“… Isn’t that right?”
Lightly swinging the sword that was on fire, Riley asked. However, no response could be heard from the black space, which only had a cut off arm coming out from it.
“All right. Don’t bother responding…For now that is.”
Riley causally rolled his eyes and looked at Nainiae. With his glance, he gave her a different order. He then cut off another black hand that was coming from behind.
“We might as well talk face to face, so…”
Although it looked like Riley had his feet planted on the ground, his body slid forward. The group who was watching this opened their eyes wide.
‘That is Riley?’
His speed was so incredible that Ryan could barely follow Riley’s afterimages. He thought he knew Riley well, but now, Ryan felt like he had just gotten struck by a hammer on his head. He had a vacant look on his face.
‘This is unbelievable.’
With the group behind him, Riley was cutting off every black hand that was coming toward them and burned them with the white flames. Before he realized, Nainiae came to stand next to Riley through teleportation. Riley muttered toward Nainiae,
“Will it be possible?”
“I won’t know for certain until I try.”
Having noticed Nainiae suddenly appearing next to Riley, Iril rubbed her eyes and checked where Nainiae was standing only a moment ago.
‘W… When?’
She could only figure that Nainiae must have used magic. Iril thought,
‘As I thought… She is a dragon.’
Nainiae was a beautiful girl, but Iril thought Nainiae must be Andal the dragon who she had run into on Andal’s mountain. She gulped and looked at Riley who was with Nainiae.
‘In that case, who is he?’
The boy appeared to be three to four years older than her. He was swinging her grandmother’s sword. Iril’s eyes were gleaming as if she was mesmerized.
‘He could be a dragon, or someone who can handle a dragon?’
Ian also looked surprised, not so different from Ryan or Iril. Ian was blinking his eyes. However…He was not sobbing or seriously agitated.
He looked calm.
He narrowed his wide open eyes and watched Riley’s movements and Nainiae supporting Riley. That’s all he did.
‘Young Master…”
Just like how he wrote in his journal once, just like he expected, speculated… the Young Master of a certain Count family that he served was swing the sword in a way that was more magnificent than Ian had ever expected.
‘Does that one make the total count 20?’
Riley thought about how many black hands he had cut down so far and mumbled.
There were 27 black spaces.
Initially, there was just one black space with an arm. Now, there had increased to 27.
‘I think it was about this much.’
Riley estimated that the one responsible for these black spaces must be running out. Nainiae was supporting Riley from the back by shooting magic to keep the hands in check. Riley signaled Nainiae with his eyes.
‘I’ll try it.’
Nainiae read Riley’s eyes, lightly nodded and swung her right hand.
“Huh?”
Because Nainiae was speaking in Dragon’s language that she had learned from Andal, as Iril watched Nainiae floating several rounds of flames in the air, she opened her eyes big and said,
“That is…”
It wasn’t the flames that made her mutter. It was the black spaces. They were disappearing one after the other.
“It’s done. All 27 of them…”
Nainiae had a serious look on her face. It seemed that she had just used another magic. Nainiae put forth her right arm toward the direction where Riley was looking at and said,
“I gathered them all.”
<… What?>
Having heard Nainiae, the one beyond the black space realized that something was off. He sounded like he was panicking.
“It looks like you never ran into any mage who could do this.”
Nainiae asked the question to the one beyond the space and started to explain what it was that she had just done.
“It’s dimensional distortion.”
Looking at the black spaces that were coming together, she explained that she compiled all black spaces that were scattered about by folding and opening spaces.
“Well, I guess you would not know about it. Magic did not exist in the world that Young Master came from…”
Even in this world where magic did exist, there probably wasn’t any other human mage who could manipulate space.
<You…>
The scattered spaces started to come together as if they were drawn to each other like magnets.