There is a small magic circle set up on a high ground overlooking the forest that the carriage carrying Louis Miller entered. At the center of the magic circle, a crystal ball is placed, displaying the situation inside the forest.
Surrounding the magic circle are Monica Everett, the Silent Witch, Cyril Ashley, and Neil Clay Maywood, the three of them.
In the crystal ball, the carriage carrying Louis Miller has just stopped. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel·fire·net
At that time, Monica touched her staff to the magic circle and activated the magic without chanting.
The magic circle then instantly shines brightly white, and in response, the entire forest below the high ground is enveloped in a faint light.
"… I've activated a magic duel barrier. Please maintain the barrier."
At Monica's words, Cyril and Neil nod and send their mana into the barrier.
It is said that a magic duel barrier usually requires two high-ranking magicians to activate and maintain it.
In fact, what makes it difficult to set up such a barrier is the complexity, while maintaining only requires a certain amount of mana.
In this case, Monica performs the complex activation of the barrier alone, and then Cyril and Neil take over maintaining it afterward.
In the crystal ball, the magic duel has already begun.
Watching the flashy eruption of flames, Neil gulped.
"…The operation to delay him has begun," Neil mutters in a firm voice.
"Ah," Cyril nods in a low voice.
Regarding the battle against Duke Crockford, there was someone Monica absolutely wanted to keep away from the Supreme Council's assembly.
That person was Louis Miller, the Barrier Magician.
"I want you to delay… Louis so that… he cannot attend… the assembly."
Two weeks ago, after revealing her true identity, Monica said this at the strategy meeting.
The one who objected was Glenn, Louis' disciple.
"Master is in the First Prince's faction, an enemy of Duke Crockford, right? If we explain the situation to him, he might join our side…"
Monica shook her head sideways and firmly denied it.
"For Louis to join us, we would have to tell him the whole truth. But if he knew the truth from ten years ago…I think Louis would choose to reveal everything publicly."
The fact that the real Prince Felix died ten years ago. And that the culprits were Duke Crockford and his servant, Isaac Walker.
If Louis knew these facts, he would happily reveal the truth without hesitation. By doing so, he could definitively put an end to Duke Crockford and the fake Second Prince.
"Louis has no reason to help the ‘Student Council President'…so it's impossible for him to cooperate with this operation."
Even if Monica and Glenn were to plead with him and appeal to his conscience, Louis would choose to reveal the truth. Louis is the kind of person who can make that choice.
In political struggles, "the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend."
Moreover, Louis is perceptive and eloquent. If Louis were present at the Supreme Council assembly, there was a possibility that he would see through what Monica was trying to do and refute her.
For Monica to be able to concentrate on confronting Duke Crockford at the Supreme Council assembly, having Louis there would definitely be inconvenient.
"Master is scary as an ally, but he's a hundred times scarier as an enemy…"
Glenn's mutter makes Monica nod deeply in agreement. Honestly, she would have little chance of winning a debate against him.
"So, on the day of the assembly, I want to delay Louis… with a magic duel."
"A magic duel?" It was the Third Prince Albert who voiced his doubt.
"Why would you purposefully challenge the Barrier Magician of the Seven Sages to a magic duel? In the barrier of magic duel, physical attacks become ineffective, don't they? It's a bit of an unpleasant way to put it, but wouldn't it be better to set up some kind of physical trap instead…"
Monica's and Glenn's voices overlapped as they denied Albert's words.
Glenn, who knows Louis' fighting style well, argues seriously,
"Master says, ‘If you want to defeat an enemy, punching them is faster than using magic'."
As everyone struggled to comment, Monica also nodded with a straight face.
"Louis is strong at both physical combat and magic, so unless we can at least block physical attacks, we have no chance of winning."
Once, in the Seven Sages' selection magic duel, Monica defeated Louis. However, if that had been a real battle, Monica would undoubtedly have lost.
In one-on-one combat, Louis prefers a fighting style where he blinds the enemy with magic to close the distance and then knocks them down with his bare hands.
For those accustomed to fighting with magic, fists and kicks flying at them without chanting are extremely threatening.
"And Master will use any means to win! He'll pull out all the stops!"
"In a battlefield with physical attacks allowed, it's Louis' home-field advantage. I, I've seen Louis beat down the magic corps troops with his bare hands and leave them piled up in the training grounds…"
"And when Master is in the middle of a fistfight, his mood gets a little…erratic! Like his blood is boiling!"
"That's right! His laugh! It's scary!"
"Master usually uses his staff when beating up anyone who pisses him off!"
"That's why using a magic duel barrier that nullifies physical attacks is absolutely, absolutely necessary!"
The two become more and more heated in their voices, pressuring everyone present.
For most of those here, their impression of the Barrier Magician Louis Miller is that of a handsome man who is popular among the women of high society due to his princely demeanor.
Monica and Glenn's shouts, which completely shatter this princely image of Louis Miller, were filled with too much genuine experience to simply laugh off as "exaggeration".
The crystal ball displaying the situation inside the magic duel barrier showed flames from spells flying back and forth.
It goes without saying that Louis' magic was outstanding, but his disciple Glenn also possessed a massive mana. An ordinary barrier would be destroyed by a single fireball with the force he can muster.
However, even when struck by such stray fireballs, the magic duel barrier set up by Monica remained completely unshaken.
Cyril, entrusted with maintaining the barrier, sent his mana into it as he marveled at its meticulous construction.
The magic duel barrier was extremely complex and advanced. It's not something that can be made in just a day or two, he has heard.
Even during the magic duel incident at the academy, it took three days just to adjust an existing barrier.
Yet Monica completed this barrier in just a few dozen minutes. Most of the time was spent drawing the magic circle itself. Constructing the magic itself took merely an instant. And a chantless one, too.
It makes Cyril realize anew, that the person standing before him is the real Silent Witch.
Last autumn, this hooded magician stopped Cyril's mana from going out of control.
Cyril had thought of that magician as a terrifyingly silent and terrifyingly powerful, inhuman monster.
But that magician had always been by Cyril's side.
Plodding over with a dull, clumsy gait, fidgeting her small hands, shyly smiling and saying, "Lord… Cyril…"
"Then, I will… head to the castle."
With those words, Monica stepped away from the magic circle.
From now on, Monica, as one of the Seven Sages, the Silent Witch, will be facing Duke Crockford and helping a young man named Isaac Walker at the Supreme Council assembly.
Right now, Monica was wearing the robe that only the Seven Sages were permitted to wear.
With her makeup done and her hair beautifully tied up, her appearance was completely different from her usual self. And yet…
"Lord Cyril, thank you… for the flowers."
Her sheepish smile, with her brows furrowed, was no different from the Monica Norton that Cyril knows.
Shy, socially awkward, clumsy, crybaby, lacking in self-confidence, yet her eyes change color when numbers are involved… Everything Cyril has seen of "Monica Norton" was not just an act.
Cyril cleared his throat and stated with the demeanor of the Student Council Vice President, "Give it everything you've got."
Monica nodded, wearing the biggest smile Cyril had ever seen from her.