Master of the Demonic Sword (3)
The swordsmanship students under Kayden were making their way along a path carved into the edge of a cliff, moving in formation with the rest of their assigned group.
Scattered across the sheer mountain peaks and cliff faces visible beyond the forest were massive circular holes, as though some great insect had gnawed its way through the stone.
The students surveying their surroundings could not help but let out gasps of awe.
"Whoa…"
This was not the work of nature. Someone had sculpted this terrain deliberately, by hand.
Just like the Alheim Basin they were walking through now.
"The Sword Saint Gilbert… what kind of person was he, really?"
Kayden murmured the name almost to himself. Among anyone who took pride in the blade, there was not a single soul who did not know the First Knight.
"How could a human do something like this…"
"Ednair scares me more."
Siri, the alchemy student walking ahead, replied without missing a beat.
"I mean, she fought that Sword Saint to a mutual death, right? Ugh…"
She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself.
Ednair was the name of the first and only Apostle in history to hold the power of three Demon Gods within a single body.
Even now, the witches of the continent revered Ednair as their matriarch, scheming in the shadows to fulfill the grand ambition she had left unfinished.
And it was here, in the Alheim Basin, that the Sword Saint had turned back Ednair as she marched upon Elysion.
"But why Elysion of all places?"
"Because if you break the Great Barrier, you can open a Permanent Rift straight through it."
Her wicked scheme to bring about a second fall of the Elven Empire had been shattered on the edge of Gilbert's blade.
After ten days and ten nights of relentless combat, the Sword Saint Gilbert had cut Ednair down—but he himself had suffered fatal wounds and died shortly after their duel ended.
Thus was the legend of the Sword Saint completed, a thousand years ago, by a tragic death.
And the clash between those two had hollowed out what was once a mountain range, carving it into the vast basin that stretched below them now.
The spring at the forest's center—their destination—was likewise the product of that titanic mana collision, born when the churned underground water had burst violently to the surface.
"I saw a paper in the library once that argued the Sword Saint and Ednair might have actually been lovers."
"Where do you keep digging up this weird stuff?"
Kelsi, the magic department student, scoffed at Siri's remark.
"If you were the Sword Saint, would you really date a witch? Every beautiful woman in the world would be lining up for you. Honestly, I'd sooner believe it was a love triangle between the Archmage, the witch, and the Sword Saint."
"There actually was a theory like that. There's a record that the Archmage Dorothy expressed feelings for the Sword Saint during her lifetime, you know? And when they compared the handwriting on the letter, it matched her own exactly—"
"You're completely cracked…"
Kelsi shook his head in exasperation as Siri's eccentric alchemist streak came fully online.
The other group members, showing about as much tension as one would expect, chatted idly back and forth.
With his friendly face and steady, manly demeanor, Kayden was well-connected regardless of department. Thanks to that, he had managed to assemble what might have been the optimal group: two from swordsmanship, two from magic, and one from alchemy.
"I wonder if Yulian and Zarel are holding up okay…"
Kayden sighed quietly at the thought of his friends from the swordsmanship department.
After passing through the cliffside path, the scenery of the forest began to reappear around them, sparse at first, then thicker.
Violet leaves, mushrooms spraying glittering spores, and grotesquely shaped mana beasts and plants that looked nothing like anything belonging to the surface world.
Combined with the isolated terrain and the spring at the heart of the forest, whose waters were saturated with the mana of ancient battle, the vegetation of Alheim had twisted into something far closer to the Illusion Realm than the Material Realm.
Realizing they were drawing quite close to the forest's center, the students' faces began to brighten.
"See? Taking the safe route is way better than rushing some shortcut and getting ambushed."
Siri, who had been in charge of the map, nodded with satisfaction.
"What's the point of being first to carve your name in? If you take an injury and get points docked for it, you've lost everything."
"It was a decent strategy."
Kayden's group had planned to aim for a stable, high score through careful group composition and a route chosen specifically to minimize threats.
"Who do you think carved their name first? Judith? Ena? Dalogo?"
"Could even be us, honestly…"
"Wait."
Suddenly, Kayden stopped the chattering students, sensing something.
At the sight of him drawing his sword with a tense expression, the rest of the group snapped into formation.
"What is it?"
"…There's something up ahead."
The group advanced slowly and cautiously, maintaining their formation.
And then, when they caught sight of what lay ahead, shock washed over their faces.
"Wh-What is this…?"
The corpse of a massive boar-like mana beast was rotting at the side of the path.
It had been hacked apart so savagely, as though someone had taken their frustration out on it, that merely looking at it turned the stomach.
"Who on earth…? This doesn't look like a person's work…"
"Maybe the mana beasts fought each other…?"
The closer they drew to the spring, the more frequently the corpses of mana beasts appeared along their path.
And at last, just as the lake-like expanse of the spring came into view in the distance—
Kayden's group member, Siri, spotted a girl lying collapsed at the side of the trail and screamed, sprinting toward her.
"Ena! Are you okay? Ena!!"
The unconscious student lay sprawled in the dirt, utterly motionless.
Across her abdomen was the unmistakable mark of having been struck with tremendous force by something.
"What could have…"
Kayden swallowed hard as he pressed forward.
The area around the spring was littered everywhere with students lying unconscious.
Then, as he scanned his surroundings, his eyes went wide at the sight of someone familiar.
"Zarel!"
Zarel of the swordsmanship department lay collapsed in the grass along with what appeared to be his own group members, all of them unconscious.
As though he had taken a powerful blow to the head, a fist-sized lump had swollen up on the back of Zarel's skull.
Kayden was just about to breathe a sigh of relief at the faint but steady pulse he could feel beneath his fingers—
"Ah, ugh…"
Someone appeared before them, staggering on unsteady feet.
