Bell and Welf burst from the end of the dark corridor and came face to face with the last line of defense at the heart of the castle. Ahead of them, Apollo Familia's archers had arrows nocked, their hands trembling but resolute, while the Mages in the rear ranks had already reached the final phrases of their deadly chants.
The air shook violently with concentrated Mana coiled and ready to detonate. Even the atmospheric pressure alone was enough to make ordinary human skin prickle.
"Go, Bell!" Welf shouted, his voice cutting through the rising noise.
Without a moment's hesitation, Bell pitched his body forward, gathering explosive force in his legs before launching himself at a speed that was nearly impossible for the human eye to follow. His white hair trailed behind him like a streak of light.
"Fire!" The enemy commander's voice, Daphne's, rang out hard and clear.
Bowstrings snapped taut as dozens of arrows tore through the air, forming a rain of death. At the same moment, the Mages parted their lips to unleash the volleys of fire and lightning magic they had been building. But in that crucial instant...
"Burn to ash, karma of darkness!"
Welf spread his palm toward the enemy. A murky haze, something that looked like liquid mercury, poured silently from his hand and spread at an unnatural speed, faster than the wind itself.
It chased Bell's shadow and flooded the enemy ranks in an instant, seeping into the magical circles the Mages had already formed.
*SRING!*
Something strange happened immediately. Every Mage's body began to glow from within, flickering and pulsing like a flame trapped inside a blocked furnace as the haze swept over them. Their eyes went wide. They could feel something was wrong with their Mana flow. The very energy they had been commanding was turning against them, running wild.
A moment later...
*KA-BOOM!*
A chain of explosions erupted at the exact spots where the Mages stood. Bursts of fire bloomed like petals of death all around them, not from any attack Welf had launched, but from their own Mana tearing itself apart.
"What?! What's happening?!"
Every Mage before them suffered a total casting failure, triggering an Ignis Fatuus that consumed them from the inside out.
That was Will-o-Wisp, Welf Crozzo's unique Anti-Magic ability.
The archers caught in the radius of the blasts were flung like ragdolls in every direction, slamming hard into the stone walls before losing consciousness. The Mages collapsed where they fell, black smoke curling steadily from their slack mouths. Not one of them would be chanting anything again anytime soon after the shock their Mana had taken.
Seizing the opening that Welf's anti-magic detonation had carved out, Bell wasted no time. He charged through what remained of the shattered defense and made straight for the spiral staircase at the base of the main tower.
The tower's top floor, where the commander Hyakinthos was waiting, was finally within his line of sight.
Across all of Orario, the spectators held their breath. Hestia Familia's small champion was only a few steps away from the enemy's heart.
◆━⊰✿✧✿⊱━◆
"Oh, interesting."
Up in the Empyrean Citadel, Charlie leaned back into the sofa, eyes narrowing with curiosity. He was mildly surprised to see an adventurer in this world possessing an Anti-Magic ability. His mind drifted briefly to his own unpleasant encounter with the Abyssal Devourer, a creature that had wielded something similar but far more absolute.
"What do you think, Charlie? Is it dangerous?" Aishia asked, watching him, her slender hand holding the bowl of popcorn.
She had noticed that Charlie was using his Senrigan to peer into a fragment of the past, rewinding to the moment of Hestia Familia's strategy meeting before the War Game began, when Welf had explained the technical workings of Will-o-Wisp to Bell and the others.
"..."
Charlie was quiet for a moment, processing what he had seen, before finally giving a slow nod.
"Yeah. Even though they call it Anti-Magic, its scope is very specific. It's only effective against fire-type magic and completely useless against everything else. If anything, Will-o-Wisp is just a degraded version of true Anti-Magic, the kind that can neutralize any manifestation of magical energy without exception."
"I see."
Aishia didn't show even a flicker of surprise at the analysis. For her and Charlie both, it was simply a given that the scale of power and the variety of magic in DanMachi's Planar World felt somewhat thin compared to the more complex Isekai Planar Worlds they were used to.
"At least by Orario's standards, it's still enough to turn the tide." Charlie added, popping a piece of popcorn into Est's waiting mouth and letting the conversation drift toward something lighter.
◆━⊰✿✧✿⊱━◆
Bell pushed his pace through the castle, the sharp echo of his footsteps ringing through the empty corridors until he found the spiral staircase leading to the top of the tower.
Nothing blocked his path any longer. Every line of Apollo Familia's defense had been torn apart by their flawless strategy.
Bell's garnet eyes fixed straight upward, while his focus began to gather around the point of light starting to circle his right arm.
That distinctive sound, like the ringing of a great bell, he hadn't heard it since the life-or-death battle on the 18th Floor. Bell reached back for that sensation, the trigger that set his desire ablaze. He recalled the voice of a god, a vision that had filled his soul with overflowing courage.
But this time, he had a vision of his own. Argonaut.
In his mind, he saw the warrior of Argos, the eternal hero who had fought to his last breath to reclaim a fortress from a horde of monsters. Not as something to imitate, but as something to draw from.
Every nerve in Bell's body came alive as he cast himself in the role of a hero storming the castle alone. White light began to pulse and gather in the palm of his right hand, building to a blinding intensity.
A massive spiral of energy spread out to either side of him, placing him at the exact center of a storm of light. Wind began to coil around him, lifting the dust at his feet.
He raised his hand toward the ceiling above, as though reaching for a sun hidden somewhere beyond the concrete.
"One minute."
Sixty seconds of charging. The flickering white light grew denser, hissing with energy that could no longer be contained, the sound like thousands of bees in a rage.
"Firebolt!"
*BOOOOM!!!*
It was not a simple spark of fire. It was an explosion of white flame wrapped in lightning, surging upward with tremendous force. The attack struck the ceiling with a deafening concussion that shook the entire structure of the castle.
The stone floor above swelled violently, then cracked and blew apart into fragments.
The Argonaut-enhanced Firebolt drove upward like a pillar of destruction, punching through layer after layer of the tower's floors as though they were made of paper. Concrete and granite dissolved into dust, leaving a perfect vertical shaft connecting the base of the tower directly to the main chamber at its peak.
White debris drifted through the air alongside the last tendrils of lightning still crawling along the walls, filling the space with a thick haze that wrapped itself around Bell's silhouette.
Bell no longer needed the staircase. Through the massive hole he had just torn open, he leapt upward toward the highest floor, his body wrapped in the residual glow of the spell.
There, Hyakinthos was already waiting, his face pale with shock, unable to comprehend that his defenses had been breached in such a devastatingly blunt way.
In Orario, the crowd erupted in hysteria. The warrior had arrived before the king.
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