Midterm Exams of the First Semester (5)
Schluss stood motionless, utterly silent, rooted to the spot. At first, Trie thought he might be weaving some kind of spell, but—
BOOM!
“Huh?!”
The moment the yellow flash swallowed him, Trie’s eyes flew wide. A direct hit. From a blast hot enough to melt solid rock. Or rather, a hologram perfectly recreating that flame magic.
Is… is he dead?!
Surviving a blaze like that should have been impossible. Unless there was some kind of barrier in place. But when Trie extended her faint detection ability, she sensed no barrier at all. To block that kind of firepower, any barrier would need to be powerful enough for even her to notice.
“Schluss Heinkel! Injured!”
“What…?”
Trie was stunned by the mechanical voice that came from the artifact. Injured? Not a fatality verdict?
For a second she suspected the device was malfunctioning. But when she saw Sergei standing beside her with his mouth hanging open in equal shock, that suspicion vanished.
Sergei calmly examined every calculation the artifact had made. The amount of mana Ainz had poured in. The shape of the spell formula. Even the environmental factors affecting the magic’s performance. Everything had been projected with perfect accuracy into reality.
Rumble…
“Heh. Hehehe. Heh heh… Hahahaha!”
From within the smoke, a dark silhouette finally emerged. It was Schluss Heinkel, standing exactly where he had been when the flash struck him. He hadn’t shifted his posture even an inch. His expression hadn’t changed either. He looked perfectly calm, as if nothing had happened at all.
Sergei stared in disbelief and checked the artifact again. This time he focused on Schluss’s physical condition rather than Ainz’s magic. And according to the artifact…
“How is this even possible?”
For a single second, Schluss’s bodily toughness had skyrocketed to an unmeasurable level. It wasn’t a barrier. It wasn’t magic. He had simply endured the spell with nothing but his own body.
Sergei had heard of something like this before.
The Diamond Indestructible Body…!
The legendary technique said to make the body infinitely hard. There had been theories that it was nothing more than a rumor born from mistaking a Ma-in pretending to be human, but now he had no choice but to believe it. That the technique from legend truly existed.
I had let my guard down. No, that wasn’t quite right. I hadn’t been careless. Ainz had simply been far more clever than I expected.
The old Ainz would have mindlessly tried to slam me with maximum-output flame magic right from the start. In that case, I would have dismantled the spell in an instant, closed the distance, and thrown him to the ground.
But I couldn’t do that this time. Because I hadn’t even been able to detect the spell formula.
Damn it…
Completely hiding a spell formula from me should have been practically impossible. Ainz knew that too. So he had used a clever trick. He had woven a formula that emitted a wavelength nearly identical to the one the simulation artifact gave off. He had chosen to hide a tree inside a forest.
Thanks to that, I was trapped inside a barrier the moment the match began. A mana-vacuum barrier. It had probably been designed to restrict my magic casting, but as a result, I had been blinded and deafened.
Feeling something was off, I had activated Selection and Concentration on my toughness for exactly one second. Sure enough, the flame magic—or rather, the projected effect of it—slammed into me immediately.
It’s bearable, at least.
The injury effect made my whole body sting as if I had been burned. Even with a toughness stat over 100, I still took damage from Ainz’s flames… It really drove home just how monstrous his talent was. If he could land a hit, he could deal meaningful damage even to a Ma-in.
Found it.
When I wasn’t paying attention, I hadn’t noticed it at all. But once I focused, I could finally tell which wavelengths belonged to the artifact and which came from Ainz’s spell. I dismantled the barrier in a single instant.
The thick smoke around me cleared, and Ainz came into view, staring blankly.
“Hey, this… the gap is way too big…”
Looking utterly defeated, Ainz dropped straight onto his backside.
One step. Then another. Every time I took a step, a new spell formula tried to form, only to be forcibly dismantled. After repeating this about ten times, no more formulas appeared in the mana. It looked like Ainz had completely run out of power.
“Well? Want to try a bare-handed fight?”
“Screw that. I know damn well you spar with that muscle girl every single day. How could I possibly be a match for you? I surrender.”
Piiiieeeep!
The whistle blew, signaling the end of all matches. It seemed this bout had lasted the longest.
I grabbed Ainz’s hand, pulled him up, and helped him to his feet.
“Good work.”
“Yeah… wow. You really are incredible. I can’t beat you. Not a chance…”
As he passed by me, Ainz couldn’t meet my eyes. Something felt off. It was fine for him to feel respect toward me, but fear was a problem. Or maybe it was more like an inferiority complex. If that was the case, it was something Ainz would have to overcome on his own. After all, now that he had awakened, his growth potential was so ridiculous he could probably even surpass Hurtlocker someday.
