It had come!
She had anticipated an attack — she knew it would come — but the reality of it still shattered Fíliya's plans in an instant.
From the moment they began walking toward the Emperor, her vigilance had been cranked to its absolute limit. She had scanned every inch of visible space. Not a single Shadow Warrior had been in sight.
And yet, in the span of a single heartbeat, a storm of slashing blades was already upon her.
Pure speed alone couldn't explain this. Fíliya was certain of one thing: these people had some form of spatial displacement technique.
She had no time to analyze it further. Surviving the first wave of this ambush was all that mattered.
In the same instant, she reached inward and called upon her mana — and found nothing.
It was an experience she had never once encountered in her entire life. Her mana, the very thing she depended on to exist, had sunk like a stone into still water. It no longer answered her. In this moment, she was nothing more than an ordinary person who had never learned a single spell.
This is...
Any other mage, upon discovering they could not access their mana, would have immediately fallen into panic. Fíliya's mind remained utterly calm.
After all, she herself possessed a method to suppress an opponent's magic. It stood to reason that other anti-magic measures existed in this world as well.
Thank goodness she had prepared a few weapons in advance, just in case. No matter what kind of magic suppression this was, surely it couldn't also neutralize weapons she had already crafted beforehand.
That was what she told herself — but in this moment of crisis, the time she wasted failing to summon her mana was already costly.
By the time she drew the twin blades hidden within the lining of her evening gown's skirt, the incoming strikes were beyond the point of clean avoidance.
Fine. Whatever. Face the first wave head-on.
With that thought, Fíliya raised her twin blades and met the onslaught directly.
In that instant, she was profoundly grateful she had been diligent in training with Linie. The vast breadth of martial techniques Linie had inherited from the War God Rivale — to some degree, they had become her own harvest as well.
Fíliya immediately deployed the most powerful technique currently available to her. But she was, at her core, a self-taught amateur who had only come to this path halfway. How could she possibly be a match for the Empire's finest warriors?
She deflected the majority of that first wave — but she could not block it all. And the price she paid was grievous.
Levi severed her right arm clean from the shoulder. Valros, the Dwarf warrior, cut her left arm off at the elbow.
Without mana to suppress her pain receptors, a white-hot agony detonated through Fíliya's body. But who was she, exactly? She was someone who had spent countless hours studying the structures of bodies alongside Solitär. A pain of this magnitude was not enough to extinguish her will to fight.
Seven of the ten slashes had been neutralized — at the cost of both her hands. Three remained, driving straight for Serie's throat.
Serie... what's Serie's situation?
Fíliya had absolutely no capacity to spare for checking on Serie directly, but she could feel it with perfect clarity — Serie's condition was undeniably worse than her own.
Fíliya herself had lost access to her mana, but her mind was still sharp, her body still moving without interference.
Serie, however, was like a marionette with its strings cut. Completely motionless.
There was only one explanation. Serie had almost certainly absorbed the overwhelming brunt of whatever curse had been cast — taking most of it upon herself so Fíliya wouldn't have to.
...Tch. I said to leave everything to me, and you actually believed me, just like that... You literally told me a few days ago that you were a little afraid of me.
Then I can't exactly afford to betray your trust, can I.
Fíliya immediately began calculating how to break the onslaught.
At that very moment, layer upon layer of crystalline barriers wrapped around both her and Serie — three rings deep — each one of exceptional quality, unmistakably the work of a Great Mage's hand.
That made things much clearer.
Frieren, you're quick on the draw, aren't you. Support arrived in an instant... That's genuinely good news.
Fíliya's spirits lifted slightly. Because the fact that Frieren could use magic meant only one thing — the people struck by this magic-sealing curse were solely herself and Serie.
So then... where had this curse originated?
Fíliya felt she already had the answer.
On instinct, she glanced down at the carpet beneath her feet.
Shifting the entire tectonic plate of the country backward by half a step... just to force her and Serie to stand on this precise spot... And it was because the Emperor had come to speak with Serie, forcing Serie — and herself — to rise and walk in this direction. Had that approach vector also been calculated in advance?
Yes... so the truth of this floor tile was...
A magic-sealing domain of immense scale, compressed down to the size of a single tile.
Small wonder — this was an organization that had poured every ounce of passion and energy in their lives into the extermination of mages. Of course they had actually managed to develop something like this.
"The more constraints placed upon a magic, the more explosive its effect upon successful activation."
A theorem derived by the Great Mage Flamme herself.
Compress a massive anti-magic domain down to the area of a single floor tile. Lure the enemy onto it through misdirection and forced displacement. The result: even a god's mana can be sealed.
By cutting off all mana resonance entirely — was that why none of the countless divine blessings layered on Serie's body had activated?
Incredible. These people were truly incredible.
Arrogance truly deserved its title as the foremost of all sins. Because she had slipped away so effortlessly from their last encirclement, she had dismissed them as nothing special... She had eaten a serious loss today due to that arrogance — lost both her arms, and now found herself in this dire position.
But... so what?
Now that she understood the mechanism, dismantling it was trivially simple. All she needed to do was take Serie and step off this tile. One small leap out — and wouldn't that be the end of it?
...No.
It couldn't be that simple.
Using the fleeting moment Frieren's barriers had bought her, Fíliya observed Serie's condition more carefully.
No good. Before she could shove Serie clear of the tile, those three remaining strikes would land first.
The moment they saw both of her arms severed, the three attackers had clearly written her off. They had redirected their full focus onto Serie herself.
Valros's attack was successfully blocked by Frieren's defensive barrier. But the other two strikes cut straight through it.
This baffled Fíliya deeply. The barrier hadn't shattered the way one does when struck by a physical blow — fracturing with cracks before exploding outward.
Instead, it had been sliced open with a perfectly clean, surgical cut.
Two people had accomplished this feat. The first was Fres, Captain of the Magical Special Operations Unit. The second was Levi, Commander of the Shadow Warriors.
Both had cut through the magical barrier directly — but the nature of how they did it was subtly different.
Fres's mana itself appeared to be a form of anti-magic, allowing her to ignore the barrier's existence entirely.
Levi, on the other hand — the answer lay in the sword in his hand.
Its blade was a deep, lightless black from tip to hilt. Simply looking at it inspired a feeling of dread.
Given that it had effortlessly cleaved through a magical barrier... that had to be a Magic-Breaking Sword, didn't it?
Tch. They came almost too prepared.
____
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