The Sparring Match (1)
The instant the signal to begin the duel rang out, the Imperial Princess spread her magic through the air with a sweep of her staff.
An ice spear so massive that merely looking at it sent a chill crawling up my spine came hurtling straight at me. I threw myself into a roll and slipped past it, conjured a set of throwing daggers into my hand, and hurled them back at her — but she had already raised a Mana Shield, as if she'd anticipated the move.
Ting!! With the ring of steel striking steel, my dagger bounced away powerlessly, and flames roared to life at her feet.
Fire began to lick and coil within a five-meter radius around her. She had likely judged that as long as she denied me close combat, she could take the match.
Before long, yet another spell came screaming my way. The Princess was one of the top-ranked cadets in the entire Academy — and for someone like me, bottom of the barrel in raw combat power, she was simply not an opponent I could hope to overcome by force.
To stop the barrage that showed no sign of letting up, I raised a massive wall of stone before me. The wall burst apart the instant the spell touched it, but it was more than enough to bleed off the attack's power.
I kept circling, blocking the large spells while dodging — or deliberately taking — the small ones. Naturally, juggling creation and evasion at the same time, I was the one bound to tire first.
The Princess, stung by attacks that refused to land, began unleashing increasingly dangerous magic, and as the danger mounted, I found myself escaping by a hair's breadth, again and again.
"How long do you intend to pathetically just run away?"
"Hah... huff... dodging is hard work in itself, you know."
"I'm starting to doubt you're really a child of House Reinhardt at all. I thought you might feel a shred of shame if I toyed with you like this. It seems I was wrong."
"You don't have a single ounce of a noble's pride, do you? Well, I'm tired of this now. You won't dodge this one."
At those words, the Princess's hair began to stir and rise. Yellow light crackled to life at her crown, then streamed down — through her hair, across her shoulders, along her elbows — gathering into her hands, where it swelled into the shape of a single sphere.
The sphere came at me with terrifying speed, and a single thought flashed through my mind.
'...I'll have to give up my left arm.'
With that, I conjured three steel balls into my left hand and thrust the hand out toward the electric sphere bearing down on my head. In the next instant it seemed to be sucked into my palm — and with it, an agonizing shock erupted from my left hand and jolted my mind wide awake.
Did you happen to know? That when you're being electrocuted, the best possible response is to remove the source of the current?
I formed a knife with a rubber grip in my right hand and, in the same breath, severed my own left arm.
"Wh... what the—!!"
"...Did I show you something unpleasant?"
With that, I regenerated my left hand, and the Princess and the surrounding cadets stared at me as if I'd lost my mind.
"Do you not care for your own body even a little?"
"I'd rather not die while busy sparing it."
"...So you cherish yourself this much — after doing all those things to other people?"
That line again. What was it the Princess wanted from me? She had already branded me a villain in her head, and now she looked at me through that fixed lens, trapped inside it.
You wouldn't know, would you. The grief of watching someone precious die. The pain of the people once close to you turning their backs the moment they decided you had no talent. The rage toward a self-loathing so deep it made you want to destroy yourself. The loneliness of being welcome nowhere.
Having never lived through even one of them — revered by all, loved by everyone, sitting in a place of universal adoration — what exactly do you think you know about me, that you run your mouth like that?
It irritated me. And then, I made up my mind.
That girl who knew nothing of the world, who had lived bathed in every happiness, loved by all — today, just for today, I would be the one to hand her something that would twist that pretty expression of hers, if only for a moment.
Even with that resolve, the shape of the match looked, at a glance, unchanged. The Princess simply kept attacking, and I remained frantically busy blocking and evading.
The cadets watching nodded to themselves — of course it would go like this. The last fight must have been a fluke, they clamored, each pushing their own opinion.
Then, just as Jenison's stamina appeared to be visibly draining, the Princess opened negotiations.
"You. I know what you're aiming for, so give it up."
"...?"
"This thing drawn on the ground... it's a magic circle, isn't it?"
"...!"
She preened as if she'd just answered correctly, and spoke in a tone that mocked the astonishment on Jenison's face.
"I'm no fool. Did you think I'd fall for the same trick twice?"
"...."
"It's a 'Tracking' circle that's nearly complete. What a shame, isn't it? All that's left to draw is the spot where I'm standing."
"Because from now on, I won't be leaving this spot."
