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Chapter 331

Seething with anger at the Romel family’s foolish attempt to capture Hadiya before reaching the ritual site, Earthima led the group, urging her camel forward. She reassured herself that leaving Lenia behind to cover their retreat posed no risk, considering the immense combat abilities and spiritual prowess she had witnessed in Lenia over the past few days. Earthima wielded her spirit blade, Soreiga, mercilessly against the assassins hidden in the sand.

「Out of the way! This Earthima is not human enough to hold back in this situation!」

Riding atop her camel racing through the desert, Earthima channeled her will through the handle to the tip of Soreiga, synchronizing with the spiritual power residing in the blade.

Crafted from high-purity spirit stones and true silver by the nation’s top blacksmiths and blessed by numerous spirits, Soreiga was among the finest weapons in Shandia. Earthima, being one of the few capable of fully harnessing its power, proved to be an unfortunate enemy for the Romel assassins, second only to Lenia.

「Take this! Sand Blade Wind Fang!」

As Earthima infused her spirit power and incantation into Soreiga, the spirit energy sealed within the blade was released, exerting a powerful influence on the surrounding spirits.

As Earthima raised Soreiga’s tip and swung it down forcefully, the resulting sword pressure struck the desert. Simultaneously, wind spirits dispersed the sword pressure in all directions, transforming it into countless wind fangs, while sand spirits created innumerable sand blades.

Notably, every attack from Sand Blade Wind Fang, directed by Earthima’s will, avoided Hadiya, Zebe, and the Maffa clan’s guards. This large-scale attack, capable of distinguishing friend from foe, featured blades and fangs with the sharpness and hardness of steel, posing an extreme challenge to defend against without superior physical and magical defenses.

The proof lay in the wounded assassins—those hiding behind mirages, buried in sand, or riding in the sky on kites or flying creatures—all revealed by Sand Blade Wind Fang’s impact.

Every single one of them had suffered injuries, severe or not. Not one had escaped unscathed. Those who crouched bleeding from limbs or abdomen were ignored not only by Earthima but also by Zebe and the guards, as they prioritized escaping from this place and reaching the ritual site.

「Wind and sand, restrain these intruders!」

Hadiya quickly beseeched the spirits to restrain the assassins, who were still struggling to attack despite their injuries.

「Hmm, your manipulation of multiple spirits is remarkably smooth. Your growth in this short period might even surpass Hadiya’s. Tch, perhaps I should have trained her more rigorously.」

Seeing Lenia’s confident demeanor as she brushed back her hood, Shija realized his attacks were ineffective. He decided to exploit her reliance on telekinesis, believing it required intense focus and sustained concentration, which might provide an opening.

(There’s too little information about this Telekinesis, so I couldn’t investigate it properly, but it’s certain that it requires even stricter concentration and maintenance of the spell formula than spirit magic. There’s a possibility she’s set up the spell formula to activate automatically even if she loses consciousness, but that’s probably the weak point to exploit first.)

Telekinesis is a type of magic developed in an attempt to recreate psychic abilities through magic. Especially the one that Leania favors is the kind that immediately cancels if the caster’s consciousness isn’t maintained, so Shija’s thinking was more effective than he thought.

That is if one could overlook the fact that the opponent was Lenia.

Lenia’s cold eyes caught sight of Shija flying through the sky on his sand carpet, kicking up sand and disturbing the air. At that moment, a chill ran through Shija’s entire body. The fact that just being looked at could cause such fear and chills almost made Shija let out a dry laugh.

(It’s no use. There’s no way I can create an opening no matter how hard I try. In that case…)

The next moment, Shija’s sand carpet was shattered as if struck by the invisible hand of a giant demon god. Amidst the scattering of countless sand particles, Shija quickly regained control of the sand, laying it under his shoes to create improvised flying shoes.

If he had just allowed himself to fall with gravity, Leania would have either crushed his head or torn his body apart.

「Guh!!!」

Spitting out an inarticulate scream and curse, Shija dashed through the air. There was no sign of pain in his bones or internal organs. But realizing that she wasn’t even giving him time to think, Shija curled his lips in a snarl, using anger as a catalyst.

