Chapter 19: The Pseudo-World’s Attack
Mizuha, having fled from the bath, apparently escaped from the castle as well in her haste.
Since she hadn’t returned by evening, I went out to search for her in the village.
This Emilie Village, while it might look like a town compared to a truly rural village, feels like a village when compared to a metropolis like the Royal Capital. It’s a place of subtle scale.
Surrounded by fields, its main produce is grains like wheat. There are many vegetable farmers, and livestock farming is also quite extensive. There are also rapeseed fields, and some people run apiaries to collect honey from the flowers.
Mizuha once said that “the soil is fertile,” and seeing this landscape brimming with vitality, I can feel it too, even without any knowledge of agriculture… or so it feels.
I pass through this idyllic scenery and enter the village. I expected to see wooden houses typical of the countryside, but instead, I’m greeted by paved stone paths and brick houses. Anyone visiting this village for the first time would likely think, “It’s more developed than I expected.”
The village isn’t that large in area.
However, it has all the necessary shops for daily life, including restaurants, bars, general stores, clothing stores, a blacksmith, and a hospital, so there’s no need to wait for traveling merchants to come by for shopping.
It’s a rural place, but one that has a touch of the city. That’s Emilie Village.
I walk along the stone pavement of Emilie Village, searching for Mizuha.
By the way, I went to the Adventurer’s Guild first, but she apparently hadn’t come today.
“She couldn’t have run off to some faraway place, right? Is she maybe pigging out somewhere?”
For the past hundred years, Mizuha had a hobby of binge eating. Remembering that, I peeked into the street lined with stalls. But Mizuha wasn’t there.
I was a little hungry, so I bought a grilled sausage skewer. It’s basically a frankfurter, like back on Earth. It’s crisp and delicious.
“If I walk around with this delicious smell, maybe Mizuha will be lured out?”
I mutter half-jokingly, half-seriously, and walk around aimlessly.
Then.
The moment I entered a park rich in nature, the atmosphere changed completely.
“…What?”
The place is definitely still Emilie Village. I haven’t been teleported to another location. If I look back, the path I just walked on continues unchanged.
Unchanged? Really?
There were shopkeepers at the stalls. There were also customers.
There were birds in the park.
But everyone disappeared. There’s no sign of them anywhere.
“There are no footsteps, no animal sounds… not even a breeze. A deafening silence… Have I been trapped in a pseudo-world…?”
A pseudo-world.
It’s a type of Barrier.
Depending on the caster’s skill, it creates a different world with a diameter of several tens of meters, trapping the target inside.
The more targets there are, the more difficult it becomes, and the pseudo-world easily breaks.
Rather, there are so few users of pseudo-worlds that being able to trap one person for a few minutes is considered mastery. That’s how difficult the magic is.
In other words, if this place I’m in is a pseudo-world, then the opponent is already a master of magic.
“There’s no one here… Am I the only one trapped? Even so, I’ve already walked a hundred meters. It’s wide for a pseudo-world…”
Could they have recreated the entire village? I gasped, but soon after, I hit an invisible wall. The enemy’s Magical Power isn’t infinite, it seems.
In Emilie Village, which is the model for this Barrier, everyday life should be continuing as usual, unrelated to what’s happening here.
Since I was swallowed up in a deserted place, no one might even have noticed that I disappeared.
“The problem is, why did they trap me… Do I have any reason to be hated… I have a mountain of them, don’t I?”
After all, I’ve killed a lot of bandits this past year. It wouldn’t be strange if their remnants or comrades hated me.
“A mountain of reasons to be hated, you’re a hopeless man,”
A voice was heard. At the same time, I felt an enormous Magical Power.
Evasion—no, I can’t avoid it. I can sense from the aura that a wide-range attack is coming.
Magical Power concentrates above my head. Even before it activates, I know it’s a freezing-type attack—but, to this extent! A block of ice with a diameter of ten meters suddenly appears in front of me!
I deploy my dark magic in a cone shape. I fire it at the ice above my head.
I create a hole big enough for one person to fit through and slip into the gap, managing to avoid the attack.
The ice block that fell to the ground shattered on impact, and the fragments immediately disappeared. They didn’t melt. They vanished.
It wasn’t that they froze the moisture in the air and dropped it, but rather, it was a pseudo-substance completely made of Magical Power.
But it’s not an illusion. From the resistance when I pierced it and the impact when it hit the ground, I know it had mass. If it had hit me, I might have died.
There’s no doubt.
The one who trapped me here is aiming for my life.
“Ho. So that’s how you avoided it. You’re quite something. Then, how about this!”
Flames.
Countless arrows of fire rained down, like a storm.
The ice block from before was wide-range, but this is on a completely different level. It’s absolutely impossible to move and avoid it. If I can’t avoid it, then I’ll jump into it myself to minimize the damage.
“Spirits, explode!”
While guarding my feet with Magical Power, I summoned spirits between my shoes and the ground and made them self-destruct. With that momentum, I soared high into the sky.
I broke through the swarm of fire arrows. My vision is still red. But that’s not fire, it’s the red of the sunset. The flames created by the enemy fell to the ground, setting the park’s plants ablaze.
The ice disappeared immediately, but the fire is spreading. It’s not strange. Fire naturally increases in intensity if there are combustibles. Even if the spark created by magic disappears, once it ignites something, it will spread regardless of magic.
There isn’t necessarily a strongest element. But in terms of destroying a wide area with minimal power, the fire element is the best choice.
If I had stayed on the ground, I would have been engulfed in flames.
If that happened, I would have had to allocate Magical Power to defense, and if a follow-up attack had come, it would have been bad.
But that didn’t happen.
I escaped into the sky and can now observe my surroundings with ease.
The enemy’s magic activation is fast. It’s difficult to counter-detect and pinpoint their location.
However, the magic they used was extremely large-scale. Therefore, the traces of Magical Power are significant. Since they used it in quick succession, I can grasp their approximate location.
“There!”
I condense my dark magic.
I fire it like a cannonball, aiming for the church tower.
The church with its beautiful stained glass windows was reduced to a pile of rubble in one blow.
“A terrifying one… To find me in this instant and launch an attack of such power… It’s been decades since I’ve been this chilled to the bone, no?”
A figure appeared in front of me as I landed on the main street. Small. Or rather, young. About the same age as I am now.
Regardless of their actual age, they look like a girl of about ten years old.