Two bottles of potion went down, and Duncan's mind cleared noticeably.
There wasn't any "special" potion made purely for recovering mental strain… well, the ones sold in the Pleasure Quarter didn't count—but both recovery potions and stamina potions could restore his focus as a side effect. Stamina potions did it better, naturally, and were priced accordingly.
"Silence."
Duncan drew a slow breath, fixed his gaze on Alfia, and spoke in a low voice.
The instant the word left his mouth, it turned into an invocation. Mana drained rapidly from his body—but there was no dazzling light, no obvious visual cue, nothing that looked like magic had taken effect. It was as if nothing happened at all.
And yet Alfia's expression shifted—she opened her heterochromatic eyes in shock.
"It worked on you?" Zald blurted out, catching the change immediately.
"…Yes." Alfia went quiet for a beat, staring at her left hand. "I really can't use magic."
"Are you serious? You're Level 7. How long does it last?" Zald's face went pale.
If a Level 3 adventurer could seal the magic of any mage regardless of level, that was a straight-up dimensional strike against spellcasters. Outside of anomalies like Alfia, very few mages could fight properly without their spells. Strip their firepower, and their value didn't become zero—but it dropped off a cliff.
"It's not so much 'forbidding' magic," Alfia said, feeling out the change inside her body, "as it is cutting off the flow of mana—forcing the body into a state where it can't drive mana at all. Like… freezing it. For mana."
To confirm it, she even tried launching Evangelion at the empty ground.
Nothing.
No shockwave, no sonic impact—exactly as she described. During the "chant," there was simply no mana movement in her body to trigger the spell.
"…Ah. It's gone." A moment later, Alfia felt her mana circulate again. "It's解除—lifted."
"So about ten seconds?" Zald inhaled sharply. "Ten seconds where a Level 7 mage can't cast… Can you extend that time?"
Compared to Duncan's other skills, which Zald had found merely surprising, this one was the kind of magic that made him jealous. A short-chant anti-mage spell—if Zald had it, he could make Alfia wash dishes tonight.
"Mana cost?" Alfia cut in, voice steady. "How many times can you use it right now?"
"If my mana is full," Duncan answered honestly, "about five times."
"Can you amplify it by dumping more mana in, like your earlier spell?" Alfia fired off questions in rapid succession. "What's the effective range? Zald—walk farther out and test."
"Seriously… stop ordering people around like it's nothing," Zald grumbled. Still, he sprang away with a few quick strides—ending up more than a hundred meters from them.
"Silence."
Duncan repeated the casting, felt the same drain, then looked to Alfia.
"Same mana consumption as before."
"So the cost doesn't change based on the target's level or mana quantity," Alfia concluded, then lifted her gaze toward Zald as he returned.
"Same as with you," Zald reported. "Even from that distance, it works… and the duration is the same."
"…Farther," Alfia ordered again. "Increase the distance."
Her eyes gleamed brighter and brighter. If the spell couldn't be extended by brute mana output, then it also meant something else: this magic didn't demand fine control or high concentration. It was almost too consistent.
A spell with fixed effect and fixed cost—mages called that a foolproof spell. Practically anyone could use it. And on a real battlefield, a short-chant, instant-use, foolproof spell was a dagger—sharp enough to slip into the enemy's ribs before they even realized they'd been opened.
And battlefields didn't give frontliners the luxury to "maintain" complicated casting. That was a privilege for backline mages, paid for with one requirement: the spells they used had to be capable of turning the entire fight.
They ran four or five tests in a row. Only when Duncan's face began to blanch did Alfia finally stop and toss him a stamina potion.
Ever since returning from Campbell, Zald had practically swept half the city's pharmacies clean. Duncan and Bell were now trapped in a training regime that was "painful and joyful" in equal measure—injured, depleted, drink two potions, get back up and keep fighting.
That was a privilege only major familias could afford.
Whether the two of them had arrived in a good era or a bad one depended on how you looked at it.
The "good" part was that with Zeus's faction destroyed, most of its wealth had ended up in Zald's hands. And with nowhere left to spend it, raising the two of them was an expense he didn't even have to think about.
The "bad" part was that back when Zeus's faction was at its peak, they had healer teams—plural. They didn't need cheap potions at all. They had every tier of sparring partner and every level of support. Now, there were no proper "training dummies" left… so the only ones left to be used as sandbags were them.
Alfia clicked her tongue, still hungry for more data.
"Conclusion: Silence is a short-chant, instant-strike spell. It forcibly prevents spellcasting by locking down mana flow. It should work on monsters as well. Range is line of sight. Duration is ten seconds. Mana cost is roughly one-fifth of your reserves."
"Shame it can't destabilize mana and cause a backlash," Zald said with a sigh. "I've heard from other gods there are spells like that."
"Different mechanism," Alfia replied, analyzing it cleanly. "Duncan's is freezing the target's mana. Once it lifts, anyone experienced will immediately resume casting. What you're talking about is disrupting mana so the target can't maintain a spell."
"Mine can be used at any point during their casting or movement. Yours only shines right as they're about to release a spell."
To put it simply: Duncan's spell force-stopped the enemy's "cast bar." When the time ended, the "bar" could continue. The other type forcibly canceled the cast and threw up an error message.
On paper, disruption might seem more threatening.
But Duncan's spell's real strength was its range and its short chant. Ten seconds might not mean much at low levels—but the higher the level, the more horrifying those ten seconds became.
For Alfia, ten seconds was enough to rewrite the battlefield.
At full power, she had shattered one of the Three Great Beasts.
"So… a mage-killer," Zald said with a broad grin.
As a heavy melee frontliner, he'd spent plenty of "sparring" sessions with Hera's familia getting bullied by Alfia. Trying to push forward while protecting your own mages—while a monster like Alfia rained magic on you—was pure misery. Seeing the next generation finally get a weapon that could bite back made him genuinely pleased.
Zald's grin widened a little too much.
Alfia's lips curled into a cold smile.
"Zald," she said softly, "your tone has implications. Want to have a match?"
"…No need to be that petty," Zald said instantly, hands up. "Fine. Forget I said anything."
He surrendered on the spot.
....
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