Midterm Evaluation (12)
The sun climbed slowly into the sky. Having slept deeply enough that further rest was unnecessary, I kept the night watch until the very end, catching the occasional glimpse of wild animals that prowled about once darkness fell.
I passed the hours like that, and whether the losses had come from demonic beasts or from the cadets turning on one another, I couldn't say — but the students, once better than a hundred and eighty strong, had been whittled down to nearly half. Once day finally broke, it didn't take long for everyone to stir awake.
That went for Lianna, who'd slept so soundly someone could have carried her off without her noticing, and even for Albert and Isabella, who had been the last to return. Perhaps because of what had happened yesterday, everyone seemed reluctant to come near me, and a few avoided me outright.
Amid all that, the people who did approach me struck me as unexpected — though they turned out to be the familiar faces after all. The Imperial Princess's party, and Lianna.
Lianna, the Princess, and the Saintess hadn't known I'd woken, and each reacted in her own way. Lianna came running to me with her face blooming like a flower, asking after my well-being; the Princess looked at me as though her drowsiness had evaporated on the spot. The Saintess... shot me a single glare, then asked how I was holding up.
Whether she was jealous that I'd met a god she herself had never laid eyes on, I couldn't say — but I had absolutely no intention of giving that experience up to anyone.
Isabella kept glancing my way with concern, but never approached. Albert — who had spoken with me yesterday and casually asked how I was — roused the half-asleep cadets, gathered them together, and stood before them all.
"Let me say this up front. I intend to hunt down that wolf."
Even though they must have already known, a stir ran through the cadets. They were plainly either ones who took it half as a joke, or ones posturing in the hopes of catching the Iris family's eye.
"If any of you have the will to help me, I'll welcome it gratefully — but I won't force anyone. So if you'd rather not take part, feel free to step out."
Only then did cadets begin shuffling backward, one after another. Albert merely shifted his gaze to them without lifting a finger. Killing a fellow cadet did earn bonus points, but this man seemed to have no interest in such things.
Before long the students began leaving in earnest, and those who remained truly could be counted on one hand. Aside from me and Lianna and the Princess's party, only about four were left — yet Albert looked satisfied, as if even that was plenty. Fair enough, really. One wrong move and you could be eliminated from the evaluation in an instant; joining him was a gamble with far too much riding on it.
"Looks like everyone who means to leave has left. Shall we start with introductions, then? As you all know, I'm Albert, eldest son of House Iris."
With that, he turned his palm skyward and kindled a single aura from his hand — a dandelion-hued glow blooming softly into view. The mana color peculiar to House Iris.
"One of my abilities. Rigid Body."
Albert brought his hand down on a nearby boulder. It burst apart with a thunderous crack, yet not so much as a scratch showed on his hand.
"You infuse mana directly into the body. It doesn't last especially long, but it's a handy ability."
The phrase one of my abilities nagged at me, but I saw no need to press it. Since our team and the Princess's party already knew one another more or less, the spotlight swung to the remaining cadets.
"Ah... h-hello!! I... I'm... Caerlin... My ability is... Interference..."
The smallest of the four, a girl who looked thoroughly wound tight with nerves, introduced herself as Caerlin. When Albert asked whether she could demonstrate, she went on, trembling, that she would need someone else's magic first.
The moment she finished, Isabella kindled a ball of fire in her palm, and Caerlin murmured something under her breath. What followed left Isabella flustered and visibly astonished — because the fireball in Isabella's hand slid, as naturally as anything, into Caerlin's grasp.
"Hoh... so you can make use of another person's magic?"
"Ye... yes... I take over the initiative of the opponent's magic..."
"Does that apply only to spells?"
"If... if it's mana... then probably... anything works... But... it's really quite... draining."
In that instant, Albert's eyes seemed to gleam at her words — and I doubted it was my imagination. A demonic beast's body is composed of mana, after all; no one alive was better suited to engaging one than she was.
But she was, in the end, still a cadet, so we would have to go in having abandoned any notion of her wresting control of that wolf. An Intermediate-Rank Demonic Beast was not a foe to be taken lightly.
"Name's Brihen. I fight with a sword, and my ability is Conduction."
"Conduction?"
Brihen — a dark-skinned man with rugged, imposing muscle, the kind anyone could see was built for close combat. He, too, seemed intent on demonstrating his ability, drawing from his back the enormous blade he'd been carrying all this while, one far too massive to be called a mere sword. And like Caerlin, he was no ordinary talent either.
Every mage possesses what is called a signature magic. It expresses each mage's distinct individuality so completely that it is known as the mage's mental image made manifest. They say that merely witnessing a mage cast theirs is enough to gauge their true skill — for grasping one's own signature magic is said to be extraordinarily difficult.
