Thanks to Epicus, I felled one of the Three with ease.

I almost felt sorry for having suspected—even for a moment—that he’d stab me in the back.

“They’re coming!”

“It’s Unutus!”

The soldiers’ screams rang out.

I tore my attention away from Trinios and Epicus.

The eldest of the Three came running through the sky.

“Loose! Don’t let him stay aloft!”

Th-th-thrum!

With Joi’s bellow, the bio-radar filled with countless ballista bolts.

Not a single bolt reached Unutus.

Vvmmm!

A powerful Magnetic Field stopped the already airborne bolts in place.

Tzzzzzt!

Like fish twitching, the bolts pivoted mid-air and came knifing down into our deck.

Thrum-thud!

“Aaaagh!”

Nearly a hundred soldiers tumbled across the planks.

Damn it.

“I had no personal feelings. Until just now.”

From a height level with the masthead, Unutus looked down on us and spat the words.

His eyes were icy, and the purple cloak—clearly a magi-device—glowed with a strange light.

“I did have feelings. From the start.”

I answered, not yielding a single line.

Rrrolll!

Kicking off the deck, I bounded up to the mast.

With my eye-line shifted, the battlefield spread beneath me.

A hundred-odd sailing ships, over a hundred various transports large and small, and hundreds of swiftboats were tangled in a brawl.

Shouts and thunder boomed from all sides till my ears rang; Blue Knights’ lightning and soldiers’ Sword-Aura flares glittered brighter than any chandelier; life and death crossed and split in scenes so vivid they would etch themselves into memory forever.

“I’ll send you to your brother’s side!”

“I’m your brother too. If you forgot, remember it now.”

“I have never once thought so.”

“I’ll make you beg for blood ties.”

At the pinnacle of the fiercest fighting, I faced the strongest foe.

Krrrumble!

I thrust a hand to the sky and called lightning.

From yesterday’s clash with Trinios I’d learned this much: against purely physical attacks, Magnetic Field is a powerful defense—but it does not block current attacks nearly as well.

Crack-crack-crack!

“Hmph.”

Unutus fanned out iron spikes, bending the path of my Heavenstrike.

From the bio-radar’s distortion I felt the spikes were saturated with massive magnetism.

If he meant to twist a designated strike point, that much Imbuement was the minimum.

And while he poured that much mana into them, an overload was bound to bite for a moment.

Shreee! Shreee! Shreee!

I didn’t even draw a sword; I swung attacks more threatening than any blade.

With my right hand I called lightning from the morning sky; with my left I snapped throw after throw of a dagger spitting electric sparks.

With both legs I kept leaping from mast to mast, hunting Unutus’s blind spots.

“Quick as a rat!”

Unutus unfurled Magnetic Fields in succession.

Crackle, crackle!

My current-laden daggers punched far closer than ballista bolts—but still didn’t draw the Three’s blood.

I wasn’t exactly swimming in leisure either.

Whoom!

A net came flying.

A giant net, the kind the net-throwers use.

“Let’s see how long you can keep up!”

Vvmmm!

Down below, he heaved up nets, spears, swords, arrows, shields—countless chunks of metal—and hurled them.

I had to cancel even as I called lightning and keep crossing between masts.

Thanks to that, I could keep the bastard Unutus pinned in roughly the same spot.

“Sir! We’re ready!”

Down on the deck—so far below it seemed our fight would never touch it—countless cannons trained this way.

A setup my quick-witted adjutant had arranged.

“……!”

“Beg. Little brother—please, just spare me. Like that.”

【Deepening Perk: Area Imbuement】

Kzzzzzzzt!

I threw open Area Imbuement.

Piles pulled like fenceposts screamed in as arrows wreathed in electric fire.

Rykenta’s Blessing of the Wind rode the cannons.

“Ghk!”

Even his enormous Magnetic Field couldn’t completely blunt it.

Thud!

One cannon bolt came straight in.

Unutus thrust both hands forward, hauling on his magnetism, but the cannon bolt ripped his quilted armor to rags and kept going.

Slick!

“Urgh!”

