Blade Against Chain
"You roughly got that? From now on, the two of you fight."
The instant the words left his mouth, Chelln's form shot forward.
Her blade was a thin, light rapier—weaker than other swords in a contest of pure strength, yet far superior in speed.
"Hup!"
Closing the distance on Ria in a single breath, Chelln swung the rapier with a light shout of effort. The stroke was so fast that an ordinary warrior would never have even begun to react—a speed that could almost be called light itself. But Ria did not flinch. She simply unfurled her magic.
Above and below, violet magic circles bloomed into being. With a metallic rattle, black chains erupted from their surfaces.
Sword and chain collided, spraying sparks. Realizing the attack had failed, Chelln recovered her stance at once and flowed into the next strike.
Clang. Clang-clang—!
A relentless chain of blows that mixed feint and true intent without pause. A blade that had been thrusting forward was suddenly retreating; one aimed at the side was, in the next heartbeat, crashing down from above. It was swordsmanship like a ghost's.
"Hah. She's insane."
Watching that technique, Desang felt a chill crawl down his spine. As a fellow swordsman, he knew exactly how high a realm Chelln was showing. He himself had already long since left the level of an ordinary student behind—and even so, Chelln was wielding a swordsmanship he could not hope to approach.
Her blade work was truly ghostlike. She darted in and out in an instant, drawing trajectories from every direction at once—overwhelming swordsmanship whose path you could not even read.
And yet even that could not break Ria's defense.
Black chains rose with perfect precision along every arc the sword would travel, catching Chelln's blade without fail.
Screee—!
Chelln pressed her assault while constantly shifting position; Ria met every attack from every angle. Sparks kicked up wildly around her wherever steel and chain met, glittering on every side until Ria had to narrow her eyes against them.
From the outside she looked as though she were casually turning Chelln's swordsmanship aside—but the offensive was far fiercer than she had expected. She had been waiting for that furious movement to exhaust itself, yet Chelln's blade only grew faster, never slower.
It's not dangerous yet, but at this rate the match will never end.
Ria tried to open the distance. The moment she drew a foot back, Chelln's sword stabbed sharply in from behind her.
Clang-clang-clang—!
Her chains blocked it again—but the sudden appearance of the blade at her back sent a chill through her. Watching Chelln pour out a ferocious assault that would not let a once-bitten prey escape, Ria almost saw the image of a leopard overlaid on the girl.
"Kh—!"
Pinned by a swordsmanship that would not release its grip, Ria realized her judgment had been wrong. At first she had meant to defend only as much as necessary and then drop an exhausted Chelln. But Chelln was not an opponent you could topple by half-measures. She was a true rival—one against whom Ria herself would have to pour out everything before a real contest could even take shape.
"Shatter."
At Ria's briefest of incantations, the chains that had been shielding her body detonated all at once. Countless shards of iron rained toward Chelln as the shockwave of the blast hurled her far back through the air.
Even suspended there, Chelln's sword never stopped. She cut down every last chain fragment that came streaking toward her.
"Crazy bitch."
Swordsmanship of that caliber—and she was supposed to be a student like him? Desang stared at the sword hanging at his own waist, staggered by the near-divine technique Chelln was displaying.
If I crossed blades with her, how long would I last? No—could I even manage to cross blades at all?
He could picture the result without effort. With luck, he might block her once—just once. And the instant he did, the barrage that followed would finish him.
Grind.
Desang clenched his teeth and settled in to watch the fight play out. With a gap this wide, there was no room even for jealousy, let alone a sense of inferiority. Simply catching whatever scraps of that swordsmanship he could see—that was all he could do right now.
"Ah! This is seriously annoying!"
Thrown clear of Ria, Chelln sprinted to close the distance again—only for countless chains erupting from the ground to keep her from narrowing the gap. They were meant purely to block approach; their durability was pitifully lower than the chains she had been hammering with her sword moments before. But their number was overwhelmingly greater. With every step she took, chains rose to bind her feet and bar her path, and for Chelln the situation was more galling than Ria's defensive magic had ever been.
