Hero
Hero
"He broke the magic!?"
"How in the hell?!"
"Th-this is insane! Absolutely insane!"
Every student in the academy stared in shock and amazement, and some of the warriors even burst out laughing as if they'd just seen something impossible. Ragnis alone had to put enormous effort into pretending to be calm.
'What kind of absolute bullshit has he pulled this time!'
He hadn't countered the spell with another spell. With no movement of Mana at all, one slash through empty air had disrupted the magic Siegfried was forming within seconds. And it hadn't merely been disrupted—it had exploded outright.
Unlike the warriors, the mages could do nothing but freeze as if they had seen the sky and earth swap places right before their eyes.
Just because you could shorten a chant, or cast chantlessly, did not mean you could activate magic carelessly. That was precisely why everyone had been so amazed when Ragnis showed them chantless casting just once, and why even her sparring opponent Eselua had been unable to stop praising her, her eyes shining.
The faster you cast, the harder magic becomes. Something already complex and difficult becomes doubly so.
The magic the Hero had activated by compressing it into a single word was the same. Judging by its scale, even Ragnis could not have activated magic of that magnitude with just a word.
Yet he detonated it with a single sword stroke. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would have dismissed it as a bad joke or the blathering nonsense of some magic-ignorant fool. It was no different from watching a dragon be stabbed to death by a wooden training sword.
Nevertheless, Eldmia swung his sword and detonated the magic as if he felt no difficulty whatsoever. As if it were the most natural thing. With the absolute certainty of success.
Unlike the other mages, Ragnis was not horrified by the sight.
She could only watch Eldmia while forcibly holding down the corners of her mouth before they climbed all the way to her ears, her heart pounding so hard it felt ready to burst.
With tears gathering in her eyes, she simply gazed at Eldmia—her own brilliant light, still dazzling even in the presence of the true Hero.
◈
"Just as I thought. The bigger the spell, the more spectacularly it blows up."
Even though this was already proven fact with the Demonfolk's orb bombs, seeing it with my own eyes made it feel different. My magical knowledge was so narrow I had no clue what kind of magic had been about to fly at me, but it sure as hell wouldn't have been pleasant if it had gone off.
I could instinctively tell that the wind swirling around the Hero wasn't ordinary wind but blades made of air, so I focused my senses as sharply as I could and moved my Magic Power.
Using the same sensation I'd felt when wrapping Magic Power around my sword beyond the gate, I slowly coated both my sword and my body in Magic Power. It felt completely different from my usual reinforcement, as if another layer of Magic Power had settled over the first.
And matching that, the senses of my entire body sharpened, and that insane, color-drenched scene began to unfold before my eyes once again.
It was a truly chaotic sight, but now I understood it.
Magic Power, Mana, aura, and the energy of spirits—every kind of power being deliberately moved around was showing up as a different color.
"This is doable."
The blade-wind flickered with blue light, sweeping around the Hero. And it was not as finely detailed as it appeared on the surface.
They were literally shaped like blades floating through the air. In my current enhanced state, they wouldn't be hard to dodge, and even if one cut me, I could take it.
"A really well-made illusion, huh."
It wasn't about turning non-existent events into real ones, or real events into non-existent ones. The core of the Sense of Touch and the magic woven around the sparring arena was spatial magic.
Those blade-winds were real. If I got cut by them, my flesh would genuinely be torn off.
Before the real attack could touch a person's body, the arena distorted space to divert it, then overlaid an illusion that reproduced the pain and injury instead. In technical terms, it was absurd magic advanced enough to qualify as technology from another age.
The Empire was pouring that much devotion into cultivating talent.
"Ghk! What the hell kind of trickery is this!"
"Everyone has at least one trump card, don't they?"
More importantly, after a while you started to forget that any of this was an illusion at all. Unless you deliberately reminded yourself, the thought kept slipping away, preventing you from getting careless with excuses like, 'It's only an illusion anyway.'
The Empire was overflowing with exceptional people and could afford to pour magical science this advanced into education, yet the Demon King and Demonfolk were still considered a genuine threat. Once again, I felt just how many mountains still lay ahead of me. I kicked off the ground and charged.
"Fine! Let's settle this with our bodies!"
Having had his magic wrecked, what on earth had suddenly improved his mood? The Hero, baring his teeth in a grin once again, charged with a movement different from before. Judging by the faintly sensed aura, it seemed he had been about to mobilize every trick—from spirit arts to magic.
For his part, he seemed to want a full-on physical brawl, but was I crazy?
"You think I'd engage in such a brutish contest against the Hero?"
"What?"
"Humans are human because we use tools and techniques."
I narrowly dodged the horizontal slash of the greatsword swung with full force, sliding on my knees as if slipping through. In that moment, two blade-winds grazed my stomach by the width of a single sheet of paper, but fortunately, there was no wound.
