Midterms (4)
"What on earth is going on?"
Chloe's eyes were locked on the colosseum playing out on the TV screen.
The dueling grounds, where monsters and humans had torn into each other in bloody combat for the crowd's delight, were now brimming with an ominous vitality. An unidentified intruder had stormed the arena. The instant his foot touched the ground, trees sprouted from his body, and grass and vegetation spread lush and wild across the floor. In a heartbeat the undergrowth swallowed the stadium whole, draping the stands—once packed with students and spectators—in a dense, verdant jungle. And inside that green prison, Eva and the other students were trapped.
Chloe had gone hollow-eyed, lost to the world. Her mind clearly couldn't keep up, so I seized her shoulder hard. This was no time to stand around gaping—every second counted.
"Chloe, with me."
"Y... yeah! Right."
Taking her flustered hand in mine, I kicked open the waiting room door and burst out. We were halfway across the corridor toward the arena when Chloe, finally coming back to herself, spoke up.
"We are heading to the arena, right?"
"Obviously. We have to go save Eva and Arlan, don't we?"
Vital. The final boss who had driven the closing nail into the first act of Academy Yuri Princess. His intrusion was beyond anything I'd imagined. The worst I'd expected was him sending the monsters under his command spilling out through the crevices between dimensions—so what on earth had possessed him to pull a stunt like this?
Eva's in danger. In game terms, it was like dropping a boss far above her level onto a newbie who'd only just received her class-change quest and was still hitting her growth stride. Leave things be, and Eva would die—and the promise I'd made to the Writer would be broken forever.
My head was a tangled mess. Had the threads of causality knotted themselves because I'd used Marin to forcibly bend the Guardians' deaths? No—there was no way the worldline would shake over something that small. My thoughts chased their own tails in circles, but my body kept moving like a machine fed its commands, because right now I had to kill the man behind this chaos and drag the students out of that prison. The one blessing was that this fell comfortably within the range of problems I could solve. Wasn't that exactly why I'd trained in every spare moment, in case something like this happened?
As long as I don't do anything stupid, nothing goes wrong. Turning the vow over in my mind, I made my way down the corridor and arrived at the entrance to the arena.
"Grrrr…"
"That's—!"
Monsters packed the passage from wall to wall, their bodies lashed tight with plant stems like ivy climbing a rampart. The beasts' ragged breathing and the prickling rasp of foliage dragging across the walls scraped at my eardrums.
"Looks like they've sealed the passage off with monsters as sentries."
"Sentries? This is the work of some lunatic. But monsters... Don't tell me you mean that man from the screen is actually commanding them?"
Exactly. Chloe, you clever girl. One hint from me and she'd arrived at the right answer in a single bound—though judging by her face, she could hardly believe it herself.
"Chloe, draw Black Night."
At my low voice, Chloe swallowed hard. Amid the chaos she recovered her composure and closed her hand around the hilt of her main weapon—the beloved sword Black Night at her belt.
Shing!
Left foot drawn back, right foot forward, Chloe settled into a quick-draw stance, every line of her body declaring her intent to split the space ahead with a single stroke and cut down the monsters in her path.
"Hold."
"Why now?! You said we have to get past those things!"
"I'm just telling you to get ready. Conserve your strength for now."
She had a role to play. No sense burning through her stamina this early—it would be far more efficient for me to take point here. I stretched my hand toward the pack of monsters, raised my index finger to mimic the shape of a pistol, and let the mana churning in my heart flow down into my arm. Golden mana compressed into the narrow barrel of my fingertip—loaded and ready.
Pew!
Fired. The golden beam lanced out in a dead-straight line and punched through the core of the lead monster.
"Kagh—!"
The creature crumpled with a short, strangled cry. The monsters beside it charged anyway, terror written across their faces—but my finger was already tracking the next target.
Beep! Pew!
Another line of light bored clean through. One after another the monsters toppled, blood pouring from the round holes punched through their bodies like water from a jar with no bottom. It was the same cold, heavy feeling as the day I'd first set foot in this world and riddled Maten and his crew with holes. The marksmanship the army had drilled into me back in Korea hadn't rusted either.
"You've got to be kidding me. This easily?"
Chloe lowered her stance and muttered, looking utterly hollowed out. It hadn't been a flashy quick-draw technique like hers, nor had I dumped extravagant torrents of mana around. All it took was the simple act of compressing mana into a single point and letting it fly to cut the enemy down, swift and clean—her awe was only natural.
"These things aren't like ordinary monsters. There's a vital spot inside them called a core—graze it even a little and they die all on their own. Total sunfish."
"That's how it works?"
