The battle quickly spilled out of the courtyard and into the forest beyond.
A fierce gale howled. To Riveria and Alfia's eyes, that black, gigantic tornado looked like some devouring behemoth, swallowing everything whole.
No matter what kind of attack they threw, the instant it sank into that churning mass, it simply vanished without a trace. Worse still, they could no longer even pinpoint where the girl actually was.
Ais seemed to have become the storm itself. As far as Riveria and Alfia were concerned, from the very start their attacks had been falling into utter "[No Effect]."
...Was the gap simply too great? Yes. It was the gap in "Strength" between them — too vast to close.
The gale swept past, and with it came the girl's silhouette, longsword in hand. She flickered into view directly in front of Riveria. At the very same instant — almost eerily — Ais's figure also appeared before Alfia.
Was it sheer speed, or some other power entirely? No one could say. But with the girl closing to melee range like that, both women had only one option left: raise their weapons and brace for a slash far more violent than even the raging wind.
Riveria held her staff.
She had once criticized Freya Familia's Hedin for being far too obsessed with sharpening his own melee skills.
But the Elf princess herself was hardly weak in that regard either — not merely from talent, but because, as a mage, she understood exactly what she needed to accomplish in close combat.
Not to attack, but to defend and wait. Wait for an ally to step in, or wait for her own spell to finish.
For a mage, no melee strike could ever match the firepower of her own magic. Trying to defeat an opponent with the weapon in her hand during close combat was simply the wrong approach from the start.
All she needed was to dodge and guard — that was enough. Because of this, the fight was, for her, comparatively simple.
Alfia, on the other hand, had far less to think about. Just as with her gift for archery, her overwhelming [Agility] and Dexterity in close combat gave her exceptional mastery over fast, nimble weapons.
The woman drew a pair of short swords.
Across the whole of Orario, even among adventurers of the same Level, no one could out-fight her with those twin blades — not even the former captain of Hera Familia, the [Empress], who in pure technique could only stand roughly even with her.
Because of that, Alfia lasted somewhat longer than Riveria did.
"...?" She couldn't make sense of it. What in the world was happening?
By the time the weapon slipped from her grip — by the time the girl's longsword had already run clean through her chest — Alfia still had no idea what had actually taken place.
The most frightening thing about failure is not knowing why you failed.
Because without knowing, there was no way to correct it, no way to search for an answer. The result was simply being "killed" again and again, lost in confusion.
She could not comprehend Ais's "skill" at all. It belonged to some absurd tier Alfia herself had never reached.
And that, too, was the power born of the girl's "Yearning." Her longing for the boy's swordsmanship let her mimic it, letting her display technique now nearly indistinguishable from Isagi's own peerless, perfected mastery.
At this point, the sensations Alfia and Riveria were experiencing had actually reversed.
Because the Elf princess's own skill level was lower, she couldn't even grasp what tier Ais was operating on — she only felt, instinctively, that it was "incredibly impressive," and that was as far as it went. Ironically, she wasn't nearly as shaken as Alfia was.
And so — there was no telling how much time had passed within that dream.
By the time the woman and the girl woke beneath the Golden Tree, night had already deepened.
Along North Main Street, most of the buildings had gone dark. Stars and moon hung in quiet silence.
In the Court of Stars, most of the rooms had gone dark too, the girls and goddesses mostly already asleep. Right now, it was plain to see just how exhausted Ais looked.
After all, imitating Isagi's power was, at its core, accomplished through "Magic," and that had taken a heavy toll on the girl's mental strength.
So for the moment, all she wanted was to hurry back to her room, wash up, and go straight to sleep.
Naturally, Ais had her own room to rest in here at Astrea Familia. Beside her, Riveria watched the girl head toward the house with a thoughtful look, then followed after her, thinking she might as well just stay over with her "daughter" tonight — she'd done it plenty of times before, after all.
As for Alfia, she planned to head back to the inn she was renting in the city.
Both women were utterly worn out, yet still absorbed in thought over the fight just past. Having been "killed" so many times, they now understood, with total clarity, just how vast that gap really was.
That was simply how it went among adventurers. A difference in Level could be fatal — especially at certain "critical Levels."
The gap between Level 4 and Level 5 was exactly like that — an enormous threshold. And now, the two of them were merely standing before another one.
Both fell into thought, clearly having gained a great deal from the encounter.
Just as the woman and the girl left the spot beneath the Golden Tree, about to head their separate ways, a young man's figure appeared at the garden gate.
Isagi was back.
Dragging an utterly exhausted body, Isagi worked the stiffness out of his limbs and looked at the three people standing in the courtyard, a little confused himself. What was going on here?
Meanwhile, Alfia and Riveria were the ones dying to ask him the very same thing.
Where had the boy run off to all day, and what exactly had he been doing to come back looking so drained and listless?!
What in the world was going on?!
As for that, Isagi's answer was simple enough.
He'd won the fight.
Ottar had lost, in the end.
Because Ottar was the first one to start doubting himself.
The young boar-man couldn't reach the same total, all-consuming state Isagi could. So, faced with the passage of time, the drawn-out battle, and their weapons endlessly clashing against each other, he found himself thinking.
How could he possibly win?
And why couldn't he win?
For Isagi, entering that state of "Selflessness" meant, above all, truly forgetting everything — even time itself.
People are keenly sensitive to the passage of time — even long-lived Elves, even the near-immortal gods, are no exception. No matter what, as long as you're alive, it's impossible not to feel time slipping by.
So then — for a person, just how much time does it actually take to "win a fight"?
One second? One minute? One hour? An entire day? Or a month, a year, ten years, a hundred years?
For Ottar, the longest battle he'd ever fought remained his clash with the deep-floor Monster Rex, [Balor]. That one had lasted three days and three nights.
But this was nothing like that, because there was no way Isagi's [Endurance] could ever rival a deep-floor Monster Rex's. More importantly, this battle had no sense of "progress" at all.
That was right — Ottar could feel it. As time dragged on in this fight against the boy, it had, in a very real sense, become utterly meaningless.
____
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