novelraw Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Not Magic
Lina steadily placed the heavy cloth bag filled with materials and herbs, together with that iconic black bread stick, onto a dry stone beside her.
Then, lowering her voice, she said to Annie, who was so nervous she was nearly frozen stiff, “Listen, Annie. Next, go to that poisonous swamp we passed on the way here just now. When I shout ‘Freeze,’ use your strongest Ice Crystal Spell to freeze the water’s surface as widely as possible, understood?”
Annie nodded hard, her lips pressed so tightly they had turned pale, and quickly ran toward the poisonous swamp!
“You mangy dog! Look here!” Lina sprang out of the bushes with a shout, picked up a small stone, and hurled it at the giant wolf.
The Demon Shadow Wolf narrowed its eyes and observed this human before it, who looked frail and weak. It did not sense much of a threat from her.
But this act of provocation still stirred its anger. Its hind legs slammed against the ground, and with a foul gust of wind it pounced over, leaving an afterimage in the air!
“Fireball!”
Not only did Lina not retreat, she instead pressed forward. With a lift of her hand, a blazing fireball had already whistled out, heading straight for the Demon Shadow Wolf’s face!
Annie turned back worriedly, only to be so shocked by the scene before her that she held her breath:
At the very instant the fireball left Lina’s hand, her body seemed to defy inertia itself, using the momentum to perform an unbelievably smooth roll to the side.
The Demon Shadow Wolf’s claws howled past the tips of her hair, while she had already used that movement to forcibly erase the stiffness after casting!
Huh? What kind of principle was this?
Annie’s understanding had been overturned. Those ironclad laws from the textbooks about “chanting, release, mana reflux” seemed like a joke at this moment.
Even the B-rank witches at the academy had never displayed this kind of technique, seamlessly linking spellcasting and evasion!
But in Lina’s view, this was merely a neural reflex honed in the mysterious little backyard—dodge canceling end lag.
“Boom!”
The fireball exploded against the shiny black wolf nose. Though it did not inflict a fatal wound, the powerful impact still made it stagger back two steps.
The Demon Shadow Wolf let out a furious roar, and its figure blurred in a strange way. In the blink of an eye, it split into four identical afterimages! Four pairs of bloodthirsty red eyes locked onto Lina at the same time, and killing intent surged over like a crushing tide.
Demon Shadow Wolf Clone Technique! Annie’s heart instantly leapt to her throat. Her steps paused, and her hand unconsciously moved to the ancient storage ring on her ring finger.
Should she use that life-saving item her teacher had left her...?
Yet in her mind flashed Lina’s calm, confident smile.
Annie gritted her teeth, buried her worry deep in her heart, and sprinted toward the poisonous swamp without looking back.
At the same time, a faint gleam flowed through Lina’s pale golden eyes.
Divination, activate!
Within her field of vision, the energy fluctuations of three of the clones were as insubstantial as dying candles in the wind. Only the one on the left radiated a dense and violent dark aura.
“Got you.”
A crafty curve rose at the corner of Lina’s lips. She did not waste her gaze distinguishing real from fake at all, and instead suddenly raised the magic wand in her hand—“Fireball!”
This time, the flames did not fly toward any of the magic wolves, but shot straight toward that enormous stalactite hidden in the shadows of the cave ceiling!
“Bang!”
The fireball struck the rock’s connecting point with perfect accuracy! Along with an ear-grating cracking sound, that stone pillar over a meter in diameter broke off with a thunderous crash, carrying a sharp tearing sound through the air, like a sword of judgment falling from the heavens!
The Demon Shadow Wolf on the left had all its attention fixed on Lina and never expected death to come from above. It did not even have time to react before, with a muffled “thud,” the falling stone spear slammed solidly into its back!
The miserable howl echoed through the cave. The End Shadow Wolf’s clones shattered instantly, and even its true body staggered from the blow, clearly heavily injured.
“Now!”
Having succeeded in one strike, Lina had absolutely no intention of getting entangled in battle, and turned to run at once.
She sprinted along the planned route, while an enraged roar came from behind her. The injured Demon Shadow Wolf shook its dizzy head and chased after her like mad. Although its injuries had slowed its speed, the oppressive force brought by that massive body was still enough to make one suffocate.
After turning the corner, that dark green poisonous swamp was already right before them, and Annie was anxiously waiting by the shore!
“Freeze!” Lina shouted sharply.
Annie, who had long been ready to act, immediately released all her magic power! Piercing cold surged out and rapidly condensed across the swamp’s surface. The ice spread at high speed, though its thickness was several degrees thinner than before.
“Get across!”
Lina grabbed Annie and lightly tapped the ice surface with her toes. The two of them swiftly darted across and landed steadily on the opposite bank.
Almost right on their heels, the enraged Demon Shadow Wolf also charged to the edge of the swamp. Seeing its prey right in front of it, it did not think at all before leaping forward!
“Crack——Boom!”
How could that fragile ice surface possibly withstand the impact of such a giant beast? The moment it landed, the ice layer completely collapsed!
The dark green poisonous water mixed with sludge instantly swallowed more than half its body!
The Demon Shadow Wolf struggled in terror, but this swamp seemed almost alive. The more it struggled, the greater the suction became. In only a few seconds, it was deeply trapped in the mire, unable to move.
“Alright, target secured.”
Standing safely on the bank, Lina patted the dust off her body and leisurely began rubbing together one fireball after another.
Eat this, my giant fireball!
Fireballs smashed one after another toward the helpless giant beast in the mire. It tried to spit out Shadow Arrows in retaliation, but under the swamp’s restraints, it could not aim at all, and every shot struck the ceiling behind Lina.
The poison’s erosion grew deeper and deeper, and coupled with Lina’s unending bombardment of fireballs, the Demon Shadow Wolf’s life force became weaker and weaker, until before long it gradually stopped resisting.
Only after the Demon Shadow Wolf had completely stopped moving, and its eyes had fully lost their light, did Lina stop casting. She nodded in satisfaction. “Done. D-rank materials should sell for a pretty high price… Hey, Annie, what are you standing there in a daze for? Hurry up and freeze the swamp! If it sinks, it’ll be a pain to strip the materials!”
Only then did Annie snap out of her enormous shock. Seeing that Lina had already rolled up her sleeves and looked ready to do some serious work, she quickly cast Ice Crystal Spell again, completely freezing the poisonous swamp around the Demon Shadow Wolf’s corpse into one solid massive block of ice.
Lina pulled out the small knife Annie had lent her and began skillfully harvesting the valuable parts: the intact wolf pelt from its back, its claws, and the magic core condensed at the top of its head. Although Annie’s technique was clumsy, she still did her best to help at the side.
A magic core was a special material condensed by higher-rank magical beasts. It could usually be used for weapon enhancement, or sold directly at an item shop.
While handling the materials, Annie finally could not help asking, “Big Sister Lina… the way you fought just now… I’ve never seen it in any book. The books say that to deal with powerful magical beasts, you need teamwork, you need to use magic with opposing attributes, you need to… But you…”
She looked at Lina, who was toying with the black magic core, then at the wolf corpse frozen in the ice, and felt that the Witch’s rules and combat theory she had learned over the past ten-odd years were collapsing.
Without stopping what her hands were doing, Lina said without even raising her head, “Do you think what the books say is wrong?”
“I… I don’t know…” Annie answered honestly.