Ch.122Girl – 2

“Why would you seek the scent of your master from me?”

“Answer me. Now.”

The girl’s eyes were completely lifeless. The corners of her mouth turned up slightly, but that smile surely didn’t come from any feeling of joy.

Charlotte knew very well the expression the girl before her was wearing. It was the expression of a woman consumed by jealousy.

She had worn such an expression herself and had seen women with such expressions. Even now, there were two women near Charlotte who didn’t know their place and clung to Charlotte’s husband.

Charlotte didn’t know who this master the girl spoke of was, but considering the fact that this wench could appear without being detected by her tracking magic, she was likely a considerably powerful mage.

For a moment, Charlotte wondered if this deranged girl, like the beast woman and the crazy woman, was referring to someone who should belong to Charlotte as her master, but she quickly dismissed the possibility.

The boy had firmly stated that he had never used soul binding on anyone other than Charlotte, Serena, and Christine.

As a wife, it was only right to completely trust her husband’s words, so she had no intention of doubting them.

Moreover, the same applied to any woman who might have served the boy as a master. He had never once mentioned the existence of such a woman.

Having laid out these deductions, Charlotte could draw only one conclusion: this was a woman who had suffered mental deterioration from excessive exposure to mana.

It was a symptom commonly seen among tower mages until a few decades ago.

A condition where mana infiltrating the brain caused all sorts of fatal effects, making humans experience hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, and distortions of memory.

Among mages, it was called mana addiction, but Charlotte couldn’t care less what weak humans who couldn’t even withstand that called the disease.

At least, unlike in the past, the number of tower mages suffering from mana addiction had dramatically decreased recently.

This was the result of Charlotte killing every mage who showed such symptoms, deeming them useless. Even mages valued their lives, after all.

Considering that this girl was a high-level mage who could ignore detection magic and walk around proudly despite having a greatsword pierced through her heart, it wouldn’t be strange at all if she was experiencing memory distortion due to mana addiction.

Charlotte had seen many mages fall into such a trap.

Mages who, due to the shock of losing someone dear to them, became obsessed with research to save lives, only to have their memories eventually distorted according to their own delusions.

Most likely, this master mage was either a lover or family member who had suddenly died, and the girl was like this due to the shock.

Charlotte made a dismissive gesture as if annoyed.

“Though I have many questions for you, I do not have time to deal with such an insignificant wench. Be grateful for my mercy and rejoice that your life has been spared—”

Charlotte’s words were abruptly cut off. Her left hand was somehow extended forward, and where her finger pointed, a magic circle was dispersing into blue light.

The girl had cast a spell, and Charlotte had dismantled it. A very simple process.

Though the reality was far from simple, given that she had dismantled a magic circle fired instantly without incantation in real-time.

Charlotte glared at the girl with fierce eyes.

“How insolent. Despite the opportunity I gave you, you are a wench who fails to understand her place and acts out.”

“I’m asking you. Why do you smell like my master?”

“Why should I tell you? Did you think I would grace an insolent wench who doesn’t know her place with my voice?”

Hundreds of magic circles appeared in the air. Each of the hundreds of magic circles loaded an equal number of attack spells. The air heated up intensely.

“Why should you? Of course you should. It matters. A lot. You see, I’m feeling extremely uncomfortable right now. There were two other women who smelled like my master besides you. You and those women. Two of them. What do you think this means? He’s mine, my master alone. He should be my flower, my fruit, my harvest alone. But it means there are three insects hovering around that flower. It’s unforgivable. If I had only regained my strength, I would have killed them all. It drives me crazy that I have to just watch this. Why? My master only needs me. I only need my master. Why won’t my master accept our world of two?”

Charlotte tilted her head momentarily at the girl’s incoherent muttering. There was a lot of unnecessary rhetoric, but the core of it was this:

There were two more women besides Charlotte who smelled like her master, and she said she would have killed them all if she had regained her strength, meaning she hadn’t been able to kill those two.

Three including Charlotte. A very familiar number somewhere.

Though she hated to admit it, really hated to admit it.

If that master the girl spoke of was who Charlotte thought it was?

All the clues pointed to only one fact. Charlotte’s brilliant mind instantly reached a certain possibility.

“Then I shall personally kill you. Would that not solve the matter?”

And, just in case what the clues Charlotte had deduced pointed to was actually true, it was right to kill this wench here.

Because it obviously meant that she was referring to Charlotte’s husband as her master with that filthy tongue, speaking as if he belonged to her.

As long as there was even the slightest possibility that her conjecture might be true, there was no reason to let this girl live.

As Charlotte lightly waved her arm, hundreds of spells were fired at once. The spells resonated with each other and struck the target point, causing a massive explosion.

A large crater formed amid the vibrations that shook the surroundings, and a thick cloud of dust settled around where the girl had been.

The faint breeze that blew was insufficient to clear away that thick cloud. The dust slowly settled to the ground.

The detection magic remained quiet, but Charlotte didn’t lower her guard. She already knew one woman who could leap out of smoke with all limbs intact.

