CH 71

The night has ended and this time, we will be travelling at Ciel’s maximum speed.

『You can rest whenever you want, okay Ciel?』

「In that case, we might end up traveling the whole day.」

Ciel said with a giggle, but since this requires me to sing continuously, I won’t be able to tell her to take a break. Because of that, while I don’t mind if it was just a joke, I’ll be worried if Ciel actually means this.

I could stop singing to call out to her, but with this method of travel, it’s possible for Ciel to get injured if I suddenly stopped singing.

「Don’t worry. After all, this body isn’t just mine.」

『Understood. I trust you, Ciel. Also, one more thing.』

「About what to do upon encountering enemies, right?」

『Yes. This time, there is a possibility of encountering A-rank monsters, so I’ll be hard-pressed to call this safe.』

「I’ll observe first and if the situation seems manageable, let’s defeat them immediately. If not, then let’s retreat.」

『That should be alright. However, there’s one thing I want to ask of you.』

「What is it? I’ll do anything you ask!」

Ciel became awfully excited, so in order to keep it from affecting her judgment, I calmly relay to her my request.

『If we encounter an A-rank, I’ll use a spherical barrier. Once is enough but please receive an attack with that barrier.』

「You want to see how strong an A-rank is, right Ain? Still, I think that your barrier can block their attack completely.」

『The golden wolf broke through my barrier after all, so……』

「In my opinion, there was nothing you could have done at that time.

Ain’s barrier was simply a bad match against it, so there’s no need to worry about that.」

『I can’t really argue if you put it in that way but… Setting that aside, we might get into trouble if we don’t check our current defensive ability, you know?』

「That’s true. I’ll try to take some attacks then.」

I’m happy that Ciel would comfort me like that, but confidently taking an attack with the barrier that would destroy it is something I can’t allow to happen. For the sake of keeping Ciel from becoming a laughingstock as well, I’ll need to have a proper grasp of my own abilities.

Besides that, I want to try experimenting with the power that we got from the golden wolf. I suspect that using it should make us capable of defending against something like the golden wolf’s claws, but this is still nothing more than speculation.

Anyhow, since we finished discussing, I began to sing.

There are various sorts of sorcery, but the ones that have a good affinity with the Dance Princess are those of fire, water, and ice.

After all, these allow a showy use of sorcery. As to be expected, being able to fascinate and impress is fundamental.

Sorcery itself is a prop to attract the eye, to make the dances appear more dazzling.

And those that can do so have a good affinity with it.

For this reason, we’ve only created water and ice stage sets but we could set up fire or earth stages if we wanted to.

A stage of earth is hard to distinguish but if we ignore the magic power expenditure, Ciel can turn the surrounding several kilometers into a forest. Though, doing something like that would exhaust Ciel before she could even dance. A forest several kilometers wide suddenly materializing would be nothing short of a problem, so we probably won’t be doing anything like that.

Something like elevating the ground or turning the area into a flower bed would keep the magic power costs down.

If we consider earth, water, fire, and wind to be the basic elements, then the one that has a bad affinity with the Dance Princess would be wind…… or so I thought. While we do use wind sorcery frequently on its own, that’s less due to the Dance Princess’ ability but more a display of Ciel’s ability in sorcery.

Since enticing is a must, I thought that the wind attribute, being invisible from the naked eye, would have a terrible affinity with the Dance Princess, but it turned out that this wasn’t the case at all. And that led to our mode of travel for this occasion.

The point is, Ciel can run through the sky.

She can walk in the air, making it a stage of wind.

As a dance, it can probably be described as a sort of dance of spirits or dance of fairies. My guess is that seeing the spirits happily jumping around in the air increased Ciel’s mastery with it.

While there are people that can use sorcery to soar through the sky, this is something that only the top class sorcerers can only achieve after great effort to do so.

Ciel is an excellent sorcerer herself, but flying without any prior practice is obviously very much impossible.

Back on topic.

With her thin and slender feet, Ciel grasped the air and jumped towards the sky.

Matching my song, she dashed through the air like a fawn galloping in the fields.

Taking notice of this, a spirit began cheerfully flying around Ciel.

As this one spirit started playing, the surrounding spirits began playing as well, and Ciel followed suit and joined in.

With how it is now, it’s turned into less of a dance and more of a festival. Though, since we’re still moving onwards through the air with the ability of the Dance Princess, let’s not think about that.

On closer inspection, the spirits seemed to be moving to the beat of my song, but let’s not think about that.

There’s also some of them trying to sing along, but let’s also not think about that.

It’s heartwarming, so it’s all good.

The fact that the spirits can hear my voice doesn’t matter too much in particular.

