vs Luke Cruella (2)
“Hah, haaah….”
Luke glared at me with sharp, burning eyes, an arcane bolt lodged in her left forearm. It was the look of someone whose entire mindset toward our duel had just shifted. She had failed to skewer me with a single stroke the moment the match began, and then she'd allowed my first attack on top of it. From here on out, she wouldn't be able to treat me as some clumsy mage who could do nothing but cast spells.
Part of me wanted her to keep that carelessness right up until the end of the evaluation duels, but Luke had always been a character with an exceptional talent for reading a situation. From now on, she was far more likely to abandon reckless dagger charges in favor of something more efficient. So I quietly waited, watching for her next attack as the circumstances changed.
“…….”
-FWOOSH!
First, she shifted her stance to escape the blinding flash still hanging in the air, circling me in a wide arc. If this were a battle between an ordinary rogue-class fighter and a mage, that movement would have been a poor decision—keeping your distance against a mage or an archer was practically announcing that you'd decided to become a living target. But I was no ordinary mage, given that I could fight up close, and Luke was no ordinary rogue fighting with just two daggers, either.
From the hand of the girl circling around me, five or six sharp blades came flying all at once.
-PISHWUT!
Yeah, figures. The moment she gave up on close combat, she switched straight to this pattern. Weaker than swinging a dagger held in hand, sure—but it could be done from range, and the way she generated blades from multiple angles while moving at high speed made it a genuinely nasty attack to deal with.
Obviously, dodging them all with my body was impossible, and deflecting every single one with a dagger was equally out of the question. An ordinary mage would have had to brace for the least painful angle and punch through a few of the blades with her own body to escape. Fortunately, I was neither an ordinary mage nor a mage only.
-TUK! TUDUK! TUK!
-CLANG! CLA-CLANG!
Arcane Shield—the final Tier 1 spell on my auxiliary magic tree. Like Dim Light, this was another spell I'd prepared specifically for fighting Luke. Knowing her, I'd figured she'd attempt a ranged attack at least once. Of course, Arcane Shield was the lowest of the low among barrier spells, the kind that shattered after blocking one or two incoming blades—but for the current me, that much power was more than enough.
I used Triple Casting to shield three of the four sides of my body at once, deflecting the blades that slipped through the gap with my longsword. As for the flimsy Arcane Shields shattering under the impact, I simply kept replenishing them. After all, the current me was the owner of an insane mana pool exceeding 2,000.
-SHIIING!!
“Dieeeee!!”
Woven into the whistle of thin blades came a sound with real weight behind it. I'd heard it plenty of times playing Luminor Academy, so I twisted my body toward the direction of Luke's voice without a moment's hesitation—and deflected the dagger in her left hand, flying dead-on for my heart through the hail of thin blades, sending it skyward with my longsword.
-CLAAANG!
The moment it struck my silver blade, the sharp dagger's trajectory warped violently and spun off into the air. Sparks flying from nothing more than a parried strike—it was a moment that showed just how single-mindedly she intended to finish me.
Holy shit, I genuinely thought I was dead.
Unlike the thin blades, the dagger she'd thrown from her own hand carried a completely different weight. If I hadn't timed a shockwave to the moment our blades met, it would have pierced my heart for certain—or, failing a clean deflection, left a wound somewhere on my body. Had I relied on Arcane Shield alone and gotten cocky, it would have gone straight through me. Dagger Throwing was, after all, the most powerful technique this era's Luke possessed, so she'd likely been trying to end it all with that one blow—judging that her wounded left hand couldn't swing properly, and striking with her ultimate at the instant I looked most open.
But with her ultimate attack failing, the momentum of this duel had all but tipped into my hands. Luke, holding only a single dagger, dropped roughly thirty to forty percent in effective combat power by my reckoning—so in terms of overall capability, I was now clearly her superior. Even the blades she'd been throwing while circling me seemed nearly spent, judging by the anxious look on her face. Not that it mattered; whatever remained would just bounce off my Arcane Shield anyway.
“…….”
The problem was that I wasn't in a great position to finish Luke off, either. To win the duel, I needed to use Mana Blast at a moment when I could hit her with certainty—and such a moment simply wasn't presenting itself. That was the biggest issue. With its long cast time and total vulnerability during use, Mana Blast required me to pin her down far more securely than I had now. It was never an efficient spell for human-versus-human combat in the first place—it was a last, desperate blow meant for party hunting.
Wounding one arm, blocking every ranged throwing option, and stripping the dagger from her left hand still wasn't enough to call her truly subdued.
Best case, I somehow get close enough to bind her with Mana Chain.
Just as Mana Blast was the first upgrade on the offensive magic tree, Mana Chain was the first upgrade on the auxiliary tree. Against anyone at or below my own level, it guaranteed a full ten seconds of binding. The catch was that using it required closing to nearly blade-on-blade distance—and since my opponent was a person, not a monster, there was a good chance she'd sense something off about my approach and bolt.
…Nothing for it, then. Here, I'd just have to lure Luke to me.
I wasn't confident in my taunting skills, but I had cleared Luke back in my previous life, so I knew exactly what she liked and what made her furious. Quietly, I opened my mouth and turned the gaze of the girl standing motionless, watching me, back onto myself.
“Done with everything you've got?”
“…No.”
“Really? Then why are you just standing there?”
