Ghoul versus Ghoul? (2)
Ah. This isn't it...
He trembled. On the last day of the semester evaluations he had, without meaning to, become the first to step onto the stage. The die was already cast, though, and this was a trial he could not take back.
Do it. You can.
He clenched his teeth as if hypnotizing himself, and his hand went to the two silver coins he kept against his chest. A kindness from someone he respected, and of late a pair of charms he trusted like talismans.
Bear No. 11.
No. Barry Cops, first-year of the sword faculty, shook the fear off with the weight of those coins and swung his spear.
Whoosh. Thuk!
"Grr?"
"Hup!"
It barely registered on the rock monster. Barry Cops wrenched himself aside in a hurry. He had learned, to the point of nausea back on Vulcan, how to face something bigger than he was. If you meant to hunt, evasion came first.
How many boars have I taken? I can do this!
...Ah. Now that he thought about it, not many. Nearly all of them had been brought down together, or the instructor had taken them himself. Barry was just beginning to repent of his confidence when the rock monster, annoyed, came at him.
"GRRR!!"
"Hnnngh!!"
Barry Cops gathered the Gyeong into his legs and kicked off the ground. Not to attack. Only to slip the monster's blow. Someone might have asked why he was dodging when he could simply strike.
Fwaaat!!
"Ghk!?"
This was why he dodged, and nothing more. Where the rock monster—no, the Rock Troll—had passed, the ground was gouged open from end to end. Mass poured out of that enormous body, and the charge was pure recklessness, caring nothing even if its own flesh broke. Had he tried to meet it instead of slipping it, he would have been twisted into jerky on the spot.
"Hoo..."
Even so, Barry did not despair. Once, a monster like this would have set his legs shaking so badly he could not even have faced it. A Rock Troll might not be a true troll, but it was still a monster no ordinary human could oppose. And now? I can still dodge. I can fight back! Gladly, here he was, fighting. So he was not disappointed. He set his stance and made ready to dodge again.
...He did not despair. That was not the same as being unafraid.
...A troll really is an absurd monster.
Krrrk.
"GRRR!!"
He could not help going pale as he watched the thing regenerate. The Rock Troll had slammed into the wall on the force of its own charge, yet its broken body was gradually knitting back together. As befitted an artificial monster made by scattering troll's blood, it possessed a measure of regeneration. The sight was dizzying.
They expect us to pass a test against this? Does the Academy have a conscience?!
Barry was dumbstruck by the absurd difficulty.
"Barry! Do a little better!"
"Give it everything—everything!"
"Show some grit, Barry."
"That one needs to be sent back to Vulcan."
"...Hey, just insult his parents instead."
"Ah. That was a bit much."
Cheers from the seventeen drifted in along the way. Classmates were classmates. Curses were mixed in, but they were cheering all the same. And so was the goddess of victory who stood for the bears.
"Senior, hang in there!"
I win. No matter what—!
If only to answer them, Barry Cops charged the Rock Troll again. Bravely.
And three people, watching the bravery Barry Cops displayed, judged it with perfect honesty.
"Lost."
"He has lost."
"Can't beat that."
The sword faculty trio. At some point that was what people called the three of them, and they read the outcome as if it were already certain while Barry Cops ran in.
"S-Senior is going to lose?"
It was Levi Fault who asked, and Arno nodded as if it were obvious.
"Had he watched for an opening and tried to settle it by casting Spear Gyeong at the proper moment, perhaps. Fight as he is fighting now, and he will only burn his stamina to the bottom. It is a shame. Classmate Barry has no composure, and because he is fighting on feeling he cannot move with any strategy. Had his field of view been wider, he might still have made a worthy match of it."
From the start, the bears' skill was not enough to beat a Rock Troll. They might possess a means of high destruction such as Spear Gyeong, but the matchup was poor against regeneration that superior. What they needed was not a single burst, but something they could loose again and again. For bears who still had only one-shot methods, defeat was as good as foreordained.
And sure enough.
