Dance with the Nightingale-Chapter 109 - 104: Separated

[The Misty Root Forest]

-Swish

A arrow flew right past my ear as I flicked my head to the side.

-Boom!

"Urgh", I groaned, as the magic spell imbued with the arrow exploded on a tree trunk, with splinters blocking my escape route.

And before you say how, let me explain, I was planning on escaping using [Acceleration] spell. As soon as any part of my body comes in contact with the magic circle, my whole body gets pulled in that direction. So, if I reach out to that magic circle now, the shrapnel’s positioning will cause it to dig right into my eyes.

Annoyingly, this wasn’t the first time this happened. That girl, Fostoria Acben, had a high affinity with wind elementals and was very proficient in wind manipulation.

Her arrows never missed the mark and she was quick witted, like how she did now, trying to block out my [Acceleration] spell.

Yes, trying.

Not to brag, but I was full of tricks myself.

Before any part of my body could touch the magic circle to my left, another one appeared right behind me, at the same time from my left hand an emerald barrier exploded out in an instant.

It passed through my body without any resistance, clearing the shrapnel out of the way, pushing it through the magic circle behind my back instead.

The wooden shrapnel shot forward like bullets, deflecting the arrow coming at me enough for me to escape into the sky.

Dodging a few more arrows by doing a zig-zag maneuver in the air, I turned quickly located her using [Mana Reading], and threw my sword at her.

Unlike a piece of stone or wood, my sword was a lot sturdier, so I didn’t hesitate as I stacked as much [Acceleration]’s I needed and threw my sword at her at a hypersonic speed.

"Dodge this!"

-Boooom!!

A much larger explosion than before shook the trees in the forest as my sword, toppled more than a few of them in the process.

With a dust cloud forming on the ground, I was blind about what happened or that’s what was supposed to happen, as the dust cloud was artificially being bolstered by Fostoria’s wind. With Mana Reading though, I could see her mana shining like a star, and my sword, which I could obviously track, pass by her without much change in speed.

Without a second’s delay, an arrow shot out the dust cloud, tearing it apart, but what was more surprising was the fact that from a single arrow somehow hundreds of arrows emerged, causing a veritable rain of arrows.

Surprisingly, some arrows were very powerful while some were not, forming a few reliefs zones in the rain of arrows.

’I see…’, I thought as I realized that the relief zones were just another trap and activated the emerald barrier to take the brunt of it while calling my sword back.

Apparently, Fostoria didn’t want that.

A arrow hit the hilt of my blade mid-air, and as my return enchantment wasn’t all that powerful, the blade spun and hit the ground. Before it could return, Fostoria picked up the sword and tried to stab it into the ground.

Again, yes she tried.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know that touching any of my equipment without permission was far from safe, to demonstrate that…

-Boom!

Another explosion resounded in the forest.

Due to [Remote Casting] the power of the spell was decreased by more than half, but this time she took the explosion head on.

’Even if it didn’t burn her hands, it should atleast sting her to pull that bow of hers.’, I thought.

This chapt𝒆r is updated by frёewebηovel.cѳm.

And I thought wrong.

"Another trick.", I heard her as she cleared up the dust in the air, having barely taken damage from the explosion.

The reason? A blue barrier enveloping her from head to toe.

"Now…", she remarked with her usual unfazed expression. "Just how many tricks do you have left?", she asked as if she really was expecting me to tell her.

But I ignored her and noticed something. She had taken damage nonetheless, not from the explosion, but from the hypersonic throw earlier. A deep gash on her side, with blood pouring out of it.

"I have lot more from where that came from.", I lied with a straight face as I thought, ’Does that barrier take some time to activate? If so then I’ll have to be fast.’

Meanwhile, I allowed her to drink a potion. Not the high level ones I use, of course, but normal ones that just stopped the bleeding. Then, I caught my sword that I finally retrieved and drank a mana potion as well.

"Hey! Can’t we talk about this? There are many reasons we shouldn’t fight!", I shouted after that short pause. Too bad, no reply came, instead an arrow which I didn’t know when she fired came at me from the side.

With [Split Second], I could more or less perceive the arrow, but knowing and doing were different things. I tried to move my body, barely ducking down as the arrow went over my head.

-Whew

I sighed in relief, unfortunately I did it too early.

At that moment, came another arrow. With my posture broken, I had to twist my whole body to jump out of the way, and as I expected Fostoria started preparing a big one in meantime.

"Try dodging this.", she said cooly giving vibes similar to some last Uchiha, but her attack was more like that of the blond haired guy.

’You’re going in prison for plagiarism, Fostoria!’, I somehow still had enough composure to joke as I looked around and summoned a talisman.

’As expected, she’s determined in not letting me escape.’, I thought as the seemingly deflected arrows in the vicinity, emitted strong mana. Then, automatically, the arrows plucked themselves from the ground, surrounded me, before shooting themselves at me.

’A good move… but, I saw that coming!’, I lunged into the ground, activating the talisman I summoned. Then, I just dived into the ground as if it was just water.

Yes, it was a talisman that allowed me to phase through the ground, letting me execute something similar to a earth escape technique.