"That's what I meant when I said you had no chance of winning."
To Jenison, who had held his silence to the very end, the Princess spoke as though granting a final mercy.
"This is your last chance. Apologize this instant to the cadets you've been tormenting."
"Do that, and at the very least, I'll end this without pain."
As she spoke, watching his face, something strange flickered over the Princess. His expression hadn't changed at all. No — if anything, he seemed to be smiling.
After a long silence, he finally opened his mouth.
"You're quite right, Your Highness. This magic circle is incomplete. No matter how much I throw and throw, nothing would ever reach you."
"I'm glad you understand so well. Then right now—"
"But tell me, Your Highness — may I ask just one question?"
"...? I don't see why not."
"Do you know what happens when mana keeps being poured into a magic circle left incomplete?"
The Princess wore an expression that couldn't grasp what he was getting at. "You're stating the obvious? Naturally the mana loses its path and explodes right there—"
"Yes. That."
The instant the words left his mouth, he began flooding the circle with an enormous torrent of mana. The Princess deployed an offensive spell the moment she saw it — but Jenison's infusion was faster, and a colossal explosion followed.
KABOOM──
'This absolute lunatic!!!'
That was the Princess's inward thought — because no matter how far gone someone's sanity, she had never imagined anyone would set off an explosion like that inside a sealed arena warded by a barrier.
She hastily threw up a shield, but the blast was far too vast. Merely absorbing the shock devoured a staggering amount of mana. Only after layering shield upon shield, and yet another beyond that, could she hold the explosion at bay — and by then, acrid smoke had swallowed the arena whole.
'A new form of self-harm? If you were aiming for a draw, how pathetic.'
Just as she thought this and moved to step down from the sparring ground, something came flying at her from behind.
The Princess spun on reflex, judging it to be Jenison's attack. How he had walked away from that explosion unscathed didn't matter. He was alive, after all — and the projectile, living proof of it, was streaking toward her.
With lightning-quick reflexes she cast, intercepting the projectile inches from her face — and it burst, gas billowing out of it.
PSSHT──
'Don't tell me — poison?!'
Thinking that, she hastily covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve — but it was no poison gas.
"Ugh?! Cough— cough!!"
"How do you like it, Your Highness? A tear gas grenade, made specially by me."
"W... what?! T... tear ga... cough!!"
"That beautiful face of yours is being ruined."
A chemical projectile that stimulates the tear glands, forcing the eyes to weep uncontrollably.
Right before the blast, Jenison had raised a massive bunker around himself, keeping his body intact — then, seizing the moment the Princess stood wrapped in smoke and off her guard, he had conjured the tear gas grenade and thrown it.
Naturally, this other world had no concept of tear gas, so the Princess had no choice but to end up drowning in her own tears — and Jenison did not miss that opening.
He immediately hurled a second projectile shaped just like the first, and the Princess, having tasted the tear gas's bite, chose to evade rather than intercept or block.
But the projectile that should have flown at her dropped short, landing right before her eyes — and soon began belching out a tremendous cloud of smoke.
One side of the barrier filled with smoke, and leaving the Princess to her wind magic — cast to claw back her visibility — Jenison sprinted toward the arm he'd severed earlier.
The severed arm still clutched the steel balls. Jenison retrieved all three and rebirthed them as magic tools.
By then the Princess had blown every wisp of smoke from around herself, so he lobbed another smoke grenade at her, then followed it with one of the steel balls in his hand.
The Princess chose to dodge once more, and the steel ball sailed past her. Jenison threw the remaining two in quick succession, and she evaded them with room to spare.
She had to. Right up until the steel balls passing on either side of her abruptly detonated.
"Kyaa!!"
Caught unprepared by the twin blasts erupting from both sides, the Princess caught sight of Jenison charging straight at her and scrambled backward in a panic.
Then — something blocked her retreating back. A colossal wall of steel that had been nowhere in sight around her.
The Princess remembered the steel ball Jenison had thrown at the very start, and tried to dart sideways in dismay — but the daggers he'd been carrying were already planted in the ground on either side of her, thrown from dead ahead.
And his figure, walking toward her with slow, unhurried steps, looked to her like a demon. The demon closed the distance one step at a time, then opened its mouth with a bone-chilling blankness.
"...Was playing the apostle of justice fun?"