Boundary Labyrinth and the Foreign Magician

Chapter 68 (Alternate view) – The Silver Mist

–The Flying Dragon Unit was a little ahead of Grace.

“Hey!”

One of the soldiers shouted.

Since they were searching from the sky using their trained eyes of a knight along with their flying dragons’ eyes, they couldn’t help but notice the shady figures that were there.

A man standing on a pier in a corner of the harbor. And a big dorsal fin sticking out of the surface of the sea. If they were in the middle of reporting, it could be said that they had arrived just in time. But at the same time, the man raised his face and looked at the Flying Dragon Unit.

“Don’t move!”

“We’re an order of knights. You will let us examine that animal!”

The man’s reaction was quick.

“Go!”

After giving a short instruction to his shark-like familiar and unleashing it into the open sea, the man soared into the sky.

He had also changed his appearance. Making a creaking sound, his human-like shape crumbled into something else.

A silver-colored main body that looked like an egg, smooth enough to reflect the surrounding scenery like a mirror. It had no eyes, nose, or mouth. Its arms and fingers were unusually thin and long. And his legs looked like the hind legs of a beast.

“So he was the demon we were looking for after all!”

The silver demon Zalbash took his position in the air, putting himself between the knights and his familiar.

“Oh, the knights have arrived. Thanks to your meddling, I had to cut my report short…”

His entire face was making a vibrating sound. His head then turned sideways like an owl’s.

They couldn’t chase after the familiar. It was easy to imagine that the demon had a mass of miasma in his hand ready to shoot at anyone who would be distracted away from him from behind as they tried to approach the familiar.

Intercepting the shark-like familiar that was holding that report was far more important than the silver demon Zalbash, but ignoring the demon completely was virtually impossible.

Figuring that there would be no use in any further conversation, one of the knights spurred his flying dragon and poured his fighting spirit into his long spear, closing in on Zalbash.

The demon shrugged his shoulders as if saying “How boring” and confronted the knight by twisting his thins arms like whips and shaking them around. They stretched out longer than the knight’s spear. The knight put up his shield to block them, but…

“What!?”

The whip-like arms came from an unexpected direction, clinging onto the shield and wrapping themselves around the knight’s body. Then, they used that momentum to fling the knight upwards and out of his mount.

“So noisy.”

“Uh, uwooooh!?”

Then, the demon fired a miasma bullet at the knight while he was in mid-air.

However, Chester quickly grabbed the knight and took him away from the bullet’s path.

He then flew back to the knight’s unmounted flying dragon, and returned the knight to his mount.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Don’t charge at him so recklessly! Attack him all together!”

Under Chester’s instructions, four knights fly around Zalbash. They flew at a really close distance from each other without crashing into one another, which was the result of arduous training. With their acrobatic-looking maneuvers, they thrust their spears at Zalbash at the last minute. But their coordinated attack missed its target. Like an octopus, it used its slender body and swaying movements to dodge the knights’ thrusts.

Chester dashed forward. He instantly realized that thrusts wouldn’t work against the demon’s nimble movements. Weaving his way through his allies, he mowed down with his spear at Zalbash, who crossed his arms in front of his body, blocking the attack.

“What!?”

It was a light attack meant to keep the demon in check, not to drive him far away. But Chester stared at him in amazement. Zalbash had been sent flying backwards a considerable distance. There was no visible damage. It was as if he had let Chester’s spear push him far away by controlling his own body weight.

Now that he was no longer surrounded by knights, Zalbash began to fly around at high speed. He wasn’t faster than a flying dragon, but the knights still had a hard time keeping up with the demon because he was flying in an irregular trajectory.

Only Chester was able to keep up with his erratic movements. He swung his spear again, hitting a silver whip.

“Whoa, you’re not pulling any punches, are you?”

Zalbash said that while still trading blows with Chester.

“I know humans and us are mutual enemies. But won’t you lend an ear to our circumstances?”

“You demons aren’t worthy of our consideration!”

“Come on, now. We have a lot of reasons for doing what we do. For example, what if I told you that our people are starving? We live in a remote place where crops hardly grow, and it was all thanks to you humans driving us away in the first place. Won’t you understand if I told you that I wanted to do something about that?”

Chester squinted upon hearing those words.

“What would you do in my position? Wouldn’t you want to help your hungry people? Would you send an army to crush those who are starving and then speak of justice? Answer me, knight!”

His manner of speaking appealed to emotions.

Those words were poison. Someone who didn’t know that this was a demon they were dealing with would have definitely thought that there was room for negotiations.

The moment he finished saying that, Zalbash spread his arms and Chester lowered his guard for an instant. Then–

“Well, it’s not like I actually think like that, you know.”

After denying his own words, a crescent-like rift opened horizontally in the lower side of his faceless head. A miasma bullet was fired from this rift, which looked like a smile.

For Chester, who was still half-astonished about the demon’s speech, this was something that could not be avoided.

“–Nonsense.”

Something that looked like a thick metal plate flew in front of him.

It repelled Zalbash’s miasma bullet as it flew by before continuing its path while making an intense whirring noise.

“You speak of ending your people’s hunger, but you’ll only do that through ruling over us humans and bringing us an incredible amount of pain, am I wrong? It’s nonsense.”

Grace joined the fray. She then pulled back the axe and got into the space where Zalbash had been surrounded by the knights a few moments ago. No matter how erratically Zalbash could fly around, she could use her powerful weapon to swiftly close the distance between them.

Nevertheless, Zalbash was laughing.

“You… You bastard!”

Zalbash glared at Chester, who was glaring furiously at him.

“Heehahahah! That’s right! You guys are so merciful to creatures that are inferior to you! This lady here knows that very well!”

