arc1 · 008-ep8

Episode 8: The Ojou-sama's Debrief★

"――Good day to you all! Tsukishiro Saya, here. Today, I...that I of all people should be bested by such middle-layer smallfry—it is the blunder of a lifetime......!"

Nine at night. In the soundproofed streaming room of her own home, Tsukishiro Saya rang her very best show of bravado out through the microphone.

On screen, as if her mud-caked state of that afternoon had been an outright lie, her long black hair was neatly arranged in a half-up style, and she wore a well-tailored robe of the classic mage persuasion. The wound at her shoulder, too, had been closed up completely under a healer's care—but the small fist clenched in frustration told the tale of just how high her pride ran.

The viewers, past ten thousand within minutes of the stream starting, set about filling the comment feed as if to say we've been waiting.

『So glad nouveau-riche-chan's aliiive!!』

『"Bested by smallfry" my foot—you were for-real nearly dead lol』

『That "hii!" squeak with your voice flipping at the very start—we all heard it, you know』

『But truly, thank goodness you're safe~ Is the wound all better now?』

『Putting on a brave face, but those slightly red ears are cute lol』

『Wearing that favorite mage robe of hers even inside her own room, I see』

Every time merciless jabs scrolled across her monitor, Saya went "Ugh......" and faltered mid-word, eyes darting awkwardly.

And in truth, the moment those five Black Hounds had closed around her at that dead end, she had felt nothing of being alive. Even now, the memory sent a chill down her spine.

"Th-the wound is nothing at all anymore! Who do you take me for, I wonder!?"

Saya puffed her chest out at once, but then quickly let her expression soften, laying a gentle hand over her own heart.

"...But it is a fact that I caused you all worry. And that I picked my life back up there was not by my own strength. That was thanks, entirely, to the one who came running to my aid."

At those words, the whole comment feed surged to life at once.

『"The one"?? You mean the rescuer!?』

『So even Saya-chan had no idea who it was!』

『The Ojou-sama Club already ID'd the channel! And she's been running wild through the middle layers ever since!』

『I went and watched that person's stream though—sword the whole time, barely any magic at all?』

『That opening three-at-once spell—wasn't it a sneak attack after all, pre-cast with plenty of time deep in the passage?』

Following the scrolling comments with her eyes, Saya's brow gave a twitch.

Of course, Saya too had learned straight after returning and being treated that the board had turned up the rescuer's stream channel, and she had gone back through the archive from beginning to end, eyes glued.

"Indeed, I too watched that person's stream just now! That person...no, allow me to take the liberty, out of respect, of calling her 'Onee-sama'!"

Eyes shining, Saya declared it grandly toward the far side of the screen.

An explorer who wields technique that refined, walking the deep middle layers entirely alone. Someone doubtless far more seasoned than herself—a noble, beautiful woman explorer. Inside Saya, it had already been settled completely as exactly that.

"That she wielded nothing but the sword on her own stream is surely because she had no intention of showing the inner workings of her precious magic for free through that sorry excuse for a mandatory camera! Or perhaps she judged that middle-layer smallfry did not merit the use of magic at all.......But you there, in the comments, who so lightly remarked 'she just pre-cast and stockpiled it deep in the passage'! Onee-sama's magic, witnessed at close range, was nothing so soft as that!?"

Saya leaned hard in, both hands clenched before her chest.

Calling up the afterimage of that crystal-clear mana from that moment, her consciousness slid further and further from keeping up the ojou-sama speech, and toward conveying what she had seen.

"It's true that the magic flew at me from the dark depths of the passage, so even I couldn't see when or where Onee-sama chanted. But listen, and listen well: even granting it was 'multi-deployment'—chanting in turn in the passage's shadow and stockpiling—firing it off like that is absolutely impossible for anyone normal, you know!? Even with just two spells stockpiled and released together, a mage leaks mana while holding them and her hands tremble, and the instant they fire, the manas collide and the trajectories scatter, do they not? Yet Onee-sama shaped barrier, ice, and wind—all three—with not so much as a tenth of a second's drift from that snap sound, at the exact same moment!? Think plainly: a barrier is the operation of spreading mana flat and hardening it; ice is the operation of building form from below and extending it; wind is the operation of compressing to a single point and bursting it! The work held in mind is entirely separate for each, so how did she run at me carrying all three at once without the manas colliding the instant she released them!?"

Once the fire caught, Saya's words only accelerated, with a momentum no one could hope to stop.

"And another thing—it wasn't some brute-force dump of stockpiled mana; from the mana's rise to its convergence there wasn't one speck of murk! That hard barrier popped out right at my nose, within a few centimeters, and not one breath of the afterwind's pressure leaked this way; the ice sewed up none but the legs of the beasts at my flanks, and the wind behind blew away none but the two deep in without disturbing a single strand of my hair! Set off three spells at once in a dead end that cramped, and normally the afterblast alone would blow me away along with everything else, would it not!? I read the old records at home, and I tried hundreds of times on the practice field, and layering just two was enough for the forms to fall apart—so how can she stand in the very thick of live combat and pull control that pure, as if it had been one single spell from the very start!? I flatly cannot make head or tails of this!!"

Saya, rattling it all off in one breathless torrent, had eyes glittering bright, gesticulating so wide it all but burst out of the screen's frame.

The viewers, who'd started out listening with a "Wow, so it really was that amazing," found themselves swept along by a Saya who talked on and on without pausing for breath, until all they could manage were nods and lukewarm replies.

『Huh? Her register』

『The ojou-sama persona peeled right off—the bare magic otaku underneath is showing lol』

『She's talking so fast the auto-captions are glitching all over the place lolol』

『Ojou-sama, how about a sip of water and a deep breath first?』

『Uh-huh. So amazing, nouveau-riche-chan.』

『That Onee-sama's magic really must have struck her somewhere deep, hmm』

『She's still going, this ojou-sama lolol』

"――And so, the mana density when that ice went racing along the floor, compared even to ordinary pre-casting......wait, oh."

Only as her lungs finally ran dry and she sucked in a big breath did Saya, for the first time, land her eyes on the lukewarm string of text scrolling her monitor—"Huh? Her register," "Uh-huh," "Still going lol."

Her movements stopped dead; a few seconds later, her white cheeks went burning red all the way to the roots of her ears.

"...k-K-KHEM!! A-anyway, as I was saying!"

With one ostentatiously grand cough, Saya hastily straightened her spine and smoothed the rumpled tips of her black hair with her fingertips.

『She snapped back to reality so fast lol』

『The ojou-sama has returned to us~!』

『Those eyes were one hundred percent a maiden in love, btw lol』

『Actually, ojou-sama—there was a bit of talk about this: that person's voice was so calm. Any chance she's a man?』

"N-none of your impertinence! She saved my life—it is only natural I convey the greatness of that magic properly! And besides, to suggest of Onee-sama that she might be a man—there is rude, and there is beyond rude! Do not liken her to those flimsy men who come hovering after money and baser designs!"

Having puffed her cheeks out in protest, Saya pulled her expression taut and serious.

How today she had seen that back walk away without ever catching a name. And the ache burning deep in her chest—her longing to hear more, no matter what, about that magic so like the dream she had chased all this time.

"I will reach out to that Onee-sama myself, without fail, and offer my thanks properly! All of you, cheer me on so that I may deliver it as I ought! ......And so, today's stream ends here. Good day to you aaall!"

Her last words coming out just slightly too fast, face scarlet clear through, Saya waved a hand with all her elegance and fled to slam the stream's end button.