I Haven't Just Been Sitting Around
“““······.”””
Silence.
Everyone watching Class A's examination had fallen into a deep hush. When people are truly stunned, words simply leave them.
Even when Leon swept aside the goblin horde with a single form, the spectators had been impressed — but not shocked beyond reason. Elprime was a place where the continent's finest talents gathered, and among them, exceptional individuals always existed. Of course, no cadet had ever finished a stage in three seconds the way Leon had, but a few had displayed comparable martial prowess. Until then, the name Leon Crusif had merely drawn attention.
······Until he started launching cadets like they were shot from a slingshot.
“Th-that’s… that’s not how you’re supposed to do it?”
A young instructor muttered blankly. He was right — Stage Two had never been designed to be cleared that way. Anyone could see the intended method: step across the floating buoys on the river. As long as at least one person stood on a buoy, it stayed fixed in place instead of drifting away. If too many people climbed on, it sank. Cadets were meant to build a stepping-stone path for one another — a stage focused on cooperation and teamwork. That was exactly how the instructors had designed it, and exactly how the previous four classes had passed.
— Ready, launch!
— Hyaaaaaah!
······No one had imagined anyone would cross the river in such a brutish fashion.
“Ha, hahah!”
A high-pitched, bizarre laugh punched through the silence.
“Ahh~ that was fun.”
Whatever she found so hilarious, Hera was cackling hard enough to wipe away tears that had leaked out. As if that were the signal, people began to shake off their shock and open their mouths one by one.
“Well, at any rate… that isn’t cheating, is it?”
“······I suppose not.”
“Judging by the looks of it, they practiced for this exact situation in advance.”
“Young Master Crusif must have put them up to it.”
“In that case, shouldn’t they get bonus points instead?”
“Fair point······.”
Surprisingly, public opinion was favorable. Solving a given situation in an unconventional way deserved high marks — and practicing until you could hurl people more than twenty meters was no small feat in itself. If it had been some cheap trick, that would be one thing. This had been pure physical ability.
“Well, let’s keep watching for now.”
“I’m curious how they’ll handle the remaining stages.”
Meanwhile, amid the growing buzz, Hera slowly dragged her tongue across her lips.
“Hnn······.”
Her gaze locked onto Leon as he, after throwing every last cadet across, crossed the river himself in just two leaps. Madness — and obsession. A dangerous light flickered in her mineral-cold eyes.
Fwoosh!
Already the third transfer. Stage Three.
“Hmm······.”
A floor of smooth stone tiles. Tall railings ringing the perimeter, and a domed ceiling overhead. A circular arena roughly fifty meters across.
Relvgius Breakthrough — Stage 3
Eliminate all enemy forces.
Evaluation begins in 30 seconds. 30, 29······.
Eliminate enemy forces. The moment he looked around, Leon knew exactly what that meant.
At the far edges of the arena, positioned at the four cardinal directions, stood enormous golems roughly six meters tall. Humanoid forms with two arms and two legs, clad head to toe in full plate armor. In their hands they gripped weapons sized to match their bulk — a massive mace, a greatsword, a spear, and a hammer. For now they slept like statues, but the instant the evaluation began, they would clearly awaken.
“Everyone — Formation Two for now.”
Leon wet his lips and gave the quiet order. The cadets nodded and adjusted their ranks, forming a circle with their backs to one another around the center.
3, 2, 1······.
BEGIN!
The moment the countdown hit zero—
Grrrrrooooom!
The golems woke, light blazing from the T-shaped slits in their helms. Dirt and stone fragments sloughed off their bodies as they rose. Fully upright, they raised their weapons and charged the clustered cadets.
Thud. Thud! Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Each footfall shook the ground with their sheer mass. Their initially stiff movements grew smoother by the second, until those massive frames were moving with startling agility.
Whoooosh!
The golems closed in and lifted their weapons. Heavy blows that would pulverize fragile humans were about to fall—
“Scatter!”
Fwap-fwap-fwap-fwap!
At Leon’s signal the cadets burst outward in every direction like grains of sand.
Krrrrrumble!
Four weapons crashed down where the cadets had stood, shattering the stone floor into a spiderweb of cracks. Leon’s tongue was already moving.
“The red gem in the center of the chest looks like the weak point! Aim for that!”
It didn’t just look like the weak point — it was. A closer look would reveal mana flowing toward the central gem. Anyone else might have taken a long time to figure that out. Leon was simply reciting what he already knew.
“““······!”””
The cadets’ eyes lit up as they charged the golems. Not one of them questioned Leon’s words. In the scramble of scattering, a few had scraped at the legs several times — and even with sword aura, they’d left nothing but scratches. Durability that absurd meant there had to be a weak point somewhere.
Of course—
Whoooom! KRAANG!
—the golems were no pushovers either. When they swept their streetlamp-sized weapons low across the ground, fan-shaped arcs of instant death carved through the air. The cadets couldn’t rush in freely; they had no choice but to leap back again and again. These were opponents so far beyond the goblin warrior horde that comparison was embarrassing.