Zalbash caught two incoming roaring axes with his arms, which had more of his miasma coiled around them. He must have considered that without it, the axes would have ended up digging deep into his flesh.

His whips had been brushed away at an incredibly high speed, and now she had an axe in each hand as well. The ends of each other’s hands struck repeatedly against each other quickly, making a strange metallic sound.

Zalbash was trying to keep his distance, while Grace was relentlessly chasing after him. The knights cannot approach because Zalbash was still swinging his whips around with a tremendous force.

In close quarters, Grace had the upper hand. She flicked his whips away, quickly approached him, and mowed down with her axes, leaving a shallow wound on Zalbash’s body.

“Tsk!”

With an annoying click of the tongue, Zalbash released another miasma bullet from his mouth, but Grace blocked it by using the side of his axe as a shield. The aftershock caused her to fly backwards, widening the distance between the two.

Grace stooped in order to get closer to him, but–

“Hold on there. Wait a moment. Haven’t you noticed anything?”

Upon hearing that, Grace looked around herself with a puzzled expression on her face. It was glitter. Something like a silvery mist was floating around.

“I’ve been scattering that all over the place while we were fighting. But It seems that it won’t affect those of you who have received a blessing… You spoiled brats.”

“Wh… M-Mother?”

One of the knights put his hands on the sides of his head and opened his eyes wide.

“Keheheh. So that’s what you’re seeing, isn’t it? Looks like our little boy here can’t stand being away from his mommy, huh?”

It was an illusion created by Zalbash. Those who inhaled that mist he had been spreading around will start to hallucinate, believing that the person they want to see the most is right in front of them. It also seemed to be affecting Grace to an extent. She scowled at Zalbash, but he only shook his shoulders and laughed.

“Let me tell you this, this mist’s effects won’t go away until I die. And if you keep on inhaling it, not only your sight, your other senses will be affected as well.”

Instead of waiting for her as he had been so far, Zalbash shifted to the offensive and attacked Grace. And just like before, she met him with an axe in each hand.

However, Grace’s movements had become sloppy. She backed away more than she needed to as Zalbash tried to approach her head-first. She found herself fighting purely defensively in response to Zalbash’s relentless assault.

Was she trying to avoid inhaling any more of that mist, or was she too concerned about her honor?

Anticipating Grace’s dodge to the side, a silver whip struck her horizontally. By a hair’s breadth, she had managed to put up one of her axes between the whip and her body right before she was hit, but the impact still sent Grace flying quite far away.

“Ugh!”

“Your movements have become quite dull. I was a bit impressed at first, but now, I’m disappointed. Can you only move in a straight line? All you do is make a beeline towards me, so your movements are quite easy to predict. Keheheh. I’ll take my sweet time torturing you to death.”

“How dare–”

How dare you, you little bastard.

Before she could finish her sentence, Grace knit her brows in discomfort.

“Grace!”

As she kept on exchanging blows with the fever-inducing demon, she heard the voice of a boy echoing in the distance. His voice seemed to be carried towards her by some Wind Magic spell.

–…So that’s what you’re seeing, huh?

That’s exactly what he said. Parallel thoughts created through a mind-controlling spell. It’s easy to get a grasp of what was going on… That’s what the voice told Grace.

“Don’t trust what your eyes see!”

“–Yes!”

Together with her reply, she closed her eyes and smiled.

Then, she dashed towards Zalbash.

“Huh?”

Zalbash gave her a contemptuous laugh. He calmly dodged her advance, whipping at the spot where Grace was heading for. Or at least, he tried to.

Grace’s right arm was throwing an axe exactly at Zalbash’s head. He barely managed to dodge the axe, which was flying with the speed of a cannonball.

Zalbash’s whip had hit nothing. Grace’s whereabouts were also unknown. Her dash had been a feint. Trying to predict where she would go next proved to be fruitless.

He instead followed the axe as it returned to its master’s hand, and screamed in astonishment.

“W-Wings!?”

There were black wings on Grace’s back, which was facing the sun. They were a transformation of Caduceus.

Caduceus required blood in order to be manifested. Half of it was Grace’s.

Grace was still Caduceus’ master. And she could still get her way around without seeing thanks to her link with the young boy.

“–Yes. And I can see you clearly now.”

Grace took control of her wings with her own will, and captured the deformed Zalbash in Caduceus’s field of vision.

She then crouched, and then kicked the air as if catapulting herself from an invisible platform.

Full speed ahead. It was all or nothing.

“Hey–”

A purple line of light as an afterimage was all that Zalbash could see before she dashed all the way past him.

Then, the bottom half of Zalbash’s body detached itself from his waist before falling to the sea.

But it didn’t end there. Grace threw an axe at Zalbash, drawing a large arc as it flew. The chain attached to its handle was leaving a purple afterimage behind as well.

The chain coiled around Zalbash’s body, restraining his movements. Then, the axe returned to Grace, pulling him towards her.

With her eyes closed, Grace bore her fangs and smiled. It was ferocious– the smile of a predator.

“Ha… Haha.”

“Uwoooh!?”

She started to laugh as she reeled him in. A miasma bullet was starting to rear its head from Zalbash’s crescent mouth…

“Hahah, AHAHAHAHAH!”

…But she didn’t care.

Grace’s axe made a thunderous roar as she brought it down on Zalbash’s, splitting the miasma bullet in half along with his face. Her axe unleashed a barrage of beams of light so quickly that their trajectory could not be seen, which hit Zalbash’s head over and over until it was shattered into small pieces.

Shortly after that, the rest of Zalbash’s body, still bound by Grace’s chains, turned into dust and scattered in the air.