Kanzaka Slayers: Volume 5

The Silver Demon-Beast
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7183-7472-0
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 5, 276 Seiten

Reihe: Slayers

Sure gotta love bandits, huh? One minute you're just whaling on 'em for some quick cash and stress relief, and the next thing you know, your magic's been sealed! With Gourry and Amelia at my side, it oughta be easy enough to track down the lady responsible for all this and set things straight, right? Too bad our destination's a town full of Dark Lord cultists and werebeasts. Oh, and we all manage to get separated... Maybe this self-styled 'mysterious priest' guy can help me out. They never have ulterior motives, right? Right?!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kanzaka, Hajime

Weitere Mitwirkende

Araizumi, Rui

Ellis, Elizabeth

Leseproben

“I told them not to do anything too reckless... Though it seems they didn’t listen to me,” she sighed.

“I-It’s just... Bey said...” the bandit groaned.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Mazenda calmly interrupted, then looked to me before continuing. “I know these men are quite hopeless, but they’re still my comrades. I ask that you let them off with a warning.”

“You really think I’ll agree to that?”

“No,” she responded readily. “So... how about this? I’ll perform a little trick for you, and if it amuses you, you let them go.”

With that, she took a small step forward. Amelia jumped way back, and Gourry put his hand on his sword. I even found myself letting go of the guy I was holding to start an incantation.

I wondered, but just as I was thinking that...

The leaves in the trees overhead shook in a violent cacophony, then rained down on us en masse, obscuring our vision.

“Bwuh?!”

Sensing a presence behind me, I spun around... And there was Mazenda. I saw her crimson lips curled into a slight smile, then something streak from her right hand. Projectiles? She threw some small objects not at me, but around me. I immediately jumped to the side, but...

“Ngh!” A numbness ran through me like a mild electric shock. It only lasted a fraction of a second. I had no idea what this trick was, but I wasn’t gonna let it stop me from doing my thing! “Elemekia Lance!”

I unleashed my spell, and for a moment——my mind went blank.

“You do appear to be the leader, so... that should cover it,” Mazenda said in a teasing tone before vanishing back into the dancing leaves. “I’m a bit bored, so I’ll play a little game with you. You have to kill me in order to return to normal. If you care to try your hand, come to the village of Mayin.”

The second she was done, there was another massive rustle as all the leaves dropped to the ground at once... leaving me, Amelia, and Gourry standing there dumbfounded. I wasn’t sure how she’d done it, but she’d apparently taken the collapsed bandits with her.

But more importantly... Ahhh! She actually managed to rattle me! I couldn’t believe it!

“They’re gone,” Amelia whispered.

“Are you all right, Lina?!” Gourry called, sheathing his sword before running toward me. His foot hit something on the way. “What’s this?”

He leaned over, staring at whatever-it-was sticking out of the ground. It looked like a red needle, about as long and fine as a piece of thread. He artlessly grabbed it between his fingers and plucked it up. When he did... the stiff needle suddenly turned pliant, indeed, just like thread.

“It’s hair. Probably from that Mazenda lady,” Amelia said.

I looked around again and found four more “needles” staked nearby. That meant, including the one Gourry had just pulled up, she’d planted five of them all told—a pentagram with me at the center.

Damn. Whatever she’d actually thrown had just been a feint. In dodging those, I let my guard down for a split second, allowing her to create the real barrier with her hair... which left me with an important question now.

“What’s wrong, Lina?” Gourry asked.

But I didn’t respond. I simply started chanting a spell. And then...

“Lighting!”

...

“H-Hey! Lina!” Amelia cried, turning completely pale.

“Wha-Wha-What?” Gourry stammered, clearly unsure of what was going on.

I slowly craned my neck toward him and guilelessly confessed the truth.

“I can’t... use magic anymore...”

In the moment, that was the only sound my mind could produce.

We were now at a small restaurant in some village nearby. We’d dropped in after the whole mess on the road earlier so we could talk things out over a meal, but I was more confused now than ever. I was so beside myself that I only managed to down two dinner specials.

“So... you really can’t use magic?” Gourry asked.