“…None of your business.”
“The Engineering Department's salutatorian signs up for the evaluation duels all confident, and this is all there is? Kind of a letdown.”
“…….”
Luke bit her lower lip at my words, her furious gaze locking onto me. I pretended not to notice even slightly, calmly stooping to pick up the fallen dagger at my feet. Then I turned her left-hand dagger—the one that looked, by all appearances, like a gift from Seraphin—over in my right hand, examining it this way and that. All while slowly reciting the no-incantation chant for Mana Chain in my head, ready to fire at any moment.
“Isn't this the one you were holding in your left hand just now?”
“…Don't touch it.”
“Why? The way you tossed it aside like garbage, I figured you'd thrown it away.”
“Don't you dare call it garbage!”
“…….”
…Yeah, that works great. Must be because it's connected to Seraphin. Well, as a former Luminor Academy player, nobody knew better than I did that this dagger was a fine piece of equipment—Seraphin would never have gifted Luke useless gear in the first place. But to draw her toward me, I needed to provoke her with deliberately harsh words.
Just so there's no misunderstanding: I wasn't putting on this insolent act because I particularly enjoyed it. It was simply a provocation I had no choice but to make in order to lure her in. Knowing how perceptive Luke was, I had to convey emotions completely contrary to my true intentions, or risk her catching on that I was steering her movements. Without that, pulling off the deception cleanly was next to impossible.
“Well, 'garbage' might be underselling it. Looking closely, it's actually a pretty fine dagger.”
“…….”
“So, I'll just keep this, then?”
“……What?”
“Thanks for the gift. I'll put it to good use, Luke.”
“G-give that back…!!!”
And when I made to actually stow the dagger into my uniform's inner pocket, the feet of the girl who had been standing frozen finally began to move. Realizing my provocation had landed squarely, I kept the final line of the Mana Chain chant held in reserve and tracked Luke's every movement. All I had to do was stay focused to the very end and not fumble the incantation. Bind her right hand with Mana Chain the instant before her dagger reached my body, then immediately begin chanting Mana Blast—and I could take this victory comfortably.
Or so I thought, predicting the arc of Luke's right hand and readying my Mana Chain—when somehow, my gut began to smolder with a quiet unease. …In the gaze of Luke, who had closed to a considerable distance, I caught, for just an instant, the look of someone watching somewhere else.
Hold on. Something's off here…?
Come to think of it, there had been one strange thing about Luke's conduct during the fight. When she used Dagger Throwing against me earlier—why on earth did she throw the left-hand dagger? She couldn't have thrown it with her wounded left hand, so if she'd wanted to exploit an opening even a fraction faster, she should have thrown the right-hand dagger instead. And if that failed, keeping the left dagger in her right hand would have been the better play anyway—there's hardly any difference between a left-hand or right-hand blade.
Which meant there had to be a reason Luke had deliberately switched the left dagger into her right hand. A reason compelling enough that, even in that desperate moment, she'd thrown the left-hand blade at me.
Don't tell me—what Luke threw wasn't just a 'dagger,' but the information that 'her left hand was empty'….
The instant that thought landed, an image flashed through my mind: Ethan and Harold crossing blades in the Blackwood Estate training yard a few months ago. And along with it, the memory of exactly how Ethan had seized his 'first victory' over Harold.
“Dieeeee!!”
While I spent that sliver of a second piecing together Luke's intent, her body had already closed the distance to my very nose, blade raised and ready to swing. I had no ironclad certainty she'd do this—but trusting my gut, I loosed my Mana Chain at the incoming Luke. Not at the 'right arm' swinging in from the front, but at her 'left arm,' sliding in from the flank.
-SHRRRRRRK!
“GAAAAHK?!”
One heartbeat before Luke's left hand could drive a dagger into the back of my skull, my Mana Chain coiled around her left arm first—and the moment I saw her collapse, her whole body seized by the binding chains, I knew. Even as the chains dragged her toward the corner of the arena, Luke wore a look of utter incomprehension and stammered in flustered disbelief.
“H-how…?”
“How this, how that.”
Brushing off her final question, I hurriedly gathered every last drop of my remaining mana into a Mana Blast above my palm. Seeing the enormous mana orb materialize over my head, Luke began thrashing against her chains in primal terror—but before her bindings could come undone, my Mana Blast was already complete. …Consider it a parting gift for the loser. I could at least tell her why she lost.
“If you're going to ambush someone, you KEEP your eyes on them till the end, you IDIOT!!!”
With that cry, thick with all my pent-up frustration, the Mana Blast hurtled toward the corner of the arena where Luke lay bound. Whether my final words reached her or not, her expression froze into hollow resignation as she accepted my last blow. After one tremendous explosion swept through, nothing remained where the chained Luke had been.
…Looks like the Death-Prevention Magic triggered properly.
“Th-the winner! Lilith Blackwood Rosewood!”
“Lilith! Lilith! Lilith!”
“WHOOAA! That was insane! Unbelievable, Lilith!!”
“Kyaaa! Lilith! I knew you'd win, Lilith! LILITH!!”
“M-milady, please compose yourself! Everyone is staring at us…!”
Bathed in the cheers of academy students chanting the victor's name, I dragged my exhausted body out of the arena and toward my waiting room, where Ethan was waiting.
…Hah. This time, I really did think I was going to die.