Chapter 266

Alice quickly realized that her threat this time was effective as she could feel a wave of mana fluctuations coming from the sheet of paper in her hands. She could also see a faint illusory figure appearing above the paper. By the looks of this situation, it would seem that the blonde Demon King was about to show herself and talk to her.

However, the instant Alice subconsciously loosened her grip over the paper’s edges, the blonde Demon King immediately grew disobedient, the Soul Mark Scroll seemingly tugged out of Alice’s hands by an invisible hand. Then, the paper rapidly folded itself into the shape of a paper crane and hovered outside of Alice’s reach.

“What?! You…!”

Alice was shocked. She didn’t think the Demon King would fake her emergence to trick her into lowering her guard. Moreover, by the looks of things, it would seem that the other party had realized that Alice had no intentions of sparing her.

It made sense when Alice thought about it. Spirit magicians were incredibly observant of other people’s expressions and moods, so they should also have a good grasp of other people’s mental activities.

“Do you think you can escape?!”

Alice glared at the paper crane in the air and raised her right hand. Then, she began gathering a frightening amount of mana. Although she lacked the mana to sustain a complete taboo in her current state, the weakened taboo she used was still much stronger than the average spell.

Subsequently, a miniature rotating star made of flames appeared in Alice’s right hand. This was the product of “Burning Star,” a taboo she had learned from the March Academy’s library.

Battles between Heroes and Demon Kings were mainly about using taboos that best countered each other. Now that the blonde Demon King’s soul was attached to a paper crane, it went without saying that the best way to counter the other party was by using a fire-type taboo. So long as Alice could burn the paper crane, she would thoroughly extinguish the other party’s soul.

When the blonde Demon King saw the Burning Star in Alice’s hand, the paper crane she inhabited flapped its wings and generated a small gust of wind using mana. Then, before Alice could toss the Burning Star in her hand, the wind-type mana the paper crane generated merged with the Burning Star.

This is…?

Alice was stunned. She originally thought that the blonde Demon King was trying to extinguish her Burning Star with the gust of wind. However, upon further inspection, she realized that the mana the other party released wasn’t particularly strong. At the very least, it definitely wasn’t enough to extinguish her fire-type taboo.

On the contrary, Alice could see and feel her Burning Star doubling in size and power when it merged with the blonde Demon King’s wind-type mana. In its current state, it was already close to rivaling the power of a complete Burning Star.

The Soul Mark Scroll stored a “Spiritual Realm” taboo, and this taboo could be used to store a relatively significant amount of mana. It was also because of this stored mana that the blonde Demon King had the capital to steal other people’s bodies. However, after the blonde Demon King’s failed attempt at possessing the Milu Rabbit’s body, there should only be very little mana left in the Soul Mark Scroll.

Yet, rather than use this mana to escape, the blonde Demon King had used it to strengthen Alice’s Burning Star…

Alice was confused by this situation. She didn’t know what the other party was playing at.

However, it didn’t take long for Alice to realize the problem. This was because she suddenly started to have difficulty breathing. When piping hot air flowed into her nostrils, she immediately became aware of the other party’s plan.

Burning Star was a fire-type taboo, so the flames it generated were many times stronger than the average fire-type spell. Because of this, Burning Star also burned oxygen at a much more exaggerated rate.

This normally wouldn’t be a problem if Burning Star was cast outdoors. Casting it indoors wouldn’t be too big of a problem if adequate ventilation was provided. However, Alice was currently in an underground room. Moreover, Andusia had also closed the secret room’s entrance in the main hall when she had left previously. This resulted in the room having a limited amount of oxygen.

Under normal circumstances, the oxygen in the room should be enough for Alice and the Milu Rabbit to stay here for an entire day. In fact, even if Alice had cast a weakened version of Burning Star, the oxygen in the room shouldn’t run out immediately. At the very least, Alice should have had enough time to incinerate the paper crane before the room ran out of oxygen.

Meanwhile, the blonde Demon King evidently knew this point. Hence, she had used what little mana she had left to strengthen Alice’s Burning Star. This, in turn, caused the oxygen levels in the room to plummet and Alice to suffocate.