“As for Trie…”
She had won, of course. It would have been nice if a miracle had happened and she lost, but it looked like I would end up facing her in the finals after all. Assuming I could endure the next two matches, that is.
I had managed to get through the fight with Ainz using only one second of Selection and Concentration, but—
“The injury you received in the first match will be maintained until the end. That means the pain you’re feeling right now will continue.”
“Ha…”
Because of that penalty, I had been saddled with the injury effect. My entire body didn’t just sting—it felt like it was on fire. And I had to keep feeling this the whole time…
If I could, I would have smashed the artifact causing this pain to pieces.
“We will begin the second match immediately!”
“Huu… haa… haaa…”
If I took another injury penalty here, I really wouldn’t be able to move. I forced out ragged breaths and stepped back onto the arena floor.
My opponent this time was… some extra whose name I didn’t even know. I couldn’t let my guard down, but at the very least he wouldn’t be faster than Trie or stronger in mana than Ainz.
“Please take care of me.”
“Hiiik!”
For some reason the opponent looked terrified as we shook hands. I returned to the starting position. Time to finish this quickly.
Both the second and third matches ended without any upsets. In the end, the finalists were Schluss Heinkel and Edengard Trie von dem Schulzenburg.
Trie had finished every match in less than a second, closing the distance before her opponents could even activate their spells. Schluss’s matches had been a little different. In the second, he dismantled all of his opponent’s spells, charged in, and forced a surrender through bare-handed combat. In the third, he suddenly rapid-fired mana-discharge spells to silence his foe.
Repeating the same tactic over and over usually made one vulnerable to counters, but… Schluss’s spell-disruption ability was so overwhelming that the students had no way to deal with it no matter how many times he used it. Sergei simply couldn’t understand why Schluss had bothered wasting mana like that.
“We will now proceed with the final match. Since the point difference between first and second place isn’t that big, don’t get too worked up about it.”
It was meant to ease the tension, but Schluss still looked terrible. His breathing was irregular and labored, and cold sweat beaded on his forehead. It was all because of the injury penalty the artifact was inflicting on him. Even so, he didn’t complain about the pain once. He stood as straight and tall as Trie.
“Professor. Could you at least give me time to retrieve my weapon?”
“No. Once the exam has begun, bringing in weapons from outside is not allowed.”
Sergei immediately shot down Trie’s request. Carrying a weapon was the easiest way to maintain high combat power at all times. This exam was also meant to evaluate that kind of preparedness. After all, you couldn’t turn your back on the enemy in the middle of a battlefield just to go grab a weapon.
“Contestants, face each other.”
With the other students seated around them watching, the final match was about to begin. Even Sergei had no idea what kind of fight it would turn into. Since Trie preferred strengthening her body with her internal circuit rather than using magic, spell disruption would be useless. It would most likely come down to whether Schluss could deploy his magic faster than Trie could charge in. No matter how strong Schluss was in close quarters, beating Gawain’s daughter while she held a sword would be no easy task.
I wonder if he’ll show us something bizarre again.
Sergei swallowed hard. Just moments ago, Schluss had openly displayed what appeared to be the Diamond Indestructible Body right in front of the students. It was quite different from the restrained power he had shown before. Perhaps after using that spell in the Wist Forest, he had decided to stop hiding his strength. If so, maybe he still had more to reveal. Maybe he was planning to show it now.
“Begin on my signal.”
“……”
“……”
Trie lowered her stance, ready to burst forward. Schluss stood perfectly upright where he was. Just as expected. Trie would close in, and Schluss would try to end it with magic before she could reach him. A heavy, breathless silence fell over the exam grounds. Everyone forgot to breathe as they focused—
“Begin!”
The match started. At the same time, every physical stat displayed on the artifact for Trie shot upward. She had activated her internal circuit. She had already crossed half the arena, yet not a single spell formula had been deployed. Had Schluss given up? It looked like the match was already decided—
“Eh?!”
Trie’s eyes widened as she slammed on the brakes and came to a sudden stop. Stopping against Schluss? Had she lost her mind?
Unable to understand, Sergei tilted his head and looked at Schluss. Then his own eyes widened.
Ziiiing…
From Schluss’s right hand. A blue pillar of light was rising from his palm. It wasn’t magic. There wasn’t a single spell formula deployed in the surrounding mana. It was something that wasn’t magic, and therefore couldn’t be dismantled.
At that point, Sergei gave up trying to predict the outcome of the match.