"[Crimson-Brown Illuminating Sky / Sacred Wine / of / Disciples / In the Verse of Rough Gold, Gaze upon the Sky]"
It was a magical chant Rose knew well.
Thunderclap Reversal. Ortesia's Bloodline Magic—a powerful spell that commanded lightning.
Indeed, lightning itself was an extremely difficult phenomenon to defend against. Among natural phenomena, it was second only to light in speed, its destructive power went without saying, and at times it would track its target relentlessly regardless of intent. To repurpose such a thing as an offensive magical technique—one could easily imagine how troublesome it would be.
But for Rose, it was hardly a problem.
Even lightning had a definite effective range. Inside a previous dungeon it might have been a different matter, but here, she could simply use her own Bloodline Magic to elevate herself beyond its reach—
"——[Murky Depths, Black Sky, Tracks of Empty Mud — Know the Serpent That Veiled Heaven and Earth]"
"...What?"
So she thought.
The instant she heard it, those thoughts were blown away.
Magic Inscription Liberation—no, that wasn't it. If it were, Rose's knowledge of the activation phrase should come last, and besides, she had never heard of a two-part Magic Inscription Liberation.
And above all—the magic power enveloping Ortesia's body.
Something so utterly alien and ominous—she had never seen anything like it.
"You'd think something's wrong, wouldn't you?"
Addressed to Rose, who was breaking into a cold sweat for the first time in this battle against an inexplicable threat, was Ortesia's eerie voice.
"My feelings are mine alone. I won't be bound by anything, nor should anything be allowed to interfere.
——As if some mere magic could decide what I feel!!!"
And then, having shouted out her own passion, Ortesia released the swelling magic power.
"So, this is what I should do, isn't it?"
She declared, as if hurling the words at the world.
"Technique, Distortion.—'Loathing Black Heavens: Thunder Across Ten Thousand Miles'!"
And so Ortesia appeared.
Her form was unchanged. But the magic she wore was completely different—no, it was inverted.
So black, so dark. Even Rose, who had surely seen more magic than anyone else in this country, had her thoughts stop for an instant at the sight of something she had never witnessed before.
As if timing it perfectly, Ortesia slowly raised her hand—
—and unleashed a bolt of black lightning.
"!"
Instinct told her this was bad, and she immediately moved to evade.
But here lay the miscalculation.
First, the performance of that black lightning.
She had already accounted for a range exceeding Thunderclap Reversal and adjusted her evasion trajectory accordingly, but even that was far surpassed as the bolt pursued her.
True to its serpentine nature, its tracking performance was off the charts—impossible for any normal Bloodline Magic. Rose stared in disbelief, hastily erecting a barrier with Enhanced universal magic—
—and the lightning pierced through it far too easily.
Rose's miscalculation... or more precisely, her weakness.
It was her lack of defensive experience.
After all, for her, magical attacks were something that naturally wouldn't reach her in the first place.
With her unique magic of flight, she was fundamentally positioned where most attacks couldn't reach, and even if they did, she could easily dodge them with her magical mobility.
For someone like Rose, defensive priority—magic for blocking attacks—was inherently low.
She herself was aware of this imbalance, but she had been too busy exploring other branches of magic to bother correcting it. Correcting it would have been low priority given her capabilities, and there were simply too many other things that mattered more to her.
As a result—the spell that struck with pinpoint precision at what was arguably Rose's sole vulnerability hit her full-on, leaving her utterly defenseless.
Pain beyond comprehension overwhelmed her.
"Nngh—gh—!?"
Pain she had never felt before.
Rose hadn't been the strongest from the start. She had nearly died on multiple occasions and had experienced her share of suffering.
And yet, even accounting for all of that, this was unquestionably the worst pain of her life—in other words, pain so intense it felt utterly unnatural.
It wasn't just pain.
The lightning that struck and invaded her body raged wildly within. The lightning assault tore through the body of the kingdom's most powerful mage—the one with the kingdom's greatest magical resistance—as if she offered no resistance at all, which was itself deeply unnatural.
As if it existed solely to—
—destroy Rose.
"——So that's what it is."
After enduring the agony to think and analyze, Rose arrived at her answer.
She activated nearly all of her magic power to forcibly expel the lightning, then glared at Ortesia with a ragged voice.
"That's a spell meant to kill me. You twisted your own magic—changed it into something designed to destroy me, didn't you, Ortesia...!"
Rose glared at Ortesia, her eyes brimming with fury, shock, and a touch of sorrow.
Ortesia, in turn, returned a thin smile whose emotions could not be read.