Training Instructor Irie (2)
"I'll face him."
Stepping forward was the male student who'd been practicing wind magic at the far end of the training ground earlier. I'd only given him a rough once-over, but on pure skill he sat comfortably in this class's upper tier — I remembered both his casting speed and the punch behind his spells being quite respectable. At his confident entrance, the watching students erupted into cheers.
"Whoaaa! Take him down fast, Hafel!"
"Show them what Class A is made of! Don't you dare lose to a guy without even any mana!"
"...Hang in there, Hafel!"
In the entire training ground, the only one on my side was Emilia, timidly raising her hand toward me from way off in the back.
Theodore, who had been quietly observing the whole scene, addressed me with a look that said he found it all rather mortifying.
"Ahem. They're at that hot-blooded age — keeping a firm rein on them is no easy task, I confess. I'm sorry it's come to this, Instructor Irie."
That was what he said, but the old headmaster's eyes were gleaming with curiosity. Pleased to have a chance to peek at what I can do, aren't we? So this was the friend of old man Dalton — and no surprise, the man was a sly old snake.
"Think nothing of it. Still, the students mustn't get hurt, so I'll be sure to keep my strength in check."
At that, Theodore burst out laughing.
"Hehehe! There's no need to handle them quite so gently. Our academy happens to possess a very fine item for exactly this occasion."
Theodore produced two silver-gleaming bracelets that had been carefully enshrined off to the right side of the training ground.
"These are training artifacts that convert every impact received in combat into phantom pain. Your whole body could be set aflame, you could take a mortal wound — the device bars all actual damage to the flesh while delivering to the wearer pain exactly commensurate with the injury."
Having finished his explanation, the headmaster handed one of the bracelets to the male student first.
"The gem at the bracelet's center, in particular, lets you read the wearer's condition in real time. Green for normal, yellow for caution — and once the wearer reaches his limit, the gem turns red."
The moment those words ended, Theodore held the remaining bracelet out to me. I declined it politely with a slight bow.
"It's quite all right. I don't need to wear one."
The headmaster studied my face for a moment, then broke into a gentle smile.
"Hehe. It seems I fussed over nothing."
The instant the headmaster meekly put the bracelet away, the student standing opposite me screwed his face into a deep scowl.
His pride, it seemed, had been thoroughly rubbed the wrong way.
"Shouldn't that bracelet be on the instructor's wrist, not mine?"
The boy flashed me a smile that was less smile than sneer, its mocking edge plain as day.
"What will you do if you're busy striking poses and my magic takes your hand clean off? If you end up unable to grip even that trifling little weapon of yours, we'd feel simply dreadful, wouldn't we?"
What a considerate young man, fussing so kindly over my very body. Why, his devotion to his instructor nearly brought tears to my eyes. To that fine, upstanding student, I returned his smile — reaching for the scabbard rather than the sword lying on the ground.
"Hafel, was it? I appreciate the concern, but you'd best mind your own hide first."
"...What?"
"Take one of my hits head-on and it hurts a deal more than you'd think."
I beckoned lazily to the boy as he readied himself.
"I'll stand right here, so attack first."
"Bluffing to the very end, I see—"
My words had plainly stung, because Hafel went scarlet with rage and thrust his right hand straight out at me.
"Cut my enemy down!"
⟨ WIND CUTTER ⟩
Whooooom!
With the chant, a volley of razor-edged wind blades came shrieking toward me. His spell looked to be aimed dead at my throat.
Swish.
Without so much as properly grazing my face, it streamed right past and away.
Crack!
The runaway blades slammed into the transparent barrier stretched around the training ground with a resounding crash, and all that power scattered into nothing — mighty as it had been.
"...Huh?"
"Put a bit more into it. If you can't hit a man who's standing still, what exactly are you trying to do?"
At my insufferable provocation, Hafel's brow knotted up tight.
"Y-you bastard...! You dodged that on sheer luck!"
Was impatience creeping in? This time, Hafel wove his spell from a far terser chant.
Three Wind Spheres came flying from his hand — one head-on, the other two splitting left and right. Judging by the trajectories, he'd genuinely used his head, but he had picked a truly unfortunate opponent.
I had lived through the Demon King's wide-area spells that ground people away by the hundreds with a single casting. Frankly, the magic in front of me was so tame it wrung a sigh out of me.
Whish-whish-whish!
With a light step to the right, I let every incoming sphere slip past by no more than a sheet of paper's breadth. A flawless acrobatic feat — possible only because I could see, in perfect clarity, the cores composing his magic.
"...!"
