She applied a static magic on herself to further counter that drag force.
In that position, she triggered movement magic on the buttons in her
hand. The buttons, empowered to move at 300 km/h without
acceleration, slowed and dropped to the ground before they had
traveled even one metre.
Miyuki's senses had felt Lina blazing in faster than the eye could see.
Although she couldn't draw data directly from the dimension of
information like Tatsuya, it was possible to perceive the traces of
event modification left by magic. This was something any magician
could do at varying levels, and anything a magician could do Miyuki
could do at the highest level.
Self-acceleration was a magic which caused event modification on the
user themself. Therefore by tracking the traces of event modification
in real time, it was possible to determine the position of the caster.
Miyuki had learned how to exploit that weakness of self-acceleration
from Tatsuya.
Everything so far had proceeded just as planned. Her saying "I guess
this much isn't enough" had been deliberate, a suggestive ploy to
provoke the other side.
The clincher would be this next magic.
([Deceleration Zone])
The technique itself was rather commonplace. It was a magic widely
used both in Japan and abroad to slow the movement of a target
object.
But when Miyuki uses this magic, her targets can extend even to gas
molecules.
The movement speed of gas molecules is proportional to its pressure.
To be precise (although this is still just an approximation) in an
enclosed space, the pressure of a gas is proportional to the square of
its movement speed. By forcibly decelerating the movement speed of
air molecules in a region the pressure falls, and the resulting pressure
gradient causes air from the surrounding space to move in.
Rapidly and forcefully.
Not just air, but people and objects were sucked in as well.
If a person caught in this had insufficient power to oppose the magic,
they would be deprived of their movement speed and trapped.
And if the person had sufficient interference power to shut down the
magic, the greatly decelerated gas molecules would suddenly regain
their speed and expansion back to an appropriate pressure would
occur; in other words, an explosion.
A magic which originally was only used in battle as a second option to
reduce the impact of projectiles when lacking the power to outright
stop them, had been wrought into a two-fold anti-personnel magic by
Miyuki's overwhelming magic power.
However, Lina held her ground against the raging suction force.
What she had shot out had looked like ornamental buttons.
Merely given some initial velocity there was no way those clumps of
resin could break through Miyuki's Deceleration Zone, but more
importantly, they had clued Lina in as to exactly just what kind of
magic Miyuki was using.
(If that's the case!)
Always be prepared two, three steps ahead of your opponent, was
something repeatedly taught to her by Tatsuya on a daily basis. If the
plan to draw the opponent into Deceleration Zone and eliminate her
there failed, she had planned strategies to take her down outside the
area as well.
Whilst doubling over the inside zone, Miyuki released the outer area.
The forcibly slowed air molecules returned to their original speed.
The air, once contained in a small area was freed in a great rush of
pressure, and engulfed Lina in a blast.
The traces of a large scale phenomena alteration disappeared.
According to her instinct, Lina flattened herself on the ground and cast
an objective barrier above.
A blast wave washed over the top of the shield. The high-speed air
flow threatened to lift her shield and all off the ground, and after
holding by applying major inertial increase magic several times whilst
remaining prone, Lina raised her head and looked for an opportunity
to counterattack — or rather to assess the situation.
Lina had no intention of leisurely(?) waiting for a chance to arise.
Up to this moment, she had been entirely on the back foot.
Her opponent was a mere high school student, while she was the
captain of the world's strongest unit.
Naturally such pride had been there, but now more than that, the
awareness that she was losing ground brought its own mental
pressure.
If she didn't retaliate at least a little, she would be overpowered.
Unless one has an overwhelming defensive magic, in a magic battle
offense was stronger than defense. So went the theory.
Lina felt the wind pressure weaken. It wasn't so much due to
cancellation of the magic as the blast which occurred as a result; after
all that compressed air had been released, it was little wonder the wind
had dropped.
Lina gripped her combat knife in her right hand.
Her gun had been taken, but this knife capable of operating 'Molecular
Divider' had not.