I Was Just Having Fun With The Time Limit – Chapter 76

Chapter 76

Top of the stairs.

The person waiting for me there was none other than Sir Viaton.

“I knew you would come, Your Highness.”

Sir Viaton was smiling with a subtle expression.

He was undoubtedly smiling with his usual refreshing smile, but somehow he looked strangely sad.

“But I also hoped you wouldn’t come.”

“……Didn’t you say you were going south, Sir Viaton?”

“You wanted to come north after sending me south, didn’t you? Right?”

Hitting the nail on the head, I was at a loss for words.

“This is the reason why I love Your Highness and also the reason why I worry.”

Thud!

The entire castle shook with a loud crash.

My center of gravity was shaken by the impact, and I almost fell backward.

Sir Viaton quickly approached and held my waist tightly.

“Are you alright?”

“I-I’m fine. I didn’t expect the vibrations to be this strong.”

What kind of monster is out there? How terrifying is a first-class monster?

I was scared all over again in front of this strong vibration.

“Your Highness, your legs are shaking.”

“I-I’m scared.”

“It would have been much safer if you had just stayed in the royal palace.”

“That’s not right.”

Sir Viaton smiled faintly.

After gently lifting me up completely, he stroked my hair.

“A seven-year-old doesn’t have to be right.”

“……”

“Still, it’s better to be right than wrong.”

Sir Viaton looked at me with eyes full of affection and worry.

Outside, there were monstrous roars and the castle was shaking, but at least for this moment, I could forget my fear.

Sir Viaton’s warm voice came.

“That’s why I can’t help but love Your Highness.”

Oh, what. I’m not sure if this is appropriate for the situation, but……

I’m a little flustered.

I like kind people.

At that moment, something popped up over the castle wall.

“Eek!”

My whole body stiffened.

I made eye contact with enormous red eyes.

The eyes were as big and red as the sun.

The eyes of the first-class monster were far more terrifying than I had imagined.

“Heave-ho.”

Sir Viaton hugged me and jumped.

It was like flying in the sky.

Boom!

The place where I was standing was smashed.

“Sometimes, when he gets angry, he jumps up like that and swings his club around.”

“W-we’re on the castle wall. It’s a very high place.”

“He’s a giant. He’s incredibly tall.”

Sir Viaton carefully put me down and spoke softly.

“If we leave it like this, the walls won’t be able to hold on any longer. I’ll go down and fight the one-eyed giant with magic and my sword.”

“You have something you want to ask of me, right?”

“You noticed?”

“Yes. This place was said to be the habitat of the one-eyed giant hundreds of years ago.”

And this place has a much higher average temperature than other places.

That’s why the volunteers were struggling because of the heat.

It’s already a hot place.

“One-eyed giants are warm-blooded monsters who love warm places, and conversely, they are very weak against cold attributes. As it happens, I’ve learned and used a lot of cold attribute magic, so I think I can be of help.”

“……When did you study about one-eyed giants?”

“I know that if their blood gets cold, their movements slow down a lot. That’s why I came here alone originally.”

Sir Viaton looked at me with a slightly surprised and slightly proud expression.

“If only I had enough time, I would have hugged you tightly.”

“Please come back safely and hug me tightly.”

Sir Viaton smiled brightly.

“I will surely obey that command.”

✦✦✦✦✦✦

Viaton jumped high into the sky.

“Here I am, my friend.”

Viaton’s movements were free even in the sky.

He was a magic swordsman, freely using mana and moving his body in the air.

As if there was ground in the air.

Isabel was startled.

‘Oh, he’s so fast.’

He was so fast that afterimages remained.

Isabel’s eyes couldn’t properly read Viaton’s movements.

It was indeed a movement worthy of the Chief Aide of the Sword Empire.

His body moved like a ray of light, scratching the one-eyed giant here and there.

‘Let me focus too.’

Isabel’s task was to draw out all the mana she had and manifest cold attribute mana.

A high-ranking mage could use large-scale magic such as creating a blizzard, but that was impossible for her.

‘I was going to come here alone.’

But now she was with Viaton.

She was still scared, but despite that, she was a little less scared.

‘I’m going to think of a very large refrigerator.’

No. A refrigerator wasn’t enough.

‘A freezer?’

She tried to imagine a freezer, but no matter how big a freezer she imagined, she couldn’t imagine a freezer big enough to hold the one-eyed giant as big as the castle wall.

No matter how much she tried to implement the image, the warm blood of the first-class monster was hotter than the freezer in her imagination.

The freezer in her imagination shattered.

‘A freezer is not enough.’

Then she had to think of something else.

