Chapter 21 | The Assassin Makes Haste
When I left the mansion, Tarte was waiting for me, dressed and ready to go.
“I brought your equipment, my lord. I’m also ready to head out.”
With all possible speed, I took the gear and donned it. Tarte had been eavesdropping on my conversation with Dad. We’d both been aware, of course, but we’d allowed it. I’d trusted that Tarte would use that information to prepare for departure.
“Our destination is over three hundred kilometers away. I’m going to head there at my full speed. You won’t be able to keep up.”
My work was much easier when Tarte was with me, but I couldn’t rely on her this time. Unless I moved as fast as I could, I wouldn’t make it there in time.
“I know we can’t go together, my lord. But I can at least help you along until I run out of stamina. Even with Rapid Recovery, your stamina and recovery rate won’t keep up when you go that quickly. Let’s go!”
Without waiting for my reply, Tarte used an original wind spell I’d taught her.
This spell redirected airflow to create an aerodynamic wind barrier, thereby reducing air resistance and allowing you to move at higher speeds.
Tarte took off at a full sprint, while I followed behind her.
Wind resistance was a big deal. Once an object exceeded forty kilometers an hour, its kinetic energy was halved as it expended energy to push air out of the way. As speed increased, air resistance increased exponentially.
Running at my full strength would’ve normally expended more stamina and mana than my Rapid Recovery skill could keep up with.
With Tarte redirecting the airflow in front of me, I could avoid that. This enabled me to move at a pace near my full speed while consuming stamina and mana at a rate that Rapid Recovery could handle.
Tarte was really giving it her all. It was undoubtedly taking serious mental energy and stamina to create the wind barrier while still running to keep up with me at the same time.
Even from behind, I could tell that Tarte’s breathing was pained and that she was drenched in sweat. Still, the girl refused to slow her pace. She managed to carry on like that for around an hour, and when she finally came to a stop, her legs were trembling.
It was clear that Tarte had hit her limit. Actually, she’d likely reached her natural maximum a while back. Sheer force of will had driven her beyond that point, but even that had only been able to keep her going for a finite amount of time.
“I’m sorry. This is all I can do for you,” Tarte forced out in between heavy breaths.
I walked up from behind her and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Thank you, Tarte. Because of you, I was able to preserve some of my strength.”
With the energy I’d saved because of her efforts, I could go all out now without depleting my strength.
“… You really love Dia, don’t you, my lord?” she asked.
“I do,” I answered.
“Then I wish you luck. Please bring her home safely. I’ll be waiting for your return.” Tarte smiled, gave me a light push on the back, and sat down on the ground.
Despite the grin, she looked like she was going to cry.
“There’s no need to worry. I’ll be back.”
Leaving Tarte behind, I took off. If I’d stopped then, it would’ve only been a waste of her efforts and words of encouragement.
I charged forward with everything I had.
As I sprinted across the land, I took hair dye out of the backpack that Tarte had prepared for me and colored my hair. I then disguised my face and wrapped it in a scarf to conceal it.
The hope was that such a facade would prevent the small chance of House Tuatha Dé’s involvement being discovered. The path to the Viekone estate wasn’t as the crow flew—it required you to cross winding forest trails and mountain roads.
I caught sight of the first of the two mountains you have to cross. This was the most difficult part of the journey.
If I wanted to get to the Viekone domain in just a few hours, I couldn’t afford to cross both mountains on foot. Dashing along, I climbed to the summit of the first mountain. With a running start, I leaped from the cliff while performing an incantation.
“Wings of Steel!”
Just like Gun Strike and my other spells, this was an original spell I’d created using Spell Weaver.
I produced a lightweight hang glider made of aluminum. This was a shortcut I’d devised. By jumping off the summit of the first mountain, I was able to drift through the air and skip over the second mountain entirely.
The wings of the hang glider caught the wind, and I soared through the air.
The wind brushed against my cheeks. The glider didn’t have any sort of power of its own—it was simply riding on the air.
Without an updraft, my altitude would slowly drop. If it fell too much, I wouldn’t be able to cross the second mountain. Since I wasn’t getting any wind, I decided to simply make some of my own.
“Summon Wind!”
As I rode the updraft I’d created, my altitude rose spectacularly.
In no time at all, I’d made it past the second peak. I was nearly there.
Once I’d landed, I slipped past the border into Soigel and began to sprint. On the way, I ate some provisions and used magic to summon water to quench my thirst. It took me just over five hours to cover the 322-kilometer distance.