Then do knights have no equivalent? They do. Knights, too, possess something akin to a signature magic — the thing sword-wielders yearn for above all else. Sword Aura.
It is the act of pouring mana into one's blade; a sufficiently seasoned swordsman, they say, can unleash Sword Aura even without a sword in hand. A mana-filled blade naturally boasts durability far beyond any ordinary sword — but this, too, is said to be impossible unless the blade feels like an extension of your own body.
And yet Brihen was doing it. However faint the amount, the mana held within that blade was unmistakably there.
"So he's forcing a bridge between blade and mana..."
"...Well spotted,,"
No doubt part of it was that he'd never slacked in his sword training, but even that modest trickle of mana was a remarkable feat by cadet standards. Sword in hand, he looked thoroughly worn out — but as far as we were concerned, he was a combat asset we couldn't have asked more of.
"My name is Huven. My ability is Contamination."
"...?"
"...Could you show us your ability?"
Huven — a man a touch on the short side, though solidly built, a book held in his right hand. What manner of ability his words described was hard to picture, and the Imperial Princess evidently shared the confusion, voicing her doubt.
When the others wore equally puzzled looks, Huven sheathed his hand in mana and closed it around a single leaf from a nearby tree. Before long, the leaf began to wither from the very point his fingers gripped.
"...Huh?"
"The mana I infuse into a target destroys its tissue."
"...I've got the general idea, so let go of it."
He pulled his hand from the leaf as Albert instructed — but the moment it touched the ground, the fallen leaf crumbled away to nothing.
"Does that work on demonic beasts as well?"
"I can't say for certain... Besides, that wolf demonic beast is bound to have its pack with it."
"I see."
His supplementary explanation brought the round of introductions to its close — and every gaze converged on the single cadet who remained.
I knew this cadet. No — there was likely no one here who didn't. She was, after all, a child of one of the Four Great Families.
The daughter of the house that guarded the Empire's west — and ran its pitch-black underworld. Her pink hair, tied back, swayed gracefully; she wore an outfit that bared her midriff as if to flaunt her figure; and she fought with two kinds of daggers strapped at her thighs. It was Shino Charlotte.
She was, even to me, a person impossible to read. She carried none of the refinement befitting a duke's daughter, and unlike the rest of her house, she had scarcely any friends. And that was exactly why I felt uneasy around her personally.
"Hehe... hey there? Albert? Feels like forever since the last party, no?"
"...Didn't expect you to be one of the ones who stayed."
"It looked fun, didn't it?"
She chased stimulation, as you could plainly see. Whether because she'd witnessed far too much that no child should see, hardly anything seemed to rouse her anymore. So she had naturally begun roaming in search of bigger thrills — at one point, rumors even made the rounds at the Academy that she drank and dabbled in narcotics.
"So can I skip introducing my ability, then?"
In the blink my attention wandered, her voice had drifted to right beside my ear — and I threw another reflexive punch. It nearly turned into a serious incident, but she snapped her head back and evaded it cleanly. Aside from the Saintess pouncing on me, demanding to know what would have happened if she'd been hurt, there was no problem at all.
"Wow! Quick reflexes too, huh? You."
"...You know me?"
"Yep! You made quite the impression yesterday!"
"..."
"You... you cut into your own arm without a shred of hesitation? Genuinely impressive! Not just anyone can do that."
The way she said it — as if she'd tried it herself — left me feeling anything but comfortable. Call it an aversion to my own kind or what you will, but the aura she gave off was far from pleasant, and perhaps sensing that I found her difficult, Albert redirected her attention.
"Enough joking around. Explain your ability."
"Hmm... my ability is Stealth! I can wield mana that warps light, like so."
The instant the words left her mouth, her figure vanished into thin air. Her presence, her scent — all of it, gone. Perhaps that was what came of inheriting the blood of those who run the underworld. Her ability was absurdly convenient for work in the shadows.
As I mulled over whether abilities carried a hereditary element, the air behind me rippled for a moment — and out of it, Shino reappeared. It was an uncanny sight, as though the space clinging to her body existed sealed off from the rest of the world.
Finding me unsurprised, she wore a flicker of disappointment — but one glance at Lianna's expression beside me, and her smile returned.
"I believe that wraps up the introductions."
"Indeed. If I may ask beforehand... do we have a plan?"
"I... I'd... imagine so...?"
"Doesn't bother me if there isn't one at all!"
One after another — Brihen, Huven, Caerlin, Shino — every last one of them seemed curious how we meant to take down that wolf. We were no different, so every eye converged on Albert, and Albert began walking slowly toward us.
"Of course there is."
"...!"
"I'll explain the plan from this moment on."
Current Remaining Cadets: 94