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There’s no problem with them being buffed after all. To begin with, I don’t even know if I can buff spirits.

After all, they’re clearly beings different from normal living creatures.

Still, from the eyes of the people who can’t see spirits, Ciel’s actions are dodgy.

She is, after all, laughing and smiling at the empty sky, so people might think that she’s insane.

While considering the need to think when using this, I continued to sing as usual since there’s no use in talking to her about this now, or rather we’ll crash if I stop singing.

◇

Three days after leaving the town of Norvell.

While pondering whether I’m being lazy or not, I repeatedly sing the same song.

Or rather, I’m singing a song that can continue endlessly. I’ll change into a different song once I get sick of it, but I’ve probably been singing the same song for several hours now.

Game BGMs, they’re amazing.

While I could probably look for a regular song too, I’m not skillful enough to do that, so songs that are made to loop from the start really helps for extended periods of time like these.

Well, let’s leave my impressions on music aside.

After all, I can see a large silhouette within my field of vision.

It would’ve been fine if we were on the ground, but no matter how I look at it, we’re in the sky.

They’re mythical beasts that are well-known even in my past life.

Now that it’s considerably close, I can see what seems to be a wyvern. An A-rank flying lizard.

Since we’re encountering one here, then the stampede likely already started.

I have no idea what the scale of this stampede is, but just from the appearance of a wyvern, the damage to the capital is probably going to be big.

If possible, I’d prefer to ignore all of these wyverns, head to the capital, leave the supplies, and escape, but unfortunately they’re heading right towards us.

If these were just grounded monsters instead, we could have ignored them all here from the sky.

We could head to the capital while running away from the wyverns, but in our current situation, I have a feeling that we could get captured for bringing along wyverns.

Now, what if we had just walked instead then? In that situation, we’d be forced to go through monsters numbering incomparably more than these wyverns—there’s about ten of them from what I can see—and so going on pure numbers alone, traveling through the sky wasn’t a mistake.

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like the other monsters are heading towards us like the wyverns are.

From here on, whether we land on the ground or fight them here in the air will depend on Ciel, but it appears that Ciel chose to fight as she showed no signs of heading towards the ground.

As we discussed beforehand, I casted a spherical barrier for Ciel to receive attacks with.

The wyvern approaching has green scales, sharp claws, and a tail, with its arms and wings being fused together.

While I haven’t read up about them thoroughly, if I’m not mistaken, since their tails have venom, just a graze from it would make the battle unfavourable.

It is quite dangerous for barrier testing, but that simply means it won’t matter as long as it doesn’t destroy the barrier.

Also, now that it’s near, it’s easy to understand that the wyvern is very big.

It’s several times Ciel’s size, so it has a sort of last boss impression.

While I do think that it’s not that much bigger than the golden wolf, the wolf walks on all fours and, in contrast, this lizard flies like it walks on two legs, so this one feels more intimidating.

It’s like a wall.

The first wyvern to come near flew at a higher altitude than Ciel and then suddenly swooped down to capture Ciel with its claws.

Like a bullfighter, Ciel nimbly evaded and, at one occasion, had the claws hit the barrier intentionally.

The strong impact almost made Ciel lose her balance, but she skillfully used sorcery to recover.

At the same time, I was certain of this battle’s victory.

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It probably has other ways of attacking, but no matter how much it repeats the same attack earlier, it won’t destroy my barrier.

Or rather, the spear of ice is much more powerful than this.

Next, we blocked its approaching tail.

It might have some other trick up its sleeve, but there’s no doubt that we’re in a considerably more advantageous position.

Yup, I guess the golden wolf really was just abnormal.

Still, while we probably won’t lose here, I have no idea if we can defeat it.

The key here will be whether Ciel’s attacks are effective against A-rank monsters or not.

As though frolicking with a wyvern charging in for a bite, Ciel ran through the sky.

Now flying freely in the sky like some magical girl, Ciel shot blades of wind at every given opportunity and steadily wounded the wyvern.

If she was wearing a frilly outfit and had a wand, it’ll probably look perfect. There’s no issue with her age-wise as well, but since what Ciel’s using is closer to sorcery than it is to magic, I guess that makes her more a sorcery girl.

Jokes aside, there are currently too many wyverns which makes it difficult to continue on the offensive.

Fortunately, the wyverns don’t appear to be good at dogfights as they can’t seem to keep up with sharp and precise movements, so we just have to outlast them.

They likely target creatures on the ground after all and their large bodies likely make it hard for them to target small prey.

Just as I was thinking that, I detected a reaction coming from afar a bit too late.

A tail quickly occupying my field of vision accurately slammed Ciel on the head.

While the barrier can block attacks, being slammed in the air means that there’s no way to redirect the force of impact.

