There is something.

What is it?

I couldn't bring myself to say it, just silently staring, when I heard the sound of teeth grinding.

"……What I felt for you,"

The moment Elodie murmured something,

Something flew towards her right window from outside.

A baseball, heading straight─

Without thinking, I moved my hand. It was almost at the same time as the girl moved hers.

Clang-!

The baseball broke through the window, sending shards of glass flying along with it. In front of them, I,

Frondier's Unique Skill

Weaving

Workshop Item No. 3

Rank - Common

Iron Shield

I extended a shield I had woven earlier, stored by a previous Frondier.

It was then I realized.

"Ah, how foolish."

This was all fantasy; it was useless in actually blocking,

Whoosh-

In the moment that thought crossed my mind, the baseball and glass shards were suddenly engulfed in flames.

The force behind them seemed to be devoured by the fire, losing all momentum and fluttering like petals.

"Wow..."

This wasn't my doing.

Elodie's right hand was stretched towards the glass shards, and her eyes and hair had turned red in an instant. She had set everything ablaze in a moment.

The glass shards and baseball, burned by Elodie's flames, lost their force and fell.

Only a few shards stuck to our clothes or brushed past us when,

Ting!

"Huh?"

"…Huh?"

The girl and I voiced our confusion in unison.

The baseball and glass shards bounced off in mid-air.

Neither my hand nor her body was hit by a single shard.

"It didn't just bounce off in mid-air. My shield..."

The shield had blocked the glass shards. My shield, which was surely a fantasy.

"…Um, thanks, Frondier. I don't know how you did it…"

Elodie didn't understand.

Of course, she wouldn't be able to see my shield.

Yet her thanking me was incredibly sincere.

"But hey! You saw it, right? Even if you hadn't blocked it, my flames would have-"

She continued to ramble on, but my mind was elsewhere.

"…Hey, are you listening? It's a bit embarrassing."

I thought back to the situation just before.

My shield had definitely blocked the window and the baseball.

"Can you just say anything?"

This meant that Weaving wasn't entirely an illusion. If the conditions were right, it could intervene in reality.

I still didn't know what those conditions were. But the fact that it could intervene was most important.

"Come on, it's not that bad to ignore!"

I felt a very slight thrill.

Clenching my fist, I took one step at a time down the hallway.

It felt like I had found a faint ray of hope in this hopeless mess of a game.

The sunlight brushed my face in a glorious moment.

"Hey!!!"

* * *

"Ouch."

Once again, I was hit in the head with a baseball. Picking up the ball that had bounced off my head and rolled to the side, I rubbed my head.

"I was sure it would work this time."

I'm currently experimenting with Weaving.

The shield that blocked those fragments must have been the one I had woven.

Then it occurred to me.

Could this skill become real instead of just fantasy when the caster is in danger? An incredible thing indeed!

To test it, I replicated the shield and threw a baseball at it, aiming the shield above me while the baseball fell.

...But of course, there was no such thing.

The baseball elegantly passed through the shield and hit my head.

Well, if it were that kind of convenient game, I would have figured it out long ago.

"How can I use it in reality?"

The fact that it blocked the glass shards is real.

All of that was evidence that my Weaving had manifested in reality.

But I didn't know how.

"Ugh, I'm tired."

Half slumped in a chair, I felt completely drained.

It wasn't just the mood; my body was genuinely exhausted.

Maybe it was a backlash from using Weaving too much.

"Why does it exhaust people without even appearing in reality?"

I muttered to myself like a complaint.

...Right?

Why am I exhausted?

What is this strange sense of depletion?

Those questions brushed through my mind in succession.

I sat up from my reclining position.

"...Mana?"

In the game Etius, just as there are skills and magic, there naturally exists mana.

And of course, having become Frondier, I must possess it too.

However, being a human from this world, I'm unaware of the sensation of mana.

But if my current state of depletion is due to mana.

Then 'Weaving' is a skill that uses mana.

Meaning, it's akin to magic.

"Think back. In Etius, what was mana? What was the concept of magic?"

Magic in Etius isn't a concept of matter.

It's a concept of phenomena.

Whether you're shooting fire, hurling ice spears, or erecting earthen walls, none of it can continue to exist in reality.

Once the caster cancels the spell or runs out of mana, it all disappears.

A natural wildfire can continue burning until it's put out or runs out of fuel, but if a mage creates flames, even if they spread like wildfire, once the mana is depleted, the flames vanish.

So when I realized that Frondier's weaving couldn't affect reality, I was disappointed but accepted it.

Magic might seem omnipotent at first glance, but it has clear limits.

You can burn, freeze, and break things.

But you can't create something from nothing.

Not even a copy.

"I need to change my thinking. Trying to create something out of thin air was wrong from the start. It's impossible. I can't create a shield."

What I need isn't matter.

It's phenomena.

Just like when a mage conjures fire, they're creating the "phenomenon of burning."

With a sword, it's the "phenomenon of cutting."

With a shield, it's the "phenomenon of blocking."

Swish-

I tossed the baseball into the air.

As it reached the apex of its arc and began to fall back toward my head…

Frondier's Unique Skill

Weaving

Workshop Item No. 3

Rank - Common

Iron Shield

I'm not creating the shield itself.

I'm creating the "phenomenon of blocking an attack with a shield."

Just for an instant.

Clang!

The sound was light, and the baseball deflected off the shield, changing its trajectory.

"......I did it."

It only appears in reality for the moment it blocks something.

Even if it's just for a split second, reality is reality.

A small thrill ran through me.