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To think she can come up with such a plan in this situation…

At this moment, Alice suddenly realized that her combat experience was vastly inferior to a real Demon King. Even though her opponent had already made use of their surrounding environment, she had failed to realize what was going on until she had started to suffocate.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too late to rectify this problem. Because Alice was the one who had activated the magic array in the pedestal used to hide the secret room, she still retained control over the pedestal. Since the secret room was running out of oxygen, all she needed to do was let more oxygen enter the room.

Immediately, Alice manipulated the pedestal’s magic array with her mana, causing it to move aside. The instant this happened, the fresh air in the main hall began flowing into the passage leading to the secret room. Although this air wouldn’t reach the secret room and return the room’s oxygen level to normal right away, Alice no longer had to worry about suffocating and losing consciousness at the very least.

However, the paper crane had also promptly noticed the change in the room’s airflow. Or, more specifically, this was what she had aimed for all along. Hence, upon sensing this change, the paper crane promptly flew into the passage connected to the secret room, its speed so fast that Alice suspected that the other party might have used some sort of acceleration spell.

“You think you can escape?”

Alice naturally wouldn’t let the blonde Demon King get away. Gritting her teeth, she tossed the Burning Star in her hand at the escaping paper crane, the flight speed of the ball of scorching flames much faster than its target.

However, just when Alice’s Burning Star was about to reach the paper crane, the latter did something that shocked Alice. Specifically, the paper crane had suddenly turned around and cast a spell, which even elementary school students knew, at the Burning Star.

Mana Balancing.

It was a simple spell with a simple effect. When cast, Mana Balancing would try to disperse and balance the mana in an area as much as possible. Elementary school students generally used it to assist them in sensing the concentration of mana in the air and learning how to condense mana.

While Mana Balancing’s effects sounded powerful, the spell couldn’t normally be used in combat due to its limited abilities. This was because it couldn’t perfectly disperse the mana of a spell due to the presence of ambient mana in the environment. It would, at most, lower the concentration of mana in the spell to match the concentration in the surrounding environment. Moreover, that was after factoring in the dispersed mana merging with the ambient mana.

The effects of Mana Balancing were even more useless against taboos. With how much mana the average taboo carried and how limited Mana Balancing’s range was, the mana concentration in the area of the targeted taboo would skyrocket far beyond normal levels. This, in turn, meant that the targeted taboo would retain a significant portion of its power.

However, the problem now was that Andusia had drained all of the mana within a several hundred-meter radius of Demon King Castle.

When one placed a large ice cube into warm water, the ice cube might not melt by much even after several seconds have passed. However, if an ice cube was placed into molten lava, it would evaporate until not even a drop of water was left in only a matter of seconds.

Currently, Alice’s “Burning Star” taboo was that large ice cube, while a normal mana environment was like warm water. As for the current environment in Demon King Castle…it was no different than lava to Alice’s Burning Star. Under Mana Balancing’s effects, all of the mana composing Burning Star was instantly dispersed into the surrounding space.

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Taking advantage of the environment devoid of mana, the blonde Demon King had used a spell, which even children knew how to use, to deconstruct a taboo.

Alice felt a chill crawl down her spine when she saw this scene. She realized that she had severely underestimated the capabilities of a full-fledged Demon King. When Demon Kings and Heroes fought, they constantly searched for each other’s weaknesses while dishing out and enduring a hail of taboos. It went without saying that they would need an astonishing degree of awareness over their battles to accomplish such a feat.

In her current state, Alice was nowhere near replicating such a feat. She felt that if she faced the blonde Demon King at the other party’s peak, she would most likely die without knowing how she got killed.

Of course, with her lack of mana, the blonde Demon King didn’t have any intentions of butting heads with Alice right now. After baiting Alice to open the way out and dispersing Alice’s Burning Star, the paper crane housing the blonde Demon King’s soul promptly flew toward the other end of the passage at breakneck speeds.

Then…the paper crane crashed head first into a nearby wall.