"Who's there—! Huh?"
Kayden, who had instantly leveled his sword at the newcomer, could only stare in bewilderment.
Because he recognized immediately who was standing there.
"You… Potts…?"
"Hk… nngh…"
The arm holding Garnet's sword was trembling violently.
She thrust it out straight in front of her, without any balance or form, swaying it back and forth aimlessly.
It was a bizarre tableau—as though the sword were not being wielded by Garnet at all, but rather as if Garnet herself were being drawn along by the blade.
Then, staring at Kayden's group, Garnet desperately forced the words out.
"Run…! Hurry…"
"What are you talking about all of a sudden—"
"I can't control it… anymore… please…"
Tears were streaming down Garnet's face, one after another.
Kayden, listening to her incomprehensible plea, suddenly snapped back to his senses and shouted.
"Have you lost your mind! Even if you're blinded by your scores, attacking your fellow students—"
"N-no, it's me…! Please… run…"
"Don't think I'm just going to let this slide—! Wh…?"
Mid-rant, Kayden's face went blank for a moment.
Garnet was already crouched low, driving in beneath his guard.
And the hilt of her sword slammed into his abdomen with brutal force.
"Gwahk…!"
The impact sent his organs lurching. Kayden let out a single strangled groan and crumpled straight to the ground.
"Wh-What the…"
Through his dimming vision, he could still see Garnet, tears falling steadily down her cheeks.
The forest was utterly silent.
Garnet, having knocked down every last one of Kayden's group, stood rooted in place with her head bowed low, trembling.
When she raised her head again, her eyes held no focus—only a dull, clouded haze.
"O false glory in the heavens, descend upon this shadow-stained earth…"
At last, Garnet began to hum an eerie melody as she drifted toward the spring.
"Instead of wine, the cup is filled with black blood, ah, with a fragrant reek of sulfur that stings the nose…"
A thin haze was smoldering up from the surface of the vast, lake-like spring.
As Garnet took in the sheer density of the mana soaked into those waters, her lips split into a grin that stretched all the way to her ears.
The dried tear tracks still clinging to the corners of her eyes only made the scene all the more grotesque.
"O melting curse, O tattered veil of the sanctuary, peeled away like rotten skin…"
Standing right at the water's edge, Garnet gripped her sword—red light smoldering along its blade—in a reverse hold.
"Before the true Lord, I kneel."
And with that, she plunged it straight down into the spring.
"Ugh, I can't even do this right, seriously…"
Kallen grumbled to himself, hopelessly lost after wandering the forest paths.
It felt all the more pathetic—like he'd sold his soul for a measly handful of coins.
Playing sparring partner for students over and over again was starting to wear on him, too.
He stole a glance at the evaluation sheet tucked inside his coat and muttered.
"Well, at least the worst-case scenario I was worried about hasn't happened yet…"
He'd already gone a few dozen rounds with students, but not a single one had tried to betray and flee—they had all either fought back or run off crying instead.
If anything, what surprised him most was that there were even more students bravely standing their ground, like Judith had.
"Maybe they're just too young to know the value of their own lives… Someone's going to get seriously hurt one of these days…"
Still grumbling, Kallen got his bearings and turned around.
"Oh, so it's this way… huh?"
At some point, a dreadful silence had settled over the forest around him.
It was so strange that he couldn't even sense the presence of a single small animal, and Kallen's expression darkened.
Just as he was trying to read something from that silent forest—
-KWAAANG!!
A fierce gale erupted without warning from the heart of the forest and crashed over him.
"What now—ghk…!"
Kallen braced himself against the wind, driving his sword into the ground and holding on.
A strange sense of déjà vu washed over him.
A sudden, violent gust like this was always the harbinger of some dark ritual.
Kallen had experienced exactly this kind of thing before, in Monastin.
And when he finally managed to pull himself upright, his eyes went wide.
The sky around him had turned a vivid, glaring red, as though blood were raining down from the heavens.
Several rivers, great and small, flowed through Alheim Forest from north to south.
Because they ran directly against the direction of the exam, students couldn't use them to travel—but on the flip side, they were extremely useful for ferrying out those who gave up midway or were injured.
"I seriously thought he was an actual Demonic Human…"
"Me too…"
At the base camp beside the main river's slow-moving confluence, where the professors and support staff were stationed, the students who'd been fooled by the actors disguised as Demonic Humans were venting their various complaints.
Only now had they understood the true purpose of the exam.
The sole consolation, if it could be called that, was that no one seemed to have actually fallen for the organizers' real design yet.
A few students who had resisted instead of fleeing were actually wearing bright, pleased expressions, clearly expecting high marks for it.
"To think he dared deceive me."
Meanwhile, Judith, settled in with a group of girls on one side of the camp, murmured in a cold voice.
"Something was off about him. That smell of booze and lonely old bachelor… why didn't I recognize it sooner… haa…"
"Smell…?"
Hanna, sitting beside her, tilted her head.
"What do you mean by that, Judith…?"
"…Ah."
Only then did Judith realize what she'd said, and she clamped her mouth shut.
As she whipped her head away, her cheeks had already flushed a deep red.
Why on earth do I remember what that man smells like…!
And so, while Judith was drowning alone in an inexplicable shame—
"Th-that lunatic has completely lost it!"
A commotion broke out at the dock where the ferryboats were drifting in.
Pas, his shoulders exposed and his upper half wrapped haphazardly in bandages, scrambled off the boat practically on all fours.
And then, his face bone-white, he screamed as though his life depended on it.
"S-something was seriously wrong with her! Stop the exam right now and arrest that girl, this instant!!"