13. Academy Terror WWE
13. Academy Terror WWE
Rus held her breath in silence.
She didn't even have to try. Hiding her presence with the Dark Sword's power and tailing Adam this far had made everything painfully clear.
'Adam caused the terror attack.'
That was enough. That alone... was enough.
Adam, the Academy's Finance Director, had conspired with that Milia bitch to stage the attack.
She had watched it all unfold from the shadows. It drove her mad—she wanted to burst out, grab him by the collar, demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing—but she held back.
'It's all...'
So that's what this was.
Every side Adam had ever shown her had been nothing but an act.
The Academy hadn't crumbled and rotted from the inside—he'd simply hidden his true nature from the start.
No matter how hard she tried to rationalize it, to tell herself there had to be a reason, she couldn't. Why, by any sane standard, would anyone terrorize a functioning academy? And colluding with the Wish Order to do it?
Rus's eyes had already long been dead and black.
After she'd stood by once, the rest came easily. So Rus continued to witness Adam's sins.
She'd watched the two of them scheming with that Milia-slag, handing over confidential information like patrol routes and opening the gates to Wish Order members. And now, right here, she was watching him actively aid the Order members carrying out the attack.
'...How pathetic.'
The more she saw of Adam's hidden self, the more pathetic she felt. She had moved into the same dormitory to help a man like that. Gone grocery shopping, made breakfast.
She thought of the living room and kitchen she'd scrubbed clean. The secret passage and hidden compartment she'd built into the dorm. The top-grade elixirs she'd prepared so Adam could consume them.
All of it was becoming meaningless beyond measure.
'The fool who got duped, that's me. Utterly pathetic.'
She laughed. Rus let out a hollow, empty laugh.
It felt as if she was letting something go. As if the last thread that had held her together, held on until the very end, had finally snapped.
Rus rose quietly from her spot. Thanks to the Dark Sword's power, there was no chance Adam or that so-called Holy Knight Commander would detect her.
'Let's end it here.'
She felt no sense of betrayal. Not because she had forgiven him. It was closer to numbness—the shock too great to feel anything at all.
Perhaps killing the Chairwoman and bringing down the Academy had been Adam's doing as well. He'd already used the Order once to attack the Academy; who was to say he couldn't do it again?
The hand gripping the Dark Sword trembled.
'......Ah.'
Rus didn't notice it herself, but a single tear was trailing down her cheek.
She had thought the well had dried up long ago, that she could no longer shed a tear. Had the numbness from the betrayal been a delusion after all?
'Once today is over, once I kill Adam, everything will be resolved.'
The Chairwoman wouldn't die. The Academy wouldn't fall.
Betrayal, hatred, fury, and regret.
Packing all of those emotions inside her, she fixed her eyes on Adam through the tears—
"But that aside, I've been sensing a strange power. Quite a familiar one, at that."
"What do you mean?"
"Yes, this feels like... the Dark Sword."
What?
What did he just say?
"Is this another one of your schemes? I suppose you're not so dim-witted as to have no contingencies in place—for a 1st Rank, anyway."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're brazen, I'll give you that. So, did you hear it from that bishop-candidate harlot? That the Order's Dark Sword has vanished? Are you trying to draw me out—me, on edge over its disappearance—by using the Dark Sword's aura?"
Rus froze at the words of the Holy Knight Commander, Malton.
As if he were blathering on about the Dark Sword being gone.
'The Wish Order's Dark Sword vanished?'
Was that even possible?
The Dark Sword had disappeared before, yes—but only because during the chaos of a previous cycle, Rus had stolen it.
But this time there was no need to steal it, since she already had it—
'Ah.'
Only then did Rus understand why the Order's Dark Sword had vanished.
Like the Holy Kingdom's sacred relic, the Dark Sword was a conceptual-level artifact. It couldn't be destroyed or erased in the first place—it simply existed.
And when Rus regressed, she had regressed together with the Dark Sword. Meaning, in this timeline, two copies of the Dark Sword had come to coexist.
But as a conceptual artifact, two Dark Swords could not exist at the same time. Just as two perfectly identical people couldn't occupy the same timeline.
Thus the weaker one disappeared.
'The Order's Dark Sword, right now, would've still been in the process of being forged.'
Unlike the incomplete copy in the Order's possession, the Dark Sword Rus held was whole. Naturally, the Order's fledgling version had been wiped out, leaving only hers.
She had caused a monumental disruption without the slightest intent.
