The Entrance Exam (4)
Arbel Academy was the foremost academy on the Yursia Continent, and every year countless people gathered at the examination grounds in the hope of winning admission.
The two most popular faculties, Magic and Swordsmanship, drew especially thick crowds. Where people gathered in such numbers, eccentrics were inevitable, and the Swordsmanship Faculty's testing grounds had a way of erupting into some fresh commotion once a year.
Every sort of madman has turned up, at one point or another.
Doping with alchemical draughts was an annual tradition. One candidate would arrive bearing a treasured heirloom blade, another would send a proxy to sit the exam in his place, and others still were mages who insisted, loudly, that they were swordsmen. The variety never failed.
And so Lucilla Fried, chief professor of the Swordsmanship Faculty, who watched such disasters unfold year after year, had naturally been left with no choice but to forge an iron mind. These days she was confident that no ordinary incident could make her so much as blink.
...Even so, that shouldn't be possible.
But that confidence of hers, it seemed, had been misplaced. At this very moment Lucilla had forgotten all about composing her expression—forgotten even a professor's dignity—and was on her feet, having shot up from her chair.
No one called her on it. Every one of them was staring at the sparring grounds with a face much like her own.
I didn't see that wrong, did I?
No. Lucilla herself had watched every instant of the duel just now, and there had been nothing irregular in how it was conducted. Even so, the match had been alien enough that she found herself doubting her own eyes. She settled back into her seat and replayed it.
The one hundred twenty-fourth match began, and the examinees stepped up onto the grounds.
The opponents were Ivan Gustav and Philip. The moment she first laid eyes on the pair, Lucilla had predicted the duel would be over in a flash. Ivan Gustav was a Rank 2 powerhouse who wielded his house's unique sword art with practiced skill. Philip, by contrast, was a Normal who had not even awakened his mana. Simply avoiding defeat on the first exchange would have counted as doing well enough, and she had expected the whole thing to be finished in roughly a minute.
And it did end in a minute. With Philip's victory.
Even when Philip charged out at the starting signal, there had been nothing wrong with the match. He had done something odd—failing to draw his sword from its sheath—but that could be read as fear, with Ivan standing before him. Then he drew the blade, and everything changed.
He poured mana into the sword and threw it. A man who, until a moment ago, had been a Normal.
Philip hurled the sword in a form so exact that the word perfect felt inadequate. That alone was absurd enough, but the speed at which the blade flew was more absurd still, for it traveled at a velocity no ordinary person's strength could ever produce. Lucilla grasped the reason at once. In that brief instant, Philip had awakened his mana, loaded it into the sword, and thrown.
...Is that even possible?
Mana existed everywhere in the world, and it existed inside a Normal's body as well. But sensing it in the middle of combat and putting it to use on the spot were entirely different matters. It was like laying eyes on a tool one had never seen in one's life and handling it, in the very next breath, at an expert's level. In a word, it was nonsense.
Fine. I'll yield a hundred times over and grant that it was possible.
Philip might have been a genius, or he might have possessed the perfect conditions for awakening his mana. But what he did a moment later made even that strained acceptance impossible.
He stopped the thrown sword in midair and fired it again? That is absolutely not a level of control a Rank 1 or a Rank 2 can manage.
Rank 1 and Rank 2 dealt with the mana inside the body. They used it to reinforce their muscles, and for a single instant they laid mana over a blade to heighten its destructive force. A swordsman of Rank 1 or Rank 2, however, could neither draw mana out beyond the body nor manipulate it once it had left. That was the province of Rank 3 and Rank 4, and anyone capable of it would not have been Rank 1 or Rank 2 to begin with.
And yet Philip did it.
Philip was an ordinary man who had only just awakened his mana. His rank, as a matter of course, was Rank 1, and the mana he held amounted to little more than a cup of water. And yet, for one instant, he had displayed a power that transcended his rank. This was... long past the point where one could nod, call it outstanding talent, and move on.
It's exactly like looking at that man.
The finest swordsman in the Academy, and the damned superior who rode her ragged day after day. As far as Lucilla knew, he was the only one who could display an art that leapt clean over his rank. She would never dare claim that Philip was a genius on that man's level... Even so, that he had shown something similar, if only for a moment, was already beyond belief.
"Professor Lucilla. What did you make of the duel just now? I watched it myself, and I still can't make sense of it."
"..."
Her thoughts had been running on when the assistant professor, newly appointed this year, put the question to her. The match just now had certainly strayed far from common sense. Lucilla considered for a moment, then gave him her one-line assessment of Philip.
