Editing Failing Witch:Volume2 Episode4 (section)

===Part 13===

The change came suddenly.

Something crashed into the ground like a shooting star.

It was a Benandanti witch in thick armor.

This was how Yagoro had gotten separated from Viocia and the others. Instead of rushing to Strena after she was hit, he had gone to the Benandanti witch who had fallen from the sky.

Even though he was Viocia’s tutor right now.

“Nancy!!”

“Ha ha… This kind of thing keeps happening to me.”

When he propped her up in his arms, the girl with red pigtails smiled weakly up at him.

He doubted the Hexenturm armor, which trapped her personal goodness and conscience in an external cage, was functioning. It had been thoroughly destroyed. Which meant she must have taken considerable damage as well.

Not even Maleficium students were invincible. A mistake on their part could always prove fatal.

Purple filled the sky above.

(There’s that many ramming familiars up there? And they’re swarm controlled!?)

The millions, if not billions, of Dracae were not moving erratically.

A closer inspection showed the Dracae at the same altitude were all forming evenly-spaced grids. And these grids were stacked on top of each other.

Yagoro was reminded of a simple homemade diorama made by cutting out pieces of cardboard along contour lines and stacking them on top of each other.

The roe-like Dracae first created an evenly-spaced 2D shape and then stacked those shapes to create a silhouette much like a cumulonimbus cloud.

(Is it like a 3D map for drones? So instead of a 2D map, these symbols present the risk of collision to show flying objects where to avoid? No.)

“This is simpler than that. It’s based on a free-moving sandstorm.”

Witches would get lost in there even with the magical map that was a Formula Broom. This created an airspace of death and doom that robbed witches of their guidance, weakening them until they came to a stop and crashed.

Crashing into the supersonic witches acted as a bird strike attack which harmed the witch and triggered a malfunction in the Formula Broom. The multi-layer structure created by the Dracae could be seen like countless suspended ceilings blocking up the sky to bring down the flying witches.

(So this wasn’t even an issue of Nancy’s skill.)

In the Dazzling Forest, Elinalva had used magic much like an anti-air laser, but this threat was even greater. Against the swarm control capable of releasing millions or billions of familiars at once, placing a few anti-air weapons on the ground wasn’t going to accomplish much of anything.

Then Yagoro remembered Sorbeddy. Or rather, what her dragonfly-like broom, Formula Broom – River Seine bis9FE, had said: “Myousou Yagoro. Watch out for a round purple garment with the scent of my river upon it.”

(That explains it. Sequana protects the River Seine and the Dracae are said to have a large city at the bottom of a French river.)

His former student spoke through bloody lips.

“Yagoro. …Watch out for that woman.”

“What woman?”

“''Wedding Exam''. I looked into her and she is very bad news. Yagoro, she has helped several girls pass Maleficium’s entrance exam, just like you have.”

Was that the identity of the false god?

But before he could ask more, he raised his head.

She was right there.