"No way you'd one-shot genuinely tenacious monsters like that. This trick only works on these guys—but in exchange, hit anywhere else and they regenerate in a heartbeat. So watch yourself."
"Got it."
That was how you killed the new species Vital had engineered through his experiments to sustain his own life. She'd seen the demonstration now, so next time she ran into one, there'd be no wasted time.
"Let's move."
With the monsters dealt with and the path open, we finally stepped into the colosseum arena at the end of the passage. The sheer majesty of it made the TV feed look like nothing. The wonder of life. The densely packed trunks had grown together into one colossal cage, sealing the inside off from the world outside. And adorning the stems that served as its bars—pitiful, fading lives.
"S-s-save me!"
"I have... no... strength..."
Spectators and students from the stands—everyone who hadn't escaped in time—were embedded in the walls of wood, nothing but their limbs jutting out. Their skin had withered like mummies wrung dry of every drop of moisture, and the light was draining from their eyes, the so-called windows of the soul.
"I'll get you out of there right now!"
At the sight of them writhing in agony, Chloe gripped her sword and readied her swing. The black blade, sunlight flashing off it through the gap in its scabbard, was just about to bare its edge—
Swish!
"What—!"
Leaves steeped in vivid green mana came pouring down on her like a rain of arrows. Chloe reacted in a flash, kicking off the wooden wall and twisting midair to slip past the attack.
"Oh dear, it missed. What a pity."
From the direction the attack had come appeared a woman with long braided locks of pale green hair spilling down her back. A feather fan in hand, she raised it to veil her mouth, her eyes curving into smooth, elegant crescents.
"What the hell is this?!"
Chloe's shout rang out—an entirely reasonable response to a stranger appearing out of nowhere and attacking her.
"Chloe. Enemy."
"What?"
"That woman is one of the ringleaders behind this whole mess."
At my words, the woman dipped her head in a graceful bow.
"A pleasure to meet you, heirs of our mother's bloodline. I am Diana—the one who serves and inherits Life, one of the ten great possibilities that compose this world."
"What did you say? Life... inheritance?"
"Ah, so you don't know. But I can see it, you know—exactly what powers the two of you have inherited."
Her green eyes, cold as winter glass, bored into us. Chloe stumbled back a step, repulsed by pure instinct, and I flinched as well, my whole body shuddering at the sensation of a tongue slowly tracing over me from head to toe.
"Night and the Sun. My, what a wretched pairing. It's almost awkward, the two of you walking side by side."
"What the hell is that bastard even talking about?"
"..."
Chloe didn't understand—but I, who had this world's lore down cold, knew exactly what Diana had seen.
Did she just glimpse the source of our powers?
"Chloe."
"Yeah? What is it?"
I leaned in close to her ear and whispered—quietly, so nothing reached that woman's ears.
"This prison—the section near the center of the ceiling is weak. Weak enough for you to slice right through with your blade."
"Why are you telling me that all of a sudden...?"
"I'll hold that woman's attention. Get in there and rescue Eva."
"...And you?"
"I'll finish this bitch off here and follow right after you."
Chloe wavered for a moment, but the urgency of the situation won out, and she accepted my plan.
"Okay. You be careful."
Hup!
Chloe kicked off the ground and leaped, shooting past Diana and scaling the bars toward the top of the cage.
"And where do you think you're going."
Whoosh!
Diana snapped her fan toward Chloe's retreating back. A violent gale erupted, and leaf-blades sharp as knives gave merciless chase.
Sorry, but I had no intention of standing by and watching that.
FWOOSH!
"You're stuck playing with me."
The searing flames of the Sun wedged themselves between Chloe's and Diana's mana. The blue leaves went up like tinder and crumbled to ash, and as the powder drifted through the air, Diana turned her gaze on me.
"The Sun's magic, and that dark skin. So you're the man the Star spoke of."
"Let me correct you—not black, brown. A very handsome bronze, thank you very much."
That aside—the Star, was it? There was only one being those people called by that name.
"Have you met Marin?"
"Marin?"
"You'd know her better as the Star's Fragment."
"Ah, the name of the human the Star keeps? How utterly hilarious."
A crooked sneer curled across Diana's lips. Scorn, plain and simple—the laugh of someone who found it beyond absurd that mere humans would dare address that great existence so familiarly, by a human's name.
"Well, no matter. The story you two were going to write from here on ends today."
"You're the one who should assume you're already dead and get ready to lie flat on the ground and repeat my orders back."
Earlier than planned, sure—but no matter. When an incident breaks out, you simply move the schedule up.
KWAANG!
I drove my fist straight at her face.