CHAPTER 34

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Lyra’s P.O.V

Alt-nii is in danger!

There is no more leeway to think about a strategy. There is no more time to think about consequences of my next actions. After all, my big brother’s future is at the stake here.

If I haven’t yet mastered powerful combat magic spells, if my magic attacks’ power output is not yet at a strong level... then there’s only one answer.

The one thing that I’m good at.

Or the one thing that I was good at.

Though it has been years since I last practiced it... at least I know that I’m more confident with my combat skills in terms of that.

“Ice sword,” I muttered, as cold breeze started to flow from my right hand. I formed a firm grasp on my right hand—grabbing the forming ice sword.

Of course, I’ve adjusted the size so that it would be good for my current body to use.

As soon as the ice sword was fully formed, I dashed forward and quickly closed my gap from that crazy lady and—

With all the power I have, I jumped up. With my current power and height, I only managed to jump as high as her lower back, but it should be good enough.

Using all the power that my arms have, I grasped the handle of the ice sword with both of my hands, and swung it forward.

“Aaaaaah!!”

The crazy woman seemed to be very surprised by my ambush, as the ice sword successfully sliced through her clothes and slightly injured her back. More than anything, I’m sure she’s surprised by the cold sensation that she suddenly felt at the same time as the sensation of pain. After all, there wasn’t only laceration on her back, but a small portion of her back was covered by the ice!

It’s as if I was using a sword imbued with ice attribute, and the effect of freezing the enemy. In other words, a magic sword that’s quite pricey and hard to get.

Magic is convenient. I wonder if there are people who specialized in using magic to form some weapons and then used the weapons in a close-ranged combat?

Simultaneously as she screamed, she also dropped Alt-nii.

With a thud, Alt-nii landed safely on the floor—the impact must be quite painful, but Alt-nii seemed not to mind it and opened his eyes in surprise.

“Lyra, why are you here? Didn’t I tell you to run?!” Alt-nii asked in disbelief.

“I couldn’t run while leaving you in the hands of the enemies, Alt-nii!” I quickly grabbed Alt-nii by hand and was about to run outside with him when—

“What the hell are you useless men doing?! CAPTURE THEM!” The woman who’s knelt down and is grabbing her injured back shouted. Her voice clearly indicated her anger. She... seems to be using some kind of ointment to heal her wounds...

At her commands, the two men who were crouching down are forcing themselves to stand up. They seem to get used to the sensation of pain they felt—or that they have gotten over it by now.

I stopped my track as all my paths are blocked by them.

“Lyra,” Alt-nii whispered softly in my ears.

“Let’s fight together.”

I slightly nodded at his suggestion.

When the two men are rushing off towards us, we are already prepared to fight back. Alt-nii is handling the man to the right, while I’m handling the man to the left.

The man I’m fighting is using two knives and his agile movements to fight me.

Meanwhile, the man Alt-nii’s fighting seems to be using a short sword.

Wait—Alt-nii’s dagger is over there, what will he do?!

But I wasn’t given any chance to worry about Alt-nii, as the man in front of me is aggressively trying to attack me.

...I am just a four-year-old child, but you’re this aggressive?!

I was quite exasperated, to be honest. Their enemies are only small children, yet they showed no mercy and attacked aggressively.

Of course, I managed to block and dodge each slash. I guess I’m still accustomed to my old fighting habit—but my body isn’t all that trained... yet. I think I will surely strain my muscles after this excessive use of them, but let’s think about that minor consequence later on.

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I’m trying to recall the Grabberton’s fighting style that I have learned in the past with some of my own style added into it.

We are mainly focused on attacking with force rather than speed—but that’s exactly why we are trained in blocking enemies that depend on speed. However, I have more advantages with my current condition, especially the ability to use magic.

When my enemy is using both of his knives to attack, that’s my cue! I blocked the two knives with my ice sword and imbued it with more mana—causing it to emit a colder breeze that froze the knives.

