Dark Mana
The boulder that Mob had shoved with all his might was hauled back onto the bridge by the teaching assistants, who waddled under its weight before setting it back in place.
“Instructor, is this angle all right?”
“You put it backwards. Flip it one hundred and eighty degrees.”
“Ah, please, have mercy...”
Letting out a miserable groan, the assistant hoisted the stone into the air, shifting his grip bit by bit to align it properly.
Taking in the pitiful sight, Son Ocheon remarked, “Suddenly makes it feel like child’s play, don't it? That kid nearly burst a vein pushing it, and these guys are tossing it around like a toy.”
“Though judging by how much they are sweating, it doesn’t appear entirely effortless.”
“That’s ’cause they’re only juniors! Seniors would be way cooler!”
Hearing Orknodi’s bright, chirpy shout, Son Ocheon and Giselle simply let it slide with practiced resignation.
“Set it down so the red line faces the bottom.”
“Like this?”
“Good work. Even if the exam has been delayed by five whole minutes.”
“Ah...”
“Take this long again, and I’m docking points from your stipend.”
Watching the assistant trudge back to the grassy patch marked with a makeshift ‘Waiting Area’ sign, the seat of his trousers stained green with grass and caked in dirt, Isabelle swore an oath to herself.
“I am never, ever becoming a teaching assistant.”
Her brief brush with the grim realities of third-year life was cut short, however, as she suddenly sensed piercing glares directed their way.
Back when she was an active member of an expedition, she had been exposed to this exact brand of bloodlust. Bandits in the wilderness sizing up adventurers to ambush them for their loot. Highwaymen disguised as merchant caravans on remote mountain roads. Monsters camouflaged as natural terrain, holding their breath until the expedition drew near.
This felt no different.
From the crystal orbs hovering in midair, long-dormant combat instincts flared back to life.
“Giselle. What are those orbs?”
“Surveillance orbs belonging to the professors.”
“...Instead of praising a student for helping someone avoid failing, they bare their fangs with bloodlust? What a baffling bunch of professors.”
Something was deeply wrong with this academy. Far more twisted than she had already suspected.
“Any complaints can wait for later. More importantly, it seems the next examinee is about to begin.”
At Giselle’s remark, Isabelle brushed aside her lingering unease and turned her gaze toward the bridge.
A longsword, barely longer than an arm’s reach. Against a colossal boulder, it seemed like an utterly baffling choice of weapon.
“He looks nervous.”
“Or perhaps he is confident.”
“Hey, runt. How does it look to you?”
“In 3D!”
“The hell is 3D?”
Orknodi’s shoulders slumped, her head drooping in disappointment.
“Never mind if you don’t know...”
My killer joke flopped.
It hit me all over again: I really was living among locals from another world. We couldn't share the same memes, the same laughs, or the same memories. Even though I knew more than anyone else in this world, nobody knew a single thing that I knew.
Yet even as I wallowed in the melancholy of an isekai protagonist, an unsettling surge of mana rippled through the air from the sword held by Zaku, who stood before the bridge.
Mana. The fundamental substance used to manifest supernatural power. There were numerous variations, but an ordinary person was typically limited to wielding just a single type. To manipulate mana, one had to solve the puzzle using mana of the same attribute, much like filling an entire face of a Rubik's cube with a single color. The most common attribute found in people was non-elemental mana, which possessed no specific trait at all.
'Which is why people say a swordsman's blade aura is usually colorless and formless, making it tricky to gauge their reach.'
Yet on very rare occasions, those raised in extreme environments, those who achieved unique milestones, those born with heavily biased affinities, or those who underwent special rituals developed colored mana. That was why tribesmen living in volcanic wastes or frozen peaks wielded blade auras colored like a vivid splash of red or blue paint.
Color aside, the mere act of releasing blade aura was an astonishing feat in itself.
'Mob, for instance, didn't release his aura outward—he merely circulated it for internal body enhancement.'
When someone possessing mana pushed through brutal physical training without giving up, they naturally tried using their mana to alleviate the strain placed on their body. That was the genesis of mana breathing techniques and the foundation of mana circulation. It was the threshold where clashing steel and basic swordplay evolved into the realm of true mana practitioners, who could cleave through wood, iron, and stone indiscriminately.
“Look at that kid,” Son Ocheon growled. “His aura’s way nastier than that Mob punk earlier, ain’t it?”
True to his beastman instincts, Son Ocheon immediately sensed the difference in power. Body enhancement versus blade aura projection. They were entirely different disciplines, but in terms of pure offensive power, the latter took the crown hands down. Concentrating mana into a single weapon held in one’s hand instead of spreading it across the entire body was bound to be devastating.
Yet unlike Mob, who had mastered his power as his own, Zaku’s blade struck with a horrific screech, carving jagged fissures into the face of the boulder.
“Since when did Zaku get that strong?!”
“Hell yeah, smash it! Smash it so there’s nothing left for our turn!”
“Wait! If Zaku breaks that, do we get to cross the bridge for free?!”
“Hang in there, Zaku!”
“You can do it, Zaku!”
Deaf to the opportunistic cheers echoing from his freshman peers, Zaku simply swung his sword again and again. With every relentless strike, the fissures widened, rock dust spraying into the air as the crowd’s cheers grew louder. Even the spectators in the stands joined in, unable to contain their excitement.
“This is dangerous.”
Someone else had picked up on the danger I thought only I noticed. The academy’s flag swindler. The devil who unleashed the venom of a double gacha with no pity system. The dark merchant, Giselle.
“Did you notice?”
“The color of his blade aura is dangerous.”