「Now this is a fight, you little brat!」

「Who are you calling a brat? you pathetic weakling. You obedient dog of the clan. Don’t waste my time with your degraded state, content with the taste of the food you’re given and the comfort of your bed.」

As Lenia pointed her finger at the rapidly moving Shija, each flick of her finger released powerful, invisible telekinetic bullets, detectable only by Shija’s enhanced senses and sand detection field.
Each time Leania flicked her finger, a psychokinetic bullet compressed with terrifying power was fired. Even if an average magician squeezed out all their magical power, it wouldn’t match a single one of these psychokinetic bullets.
「Yellow Sand Wall!」

Shija raised both hands from bottom to top, uttering words of power to activate spirit magic in place of an incantation. A thick defensive wall of yellow-tinted sand formed in front of Shija.

While it could block cannonballs used in fortress attacks, it couldn’t withstand Leania’s psychokinetic bullets for even a second. For Shija, that was enough time to escape from the line of fire.

「Damn it, you monster! Do whatever you want!」

Rapidly descending towards the desert floor, Shija dispelled his sand shoes just before impact and landed on his feet. Placing both hands on the sand, he called out to the spirits lurking in the surrounding area.

「Dry up at the bottom of the sand!」
Since the time he had been lying in wait, Shija had been carefully and secretly interfering, placing the surrounding desert under his control to a certain depth.

Centered on Leania’s feet, the desert suddenly caved in like a mortar, creating an impromptu antlion trap. The sand swirled at a terrifying speed, attempting to engulf and sweep away Leania. Furthermore, sand from outside the vortex burst forth from all directions, covering Leania’s head and then falling down.

Either to kill Leania by sinking her to the bottom of the sand, or to crush her by dropping the sand from above.

「Spirits of wind, water, and fire! Give me all your power to kill that damned brat! This is the biggest request of my life!」

As Leania was about to be crushed by sand from above and below, Shija launched a merciless follow-up attack. Oxygen was rapidly depleted around Leania, while the sand quickly heated up, turning into red-hot sand.

This was Shija’s ultimate attack, prepared to make Leania experience either crushing, suffocation, or burning to death, or perhaps all of them. With a thunderous roar, the sand canopy fell, completely enveloping Leania.

Both the sand from above and below rotated at high speed, creating a vortex that would shatter flesh and bone into countless pieces if touched carelessly. The heat and friction of the red-hot sand caused flames to occur, eventually creating a giant flame tornado directly above the vortex.

「How’s that? Your face, your heart, no, all your bones and flesh, without a trace…!?」

Shija’s face broke into a smile of elation as he became certain of victory, but as if waiting for that moment, the flame tornado exploded from within, scattering in all directions, and the sand vortex stopped moving, not a single grain stirring.

Shija’s voice still reached the spirits, and the spirits’ voices still reached Shija. Nevertheless, neither the sand nor the wind, nothing moved as Shija willed. A power even greater than the spirits had completely fixed and dominated the surrounding sand.

Shija’s smile quickly distorted, and as cold sweat dampened his cheeks, he watched the enormous amount of sand rising before his eyes and put his despair into words.

「A dominion surpassing the spirits? No, are you forcibly suppressing the spirits!? You’re truly a monster beyond comprehension!」

Due to Leania’s extraordinary thought magic, all the sand that Shija had turned into an antlion trap at her feet, as well as the sand that had covered her from above, was now being lifted high into the sky.

From within the rising sand, Leania appeared without a scratch, along with her motionless camel. Leania had only her right hand extended towards the sky, and it seemed that the movement of her right hand was synchronized with the sand lifted high above.

「Romel Shija, the determination and effort you’ve put in to improve your abilities this much in just a few days is somewhat impressive. Well, it’s completely useless against me, not even a drop or a dew’s worth of effectiveness, and it was all in vain and futile, but I’ll at least acknowledge that much.」

To Shija, this was a straightforward and honest opinion without any pretense, which made it all the more humiliating for Shija. Biting his lip until it bled, Shija’s eyes burned with hatred that could be said to rival the flames of hell.

But there was a cruel difference in power between the two, too great a gap in class, and it was impossible for Shija to satisfy his hatred.

「Now, I won’t kill you, but I won’t save you either. Try to survive without using the spirits.」

Leania coldly told Shija with a hint of mockery, then swung her right hand down. In sync with her movement, sand that filled Shija’s entire field of vision came crashing down like a tsunami.

Engulfed by the sand tsunami moved by Leania’s psychokinesis, which even the spirits couldn’t resist, Shija didn’t even have time to utter a death cry.

The results of her training as a spirit mage, honed alongside Earthima while under Leania’s intense pressure for just a few days, were evident. The winds and sand around the assassins crawling on the sand began to swirl, taking the form of chains, handcuffs, and shackles, binding the limbs of the assassins.

