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Something flashed in red in the corner of my vision.

I thought it was an enemy for a moment and became alert, but nothing came our way. Instead, one more red light flashed at the forest part of the foot of the mountain… and disappeared again.

“What the, was that magic?”

The flickering light was clearly not from a natural source.

It was magic, specifically a fire-type offensive spell. The sound of an explosion that came after a momentary delay was proof of that.

It seemed that someone was fighting while chased by something and the sounds of the explosions were moving.

“I hope it’s not something troublesome again.”

The traces of that spell were on the route towards us. At this rate, we would come across it when we descended down to the foot.

“Michelle, Cloud. I sense trouble, so hurry up with the loading.”
“Okay, though I’m mostly done.”
“We had a pretty easy time due to big sis Finia’s magic.”
“I feel like I was useful for once in a long time.”

Finia hadn’t been playing as conspicuous a role as Michelle and Cloud, so she felt fulfilled from this. However, I can declare here and now that she was by no means useless. She was not a unique person who specialized in one aspect, but instead an all-rounder who could support us in all kinds of ways.

She did not stand out simply because the rest of us were specialized in certain directions, but her skill was definitely still first-class.

“Hmm… okay. We might be a bit short on it, but let’s withdraw with this.”
“Gotcha!”
“Okay.”
“Finia, it might be hard, but please keep up your spell.”
“Leave it to me.”

With that, she got on the board and assumed the transportation posture along with the bag filled with Fire Phosphorites. For as long as Finia’s Extinction spell was going, the Fire Phosphorites were no different from ordinary stones.

This spell was normally not a long-lasting one, so it had no such formula embedded into it. In order to forcibly keep it going, Finia was constantly consuming her magic power now. She would quickly run dry like that, so she had to assume a position that would aid her magic power recovery.

By balancing the recovery of the magic power through rest with the consumption of the maintenance, she could realize a long-term effect. But because of that, you could say that she could not move or battle almost at all.

“Okay, Michelle and Cloud, you are on foot. Follow behind me.”
“Gotcha!”
“I’m not gonna stray off in such a scary place.”
“You are prone to doing that, Cloud, so it’s natural to worry.”
“O-Okay…?”

Cloud responded somewhat flushed, while Michelle was pinching him in the flank.

Well, I wasn’t so dull that I’d fail to notice the mood between them. I would overlook it as long as they didn’t do anything lawless. They were my comrades, after all.

“Ah?!”
“Hmm?”

Then Michelle suddenly exclaimed loudly.

It was known that yelling out in a loud voice could surprise people and make them miss their footing, blowing them up, so we were restraining our voices as much as possible.

And yet, she failed to suppress her voice. Thinking of that as strange, I turned towards her.

“Michelle, what’s wrong?”
“Nicole, look! Look there!”

She pointed behind me with a rare cornered expression.

I knew that there were no enemies around, so I turned around to see what was making her so scared… only to see a fireball flying toward us.

It was most probably a stray bullet from the battle going on at the foot. The user’s skill was clear, considering it managed to reach this far. But there was no time to be impressed now. Because it had rained the other day, Fire Phosphorite could have melted into the water and evaporated into a flammable gas.

“R-Retreaaat!!”
“Kyaa?!”

I broke into a run with a face so frantic it put Michelle’s to shame.

Because I had the board tied with the rope on my waist, Finia and the bag of Fire Phosphorite were dragged after me. It had a Levitate spell so you could move it with even slight strength.

Finia raised a high shrill due to the sudden acceleration.

“Kyaa?!”
“H-Hold upp!”
“Don’t leave me heeere!”

Michelle and Cloud chased after us with such screams. A few seconds later, a spell that looked like Firebolt impacted the place we stood at before. Normally, it would’ve only burned the landing spot, but even such a simple spell was fatal here.

Shhhh, came a sound like someone had thrown lit firewood into the water. And then—

“Nwaaaaaaaaah!?”
“Kyaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Ugeeeeeeehhhh!”

Three various screams. Followed by a big explosion.

It did not end at the landing spot, but started to spread to the Fire Phosphorite around in a chain reaction.

Of course, that explosive combustion reached even our fleeing backs.

By the way, Finia was the only one who did not scream. She currently had her eyes closed and held the bag of Fire Phosphorite so it wouldn’t fall off the board, and as such, she did not know about the disaster behind her.

I wished I was in her position.