Chapter 8: Battle Banquet (4)
A good painting is one that is complete and whole.
A bad painting is one that fails to reveal everything it contains.
For the man in the white suit, the space he stood in was limited by two things, space itself and the guards.
This meant his power was absolutely restricted within a radius of about fifty meters. At the same time, to avoid being exposed, he created a mobile barrier with himself as the center of that spatial zone.
The zone protected him from outside observation while also blocking the flow and detection of mana from others.
At the same time, he constantly observed his surroundings and noticed someone hiding ten meters to his left.
Right now, he needed to temporarily escape, reach a crowded area, and detonate the bomb. But before that, he still had to eliminate the person in front of him.
To do that, he needed to use his Gift.
The shadow stepped forward toward the man in the white suit, each step carrying an inexplicable calm.
Stab.
Drops of water suddenly drove themselves deep into the black fabric like thousands of needles piercing flesh.
The shadow rushed forward to avoid the falling droplets, but suddenly halted.
In front of him, space itself had twisted horribly. No, the surrounding matter had been distorted.
From the trunk of a tree, a branch grew directly from the middle of the wood. Bricks reshaped themselves into small stone pillars, and from those pillars smaller ones sprouted on both sides.
Then everything exploded.
The fragments shot toward the shadow and embedded themselves deep within the thick cloak.
One toy eliminated.
"This plan… is really this sloppy?"
But he did not realize that sometimes the simplest approach works best.
The shadow split into hundreds of pieces and scattered in all directions. Yet something unexpected appeared.
A stone card torn into two halves.
He turned to look at the hidden figure ten meters away, only to see it rise into the sky. It was a strange eagle that always seemed to blend perfectly into its environment.
At that moment he understood.
I had never intended to fight him.
He tried to activate his power and escape from this place.
But he could not cast any spell or use any ability.
Because
From that very moment, everything had already been drowned in white light and smoke.
…
"Sorry. From the beginning, I never intended to fight you directly."
I stepped into the white smoke to search for him, only to discover an unconscious man.
He could have tried to suppress the explosion and the poisonous smoke instead of running away. But because he believed it was a bomb, he feared he did not possess enough power to stop the detonation.
In any case, his strength only extended for several dozen meters, so he was not much stronger than I was.
"Hm. Judging from a glance, your Gift resembles something quite strange. It looks like a Koch snowflake, or something like that."
I gently placed my hand on his head and whispered softly.
"What a pity. If you had been just a little smarter and had not let your emotions guide you from the start, things might have turned out differently. At the very least, you would not have died.
If you had not blindly believed in the modern faction of The Card and still trusted the traditional group, you would not have ended up like this."