Growth (1)
The battle had only just begun.
"Ahh, don't you worry about the Meteor. This is a heated clash between knights. So…"
Riiip!
The old warrior's eyes gleamed as he tore open his upper robe.
"I shall use only the sword."
"Excuse me?"
Then what's that 7th-circle ultimate magic, Meteor, doing floating up there in the sky?
The urge to pick that apart was mountain-sized, but unfortunately, he didn't even have the luxury.
"Then let us begin. Receive my blade."
"?"
Because the old warrior had drawn his sword(?).
"I seriously cannot take this anymore."
"Hmm?"
In the end, he asked the old man outright.
"That's a sword?"
"It is, yes."
"No matter how you look at it, that's a wand."
What the old man's sturdy hand was gripping was a wand, carved from wood into the shape of a greatsword.
Wood, Water, Earth, Metal, Fire.
A wand that looked like a wooden sword, with five highest-grade magic stones embedded in a row.
"The Meteor you launched up there, that wand that looks like a wooden sword, even the robe you tore off pretending it wasn't one. No matter how you look at it, you're a mage, not a knight."
A precise thrust that cut straight to the truth.
The next instant, however—
"…You dare insult me?"
"When did I!?"
Rage settled over the old warrior's face.
"Did you not just call this old man a mage."
"You used magic."
"Silence!! Just because one uses magic, does that make them a mage!!"
"Pretty much, yeah?"
"YOU BRAT!!!!"
After that rough bellow—
"A mage!!!! Do not compare me to those despicable lot!!!!!"
The old warrior, sword in his right hand, raised his left and summoned a magic circle.
Supreme Physical Enhancement (S)
Enchant: Wood
Enchant: Water
Enchant: Earth
Enchant: Metal
Enchant: Fire
"That's what you call magic!!!!"
"Ahh, this is what we call aura."
The wooden greatsword…
No — the five magic stones set into the wand all flared at once, as if they were a single light.
Five streams of energy wrapped the old warrior's body, rippling like aura, just as he'd claimed.
And then—
"Five Elements Assault Technique!!!!!"
"You're just coming to beat the crap out of me!!!!"
GROOOOAN!!
Eyes blazing, the old warrior charged.
O-oh. The Meteor's coming down too.
Was it thanks to Named Boss Eugene's body?
My thoughts are accelerating.
The charging old warrior, the Meteor falling from overhead — both looked slow.
And in the same breath, he understood.
If I don't stop this, I die.
Force so overwhelming that even deflecting it with an imitated technique — not the original — would be more than he could handle.
Should I use a borrowed skill?
No.
He couldn't.
If this old man is who I think he is, I still need to keep my Unique Trait hidden.
In the end, there was only one way.
Use the ancient weapon.
He sheathed the sword he'd drawn.
"So you've chosen death!!"
"As if."
The sword in his hand now was the one he'd stol— no, received from the Count Vulcanus family's tomb this time around.
And this ancient weapon had several powerful traits hidden inside it.
The first of them.
An ancient weapon activated together with the True Name bound to it.
The Fourth Child of Fire.
The masterpiece created by Layla Vulcanus. The true name of this pitch-black famed blade was—
"Enshroud us, Twilight."
The next moment.
The Fourth Child of Fire — Layla Vulcanus's Masterpiece awakens from deep slumber.
The black light vanished from the blade.
A golden sunset, seeping in from the horizon, pushed back the night that clung to the sword and soaked into the steel.
The first trait, manifested the instant it activated.
The Hour of Twilight.
It deployed an indestructible barrier, then recreated, inside that barrier, the twilight of the moments just before the sun went down.
The recreated backdrop was the outer wall of some nameless fortress, and the radius in which one could move was restricted.
And if—
If he drew the enemy into the barrier and held out until that twilight faded—
Until dawn comes after twilight has passed, it is the time of things that have set.
From the instant after sunset until the coming of dawn: all abilities of the opponent drawn inside are sealed.
He could render his opponent powerless.
Until Sunset: 00:04:59
Five minutes remaining.
"Let's play."
You crazy old geezer.
The instant the barrier deployed—
Skill cancelled.
Skill cancelled.
Skill cancel—
· · ·
Master Leopold Lionheart, Headmaster of Academy Zion, realized that every skill he had activated had been dismantled — mana and all.
An aftereffect of the barrier?
He had lived his entire life for magic alone, and yet, for reasons he couldn't fathom, he couldn't even get a read on this.
But it's already too late.
He was already charging toward Eugene — and Eugene, who had already corrected his stance, was likewise—
Aura Emission (B+)
Insufficient proficiency. Rank adjusted: C-
—rushing straight at him.
