“Fire Lance, Explosion, Earth Needle!”

“Stone Bullet, Air Cutter!”

Damn it, this is tough! The relentless barrage of attack magic leaves me with just enough focus to dodge and defend. My perception skill slows down time a bit, but even so, my thoughts can’t keep up!

And if I stop moving for even a moment or ease up on my counterattacks, I’ll be crushed again by simultaneous attacks from all directions, just like before. …I have to take a gamble here!

Bang!

I leap into the air with my suppression skill disabled.

“Thunder Lance, Aqua Shot!”

Just like before, when I dodged into the air, Ande launches pursuit magic at me. Not only that, but he also leaps after me himself.

However, this time, instead of dodging sideways, I create footholds with wind magic and jump even higher into the sky. Naturally, Ande follows.

This is it!

“Sto-rage Ma-gic!”

“Wha—what the hell is this!?”

This is my trump card!

From my storage magic, I release the corpse of the Calamity. Its massive body—no, its mountain-sized bulk—suddenly appears mid-air right in front of Ande.

Ande’s magic from earlier collides with the enormous corpse, but it does nothing to stop its sheer mass as it plummets at full speed under the force of gravity. Even for Ande, there’s no way to dodge a mountain-sized Calamity corpse appearing out of nowhere right in front of him. He’s completely crushed beneath its overwhelming weight.

“Gwoooooooohhh!!”

For the first time, Ande lets out a scream. Up until now, no matter what I did, his voice never wavered. But his scream is soon drowned out as the Calamity corpse smashes him into the ground.

Rumble!

With an earth-shaking impact, the massive corpse collides with the ground. The shockwave further distorts the already devastated Basil Plains.

No matter how strong Ande is, getting crushed by such an enormous mass should be inescapable. I might have just killed the disciple of the Grand Mage… but I had no room to hold back.

He had barrier magic, and his body was absurdly tough. If he’s still alive and I use healing magic, he might still survive.

“Wha—!?”

Just as I try to locate Ande with my presence-detection skill, my danger sense flares to its absolute limit—from above me!

Crack!

A sudden impact from overhead shatters my barrier magic, and before I can react, I’m slammed onto the Calamity’s corpse.

Bang!

“…Ugh.”

I was completely convinced the fight was over, so I had let my guard down. My barrier magic had almost faded, and getting slammed onto the massive corpse hurt like hell. I force my body up and stand.

But what the hell just happened!? Why was I sent crashing down from such a high altitude!?

“…You really did a number on me. I actually thought I was going to die there. I had my barrier magic up, but with that mass… If I had been completely crushed, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

Looking down at me from above the Calamity’s corpse is a small, shadowy figure.

“…How did you evade that attack?”

“…I’ll show you the answer.”

The moment Ande speaks, he vanishes from the sky—and appears right in front of me.

“…Teleportation magic?”

I know that spell. It allows the user to instantly move to a place they’ve been before or somewhere within their line of sight. I use it often for travel.

But teleportation magic always has a slight delay before activation. However, what Ande just did looked like instantaneous movement.

“…So you do know. Could it be that you can use teleportation magic as well? But I doubt you can use it as fast as this.”

As he speaks, Ande flickers in and out of sight, appearing in front of me, then behind me, in an instant.

“That’s gotta be cheating…”

Teleportation at this speed is just ridiculous! He wasn’t even fighting seriously before. If he had been using this from the start, someone like me, with barely any combat experience, wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“…This is my specialty. I’ve spent years refining my teleportation magic for combat. But if you call this cheating, your last attack was quite something as well. That corpse belongs to a Calamity, doesn’t it?

Back when I was with my master, I saw one once. Even my master couldn’t defeat it. I had planned to challenge it myself someday. That thing had an extreme resistance to magic… How did you manage to kill it?”

“…Who knows.”

No way I’m telling him it was thanks to some conveniently placed bombs and toxic gas.

“…Well, no matter. But I must say, your last attack was impressive. You made it seem like you were fleeing into the air, then dropped something like that from the sky. It seems I underestimated you. Masayoshi, was it? From now on, I’ll be fighting you seriously.”

We’re only getting serious now!? That kind of development should stay in manga…