Before I could finish thinking about how bad it could be to be hammered to the ground this way, I used what I planned to use for my second experiment.

The mysterious power used by the golden wolf that melded into my barrier.

Just as how I make use of magic power in sorcery, I circulated it through the body and released it outside. The fact that I’m able to circulate an energy more powerful than magic power is all thanks to Ciel’s atypical magic circuits.

After a skydive that lasted less than a second, or perhaps a cordless bungee jump, I only felt the sensation of landing on the ground, it was as if there was no impact at all.

Realizing what happened, Ciel looked around and the area surrounding her turned into a small crater.

Looking up, the wyvern quickly drew near us.

Without looking away from the large creature approaching close before our eyes, Ciel did nothing at all.

Just as I was pondering what’s on her mind, the charging wyvern’s claws hit the barrier and snapped.

Perhaps feeling pain, if not anger for things not happening as it planned, the wyvern roared before fleeing back into the sky.

Yup. It looks like the barrier’s defensive ability has increased.

『What should we do about that? 』

Since we fell from the sky, I stopped singing and asked Ciel.

The wyverns appeared to be still locked onto Ciel, as they’re circling us in the air.

「Thanks to Ain, I won’t lose against them but just going to the royal capital like this would also be bad, right? 」

『It’d be better to avoid doing that, yes.』

「Then there’s no other choice but to defeat them; still, it’ll be hard to use anything other than wind sorcery up in the sky, while down here any other sorcery likely wouldn’t reach them.

So, how about I try acting like a typical Dance Princess for this occasion?」

『That might be a good idea. I’ll provide support to keep you from getting wet then.』

With our next move decided, I started singing once again. What we’re going to perform right now is a ceremony of sorts, so I sang a solemn song befitting of one. Ciel kicked the ground, constructing a simplified stage.

After so, Ciel used her robe in place of a stole and fell to her knees as though to offer a prayer.

While we haven’t done this much up until now for some reason, this is the most typical form of the Dance Princess’ ability.

Set a stage, perform music, and offer a dance.

Ciel slowly stood up and without any imbalance in her body’s core, she then performed a gentle and slow spin.

She moved her slim body greatly, moving as a gentle flowing stream, continuously matching my song.

Following her movements, her robe seized the air, which spread it wide open, and followed Ciel’s motions as though unaffected by the pull of gravity.

What’s perhaps the most regrettable part might be that Ciel is in a completely hunter-like attire.

Or maybe it’s the fact that her gallery only consists of lizards.

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Being covered in thick clouds, the sky turned dark and perhaps sensing something, the wyverns began to move in disarray.

――Drip

A drop of rain fell from the sky.

――Drip Drop

Then two, then three. Before long, the raindrops increasing in number now fall incessantly.

The sounds of the drops link into one, and their terminus gradually and steadily got gouged out.

In the middle of this heavy torrent, Ciel continued dancing alone.

Twirling round and round, as though eagerly awaiting this savage blessing.

Flowing smooth and slow, as though celebrating this cruel world.

The spirits joyfully jump about.

The blue spirits in particular are swimming about in the sky.

The wyverns that failed to escape had their wings slammed by the raindrops and fell to the ground.

And as a flash of lightning descended, Ciel ended her dance.

Hiya~! Another dance, another slain! And this time, unlike Ciel’s usual battle mage-dancer hybrid battle style, we have a pure ceremonial dance princess!

First of all, giggly Ciel is always cute. Terribly cute. Also, Ciel gladly willing to hear any of Ain’s requests, lol. And Ain, lol, I feel you, game bgms are top tier background music for doing stuff. They are background music after all.

With their growth so far, our princesses are really shaping up into fairies, it seems, lol. First the avatar bending like dances, then a mode of flight that is further influenced by that of the spirits playing around them, and Ciel basically looks like an ethereal being from how pristine she always looks anyway. And to top it off, ceremonial dancing that summons torrential rain and thunder, which is practically on the realm of this world’s magic rather than sorcery. Think about it, magic needs a sacrifice that isn’t particularly just magic power, heck Ain’s magic (the strengthening of her barrier with the sacrifice of her combat capabilities) used zero magic power at all. So in a sense, the ceremonial dance could be seen as a “sacrifice” as it is an offering, with the resulting rain being summoned with no magic power at all. In this sense, dance princesses are really op but specialized even without the capability for sorcery. Well, enough about me gushing over this, lol.

Btw, is it me or is the author/Ain referring to Miyu Edelfelt from Prisma Illya when she was describing how magical girl-ish Ciel’s air walk is, lol. I do see some similarities with Ciel and Miyu tho, but that’s just my speculation.