I Wanna Fight, Sparrow-Style
It's nothing all that amazing, but the Academy has a Teleportation Station.
Common sense says walking across the sprawling grounds is simply impossible.
So about eight of them are installed at various points across the campus.
…Hmm.
Honestly, it was pretty badass. It felt a bit like showing off, sure. A teleport system even the Grand mages can't manage?
That was, admittedly, pretty cool.
'Of course, there are plenty of restrictions.'
A single teleport consumed an enormous amount of resources. Dozens of mages poured their mana into the circle for three full hours just to preheat it. Every mage used during the warm-up was then swapped out, and another few dozen were cycled in for the actual teleport.
And it wasn't as if people alone were enough. You needed cores from monsters powerful enough to level a city with a flick of their tail — glittering mana stones that served as batteries. Two or three uses per stone, maybe.
Which meant the Teleportation Station couldn't exactly be treated like a subway.
I mean, it would be possible if the imperial treasury doubled its taxes.
But the empire would collapse for real if that happened, so the portals only operated on a handful of designated occasions.
Like today. Exam day.
[It's enormous.]
After a trek of several dozen minutes, a building resembling an ancient temple finally came into view in the distance.
That was the station.
"…It's even more massive than I imagined."
Even Lucia seemed a little taken aback by the sight.
Naturally, her expression didn't change one bit.
'That's not what matters, though.'
Before I could lose myself in awe at the heart-swelling scale of the station, there was something I absolutely had to do.
'The teleport formula will be mine.'
I hadn't been studying it because the resources required for activation were absurd and the conditions brutally strict. But since I was here anyway, I figured I'd just steal the formula outright.
'Mmm. I see.'
For reasons beyond my understanding, the ChirpGPT installed in my brain simply couldn't create anything related to teleportation. Fortunately, analyzing it was easy, so I was breezing through the work when—
'…There's someone quite a ways behind us.'
Someone was walking toward us from far back. Tracing the flow of mana to pin down their position… no matter how fast they ran, they wouldn't beat the clock.
'Poor kid.'
The teleport fired at exactly the designated time, no exceptions. Latecomers were mercilessly barred from the exam.
Well, they could still make it if they sprinted all the way to the exam site.
'But it's way too far from here.'
This station sat almost directly opposite the exam grounds.
While I was feeling sorry for the poor student, time marched steadily on, and soon we stood inside the station — on a vast magic circle crowded with hundreds of cadets.
The examination will begin shortly.
You will be teleported to a random location within the exam grounds. Please remain still and wait calmly.
Teleportation will commence in 10 seconds.
A deep blue light swallowed the space around us.
"…We're in a forest."
Lucia's starting point was the woods.
Thankfully, she didn't run into any monsters right off the bat.
'Guess I'll just read the surroundings for a while.'
I'd decided to avoid using telepathy during the exam unless absolutely necessary.
One stray hint could derail everything.
'She'll be lonely for two days.'
There I was, already worrying about that — but what about Lucia?
She was always alone in the original story, so she'd probably be fine—
"It seems the early going is safe, at least."
Lucia stroked the top of my head.
[Right. What a relief.]
I nodded along and sent the thought without thinking.
"…I hadn't confirmed that myself, you see. Did you just tell me the surroundings were safe?"
[Huh? No, I was just agreeing with you.]
Lucia's blue eyes fixed on me. That cold, unreadable expression — not a trace of emotion to be found.
This was serious—
"—Just kidding."
[….]
Anyway. Lucia kept moving.
'Should I take a look at her gear?'
Unlike the pair she'd used in our last sparring match, this time she wore them on both wrists and both ankles — all four at once. The appearance was a little different, too. Black, fairly thick, and even shimmering with light!
'…Aren't those smartwatches?'
And here was Lucia, wearing four of them. A strange feeling kept creeping up on me.
'Banish the stray thoughts.'
In a sense, this exam had her very life riding on it. Every now and then, a monster would go berserk, or the defensive enchantments on a magical device would malfunction.
Nothing threatening around us at the moment, so…
'Inspection first.'
Time to audit the Academy for embezzlement. The most critical piece — the defensive magic…
'Passes with flying colors.'
Next. The return spell that activates if the defensive barrier takes damage…
'Absolutely flawless.'
Truthfully, I'd scrutinized this far harder than the shield itself. A weak barrier doesn't kill you instantly. But a return spell that fails to fire at the moment of death?
That's how a cadet actually dies.
'And that's when the imperial special audit comes down on the Academy for real.'
