Rei and the Old Woman had left the settlement and come out to the grassland.
Though not far from the settlement itself—just a nearby spot.
"I'm glad you remembered the promise from before..."
True to her words, the Old Woman wore a smile that radiated genuine delight.
Her already deeply wrinkled face creased even further with her grin—an expression so warm it made anyone watching feel happy too.
"I had no idea what kind of magic Centaurs use. I was really looking forward to seeing it."
"Is that so? Then... shall I give it a try?"
At Rei's words, the Old Woman smiled without any particular concern... then took her short cane in hand and began to chant... and before long, her body rose into the air.
(A flying spell?)
For a brief moment, Rei thought so, but his guess was close yet wrong.
In reality, the Old Woman's body was floating above the ground, but her altitude never exceeded a certain height.
She hovered a mere thirty centimeters or so off the ground.
Rising like that, the Old Woman moved with ease.
When walking on the ground, her speed had been far from fast due to the decline that came with age.
But in her current state—floating in the air—she could glide across the ground as if sliding on ice.
(Hover movement? ...No, it's not like she's floating using wind, so maybe that's not it?)
Rei suddenly recalled the term "hover movement," but the hover movement he knew—knowledge naturally acquired from manga, anime, and games back in Japan—involved thrusting out air to float just above the ground.
He had heard that vehicles capable of hover movement existed in reality too, but unfortunately, Rei had no idea what they actually looked like.
Regardless, there was no mistaking that the Old Woman was floating slightly above the ground and moving, and it was a surprising sight even for Rei.
After all, to Rei, flying through the sky meant riding on Set's back.
Alternatively, he could use his Sleipnir boots to kick off the air, but that was only a temporary ability to push off the sky—not the same as freely flying or hovering above the ground.
It was undeniably something entirely different from the Old Woman's magic.
(She's not thrusting out air or anything, so thinking about it again, maybe it isn't hover movement after all? But watching her float just above the ground, the impression of hover movement is still strong.)
The Old Woman glided over the ground for about five minutes before returning to Rei and descending.
"Phew. I'm sorry. At my current level, this is already my limit."
"No, you showed me something wonderful."
When Rei expressed his gratitude, the Old Woman smiled happily, satisfied, and began making her way back to the settlement.
Rather than floating through the air like hover movement, she walked on her own feet.
Perhaps due in part to her age, the Old Woman's walking pace was considerably slower than a normal Centaur's.
Even so, from what Rei could see, her steps were still steady.
After seeing the Old Woman off, Rei recalled the magic he had just witnessed with his own eyes.
And as he turned it over in his mind... something else surfaced.
He had completely forgotten until just now, but he had previously been thinking about a spell that would let him fly freely through the sky.
It wasn't actually that long ago, but considering all the various troubles Rei had experienced and been swept up in since coming to Elgin, it felt like something he had thought about ages ago.
That was why, having remembered it—and having just seen the Old Woman's magic—Rei felt strangely excited.
Wondering what exactly he could do in this situation... whether he could create a spell to fly through the sky.
(That said, what kind of spell should I make? The obvious answer would be wings, but...)
As expected, the first thing that came to Rei's mind at the thought of flying was Set.
Given Set's movement speed, the phrase "high-speed flight" suited him best.
So naturally, Rei wished he could move like that too. He wished so, but...
"No good."
He tried concentrating for a few minutes, but whenever he pictured wings, he inevitably envisioned Set, and he simply couldn't imagine a scene with wings sprouting from his own back.
This was likely the negative effect of wings and Set being so tightly linked in his mind—an impression far too strong to shake.
Understanding that, Rei gave up on constructing a new spell to grow wings of flame on his back and fly through the sky.
Unlike a normal mage, the most important thing for Rei when creating a new spell was the image.
Using that image as the framework, he would flesh it out with magical power and construct the spell.
To the mages of this world, that was nothing short of astonishing—an unbelievable feat, even.
But for Rei, who had been doing exactly that ever since arriving in this world, it was old news.
Even so, given that he was creating new spells in such a manner, the image was extremely important to him.
And right now, Rei couldn't form an image of himself flying with wings.
When it came to winged beings, he invariably thought of Set.
That was why, if he was going to create a new spell for flying, he had no choice but to find another way.
But this was where the method of creating spells through imagery held Rei back.
Having already latched onto the idea of flying with wings, he couldn't so easily come up with the next approach.
"Now what should I do...?" he muttered, lying back on the grassland.
Beneath his back—beneath the Dragon Robe—was not dirt but grass.
Soft grass, firmly supporting Rei's weight.
Lying with his back to the grassland, he looked up... at the sky above.
There, the blue sky stretched endlessly high.
A sky so captivating it seemed ready to steal one's consciousness away just from looking at it.
If there had been even a single cloud, he might have gotten a somewhat different impression.
But as things stood, Rei came up with nothing, simply staring up at the sky.
Right now, magic was the furthest thing from his mind.
He had even completely forgotten about Anastasia and Fana.
Whether the phrase "state of nothingness" suited Rei at this moment, he couldn't say, but he emptied his mind and simply gazed at the blue sky.
How much time had passed while he did that?
Ten minutes, twenty minutes... or perhaps an hour, or two.