A blue aura meant a water-attribute swordsman; you could shrug it off as someone who splashed around in the ocean. A red aura meant a fire-attribute swordsman; you could assume they liked playing around near volcanic craters.
But ‘black’ was a whole different story.
Black was the emblem of all negative energy. The closer it leaned toward pitch-black, the greater the peril. Darkness and despair. Death and emptiness. It was not an attribute nurtured under normal conditions.
All black was a color steeped in demonic taint. The demonkin, vassals of the Demon King. The fiends, thralls of the demonkin. The demonic beasts, driven by demonkin and fiends alike. It was the hallmark hue representing the fountainhead of all sinister forces.
A power that devoured its wielder if control slipped by even a fraction—and a mere freshman was wielding it.
'Kinda makes me nostalgic!'
I had my dark knight phase back in the day, too. Countless runs had gone down in flames because I dabbled in dark power without knowing what I was doing. Yet old habits die hard, and Zaku was putting on a masterclass in why players kept returning to the dark knight path despite the risks.
“That destructive power ain’t no joke,” Son Ocheon murmured.
Its raw destructive power rivaled fire, while its piercing capability matched lightning. Its sustain rivaled wind, and its regenerative pull wasn’t a step behind water. A sheer might that even Son Ocheon found impressive. Dark mana was the very catalyst that made such absurdity possible.
Which meant right now, Zaku’s body was undoubtedly groaning beneath a crushing burden.
'A power that eats away at its user in direct proportion to how long it's active. And he's already kept it going way too long.'
If his mana reserves had been shallow, he would have collapsed unconscious long ago. But for whatever reason, Zaku showed no signs of running dry. If his compatibility had been poor, he would have destroyed himself and died on the spot. Yet his affinity was so freakishly high that his muscles merely bulged and bulged—with not the slightest hint of dropping dead.
“Mister Son Ocheon, you still have so much to learn!”
“What did you figure out this time to make you act so smug, you little squirt?”
“The reason it’s so loud and the rock keeps shattering like that is proof he can’t control his power! If your point of impact is dialed in, the force wouldn’t scatter everywhere!”
Abundant mana. Sufficient aptitude to endure it. And control that lagged miserably behind.
All three triggers were met. Instead of rupturing his physical shell, the dark mana had found the perfect conditions to target and shred his sanity first.
“Graaaargh!”
With a thunderous explosion, the massive boulder shattered into a million fragments. Cheers erupted from the Lower Class students, even as dark mana blazed fiercely along the blade trailing loosely from Zaku’s hand.
“Examinee Zaku. Congratulations on passing the test. You may withdraw your aura now.”
“...”
“Examinee Zaku?”
Zaku’s drooping head creaked as it tilted toward the instructor calling his name.
“He did it! Zaku really smashed the rock!”
“Woooow! There’s no rock left, so we get a free pass!”
“Thanks, Zaku! You’re the hero of the Knight Department!”
The head that had tilted toward the instructor snapped around toward the classmates cheering his name from behind.
I knew exactly what came next.
Berserk frenzy. Mass murder. Indiscriminate slaughter. A milder preview of the bloodbath meant to occur at the end of the first semester at the hands of Chapter Boss Hestia. The opening act demonstrating the true horror of dark mana and all beings tainted by evil.
“Whoa, Zaku! Aiming blade aura at people is dangerous!”
“Wait, is something wrong with Zaku?”
“His eyes are glazed over. Did he blow through all his stamina and pass out on his feet?”
“H-Hold on. He’s not pulling back his blade aura. Isn’t this looking really bad?”
“S-Stay back! Zaku, don’t come over here!”
Panicked students scrambled backward as Zaku took a heavy step forward in pursuit. Fanning out to flee from a single boy, they broke into a dead sprint.
Dark mana flared with renewed savagery as Zaku dropped into a sprinter’s crouch, coiled to lunge.
“Wait, Orknodi! Where are you going?!”
“Hey, runt! Have you lost your damn mind?!”
“...No. It is better not to stop her.”
I knew I could count on Giselle to get it. Unlike Isabelle and Son Ocheon, my two innocent comrades, Giselle had grasped my intention and held them back from interfering.
With the teaching assistants and the instructor completely caught off guard by the sudden turn of events, there was no one to stop me as I leaped from the stands and stuck the landing squarely on the testing grounds.
“Lucky us, running into each other like this!”
Shouting at Zaku, I leveled my sword straight at him. And at that very instant, black mana ignited along the tip of my blade.
“Is that... dark mana?!”
“I had an ominous feeling about her ever since that discernment lecture...”
“So it has come to this.”
Zaku wheeled around, his focus snapping from the Lower Class students to me. Watching him, Giselle murmured:
“They say wielders of dark mana are drawn to one another. Orknodi revealed her power specifically to draw Zaku’s rampage away from the others.”
“What? Then ain’t that a good thing? It’s not like that runt’s weak enough to get beaten around.”
“It is not a matter of combat ability. It is a matter of perception.”
I really wish he wouldn’t overthink things like that. Giselle, cursed with intuition that was far too sharp for his own good, had already deduced the fallout that revealing such power would bring.
“Even a Lower Class student possessing only a modest reserve is actively losing control and causing havoc. What do you think will happen if an Upper Class student harbors such power?”
Isabelle answered in a trembling voice, “...A bomb. She’ll be treated like a ticking time bomb.”
“And a high-yield one at that. One capable of wiping out the entire Upper Class.”
“Then why the hell did she step in?! What possessed that idiot to jump down there?!”
“Because she is simply too kind. Such is the nature of our little lady.”