Water Magician-Chapter 667 : The Alchemist’s Battle
Chapter 0667 The Alchemist’s Battle
Translator: Jay_Forestieri
Editor: Tseirp
Ryo’s <Ice Wall: 50-Layer Multi-layered Ice> cover, which was stretched above as well.
Tens of thousands of ice shards poured down upon it.
It was not a single volley.
Over and over again.
Each time, tens of thousands of pieces of ice rained down.
“Like stars... a hundred launch platforms? They’re making it rain ice from launch platforms created by alchemy—the very extreme of brute force.”
Ryo said admiringly.
“Even so, a shell of ice that won’t be broken by brute force... And that, moreover, is not alchemy, is it? Pure water-attribute magic—how can it endure like this?”
Lord Rowon, still wrapped in an ecstasy of delight, calmly analyzed Ryo’s ice cover.
Directly above them, the falling ice rain and the repelling ice cover crashed into each other without pause, yet the two water-attribute magicians standing at the bow behaved as if they were having a casual chat over tea.
“We need to increase the load. Your Highness, have the fleet fire magic bombardment.”
“Understood. Fire.”
Prince Kouri’s order was relayed to the entire fleet.
At that moment, only Abel seemed to notice the very slightest change in Ryo’s expression.
“Fire!”
A magic bombardment launched from the two-hundred-ship fleet.
Neither Lord Rowon, who had requested the bombardment, nor Prince Kouri, who had ordered it, expected the barrage to succeed.
Still, it was a fact that both the ice wall blocking the fleet’s path and the ice cover protecting the sky were being created and maintained by a single magician.
If so, then thickening the attack to increase the load and eventually force a total exhaustion of mana is a textbook tactic in magic warfare.
That is the significance of the fleet’s magic bombardment.
But... textbook tactics are, by definition, predictable.
From the opponent’s point of view, in this case.
That opponent being Ryo.
“‘Dynamic Steam Mine II’—laid.”
Not the usual <Dynamic Steam Mine II> made by water-attribute magic, but an alchemical ‘Dynamic Steam Mine II’ prepared previously for the fight with Fan.
He had modified it a little...
“Chain-detonation? No—induced freezing? The moment it’s hit, everything from there to the launch platform freezes up.”
Ryo’s mutter was audible only to Abel at his side.
Of course, Abel did not understand the meaning at first...
But he understood after watching what happened.
The fleet’s alchemy devices for magic bombardment, installed on the port sides of the Kouri fleet, fired.
Their shots flew a short distance and then froze solid.
From the frozen point... like a fuse transmitting fire, like flame running along gasoline, the fire traveled, and the very alchemy devices that had fired were frozen in an instant.
Every ship that fired, every gun.
That spectacle was visible even from the bows of the two flagships that had rammed into one another.
“Impossible...”
Words muttered by Prince Kouri.
“What the...”
Words muttered by Kabui Somar.
“Terrifying...”
Words muttered by Captain La Wu.
“Ku-huh.”
The laugh that slipped out involuntarily was Lord Rowon’s.
“That was alchemy! When firing, my ‘Moon’ steps out of the firing line... I had read it as something that couldn’t be defended. My, my. When did you lay such a trap?”
“Being praised by Lord Rowon, the alchemist famed throughout Darwei, is an indescribable honor.”
Ryo answered Lord Rowon’s admiration with a brisk, refreshing frankness.
When a set trap works perfectly and yields perfect results, even someone other than Ryo would be pleased.
“With that, we’ve ‘halved’ the Darwei fleet’s bombardment.”
Ryo said with a smile.
“Half?”
Abel tilted his head.
It looked as if he had destroyed the alchemy bombardment devices on every Darwei ship except the flagship Feidoshin, which had its bows locked together.
“I crushed the ones on this side’s hull, but the ones on the far side are still intact.”
“Ah...”
Yes—the bombardment devices are installed on both sides of the ships.
He had smashed all the ones facing their side, but those on the opposite side remained unharmed.
“I don’t know whether they can move them or not...”
Ryo did not know exactly how the alchemy devices were affixed.
But if they were the sort of things Captain Lu Yao and her men used on Midorisou Plain, then... though these were probably much larger in power— with time and manpower, it might not be impossible to move them.
“But they’ll come head-on rather than relying on a ship’s alchemy devices, won’t they, Lord Rowon?”
Ryo said loudly, on purpose.
He directed the remark at an opponent who was both a water-attribute magician and an alchemist facing him head-on.
“It can’t be helped. If that is what you desire, I shall oblige, Duke Rondo.”
Lord Rowon replied, still laughing.
“By the way, Lord Rowon, even if it’s alchemy, can you run out of mana?”
“No, Duke Rondo, depending on how you do it, exhaustion of mana rarely occurs.”
“You mean by using that 1024-character string, don’t you?”
The instant Ryo said that, Lord Rowon’s expression clearly changed.
But he immediately nodded.
He had realized why Ryo knew of it.
“Did Lu Yao tell you?”
“Yes. Also, the ‘Flight Ring’ sold in the capital contains a similar character string.”