Into the ground and out of the sight, I felt some violent vibrations shaking the earth.

’Just why did it come to this?’, I sighed as I remembered what happened an hour ago.

***

Not long before, Amy and I were navigating through a lush forest.

Since, it was winter season, quite a number of dead leaves were accumulated on the forest floor. Stepping on them, going over dead trunks, chasing away mosquitoes… It almost felt like a outdoor date.

Alas, the two figures we were following, the veil of shadow hiding us from the world, and the Amy’s battle armor kept reminding me that it wasn’t.

We intended to reveal ourselves at the last moment or at stay hidden atleast until Fostoria lead us to the Tree of Light, in case the demon pulled something unexpected and the Archmages had to team up against him.

With nothing to do, I made some small talk with Amy, my only companion in the shadow veil while following after the duo.

’Honestly, it is a little boring, nothing like the high action chase I had imagined.’, I thought then.

God, I wish, I hadn’t jinxed it then. Cause it was right after that, that things started going wrong.

After a while, we reached an area of the forest covered in mist.

At first, nothing happened, but slowly, the mist started thickening.

Of course, having read enough mystery novels, I told Amy to immediately check the mist with her senses.

But according to her it was simple, natural mist.

In fact, my maid even teased me about comparing this scene to mystery novels. Only after that she explained that she had examined the terrain and it was perfectly normal for mist to gather in this low area especially in winter season.

I was not entirely convinced, especially with my ’author-sense’ tingling very loudly, but I had no choice but to accept her reasoning and move on, blowing the mist away would be similar to blowing out our cover after all.

I shouldn’t have done that.

Thankfully, against my expectations, the mist didn’t thicken like in novels I read, and I could still see Fostoria and the Elementalist’s silhouette.

After another minute of walking, I spotted something in the mist, something shining in its white expanse.

"What’s that?", I thought out loud.

"That’s a firefly, Young Master?", Amy strained her eyes as she said, unsure about the answer, after all fireflies don’t show up in winter, and that logic still held in Rowen too.

"Are they illusions?"

"No, at least they appear real in my senses."

I bit my lips unconsciously at that news, cause something in the forest that even Amy couldn’t see through was a huge variable.

Soon, more and more of those fireflies appeared, some even entering the shadow veil. Catching one of those unlucky ones, I examined it closely and Amy did the same. After thoroughly examining the bug, I let it, unfortunately Amy’s bug wasn’t that lucky.

Amy crushed it between the fingers, even examining its dead remains, it was only after that, she confirmed, "They are real… Young Master. And that’s not all…", then she looked around and added, "It’s almost like it’s spring here."

As if on cue, the flora around us changed too. Gone was the forest floor filled with dead leaves, or the withered trees, what I saw instead was a forest in full spring.

With warm wind flowing, I saw majestic trees sprouting green leaves, flowers blooming peacefully and bugs, a lot of them busily doing their work.

’I guess it is a deity in its own right.’, I wondered as I observed life thriving all around me.

The feeling of majesty and wonder had me enraptured, so much that I let my guard down.

Then, I felt the moisture in the air starting to rise, and soon a small pond appeared in front of us not far ahead.

It was a small pond, around 600-700 m sq. in size, the duo ahead of us took right to go around it, and for some reason, I decided to go left.

And it was when it happened.

For some reason, the shadow veil burst like a bubble, and Amy who was at its center stood in place, as if she couldn’t advance.

And in an instant, I found out, it wasn’t a matter of as if, she really couldn’t advance. An invisible barrier blocked her path that glowed golden wherever she touched it.

Just snapping, back to reality, I tried to cross over to Amy’s side of barrier, when I felt a spike in mana from my left, at the same time I saw Amy’s lips moving as she pointed to my side.

"Fuck!" I cursed, as it hit me that I had forgotten about the situation and was now discovered.

Without a second’s delay I activated my skills, [Split Second], [Mana Reading], and [Attribute Infusion] to react as fast as possible to the rain of arrows.

And that brought us to the present… me hiding ten meters underground to save my skin.

Hell, even that didn’t stop her as I saw mana again gathering around Fostoria’s figure.

Getting a dangerous feeling, I dived another ten of meter into the ground and turns out it was the right decision.

Cause soon, I could feel a terrifying arrow filled with mana drilling down at me.

’Wait! It’s not stopping!’, my eyes widened as the arrow covered the first 10 meters in a flash. Not hoping for the last half to hold I hastily dived deeper as I felt the arrow catching up to me.

Seven meters, five meters, three meters, two meters, one meter…

’Damn! That was close.’, I sighed as the arrow stopped not more thirty centimeters away from me.

’That fucking arrow just drilled past 40 meters of earth!’, I exclaimed as I realized it wasn’t safe even underground.

Seeing another even more terrifying spike in mana, I about to run away, when I saw something red in the corner of my vision.

’W-What is that!?’, my mind that was process several things use [Parallel Mind] stopped working for a second as I felt the dark, ominous power from that red current that took over my vision.

Fostoria, having realized the same thing stopped attacking me, giving my mind a second to process things and soon the only possible but impossible possibility flashed in my mind, ’That demon! Don’t tell me he actually succeeded in summoning the demon world!!’