A Duel of Equals
"You got the general idea, right? From now on, fight each other. Three."
The duel between Desang and Kellon burned even fiercer than the clash between Jerry and Talon.
Kellon measured the reach of his spear with ruthless precision, shutting down every approach Desang attempted, while Desang read those spear movements and strained to find any gap he could force open. Their skill stood dead even. Both had long since left student level behind; even active knights would have found nothing to sneer at in their technique.
"Kwahahahaha!"
"Heh-heh... hahahaha...!"
To a warrior, an equal opponent is a blessing handed down by the gods themselves. How do you pierce the enemy's guard? How do you snuff out the enemy's scheme? Feint with the false, then drive home with the true. That was the foundation of every warrior's fight, and a duel against a true peer honed that foundation sharper still.
"Gross..."
Jerry scowled as he watched Desang beam with pure delight while trading blows with Kellon. The sight of that smug noble brat looking so happy simply rubbed him the wrong way. At the same time, the fight forced Jerry to taste his own helplessness. If his opponent had been either of those two instead of Talon, could he have lasted even ten seconds?
No. Jerry himself could state that with absolute certainty. Before he could even move, Kellon's spear or Desang's sword would have already punched straight through his heart.
"Tch!"
Jerry clutched his chest against the helplessness seeping into him. That the gap between him and the guy he despised so much could be this vast was something he simply could not accept.
"There. I win."
"Kwahahaha! Fine! I lose!"
The long, roaring exchange ended far more abruptly than anyone expected. While Kellon pressed Desang hard, the plant-magic seed Desang had quietly planted in the earth earlier blossomed and tangled Kellon's feet. It was Desang's own arrangement of the explosive trap Jerry had used against Talon. Even with both legs bound, Kellon still fought valiantly, yet in the end he failed to hold the distance and fell to Desang.
"A fine fight, my friend!"
"Kyaaagh!!!"
Defeat left Kellon strangely refreshed. He swept Desang into a crushing hug and roared with laughter. The force of the embrace was so great that Desang screamed, but Kellon, convinced the cry was one of joy, only squeezed harder. Willy eventually intervened and made Kellon let go, yet by then Desang had already blacked out.
A victory that left nothing but wounds.
"Then I'll be counting on you, Pel?"
"I'll be counting on you too, Ruz!"
Once Desang came around and the two of them had reviewed the previous match, Willy moved on to the next bout. The third duel was Pel versus Ruz. Pel drew an ordinary wand; Ruz produced a strange ring-shaped weapon.
"A hula hoop...?"
"No! It's a weapon called a chakram!"
A chakram. A throwing weapon once used by certain religious orders in the Middle East. Historically the size of a bracelet at most, yet in fiction the unspoken rule was that such pedantic accuracy never applied. The chakram Ruz had drawn was no bracelet-sized ring—it was a massive hoop nearly as tall as a person.
"Begin!"
The instant Willy shouted the signal, Pel swept her wand and summoned a pink-wooled sheep. Pel's primary magic was spirit arts—an art usable only by a rare few born with the gift of speaking to spirits. While the unexpected appearance of a spirit set the students murmuring, Pel's astonishing magic activated once more.
Magical★Change!
Countless beams of light poured from Pel's pendant. The sheep spirit she had summoned dissolved into particles of light that wrapped around her, and the school uniform she wore transformed into a dazzling battle dress adorned with enormous ribbons and frills.
"Dreaming★Pel! Here I go!"
Kiratt!
The instant the costume change finished, pink star patterns cascaded above Pel's head.
"Ch-change...?"
"What in the world..."
"Is there even a magic like that...?"
Faced with a spectacle so absurd it defied comprehension, the boys—Willy included—froze solid. The girls' reaction, however, was pure explosion.
"Woooooo!"
"Kyaaaaah!"
Chelrn and Ruz, watching, let out huge cheers. Even the normally expressionless Lia's eyes lit up as she stared at Pel decked out head-to-toe in pink frills, while Jerry simply clapped both hands over his mouth in pure emotion.
The developers of Destiny had all been the sort of people called hardcore otaku. Their characters and events overflowed with parodies and homages, and Pel herself was a character in whom those parodies had been concentrated to the extreme.
