Royman's eyes bulged from their sockets, his obese body convulsing as he half-scrambled, half-crawled to the window, staring desperately toward Babel...
The next instant, he froze as if struck by lightning, his breath stopping cold.
Centered on Babel, a roaring blizzard had risen like an awakened beast of absolute cold, opening jaws of frost to swallow the entire Adventurers Plaza along with the lower levels of Babel itself.
Under his gaze, the plaza's ground, its colonnades, its fountains, its banners... down to every single snowflake drifting through the air, froze and solidified at a speed visible to the naked eye. In the span of a few heartbeats, everything within sight had turned to a dead, silent ice-blue.
That bustling district he knew so well had, in that moment, become a silent... frozen graveyard.
The fat on Royman's face quivered wildly, his eyes bloodshot, his breath heaving like a winded ox.
"It's all... all of it... gone..."
His lips trembled, and at last he couldn't draw the next breath. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed on the spot.
"He's done for!"
"..."
The staffer watched Royman crash to the floor, his body still twitching twice, and his expression went from terror to blankness to panic in the span of three short seconds.
"Guild Master?"
"Guild Master!!!!!!"
"Someone, get over here! Someone, hurry...!"
"The Guild Master's passed out!"
"Go get Lady Airmid, now, aaaaaaah...!!!!"
...
...
The shock and uproar set off by Leon's Ultra-Wide-Area Annihilation Magic had only just begun to sweep across all of Orario.
Judging by the staggering scale visible across the whole city, this single strike, augmented by techniques like the Transcendent Magic Circle, had long since surpassed what any ordinary Lv.4 mage should be capable of.
In sheer area of effect alone, it likely rivaled Riveria, the royal elf and top-tier Lv.5 mage.
As for the raw power...
"He deliberately weakened the magic's attack strength to push the range to its absolute limit."
"Control at this level... a mage of average skill might not even catch it."
"In terms of magic mastery... I suppose he barely... passes."
Gazing out at the Adventurers Plaza now turned into an "ice and snow paradise," the Witch of Silence, Alfia, slowly opened her heterochromatic eyes and delivered her detached assessment in that cool, hoarse voice unique to her.
But the hand faintly clenched beneath her luxurious cloak quietly betrayed the stir in her heart.
"Huh? Barely passes?"
Zald stumbled, gaping at the placid profile of Alfia, the corner of his mouth twitching hard.
"Hey, hey, hey, come on now. Just mastering high-tier techniques like Circle Linking, Inherited Chanting, and Linked Chanting is already absurd, isn't it? That's not something just anyone with a bit of magic knowledge can pull off, is it?"
"And this kid's definitely hiding other tricks too... I'm a layman when it comes to this stuff, but even I can feel it."
Alfia watched Leon slowly lower his hands, her red lips curving into an alluring arc.
"...Repeated Chanting."
"Repeated Chanting?"
Zald frowned, completely lost.
"And what technique is that?"
Alfia shot a flat glance at the brute beside her who only understood eating meat and swinging a sword, explaining in an even tone:
"The ice clones he creates have no independent consciousness, so every action of theirs must originate from his control. The magic released through the clones naturally follows the same logic... it's cast by the original body."
"The key to it is that he treats the ice clones as magic nodes extended outside his body, and through his link with those nodes, he achieves remote synchronized casting."
"So here's the question... how do you get ten copies of yourself to cast magic at the exact same time, in perfect sync?"
"The answer is a high-tier chanting technique: Repeated Chanting."
Zald rubbed his chin, a glint of realization in his eyes.
"I see, so the ice clones are under the original's control... I really couldn't have figured that out if you hadn't said so."
"To use a technique to this degree in actual combat, it seems his understanding of his own magic is already pretty deep."
"Heh, this kid... he's got a bit of you in him from back in the day."
"If he'd been born a few years earlier, given a little more time, maybe back then we could've..."
Alfia gently closed her eyes and turned, melting into the shadows behind her, leaving only a soft murmur drifting in the air:
"That's it?"
"He's still got a long way to go."
Zald blinked, then shook his head with a wry laugh.
As brazen as Alfia's words were, he had to admit that the Witch of Silence had every right to say them.
Did people even understand what the title Incarnation of Talent meant?
He wouldn't dare claim no one would ever match her, but given Alfia's terrifying gift, calling her "unprecedented" was no exaggeration at all.
If she hadn't been afflicted with that incurable illness, with talent like hers, what chance would anyone coming after have had?
The Black Dragon would probably have been pulverized to dust long ago, not a bone fragment left.
"Fate, huh..."
Zald tilted his head back to look at the sky, sighed, then let his gaze fall once more onto a certain young Boaz man.
...
...
"Ottar?"
Noticing the aura of her "escort" at her side loosen, Freya was about to speak up and ask, only to discover with surprise that Ottar had once again returned to that coiled, battle-ready state.
Freya's eyes narrowed slightly as she slowly raised her head and looked into the distance.
"Interesting."
If Freya could sense Ottar's shift, then the few standing beside her naturally wouldn't miss the subtle change either.
Astraea and Artemis in particular, two battle-hardened warrior goddesses, were extraordinarily keen when it came to the flow of auras.
The two goddesses traded a glance without a trace of obviousness, their slender fingers drifting to their waists in unison... where no weapons hung, yet it was the instinctive reaction of a habit ingrained over hundreds of millions of years. Astraea leaned in slightly, lowering her voice, sweet as a clear spring:
"Artemis, for one of Freya's children to be this wary... do you have any guesses?"
Even amid the joyous celebration of the Christmas festival, Artemis was dressed as ever in sharp, practical hunting gear. Her waist-length deep blue hair was neatly bound at the ends by a silver clasp, lending her a striking, gallant air.
The goddess casually gripped her Hunting Longbow, an arrow nocking silently to the string, her sharp gaze sweeping the surroundings like a hawk's as she answered in a low voice:
"No idea. As far as I know, the only ones who've reached the peak of Lv.6, besides Freya's children, are the children of Baldr's house in the School District."
"The School District, Baldr?"
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