It mashed skin at last—blood showed.

I laughed as I called another bolt.

The feeling was like drawing elastic spider-silk fishing line and hauling a fish from the water.

Exhilarating.

All the more so when victory felt close enough to taste.

Flash!

Another sheet of white lightning fell.

Inside Unutus’s head, rage crossed with fear.

He didn’t kill the youngest by luck.

That lightning just now had nearly hit dead-on.

Ordinary ballista or cannons were nothing before a magnetism-crafter.

Change the trajectory, or reverse it and drive it back down, and you made them kill themselves with their own shot.

But giving those bolts an electric spark changed the situation.

I’d had to burn more mana and focus than expected to block bolts that bit deeper than expected—and then I lacked the mana and focus to shed Heavenstrikes.

Flap!

On top of that, Kyrie was circling Unutus, drawing a little closer each time to a nearer mast.

He saw the two swords at Kyrie’s waist.

One regulation greatsword—the Lightning Longsword—and the other, if he didn’t miss his guess, was even better than that Lightning Longsword.

If not, Kyrie could simply have belted on another Lightning Longsword—so the logic was obvious.

If he Imbues current into that sword and swings, even my magnetism won’t be able to shove it completely away.

A common soldier’s blade could be kept from touching you at all—that was outside the discussion.

But a Blue Knight’s blade swung with current Imbuement was a different story.

At this rate I’m pushed.

For his younger brother’s revenge, he cooled his boiling blood.

Shave him down slowly.

He spotted the adjutant commanding the cannon crews.

“Don’t waste ballista bolts! Against a quantum-grade magnetism-crafter, you’ll only be topping up his ammunition!”

Brown hair, yellow eyes; a handsome face both flippant and feral.

He was bounding from one of Kyrie’s ships to another, relaying orders.

At best, Navigator-rank!

From that movement, Unutus read Joi’s level.

For the heavy charge he held on this field, his body was far too frail.

Whoosh!

[“Follow me!”]

Unutus burst a Lion’s Roar at the cluster of Knights, Navigators, and Retainers who were just about to leap from their ship to Kyrie’s.

Thunk!

Then, riding Magnetic Flight, he sprinted through the sky straight for Joi.

“Coward!”

Kyrie hurled a dagger in urgent haste, but Unutus raced faster still and dove.

“Uwaaa!”

Crash!

Like a waterside raptor, Unutus slammed into Joi and landed.

From the recent fighting, that ship’s deck was already cracked in places.

Krack-krack!

Joi and Unutus, locked together, dropped through below the deck.

The space between cabin and corridor.

“Ghk!”

Joi couldn’t endure that battering-ram blow and half lost consciousness.

I… have to… focus.

He’d stripped off his magi-device plate cuirass to prep for a water-entry scenario and wore only a worn quilted coat beneath; that made it worse.

Zzzzt!

Under the colossal shock, the quilted coat and the bandages wrapped below it tore all at once as if they’d burst.

“Hm?”

Seeing that, Unutus narrowed his eyes.

No way.

It wasn’t a man’s body.

“Sir Unutus.”

“Sir Unutus.”

A few of the Three’s Knights, Navigators, and Retainers clattered down below deck after him.

“Take this one alive. Under no circumstances kill her.”

“Yes!”

“Kyrie—too lofty to show any interest, acting all high and pure—had this taste?”

A greasy smile crept across Unutus’s whole face.

In the Empire of Stars, cross-dressing in either direction was a grave crime.

Commission under false gender went without saying.

And Kyrie and Andromeda were just about to present Erica at the Manseong Church Cathedral to take her testimony.

If Kyrie—openly flouting church law—had brought in a witness like this, how much weight would that witness’s words carry?

“Unutus!”

Whoosh!

Kyrie dropped straight down through the hole in the deck.

His cloak, filled with the Blessing of Glide, billowed wide; electric flame licked his single eye like a torch; the Lightning Longsword in his hand glowed white-hot.

But Unutus was the one smiling, and Kyrie was the one grimacing.

“Have you enjoyed yourself to the fullest?”