"Hoo…"
In the brief span while Chelln's feet were bound, the flow of air and wind across the clearing suddenly reversed. Air began to gather around Ria; vast quantities of mana concentrated upon her body. While Chelln was held, Ria had begun preparing the great magic that would decide this match.
"You think I'll just let you!?"
Chelln was not so stupid that she couldn't tell Ria was about to do something catastrophic. She had no idea what the magic would be, but she could not simply stand and watch a great spell take shape right in front of her. She swung her sword and drove a foot forward—
But Ria's mana, already saturating the clearing, held the small space under her dominion. The instant Chelln stepped, hundreds of chains seized her and began to wrap her body.
No. At this rate I lose.
I have no choice.
Chelln clad her whole body in mana and focused her spirit into the sword. She took the hilt in both hands and set the tip toward the sky, resting the blade before the center of her chest—completing the knight's formal salute.
The reverence was offered beyond the sky, to the great beings who looked down upon the human world from a higher plane. A presence that had, since ancient times, prized human wisdom and nobility answered Chelln's etiquette.
Among the gods, fourteen in particular—those of the greatest influence and power—granted a sacred force only to their own apostles: the Holy Sword.
Despite the name, a Holy Sword did not always take the form of a blade. The one Chelln had received from the God of Wisdom was pure mana nested deep within the heart.
At the center of a wave of vivid blue that spread from Chelln, the outline of her sword blurred, and a portion of that glorious mana began to shine. Like morning light driving the night sky before it, Chelln's blue mana began to push Ria's violet aside.
Sensing the dominion of the space slipping steadily toward Chelln, Ria abandoned control of the field and poured everything into the mana gathering in her hands.
Magic was the pursuit of the world's truths, and the manifestation of the world's mysteries by paying a rightful price.
Ria's fingertips pointed to the sky. She wished for the radiance of that heaven—and for heaven's iron mace.
She recited the ancient tongue that held the world's mysteries. The mana gathered at her fingertips soared high into the heavens, glowing with a soft light like the noble moon above. From the ground, serpents rose to swallow that mana. Twining and devouring one another, they formed a vast sphere.
The Garcia-style great magic: Starfall.
True to its name, it was a great magic that created a small star and brought down heaven's iron mace.
Ria, who meant to drop the light of the sky, and Chelln, who kindled light upon the earth, locked eyes. Fierce fighting spirit that would yield to nothing pierced the space between them.
"Ugh, you absolute lunatics."
But the two wills never collided.
Realizing how serious the situation had become, Willy appeared at once and bound both of them in chains of a darker black, denser and more refined than Ria's own.
"Gah!"
"Ghk—!"
Bound, Chelln and Ria slammed face-first into the dirt, and the mana left without a master scattered into the air as fine motes.
"Do you two just not know the meaning of 'moderation'? Attacks of that level and those bracelets wouldn't have stopped a damn thing, you maniacs."
Willy strode over to the two faces planted in the ground and unleashed a storm of scolding. If those finishing blows had met, neither of them would have walked away unharmed. One of them might even have been seriously injured. Protecting the students from the aftershock would have been easy enough for him—but ending the fight was simply less of a hassle. And if they had kept going, even a simple practice match might have turned into a genuine grudge fight. So Willy had stepped in after all, binding them with chains more precise and delicate than Ria's and driving them straight into the earth.
I was only going to watch. And you dared force me to get involved myself…
As far as Willy was concerned, that was unforgivable.
Chelln and Ria, for their part, could only feel wronged as Willy planted them in the dirt and poured out his lecture. No one had told them to hold back. He had just said fight—so they had fought. Wasn't this a bit much?
But right now, soothing their sense of injustice was far less important than something else.
"Um… Teacher…?"
"What."
Chelln averted her eyes from Willy's glare and carefully raised a hand.
"So… who won…?"
Ria, who had been staring blankly at an ant crawling across the dirt, jerked her head up and fixed Willy with a sharp look of her own. What mattered to them was not any appeal to fairness. Standing above the other—that alone mattered.
"A winner? Obviously the one who shoved both your faces into the ground. Me."
Their thoughts were far too transparent, so Willy had no intention of giving them the answer they wanted. Watching the two of them flush and tremble with indignation was, frankly, deeply satisfying.