There was no reason this one wouldn’t do the same.

“So you’re hiding my master too? Right? Right?”

Her prediction was exactly right. A shockwave burst from within, blowing away all the dust clouds and revealing the girl standing without even a trace of soot.

Charlotte could see the turbid-colored mana surrounding her body. It was neither blue, nor red, not even black, but closest to gray.

The girl kicked off the ground and closed the distance in an instant. Seeing the ground crack, twist, and tear from just the aftermath, Charlotte made a slight modification to her strategy.

She had thought the girl was a mage since she had fired magic right away, but she was a beast who charged forward with just her body, acting on instinct.

And Charlotte had experienced dealing with such beasts to the point of tedium.

As Charlotte snapped her fingers, dozens of magic circles appeared in the air and fired chains made of mana at the girl.

These were more like whips meant to sever the body rather than ropes to bind it. The cracking sound of the tips breaking the sound barrier could be heard from all directions.

However, the mana chains all scattered into blue light before even touching the girl’s body. Whatever method she used, even the magic circles laid on the ground were all broken and shattered.

At first glance, it might seem like the girl had dismantled Charlotte’s magic, but what just happened was a bit different from ordinary magic dismantling.

It felt closer to mana nullification than magic dismantling.

“What a troublesome wench indeed.”

Charlotte prepared her next spell. With a small gesture, tremendous heat was added to the air. The temperature soared endlessly upward.

The weather changed. The soil and rocks that made up the ground bubbled and boiled. Everything around melted with a death cry due to the suddenly added heat.

The girl’s feet sank deep into the soil, or more precisely, into the sticky liquid formed by the melting soil and rocks.

Rain made of lava began to pour down.

Even if they had been ordinary water droplets, the density would have been enough to be called a downpour, but each one was like a flame containing tremendous heat.

Magma erupted explosively, forming rivers that flowed down. The small mounds of soil that had been barely visible were all covered with a liquid that was both bright red and orange.

Charlotte, the one who had turned the surrounding landscape into a scene from hell, stood intact without even a speck of dust on her.

And the same was true for the girl who kept approaching, deflecting the continuously fired spells.

Charlotte narrowed her eyes at the sight.

It wasn’t just that she was intact; she seemed completely unaffected by how the surroundings changed.

Despite the lava flowing down her hair and body, there was no sign of her skin melting or her clothes burning.

The girl approached Charlotte, laughing madly.

“I was right after all. You smell like my master. Very strongly too. You, you’ve been with my master, right? Right? I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Shut your mouth. Or must I personally sew it shut to make you listen?”

The distance between the girl and Charlotte had narrowed considerably. The girl’s face, with lava flowing down it everywhere, was contorted with maniacal laughter.

Hundreds of teleportation magic circles were laid over the lava, through the gaps in the falling lava from the sky, and on the handful of soil that barely remained.

Lightning spears erupted from the magic circles drawn in the air. A thunderous sound like a roar broke through the rain of lava and echoed throughout the hell.

However, even the lightning spears failed to inflict any damage on the girl. The spears, compressed with high-voltage current, couldn’t penetrate the girl’s skin and scattered futilely.

By this point, even Charlotte had to frown.

It wasn’t like Serena, who avoided magic or deflected it with her sword, nor was it like Christine, who nullified the magic itself.

It wasn’t even the simple and crude method Serena used, surrounding her body with mana to withstand magic with sheer toughness.

Yet no matter what magic Charlotte used, the girl took it all without suffering even the slightest damage.

It seemed that another troublesome woman had appeared.

Charlotte, who had recalled her own body to one of the pre-laid teleportation magic circles to distance herself from the girl, drew a different type of magic circle.

The girl, who hadn’t lost any of her speed even in the swamp created by the mixture of melted soil, rocks, and lava, was launched into the air by a magma explosion from beneath her feet.

Though she wasn’t harmed by the magma, it created enough of a gap for Charlotte to prepare her next spell.

“Let’s see if you can withstand this as well.”

A blue dragon form appeared from the magic circle drawn behind Charlotte’s back. It was a spell that perfectly recreated the appearance of a dragon based on what she had read from the boy’s memories.

The mana-formed dragon opened its jaws wide. Inside its mouth, pure mana of a chilling size began to concentrate.

If what she had used until now were spells that transformed the mana in the human body through various formulas, what she was about to use now was mana itself.

A breath made of pure mana that might have even greater power than the original dragon’s breath.

“Withstand? Me?”

In the hand of the girl, who was staring at the dragon form about to explode with madness in her eyes, a sword appeared. It was a familiar-looking sword with a red jewel embedded in the hilt.

The girl’s body, having instantly created the sword, turned into a streak of light.

“Why?”

And she plunged straight toward the fired breath.

Charlotte’s eyes widened.

Charlotte knew this technique. She couldn’t not know it.

It was a technique used by a certain blonde female knight with whom she had been fighting fiercely until recently.

—Star Drop.

With the familiar name, a star fell to earth.