"Wind Creation Magic: Heavenly Wind Ark!"
Yuno's Grimoire flipped quickly to a page bearing a recorded spell, and the mana inside his body surged outward with a force that was at once powerful and refined. Immediately, a flying boat made entirely of wind appeared directly beneath the feet of all five of them.
The boat lifted everyone standing on it with effortless ease, showing not the slightest strain from carrying multiple people, nor causing any discomfort whatsoever to those standing on its surface.
"That's incredible..."
Standing on Yuno's wind boat, Noelle stared at the black-haired young man in astonishment. "He can control his magic this effortlessly...?"
As someone who also possessed formidable mana and magic of her own, Noelle naturally understood that Yuno's spell had to be both powerful and extremely stable in order to carry five people on it without any issue at all.
Yuno had done it with complete ease, and that alone showed just how outstanding his mana control truly was, so unlike herself, a person who had always struggled terribly with controlling her own mana and magic.
"Yuno has always been this exceptional."
Brian explained quietly to Noelle, "You see the emblem on his Grimoire, don't you? That alone is proof of just how talented he is."
Noelle directed her gaze toward Yuno's Grimoire at Brian's words. The silver-haired girl's eyes went wide immediately, struck completely speechless with astonishment at the emblem displayed on Yuno's floating Grimoire.
"Isn't that..."
"Yeah, it's a four-leaf clover."
Brian said it as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. "He's just like me. Both of us are chosen ones."
Brian's voice carried a note of confidence, and more than a little arrogance when he mentioned the distinction that set both himself and his closest friend apart from everyone else. Which was fair enough. Being "gifted beyond all others" had always been something he held his head high about.
"Yuno, head that way."
Brian stepped forward past Noelle and positioned himself right beside Yuno before speaking. "There are a few magic traps in that direction, but it's the shortest path to the treasure. I'll point out where the traps are, and all you need to do is destroy them."
"Got it, leave it to me."
Hearing Brian's directions, Yuno asked nothing further and immediately steered his wind boat in the direction Brian pointed.
Standing at the back of the boat, the two remaining Golden Dawn members said nothing. They stood in silence and watched Brian and Yuno work together. The image of Brian in their eyes at this moment was genuinely very different from the impression they had formed when they first met him.
Without any need for further involvement from anyone else, Brian and Yuno were more than capable of guiding the whole group to the location of the treasure entirely on their own.
Neither of them quite understood why, but this same thought appeared in both their minds at the same time, leaving them feeling strangely unsettled. This was especially true for Klaus, who had just had a brief clash with Brian not long before.
Unlike in the original story, Yuno had already earned the recognition of both Klaus and Mimosa within a short period of time after joining Golden Dawn. He had not only shown them his strength, but had also shown them his character through the various missions they had carried out together.
Yuno had already earned the recognition of Klaus and Mimosa. A talent of his caliber, and yet right now he was the one letting Brian give directions while he himself was the one carrying out those directions.
It was genuinely difficult for the two of them to believe what they were seeing, but they had no intention of asking questions or making things awkward at this particular moment. And so they chose to stay silent and simply observe just what Brian was truly capable of, that he could make Yuno cooperate with him so naturally and without any resistance.
The speed of Yuno's wind magic was truly in a class of its own. With the wind boat he had just created, he carried all five of them and glided through the Dungeon without the slightest hint of difficulty.
Wherever they went, Yuno's sharp gusts of wind swept aside the floating stone blocks that stood in their way and blocked their path. Under Brian's guidance, Yuno's winds destroyed and neutralized every single trap they encountered along the way.
Not a single obstacle managed to stop them or even slow them down in the slightest. Yuno's wind boat pressed straight ahead without pause, without hesitation, without any sign of faltering.
"Turn left at the fork up ahead, then drop down to the lowest level."
Brian spoke to Yuno in a decisive and unhesitating tone, having committed the entire route the group needed to travel in order to reach the treasure completely to memory.
Yuno did not hesitate for even a moment and immediately turned the helm according to Brian's directions. The wind boat shifted course with a smoothness that felt almost effortless, then continued moving forward at high speed once more.
The wordless, effortless understanding between the two young men from Hage Village made even Klaus, who still harbored considerable resentment deep in his chest, fall silent and observe them, gradually and reluctantly recognizing Brian's ability for himself as he watched.
Brian had no need to even look at his Grimoire in order to guide the group, and that fact alone proved that his mana-sensing ability was exceptional in a way that went far beyond the ordinary.