If so much as one precious scion of a noble house got tangled in something like that, the imperial inspectors would descend on the Academy before the body was cold.
Anyway.
'It really is something impressive.'
The defensive magic, as always, drew a continuous supply of mana from the exam grounds themselves. If I'd assumed it all ran off whatever was stored in that little bracelet, I'd have been dead wrong — under that design, every single cadet would be ejected within five minutes of the start.
'…But this teleport formula is a bit unusual.'
It was completely different from the group teleport we'd ridden at the station.
'This one's far harder.'
Moving everything within a designated space versus selecting exactly one person and teleporting them instantly — the difficulty was on another plane entirely. Which was probably why this spell came burdened with far more constraints. Only from certain spaces, only at certain times, only under certain conditions, only to a fixed destination, one-way only… and so on.
It was crusted over with restrictions like the runic language of classic high fantasy. A bit of a headache, honestly.
'But either way, it means she's safe.'
Safety inspection complete.
As Lucia pressed on, my thoughts drifted along in that fashion until—
Mana stirred up ahead.
'Another cadet?'
The distance was nothing — a hundred meters at most. I glanced sidelong at Lucia; she hadn't noticed.
'They're going to run into each other.'
The moment I read the mana more closely just to gauge their general skill level, I realized something was off. It was familiar. This was unmistakably mana I'd sensed for the first time today.
'Don't tell me — that kid?'
The latecomer who'd failed to reach the Teleportation Station in time. I'd naturally assumed he'd miss the exam entirely, but apparently he'd somehow made it after all.
'…Whew.'
It was a distance that would take even high-speed flight several minutes to cover.
And he'd done it in less than a few dozen minutes.
'Did you teleport too?'
No. Obviously not.
For now, I waited as inconspicuously as I could. The latecomer must have burned through his mana just getting here; he'd be in no condition to fight. My scan confirmed it.
'Mana reserves: nearly empty.'
So low that an ordinary cadet might not even realize he had any left. My apologies, latecomer — but you're going to have to quietly become a line on Lucia's scorecard.
As the distance closed at a leisurely pace—
-WHUMP!
The ground shuddered. The tremor spread from somewhere quite close.
'Time for the mid-tier monsters to start showing up, huh.'
Right after the exam began, the only encounters were trash mobs like goblins and kobolds. Beefier monsters like ogres were summoned after a wait of one to three minutes.
"…Hoo."
Lucia swept her gaze over her surroundings, then headed straight for the source of the tremor. Points were awarded based on the number of cadets she retired and monsters she slew, so she intended to start running up her score from the very beginning.
'Will the latecomer run?'
I checked his mana again.
…He had vanished without a trace. Forget the speed of the disappearance — there wasn't a single trace left behind. This didn't even look like fleeing.
'What the hell?'
Head brimming with questions, I came face to face with the ogre's broad back.
"Kyaeeeek! I don't wanna be eliminated this early!"
A girl had toppled over backward and was shrieking. The ogre raised its club and lumbered toward her.
-WHUMP!
Lucia's mana bullet beat it to the punch — fast.
Though the spell's target was not, in fact, the ogre.
The cadet's head.
-KWA-BOOM!
"N-nooo…! That's unfair…!"
Wrapped in blue light, she was ejected from the exam.
"Urgh…?"
The ogre seemed flustered by the spell that had suddenly come flying in.
"…Groohk!"
It spotted Lucia a beat too late and charged — but the distance between them was fifteen meters.
Besides, fifty spells were already laid out around Lucia. The mana converged, a blue sphere on the verge of forming when—
-KRAK-BOOM!
Lightning magic tore through the air. The ogre, roasted whole, crumbled into blue powder and scattered.
"…?"
Lucia was still fully absorbed in maintaining her spells and hadn't managed to read the surrounding mana.
'That's something to fix later.'
Be that as it may, that wasn't what mattered right now.
-Rustle.
Someone was approaching through the grass on the opposite side. The heinous lightning mage who'd just stolen Lucia's point.
The fact that she was showing herself openly meant she was probably planning to fight, too.
"Don't take it personally. Just as you dealt with another cadet moments ago, this is an exam of pure competition."
The purple-haired girl walked out at an easy pace, a faint smile on her lips.
"If you want to fight me, then figh—"
Her green eyes found Lucia.
Veronica Ardi — a girl blessed with a talent for lightning magic that could be called nothing short of blasphemous.
"…You want to fight?"
"N-no. Um…?"
Her eyes wavered wildly.