I was pretty sure it was just Filo singing, but the song was echoing throughout the area. So it wasn’t magic, then? In that case, they wouldn’t be able to block it. After that, Filo took a deep breath, changed into her filolial form, and then held her wings up to her mouth like a megaphone and screamed.

“Air Block Voice!”

There was a loud boom, and then I saw something like a shock wave shoot out of Filo’s mouth and toward Murder Pierrot. She had some pretty ridiculous secret moves. Why hadn’t she used that on Kyo, for crying out loud?! Then again, I guess just using magic like normal might have been more effective.

“Thank you, Humming!”

Raphtalia was making her other katana appear and disappear as needed, while she slipped through Murder Pierrot’s obstacles, in what appeared to be a graceful dance, and then closed in to attack. We were overwhelming the opponent . . . but how long would that last?

Ugh . . . The weight of the debuff magic had become noticeably heavier. Raphtalia and Filo were moving more sluggishly now, too.

“Little Rock.”

Sadeena had been bound just like Filo, but she transformed to break free and came over to me. This thread I was wrapped up in had turned into a real flame war, but Sadeena reached out and touched me.

“What’s up?”

“It’s not that I forgot to mention this, but there is a way to use magic in a situation like this, you know?”

“Huh? How is that?”

“Have you not studied magic?”

I thought back to when I had been studying magic while we were peddling. Counter-magic was something that could only be used on an individual opponent, but it was possible for multiple people to cast counter-magic. But what if multiple people were performing a single incantation? Aha, so if it were several people casting cooperative magic, then it might just work. I remembered seeing Filo do it several times before.

Sadeena brought her mouth next to my ear and quietly explained.

“So you and I can work together to cast cooperative magic, little Rock.”

“But they’ll notice us chanting the incantation and just interfere, won’t they?”

“Leave that part up to me, darling. I won’t fail.”

Sadeena winked at me and started focusing on the incantation.

“You focus, too, little Rock. I’ll help you out. We’re going to cast support magic.”

Fine, whatever. I started to focus. I felt a flow of magic power coming from Sadeena . . . Strange. It was like the flow of power that I felt when casting magic with Ost . . . but something was different. I closed my eyes, and in my field of view, something that looked like a square block appeared. Next to it was a sculpture of some random shape? No, that wasn’t it. It was a puzzle piece. What was going on?