Even watching all this, Hafel refused to quit, spitting out spell after spell without a moment's breath — and not a single one so much as touched me. His blind, wasted magic did no more than break against the training ground's transparent barrier, crumbling away into futility.
"Wh-what...? Is there actually something to him?"
"Hey, Hafel! Quit messing around and do it for real!"
As the situation swerved somewhere none of them had foreseen, the color began to drain, bit by bit, from the faces of students who had lounged in easy certainty of Hafel's victory.
And Hafel, the man at the center of it all, was no better. He stared at his own right hand, dumbstruck, trembling uncontrollably. Deep bewilderment and fear had settled into his eyes — the crushing weight of a gulf he could feel in his very bones: he had poured out every last drop of mana he possessed, and not a fragment of it had reached the man standing before him.
I put a light question to the boy who had frozen in place.
"Done?"
"..."
"Pull yourself together. Or quit, right now."
At that word, quit, the light in his guttering eyes flared back to life.
"D-don't make me laugh...!"
With a roar, Hafel flung both hands high into the sky this time. A tide of mana incomparably vaster than anything before came streaming in around him.
"O storm of wind, tear my enemy to shreds!!"
⟨ WIND TORNADO ⟩
With that brimming confidence, the tens of thousands of green threads converging on his hands wove themselves into a core in an instant — and a colossal tornado began to take shape.
"Oooh...!"
"Hafel, you could use magic like that?!"
It was more than enough magic to feed the students' expectations. This time, at last, they could knock that instructor flat — the thought set every watching eye alight.
But for all the fever in the air, my head had gone endlessly cold.
That chant is one hell of a mouthful.
The power climbs high, all right. He'd likely shoved through his own ceiling for no other reason than that he hated the thought of losing to me. But chase nothing but raw power, and the core binding all that mana into one hangs out in the open, plain as day.
"Dieeeee!!!"
With Hafel's scream, the colossal storm of wind came crashing down upon me.
Out of a sliver of respect for the boy, this time I moved my body a little. Scabbard in hand, I strode unhurriedly into the oncoming maelstrom — and straight toward its furiously spinning heart, I poked the scabbard in.
Fwoooosh!
Like a pin driven into an overinflated balloon, the spell — its core pierced clean through — left nothing behind but a hollow wheeze, losing its shape in an instant and scattering to nothing.
"...Huh?"
"Wh-what?! Where in the world did the magic go?!"
"In-sane... he just erased it? With that one stick?!"
Before the students' astonished cries could even fade, I — having just cleaved his magic apart — rode the speed and recoil, kicked off the ground, and drove in straight for Hafel's nose.
"Ha... haha..."
Watching the spell he'd believed his masterpiece simply evaporate had plunged Hafel into shock.
At that boy's shoulder, I brought the scabbard in my grip down in a light, clean stroke.
WHAM!
"KUAAAAAAAGH!!"
With a dull crunch like bone shattering to gravel, Hafel went rolling across the training ground floor, shrieking in agony.
BEEP!!
The gem in the bracelet at his wrist had long since drowned in red, wailing its shrill alarm.
"M-my shoulder! AAAGH!! My — my shoulder's broken!!"
I rapped the boy on the head and spoke, flat as ever.
"Spare me the theatrics. I barely tapped you, and thanks to that bracelet, nothing's actually broken."
"Kk... khhhhh..."
"Well. The pain's real enough."
Just then, a sharp cry burst from the crowd of students — the girl who had been cheering the boy on so timidly only moments before.
"H-Hafel!!"
She burst out, white as a sheet, threw her arms around Hafel where he sat crumpled on the ground, and began to tremble uncontrollably. His anguished groans had already brimmed her eyes to overflowing with tears.
"Why... how could you do something this cruel...?"
A look of bitter reproach stabbed into me.
But I offered no excuse of any kind. I simply gazed down at the two of them, face impassive, and answered.
"If he's hurt, carry him to the infirmary."
Honestly, I could have coaxed her with gentler words, offered some comfort. But hadn't Elenora said as much earlier? This was an academy that raised the very people who would one day fight on true battlefields.
Death on a battlefield is perfectly equal to all who come to it unprepared.
And death does not wait just because you happen to have a story to tell. Least of all for a boy with someone that precious standing at his side. Every second spent resenting me and slumped in the dirt is a second he should have spent making himself stronger.
Because that's what real combat is.
I brushed away the faint sprigs of regret and rumination blooming in my mind and turned my head toward the center of the training ground.
Where my gaze landed stood the imperial princess — frozen stiff, watching the whole spectacle in breathless silence.
Meeting those wavering blue eyes of hers, I asked, dry as ever.
"And now? Are you a little more convinced of what I can do, Your Highness?"