A world-altering upheaval.
A miracle worthy of a name that meant turning heaven and earth upside down had come to pass.
Serie marveled at the beautifully spread sea of pure white.
"To think the sea could turn into a glacier in an instant."
Ice crystals fell and melted against her skin.
"A snow-white sea has its own charm, but..."
Her bare foot brushed lightly across the frozen sea.
Her long, outstretched ears had turned red, and the chill spilling past her bluish lips disturbed the air.
"It's cold."
With those words, she traced a hand through the air, and sparks scattered from her fingertips.
What she desired was the hellfire of the underworld.
A new spell chant.
'So that's how you're playing it!'
He grasped the enemy's magic and immediately drew out the proper counterspell in his mind.
"Magic that breathes forth the flames of hell."
"Hellflame."
Flames surged up between the two mages, and the black, murky fires devoured one another as they blazed.
Before the contest of firepower had even ended, sparks flew again.
"Magic that fires the lightning of destruction."
"Annihilation of Ten Thousand Thunders."
Purple lightning and blue lightning collided, then climbed through the air and branched outward like trees.
The thunder that followed left their ears ringing.
"Magic that drops stones from the sky."
"Meteor Fall."
As he let the lightning slide away and swung his fist downward, a hole tore open in the gloomy sky and meteors crashed into one another.
The massive lumps of matter were drawn together by each other's gravity and shattered apart, breaking into fragments before pouring down as shooting stars that lit the dark heavens.
"Magic that controls stone like a puppet."
"Primal Earth Spirit Summoning."
Gathering the shattered meteor fragments, she raised a giant golem and drove its fist forward. In response, he activated the earth jewel embedded in his staff and raised an earth elemental to meet it head-on.
Boom.
The fists of the two giants shook the glacier, and a blade-like wind swept through the hollow spaces in the ice.
A procession of magic that twisted the terrain itself. Their spells counterbalanced one another.
The battle between the two mages was like something out of myth.
If their battle had taken place on land rather than at sea, it would have been a catastrophe great enough to redraw the map.
'Every spell she's using is at least 8th tier. I could raise my firepower with buffs, but I don't have the breathing room.'
If he showed even the slightest opening, his skull would be blown away by magic.
That was how fierce their exchange was. Neither side could afford to yield even an inch.
And yet, something was strange.
The doubt kept rising like a thorn lodged in his throat.
'Why did she say it was cold?'
If she had [Magic that reflects curses] active, then the cold damage from [The Creation] should have been reflected as it was.
To him, this was merely magic, but to his opponent, it was a curse that froze not only the sea but the body as well.
But that had not happened.
To move from doubt to certainty, he activated his next spell.
"Grasp Heart."
It failed.
Ordinarily, it was a spell that crushed the opponent's heart and burst it apart, but it did not work.
Only the sensation of his fingers brushing empty air remained.
His opponent knew it as well and did not return the attack with magic.
'So all instant-death types are reflected. If I weren't a skeleton without a heart, I'd have died instead.'
Using that as a basis, he analyzed the enemy's magic.
Even if magical detection was useless, stopping his observations would be no different from surrendering the fight.
From the movement of her hands when casting magic, to the length of her stride when she moved, to the shape of her mouth when she chanted, even to the sway of the clothes she wore.
He organized everything he had observed so far.
The sea had frozen, and she had felt cold from the sudden drop in temperature.
Beyond that, sparks from Hellflame had singed her, she had shut her eyes against the flash of lightning, and mud fallen from the elemental had wet her feet.
If she had judged Yggdrasil's magic to be curses and reflected them, then those should have returned to him just like Grasp Heart. But they had not.
There was only one conclusion to draw from that.
"It seems you can't reflect something unless you recognize it as a curse."
He struck at her blind spot and watched her expression.
Now then, how would she react to that?
The elf looked slightly surprised when she heard him, but even so, the smile did not leave her lips.
"Who can say?"
Was she telling him to think whatever he liked?
It even seemed as though she did not care whether he knew.
He was certain now.
Her magic was the kind that manifested images into reality, like the sorcerers of fairy tales.
It judged Yggdrasil's magic to be curses and reflected them automatically.
At first glance, it seemed absurd, but it looked different once he considered who decided the standard that separated magic from curses.
Was this world also under the influence of some absolute system?
No.
Now that he had realized this world was not a game like Yggdrasil, the one who chose the path forward was no one but himself.
Which meant the one judging curses was that elf herself.
'Magic she believes can be realized is not classified as a curse.'
In other words, ordinary magic would work.
"Show me more of the magic you possess!"
"I was going to, whether you asked or not!"
When he swung his staff, there was fire, lightning, and storm.
When she swept her hand, there was water, wind, and ice.
They collided, split apart, and shattered.
What unfolded was a pure battle of magic.
Neither of them used the same spell twice.
If either showed a spell they had already used, the other would obviously devise a countermeasure and break through it at once.
