Chapter 79
Bolt.
The bolt is an exceedingly reliable magic. It has a short casting time, and despite this brevity, it packs considerable power. In any given situation, it performs above average, truly a jack-of-all-trades kind of magic.
If we were to liken the bolt to modern firearms, it would be akin to a very well-made pistol.
High accuracy, low likelihood of malfunction, and excellent portability allow it to be drawn and used at any time.
By contrast, the magic that Lir boasts of, ‘Lightning Strike,’ has several drawbacks compared to the bolt.
The casting time is longer, and there are various restrictions and conditions tied to its execution.
While ‘Bolt’ can unleash its full power by simply raising a staff and invoking the spell’s command, ‘Lightning Strike’ requires several preparatory actions to unleash its full potential.
If the bolt is like a very well-made pistol, then the lightning strike can be likened to a heavy machine gun where the stats are overwhelmingly weighted towards power. It’s heavy, cumbersome, and in situations where every second, every tenth of a second counts, it has many drawbacks.
“The eye of the star, the cloud of light, the sea covered in scales, and the flower of salt.”
Still, no storm mage would dare to underestimate the Lightning Strike. Even if one doesn’t have an innate talent like Lir does for ‘Lightning Strike,’ most storm mages have a considerable understanding of both ‘Bolt’ and ‘Lightning Strike.’
The reason is simple—
The overwhelming firepower this magic possesses.
“The humidity is appropriate, and there are a great number of storm clouds gathering.”
Alter held his staff with both hands, watching Lir intently as she muttered the incantation, and softly chuckled and spoke.
The bottom of the trench where Lir stood had a large piece of parchment laid out. On it were inscribed massive rune-covered magic circles that would be incomprehensible to most common folk.
“Do you have any idea how much power is hidden within those storm clouds?”
Alter stood beside Lir, who was emitting electricity from her whole body, looking up at the sky. He had the contented smile of a father watching his well-raised daughter perform her talent.
Every time Lir’s mouth uttered a single word, the sky seemed to roar in response. By now, the only sounds in the area were the thunderclaps, and without a word, everyone instinctively raised their heads to look up at the black clouds that were discharging lightning towards the ground.
The earlier familiar clouds twisting and turning made Raguel frown.
“Lightning Strike.”
Raguel hastily folded his wings and dropped to a lower altitude.
But it was too late, and the sky began to unleash its fury in response to Lir’s command.
Light enveloped the world. The battlefield, covered in a haze of blood mist, turned stark white. Vision was lost instantaneously, followed shortly by the loss of hearing as well.
The ringing in the ears affected everyone equally—humans, orcs, elves, marauders—it didn’t matter who.
The orcs were the first to regain their vision. It was thanks to their inherent robustness. Next came the humans—not as resilient as the orcs—but the elves, due to their heightened sensitivities, took longer to recover from the ringing in their ears and the intense light.
Once vision was restored, what greeted their sight was nothing short of a magical spectacle.
The sky relentlessly hurled lightning down to the ground while the battlefield, now mud-filled, swayed like the edge of a stormy sea.
An unidentifiable metallic scent filled noses and mouths, and a tingling sensation from the electricity lingered in the fingertips.
“Th…is mad!”
A small scream escaped from the spot where lightning was striking the most, but the scream quickly disappeared, drowned out by the thunder.
“…General, take a look at the 2 o’clock direction.”
In the concentrated bombardment zone where hundreds of lightning strikes fell every second was Grand Marshal Ariel.
Rex chuckled in disbelief as he observed the shadow that kept disappearing and reappearing, kilometers away.
The young boy, Rex’s superior officer, hadn’t yet recovered his senses from the light and thunder of the ‘Lightning Strike’.
“Hmm…”
The biggest disadvantage—and advantage—of ‘Lightning Strike’ was its great dependency on weather conditions.
If used on a clear day, ‘Lightning Strike’ would perform similarly to ‘Bolt,’ but on a day filled with thick black clouds and high humidity, ‘Lightning Strike’ displayed a devastating power incomprehensible as the same magic.