“Seems that way,” Amelia responded on my behalf (I was still too rattled). “Nothing we can do about it now, I guess. The question is what we do next.”

“Well, true... Lina without her magic is...”

“Just a pain in the rear.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but she is pretty bossy for being so useless now...”

“Yeah, she’s got maximum attitude with minimal bustline...”

“Flatline sex appeal, too.”

“Shut up!” I exploded. “How can you say all that crap while I’m suffering over here?!”

“Well... c’mon,” Gourry said, scratching at his head while he exchanged looks with Amelia.

“Don’t get mad, Lina. Master Gourry and I were just trying to cheer you up a little.”

“...Really?” I asked with a sidelong glance at the two of them.

Amelia then waved her hand placatingly and laughed, “Nah!”

“Rrragh!”

“W-Wait! Hold on, Lina! Strangling Amelia won’t solve anything! More importantly, is there a way to get you your magic back?”

“Taking out that Mazenda woman will probably do it... at least, that’s what she implied,” I explained, removing my hands from Amelia’s throat and calmly taking my seat again.

“Then that settles it,” Amelia said, rubbing her neck. “We just go kill her like she said, right? I mean, no need to hold back. She clearly works with bad guys, which makes her a bad guy too.”

Well... at the very least, Mazenda certainly didn’t look like one of the “good guys.”

“But how do we know where she is?” Gourry asked.

“She said it herself: the village of Mayin,” I said with a sigh. “Of course, knowing you, I’m sure you weren’t listening...”

“I was too listening. I just forgot.”

Oh, yeah, because that’s so much better...

“Anyway, it’s not like we have much of a choice,” Amelia interjected. “We’re headed in that direction anyway.”

Gourry and I nodded in unison in response.

“Whaaaaaaaat?!” Amelia shouted, silencing the whole tavern.

We were currently off an old back road that went from Saillune to the Kingdom of Dills by way of Kalmart. We were only two villages away from Mayin now, but the hardest stretch of the journey still lay ahead. Mayin was Mazenda and her gang’s home turf, so we were likely in for a beatdown if we charged in unprepared. We decided, then, to spend the night in this village and gather what information we could about Mayin here at the tavern.

That was when what looked like an old peddler had whispered to us, “You’d better avoid that place.” Amelia had gone over to ask for details, leading to her exclamatory cry when she heard them.

“Hey, watch it! Keep your voice down!” the old man hissed, looking around hurriedly.

“I most certainly shall not! You know that evildoers abound two towns over, yet you haven’t even tried to inform your local lord... Have you no love of justice in your heart?!”

“J-Justice has nothing to do with it! They’re just rumors! If I took baseless hearsay to the authorities, be the one in hot water!”

That was a perfectly rational stance to take, but Amelia wasn’t the type to be swayed by rationality.

“Make no mistake!” she declared as she planted one foot atop a chair, her right hand clenched into a fist. “There’s a mighty evil festering out there!”

“She’s on that tear again, huh?” Gourry muttered coldly as he poked at his roast chicken.

“But I guess some really nutty stuff’s going down in Mayin, huh?”

“I’d put money on it, yeah.”

“Mazenda did invite us there, after all...”

“Hmm, that’s not really what I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking, then?”

“Well...” Gourry paused, scratching his head. “Just that nothing you’ve ever been involved in has been anything less than nutty.”

“Oh, put a sock in it!”

It was just then that Amelia returned with an unusually grim expression on her face.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“Not here... I’ll explain once we get back to the room,” she replied before silently shoveling down the rest of her meal.

“Okay, Amelia, here we are. Start talking.”

It was now after dinner. Amelia, Gourry, and I had gotten three adjoining rooms at the inn, and we’d gathered in the center one for our tête-à-tête. Here, we could be reasonably assured that no one could listen in, even if we got to talking in our outdoor voices.

“He said it was all just rumors, but...” It was rare to see Amelia falter like this. “The village of Mayin has supposedly become home to... a certain organization.”

“That woman’s bandit gang, right?” Gourry asked, offering up the obvious conclusion.

A mere bandit hideout, however, wouldn’t have Amelia so shaken.

Thus she shook...