"Ah... amazing, you've caught me... Can we eat now?"
Pinned to the ground by magic and unable to move, Fíliya still wore her signature mischievous grin, showing not the slightest hint of tension.
"Tch. Ehre, hit her with something. Any attack will do."
Wirbel said to Ehre, looking displeased at Fíliya's cheeky expression.
"Huh? We can't do that! Isn't Fíliya trapped? A target caught by your Restraining Magic can't activate their mana... She won't be able to cast Defensive Magic... Something bad will happen."
Ehre glanced at Wirbel in horror, thinking, Didn't you say this was just a test? Why are you making me get serious?
"Idiot. Can't you see this woman is toying with us? Just do it. I want to see what tricks she has to break my magic."
Wirbel commanded again.
"But... it's still dangerous! Aren't we on the same side? Let's not do such a risky test."
Ehre's expression was still hesitant.
"Then aim for her leg. It's just a broken leg. We have clerics in the unit; they can restore it completely."
"Ooh... but that would still hurt a lot, wouldn't it? She's a girl... Wirbel, you're being too... Okay, I understand."
Ehre was about to criticize this guy who had absolutely no sense of chivalry when she saw the corner of Wirbel's eye twitch twice.
Having worked with Wirbel for some time, Ehre knew very well that this was a sign of his anger.
Sigh... Unable to refuse Wirbel, Ehre sighed and began to conjure an ordinary attack spell.
Who made Wirbel the leader here? I have no choice but to follow his orders... Ehre thought. Besides, Wirbel's right. If it's just a broken leg, a cleric's divine arts can easily heal it.
Well... here I go, then?
Ehre gave Fíliya an apologetic look, then unleashed an Ordinary Attack Magic.
With a "BOOM," the Ordinary Attack Magic exploded against Fíliya, kicking up a cloud of dust. When the dust settled, Ehre saw it.
Fíliya had properly blocked her attack with Defensive Magic.
Huh???!!
She looked at Wirbel, her face a mask of confusion.
Wirbel hadn't looked away... but the ring of light that had been wrapped around Fíliya was indeed gone. Which meant...
Fíliya had successfully broken Wirbel's magic... How did she do it?
"Wirbel, what's... Huh??!!"
Driven by curiosity, Ehre was about to ask Wirbel for an explanation when she saw his body suddenly lean toward her, and he grabbed her wrist.
What is he doing?!
She was a little startled and nervous, and her face flushed slightly.
"Don't move... Ehre, help me... I can't see."
Wirbel's voice trembled noticeably as he spoke these words, a sign that he was desperately enduring immense pain.
What?
Before Ehre could even process her shock at Wirbel's words, she saw blood streaming from his eye sockets, as if he were crying tears of blood.
That must hurt so much... Ehre couldn't help but gasp. But as a mage, she wasn't particularly worried about Wirbel's condition.
Because the clerics of this world were truly powerful. Regenerating a severed limb was nothing to them; a legendary cleric could even resurrect the dead from mere bones.
In this test, if Fíliya's leg had been broken by her attack, it could have been healed. So naturally, Wirbel's blindness could be healed as well.
What Ehre was more curious about was how Fíliya had managed to pull off this counter-attack.
She was very curious!
From Wirbel's gruesome state, one could deduce that Fíliya had broken the Restraining Magic by destroying his eyeballs.
As long as the target wasn't captured by his gaze, the magic would naturally be nullified.
What Ehre couldn't figure out was... Fíliya had clearly been suppressed by the Restraining Magic. Logically, she shouldn't have been able to cast any magic at all...
"Hmm, yes. How exactly did I launch an attack when I was already caught... The answer, of course, is..."
As if she had read Ehre's mind, Fíliya patted the dust off her rear, stood up, and began to explain with a composed look.
"The answer, of course, is that my attack was already planted on Little Bel beforehand. So even if I was caught, it didn't stop the previous attack from activating, you see?"
Fíliya said, wagging a finger at Ehre with a playful and cute smile.
"Magic to Control the Senses. The effect is just as it sounds."
"Sigh... Young people are just too young. To think he didn't even notice he'd already been hit. If it were one of the old-timers, a little trick of this level would never have worked."
Uh...
Ehre suddenly felt an urge to retort. Fíliya was clearly from the same class generation as her, while Wirbel had been fighting the Demon Race on the battlefield for years... No matter how you looked at it, Wirbel was the older one!
"I see... You. You cast that spell on me the moment we met, didn't you? Tch."
Although his face was covered in blood and he was enduring the excruciating pain of his eyeballs bursting, Wirbel's demeanor was unusually stable. He was completely calm and hadn't lost his composure.
"Mhm, that's right, Little Bel. The moment I saw you, I had a feeling you'd pull some boring test like this. So I made a few preparations, just in case. If we could have had a friendly chat, I wouldn't have let the magic activate."
"After all, I'm not some kind of demon who enjoys torturing people."
Fíliya said with a light laugh.
"Tch."
Madwoman.
Wirbel couldn't be bothered to say anything more in response to Fíliya's explanation. And though he had been dealt a miserable blow, he didn't harbor any hatred toward her for it.
On the contrary, he was now quite satisfied.
The battlefield was a place that needed to be dominated by madwomen like Fíliya.
With someone like her as a comrade, he could probably slaughter every last one of those Demon Race bastards.
He no longer had any complaints about the Magic Association sending only a single Second-Class Mage.
"Ehre, do me another favor. Help me get to a cleric. As for you, Fíliya, rest here for a bit. We'll eat after my eyes are healed."
With that, Wirbel slowly walked out of the room, supported by Ehre.
Only after the two figures had completely disappeared did Fíliya casually find a place to sit.
Once seated, with nothing else to do, Fíliya began to savor the words Wirbel had left her with before he left.
"'We'... 'we,' he said. Is this a sign that he's accepted me as a comrade? Hmm... The kind of comrade you can bare your heart and soul to?"
"Speaking of which, this is the first time I've ever teamed up with anyone. I wonder if I'll be any good at it... And also..."
"I can finally eat some normal food."
____
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