To counterbalance this disadvantage, some mages would cast a spell to create storm clouds beforehand. But today, it wasn’t necessary, as the sky over Valleland had been covered with thick storm clouds for two weeks straight, blocking out the sunlight.
“…Almost… at my limit!”
Lir opened her trembling mouth as she gripped her staff, having brought the battlefield into a hellish realm of thunder and lightning.
Originally, Lir was not such an impressive mage to leave a deep impression on the battlefield in Valleland.
Though she became a fifth-tier mage at the youngest age in the history of the storm school, that was all there was to her.
She had boundless potential, but her current skills were far from perfect. That was Lir.
And yet, Lir’s ‘Lightning Strike’ had, for a moment, completely dominated the battlefield.
The sky filled with storm clouds, a meticulously crafted strategy, an innate talent for the ‘Lightning Strike,’ and the boon bestowed by the elementals—all four factors combined to create an unimaginable variable, and she was it.
“Phewww…”
Like the air escaping from a balloon, Lir dropped her staff.
“Lieutenant, please place Lir at the rear. I’ve expended all my mana.”
The young boy was still suffering from ringing in his ears, holding both hands to his ears.
“Y…es? Ah, yes! Understood. Corporal Hendel and Corporal, along with Private First Class Sys, take the mage and retreat to the rear!”
The lieutenant, wearing relatively clean attire compared to the soldiers, quickly shouted orders after hearing Bin’s command.
Frankly speaking, the lieutenant was in a state where he didn’t fully understand what had just happened on the battlefield, but quickly regained his composure.
He had experienced many situations on this battlefield that were incomprehensible. In such situations, attempting to understand by needlessly straining one’s brain was poisonous. The lieutenant knew through long battlefield experience that simply executing the orders of superiors as they were was the best course of action.
“…Whoa, it’s become horribly sunny.”
Lir was a mage, like the boy, who had received the ‘Boon of the Elementals’ from Daljin. Because of this, she had no limit on how much mana she could store. Furthermore, Lir was one tier higher than Bin.
The result of this mage dumping all the mana she had accumulated in her body over the past two weeks into just one minute was what now filled the view before her eyes.
The sky, having unleashed tens of thousands of lightning strikes, was as clear as the morning of some unknown rural village. The humidity and fog covering all sides had vanished, and the storm clouds blocking the sunlight were gone, leaving only clear blue skies and sunlight above their heads.
Some soldiers even felt an eerie sense due to the sudden change in the battlefield.
The nearby hill that was visible before, along with the remnants of the bodies, were nowhere to be seen. In front of where the white-haired boy stood now was a massive crater created by tens of thousands of lightning strikes, and beneath it was just the blackened silhouette, writhing in agony.
“…Really, the shape can’t even be discerned, just as reported. Finding that Grand Marshal under such weather conditions would have been impossible.”
“Is it some kind of camouflage magic? It’s strange.”
The two orcs who had come out to guard Bin looked at the silhouette beneath the crater far away, spewing smoke and slowly moving, and softly conversed. Being ignorant of magic, they tended to attribute phenomena they didn’t understand as magic.
“Not so much magic as… more of a biological concept. Think about how a chameleon changes its body color to match its surroundings.”
Alter slowly climbed out from the trench, answering their conversation.
In Alter’s hands was a staff nearly as large as his torso. The staff was filled with magical decorations and runes, covered in the scratches he obtained over years of traversing battlefields.
“What is a chameleon?”
“…Never mind. Let’s just call it magic.”
To Rex’s follow-up question, Alter cut the conversation short, sensing it would elongate unnecessarily.
While the white-haired young boy carefully ascended onto the battlefield, two soldiers holding stretchers came down the trench and gently placed Lir atop it.
“Good job. Go rest.”
The boy looked at Lir with fond eyes as she departed from the battlefield. Seeing that look, others might have assumed the boy held special feelings for the elf mage, but in reality, the boy simply felt envious seeing Lir leave the battlefield ahead of him.
“Hehe… I should go eat the chocolates our master brought. My blood sugar’s dropping so much.”
“Aren’t you worried about me?”
The boy, facing the upcoming life-or-death moments, looked slightly disheartened at Lir’s calmness as she was about to munch on chocolates.
