When categorized in detail, there were over dozens of schools of magic, but among them, the most representative ones were as follows:

Wizard—also known as Elementalist.

Necromancer.

Alchemist.

Enchantress—known as Enchanter for male practitioners.

It wasn’t particularly because these schools themselves were tremendously superior or strong.

If that were the criterion, while the other three might have managed, the Necromancer wouldn’t have even been able to present their business card.

The reason these four schools were treated as representatives was simple. They were the schools handled by the Four Great Witches of The Cardinal Directions.

The fact that the school name of Enchantress was predominately used over Enchanter was not unrelated to this. After all, the representative of the school was female.

And there existed a peculiar relationship of compatibility between these four schools.

The Wizard was strong against the Necromancer.

Before the Wizard, unrivaled in area destruction, the army of corpses summoned by the Necromancer was mere kindling.

The Necromancer was strong against the Alchemist.

The moment the homunculi handled by the Alchemist met death, their strength was wholly transferred to the Necromancer, becoming a threat to their master.

The Alchemist was strong against the Enchantress.

To the Enchantress, whose means of physical destruction were extremely limited, the Alchemist, who could easily produce powerful and high-quality barriers, was a troublesome opponent.

The Enchantress was strong against the Wizard.

The Enchantress, rich in self-enhancement methods and unusually strong in close combat among mages, was an object of avoidance for Wizards who preferred long-range area attacks.

In that sense, theoretically, the battle between the Witch of the West and Dorothea should have been advantageous for Dorothea, but…

“Those guys have no intention of coming down from the sky!”

It was common for discrepancies to arise between theory and practice.

Dorothea gritted her teeth as she watched the golden monkeys, who only looked down at them from the blue sky, not even approaching the ground.

No matter what was said about taking over homunculi, that was only possible after killing the opponent first. It was impossible to usurp control over an opponent who was perfectly alive.

One might say it was a good thing if the opponent avoided fighting, but this time, that wasn’t the case, either.

[■!]

As one monkey held out a pouch that looked like a greatly enlarged quiver in both arms, the surrounding monkeys took out throwing spears from inside it.

One after the other, spears thrown with great strength rained down toward Dorothea’s group.

Whoosh!

An eerie sound of air being cut rang out.

Perhaps because the amphibious carriage was moving at high speed, the attack missed, but just seeing it pass by sideways was enough to know its power was not ordinary.

But this was only the beginning.

The number of monkeys holding spear pouches was a quarter of the total.

Soon, the spears thrown by the remaining three-quarters began to pour down like rain.

“Franka!”

“I know!!”

As Franka, who answered irritably, stomped her foot, the trajectory of the carriage that had been moving in a straight line swerved sideways.

Right after, spears fell onto the path where the carriage was about to advance.

Some spears did hit where the group was, but they only left scratches on the outer wall in the central part of the carriage, not injuring the group inside.

Bang!

And as if in response, the ballista at the front of the carriage fired.

Though in the shape of an arrow, the arrow larger than even the throwing spears mercilessly shot down one of the monkeys flying in the sky.

Originally, reloading a ballista took quite a long time, but in the case of this ship, there was no such worry.

As soon as the bat-winged monkey placed a new arrow on the ballista, the ballista was reconstructed into a “tightly drawn state”.

[Ooki]

Thanks to this, the bat-winged monkey could just aim the already loaded ballista and fire, while the insect-winged monkey diligently pedaled, providing power to the carriage.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ admires their skillfulness!]

Dorothea agreed with the Tin Knight’s sentiment.

At a glance, Franka seemed to be just stomping her feet, but in reality, she was simultaneously performing various tasks, such as adjusting the direction of the ship and reconstructing the ballista.

The fact that they had built a system where they could fight on their own without external help showed that Franka wasn’t just relying on Dorothea.

But.

There are too many enemies.

No matter how quickly they reloaded, they couldn’t overcome dozens of hands with just one ballista.

Moreover, due to the double difficulty of targets high in the sky, in addition to the high-speed movement of the carriage, their attacks didn’t have a very high hit rate.

Dorothea shouted, “Can’t you make one more ballista?!”

“I told you it’s not something I can change so quickly! Besides, we don’t have that many spears to begin with!”

Franka’s alchemy was about changing the form or structure of existing substances, not creating something from nothing.

If they had been on land, she might have used materials like soil or stones on the ground for synthesis, but on the sea where there was no way to replenish materials, resources were only being consumed.

Dorothea’s worry deepened.

The number of monkeys was not decreasing but rather increasing, perhaps gathering as they realized a battle had broken out, and the number of spears hitting the carriage was also gradually increasing.

Moreover, the spears shot by the monkeys were full of mana, so their power was not ordinary.

The carriage, made of the special metal Franka favored, was somehow holding up while getting slightly dented, but if it had been made of ordinary iron or wood, it wouldn’t have been strange if it had been smashed long ago.