'Is that why the Order is collapsing?'
The Dark Sword was the core, the root of the Wish Order's existence. With a sacred relic like that gone, it was only logical the Order itself would crumble.
For the first time, a shiver ran through Rus as she realized she had genuinely altered the future—and had now pinpointed the exact causal chain.
Strictly speaking, there hadn't even been a deliberate cause. The mere fact that she had regressed while holding the Dark Sword had triggered a cascade of enormous change.
Her thoughts rushing that far ahead, Rus seized on one thing before anything else:
An outlandish, excessive thought, but still.
'If.'
If, as Malton suggested, Adam had known this would happen, and had used the terror attack as a pretext to lure the entire Wish Order out so he could annihilate them in one stroke—
If the Dark Sword were intact, that would be a pointless endeavor. As long as the Dark Sword's power existed, the Wish Order would endure. It was hopeless unless you killed the Pontiff himself.
But a Wish Order without the Dark Sword?
'He did say this Holy Knight Commander bastard, the Archbishop, and a number of elite faithful had come here—using the terror attack as an excuse.'
What if they were lured in and captured all at once?
The Wish Order would then be effectively finished. The Pontiff, by his very nature, couldn't leave the Holy Ground. Having lost all its elite forces and even the Dark Sword, the Order would destroy itself.
If all of this had been Adam's design from the start—if he had played a part to wipe out the Order—then...
'I don't know. I truly don't know.'
"The Dark Sword? I'm afraid I don't know anything about that."
"...Tch. Spoken exactly like a man who engineered all this. For a 1st Rank, you really are insufferable."
"You flatter me."
"Still, now that I've set things in motion, there's no backing down."
A snap.
"—!"
"The Dark Sword's aura must have come from Milia. This will make for a fine political pretext to oust the bitch. Ah, don't you worry. By the time you regain consciousness, everything will already be over."
"Ghk—!!"
"You seem to have underestimated me. Whatever trick you had in mind, I'll just smash it head-on!"
Rigid Energy.
The wall that divides the 6th and 7th Ranks, and the threshold where an individual can genuinely overcome a collective. Malton's power, though his rank was raised through a near-backdoor method using the Dark Sword, was nevertheless real. As Rigid Energy gathered in his hand, a sound like fracturing glass filled the air.
Crack-crackle, craaack!!
The surrounding space began to rupture—tiny in scale, but unmistakable—under Malton's Rigid Energy.
And within those ruptures, an ominous swell of mana stirred.
Oooom!
"Oh? Ah, so this was your insurance, was it? A rather high-grade Artifact by the looks of it."
"Krk... hk!"
"I'm a little disappointed. Did you really think something like this could stop a 7th Rank? Seems you were looking down on me."
But with a snort, Malton immediately suppressed the Artifact's mana. No specialized countermeasure at all—just brute-forcing the mana through sheer power. It was crude, but devastatingly effective.
The high-grade Artifact's bright glow dimmed and died; the mana crumpled inward and vanished.
Having pulverized even Adam's final act of resistance, Malton lifted the corner of his mouth.
"I have to knock you out anyway. Just accept it quietly."
"Ghk, hhrrk—!"
"You've been insolent this whole time and it grated on me. Consider this petty revenge—it'll hurt a little."
From Malton's perspective as a 7th Rank, there were many ways to knock out a mere 1st Rank like Adam. Given that Adam had just broadcast the cancellation of the terror-response drill, the correct move was to incapacitate him quickly and leave.
Malton, though, deliberately chose the slower, most painful route—blocking Adam's airway and choking him out.
Adam's ragged gasps and agonized voice filled the room, and just as his thrashing began to subside—
"—What?!"
Fwshooom!!
A sword materialized out of thin air and swung straight for Malton. Sensing danger, he hastily released Adam's collar and hurled himself backward.
He had let his guard down, but he was still a 7th Rank—and yet he hadn't even detected her presence. Had his reaction been a hair slower, it would've been a fatal blow.
In an instant, Malton wrapped both fists in Rigid Energy and bared his teeth.
"Who's there?!"
"......What an idiot I am."
"What—?"
"My body moved before my head did."
From the darkness, a figure emerged: black clothing, white hair, and the very sword that had just threatened Malton.
Rus gave a self-mocking laugh as she planted herself before Adam—who lay sprawled on the floor, coughing and dry-heaving—as if to shield him.
"Sword Aura... You're 6th Rank? At that age?"