Sitting at the back of the boat, Mimosa at this moment also glanced briefly over at Brian. His composure and his meticulous, precise way of working reminded her of Yuno, who did share certain similarities with Brian in that regard. She was not entirely certain who had influenced whom between the two of them, but her intuition told her clearly that Brian was the one who had left a more significant and lasting positive impression on Yuno, rather than the other way around.
Right at this moment, Mimosa suddenly recalled the rumor she had heard about someone who also possessed a four-leaf clover Grimoire, just like Yuno's, having joined the Black Bulls after the Magic Knight entrance exam. She was about to turn and ask Noelle about it directly, but something else entirely caught her attention first and made her set the matter of Brian aside for the time being.
Standing directly behind Brian, Noelle was at this moment maintaining a thin and light but extremely stable layer of mana around her body, using it to reduce and soften the pressure of the wind bearing against her as the boat moved at speed.
Seeing what the silver-haired girl was doing so quietly and steadily, Mimosa could not conceal her astonishment at what she was witnessing right in front of her.
"Noelle... has your mana control really improved this much?"
Noelle's poor mana control was no secret among the nobility. For a very long time, Noelle had been entirely unable to make any improvement to her mana control no matter how hard she tried, and yet in only a brief period after joining the Black Bulls, this silver-haired girl had managed to accomplish something that she had spent over ten years failing completely to do.
Hearing the surprised question in Mimosa's voice, Noelle gave a slight, composed tilt of her chin. Though inwardly she was absolutely elated at the astonished expression being directed at her, outwardly she maintained the haughty, composed air of royalty that she typically showed to the outside world.
"Hmph, of course. I have been training with the utmost seriousness ever since I joined the Black Bulls."
The moment those words left her mouth, Noelle unconsciously let her eyes drift over to Brian's back, and her gaze softened in a way that she herself did not even notice she was doing.
Noelle's small and unguarded gesture did not escape Mimosa, who had been watching the silver-haired girl with a quiet curiosity. She turned her eyes to Brian, and the look in her eyes as she regarded him at that moment also shifted, carrying considerably more weight and consideration than it had before.
It was plain to see that Brian was the one who had brought about Noelle's dramatic improvement in mana control. Noelle's unconscious action had said as much without her needing to speak a single additional word. He had accomplished something that no one had managed to do in all the years prior, which was to genuinely help Noelle gain real control over her own mana.
The curiosity that both Klaus and Mimosa felt toward Brian gradually continued to grow larger and larger. Both of them very much wanted to know where Brian's true abilities stood when measured against their own, and when measured against someone like Yuno.
After traveling for a time under Brian's careful and precise guidance, Yuno had brought the whole group to what appeared to be a completely solid dead end deep inside the Dungeon. This caused the others to turn and look at Brian with skeptical and questioning eyes, with the sole exception of Yuno and Noelle, both of whom still trusted without doubt that Brian had a clear reason for having led them here.
"This is the place."
Brian stepped forward to the bow of the boat. His Grimoire began to emit a pale golden light as it floated in the air around him. The mana inside Brian's body flared briefly outward, and based on what he was putting on open display right now, the amount he was showing was in no way inferior when compared to Yuno's.
"Earth Magic: Hidden Burrowing!"
The spell Brian had once used to dig a tunnel during the mission at Sosshi Village was cast once more. Under the wide and astonished eyes of the others watching, the wall that had turned their path into a dead end suddenly began to shift and move, the earth and stone pulling themselves aside to reveal a small tunnel leading to somewhere that lay beyond.
"Go in, Yuno."
"Got it."
Yuno immediately steered the wind boat and led the whole group into the tunnel Brian had just opened up. Once inside the tunnel, Yuno loosened his active control over the wind boat, and despite no longer being directly guided by him, the wind boat continued moving steadily forward entirely on its own.
"This spell is as useful as ever."
Yuno remarked with genuine admiration as he stood at ease on the self-moving wind boat. "With magic like this, you really can pull off just about anything you set your mind to."
"Yeah, I would agree with that."
Brian smiled as he replied to Yuno. "With this spell, I'm not limited to just creating tunnels wherever I want. I can also make anything that enters the tunnel move automatically all the way to the other end on its own."
Put that way, Brian could make anything travel from one end of a tunnel he created to the other end. Whether it was a person, an object, or even a magic spell itself, he had the ability to do it with any of them equally.
Truly a versatile and multi-purpose spell in every sense of the word, befitting both the wishes Brian held for his magic and the high standards he set for what a spell in his arsenal should be capable of.