Never a Dull Moment (4)
"Move!"
At the captain's barked order, one of the female agents bolted for the rear. Leon sized up the situation in an instant and shouted at Riana.
"Riana! What are you doing? Hit the escape route with magic, now!"
"W-what??"
"She's getting away! Collapse the passageway— damn it, too late."
While Riana stood there gaping, the female agent slipped through the open stairwell behind the counter that led down to the basement. Leon felt like his chest was going to burst from sheer frustration.
All he'd wanted was a decent ranged spell — a fireball, something like that — to cave in the passage and seal it shut. For someone of Riana's caliber, it shouldn't have been difficult at all.
"Tsk. Do I seriously have to spell out every little thing?"
Leon clicked his tongue and muttered under his breath. If it had been Aria, she would have done it on pure instinct without needing a word. For a fleeting moment, he found himself missing her.
"Hyaaah!"
Thud!
The clash began with Carotin's thunderous opening strike.
"I'll take this one!"
"You little brat…!"
Carotin, built of similar bulk and dense muscle, locked onto the captain. The two of them tore into each other like mortal enemies, swinging sword and blade with the ferocity of wild beasts.
"I've got this one."
Celia charged the man with the merchant's topknot.
Whoooosh!
At the same moment, a crisp wind rose from nowhere and coiled around her spear like a whirlwind.
Slash! Swish! Whoom!
She spun her spear — a weapon as tall as she was — like a windmill, unleashing a storm of successive strikes. It was her signature technique as both a spear fighter and a wind spirit mage: the Flowing Wind Spear Style.
Leon watched for a beat, then gave Riana her orders.
"Riana. Support those two."
"…Got it!"
Riana clenched her jaw and began casting, determined to make up for her earlier blunder.
"Then I guess that leaves you."
"……"
Leon's opponent was a man with the harmless look of someone who ran an orphanage. Behind that gentle face, though, his eyes were thick with killing intent.
Fzzzt!
A thin, mist-like blade aura shimmered along the man's dagger.
"Oh my. You think that's gonna cut it?"
Leon sneered and drew out his own blade aura.
Fwoooosh!
A brilliant blue aura bloomed like a clear summer sky. Next to it, the man's looked crude and unfinished. The Heaven-Shattering Sword's exceptional mana conductivity elevated Leon's blade aura to another level entirely. There was a reason people talked about gear advantage.
The man's face twisted at the rich kid's shameless flaunting of wealth. He was an orphan who'd scraped by on the freezing streets of the Republic.
Whoosh!
Leon's sword came down toward that face. The man slipped the attack with nimble footwork and immediately set his arms in motion. His dagger carved unpredictable arcs as it flew at Leon.
Scrape! Cling! Clink-cling!
The man tried to close the gap and overcome the reach disadvantage. Leon worked to keep the distance that favored him. Rather than parrying Leon's blade head-on, the man relied on pure evasion — the difference in power between their weapons and auras was so severe that a direct clash would simply bat the dagger aside.
Tap-tap-tap!
Leon used the Heavenly Spirit Steps to circle past the man's snaking advance. The man dropped into a low crouch and stuck to him like a venomous snake with its blood up.
Spin! Whirl! Hiss!
The two men whirled and crossed paths like dancers, sharp edges darting between them to leave shallow cuts in their wake. Blade aura grazed fabric, leaving scorch marks and the stink of burnt cloth.
Clang! Scrape! Slash!
Even amid the frantic exchange of steel, Leon's crimson eyes never stopped tracking every twitch of the man's body. His talent gathered the data, analyzed it, and found the flaw in the dagger technique.
One, two. One, two.
Leon weathered the man's increasingly frantic attacks and measured the timing. Under the crush of absolute focus, the world began to slow.
Huummm.
In that stretched-out time, the man's waist turned, and his shoulder moved with it.
Swish—!
The blade at the end of his fully extended arm drove straight for Leon's chest.
Clang!
Leon's sword cut across the path and shoved the dagger aside.
He slipped up!
Seeing Leon's unstable stance, the man thought he'd found his opening and poured every ounce of strength forward. Exactly what Leon had been waiting for.
Slip.
Leon let the tension drain from his hand, released his sword, and drove straight into the man's guard.
"……!"
In those eyes blown wide with shock, Leon's crooked smile was reflected clear as day. The man toppled forward on the momentum of his own thrust — and Leon's elbow was waiting right in front of his jaw.
Crunch!
The man's jaw joint wrenched hard to the side, and he went out cold. A clean fake, a clean takedown. Given the circumstances, capturing him alive beat killing him.