As the flat of the enormous blade swept past the tip of my nose, I thrust out my right hand, wrapped in as much Magic Power as I could manage, and grabbed it. I kicked off the ground and let the sword's momentum carry me straight toward the Hero. I had no idea how strong he actually was, but in that instant my body was yanked along like I was riding a roller coaster.
It was moving far faster than I'd expected, and the edge left a shallow cut across the palm gripping it. The pain was real, but still well within what I'd anticipated.
"Huh?"
Probably figuring I'd duck under the sword and aim for his flank since I'd shown him that move earlier, the back of the Hero's head was visible. Did he feel no particular weight despite me hanging in the air gripping his sword? Truly, his strength was senseless beyond belief.
I was curious when he'd notice, but dawdling and getting smacked down would be a sorry sight.
I climbed onto the blade as if it were a skateboard and drove my own sword forward.
The Hero's head whipped around, apparently realizing too late that the weight on his sword had changed. He'd only accounted for attacks at a normal height, so the blade-winds offered no obstruction up here.
There was no resistance. Because it was an illusion, after all.
But my sword most definitely pierced the Hero's solar plexus.
"That's it! The victor is Eldmia!"
At Jideulli's shout, cheers erupted among the students.
"He beat the Hero!!"
"Yeah! Swordsmanship! Fucking swordsmanship wasn't wrong!!"
"Aaaah! See that, Hero! The techniques humanity has built up weren't wrong!!"
The warriors, nearly eighty percent of them going berserk with fervor, were terrifying beyond words, regardless of gender, thrashing around like genuine lunatics.
The problem was that even that damn Jideulli himself was joining in.
"This is ridiculous."
The Hero stared down at my sword, still lodged in his chest instead of disappearing, and then burst out laughing. Surprisingly, there was no irritation or mockery in it at all. Then, like he'd suddenly swallowed something wrong, his expression went dead serious and he looked straight at me.
"What did you get so strong for?"
His eyes were completely different from anything he'd shown until now.
His gaze was so calm it was hard to believe he was the same person. I actually liked that look a little.
"When I was eight, my village burned down and my whole family died in the Demon King's Army's historic first raid."
So I dropped the act I'd been putting on and answered in a voice low enough to be swallowed by the cheering. With that wind spirit or whatever he had, he'd hear me anyway.
"I decided I never wanted to go through something that fucking unfair twice in one life. So for starters, I figured I'd get strong enough to split open the head of the Demonfolk bastard who gave the order."
"Instead of leaving it to the Hero, you're going to do it yourself?"
I felt like he was either lacking comprehension or just not understanding what I was saying. Why would I entrust my revenge to him?
"What's this about leaving it to you? You're supposed to split the Demon King's head. I'm only after the bastard who gave that order. I don't have any particular grudge against the Demonfolk as a whole. My target just happens to be one of them."
"...? Maybe I'm asking because I don't really get it, but isn't that ultimately an order the Demon King gave?"
"If the Demon King doesn't know military strategy, then a commander gives that kind of order. The current Demon King is that type."
I'd learned that by scraping together every scrap of information I could find. Every Demon King was different. Some were absurdly strong. Some were absurdly weak but terrifyingly clever. Some relied entirely on their bodies, others used nothing but magic, and so on.
The current Demon King was one who had reached the position of Demon King through personal martial force alone.
"So you and I have different jobs. You fight the Demonfolk. I'm simply taking revenge."
Approaching the Hero and extending my hand, I continued speaking.
"If I kill a bastard of that caliber, nobody's going to think they can push me around easily, right?"
"...Ha. You little shit. Here I thought you were all airs and pretense, but you've actually got some interesting ideas."
Taking my extended hand like that, the Hero flashed a fierce grin once more.
"Of all the guys I've met so far, I like you the best."
At first I'd written him off as a useless bastard, but maybe he was worth watching a little longer.
"I thought you were just fucking crazy, Hero, but I guess some of it was an act."
"It's the Hero's deeper intent, so just pretend you don't know."
"Even if his intent is deep, isn't its level just chasing skirts during break time? I'm embarrassed just hearing about it. What is he, a monkey?"
"You little bastard, you picking a fight outta nowhere? Fuck, because of you, even my spirit keeps joining in and chewing me out."
A fight? You're the one who fucked up, and clearly. Though it seemed the spirit had its head on straight.
"One should be able to distinguish between public and private matters. If you're not careful, the Empire will find an excuse to collar you and jerk you around."
"...Interesting. Let's talk about that more some other time."
I'd thought he was some brainless case of terminal middle-school syndrome, but the Hero's response was unexpectedly sane. Maybe some of his madness really was fake.
"Eldmia!!! Eldmiaaaah!!"
"Eldmia!! Take me!!"
"Aaaaah! Kingdom knight! Kingdom knight!"
Right. That was real madness.
God, they were fucking loud. At least it meant I didn't have to worry about anyone overhearing my conversation with the Hero, but the excitement showed no sign of dying down.
This was only day one. If things were already this bad, I had no idea what the rest of the week would bring, and my head started to throb.