Something, however, was off.
It's sloppier than I expected.
If you wanted to grasp someone's true nature in a short time, a fight with lives on the line was the surest way. But if he — the pinnacle of the magical world — went all out against a student, the boy would plainly die.
That was why he was pretending to be a madman, using a sword he was still woefully unskilled with. And yet—
"Head."
"That's the waist!!"
"Slow. Light, too."
"Must be nice, being so good at fighting!!"
Clang!
How can his sword be this light?
The leading candidate for top incoming student. The one who had smashed the Tyrant's scarecrow and survived the wrath of Vivian herself. The one who had pacified the Backstreets in a single day and restored Shadow King Ian's throne.
He said he'd been injured in the fight with Vivian. Is this the aftereffect?
Either way, Leopold was a little disappointed.
Eugene, on the other hand, was pissed as hell.
This crazy old geezer, I swear to god!!
Eugene could see it.
The supreme combat-support magic that the barrier had stripped away—
Supreme Physical Enhancement (S)
Enchant: Wood
Enchant: Water
Enchant: Earth
Enchant: Metal
Enchant: Fire
—he had reactivated in a single second.
Five attributes. Magical prowess other mages couldn't even begin to compare to.
That settled it.
That old man is the Headmaster of Academy Zion.
Master Leopold Lionheart.
He was one of the Five Heroes, a name that still rose to people's lips with genuine warmth.
"I-it's the Headmaster!!"
"Long live the Five Heroes!!"
"Long live the strongest mage, Master Leopold Lionheart!!"
"Haha. To be welcomed like this even after all these years… how embarrassing."
The same man who had single-handedly stormed the Five-Color Magic Towers after they'd grown complacent, and put the fear of god back into them.
"So the Five-Color Magic Towers finally submitted."
"To His Majesty the Emperor?"
"No. To Master Leopold. He said he intends to study each tower's secret arts."
"Good heavens. Just how much stronger does he intend to become…"
The same man who had taken up the sword under the Mercenary King, K-Charles de Lumière — a man who had lived his entire life by the blade.
"This is really too much, Master."
"What is?"
"Reaching Sword Expert Advanced after holding a sword for only ten years."
"Haha. Even so, I'm still weaker than you, am I not?"
"That, too, probably won't be the case for much longer."
A monster who, even past the age of eighty, never stopped hungering for strength — never stopped learning.
A man who had spent his entire life studying, analyzing, and teaching in the pursuit of becoming stronger.
That was the hero Leopold.
And so the evaluation Leopold delivered of Eugene—
"Looks like a newborn baby possessing a hero's body."
—could only be devastatingly accurate.
"Waaah!!"
"Ugh. Don't tell me that's you being cute?"
"As if!?"
Whoosh!
Eugene knew it too.
He wasn't so sure about Hype Man Eugene — but Named Boss, the 2nd Apostle was definitely a powerhouse.
But even the finest car is useless if you can't drive it.
That's me right now.
He didn't even properly know how to drive. He didn't even know what features the thing had.
The only information he'd possessed — the Martial God's Physique — was locked away along with his memories, and the skills borrowed through Admiration were, quite literally, borrowed.
I can make them my own. I can imitate the skills I've used so far, too.
But those were still, in the end, someone else's. Because he hadn't fully made them his own, the rank dropped, or the power came out weak.
Handy against fellow students. Useless against a Headmaster-level powerhouse.
Until Sunset: 00:01:04
A little over a minute remaining.
Leopold definitely came after hearing about me from Cheolsu.
If he proved useful, they'd hunt cultists together. If not, the old man would just think of him as a student.
So I have to prove it.
That unlike the other students, he was a powerhouse with some real strength to offer.
Alright. Back to square one.
In that case — what method should he use to leave a lasting impression on the Headmaster?
But the truth was, Eugene already had a plan. He'd had one before he'd even activated Twilight. From the moment the Headmaster had shown up, in fact.
Time to get started.
Clang! Thud!
The instant Eugene somehow managed to put some distance between them—
"Watch out, old man. This might sting a little… huh?"
His gaze flicked past the Headmaster's shoulder.
"Vivian?"
"?"
Faced with that frozen expression, the Headmaster turned around before he could stop himself—
"Huh?"
—and immediately realized he'd been had.
"Obviously a lie."
"You, you──!!"
"A man who's lived as long as you have, and you fell for that?"
And that brief opening was—
Imitating Bright Alfred (A)'s skill:
White Flash (A)
—more than enough to buy a little time. Enough, say, to use a skill whose activation ran a touch long, but whose power was guaranteed.
Skill attribute reset to caster — Eugene's attribute value:
EVIL
More than enough. Overflowing, even.