“No, not really.”
Lir smiled plainly as she responded.
It wasn’t that she was indifferent to the boy or disliked him—it was quite the opposite.
Rather, she trusted the boy firmly. She believed the boy, named Bin, wasn’t the type to collapse in such a battlefield. She firmly believed in his true potential and talent, that he wouldn’t fall apart at such a place.
“….”
However, the two soldiers who lifted Lir onto the stretcher looked at Bin with somewhat sympathetic eyes.
To the outsider’s perspective, it was merely the affectionate human boy gazing at the elf and the elf’s brusque response.
‘…Bin, you don’t have much talent for romance.’
‘…You’ve met a tough opponent in an elf.’
Such thoughts, slightly out of place for the tense situation, flashed through the minds of the surrounding soldiers.
It must’ve been the weather.
Until just moments ago, their shoulders were tightly bound by the pressures of survival and death, but now, they were relaxing under the bright sunshine and moderately dry wind.
Someone might criticize this lack of military discipline in the presence of the enemy, but for those soldiers who had faced the fear of death every day over the past period, holding swords and shields, this absurd relaxation was what they needed.
It seemed the relaxed mood had spread. The soldiers, as though entranced, slowly peeked their heads out of the trench. Some even ventured out of the no-man’s land by bracing their hands on the ground, hardened and baked solid by the lightning, without stopping the soldiers’ retreat from being halted by officers observing them.
“…Total war?”
Instead of stopping soldiers who had stepped out of the trench randomly, the lieutenant hiding in the trench asked the white-haired boy.
While the Grand Marshals used to appear one at a time against Bell, two of them simultaneously revealed themselves against Bin.
What’s more, one of the two grand marshals was painfully rolling in the large crater without any cover or protection, while the other seemed quite fearful that another powerful magic wouldn’t be unleashed again.
The fog that obscured the vision was also gone. Thanks to the bright sunlight flooding the battlefield, they could quickly respond to enemy ambushes or surprise attacks, and the ground baked hard by the lightning eliminated the issue of soldiers’ boots sinking into the mud and reducing their mobility.
Above all, the soldiers who used to look down at the ground in continuous fear now had spirit and fighting spirit glimmering in their eyes.
While the morale wasn’t yet sky-high, they were grateful even for this much.
Whereas the soldiers before were like the animals at the slaughterhouse, waiting for death, now they were the warriors prepared to die in defense of their homeland and their loved ones.
“Total war.”
Hearing the young general’s answer, the soldiers began to mutter with small snickers.
“Finally, this goddamned war of attrition has an end. Damn… it dragged on for way too long.”
“Alright, either I die or those things die today, and that’s it.”
“Huh, fuck it! Let’s do it, then.”
More soldiers began to leave the trenches. The clanking of their armor brought excitement to the soldiers’ hearts.
“…Prepare for the total war!”
The belated order from the commanding officer reverberated through the soldiers’ ears.
The swords and shields stained with mud gradually formed into formation and began surrounding the young, white-haired boy.
“This is the real reason why our mages receive preferential treatment in noble society.”
Alter chuckled and said so, looking at the white-haired boy.
“…You dumb kids! Looks like your heads are finally on straight!”
As Raguel was repairing his pitch-black wings scorched by lightning, he mocked the soldiers who had picked up their swords and shields with fighting spirit.
Logically, the Continental army was still at a disadvantage. Two out of the four Grand Marshals were still unseen, and considering the other high-level Marauders and the mutants bred from them, they were inferior both in terms of quantity and quality of their forces.
However, a strange confidence inexplicably welled up in each of the soldiers’ chests.
Perhaps it was because they had just seen the massive baptism of lightning engulfing the heavens and earth.
‘This is a mage far more powerful than the one using such magic who is fighting alongside us.’
‘If we just protect Bin, the situation will somehow resolve itself.’
On one hand, these thoughts seemed foolish, and on the other, they seemed unreasonably illogical but somehow gave strength to the soldiers’ legs.
The lightning of the mage did not merely burst from the enemies’ bodies; it also ignited the will and strength of the allies.
