“…!”
Fiery lines drew a whirlpool of flame encircling about the Mazoku, caught in the eye of the storm. Noticing that the flames were again unable to cause it harm, it ceased its attempts to evade, instead opening its mouth to speak.
Ignoring the searing flames, it waved its arm in Suimei’s direction.
“I’ve had it with you!”
An enormous mass of power came flying his way, consuming the remnants of Suimei’s spell and turning the trees behind Suimei to dust as it approached.
Nevertheless, an attack of that level was something that Suimei could avoid with ease. He took a firm leap backward.
In the next instant, a cloud of dust, thrown up by the attack, crashed into his person.
Suimei held up a hand to protect his face as his mind raced.
Even that attack didn’t do anything…
The enemy before him, a Mazoku.
What was it about it that rendered his magic so ineffective?
Looking it over, he couldn’t find anything that would grant it such a resistance. That his magic would be utterly impotent was hard to believe.
…Its mana levels aren’t anywhere near enough to resist the magic I’ve been using, but it doesn’t look like it’s an innate, physical resistance either…
His enemy definitely did not have the ability to weaken his magic enough to extinguish it, nor should the Mazoku be in possession of a body with a magical resistance of such a degree either. Even if its body was extremely durable, but from the sensation he’d felt when he’d sent it crashing into the ground, it wasn’t at a level that surpassed other lifeforms.
It was conceivable that it had innate resistance to fire, but for it to be to the extent that it hadn’t been so much as singed by his flames was not.
If he were to assume that it was not a resistance to fire, but rather the ability to extinguish its flames, then several possibilities existed.
That was because fire created by magic was quite different from the naturally occurring phenomenon.
The flames called forth by magic were unlike the naturally occurring phenomenon, which would only occur when the conditions of a fuel source and sufficient oxygen were met. Instead, it operated via the medium of a reconstructed mystery, essentially forcibly inducing the combustion phenomenon. Aside from ignition conditions, magical fire would simply burn along the path outlined by the spell.
Subsequently, unless you countered the magic process directly, the flame would never go out until its target had been completely consumed.
Of course, if it was a simple spell on the level of a firestarter, then that was a different matter, but it should go without saying that the type of magic Suimei had just invoked was of the other type.
So why was it that the fire brought about by his magic wasn’t working?