Something with a cold attribute that could slow down the movements of that terrifying first-class monster.

‘The Arctic!’

She had never actually been to the Arctic, but she had seen it a lot in documentaries.

A world filled only with ice. A place where glaciers float beyond the horizon.

But it wasn’t easy to concretize the Arctic she had only seen on TV.

‘Oh?’

A very old, forgotten memory came flooding back.

‘That’s right.’

Her childhood in her past life.

She had a small wish.

She thought it would be nice to have a huge shaved ice like the Arctic.

A huge red bean shaved ice that never runs out no matter how much you eat.

In the imagined shaved ice world that stretched out like the Arctic, there was also a big polar bear friend.

The imagination of being buried in Arctic shaved ice with a polar bear friend.

It was a very happy dream for her, who was only lying in a hospital room.

At that time, she was so obsessed with that imagination that she kept saying “red bean shaved ice, red bean shaved ice, delicious Arctic red bean shaved ice” for three days straight.

‘The doctors had a hard time because I kept begging for shaved ice back then.’

Magic is the realization of an image.

The more solid and firm the image, the higher the success rate of magic.

‘Imagine Arctic shaved ice!’

She closed her eyes, imagining it.

She imagined the image while drawing up mana.

To bring that image to reality, various magical knowledge and intuition were needed.

And the Arctic shaved ice was something she had imagined very concretely and firmly as a child.

What is imprinted in childhood is not easily forgotten.

‘A world of shaved ice that never runs out no matter how much you eat!’

A cold wind began to blow.

✦✦✦✦✦✦

Viaton continued the battle with the one-eyed giant with skills worthy of the Empire’s Chief Aide.

But something was strange.

‘He’s much stronger than the one-eyed giant I know?’

Thud!

When the giant club struck the ground where Viaton had been, dust billowed up.

‘It wasn’t like that.’

This one-eyed giant was very different from other individuals.

It was also unusual that a strange pattern was engraved on his left shoulder.

‘What the hell is that?’

It was a skull-shaped pattern.

‘I think I’ve seen it somewhere before…… Eek!’

The one-eyed giant continued to swing his club tirelessly.

As time passed, instead of getting tired, he became even fiercer.

On the other hand, Viaton was gradually getting tired.

‘When is His Majesty coming?’

But at that moment, a cold wind suddenly began to blow.

A huge wind that could blow away all the heat.

That wind contained a powerful chill.

Crack━━━

The ground began to freeze.

It was as if a disaster was approaching.

‘What is this……?’

Suddenly, when he turned his gaze, a surprising sight unfolded.

‘The wall is frozen?’

The entire wall seemed to be made of ice.

An ‘ice castle’ that would only appear in storybooks appeared.

A bluish chill quickly reached out towards them.

‘I might be in danger too.’

Viaton quickly moved his body to avoid the tsunami of cold air. But the one-eyed giant couldn’t.

The giant’s toes began to freeze.

Crack- Crack━━━

His toes froze, his ankles froze, his knees froze, his waist froze.

Viaton floated in the air and looked down.

‘He’s turned into an ice sculpture……?’

He had turned into an ice sculpture and completely frozen.

‘Yikes. What is this again?’

Brown or black. Hail-like things of that medium size fell down.

It did have a slightly sweet smell, but the power was not to be ignored, so they had to avoid them all.

‘Red beans……?’

The grains were thick and hard to be called red beans, but anyway, they looked similar to red beans.

‘Phew. It’s stopped now.’

Viaton looked around.

‘Is this, the Elbe Mountains?’

A snowfield, no, an ice field was spread out.

Hail that looked like brown red beans were stuck here and there, and something yellow and chewy was created here and there.

The strange thing was that a sweet smell kept coming up.

It smelled like condensed milk, though he wasn’t sure.

As a magic swordsman who handled magic, Viaton knew how absurd this was.

‘This kind of large-scale area of effect magic…… can’t be done alone.’

Viaton looked at Isabel.

Isabel was closing her eyes tightly and chanting a magic spell.

The magic chant was a little strange.

“Red bean shaved ice, red bean shaved ice, delicious red bean shaved ice, topped with injeolmi, condensed milk is the national rule. Arctic red bean shaved ice to eat with my polar bear friend.”

Viaton was slowly walking down as if there were stairs in the air, then suddenly ran.

“Your Highness!”

Because Isabel had collapsed.

Viaton hurriedly ran and hugged Isabel.

“Are you alright?”

He first checked her pulse and examined Isabel’s well-being.

There was no color in Isabel’s face.

“Your Highness?”

The composure that Viaton had maintained even when facing a first-class monster completely disappeared from his face.