There was a reason I’d been able to arrive so quickly, and while avoiding detection at that. It was because I’d made this journey many times in order to see Dia.
Without my regular trips, I would’ve been forced to rely on the crude maps of this world to find my way. I would have never made it in time using such a method. Getting to Dia’s place during my very first trip had not been easy. Never would I have thought that my monthly secret meetings with Dia would come in handy for such an unexpected disaster.
When I at last arrived, I quickly found that much of the domain and the town that surrounded the Viekone estate had become a war zone.
I hid myself in the woods at a safe distance from the fighting.
Dia’s father was a count, and as such, his manor was so large, it was better described as a castle. The fortified building sat on the outskirts of town, guarded by a large rampart.
Making use of that barrier, the vassals of Count Viekone had somehow managed to successfully keep the army of the enemy noble faction at bay.
The miraculous defense was unlikely to last much longer, however. The opposing force outnumbered the vassals far more than I’d expected.
Even with the advantage of the rampart, the defending group was made up of only two hundred soldiers, while the attacking force boasted fifteen hundred. Mages could make up for a deficit in numbers, but no one stood a chance when they were outnumbered that badly.
Thus far, the noble faction’s army had been kept from entering the castle, but only just barely. The estate was likely to fall at any moment.
Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. How have they been able to last this long? I thought.
Using my Tuatha Dé eyes, I could see that the invaders boasted far more mages. People with mana shouldn’t have had any trouble just jumping over the rampart.
There was something else that seemed odd to me, too. The noble faction seemed very focused on a particular window of the castle.
“Ah, that explains it,” I said, finally catching on. Dia was the reason the castle hadn’t been taken yet.
I remained hidden in the darkness of the woods, being careful to avoid detection.
Before sneaking into the estate, I wanted to cause a disturbance that would weaken the attacking force’s assault. It didn’t look like the vassals were going to last much longer.
“I need to be strong… To save Dia, I have no choice but to kill those who are trying to steal her away.”
I wanted to kill as few people as possible, but in such a situation, there was no method to save Dia that didn’t involve murder. Her safety was my first priority, which meant my hands were going to get a little bloody.
I produced a gun using one of my spells.
Using a silencer was a waste of effort this time. With the gun’s level of firepower, which was high enough to kill battle-ready mages, there was no way their mana-enhanced ears wouldn’t catch the sound.
I channeled mana into my Tuatha Dé eyes.
In battle, it was said that a single mage was the equivalent fighting force of a hundred soldiers. To rephrase, this meant that killing a single mage was the same as taking out a hundred ordinary swordsmen.
My Tuatha Dé eyes allowed me to sense mana. Normally, you couldn’t sense an opponent’s mana unless you were relatively close to them, which made picking out mages difficult.
Thankfully, I was more than able to tell who among the invading force could use magic.
I drew a deep breath, and as I released it, I used fire magic to create an explosion within the iron gun. A tungsten bullet shot from the barrel and cut a large hole through the chest of a mage who’d been on the front lines.
That’s one.
I loaded another bullet and another body hit the ground.
One after another, they began to drop as I killed them efficiently and without emotion.
At the death of the fourth mage, the army took on a noticeably different formation.
Anyone who could use magic positioned themselves behind the ordinary soldiers for protection. They’d also clearly identified the direction my projectiles were coming from by way of the sound of the gun and which mages had been killed. Soldiers were dispatched in my direction, and the archers loosed a volley of arrows.
With no small urgency, I left that spot and, taking a large detour, began to move toward the opposite side of the battlefield.
“Just as I thought, they already know about the guns,” I muttered.
The army’s response had been too quick. Had they never encountered firearms before, they would’ve been far more confused. The explanation was simple enough: Dia had already been using Gun Strike. Perhaps that was the reason the vassals had been able to hold the estate against the noble faction for three days.
Dia could reliably hit a target from a distance of up to three hundred meters. She’d been able to prevent anyone getting over the rampart from her spot at the castle window by using Gun Strike, as the spell had enough force to kill a mage in a single shot.
It had reduced the enemy numbers, of course, but her shots had also caused the attacking soldiers to shrink away in fear of being the next one to take a bullet.
Almost all mages were of proper nobility or came from a branch family. Such social standing and battle prowess meant the noble faction couldn’t afford to keep throwing away the lives of their mages by having them try to scale the rampart.