Pel's magic was spirit arts. Simply being able to speak with spirits already marked her as a rare constitution, yet on top of that she possessed the even rarer trait of being able to take spirits into her own body. Among that already tiny number of spirit mages, only a handful ever held such a constitution. Using that trait to absorb a spirit and transform was precisely Magical★Change, and—astonishingly—it was a magic that had been passed down for generations...
Or so the in-game lore claimed.
Yet Pel's magic had a backstory. The setting of Magical★Change had been invented by the director in charge of Destiny. At the time he had been thoroughly enjoying a magical-girl series in which people split top-from-bottom and the mascot turned out to be the mastermind of everything, and he had said, "Huh? Pink hair, short and cute mage? This is just a magical-girl role waiting to happen," then scrapped the existing spirit-mage setting and stuffed it full of magical-girl tropes instead. That was the true nature of the magic called Magical★Change.
"Heh-heh. No matter how many times I see it, it's still such a splendid magic."
My young lady, who already knew Pel's transformation magic, remained perfectly calm as she appraised Magical★Change. I, however, still remembered the sight two years ago of my young lady hiding in her room and shouting, "Magical★Change! Flame★Noir!"
"I had heard there was magic that cloaks the body in a spirit... but I never imagined it would look like that..."
When the enormous hammer swung, instead of a thunderous crash it produced a cute little boing. The teacher watching squeezed his eyes shut, yet every time the hammer made that boing-boing sound the girls' eyes sparkled, while the boys simply abandoned all further thought and stared blankly at the fight.
Magical★Impact!
Pel's hammer swelled to several times its previous size—large enough to blot out the moon. Every time it collided with Ruz's hula... no, chakram, it seemed to grow larger still.
"Ugh, did I watch too long...?"
Until now Ruz had been enjoying the fight with dance-like, dazzling movements, yet it was no longer possible to drag things out. At last she gathered mana through her entire body, as if intending to settle everything with the next single blow.
Wheeeeeee—!
A crimson wind coiled around Ruz, and the blade of the chakram—no, the hula hoop—she held began to spin at ferocious speed.
"Haht!"
With a sharp wind-cutting shriek the spinning hoop leapt into the air. Ruz soared upward and delivered a cutting strike against the pink hammer descending toward her. Some of the students watching her hurl herself at a hammer ten meters across thought she had simply given up on winning—yet the bout took an unexpected turn.
Seogeok—
"Eh!?"
The hula-hoop slash cleanly bisected the hammer. Ruz planted a foot on the falling pieces and accelerated again, closing the distance in a flash. In the blink of an eye she was right in front of Pel. The girl who moments earlier had been looking down on Ruz from the sky was now the one being looked down upon.
"Here I come, Pel!"
"Hiiit?!"
Ruz spun her body in midair and swung the hula hoop with all her might. A ferocious red vacuum slash of aura erupted from the hoop. Even after it cut Pel down, the slash did not stop; it sheared through the trees of the forest and only scattered into empty air after smashing a boulder far beyond.
"What... is this..."
An outcome no one could have predicted, and a slash whose destructive power drained the will even of those merely watching. Thanks to the bracelet Willy had handed out before class began, Pel was unhurt, yet she could only drop to her knees and stare blankly up at Ruz.
Pel was not the only one shaken. Kellon, who had momentarily lost track of Ruz's movement, felt an inexplicable chill, while Desang and Jerry even doubted their own eyes.
"Winner! Ruz Hari!"
Only Willy's calm voice rang out across the clearing.
"Next—Chelrn Macadia and Lia Marx, step forward!"
After reviewing and evaluating the previous bout, Willy moved straight on to the next match. This time it was Chelrn versus Lia.
"Looking forward to it?"
"...."
Chelrn drew a rapier; Lia held a small grimoire. Warrior versus mage—an eternal rivalry that had sparked heated debates for ages over which side would win.
"Let's both do our best!"
"...?"
Chelrn was brimming with motivation now that her turn had finally arrived. Lia, by contrast, was glaring at Willy with an expression that clearly asked why they were even bothering with this. Willy, after all, knew her ability better than anyone; she saw no reason for him to force a lesson like this.
"Haa... Begin!"
Faced with that look, Willy let out a deep sigh and called the start.