"A genius enrolling at the Academy isn't exactly a rare thing, is it?"
"Pardon?"
"He passes. No conditions. I'm looking forward to the day I get to teach that boy myself."
What would become of a child with talent like that, if he received proper instruction under a worthy master? For the first time in a long while, Lucilla felt a flutter of excitement, and in the column for Philip's practical examination she entered a perfect score.
The House of Fiorenza was no ordinary family.
Fiorenza had existed since before the Empire seized hegemony over the continent, and when the Empire launched its wars of conquest, the house stood at the very forefront. It toppled countless petty kingdoms and took the heads of countless generals for its battle honors. Across battlefield after battlefield, Fiorenza never once suffered defeat. And when the Empire at last became the hegemon of the continent, those merits were recognized, and the house was granted an undying honor.
The Ducal House of Fiorenza, a lineage famed for the sword. It has a fine ring to it.
Three hundred years had passed since the wars of conquest, yet the name Fiorenza still stood high. It no longer reached the heights of the days right after the wars had ended, of course. Even so, it held an authority and a strength that the other ducal houses could not dare to challenge.
The most exalted house in the Empire after the imperial family. The house that handled the sword better than any in the Empire, save the imperial family itself. Both of those phrases meant Fiorenza, and Sylvia, young lady of that house, simply lived a life worthy of the name.
"This is boring as hell."
Fiorenza must always be the best. That was the house motto, and a refrain its children heard until they were sick of it from the time they were small. It was why Sylvia herself was here. Go to the continent's foremost academy and seize the seat of number one in the Swordsmanship Faculty. That was the order she had been given, and the duty she was bound to carry out.
"I want to get this over with and go home."
Sylvia yawned, bored. She had come expecting something worthy of the title of the continent's greatest academy, only to find the examinees' level poorer than she had imagined. There was at least some savor in breaking someone who was strong to a certain degree. Everyone in the waiting room fell short of even the tips of her toes, and none of it held any interest.
Eschborn might have been worth facing, at least...
Eschborn had long since gone out to duel another examinee. Which meant there was nothing left in this round worth looking forward to. Sylvia lost every scrap of interest and drive, and decided to let the time dissolve until her own turn came.
"...?"
"..."
How long passed like that? By the time more than half the waiting room had filtered out and the chamber that had been packed tight had grown sparse, Sylvia happened to meet the eyes of a young man.
Black hair, black eyes, an ordinary face. He looked faintly startled to see her, but Sylvia had not the slightest interest in him.
Trash. Not worth another look.
Sylvia was a genius of the sword. Her gift went beyond merely wielding a blade well; her understanding of swordsmanship itself was exceptional, and she had a talent for taking the measure of another's strength. In that sense, the man before her was trash. He did not know the fundamentals of the sword, he lacked a swordsman's mindset, and he was a worm who had never even killed anyone. Sylvia dared to be certain of it: the day that man passed the Academy's exam would never come.
"Ha!"
"?!"
But then something utterly absurd happened. She was the one who had named the man trash, and yet the sneer came not from her, but from him. He looked away at once and wiped the smile from his face, but Sylvia had seen it. He, too, had judged her to be trash, and had looked at her the way one looks at something insignificant.
This is so ridiculous I can't even laugh.
Any other day, Sylvia would have ground the insolent man thoroughly underfoot, and wrung an apology out of him while he wailed and made a scene. For some reason, though, she felt no desire to do so. The reason was simply that the man was too shabby, too worthless.
A man who isn't worth engaging. Getting angry would be a waste of effort.
As she had thought a moment ago, Sylvia liked actions that held some worth. If a bastard with backing and real skill ran his mouth, then you broke him with your own hands and taught him which of you stood above the other. A rat crawling the floor and squeaking—flying into a rage at that was an ugly business. So Sylvia took her eyes off the man, and ignored him even when his name was called. From the look of it, he was fighting the young master of some viscount's house.
I hope he gets himself good and crippled.
With that thought, Sylvia closed her eyes, meaning to wait until her own name was called.
How many dozen seconds had passed with her eyes shut? She sensed, on instinct, that the air of the waiting room had changed, and cracked her eyes open to look around.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Every last one of them was staring at the sparring grounds with the same vacant, stupid expression. Puzzled, Sylvia turned her own gaze that way, and tilted her head at the sight of the viscount's young master lying there.
Why is that man face-down? Is his house's unique sword art one you perform lying prone?
That idiotic thought was shattered an instant later by the referee's shout.
"Hah?!"
That piece of trash won the duel?
Sylvia could not, no matter how she tried, accept the reality before her eyes.