This Is Fucked (Revised)
"...What is the meaning of this, Chairwoman...?"
"First, allow me to apologize for intruding upon your Duel of Honor without permission, Cadet Jenison."
Crrreak—
"..Spare me the courtesies. I asked what the hell you think you are doing..!"
An uncontrollable killing intent bloomed out of my body. Some of them must have felt it, because a few shrank back a step; professors raged at me for daring to show the Chairwoman such disrespect. Of course, here and there among the cadets too, I caught the occasional one who couldn't swallow it and shouted me down all the same...
"How dare you speak to the Chairwoman that way!!"
THUNK!!
I put them down the honest way — by 'kindly' delivering hand-axes and daggers into the ground beside their faces and between their feet. The ones with any sense apparently read my intent quickly enough and tucked their tails at once, and I was able to raise my eyes to the Chairwoman's face and speak again.
"Do not worry. This duel will be recorded as your victory."
"...."
"Had I not stopped you, Cadet Leon would certainly have died."
"That is not what I asked. Why did you save that bastard?"
Even under my killing intent her face remained the same flat mask it always was — and yet the expression she wore in that moment was, beyond any doubt, one I had never seen on her before.
"Can it truly be a crime, to keep a cadet of my Academy from dying?"
A wry smile. The face I was looking at was, unmistakably, a wry smile. A wry smile that said she had no wish to be doing this, either. It was absurd.
There was no way on earth she didn't know that a Duel of Honor sanctioned killing. Even the commoners of this Empire knew it well enough to gather round and watch one as spectator sport.
Think it through. No one interferes in a Duel of Honor over a reason that flimsy. This was a contest held over honor — the thing nobles prized above their very lives. To barge uninvited into such a match and disrupt it meant stepping onto that stage with your own death accepted as the price of entry.
'However I turn it over, there is no reason for the Chairwoman to step in..'
It wasn't as though Duels of Honor had never broken out at the Academy before. If anything, this being one of the densest gathering points of nobility in the Empire, they had flared up all the more often here. And in all that time, the Chairwoman had never once — not a single time — come forward to stop one.
"So why, this once, are you stepping in personally?"
"...."
And not just personally — at precisely the moment I moved to kill that bastard Leon, of all times. So I set my thoughts racing, killing intent still smoldering, and before long a single notion flashed through my head.
"Chairwoman.."
"Yes."
"Exactly how much is House Venil paying you, that you would go this far?"
"...."
Whether I had hit the mark or not, she gave no answer. The Academy was, peculiarly, no imperial institution but a private one — founded by an individual, in other words. It ran with no support from the Empire on student tuition alone, which left it perpetually in the position of a merchant house bleeding expenses with no income flowing in.
And so one custom had been all but inevitable: sponsorship money from the great noble houses, accepted in return for certain courtesies extended to those houses' children — patronage whose inner substance was, plainly and simply, bribery. Seen in that light, her rushing to save Leon Venil became at least partially comprehensible. The current Chairwoman wore her distaste for such dealings openly enough that the professors could hardly hand out favors to her face.. but if the Venil money ran deep enough, even that could be arranged.
'Or else the whole story is simply that someone holds her weakness in hand..'
For any other person, perhaps. Not for that woman. Even if her weakness truly had been seized, she could kill the holder and be done with it. Why would she bend over backwards like this, stepping out in person to do someone a favor? Befitting her name as the Empire's 9th-Circle Archmage, she could erase a person without sound or rumor and sleep soundly afterward.
"If you have some reason you suspect.. then I am sorry, but let this be where it ends."
"No."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Because that bastard insulted my mother."
With that, I willed a hand-axe and daggers back into existence in my hands and granted them their enchantment once more.
Dispel
A weapon that cut through magic would punch through even a shield raised by a 9th-Circle archmage — her shield included. However far she had climbed, against magic that devoured magic itself she would be as helpless as a child.
So thinking, I walked forward, slow and unhurried. Besides, in all likelihood she could not attack me at all. She herself had said, mere moments ago, that she had intervened to save an Academy cadet. I was an Academy cadet too — the instant she struck me down, she would be ripping her own justification to ribbons. And in front of all these witnesses, no less.
"..That much is certainly true. It is not mine to dispute."
"Then, knowing that, even now—"
"However, I, too, cannot simply step aside.."
Before I knew it, she had released every spell she had draped around me, brushed the dirt from her clothes, and turned her eyes back to me.
"I shall open the Academy's treasury to you."
In that instant every mouth in the yard hung open — every mouth but mine. Throwing open the treasury, the vault where every treasure the Academy possessed lay stockpiled, for a single student? Everyone present understood exactly what an absurdity that was.
