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Chapter 18: Battlefield in the valley

Year 1872

They had been walking for days in this mountainous wasteland by now, having come out of the underground. Now Haruna figured they were already officially in Byakko territory, so she kept her eyes open for any possible outposts in the distance. Nothing yet, though. This time they had stocked themselves well in water from the temple and were rationing it better, and hunting in this landscape was much easier than it had been underneath it. Haruna kept herself focused on finding their path towards where she knew the fortress of Kagizume should be, while watching out for anything out of the ordinary. Meanwhile, Rina was the one responsible for their resources and Tomomi... Well, Tomomi had been working herself a whole lot ever since the temple.

It was a daily sight now for Haruna, every single time they stopped to camp somewhere for the night, to see Tomomi practice that shield spell of hers against Rina. It looked like it was a lot more efficient now than it had been the first time those two had woken her up with their ruckus back at the temple, that's for sure. The practice seemed to be producing some results. Just like now, as the princess sat in front of yet another fire under the purple sky, watching as the critters Rina had hunted cooked against the flames, those two were at it again.

Right when she stared in their direction again, Rina attacked the sun sorcerer yet another time, and Tomomi produced another almost completely transparent shield made of light magic. She blocked Rina's attack completely. The difference this time, Haruna noted as she poked the flames a little bit with a rock, was that Rina wasn't punching or kicking the sorcerer anymore.

Rina was attacking Tomomi with the blunt side of her sharp swallow this time. The blade had just ricocheted from the magic shield, and Rina moved it back quickly. To be quite honest, Haruna was a bit scared by how much Tomomi had progressed with that spell over the course of a few days. If she understood this correctly, Tomomi was one of those sorcerers with a uniquely large quantity of energy that they could use before running out. That's the reason why she could use healing magic at all.

That also seemed to be the reason why that magic shield now looked just so much thicker than it had looked three days ago. Tomomi could just decide to spend all her magic on this one thing if she wanted to. It really did seem to Haruna that this girl could be a formidable warrior if she wished to be. If only her aspirations made her so inclined. The tools were there for her to use, the eidetic memory that allowed her to remember all these spells and the abnormal amount of magical energy inside of her body, tools that none of them except for Tomomi could ever dream of. Tools that not even Mami possessed, as much as Haruna knew that she was an infinitely superior fighter. Now that she thought about it, Mami seemed to be quite at the opposite end of the spectrum when compared to Tomomi. Haruna had two incidents that she could use to analyze it, and now that she did, her conclusion was that Mami maybe had what could be considered a small amount of magic capacity for a sorcerer. Back when they first found her, Mami used the gravity spell against them and then later used it again against the swamp dragon... and then she used that strange magic that got both herself and Haruna out of that situation alive. After that, she lost consciousness. Haruna couldn't be sure based on that alone, because back then the night dweller had just come out of a long sleep inside of a lab.

The second time was the fight against the Seiryu unit, when Mami used her gravity spell against the entire unit until she crushed them to death and then her strange magic again to prevent Tomomi from taking an arrow to the forehead. Of course, once again, Haruna couldn't be completely sure because in that situation Mami had been hit by arrows and lost a huge amount of blood before inevitably passing out. It made sense, though. Mami had the skill developed with hard work, despite not having the innate talent. Tomomi had the talent, but not the skill. They could have been unstoppable together.