Chapter 39 Strongest Sage, Grasps the Graveness of the Situation

 

Among the three magic, the first one is 【Mana Strike】. That's a decoy.
The second one is 【Mana Concealment】. A magic for literally hiding mana.
And the third one hidden by the 【Mana Concealment】 is the main thing, 【Magic Destruction】.

"Kuh.... Flame!"

Devilis noticed my 【Mana Strike】 and used demon magic to build a wall of flame around itself in order to keep me off.
It's an extremely orthodox method to cope with the close-combat nature of the First Crest.
<TLN: The raw said First Crest, but I believe the author probably intended it to be 'the Fourth Crest'.>

However, that is exactly why there are established ways to break through it.
I chose the simplest one among them.
In other words, frontal attack.

"Wha...."

Devilis was surprised to see me jumping into the magic flame without a moment of hesitation.
Just as I thought, this demon lacks battle experience.
Building wall of flame is only effective for buying a very short amount of time or if your magic control exceeds that of your opponent.

Using it like this without taking magic control strength into consideration, let alone being useless, your own magic will be used against you instead.
For example, like this.

While jumping into the flame, I mix my own mana with Devilis's mana in the surroundings, taking control of it and making it attack Devilis.
The whole flame wall didn't break off, but the part I took was quite enough to create a gap.

"Wha....How!"

Devilis countered the flame with defensive magic and used the magic again to block my 【Mana Strike】-armed sword.
But since Devilis was forced to block these two magic, it had no more room to block another attack. Just as planned.

"You suck at combat!"

I fire the concealed 【Magic Destruction】 at the defenseless Devilis.
【Magic Destruction】 destroys Devilis's dual barriers and the magic that disguised its figure.

"Oy, what just happened!"

"It's too high level, I can't see--hey that's, a demon!"

"T-there's a demon! Where did Devilis go!"

"That demon is wearing Devilis's armor! Don't tell me, Devilis is a demon...."

"Who cares about that, there's a demon in the middle of the town! Hurry contact the Royal Castle, Magic Division and the Knight Order! Have the teachers buy some time while the students evacuate--"

Looks like the audience has begun to realize that Devilis is a demon after it lost its disguise.
The audience seats spiraled into a flurry in an instant.

"Kuh..."

After seeing that, Devilis probably concluded that it couldn't hide it anymore.
Devilis spread out wings peculiar to demons and began to concentrate its mana.
Judging from the movement of mana, this is a state where you allocate the whole output to movement magic, to run away with all your might--in brief, it's trying to fly away in this case.

I'm not sure if the reason it doesn't use teleportation magic is because demons have been weakened or something else, but of course, I'm not going to let it escape.
For this level of demon, it should take around one and a half second from spreading wings to takeoff.

With the little damage I gave to the demon, it would manage to escape by using the difference in our mana quantity if I let it to takeoff even once.
I need to settle this in one blow--nevertheless, one and a half second is more than enough.

I took out a magic stone from Storage Magic and put it onto the sword I held.
And then I cram my mana into the sword and the magic stone, adding 【Steel Slash】, 【Impact Blade】, 【Sharpen】, and 【Hardness Reinforcement】    augments.
These four augments are all for strengthening the sword's slashing power in their own unique way.

--However, this magic can't be called augment anymore. It's a clear failure.
Quadruple augments in this short amount of time would be very difficult even for the First Crest. Of course there's no way the Fourth Crest can do it.
Normally, a sword that's been crammed with mana at an impossibly fast rate and forced to possess magic will disintegrate in two seconds.

However, that's not a problem in this situation, for we have one and half a second time limit.
The augment took 0.8 seconds. 0.7s remaining. An easy victory.

"Wha...."

The demon who saw my sword suddenly turning into a magic sword tried to take a defensive posture.
However, it's useless. The demon isn't flexible enough to change into defensive posture in the middle of trying to fly with all its might.

This is the end.

While upping the sword's speed with Physical Reinforcement, I put  【Mana Strike】, 【Steel Slash】, and 【Sharpen】 on the magic sword that hasn't much time left.
Magic that dwells on a magic sword and magic you use on one are separate things, it's possible to buff magic swords.


【Mana Strike】, 【Steel Slash】, 【Steel Slash】, 【Sharpen】, 【Sharpen】, 【Impact Blade】, 【Hardness Reinforcement】
After putting all these magic, my sword that normally wouldn't have been able to kill a demon in one blow demonstrates sufficient power now.

The sword that has seven magic of five different kinds on it easily slashes through Devilis's body along with its mithril armor, destroying its heart.
The structure of demon's body is similar to that of human, so are the weak points.
In other words, they will die if you destroy their heart, and Devilis isn't an exception.

The mana inside Devilis's body lost control and scattered into the surroundings, power left its body.

"Did he...beat it...?"

"Unbelievable, beating a demon alone.... I heard that he won against the Knight Commander in the entrance exam but this...."

The people in the vicinity seems to notice Devilis's defeated figure, and a different kind of commotion begins.
Afterward, bunch of guys like Knight Orders and Royal Magicians gathered and it turned into a huge uproar.

Still, the demon even managed to slip into representatives of the First Academy huh....
It appears the world is in a quite grave situation right now.
This needs to be dealt with, else the humanity would be wiped out before I gained strength.





























Previous Chapter