Kwaaang!
"Gaaah!?!"
Barry Cops put everything he had into Spear Gyeong and punched through the Rock Troll's shoulder. Sadly, the Rock Troll cared nothing for a ruined shoulder and simply charged. Barry tried to swing again, but his stamina was already gone, and the Rock Troll did not miss the chance.
"GRR!!"
With a heavy thud, it rammed Barry Cops.
It was over. Everyone looked at him with bloodless faces and shook their heads. An overwhelming defeat from start to finish. There was nothing for it but regret.
"Idiot. Instead of studying debate, he should have swung a sword more."
"Still, his debate score was decent, so he won't be expelled."
"Ah. That's true."
His classmates delivered a cold verdict on the loss, but the taste in their own mouths was bitter. They knew Barry's effort, and they knew they might lose looking no different from him. That was what soured their tongues. They were already worrying what would become of them if they lost that wretchedly.
...But the spectators were not the ones passing that harsh judgment.
"Wow. How can he charge a monster like that?"
"Brave! That's the sword faculty for you. Just what you'd expect of knight candidates."
"I heard that one's a commoner?"
"...A commoner wounded a Rock Troll? What? Is that troll rotten...?"
Admiration. It was admiration. To his classmates' eyes it was nothing but a miserable defeat, but to ordinary spectators he looked like nothing less than a warrior of peerless courage. Charging a monster was no different from running at a giant with only a club in hand, and it would have been strange not to marvel at ferocity like that. Besides, for so wretched a loss, the content of Barry Cops's match had been good. Like a matador he slipped the Rock Troll's violent attacks, landed his blows in their time, even drew blood, and fought a match that—to a layman's eye—looked razor-close. For that skill and that passion, they gave him unstinting applause.
Pendragon was a kingdom of knights that revered battle and courage. They were not so twisted as to be stingy in judging the fighting spirit he had shown.
"So they value the content of a duel more than the result? This kingdom really does have a great many customs I cannot understand."
"It is a custom made by His late Majesty. A warrior who fights a fine battle deserves unstinting courtesy."
"...A romantic sort."
And so petals drifted through the Colosseum. While everyone clapped, Levi Fault spoke.
"Um... is no one going to worry about Senior?"
"......Ah."
The only sane girl among them raised the perfectly reasonable question of why no one was worried whether Barry, flung by the Rock Troll, was even alive. Only then did the classmates run to look after him.
...A futile sort of fellow-feeling.
By a mercy beyond measure, Barry Cops was not dead.
"I'm dying, it hurts..."
"Quit exaggerating."
"Broken arms and legs look like exaggerating to you?"
He was not dead. That was all. The injuries themselves were enormous. Strangely, though, he felt only pain; nothing about him looked as if it were truly, deeply wrong. It was a wound that ought to have left him concussed, but fortunately, in this Colosseum—
"Holy Law, I swear. Long may it reign."
"You won't die."
Holy Law. A Mystery that only a priest bearing Holy Power, a follower of the one god, the Light of Radiance, could unfold. That mysterious power was spread across the whole of the Colosseum, and thanks to it even those who took grave wounds did not die. Barry Cops's injuries had been dealt inside Holy Law's field, and so they would mend before long. A battleground so safe that one could neither die there nor remain hurt. A miracle that testified a god existed.
And the one most deeply moved was a warrior of a certain mystery-race.
"Kunta want Holy Law! Have this, our tribe, nobody get hurt!"
The warrior of a barbarian tribe that was forever taking harm from monsters had met the Mystery of Holy Law, and his eyes shone. Like a child who had found a toy he absolutely had to have. Arno, however, had no choice but to break that pure expectation.
"I would not particularly recommend it."
"Why?"
"It has no effect on real monsters."
"...Huh?"
"It is acceptable against an artificial monster that can be controlled, as that one can. Should a true monster run wild, Holy Law is easily torn apart. It is passable now only because it is being managed in real time, in a situation this safe. Otherwise, well..."