“A quantum-grade Blue Knight taking a hostage? Disembowel yourself.”

“Call her a witness. One who’ll proclaim your lust and greed to the whole world!”

Kyrie looked at Joi.

A witness?

Through the torn quilted coat, a curve showed.

Bang!

One of the Three’s Knights smashed through the wall of the lower deck and poked his head through.

He hailed one of the small boats that ferried between ship and ship and boarded with Joi.

Leaving the fierce fighting, they rowed hard away, back behind the Three’s lines.

“Since we’d heard nothing, I thought you were a eunuch—hiding a woman with a body like that? Why didn’t you introduce her and say you’d made a nephew?”

Unutus dripped his jeer.

Crackle, crackle!

Black grains swarmed around him.

Grains soaked as if they’d just risen from the riverbed.

Black sand-iron?

Kyrie recognized it.

Tzzzzzt!

A black whirlwind wrapped Unutus’s body.

Unwinding long, the whirlwind surged for Kyrie.

Krack-krack!

It tore a timber pillar in the middle like paper.

It was a magnetism Authority—Sand-Iron Blades.

“Damn!”

The instant Kyrie saw that amorphous metallic tide, he stabbed the Lightning Longsword into the floor and drew the Star-Sword.

“A holy-sword grade?!”

Unutus recognized that blade too.

In its translucent blade, shards of the Dreaming Thunder Star were set like the Big Dipper, spewing current.

Boom!

The Sand-Iron Blades collapsed in a rush.

Unutus’s eye-corners dropped at roughly the same rate.

Ripped.

Stay calm.

In less than a second I repeated those words in my head a hundred times.

The Sand-Iron Blades were threatening, yes, but before this Star-Sword they didn’t measure up.

The voltage I ran, amplified through this blade, was much higher than any magnetism he could shape; mere contact severed the Sand-Iron Blades.

What I had to worry about now was how to get Joi back.

Fortunately she was still within bio-radar range.

With sailing ships smashing each other on all sides, they hadn’t even gotten a hundred meters.

For now, Lion’s Roar was not worth considering.

The chance that common soldiers could rescue Joi from those Knights and Navigators was zero.

Even if a friendly Blue Knight stepped up, it would only change which enemy held leverage over my weakness.

Heavenstrike was out as well.

It would kill the Knights—but it would kill Joi too.

I wouldn’t have rumors that I kept a cross-dressed female adjutant to enjoy every church-forbidden act—but I would lose a loyal adjutant who was also capable.

“You! You plundered Spiramentaon’s vault!”

“Gracus gave it to me!”

“Lies! No Governor draws that sword in a civil war!”

Unutus roared and whipped the Sand-Iron Blades.

Krack-krack!

Like the tentacles of a giant squid, the blades coiled, slicing walls and pillars, gouging the floor.

Boards crashed down above my head; beside a bent wall, crates big and small tumbled.

Because of the Star-Sword, a direct strike at me was awkward—so he meant to attack indirectly.

If I charged recklessly and those Sand-Iron Blades scraped in from behind, I’d have no way to block; I couldn’t simply go for his neck.

Ssssshhhh!

Four Sand-Iron Blades rushed from front, back, left, and right.

I cut the two on my right with the Star-Sword, and meant to blast the two on my left with a radiation of current at maximum output.

If high-voltage current could block it, it didn’t matter whether I blocked with a hand or with a sword.

Psh-sh-sh!

The blade popped the Sand-Iron to shreds at once, and the current radiation slowed and sifted the rest in mid-air.

But I couldn’t scatter them completely; the Sand-Iron kept writhing, surging to rush me again.

“Lies?”

By reflex I unfurled Imbuement.

Kzzzt!

I tried to seize control over the sand-iron.

“Then try making it that way!”

Since I couldn’t use magnetism-craft, the Sand-Iron Blades didn’t wind themselves around my hand.

But I could shove out Unutus’s current flowing through the sand-iron.

The grains of iron sand pattered down to the floor.

Imbuement?

That was when a way to pull Joi free came to me.

Area Imbuement…!

Chapter 105

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