They weren’t completely immobilized and could still move their arms and legs to some extent, but Hadiya’s influence over the spirits was greater, and the restrained assassins seemed unable to use spirit magic.

Hadiya breathed a sigh of relief as the spirits accurately understood her will and acted as she had intended. She turned her gaze back towards the ritual site.

Her profile showed not a trace of worry for Leania but rather the determination to do what she must for her own future. Unbeknownst to her, Zebe, observing her profile, was once again impressed by Earthima’s abilities while also reassessing Hadiya’s skills as a spirit mage.

(Sigh, this is troublesome. Even if this incident is resolved with the gifted child being returned alive, if Lady Earthima and Lady Hadiya leave the country with Leania as she wishes, losing such talented individuals would be quite a blow to us.)

As the future leader of the Maffa clan and a key figure in Shandia’s governance, Zebe was troubled by the prospect of losing these exceptionally talented spirit users. While Earthima and Hadiya lacked political and administrative acumen, their combat abilities and compatibility with spirits offered countless potential uses. Utilizing their power effectively was a matter for the rulers to decide.

There were plenty of fields outside of combat where they, who could hear the voices of spirits well and convey their own voices effectively, could excel.

Zebe couldn’t suppress a sigh as she watched Earthima slice apart a newly emerged group of large sand sharks, which had been lurking deep in the desert and now burst through the sand sea to attack with a single swing of Soreiga and the accompanying wind blades.

「It usually takes five soldiers to bring down a single sand shark that size, let alone a coordinated group of them. How many do you think could handle that kind of ambush with just one swing?」

Ah, shark fins are delicious when dried and then simmered, Zebe thought incongruously in the corner of her mind, despite being in the midst of an assassin attack. Well, dried sand shark fins were indeed an important export item for Shandia.

While Zebe was lamenting, Shija, who had reappeared before Leania after what felt like an eternity, was ready to demonstrate the results of his intense, albeit short, training. His attitude changed from exasperation at Leania’s rudeness to a belligerent yet joyful smile.

「You know, I’ve been wondering why an outsider like you would stick your nose so far into our internal affairs. Wouldn’t it be better if you just did some sightseeing, bought some souvenirs, and quickly went back to your country?」

「Why should I care? I’ve acted as I please since coming to this country. If the results are bitter for you, it’s either by chance or the consequences of your actions.」

「Yeah, I get that. It’s not so much about me personally, but considering what the bigwigs of this country have done, it’s not surprising that the stench they’ve been covering up can no longer be contained.」

「Calling Hadiya the stench, are you?」

「More like the custom of the Gifted Child, I’d say? It’s ridiculously outdated for a country to still need to offer sacrifices to survive. None of the neighboring countries continue such practices nowadays. Well, I suppose there must be some benefits for it to have continued until today.」

「You sound like you’ve got quite a lot of pent-up complaints from having to dirty your hands with blood on orders from those who sit high and mighty on their chairs. But I have no interest in listening to your grumbling.」

「I’m not really talking because I want you to listen. I just felt a bit sentimental, thinking this might be the last time we exchanged words, hateful as you are.」

Around Lenia and Shija, an eerie silence fell. Contrary to Shija’s calm demeanor, his surging magical power affected the nearby spirits, causing them to freeze in place, forgetting even to move.

An extreme tension, like a taut string, filled the surroundings, but Leania’s face remained impassive.

「You lost to me completely, yet you’re still having that confidence.」

「That’s because I’ve retrained myself since then. Now, let’s make you regret coming to this country in your final moments! Take this, 『Sand Bullet Storm』!」

As Shija raised his left arm, the sand around Lenia coalesced into small, human finger-sized bullets, about two hundred in number, and fired at Lenia with bullet-like speed.

As Leania activated her psychokinetic magic to lightly brush away the “Sand Bullet Storm” that was swarming at her with speed rivaling real bullets, Shija was already no longer there. Riding on a rapidly moving sand carpet, he took a position above Leania’s head, and black sand flew out from his sleeve, instantly forming into a giant spear.

This was one of Shija’s specialties – not just iron sand but several types of metals and spirit stones processed into powder, which he could freely manipulate by influencing spirits. The spear formed by sand spirits was imbued with intense heat by fire spirits, causing it to glow red-hot in an instant.

The spear, maintaining its hardness even in the flesh-carbonizing heat, was further accelerated by wind spirits. It had enough power to pierce the chest of a full-grown dragon, but unfortunately, its opponent was an anomaly beyond the scale of even dragon kings or emperors.