A blessing? Encouragement?
She had memorized lines all night last night and forgotten every single one!
What should she do? Improvise?
Her gaze swept across the excited little witches below the stage, trying to find the answer on their faces.
Suddenly, among the crowd, a girl with long black hair and delicate features caught her attention.
She was holding a long black breadstick in her arms. Her clothes were somewhat worn, but unlike the other witches, her expression was neither worshipful nor excited. Instead, it was somewhat... strange?
In that instant, an intense sense of familiarity flooded her mind!
Was it her?
...No, impossible. That selfish bastard had long since abandoned this world and left...
Wait... what she was raising was...
The exam rules!
Right, recite the exam rules!
Fennis took a deep breath, cast aside her distracting thoughts, and began to recite the contents of the rules in a stiff, formal manner.
After going through the procedure, her gaze swept over the crowd once more, only to see that strange little girl holding the black bread talking to another little witch, completely unaware of her.
So it had just been a coincidence...
Fennis nodded to the chief examiner, turned around, and left the podium.
“Is everything over there ready?” Fennis said as she walked toward the tower behind the association.
The air beside her suddenly trembled slightly, and an ethereal, drifting voice sounded by her ear: “We are only waiting for your personal inspection, Witch of the Moon.”
“This ‘containment object’ is extremely dangerous. Do not approach it rashly. We suspect it already had a magic leakage incident five years ago.” Fennis’s voice was extremely solemn. “If you notice any unusual movement from it, inform me immediately.”
“Yes, Witch of the Moon.”
After walking a while longer, Fennis finally arrived in front of the mysterious, ancient tower in the association’s back courtyard.
This structure stood about twenty meters tall. Its spiraling spire was bizarrely joined to the hexagonal prism-shaped tower body. Ivy covered the surrounding walls, yet the tower’s bluestone walls were completely bare, and even the weeds in the courtyard avoided the area within a two-meter radius of the tower’s base.
The bronze gate at the bottom of the tower was carved all over with profound and complex runes. They were not orderly like those described in books, but looked more like a desperate “stacking,” as though the creator had wanted to engrave every sealing spell he had learned in his life into this limited space.
The closer she got to the building, the heavier that sinister, eerie atmosphere in the air became.
Fennis continued forward. She seemed able to sense that something was secretly peering at her through the cracks behind the bronze gate.
Thick white fog rose from nowhere, slowly lifting from beneath her feet and gradually swallowing her vision...
Something was wrong!
Fennis abruptly stopped and spun around at once, only to discover that at some point, everything around her had already been completely engulfed by dense fog!
Damn it... the containment object was out of control!
When exactly had it happened!
“Tap, tap...”
A series of footsteps came from deep within the fog, drawing closer from far away. Fennis narrowed her eyes and watched the direction the sound came from.
“Greetings, Witch of the Moo—”
In that instant, Fennis threw an ordinary straight punch. The powerful shockwave instantly swept through the fog ahead, and the vague figure in the mist was utterly destroyed down to the atomic level the moment it was caught in the blast. Even the almost tangible white fog was forcibly split apart into a fan-shaped area fifty meters long.
The boundless fog slowly gathered toward that “vacuum zone,” and before long, her vision was once again filled with mist, as though the attack just now had never existed.
“Do not be so hasty...”
Ordinary Punch.
Another burst of fist wind swept out, and the figure in the mist shattered once again.
“It is useless...”
Ordinary Punch.
The shadow’s voice was punched into a Doppler effect, and great swathes of the fog were forcibly blown away under the terrifying impact.
...
“Stop this meaningless—”
Ordinary Punch.
Fennis’s expression remained blank as she withdrew her arm, as though what she had just done had merely been a warm-up. The shockwaves caused by her straight punch continuously crushed the surrounding space, sending layer after layer of ripples across the edge of the barrier.
...
“Can you f*cking let me finish one sentence!!!” the voice in the fog shouted in exasperation.
“Oh.” Fennis stopped.
The voice in the fog paused for a moment, then continued, “Not fighting anymore?”
Fennis tilted her head. “Are you done talking?”
“You—you—idiot!” the voice in the fog cursed. “Do you think you can break the barrier of the Door of Dreams? Just stay here obediently for a month!”