What would decide their battle now was which of them ran out of magic first.
It was a game of chicken in the deep sea of magic, where the one who hit bottom first lost.
They hurled spell after spell.
When the two magics met, space itself warped.
Yggdrasil's magic produced fixed results, whereas the magic of this world changed freely, as though it were giving form to imagination itself.
Serie felt it.
'What chillingly neat and orderly magic.'
To her, magic was not something limited solely to killing others.
In the countryside, there would be magic for plowing fields, and on the battlefield, magic for killing enemies.
But the skeleton before her was different.
Attack spells pouring forth without end.
It was as though...
"Isn't it as if you're draped from head to toe in spells designed for the sole purpose of killing people!"
Broken ice rushed forward as spikes, and ice formed in the sky intercepted them.
"The same goes for me! I've never seen an elf capable of manifesting this many spells!"
How long had it been since he had used so many spells, their number forcibly expanded through black wisdom?
From low-tier to high-tier magic, she pressed him relentlessly with endless variations.
The number of spells both of them possessed seemed endless, and in the end, what they reached was not the exhaustion of magic, but the depletion of mana first.
Their magical power had visibly diminished.
Without a word, both instinctively sensed that they had entered the turning point that would decide victory and defeat.
It was Momonga who moved first.
A magic circle similar to the one from [The Creation] was drawn high in the sky.
"So it is that spell after all."
The great magic that had frozen the sea in an instant.
[Super-Tier Magic] had a limit on uses, but consumed no mana.
She knew that because she had seen it clearly with her own eyes.
Since it was magic that used no magical power at all, she had expected that if he meant to finish this, he would use it.
'He must have drained all his mana in that battle of magic to set up this spell.'
That was why Serie felt inward regret.
"You failed to see through my mana suppression."
The magical power that had seemed on the verge of going out flared back to life.
Even Momonga could clearly see its shape.
'So she really was hiding her mana.'
Just as he had expected, that elf had deceived [Mana Essence].
He had considered that possibility, but it had been a move he could not help but fall for.
He had already shown that he could shorten casting time, so before he could even finish the sequence of taking the hourglass from his subspace and crushing it, her attack would land.
"Magic that delivers the judgment of light."
Light gathered in the shape of a cross.
He could tell at a glance.
'That's her fastest spell.'
She leaned forward to finish it and closed in, seeking a decisive blow.
A sound judgment.
The spell he intended to use was [Fallen Down].
Once [Super-Tier Magic] was activated, the surrounding area would be blown away.
Rather than widening the distance, striking the spell accurately was more important.
He had been waiting for that decision.
"[Perfect Warrior]."
The [Super-Tier Magic] was interrupted.
Of course it was. He was no longer a magic caster, but a warrior.
What clothed his body now was not a black robe, but black full plate armor.
The elf's eyes widened as she approached.
'Is it really that surprising to see someone who was using magic suddenly holding a sword?'
He did not know the magic of this other world.
And the same was true for his opponent.
He had deliberately gone along with the battle of magic to conceal his information until the very end.
It had not been a fight to drain mana, but a strategy to draw her into close combat.
Just as expected, she had shown the greatest opening.
[Perfect Warrior] merely reconstructed his status into that of a melee class, so cheating abilities like curse reflection were impossible.
"Checkmate."
He brought down the greatsword in his hand.
With the acceleration behind it, the black blade would sever her neck like a guillotine.
His eyes met the elf's.
And the world flipped over.
When he came to himself, he had crashed headfirst into a massive wall of ice.
An attack he could not make sense of.
"...Damn it, knockback?"
A powerful repulsive force had shoved him away in an instant.
'Some unknown power that pierces through all kinds of resistances? No... is that even magic?'
He was appalled by a force that had no casting time, no visible form, and could not even be detected.
Serie walked out across the icy ground where sand and frost were mixed together.
"Impressive. You are something no different from death itself."
Her hand was pressed to her neck, and blood was flowing; it seemed she had not avoided it completely.
"How many years has it been? To think I'd use this again."
So the knockback had been her trump card.
As he pulled himself free from the ice, he thought of the object resting in his abdomen.
A red orb.
If that repulsive force was the elf's last resort, then this was the item that could be called his own hidden ace.
It was a World Item, powerful enough to make even [Super-Tier Magic] seem trivial.
'Do I really have no choice but to use it?'
He had not wanted to use it because of its enormous drawbacks, but cornered as he was now, he had no choice.
As he measured the timing to activate it, the elf opened her hand and gave a small shrug.
What was that? The sign of some spell about to be cast?
As he stayed on guard, the elf let out a faint laugh.
"I'd like to see this through to the end as it is, but it seems I can't form an image of killing the dead a second time."
Then, as though an amusing thought had just come to her, she spoke.
"My name is Serie."
There was something in her eyes... like a child who had found an interesting treasure.
"You. Become my disciple."
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