Time passed.
At some point, Justeaze had lifted her head skyward, hands still clasped near her navel, posture rigid and still.
Rain of blue-white continued to fall from above, sliding down my hair, seeping through my coat to dissolve into mana that filled my pseudo-circuits to the brim. Silver motes flickered along their black outlines as the excess mana bled out.
Behind us, Illyasviel's coughing had subsided, the sound of her rhythmic breathing reaching me even beneath the patter of rain.
Justeaze finally lowered her gaze to meet mine. In her blank crimson eyes, I saw my reflection: hair clinging to my jaw, a solitary drop gathering at my eyelash before falling.
"Very well, I agree. But—" She stepped closer, the bottom of her dress brushing against scattered petals. "On a single condition."
"What is it?" I asked, tilting my head as I watched her halt at a precise distance, standing like a pin set onto a map.
"The Third True Magic..." Her voice maintained its even register. "I want you to reach it and become a Magician."
"Your Third Magic is incomplete," I noted, raising a hand to wipe two drops from her forehead with my thumb. "So, you want me to become a real one?"
"Yes. That is my reason for existing." She didn't react to the touch, no flinch or reaction that indicated anything other than flat indifference.
"Alright." Withdrawing my hand with a nod, I tugged at my tie, slipping it off, and tossed it aside.
Next, I shrugged off my coat, fingers drifting to unbutton my shirt.
Justeaze observed these actions and asked, "What would you have me do?"
"Merge your silver threads into these pseudo-magic circuits you see." Pointing at the black markings on my bare collarbone with my chin, I continued to unbutton the shirt.
"Understood."
...
..
.
Chains wound through a maze of trees, links grinding through trunks and bark alike, laid out like an intricate snare across the foliage.
A single chain swung mid-air between two pines. Medusa stood upon it, the arches of her heeled boots wedged into links, feet scraping against iron.
For a moment, everything was still. Then, the chain beneath her feet quaked. And the forest trembled from its foundations, splinters raining loose as vibrations raced through multiple chains surrounding her, humming into Medusa's frame.
Soil punched upward in the distance. Roots pulverized into dust, erupting sideways as a black-furred silhouette charged straight for her, its rear shedding a dark glitter that vaguely formed into two hind legs.
In three seconds, it was on her, leaving a trench of ruined earth in its wake.
Medusa's left leg jerked forward, her right pulling back, and the chain beneath her pulled taut.
Tension traveled. Links snapped tight in sequence along a zigzagging route toward the dog-whale. A pine's trunk contracted as the chain ground into it, stripping off bark in long curls.
From that pine, the tension leapt to an oak tree through a slack chain. It whipped from loose to rigid in a single breath, iron screaming as the oak's trunk bowed under sudden load.
And from that oak, the route plunged downward. A chain buried beneath soil and roots found the tension next, and earth above split in a violent line, links shredding through dirt and erupting upward, flinging dead leaves and pulverized bark into air.
That final link in the sequence rose at ground level, catching the creature's leading ankle mid-stride.
Iron met fur and cartilage. Their accumulated force from pine to oak to buried earth detonated all at once, and that dog-whale's front leg skidded to a halt, balance shattering.
Momentum drove its massive body forward against its own restrained limb. It then slid, claws carving four parallel trenches through soil, each deepening as it fought for purchase.
Two stakes materialized in Medusa's grip, their chains vanishing deep into the forest behind her.
She bent her knees, calves tensing, forearms crossing in an X over her chest. Her heeled boots dug into links, twisting that chain taut.
Gone.
A sharp whistle pierced through the aftermath of that creature's crash. It only had time to jerk its head up before being greeted by two purple eyes, flecks of sky-blue shimmering within them.
Medusa hung directly above it, eye to eye, her stakes held in reverse.
The dog-whale's front legs scrambled for solid ground, muscles loading for a lunge. Both legs pressed downward, spine locking, weight shifting to its rear—
Stop.
Gray stone spread from its ankles upward. Flesh hardened to mineral. Joints stopped mid-flex, tendons solidifying into rigid structures devoid of elasticity. Gray climbed past its shins, reached its knees, and turned the creature's legs into immovable pillars.
It pulled. One leg strained against ground, then the other. Neither moved. Operating on pure instinct, the beast shifted its weight forward, neck tensing.
Its jaw unhinged.
A curving wall of jagged canines revealed itself, parting further as its throat widened into a passage large enough to swallow ten men side by side.
It didn't stop there. Taking a deep inhale, it pulled air toward that gaping maw. Leaves, soil and splinters, everything loose within fifty meters, was dragged inward by the suction of a mouth intent on swallowing her whole.
Medusa's arms heaved.
Both hands wrenched downward on the stakes, and those chains vanishing into the forest behind her answered.
The landscape screamed.
One tree tore free. Then five. Then twenty. A hundred trunks ripped from soil in a single line, roots blasting skyward in detonations, each one wrapped in a circle of chain threaded around its base.
They rose in a ribbon, a horizontal construct of earth, timber and dangling roots, trailing from Medusa's left hand in a wave that stretched far past sight.
Her right hand pulled. The second chain answered. Another ribbon of a hundred trees tore free on the opposite side, soil cascading from their roots in a waterfall of dirt.
Medusa hung suspended between them. Two ribbons of a hundred trees each hovered behind her, trunks swaying in the air like enormous serpents coiling to strike. Chains linked trunk to trunk in unbroken lines that ran from her fists to the forest's edge.
Her arms swung forward.
Those ribbons followed, whipping overhead in parallel arcs that tore the clouds above in two clean halves, chains singing loud enough to rattle windows on the far side of Fuyuki.
Wind slammed downward under their immense weight, forming two enormous walls that flattened everything to their sides. This area of Mount Enzo sank ten inches deeper.
The creature wailed, just before those ribbons of raw nature punched it straight into the mountain.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Bro! That dog-whale got the whipping of its life. Medusa's idea to deal with a big dog? Bring a fricking hundred meter whip of nature, and let it taste the mountain's soil from deep inside... Hahahaha!
Artoria drills! Medusa whips! Medea Impales!
Hahaha!