“Ho ho. You opened a ‘Flight Ring’? If you open one clumsily, it will erase the magic formula... But, well— you, Duke Rondo, who can wield so much alchemy and even make golems, have no problem with that. Excuse my bluntness.”
“No, Lord Rowon—your earlier... the ‘Moon’ you used to protect the ship. It’s amazing to perform such a mass of precision control with alchemy. And what you’re firing now... I should call it the ‘Stars’. A vast barrage from countless stars at a steep downward angle—marvelous.”
“If the world were different, we might have debated alchemy day and night.”
“Indeed, quite so.”
Lord Rowon laughed heartily while not letting up the attack.
And Ryo received it with a smile.
Abel, listening to such a conversation beside Ryo, had come to understand recently.
In magic warfare among beings of this class, outcomes are rarely decided by brute force alone.
And that the practitioners themselves understand that best of all.
Therefore, the kind of apparent stalemate— where it looks like brute force meets brute resistance—is actually the state both sides want.
Behind that facade, they are thinking rapidly about a way to settle it in one decisive blow and preparing measures for it.
When nothing seems to be moving from an outsider’s perspective, the top-class ones are actually thinking and preparing.
Abel thought.
Ryo’s goal was probably to secure Prince Ryun and the others.
Because he had admitted them into the Neil Andersen, nothing immediate could be done to them.
But the Neil Andersen itself was still on the enemy’s deck.
Perhaps Ryo wanted to move it closer to their side.
But Abel could not read Lord Rowon’s thinking at all.
He was an alchemist and water-attribute magician touted as the best in Darwei, with a lifetime of experience.
He surely wasn’t doing nothing...
After a while, Lord Rowon laughed.
This laugh was different from the previous ones—it carried a sinister, baleful tone.
A laugh that came from the certainty of having taken the initiative and achieved his objective first.
“Duke Rondo, I think I can take the initiative. <My Hand>.”
The instant Lord Rowon chanted those words.
Ryo felt his control of the <Ice Wall: 50-Layer Multi-layered Ice> that had been protecting the space before him snatched away.
As if taken by Kraken or Fan.
At the same time, it vanished.
Ryo’s pushing Abel to the side was almost unconscious...
And then.
Ryo was frozen solid.
“Impossible...”
Abel, who had been shoved aside, muttered, looking at Ryo, now encased in ice.
“Wah-ha-ha-ha-ha—delightful, delightful. To be able to freeze such a water-attribute magician in ice!”
If it could be called a raving laugh.
Then that was Lord Rowon’s laughter as he rolled about.
“Ryo will break through and come out...”
Abel said involuntarily.
“No, that’s impossible, Your Majesty Abel.”
Lord Rowon said, bowing politely while laughing.
“This is ice encasing produced by alchemy. If it were only magic, there might be a slim chance. But since I froze him with my alchemy, even a legendary magician cannot possibly escape.”
Lord Rowon explained.
Hearing that, Abel’s face soured.
He recalled the previous fight between Ryo and Fan.
At the end, Ryo had used alchemy to encase Fan in ice.
Fan, who had the body of a dragon.
A true apex water-attribute monster. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶
Yet even she could not free herself from the alchemically created ice coffin by her own power.
So Abel understood.
What Lord Rowon said was true.
Still...
“The match is decided. Surrender.”
Prince Kouri’s renewed call for surrender came at a perfect moment.
At the precise moment, the strongest force on which they relied had been lost.
If they surrendered, the soldiers would probably not be harmed.
At least, neither Kabui Somar nor Captain La Wu could issue orders to continue this as a forcible combat.
Rather...
“Abel-dono, what do you think?”
Kabui Somar honestly consulted Abel.
He knew now—Abel had just been revealed as Abel the First.
In this situation, consulting Abel the King as commander of the allied fleet was not wrong.
Abel deliberately turned his back on Prince Kouri and faced Kabui Somar and Captain La Wu.
“Wait just a little longer.”
“Do you mean... that Duke Rondo will break that ice and come out?”
“Is he alive, trapped in that ice?”
Abel requested; Kabui Somar asked; Captain La Wu already doubted whether Ryo’s life remained.
“No—the Neil Andersen and the ice wall continue to exist. So at least Ryo is not dead.”
Indeed, the Neil Andersen had been generated by alchemy, but the supply of magic power should be coming from Ryo himself.
He was not using magic stones, after all.
That was Abel’s reasoning.
However...
Crack.
A sound was heard...
And something transparent vanished.
“They’re peeling off the ice wall one layer at a time.”
Kabui Somar must have sensed and understood it.
The ice walls that Ryo had generated to protect the allied fleet were being taken over and removed layer by layer by Lord Rowon.
The first wall that had been commandeered and peeled away by the magic called <My Hand>...that was the wall directly before Ryo’s side.
But other ice walls were protecting the allied fleet.
Those, too, were being peeled away.
“This is bad...”
That realization spread unease among everyone aboard the allied fleet.
As leaders of the fleet, that was extremely bad.
“Ryo...”
Abel murmured that as he looked at Ryo frozen in ice.
<<COUNTER ALCHEMY>>
Crack.
“Preparedness leaves no cause for worry.”
Ryo said as he shattered the ice—and he was back in the fight!
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