As Dorothea was pondering, the Tin Knight suddenly jumped onto the roof of the carriage.

“Hey, you! What if you fall!?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says he’s fine, uttering a line with a high mortality rate!]

Ignoring Dorothea’s words, half worry and half complaint, you examined the footing, that was, the condition of the carriage roof.

Although it was dented here and there from being hit by mana-imbued throwing spears, perhaps due to the sturdiness of the original material, it didn’t feel like it would break immediately.

No matter how skilled you were, if you lost balance and fell into the sea in this situation, it would be very troublesome, so the stability of the footing was a very important factor.

Whoosh!

A spear imbued with golden mana fell towards your head.

As the timing was just right, you caught it.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shouts that littering is against the law!]

And you threw it right back at the monkey in the sky.

Splat!

As a monkey whose head was not just pierced but burst open fell, another spear flew in, aiming at the ship.

You caught that spear too and returned it to the enemy in the same way.

Catch, throw, catch, throw.

There was no spear you couldn’t catch, and no spear you threw missed.

Neither the footing that was moving at high speed and swaying left and right, nor the attacks continuously coming from the sky were enough to hinder your attacks.

After making ten monkeys fall in the blink of an eye, the monkeys’ movements changed.

They spread out left and right, centered on the carriage, and in that state, lowered their altitude.

When they threw spears from a position slightly higher than the carriage, the spears hit the side of the carriage instead of the carriage roof where you were standing.

You pondered for a moment.

It wouldn’t be difficult to go down and catch the spears, but if you did that, they would try to attack by changing the angle again.

You could use the spears for the ballista instead, but looking at the increasing number of monkeys, it seemed that would have its limits.

You needed to secure some means of attack on your own.

One, two, three.

Ding!

Something popped up in your head.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks Dorothea to make spears!]

Dorothea asked back as if dumbfounded, “What? Spears? How am I supposed to make such things!”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says anything long like a bone would do!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ requests Dorothea to recreate how she used to inflate parts of bodies with mana!]

That was right.

You had seen Dorothea use small bone fragments or clotted blood as catalysts to create undead dozens of times larger several times.

Supplementing the lacking parts with her own mana, that was.

Of course, the undead created this way had shorter maintenance times and consumed more mana than undead using complete corpses, but that didn’t matter when creating disposables like now.

Dorothea’s expression changed as if she had realized your intention.

“I’m telling you in advance, they won’t last more than 10 seconds.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that’s more than enough!]

Dorothea took out a pouch containing bone powder from her waist pouch.

A tiny amount of catalyst, just enough to pinch between thumb and index finger. And a heap of top-grade mana.

You received a long femur, which clearly didn’t seem to be human, made by the witch’s impromptu recipe, and struck it hard on the edge of the roof.

Then the femur transformed into an impromptu spear.

“Huh?”

“W-what did you do?”

[Ooki? Ookiki?]

The group expressed their questions in various ways.

In fact, there wasn’t such a great secret hidden in it.

Objects strengthened with mana were hard, and those that weren’t were relatively weak, so if you strengthen the bone into a spear shape and then apply appropriate impact, the unstrengthened parts fell off and only the strengthened parts remained—that was the principle.

It was a bit more difficult because it was already full of Dorothea’s mana, but it wasn’t impossible to roughly make something spear-like—after all, it wasn’t like delicately engraving intricate work.

Instead of answering the group’s query, you took a throwing stance.

The spear’s lifespan was decreasing moment by moment even while doing this.

Whoosh!

Splat!

After piercing a monkey’s head, the spear crumbled a few seconds later as if it had reached the end of its lifespan.

And the basket of throwing spears the monkey was holding also fell and sank into the sea.

The quality of the spear was hard to call even decent even as a white lie, and that monkey also seemed to boast toughness that wouldn’t be scratched by ordinary sword cuts as it was a homunculus, but that was just a matter of using more mana.

As long as Dorothea was right next to you, there was no need to fight while conserving mana.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ demands the next spear!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says looking at the time, it seems okay to give two or three at once!]

“Here!”

Splat splat splat!

In an instant, the heads of three monkeys burst.

And this time, too, the baskets of throwing spears they were holding fell into the sea.

Franka muttered as if dumbfounded, “Impossible. Is he aiming for all of that on purpose?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says targeting the enemy’s supply line is basic!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says if we can’t reuse the opponent’s spears anyway, there’s no need to let them shoot!]

The number of golden monkeys was teeming, but only some of them were holding spear baskets.

As you accurately targeted and sniped only those few, the golden monkeys became flustered as they no longer had weapons to throw.

In contrast, you immediately counterattacked every time Dorothea threw you a spear, so the monkeys finally couldn’t hold out any longer and distanced themselves from the carriage.

It seemed they were leaving for resupply.

Dorothea said, “Well, we’ve overcome the first hurdle.”

Landing operation, successful.

***

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