Chapter 116 Strongest Sage, Wait—and—See
Chapter 116 Strongest Sage, Wait-and-See
"…I see. Over there huh."
Right after the demon went outside the capital's vicinity.
I observed the run-away demon's mana reaction.
Fundamentally speaking, demons do not form a group.
14 of them went to attack Second Academy, but that sort of unity is rare.
However, it's not unusual for demons to temporarily work together and build a small base.
Such situation almost happened in Ace Kingdom before I got here after all.
Thus, I've latched a magic on the demon that makes it emit a special kind of mana to tell me its location.
Of course, I didn't ask for the demon's consent.
From now on, that demon will have to work for me, to go around demon's bases in various places and tell me their locations.
The demon itself is probably going to report to other demons about my and Second Academy's menace anyway.
--Leaving that aside, the problem now is the monster outbreak magic those demons left behind.
It's most likely a magic that interferes the peculiar mana released by dead demons to cause a huge outbreak of monsters… Looks like they made a mistake constructing it, the part for stabilizing the magic is damaged.
The success rate of summoning monsters with this composition is only 0.7% at best.
Nothing will be happening at more than 99% probability.
The problem is the remaining 0.3%.
The magic circle is broken just right for it to operate the surrounding mana, creating a possibility of it causing an unusual phenomenon instead of just summoning monsters.
I waited here to look after the magic until it disappeared while thinking that nothing would have happened anyway, however… this pattern, it seems we're quite unlucky--no, quite lucky.
The incomplete magic turned into something weird, as it combined the mana of demons that died this time with the monster outbreak magic (the one Ashril used right before his death.)
If this is left alone, a large scale monster summoning will happen near the capital.
After watching that far, I went back to the Second Academy.
""Mathi-kun!""
Ruli, Alma and Iris were waiting for me in front of the school's gate.
It appears they managed to stabilize the barrier while I was absent.
I need to give a hand when the barrier is getting activated for real so they're probably standing by now.
I don't see many students… Judging from their mana reaction, apparently they've gathered inside the school.
Wonder if they're having a celebration party.
"You told us that you had a work to do… What happened!?"
"Ah. I just went to beat up some demon. And the work refers to the other demon."
I took out the horn of the demon I killed earlier from Storage magic while answering Ruli.
"Y-you said it like you just went shopping… By work, do you mean that horn?"
"Nope, that's from another demon. I latched a magic on the other one so I let it escape on purpose."
I search the reaction from the demon back then once again as I said that.
Apparently the demon is still in the middle of its flight toward a neighboring kingdom.
The magic I latched on it is working well.
"Letting a demon escape!?"
"Yeah. I just threatened it a little."
"T-that sounds dreadful… By the way what kind of magic did you put on it?"
I answer Ruli's question.
"One magic is to make detecting the demon easier, and the other one is to remotely explode it."
"E-Explode!?"
"Yeah. Well, it's impossible for Disqualified Crest to remotely control magic in the strictest sense, so it's a type of spell art that will automatically explode when it reacts to a peculiar mana."
That was the most troublesome thing in the fight this time.
With other crests, it would have been over in an instant by simply inserting the magic, but here I had to go to the trouble of binding them.
Disqualified Crest is nice in a frontal combat, but it's not well suited for this kind of petty tricks.
"I-I see… I mean, there's no way Mathias-san would have let a demon escape just like that…"
"Yeah. I can't let them slip for free no matter how weak those demons are."
Leaving them alone to a degree was fine in my past life, but the present time can't seem to afford that.
My traveling speed has slowed down considerably too, so directly beating them will take time.
I cut in to the next topic while thinking that.
"Oh and I have a good news."
"Good news! W-what is it!"
"The scale of monster outbreak that will happen near the capital has been greatly magnified!"
"…G-good news? Err, it sounded like nothing but bad news to me though…"
"Or rather, it's a catastrophe…"
Bad news? Catastrophe?
What are they saying.
Monsters that are just right strength-wise will appear in droves, and they're going to be our experience points.
Clearly, that's a good news.