Broken chunks of stone kept flying into the air. Explosions, shouts, and the shriek of cutting wind battered their ears. Cadets hurled themselves skyward, trying to cling as close as possible. Amid that chaos—
“Teams Two through Four! One team per golem! Team One, on me!”
Team One’s members snapped to Leon’s side at once. Team One held the center while the remaining teams engaged the golems from four directions. Leon glanced over the battlefield and spoke. The red gems were indeed the weak points — but one more condition had to be met to bring the things down. He needed to sell that fact with a plausible reason, enough to convince not only his teammates but the instructors watching from above.
“Breaking just one gem doesn’t seem to drop them, does it?”
“I-is that so······?”
“It’s happening right now. Look.”
At his words, Team One turned their eyes.
Crack-zzzt!
“I-I got it!”
A cadet’s blade punched into the chest of the greatsword-wielding golem, and the gem went dark — but
Grrrrrooooom!
“Wha—?!”
A few seconds later the golem rose again as if nothing had happened and resumed swinging its weapon.
“······You’re right. Then the gems aren’t the weak points after all?”
Carotin asked. Leon shook his head.
“The way I see it, you’ve got to smash all four gems at the same time.”
He pressed down hard on the corner of his mouth, which kept twitching at the thought of how easy this was going to be.
“We’re going with Operation Three. Each of you climbs onto one from behind and breaks the gem. You can sync the timing yourselves, right?”
The teammates looked faintly worried.
“You want to hold those things off? Even you, Leon······.”
“It’s fine. Just do it.”
He narrowed his brow slightly, and the teammates flinched and nodded. Leon hated repeating himself.
“Hey! Everyone! Operation Three — Three!”
“All of you, wait for the signal!”
The teammates fanned out, relaying the plan to the rest of the cadets. Once Leon confirmed that six people had each claimed a golem, he gave the signal.
“Scatter!”
The cadets flung themselves backward in unison, putting maximum distance between themselves and the golems — far enough to nearly touch the arena’s edge. Naturally, every golem’s attention locked onto the closest target: Leon, standing alone and unmoving in the very center.
“Right here, you rock-headed bastards!”
Leon flourished his sword, blue aura blazing along the blade like a glow stick, drawing every eye. Whether their intelligence simply wasn’t that high, the golems took the bait completely and charged him.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
Hammer on the left, greatsword on the right, spear in front, mace behind. Each weapon was the size of five or six grown men stuck together. Weapons packing that much mass alone came crashing down, and the crushing wind pressure alone threatened to flatten Leon’s body.
In that life-or-death instant—
“······.”
—Leon’s focus sharpened to a razor’s edge, and time began to crawl. A moment sliced into dozens of fragments, a span he could swim through. His senses caught Team One’s members streaking in behind the golems.
His role here was simple: hold the line against their assault until his teammates shattered the gems. It looked crude at a glance, but in his judgment it was the fastest way to clear this stage. And of course—
Leon was more than confident he could pull it off.
“I haven’t just been sitting around all this time, you know.”
Murmuring that, Leon let a delighted smile curve his lips — and moved his sword.
Jecheon Sword Style, Third Form — Black Cloud One Slash.
Proud. Elegant. Planting one foot as a pivot, he spun in place and slowly turned his blade clockwise. It looked for all the world like a sword dance — jarringly out of place in a moment when attacks that could pulverize his entire body were bearing down.
But the blade tracing the air grew faster and faster. A tremendous force gathered around him. Just as black clouds mass before a rainstorm, every scrap of mana in the area was sucked into the tip of his sword and concentrated there.
KRAAAAAAAAA!
At last his sword aura blazed so bright it seemed to drink every light around it. A dark-blue vortex formed around the blade, and a storm-force whirlwind whipped violently through the air.
Drrrrrrrk!
A lethal sword pressure that made his arm tremble from wrist to waist simply from holding it. As if that completed it, Leon raised the Heaven-Shattering Sword to meet the four weapons dropping from above.
Whoooosh!
It was the mantis trying to stop the chariot. That slender, fragile blade looked ready to shatter under weapons dozens of times its weight — yet Leon actively drew the attacks in, as if daring them to try.
Everything was pulled into the vortex. Five weapons overlapped.
KRAAAAAAAAAANG-!!!
A colossal shockwave erupted, shaking the entire area. The Team One members racing in behind the golems had to plant themselves upright. A sharp ringing filled their ears. Dust, concussion, and the shattered remnants of mana rolled outward in concentric rings. The cadets squeezed their eyes shut against the violently crashing aftershock.
Shhhhhhh—
At last the air settled. When the cadets pried open their clenched eyelids—
“““······!”””
—there he stood.
One sword in hand. Firmly planted on two legs between the giants.
Krrrrrrrk!
A boy holding their weapons at bay without yielding an inch.