Normally, I should be blocking the two knives and identified a weak spot quickly, then I should force my body to that direction and powerfully hit it with my sword—yup, a sudden movement to get closer to the enemy’s weak spot and strike it at once. It is kind of a suicidal move that I developed for not really caring on what would happen to me.

After all, if I am not careful enough and if the enemy is clever enough, the enemy could also strike me the moment I threw my body at their direction. It was like a bet on who would succeed with the attack, and which side could injure their enemies more severe. Injury? Hah! What mattered the most was if I could win the battle anyway. Any wound would worth the victory, and if I was severely injured because of my rash style, then it would only mean that I was fated to die as a warrior, or during a match. Quite a cool death, to be honest.

This rash trick I mentioned was my own improvisation added to the Grabberton swordsmanship style I used to use in battles.

But now, the situation is different. More or less, I should probably develop a style where I could fight with less injury—so that my life won’t be in danger. So that I won’t cause my family to be worried.

Lucky I could use magic.

The man was surprised because the ice quickly traveled to his hands. As he wanted to drop the knives so that he could fight with other means, I quickly slashed my ice sword towards his legs, causing him to drop into his knees—which have already started to freeze.

With this, he isn’t too far away from my reach and I quickly performed another slash to his body—after taking some distance, as I only intended to freeze him, causing him to be immobilized. I don’t intend to be a murderer at the age of 4 if possible.

After making sure that he was immobilized, I quickly turned my gaze towards Alt-nii.

He was erecting magical barriers in order to defend himself from the enemy’s attack!! He seems to be having trouble to keep it up, so he hasn’t had the time to cast an offensive spell. He has been going full defensive all this time!

But the man’s movement seemed to be slowing down, and Alt-nii quickly—

“Disappear!”

--shouted while lightly touching the man’s blade from his barrier, causing a pitch black area to appear from the tip of his hand, slowly devouring the man’s blade into nothingness. Of course, the man was surprised, but he was quick to react and submissively let his blade to disappear.

And this is where trouble comes.

Okay, Trouble is my nickname for the troublesome crazy lady-leader.

Trouble seemed to mutter something as electric sparks started to fly at Alt-nii’s direction—she’s casting magic!!

The electric spark hit Alt-nii’s barrier, causing Alt-nii’s attention to be divided as he glanced towards Trouble who’s ambushing him.

...could it be that they were aiming at Alt-nii all along?

“Alt-nii, careful! Switch!”

As the man started to switch his battling style and formed a fire ball that’s directed to Alt-nii when he wasn’t looking, I dashed forward and positioned myself between them, and blocked the man’s flame in exchange. The flame managed to cause my ice sword to be melted.

“Lyra!”

Alt-nii turned over at me, and I shouted.

“Alt-nii, just go and fight the lady-boss, I will block him!”

Alt-nii didn’t say anything else and quickly faced his opponent.

Though we are fully aware that the man I’m facing is specialized in fire magic that naturally can win over my ice magic, the fact that Alt-nii didn’t protest also indicated that we considered Miss Trouble as the most dangerous out of the two, and that it would be better for Alt-nii’s Void magic to be used to fight against her.

As for how I could fare against this fire user... We’ll see!

***

Normal P.O.V

“What is this? Sibling-y love-y? How cute-y~ ♥ Makes me feels more excited to love you reall-y good!!” The female leader’s voice shook as she laughed uncontrollably, and her crazed brown eyes peered deeper at the two siblings, as if she’d burn them with her piercing gaze.

She then proceeded to chant in a low voice, and an electric spark appeared on top of her palm. Altaire looked at her, full of precaution.

Meanwhile, Lyra’s fight with the fire user has already started. Now that the man’s weapon was gone, he had to resort to fighting with magic.

Somehow, perhaps due to the influence of her past training as a swordswoman, her movement was still fast, albeit her current body has never undergone any similar training. She managed to dodge each fire ball aimed at her. Occasionally though, she would use her formed ice sword to block the fire, causing it to melt.

