Geehrt immediately went to work. He took on the duties of the vanguard and engaged the four remaining demon warriors head-on, while Kanone supported him from the back lines by firing her bombardment spells toward the enemy mages.
The demon vanguards who were now fighting against Geehrt were left in a state of total shock.
They did not expect that the weakest-looking and most unassuming person within the trio would be the one to so easily dismantle their forces.
They knew their fallen comrades were capable warriors with mana capacities equal to their own, yet this human boy was cutting them down with terrifying efficiency.
As the vanguards tried to coordinate their attacks to kill Geehrt, he simply weaved through their strikes, slowly observing everything that was happening on the wider battlefield.
His eyes darted past his immediate opponents, and he realized that Frase, his grandmother, was slowly losing her advantage over the Demon General.
Schorner was fighting like a maniac and a calm soldier at the same time. His fighting style was both wild and calculated, a paradoxical mix that was difficult to predict.
He was not fighting against Frase's technique as a mage, for she was incredibly skilled in magical warfare. Instead, he was fighting as a brawler with mage-like precision.
Schorner activated his main ability. A massive, compass-like mana signature appeared on the ground, covering the entire area where he and Frase were dueling.
From what Geehrt could see with his Six Eyes, this was not merely a decoration. It was a detection domain.
Schorner was using it to pinpoint the exact fluctuations in Frase's mana signature.
Every time she prepared a spell, he would send a precise shockwave to deplete the mass of her magic before it fully formed, slowly forcing Frase to spend more and more mana just to maintain her defensive shielding.
'I know Grandmother has also noticed this, but she is being pressed too hard to counter it,' Geehrt thought.
He ducked his head just as a massive axe cleaved the air where his neck had been a fraction of a second prior.
Geehrt used this movement to his advantage. He stepped into the guard of the demon that had just attacked him and slashed upward.
His blade struck the open torso of the creature, cutting the demon in half and killing it in an instant.
The remaining demons looked at Geehrt with heightened caution. They realized that victory was impossible, and they collectively decided to initiate a retreat.
However, Geehrt noticed the shift in their posture before they even took a step back.
He activated a specific spell.
Suddenly, Geehrt's perception of time began to slow down. The world turned sluggish. In his vision, a spectral blue-colored figure appeared, moving toward the demons in the most optimal trajectory possible.
In this vision, the blue figure cut them all down in the next moment.
Then, Geehrt's perception slowly returned to normal speed. He surrendered his body to the spell, moving in the same path as the blue figure.
It was as if the movement had been pre-rendered for him.
In the next second, Geehrt moved with blinding speed, following the blue trail. He decapitated every single demon vanguard in a singular, fluid motion.
The demons in the back, who got distracted by the sudden blur of Geehrt's approach, were caught completely off guard.
They were immediately struck and disintegrated by the multiple Zoltraak spells that Kanone had timed perfectly to coincide with Geehrt's assault.
When the battle finished, Geehrt smiled. The spell he had worked on so hard with his clones was a resounding success.
It was quickly becoming one of Geehrt's favorite spells. In reality, it was a highly modified version of Folk Magic.
Originally, the spell was designed merely to make a picture dance, which was technically the fundamental principle of how a movie worked.
The original Folk Magic allowed the user to make still photos move at a rate of twenty-four to thirty frames per second.
When Geehrt first read about this obscure magic in a grimoire, the very first thing that came into his mind was to try to recreate the Projection Sorcery of the Zenin Clan from his previous life's memories.
That technique allowed Naoya and his father, Naobito Zenin, to move at a rate of twenty-four frames in a single second.
However, unlike the original Projection Sorcery, Geehrt had modified the conditions.
In the original version, if the user or the person they touched failed to follow the twenty-four frames per second rule, they would freeze in place for one second. Geehrt could not replicate that "freezing" penalty on his enemies yet.
Geehrt's figure followed the blue line, which signified the mana spent on the predetermined track he had visualized.
Unlike the Projection Sorcery of the Zenin, if Geehrt failed to follow the blue mana trail, he would not freeze.
He would simply stumble and suffer the consequences of being out of position. But with his Six Eyes, he never failed to follow the track.
When Kanone finished her battle, she and Geehrt immediately turned their attention to the main threat.
They both fired beams of Zoltraak toward the towering figure of Schorner, assisting Frase who was beginning to tire.
Geehrt did not stay back. He rushed forward, acting as the vanguard for the pseudo-party formed between the three of them.
Geehrt intercepted the demon. When he blocked one of the punches that Schorner had thrown, Geehrt felt the overwhelming strength and the destructive vibration that the General's fists carried. It was like being hit by an earthquake.
Schorner roared and sent out another omnidirectional blast of shockwaves toward the three mages.
Geehrt reacted instantly, using another modified spell.
This time, however, it was not as complicated as the Projection Sorcery. It was just a scientific application of a simple wind spell he had learned from Frase.
Geehrt manipulated the air pressure and created an entire dome of vacuum around Schorner and himself.
It was an incredibly simple concept to understand but difficult to execute. By removing the air, Geehrt directly limited the damage output of Schorner's shockwaves.
A shockwave was merely a vibration moving through a medium, usually air. Inside the vacuum dome, no waves could travel. The sound and the force were nullified instantly.
While the demon was confused by the sudden silence and lack of impact from his attack, Geehrt fired a point-blank Zoltraak toward Schorner as a way to push the offensive.
Frase and Kanone also started throwing their heavy spells toward Schorner from outside the vacuum zone. This divided the attention of the Demon General between the three attackers, and for the first time, panic began to set in.
'I need to escape,' Schorner thought.
His mind was filled with this singular idea. He knew that he would die if he continued to stay here against three high-level mages. He moved his eyes frantically, looking for the most viable escape route to the forest.
But then, Schorner felt a sudden, cold sensation.
He stared in front of him, his eyes widening in disbelief. He looked down, only to see that Geehrt had his arm directly passing through his chest.
"How?" Schorner asked, blood leaking from his mouth.
He realized that it was much too late for answers. He was going to die now. Geehrt had bypassed his tough exterior defense not with brute force, but by vibrating his hand.
Geehrt was destroying the demon's heart with his own spell, mimicking the shockwave generation that Schorner had been using all this time to phase his hand through the demon's flesh.
"I do not owe you any explanation," Geehrt said coldly.
He ripped his arm back, pulling a spray of black blood with it. In the same motion, he swung his sword and cut off the head of Schorner to ensure that the General was truly dead.
Schorner's eyes looked at Geehrt's figure one last time, filled with confusion and fear. Slowly, the massive body began to dissipate back into mana particles.
Geehrt stood amidst the glowing dust, inhaling deeply. He absorbed more than fifty percent of Schorner's dense mana.
As he absorbed more, his absorption capacity seemed to stretch, becoming larger and more efficient.
The village fell silent, save for the wind.
"How did you move that fast earlier? I did not see or even feel you use the Jilwer spell," Frase asked.
She turned toward her grandson, her eyes narrowing slightly in analytical curiosity. She had not felt the specific mana signature associated with the standard imperial movement magic.
Geehrt just smiled toward Frase. He knew she understood that a mage had their secrets, and seeing his expression, she decided not to push the topic further. They had won, and that was what mattered.