Millennium Witch-Book 3: Chapter 203: Fire Mage
On the village road near the exit, the fighting had reached a fever pitch.
The mana-infused blade carried a searing gleam; with every swing, Lucia forced the knight before her to give ground again and again.
Under normal circumstances she would have won long ago, but now she was fighting one against four. Even when she gained the upper hand, she had to split her focus to guard against strikes from all sides, making any follow-up impossible.
“Go, Lucia. If you leave, it’s better than all of us dying here!” a villager urged.
Lucia kept silent and fought on. With her current strength, she truly could choose to save her own skin; if she decided to withdraw, no noble knight would willingly throw away his life to stop her by force.
But she couldn’t talk herself into doing that. Her father was the militia captain, even now fighting to the death at the village gate to hold the enemy back, and her task was to escort everyone out. Even if fleeing alone was the most rational choice, it wasn’t the one for her.
Just then, a shout tinged with fear rang out. It was Hank, the boy whose swordsmanship was second only to Lucia’s in the village. Brandishing an axe, he charged at a knight who was about to ambush Lucia from a tricky angle. The commotion drew the knight’s attention and foiled the ambush, but it also drew the knight’s attack onto Hank.
The knight didn’t even look at him directly—he simply twisted and thrust backhand.
Cold blue light flickered along the blade empowered by a combat art. Hank, a spellblade still at the Apprentice Tier, with mana just past 150 points, was no match for a noble knight—let alone without access to any high-end combat arts.
Lucia’s gaze froze. She and Hank didn’t get along. As a child she’d felt out of place and secretly inferior, largely because that chubby boy kept calling her a redheaded freak, and when he was being cruel he even called her a bastard, making her feel like an outcast in the village.
As they grew older, though, such incidents dwindled; their relationship shifted from terrible to merely ordinary, but never truly good. She never expected that, at the critical moment, he would be the one to step forward and risk his life to help her.
The blade was about to plunge into Hank’s chest, and the villagers screamed.
But the next instant, there was no scene of a sword point bursting through a body. Instead, a fleeting arc of blue-green light flashed. Neither Lucia, nor Arnold Pitt in the form of a wild boar, nor the knights and villagers around them managed to see what had happened—only that a scream erupted from the knight’s side as he clutched his hand and collapsed.
Bewildered, everyone looked over to find that his sword hand had vanished. At his wrist was a bloody wound, as if someone had hacked the entire hand off with a blade. Blood spurted out as he howled in pain, a sight too gruesome to look at directly.
“Who?!” a knight shouted in shock and fury, scanning around. Then he saw her—on a nearby rooftop, at some point a silver-haired girl in a black dress had appeared, standing there in silence.
“Yvette—” Lucia murmured. The villagers behind her also looked over, faces full of shock.
Unlike Lucia, most villagers harbored fear toward the witch who lived secluded in a cottage in the woods. On ordinary days they wouldn’t even dare lift their heads when they met her, much less greet her. None of them had imagined that, at such a dire moment, the witch would appear—and seemingly to save them.
Yvette drifted down lightly from the roof and swept her gaze over the scene. Noting the crest on the knights’ tabards—distinctly of the Eyrie Kingdom’s style—she immediately drew the conclusion—the Eyrie Kingdom had launched the attack.
She had little attachment to Sanggren Village, no desire to get involved in the war between the Kingdom of Kisul and the Eyrie Kingdom, and even less desire to make a spectacle of things and draw the world’s gaze.
But the knights of the Eyrie Kingdom clearly hadn’t gotten the memo about peace and quiet.
So the moment she landed—before she even made her next move—a knight had already raised his sword and hacked down hard, using an ice-aspected sword technique.
“Careful!” Though she trusted Yvette’s strength, Lucia couldn’t help calling out.
In the next heartbeat, however, things took a turn none of them expected. The knight who had rushed up to Yvette suddenly burst into flames for no discernible reason. In just two or three seconds, he writhed and turned into a charred corpse, without managing even a token resistance.
Deathly silence fell over the field; even the crackle of burning buildings seemed smothered by it.
The remaining knights darted looks at the silver-haired girl, then at the charred remains on the ground, as if still unable to make sense of what had just happened.
“Can you hear me now?” Yvette asked.
“W—Who are you?” one knight stammered. As nobles holding fiefs under Vladimir, the knights prided themselves on being worldly; yet they had never seen a death so uncanny, so impossible to resist.
It didn’t even look like magic, but a curse—a curse their defensive combat arts couldn’t ward off.
“I’m a fire mage—temporarily staying here.” Yvette’s face showed no emotion, like a wooden doll. Combined with what had just transpired, however, the effect was chilling. In a cool voice she said, “And you are disturbing my sleep in the dead of night. Would you please leave. Now.”
The knights looked at each other, then toward their captain who still hadn’t spoken. At that moment, another knight suddenly seemed to recall something. With a mix of outrage and alarm he shouted, “No! You’re lying! You’re a witch!”
He hesitated, then added, “The intel mentioned a witch living here—that’s you! You’re no fire mage! I’ve never heard of flame magic this freakish!”
Yvette frowned slightly and turned toward the man.
A second later, amid a piercing scream, that knight also spontaneously combusted where he stood—and in two or three seconds likewise became ash.
“Am I a witch?” Yvette looked at the remaining knights.
“N—No—Master Mage, it was our discourtesy.” The surviving knights swallowed hard and shook their heads repeatedly, terrified that the slightest wrong reaction would displease the witch before them and make them the next to be glanced at and then burned to death.
What kind of fire mage is that… no one has ever heard of flame magic like this!
She was absolutely a witch—genuine and unmistakable!
“Then I’ll ask one last time: could you stop disturbing my sleep?” Yvette asked, expressionless.
“Y-Yes, Master Mage!” The captain at their head went pale with fear. He led all the knights in a deep bow to Yvette, then either grabbed their horses or fled on foot, running as if for their lives. As they ran they kept sneaking looks back, like they feared the witch might suddenly give chase.
Yvette had no intention of pursuing. She wasn’t a local and bore no deep hatred for the Eyrie Kingdom’s soldiers; she was simply very annoyed at having her sleep disturbed. Turning to Lucia, she asked, “Are you hurt?”
Lucia shook her head blankly. Like Mr. Arnold Pitt beside her and the other villagers, she was still reeling from the shock of what had just happened.
She recovered quickly, though. Something sprang to mind and she blurted, “My dad! I don’t know how he is—he’s still at the village gate. Yvette, can you save him?”
Yvette gave a slight nod, rose into the air, and flew toward the village gate.
Book 3: Chapter 203: Fire Mage
Comments