Lorelei Barthomeloi stood rooted to the spot, her eyes wide and her lips silent.
For Barthomeloi, whose family precepts demanded an elegant, cheerful disposition during a hunt to display their majesty, such behavior was unquestionably a lapse in decorum.
The girl understood that more deeply than anyone.
Yet her gaze remained firmly riveted in place, unable to turn away.
The reason for this was simple.
Before all her lofty titles-Grand Marshal of Magic, Lord, and candidate for director of the Clock Tower-Lorelei was a mage through and through.
A seeker who used her individual existence as a fulcrum and magical energy as a medium to explore mysteries, analyze the world, and pursue the Root.
Thus, there was no way she could simply ignore the temptation before her.
But the rivers pouring out from beneath her enemy's feet were already flowing.
Clear and immaculate, they surged onward.
Like fish leaping into water, they leaped into the atmosphere, stirring rings of ripples as they encircled their surroundings.
In this dark Bloodthirsty Forest, where even the atmosphere was poisonous, there were naturally no riverbeds or channels-only bloodsucking trees and bloodsucking earth.
In other words, they had appeared out of thin air.
This defied common sense.
Even Hohenheim, the pinnacle of modern alchemy, who could freely convert the Five Great Elements and condense them into a Philosopher's Stone, could not violate the principle of equivalent exchange.
That was why a Reality Marble, which used only magical energy as its medium to let one's Inner Landscape replace the world for a limited time, had become the ultimate mystery of mages.
That was why Dead Apostle Ancestors, who possessed Principle Blood Rings and passively eroded the Planet's laws simply by living, had become great enemies that denied Human History.
But standing amid the changes unfolding before