“Door of Dreams... as expected, the loss of control of S-09 was your doing.” Fennis’s voice was extremely cold. “What did you do to the containment object’s administrator?”
“Hah, that green-haired witch? She has already become part of my lord’s dream!”
“Hoo—” Fennis gently let out a breath. She shook her arm, then once again aimed in the direction the voice had come from and threw a punch.
“Boom!!!”
A shockwave several times more powerful than before swept through the entire sea of fog like a storm!
“Crack—crack—”
Fine sounds of breaking came from afar, accompanied by a furious roar of alarm: “You... what are you doing?! Is this the only move you know!”
An inherent barrier was very difficult to break from the inside. Under normal circumstances, one had to find the barrier’s “source point” in order to destroy it.
However, Fennis hated trouble, and she did not have that much time to search for the barrier’s source point. She needed a method that was faster and more efficient.
The mentor had said that the fastest way to deal with this kind of barrier was to use magic several times beyond its carrying capacity and destroy it directly.
But Fennis only knew one offensive spell.
While thinking, Fennis continued gathering magic power.
“Arrogant! Do you really think you can do it? Smash an inherent barrier from the inside... are you trying to fight against this entire world?!”
Fennis raised a hand, and a brilliant, immaculate moon rose behind her.
“It is nothing more than a false world without complete laws... The only one capable of creating a complete world within a barrier is a single person...”
The moonlight instantly dispelled all the mist, illuminating the world inside the barrier with perfect clarity. The black shadow hiding within the dense fog also revealed its true form.
Facing the figure hidden beneath the black cloak, Fennis said:
“I actually know one more move.”
“The mentor said that the principle of the magic 【Super-Tier Disintegration】 is to launch magic power compressed to the limit in its simplest form, and this spell is also the most efficient magic for destroying an inherent barrier.”
“Although I do not understand the structure of magic incantations, I have my own way of compressing magic power.”
Under the dumbfounded gaze of the man in black, Fennis leaped high into the air and kicked the moon behind her with one foot.
“【Super-Tier Disintegration】!”
The moon condensed from magic power instantly accelerated to its limit, dragging a silver afterimage behind it as it ferociously slammed into the edge of the barrier!
“Boom!”
Along with the moon’s disintegration, the terrifying magic power transformed into moonlight and instantly filled every corner of the entire barrier. Unable to bear the load, the barrier shattered at once.
...
Lina stared blankly at the two Norsens turning into fundamental particles within the moonlight, and at Fennis slowly walking out from the moonlight.
Dreamlike moonlight wrapped around her body like gauze. Through the haze, specks of starlight frolicked between her sleeves.
Her snow-white skin appeared even smoother under the moon’s glow, and her long silver hair swayed gently with her movements, like willow branches covered in snow drifting in the evening breeze.
She slowly stepped down from the air, and silver-lit stairs naturally condensed beneath each place her feet touched. The moonlight rippled softly with every step she took.
Her nearly perfect figure became even more striking in the contrast of light and shadow, but those gray eyes flowing with silver sand stole every bit of attention, like a love confession secretly left behind by the Goddess of the Moon last night.
Quite a few young witch apprentices saw this scene and immediately fainted on the spot with nosebleeds spurting.
Lina smacked her lips. Could you turn off those special effects of yours! They were blinding her!
However, what Fennis was thinking about at that moment left her with no time to care about the excited fans below. She continued gathering magic power and used her powerful perception to scan the entire town.
As expected, he had escaped... and taken S-09 with him.
No, it was also possible that S-09 had taken him away.
Although S-09 had not previously shown any signs of being alive, they still knew far too little about S-rank containment objects. The possibility of some special activation method could not be ruled out.
Where exactly had the tower keeper been taken?
If the tower keeper had already been killed... then who exactly had been the one speaking to her earlier?
“Hey— hey!”
Suddenly, a shout broke the silence. Fennis looked down and saw that it was the poorly dressed little girl she had seen earlier in the square.
At that moment, the girl was waving her arms at her and shouting loudly:
“Fe... Witch of the Moon! I, I have something important to tell you!”