While it was true that the mages might’ve been able to use magic to get multiple ordinary soldiers over the rampart at the cost of a few deaths, Dia sniping with Gun Strike kept that from being a viable strategy.
So long as the mages from the noble faction stayed away from the front lines, the Viekone mages would be able to handle the enemy soldiers who didn’t have mana.
Using wind magic, I picked up sound from the battlefield.
The noble faction soldiers were yelling about how there was someone other than Count Viekone’s daughter who was using the strange iron stone magic.
The enemy’s response was visibly too late.
Normally, four people being killed among so many soldiers wouldn’t have been a problem. The reason it had created such an uproar was because four mages had been singled out.
Now was the time to take advantage.
Stealthily, I made it to the other side of the battlefield, and while hiding in the woods, I produced a bow and some arrows made out of metal.
The arrows each had a special attachment on the end containing a jewel filled with red light.
“I didn’t want to play this card yet, but… I don’t have much choice.”
The jewels were actually Fahr Stones. Each stone was filled with mana to the point where it would very nearly explode.
Fahr Stones had the ability to store mana and were typically used to measure a person’s mana capacity.
But if you filled one past its limits and then broke it, the entrapped mana would explode outward.
Years ago, I almost destroyed the Tuatha Dé estate with one of those stones.
After much testing, I’d discovered that filling the stones with 70 percent fire mana, 20 percent wind mana, and 10 percent earth mana resulted in the highest destructive force.
I poured more mana into a Fahr Stone to push it beyond its capacity. The stone made a high-pitched noise as cracks began to form on the little sphere’s surface.
I drew an arrow—and released. Leaving a red trail of light, the arrow slipped through the trees and made impact in the middle of the noble faction’s army. Seven seconds later, light overflowed from the stone, and then it exploded.
Flames burst forth from the fire mana, which then exploded in combination with the wind produced by the wind mana. The earth mana became countless iron scraps, which then shot forth in all directions like bullets from the force of the explosion.
The blast itself was about two hundred meters wide, and the iron scraps caused additional damage for another few hundred beyond that.
Dozens of people were injured or killed from the explosion, burns, or the flurry of shrapnel.
I’d stored mana equivalent to the capacity of three hundred ordinary mages, and when the stones exploded, this was what happened.
My mana capacity was over a thousand times higher than the average mage’s, but instantaneous mana discharge was much harder to increase. Truthfully, mine sat only around seven or eight times higher than a regular mage’s.
Fahr Stones changed everything, however.
I fired three more Fahr Stones into crowds of enemy soldiers, and then after using Gun Strike to take out one more mage, I decided to move again. Remaining where I’d been hiding for much longer was likely to be dangerous.
I suppose you could say that even that type of large-radius attack was a form of assassination.
Assassination was defined as killing someone without showing yourself and without your target being aware of you. The mages I just killed with Gun Strike and the soldiers who died from the Fahr Stone explosions died without realizing who their attacker was.
An assassin did not devote themselves to assassination merely out of pride—it was simply because they were unable to rely on other means. That was not to say it didn’t have unique benefits. The use of covert methods helped me send the battlefield into a state of confusion and take out multiple soldiers without ever showing myself.
After four Fahr Stone explosions, the entire noble faction looked ready to flee.
Even the mages were getting increasingly scared because they didn’t know what they were fighting. It’d also grown quite clear that they were being specifically targeted.
“The Viekone soldiers are well-trained. It looks like they understand the opportunity they’ve been given,” I observed.
Count Viekone’s soldiers, who had been stuck on the defensive for the last three days, now opened the castle gate and charged.
Even after having lost a decent number of soldiers, the noble faction still retained a strong advantage in numbers. Their heavy state of panic, however, was what allowed Count Viekone’s people to take the offensive.
With their mages leading the way, the count’s soldiers began to rout the enemy.
Very quickly, the battlefield descended into a state of mass confusion, and there was no longer any need to fear the castle falling.
I hadn’t actually planned on changing the outcome of the battle all on my own. All I’d been trying to do with that series of attacks was create a diversion.
To avoid enemy attention falling on Dia and me, the battle had to be turned from a one-sided fight into a difficult struggle where the noble faction soldiers didn’t have the luxury of turning their focus anywhere else.
Employing the Fahr Stones had been for a second purpose as well. They were part of my plan for saving Dia.
With a ground battle unfolding, sneaking into the manor was sure to be quite easy now. It was time for a rescue mission.
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