Since he had simply been staring up at the sky without thinking about anything, Rei had no idea how long he had been gazing upward.
But into Rei's mind, a single image surfaced.
A man wearing bracelets and anklets on both wrists and both ankles, using them to fly freely through the air and fight.
"!?"
The moment that image flashed through his mind, Rei bolted upright from his lying position.
"That's... if I recall... yes, it must have been an anime I watched back in Japan."
He recalled where he had seen the image that had suddenly popped into his head.
And strangely enough—truly strangely—the wings of flame that had so occupied his thoughts when he first tried to create the spell were now completely gone from Rei's mind.
So completely gone that he wondered what he had even been agonizing over.
"Is this...? No, but with this, I can make it work."
For some reason, Rei held absolute conviction.
Concentrating his awareness, making sure not to let the image that had sprung into his mind escape, he began constructing the spell formula.
Judging that there were no issues, he drew Death Scythe—a magic Catalyst—from his Misty Ring and began to chant.
"Flame, thou art that which burns all, and... dwelling within the four limbs of my body, thou art that which conquers the sky. The flame becomes rings, dwelling upon my hands and feet."
Simultaneously with the chant, flame erupted from the tip of Death Scythe's blade, and the fire gradually wound itself around Rei's four limbs—both wrists and both ankles.
Magical power drained heavily from within Rei's body.
It was a sensation Rei knew well.
Even with "Flame of Repose," a spell that forcibly imbued his flames with the purification attribute—a property originally unsuited to Rei's fire—his magical power had been consumed at an overwhelming rate compared to the spells he normally used.
That said, purification had a strong affinity with fire.
Even so, it siphoned away a massive amount of magical power. But this time, he was forcing the attribute of flight itself into the spell's effects.
How much magical power that would consume was easy to imagine.
But Rei leveraged his enormous reserves of magical power to forcibly activate the spell.
Flame Heaven Wheel.
Upon activation, the flames clinging to his four limbs solidified into the shape of rings.
Rather than being fully materialized, it was more accurate to say that the flames had taken the form of rings and equipped themselves on both wrists and both ankles.
Then, concentrating his awareness...
"Nuo-oaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!"
The moment he focused, Rei was blown about ten meters straight up from where he stood.
Even while screaming, he managed to halt his movement in midair...
"Naaaaaaaaahhh!"
And the very next instant, he plummeted toward the ground.
Crashing into the ground at this speed would likely inflict a fatal injury even with the Dragon Robe on, so he desperately tried to slow his descent...
"Nuoh!?"
For some reason, this time he went flying to the right.
After that, Rei spent nearly ten minutes flying back and forth, up and down, all over the place, but even so, he gradually grew accustomed to controlling the Flame Heaven Wheel.
The fact that he didn't suffer any fatal injuries before getting used to it was partly luck, but also a testament to Rei's strong crisis management ability—whenever he was about to crash into the ground, he would frantically adjust to ascend, and so forth. And then...
"Zehaaah!"
He released the spell, and the moment the Flame Heaven Wheels on his four limbs vanished, Rei collapsed onto the grassland.
The Death Scythe he had been holding also fell to the ground nearby.
This wasn't an issue of physical stamina, but the negative effect of suddenly and massively consuming magical power.
This spell had originally been built on a formula that shouldn't have been possible to activate, yet Rei had used his enormous magical power to forcibly bring it into being.
Moreover, it didn't just consume magical power at the moment of activation—it continuously drained magical power for as long as the spell remained active.
"Haa, haa, haa... this is tough."
It consumed about as much magical power as when using the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor... no, perhaps even more.
The Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor required a massive amount of magical power to activate, but once active, it didn't consume that much more. Compared to the initial activation cost, at least.
In contrast, Flame Heaven Wheel continued to endlessly drain magical power at the same rate as the initial activation of the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor for as long as it remained active.
In terms of ability, it was an excellent spell that allowed free flight, but if asked whether it was worth the magical power it consumed, Rei would shake his head without a moment's hesitation.
That was the price of forcibly enabling a completely unrelated ability through Flame Magic.
"Thinking about it that way, I suppose I just have to accept it. Still, this turned out to be a spell that's hard to find the right moment for."
Normally, when a spell consumed a large amount of magical power or had some kind of drawback, it could be addressed by refining the spell formula used to activate it.
But that only applied to ordinary spells. The Flame Heaven Wheel that Rei had created used magical power to forcibly activate something that should have been impossible—freely hovering in the air using fire.
Given that, reducing magical power consumption was utterly out of the question.
On top of that, perhaps because he wasn't yet accustomed to wielding the spell, activating Flame Heaven Wheel took everything he had just to maintain control.
There was no way he could attack with Death Scythe or the Twilight Spear while flying.
If he tried something like that, he would lose control of Flame Heaven Wheel and go flying off in some random direction, just like at the start.
"I knew from the start that it was going to be unreasonable in a lot of ways, but the real problem is how to master it."
He had gone through the trouble of creating the spell, and above all, the ability to fly was extremely rare.
Because of that, simply not using it wasn't an option for Rei.
No matter how much struggle it took, he would definitely master it.
With that resolve, once his breathing had settled, he reached out for Death Scythe lying nearby and began to chant once more.