"And for something that useless, the offerings it eats are huge, right? Install that in your tribe and you'll be living on gruel for the rest of your lives."
"......Kunta hate Holy Law now."
Kunta was disappointed. He had thought he had found a fine means, and it was nothing of the sort. Just as he was about to wilt, someone spoke.
"Don't droop. Lift your head. Our faculty's greatest hope looks like he's about to swing a sword properly."
"......Ooh!"
The barbarian jerked his head up and lit his eyes, as if he had never been disappointed at all. Holy Law had been a letdown. That one, though, would not disappoint him.
"I am Roen Drimit de Lionel."
"I swear upon the dragon, the lion, and the fairy that I shall fight a duel of which I need not be ashamed."
Shing.
The young lion drew his sword.
An unending procession of carriages. And not ordinary carriages—rows of luxurious ones. Carriages of vain nobles, and of the merchant union flaunting its wealth. Even carriages that were not luxurious, but bore the mark of the united guilds, which could not be ignored.
During the War Game the other day, people had crowded in to look well before the princess, but this was not a hasty gathering of riffraff like then. These were people who did not stir easily. When the semester evaluation ended, the Academy's students would have a week of rest, and perhaps for that reason many had come in person to take their children home. However heavy the seat of a high noble or the master of a great caravan, a parent was still a parent. That, at least, seemed to be the meaning of it.
They had not moved, however, out of care for their children alone.
"Count Jeremy, how long has it been!"
"Caravan Chief Isol? Hoh, so your child attends here as well?"
"Haha, he entered this year."
"You might have told me sooner."
"How could I trouble a man so busy with public and private affairs over a trifle?"
"And you aren't the one busy with public and private affairs?"
"Surely not!"
"Hahaha!"
A pretext. For great figures who were hard to meet, or who stood in an awkward relationship, it was a fine excuse to encounter one another while pretending the meeting was chance, and so it was worth making the trip all the way to the Academy on purpose. For this and that struggle over interests, carriages gathered ever more thickly at the Academy's main gate, and a great crowd streamed toward the Colosseum that would crown the last act of the semester evaluation. Each of them hid an aim, a slyness, an inner thought.
And off to one side, watching such people, there was one who passed a different judgment.
"—Nothing but filthy pigs, gathered in a heap."
Within the flow of the crowd, a man in priest's robes furrowed his brow and spat merciless contempt. Whether the frown was habit, the crease between his brows ran deep. His contemptuous gaze fell where those who could be called the powerful had gathered, and he looked ready to start something at any moment.
"By that logic, aren't we pigs too?"
"...I won't deny it. Don't make me chew on it on purpose."
"Heh heh. Sorry, Captain."
"You lunatic."
At the retort of the colleague beside him, the man calmed. Yes. This was a time to endure. He muttered it under his breath, and his colleague lifted the corner of his mouth, playful.
"Even if the captain doesn't step in, the ones due for the butcher will all be butchered. The preparations were thorough."
"You're certain?"
"If an Aura User or someone with real skill moved, I wouldn't know. But that isn't the case, is it? I looked at today's list. No one of real ability seems to be here."
"So it would seem."
"Then let's just watch. It's a rare and amusing festival, isn't it? Haha!"
"It is not a festival. It is the semester evaluation. Speak properly. The students are laying their lives on the line and doing their utmost, are they not?"
"Honestly. The strange things I have to hear."
He shrugged. What the man was saying was exceedingly strange, and well it might be.
"Coming from the man who means to kill every one of those hardworking students."
He had no intention of leaving alive a single person gathered here today, and yet he spoke like a normal man. It could only feel off. The man, however, was unabashed.
"Kill them? Don't say it like that."
Click.
He lifted a cross and quietly made the sign of the cross.
"It is not death. It is a glorious blessing. Where else is there an honor to match it? They, too, will surely be satisfied."
As though nothing could be more enviable than the young lambs who, from this moment, would become offerings. The man laid his envy bare, and he meant it.