Leon picked up his fallen sword and surveyed the battlefield. It was roughly even. The students had better weapons and a mage backing them up. The agents were holding their own through sheer experience and raw skill. In pure ability, the agents still held the edge.
Sure, the students were among the Empire's finest prospects — but they weren't even twenty yet. There was a gap in experience that raw talent alone couldn't bridge. Leon, though, had six months of dense, hard-earned combat experience from running wild in Hevilon. That was what set him apart from the other students, who couldn't seize the advantage even with better conditions on their side.
"Captain!"
Just as Leon moved to join the fray and lend a hand, the female agent who'd vanished earlier burst back into view. In her hands were three finely crafted swords.
What? She wasn't running away?
She tossed two of the blades to the captain and the topknotted man. Both snatched them up eagerly and switched weapons.
Oh, for crying out loud.
Leon surged toward the female agent and shouted to his friends.
"Hold on just a little longer!"
Now that the agents had proper weapons, they were about to start pushing hard. Carotin, Celia, and Riana spotted Leon's downed opponent and answered through their surprise.
"Understood!"
"Got it!"
"Okay!"
Fwoosh.
Leon's heightened senses caught heat and the smell of burning rising from the basement stairs. So that was what she'd been doing — in that brief window, she'd set the branch office on fire. Leon couldn't help but admire the agents' cold-blooded judgment as he swung his sword with brutal force.
Whoosh— Clang!!
The female agent met him blow for blow, fighting like her life depended on it. Leon had no interest in dragging this out. He pushed his mana even harder.
Bang! Bang! BOOM—!
"Urgh!"
Under the full weight of Leon's earnest strikes, the woman's arms shook dangerously. Then Leon suddenly looked past her shoulder and called out in a bright, startled voice.
"Oh! Instructor!"
"?!?!"
She whipped her head around in pure shock.
"Just kidding."
You fell for that?
Wham!
Leon cracked the flat of his blade across her empty-headed skull. She crumpled with a face full of pure, seething injustice.
Now I need to help the others…
Thud! Thud!
The instant Leon turned to assist the students, two heavy impacts rang out in perfect succession.
"……"
A woman with light blue bobbed hair had appeared from nowhere, like the wind itself. At her feet, both remaining agents already lay sprawled with the backs of their skulls caved in.
…Are they dead?
"Well done, all of you."
Radiating a murderous aura from every pore of her body stood Cheren Asonia, Class A's instructor.
"Good work."
A day that had felt like a week finally ended, and the next morning dawned.
The instructors who'd raced over from the Academy had cleaned up the previous night's chaos. But a brawl in the middle of the city had drawn plenty of onlookers, and word spread like wildfire. Leon, already in the spotlight from his duel with the princess, became a celebrity overnight.
"Hey, hey! Over there, on the right!"
"Wait, is that him…?"
On the way to morning class, Leon grinned and waved at the students whispering about him. This was already the fifth time.
Rattle.
He opened the door to Class A and found Carotin surrounded by classmates.
"So right then I thought — ah! This bastard's going after the mage first…"
In his rough, booming voice, he was happily recounting yesterday's heroics. Surprisingly, he stuck to the objective facts without a shred of exaggeration or bragging. It was almost impressive.
"Oh!"
Carotin spotted Leon and waved enthusiastically.
"Here comes our protagonist!"
A rustle of interest swept the room as every curious gaze locked onto Leon.
"……"
Under all those eyes — and at the word protagonist — Leon felt a strange twinge. Wasn't that supposed to be Billy's seat?
Honestly speaking…
Even if I hadn't stepped in, Billy would have made it out of there alive.
It had been a near-impossible situation, but given Billy's talent, it would have been nothing more than another "trial." He would have beaten them all and emerged stronger — the classic protagonist arc.
But Billy was the kind of man who'd spit out the protagonist role even if you handed it to him. He was someone who always put a peaceful life first.
So if Leon was confident he could handle it, why not take the seat instead? Spare Billy the suffering he never asked for, and save the world while he was at it. A win-win if there ever was one.
I'll just keep doing it this way.
This was a world where the existence of the gods had been proven beyond doubt. Surely they were cheering him on from their lofty heavens.
At this rate, heaven's a lock when I die.
Living a life this beneficial to the world — there was no way they'd turn him away. A self-satisfied smile spread across Leon's face.
Click, click, click!
Just as Leon, riding high, was about to launch into his own version of the story for the class, Instructor Cheren walked in and cut him off cold.
"Leon. Carotin."
She jerked her chin toward the hallway.
"There are people from the Intelligence Bureau here to see you."