But worry not, as Lyra quickly regenerated the ice sword and proceeded. The man also managed to dodge the icy slash Lyra delivered by using his fire magic to form a flame shield, though his flame shield was quite weak.

Lyra soon realizes why this man didn’t directly use his magic to fight. Because the man was not good at magic! It has just been a few minutes and a few fire balls and shield, but the man’s already sweating and his breathing became ragged.

Lyra smiled once she knew she was going to win. She launched another jump and swung her ice sword—the man barely managed to cast his fire shield and blocked the sword.

In the meantime...

“Damn you, Void user!!” Miss Trouble clicked her tongue when she realized that her battle was following the same pattern, as Altaire would either erase her thunder balls or cancel her spell in case she wanted to cast a powerful magic.

Altaire grinned widely, forgetting the pinch that he barely evaded.

[Hlynrian trinda] (Thunder ball)

“Again?” Altaire said mockingly. However, with just a little bit of sliding right, he managed to evade the attack.

“Huh, have your eyes gone blind, Onee-chan? It was a total miss!”

But he was greeted back with a wide smile.

“...no way...,” Altaire quickly knew what was going on and turned to look behind him—the thunder balls were aimed at Lyra!!

The woman's main target of the day was Altaire--but at that time, she didn't know that Lyra would cause her so much trouble. Now that she knows it, she thinks that she should get rid of her first.

“Lyra, be careful!!”

“Oh~ you dare ignore Onee-chan?!”

The crazed woman quickly closed in her distance to Altaire, and Altaire was shocked to realize that the moment he faced her again.

Lyra noticed Altaire’s warning and quickly turned behind her to see the incoming thunder balls while the man behind her cast another magical flame again—and Lyra was aware with the man’s movement, as she could feel the fire’s heat closing in on her.

If she dodged the man’s fire, she would get hit by the thunder balls. If she dodged the lady’s thunder ball, she would get hit by the man’s fire. Dodging sideways didn't help as she could only make a small movement to the left or right--and the size of the fire blast and the area that the thunder balls could reach were quite wide. In other words, she was completely trapped.

“Nooooo, stoppppp!!”

Lyra spontaneously closed her eyes and screamed—unable to think which side she should dodge, as she also noticed Altaire’s bad predicament. She was simply frozen in fear of what was going to happen.

At that moment, cracks started to form rapidly at Lyra’s magical stone pendant. In no time, the stone was shattered to pieces with a loud crack. In her heart, she wondered, 'what was all this cracking sound?'

Moments later, Lyra realized that the pain she expected to feel wasn’t there at all. When she opened her eyes, she realized that the thunder ball stopped right in front of her. The man’s fire blast didn’t get any inch closer to her. Not only that, the man’s movement also ceased to work, along with the lady’s ambush on Altaire. Even her brother didn’t move.

“Eh...?” Lyra was taken aback with this sudden turn of events.

It's as if...

As if time has completely stopped, except for her time.

Just when she thought that time was indeed stopped for anyone else but her...

“Y, y, you little runt! What the hell... did you do?!” Miss Trouble’s body couldn’t move, but her facial expression could twitch in anger and her mouth could still curse Lyra.

“Lyra...? Is this your doing?” Altaire was also surprised.

No... It's not that time has stopped.

Only their body movements stopped.

“W, what is going on?” Lyra stared at all of them in confusion.

No, wait, I didn’t do anything…

At that time, Lyra noticed that the weight she felt was slightly lighter—so she cast her gaze downward and noticed… that the magical stone on the necklace her mom gave her has been shattered to pieces!!

What could this mean?

I certainly didn’t use any sort of magical forces—I didn’t even feel any mana leaking out!!

But how would that explain my necklace breaking and how the others’ movements stopped?

With her past self being completely foreign to the magical world, Lyra couldn't comprehend the phenomenon happening right in front of her.