"What, never seen a 6th Rank before?"
"You wretched bitch—!"
To think he hadn't sensed the presence of a 6th Rank. Malton's eyes burned with fury, but he quickly composed himself and marshaled his Rigid Energy.
The gap between 6th and 7th was substantial—but to reach the 6th Rank at such a young age meant she was a prodigy. Judging by her stealth just now, it was smart to assume her capabilities exceeded his expectations.
On top of that, Malton himself was a half-baked 7th Rank who'd climbed there on the Dark Sword's borrowed power. And now that the Dark Sword had vanished, even that power had weakened. Prolonging this was never an option to begin with.
"Hup!!"
Finish it fast. Having made that call, Malton gathered every scrap of usable Rigid Energy into his fist.
Putting too much into the blow could turn a 1st Rank like Adam to paste, but that wasn't his concern right now. Malton always prioritized his own welfare above all else.
"You'll regret that I didn't finish this sooner!"
"......"
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!
The Rigid-Energy-charged fist's mere aftershock turned the room into a wreck, and the instant he thrust it toward Rus—
"No."
"...?!"
Rus drew the rusty sword's blade across her own hand, splitting the skin, and let drops of blood fall onto the edge.
It was only a few drops of blood, but the old sword slurped them up as greedily as if they were the water of life. The sight was so intimately familiar that Malton's eyes flew wide—
"That's not going to happen."
For just a heartbeat, the rusted sword revealed a glimpse of its black blade, and in that moment, it wreathed itself in Sword Aura.
Sword Aura versus Rigid Energy: which held the advantage was clear. Even Rus couldn't match Rigid Energy head-on with Sword Aura alone.
But the Dark Sword changed the equation.
KABOOOOOOM!!!!
A thunderous roar split the room; someone shot through the broken window and flew into the distance. It was Malton, reduced to a bloodied mess, sent hurtling straight into another building and embedded in the wall.
Inside the ruined room, having overwhelmed Malton in a single stroke, Rus quietly reached toward Adam, who lay collapsed on the floor as if unconscious.
"I know you're not unconscious."
"Hm. How did you know?"
"Because I know about the Artifact you just used."
"What? How could you know? The Chairwoman assured me no one else was aware of it."
"...There are ways."
Would he even understand if she explained that that Artifact had saved the previous cycle's Adam more than once?
With deadened eyes, Rus stared down at Adam, who was wearing an awkward expression.
And at the same time, she thought to herself that she truly was an idiot.
"Idiot."
"Excuse me? That's a bit harsh, even so—."
"I watched... every single thing you did. I still haven't even reached a conclusion. No matter what excuse you try to dress it up in, you were behind the terror attack—that fact doesn't change."
"......."
"...When it looked like you were in danger, I jumped out. I had resolved to stand by and observe to the bitter end, but my body moved before my head could stop it."
Which meant.
It seemed that, I—.
It seemed that I... didn't want Adam to die or get hurt. No matter how hard I tried to draw the line, in the end I always turned back to Adam.
And yet I couldn't accept that this emotion stemmed from affection or respect—because I hated Adam as much as I esteemed him.
'...I'm the only one who's allowed to hurt Adam. That's why.'
Just like before.
I, Rus, and I alone, had the right to be the one at Adam's end. Only I could hurt him. Only I could knock him out. Only I could make blood flow from his throat.
Having thus persuaded herself, Rus looked down at Adam with eyes still dead.
"So tell me."
"...Tell you what?"
"Why you did all of this. All of it—before I swing this sword at you."
She would at least hear him out. Whether it was an excuse, self-rationalization, or genuinely hidden intent—whatever it was.
Doing so felt like the only way these feelings of betrayal, hatred, fury, and regret might somehow subside. The only way she might regain control of herself.
Adam swallowed hard, visibly tense at Rus's ultimatum.
"Before that, may I ask just one thing?"
"What on earth could you possibly—in this situation—?"
"Are you really Student Rus?"
"...Huh?"
"You were... a woman?"
At Adam's dumbfounded tone, Rus slowly turned her head toward the shattered window.
A distractingly large chest, feminine curves, and even hair left loose. The culprits were obvious: she'd untied her chest binding and reverted her skeletal structure back to normal so she could observe more comfortably, since she'd planned to stay out of it anyway.
Thus, in a situation where each had stumbled upon the other's secret—
"............."
"................"
—a vicious silence alone dragged on.