The forest in question, which would take about twenty minutes to reach by carriage, could be reached in about five minutes by this magic-powered carriage.
Thanks to the improvements made by my brother, we could increase the power output by infusing our magic power. The speed was also adjusted according to how hard I step on the accelerator.
Thanks to this, we could go slow inside the city and go fast while on the city outskirts.
If the roads are paved, it can go even faster, but this is already fast enough.
Using magic as the fuel, you could adjust the speed of vehicles; the world of magic is cheat itself…
But let’s move on because right now, we have an important job to do.
We park the car in front of the forest and get off. I can already see the red fruits growing all over the place.
It almost like an apple farm during its harvest season. Except, it’s not.
There are no apple trees in this forest. They were all monsters; the only word that came to mind was “abnormal”.
They did say that there was an abnormal phenomenon, but this is much more than I imagined.
Hayato seemed to be a little surprised too.
“Alice, try to explain what kind of monster a human-eating apple is.”
“Yes! It is a monster that mimics an apple tree, and when its prey gets close to it, it will suddenly open its big mouth and tries to bite you with its sharp fangs. As a side note, on its own, it is not much of a threat!”
You just told me about this, of course, I will remember.
“That’s right, and what are you supposed to do when you encounter one?”
“Just be careful not to get bitten, and if you’re good at magic, shoot it with magic, or if you’re good at physical attack, just crush it with brute force!”
There’s no specific way to deal with it; you can only use a straight forward method.
“That’s correct, but it will be hard for E-rank to handle that many.
They’re not very strong, so I guess the guild is thinking of having various parties to hunt them a little by little…
Now, the question is, what will Alice do about this?”
“I’m going to shoot them one by one with magic from a distance.”
I mean, what else is there to do?
Even in the academy, they taught me that when you’re dealing with a large number of people, you have to make sure you get as far away from them as possible and make sure you target them one by one to make sure the damage is not dispersed.
They did teach basic war tactics there, but I think Hayato had something else in his mind.
“It’s not a bad idea, but that would take a lot of time. If you have a lot of mana, you can do it this way.”
Then Hayato looks up at the crowd of man-eating apples and—
“[Connect]”
In the next moment, a line of magic power seemed to connect between all the human eating apples and Hayato as far as my eyes could see.
It disappeared almost immediately, and soon after, a blue-white light shot out and scattered into countless numbers.
Immediately afterward, the apples began to fall. It’s as if they’ve been smashed with an ice edge.
What just happened?
It wouldn’t be strange if the man-eating apples that fell to the ground like rain looked regretful.
The pieces of apples that fell to the ground turned into particles of light and disappeared like smoke.
The magical power is transformed and hardened, crystallized, and forms a core, from which it will give substance to its form. That is the true identity of the monsters of this world.
If you destroy the monster’s core from my previous life game knowledge, it will disappear and occasionally leave a drop item.
“What did you just do?”
“I sent ice magic to all the ones I could see.”
Well, that didn’t explain anything.
“Explain it a little more, please.”
“It’s like this; First, using your eyes, you must connect your magic power with the target, then you need to create a path, after that all you have to do is group the paths together and put a strong spell on it, and it will split off on their own towards all target.”
You’re not very good at explaining things—you foolish genius.
At any rate, I knew he was using brute force.
But the fact that he can apply one magic to that group of monsters is impressive. I’m not sure if I could imitate that.
“It’s the first time I’ve heard of this [Connect] magic. Who taught you?”
“I thought of it myself.”
I see, expected from a genius.
“The fact that you can connect with their magic power means that it surely be a tracking magic type, right? I could understand that much, but on the other hand, won’t the other party’s magic take over or use the path you created?”
A magic takeover can result in a personality change; that phenomenon will occur when someone else’s magical power is sent directly into the target body with malicious intent.
If it’s not too severe, the person can recover quickly, but at worst, the person can stay that way for a few days.
If you can cleanse the invading magic, you can speed up the recovery, but it is difficult to do, and there are only a few magicians who can do it.
Of course, the magic takeover is a crime when it’s done on purpose between humans.
“Yeah. When it comes to that, it depends on your magic power, of course you can just push it back so that it won’t take over you, and the connection will disappear in a second, so, if you can finish your attack during that time, it won’t be used.”
“One second.”
It’s short, but it might be dangerous if it takes any longer than that.
Regular tracking magic requires you to control the magic you release at will. Normally you can’t hit multiple targets at the same time.
But with Hayato’s method, you can track many targets at once. However, considering the risk of connecting with the enemy, I think we should be cautious when using this.
It’s a good idea to make sure that you have a good idea of what you’re doing.
“Once, my former companions tried to use it, but it didn’t work because the connection was… hijacked or something, and the others couldn’t fire the magic in that one second because he didn’t have enough mana to produce appropriate firepower when the spell is split.
But I think Alice can do it. What did Alice think when you saw that amount of man-eating apples?”
“I thought it was abnormal.”
“As I expected. You weren’t scared?”
“Yes. Come to think of it; I wasn’t scared at all.”
Even though I know it’s a monster tree, I didn’t feel fear in front of that many monsters.
I’m quite bold, aren’t I?
Knowing that I’m not afraid, Hayato raises the corner of his mouth.
“That’s the proof that you have superior magic power. Just try it? I’m sure you can do it if it only that much.”
“Yes, sir.”
Since there were no more man-eating apples in sight, we moved our location and went to the next man-eating apple area.
Even though I’m facing a large number of man-eating apples, I certainly don’t feel like I’m going to lose.
It’s as if all of my enemies are in my palms.
“At first, it might be easier to connect them when you did a hand movement like this.”
Hayato said and held out his palm in front of him and quickly moved it to the side. It’s that principle that when you read a book full of words if you put a ruler or something against the line, it becomes easier to read.
If I do as he says, I can certainly recognize each of the enemy’s figures.
“Do you understand? Alice. Imagine that a thread connects you and your enemy. These threads will be joined together in front of you to form a single rope.
Then you can put strong magic on the rope, do it as it is, and it will disperse on its own.”
I nodded and slid my hand sideways.
“[Connect]”
In an instant, I connected with all the apples. You can feel the resistance of the other side’s magic power, but it doesn’t matter. Without a moment’s pause, I put all my magic power into it and released the same ice magic as Hayato.
The glowing threads branch out like rails, guiding the magic.
There’s a response; I know my power is hitting them!
“I did it!”
All at once, the crushed man-eating apples fall to the ground with a thud.
A spectacular sight.
“Hayato! I did it!”
When I turned around with a joyful look on my face, Hayato raised his right hand with the same expression on his face.
I raised my right hand as well and hit his palm to complete our high five.
Yep, they’re totally “Partners” alright~