The Devil Does Not Need to Be Defeated

After half a day, Shien's group reached the location of their first target.

"So those are vampire vines?"

After getting down from the heavy atmosphere of the carriage, Shien's first sight was their target – vampire vines.

This is a kind of weeds that grew on the main road north and sealed the path like a roadblock.

The vines are crimson like the color of blood, and they grew extremely thickly. They were tightly intertwined together and formed a low but extremely wide area wall.

Of course, that's not something worth admiring.

That's because Shien could clearly see that these vines were like veins. They're constantly expanding and contracting like something was flowing through them, and they constantly wriggled. It looked extremely disgusting.

If he saw this back when he was first summoned to this word, Shien though that he would definitely have started throwing up.

"Is that a demonic beast?"

Shien spat out with a bit of disgust.

On the other side, Vivian walked over while leading the carriage gave an answer to Shien's muttering.

"No, that's not a demonic beast. That's just a plant that will grow where there spilled a great deal of blood. Although it may look like a thinking Demonic Beast, in reality it's not that different from other plants. The only real difference is that he doesn't grow from water, but rather blood. Therefore, if you're unlucky enough to get entangled in them, you're not going to be able to escape. You'd be cut open by those thorns and die from getting every bit of your blood drained. Thus, to many people, these vampire vines aren't any different from demonic beasts."

Not just that, vampire vines also have fairly strong vitality and toughness. Once they've grown, they'll spread with extreme speed and only stop when every bit of blood within the area has been drained dry. Normal blades wouldn't even be able scratch the outermost layers, and anyone who got close would run the risk of getting caught and drained dry. Therefore, these vampire vines end up bringing a great deal of trouble for many places.

"It's very difficult for normal people to remove vampire vines. Therefore, no matter the town, generally, whenever they discover a large patch of vampire vines nearby, the governor would either send out their military to remove it or put up a quest for adventurers at the guild to deal with it. That way they'd avoid too much damages."

Vivian patiently explained.

"The vampire vines this time grew one the only road to the northern town, so it's probably already cause a great deal of damages to many merchants as well as restricting the normal trade between the two towns. Let's remove it as quickly as possible."

"There's no problem, right Melika?"

Vivian asked.

"N-No problem."

Melika instantly tightened her grip on her staff, hid a glance at Shien, and walked forwards.

Seeing that Shien raised an eyebrow.

That's because he seems to have a guess on how they will be removing these vampire vines.

"If you want to remove vampire vines, it'd be very hard with just normal blades. Nor can you get close, since that's just too dangerous." Vivian gave a grin at the minute anticipation that Shien seemed to hold, "Therefore, the best method is to set a large fire to burn them to the ground first, and then slowly dig out their roots hidden in the ground to avoid them regrowing."

However, due to their toughness and vitality, a normal fire would probably need to burn for quite a while.

Unless…

"Use magic to directly burn away the vampire vines in one go."

As that sentence left Vivian, Melika up in the front moved.

"————This is the breath of heaven————"

Melike raised her staff and sang out the weighty chant from her alluring red lips.

"————Oh scarlet spirits of flame, oh transparent reason. With this prayer as kindling, rise from this place————"

In that moment, Melika no longer maintained any of the tightness or nervousness she had before, but instead become alike a spirit of nature. She called forth magic around her while calling out in a clear voice.

"Heaven Fire!"

The staff that Melika had raised high into the are released a bright light from the crystal embedded on its tip.

In an instant, a haze of heat appeared above Melika and formed into countless flames. Then, they fell towards the patch of vampire vines like a rain shower.

The flames dyed everything in the area with a scarlet hue as if summoned from the light of a setting sun, causing temperature of the air to rise continuously.

"Woosh!"

As second later, that unending rain of fire fell upon the vampire vines, and the resulting wave of fire completely covered the vampire vines like an explosion.

That bloody patch of vampire vines were thus consumed by the sea of flames, and were set ablaze.

"————!"

As it it was screaming out in a silent voice, each strand of the vampire vines begun struggling like mad within that sea of flames.

If anyone had saw that scene, it would be assured that they would, much like Shien did, greatly suspect them to be demonic beasts instead.

Unfortunately for them, demonic beasts at least knows to fight back or run away when they're about to die. Vampire vines couldn't do that though. They just rolled about wildly in the conflagration as if struggling in its final throes.

Not long after, under that enormous blaze, one strand of vine after another turned to charcoal and then ash.

The air was completely filled by the heat and dryness of the flames.

"So that's magic..."

Shien, whose face was completely lit up by the light of the flames, spoke out as if moved.

Although back when he was in the forest of demonic beasts, Shien has seen more than once instance of monsters who could breath fire or lightning, but it was unquestionably Shien's first time seeing magic like this.

Shien stared even harder that the figure of Melika who had cast this magic.

When the vampire vines were all burnt to ash, the conflagration suddenly vanished like it was an illusion following Melika withdrawing her magic power.

That huge patch of vampire vines were burnt to nothing just like that, only leaving a patch of ground burned black.

"Whew..."

Melika finally breathed a sign of relief, and withdrew her staff.

"You've worked hard."

Vivian only then moved forward and gave Melika her praise.

"A spell just as powerful as always."

Diere also calmly gave her assessment.

"As expected of an elf..."

Lumia who was still holding onto Diere's arm gave Melika a worshipful gaze.

To that, Melika just shook her head and spoke, "I didn't do anything special. I just cast magic like I always did."

Although she said that, Melika was also showing a smile on her face.

As expected, Melika's attitude wasn't always tight and nervous when she's facing her own comrades. Now, she seemed to have recovered her normal behavior somewhat.

Seeing that, Shien who originally planed on following up with the others stopped himself.

Seeing Melika show a true smile from her heart, Shien abandoned his previous plan.

"It looks like there's no way to get her to teach me magic."

It had to be said, this was regretful.

Although…

"Magic, huh?"

As he felt the high quantity of magic flowing within himself, and he considered his own [Magecraft] skill, Shien though that he should find an opportunity to learn some magic.

Otherwise, that's just way too wasteful of his abilities.