And so, while the whole crowd stood thunderstruck, my answer crossed the silence..
"Cut the bullshit."
It was a refusal as clear as refusals came. The man who had slandered my mother — my mother, of all people — was standing right there in front of me, and I was supposed to pocket one trinket and let the matter drop? I knew my conduct was disgraceful. On this one point, I would not yield an inch. Not to anyone.
So I threw. Blades, past all counting. Dozens upon dozens of edges streamed toward Leon where he cowered behind her back.
Tzing— tzingtzingtzing—
But what rang back was no sound of flesh parting — only an even drumbeat of metal on metal. Not one note of a blade opening skin.
"..What exactly are you doing?"
"Can you truly not accept my proposal?"
"I did just say I refuse.. didn't I?!"
Even after that I went on forging fresh weapons in my hands and flinging them at Leon in a wild, endless volley, and she — miraculously — turned aside every last one. Despite the fact that every dagger and every hand-axe carried Dispel on its edge.
Ting— tzing—
"It is hardly a poor bargain for a mere cadet."
"It's a terrible bargain. A very, very terrible one."
"..If you feel that strongly about it, I suppose I have no choice—"
So saying, she began to raise the mana within her body. Rather than any aim of subduing me, what it advertised most of all was her own strength — a demonstration, as good as a declaration that she had no desire to fight me at all.
"All I can offer you is my sincerest apology, I fear."
"..Bullshit."
"I will see to it that cadet receives a punishment befitting his offense."
A befitting punishment? He was a man who should have died here today. What punishment under heaven could possibly be "befitting" for scum like that — enough to make her announce it so grandly? And at the end of the day, he was the eldest son of House Venil, a man I could not touch in private revenge even once this Duel of Honor was over. The moment I tried, I would be facing not Leon Venil alone but the entire house. There is no family in existence that would stand by while its heir took insult from a commoner.
'If only that bastard had been a bastard child too..'
Then this whole disaster would never have snowballed. No house mobilizes itself, head to toe, to shield a nameless by-blow. The Chairwoman would never have stood there so openly wrapping him in her protection, either.
"Haah.."
Somehow the situation kept winding itself tighter and tighter, and sighs poured out of me of their own accord. Seizing on that lapse, the Chairwoman made one more attempt to talk me down — unfolding, as she spoke, a barrier wrought of mana so dense the very air thickened.
"Cadet Jenison, I ask you to reconsider, just once more—?!"
"Now."
Yes. The chance was now, and only now. The instant that preposterous wall of mana came down. The moment the exalted Chairwoman — so certain she could stop me whenever she pleased — let her attention slip. His breath had to be stopped right here. If I failed to end him here, there would be no further opening. None.
'The people watching have surely noticed by now that I've changed.. and once they have..!!'
It was obvious no one would come lunging at me this carelessly again. Challenging a commoner to a Duel of Honor over a little irritation, just as Leon had, was far too costly a gamble — a wager of your life for the privilege of clearing away one nuisance. That whoreson had simply taken me far too lightly.. but from here on, openings like this would not come around often.
"Which is why.. right now, by any means necessary, that bastard has to d—"
"I am sorry."
BAM—
'..She wasn't careless.. not even for a second, was she?'
Fucked. Absolutely fucked.
Meanwhile some people are born without so much as a scrap of talent, and end up living exactly like this.
Sliip—
And so, carrying that soundless resentment, my vision faded to black.
"Chairwoman, are you all right?"
"Yes. Please send everyone to the infirmary."
"Er.. Cadet Jenison as well?"
"Yes. Is there some problem?"
"That man — isn't he the very student who dared act so insolently toward you, Chairwoman?!"
'If you would only say the word, then I would gladly..!!'
The portly male professor had clearly been lying in wait for this very moment, scheming to earn the Chairwoman's favor.. but alas, she never heard the rest of his sentence.
"See to it that cadet is not touched, either."
"Ye.. yes?!"
"I do not say things twice. Now then, I will go in first."
It was not the answer anyone had braced for. They had been certain she would have him dealt with on the spot. Hers had always been a nature that could not stomach insolence.
"Well.. if the Chairwoman herself insists.."
"We leave him be for now."
"As long as nobody moves against him openly.."
They wrote it off as one of her moods. Mages were capricious creatures to begin with — a breed that forever acted outside all expectation. This time, too, would be just the same, they assumed.
"..Are you listening? I kept our contract."
"..When we meet at ...., you may.. speak freely."
No soul present heard the voice that whispered, softer than breath. And so they simply went on believing exactly what they had believed before.