The Academy's Assault (4)
The cave was filled with marble, damp and pitch-black. The moment they emerged from it, they found themselves on a cliff at the southernmost tip of the continent.
The sun was sinking low, painting the sky in deep orange hues. Waves crashed against the cliff with rhythmic roars. Standing atop it was the headmaster, Ash Bell Draig.
Before her stood the one who had dragged her here: a massive figure clad head to toe in black armor. Beside him was a woman wearing a mask and wielding an enormous scythe.
Ash glanced around once before letting out a small sigh.
Her tone was calm, carrying neither resentment nor excuses. Yet her eyes held clear surprise. What astonished her wasn’t simply being ambushed before she could cast a spell. It was the fact that they had brought her here by leaping through space itself.
After all, magic capable of spatial transportation did not exist.
Ash scanned her surroundings once more. The gate she had just stepped out of. And the marble inexplicably embedded into the coastal cliff. Something that clearly did not belong on this seaside precipice had been mixed into the landscape.
She turned her gaze toward the giant, who seemed to know what was happening, and spoke.
The one who answered wasn’t the giant, but the woman beside him holding the massive scythe.
The giant let out a small sigh. Ash’s eyes narrowed at the sight of him. Having seen all manner of beings in her long life, the color she perceived in this giant was both strangely familiar and entirely different. A murky gray. Yet a gray that felt somehow known to her.
But that wasn’t what mattered to Ash Bell Draig right now. What concerned her was that the one she had struck with Dragon Words was nowhere to be seen.
So that’s how it is.
Ash finished piecing together the situation. She had been kidnapped alone. Having poured every ounce of power into Dragon Words to seal the Aura Blade, she wouldn’t be able to use them again for some time. Still, the academy itself wasn’t in immediate danger. After all, that skeleton remained there.
Yet why was it that an uneasy feeling kept creeping up from deep within her chest? She felt an urgent need to return to the academy as quickly as possible.
Ash spread her wings. And then she unleashed Dragon Fear.
The absolute authority that forced all creation to its knees. A song permitted only to dragons.
The woman beside them broke into a cold sweat and dropped to one knee. However, the giant merely staggered for a moment before standing firm as if nothing had happened.
Ash’s pupils widened slightly at the sight.
Someone of this caliber in the Twilight Sect?
Dragon Fear was powerful enough to bring even those who had reached the realm of superhumans to their knees. Yet the giant before her stood completely unfazed even after taking it head-on.
The woman, who had barely risen using her scythe as a crutch, spat out a curse.
The giant drew the sword from his waist.
The third skilled opponent he had encountered after the skeleton and Marshall. A being whose color was both familiar and yet not, a murky shade.
Under normal circumstances, he would have savored the story behind it. But right now, that wasn’t important.
Ash gathered her mana. The world itself began to respond to her power.
The giant muttered quietly, almost to himself. Ash let out a small snort at his words.
Dragon Words were unnecessary for her. Even without them, incinerating these two would be more than enough.
Ash let out a hollow laugh at the man’s attitude. She was the Red Dragon and headmaster of the academy. Yet even in a fight against her, this man was cracking jokes. Was it confidence born from true skill, or mere bravado? At the very least, given that he had endured her Dragon Fear, it probably wasn’t the latter.
No incantation. No magic circle. She simply summoned a pillar of flame and brought it crashing down on him.
The moment Ash manipulated her mana, a massive column of fire erupted, carving away the cliffside. But the pillar split apart, and something rose from within it.
Ash murmured as if she had predicted it. It had only been a probing attack, after all. She prepared her next strike.
Countless magic circles filled the sky, centered around her. They began raining down on the man like concentrated fire. With every impact, the terrain collapsed.
The cliff that had once stood there vanished without a trace, the landscape ruined so thoroughly it would need to be redrawn on any map.
Yet a single streak of light pierced through the barrage and charged straight toward her.
Clang——!!
With a metallic clash, the giant’s sword failed to break through Ash’s magic and was blocked. Ash’s eyes widened. The swordsmanship the giant had just used was unmistakably the Logress Swordsmanship, specifically the Swift Sword style.
She forcefully repelled the giant with her mana and glared at him coldly.
The giant simply floated in the air, looking at her with clear amusement. To Ash, he was becoming increasingly irritating.
A powerful expert with a familiar color, and now he was even using Logress Swordsmanship. He wasn’t Marshall. Marshall had never been this large. Besides, there was no way Marshall would have joined the Twilight Sect.
An alias she had never heard before. The man before her simply nodded as if it were only natural. Was he mocking her?
Ash once again hung countless magic circles across the night sky like stars. There was no longer any need to waste time or ask questions. The priority was to dispose of this man and return to the academy.
She loaded the circles once more with the intent to end it here. If she simply tore the problem apart, there would be no need to solve it.
On the other hand, the man overlaid a single pure white star onto his blade. The star that countless swordsmen longed to reach. The Aura Blade, the exclusive privilege of Sword Masters.
The man who had coated his sword in Aura Blade answered.
That answer explained nothing. The alias Il Capitano was well-known, but precisely because it was famous, it failed to reveal the giant’s true identity. However, Ash had no time left.
Therefore, she asked no more questions and sought no further answers. She simply offered her magic as the reply.
Reporting the situation to Luke Eaenril was irrelevant. Having turned from human to skeleton, he judged everything based solely on the experiences accumulated and engraved into his bones.
He confirmed the reverse summoning of Silves’s four spirits. He confirmed the masked man riding a spirit while holding a golden spear. He confirmed that the man’s right eye was glowing. He confirmed that the man’s left eye was closed. He confirmed the intangible armor enveloping the man’s body. And he reached the decision that he must cut him down. All of this took 0.01 seconds.
The moment Luke arrived in front of Scaramuccia, he swung his sword without hesitation. But Scaramuccia was one step faster.
He tore off something hanging from his neck and showed it to Luke. The instant Luke saw it, his sword trembled slightly. He felt an intangible force attempting to bind his body.
Yet Luke’s sword was faster than that restraint.
Shaaaaaaaack———!!!!
It struck Scaramuccia’s arm directly. The intangible armor that had repelled even upper-class spirit attacks was torn apart, and his left arm was severed cleanly. The severed limb flew through the air amid a fountain of blood.
Luke’s voice sounded almost disappointed. Scaramuccia broke into a cold sweat as he stemmed the bleeding from his severed left arm. He had expected this. The Mystic Eye that had deflected every blade and protected him from all threats would not work on this skeleton.
That was why Scaramuccia had neither tried to dodge nor counterattack. The moment he focused on such things, his head would fly off.
The instant the skeleton entered his field of vision, he had dropped the golden spear and devoted every ounce of his attention to showing that single object.
Of course, if the skeleton had gone for his neck first, he would have died. But trying to block or counter would have led to the same result. Therefore, Scaramuccia had focused every nerve solely on the one outcome that would guarantee his survival. Though even that wasn’t certain.
What he had pulled out, even at the cost of his left arm and his weapon, was a small clay tablet that fit in one hand. He had gambled everything simply to show Luke that single tablet. And the gamble had paid off. Because the moment Luke saw it, he froze.
The blue flames burning in Luke’s eye sockets narrowed. Behind him, Silves couldn’t hide his shock. The only being capable of killing this man had just been sealed away. And it was because of that single object—Luke’s weakness, something that should no longer exist in this world.
Me. It was both Luke’s weakness and a geas. A vow engraved into his body when he had been forcibly transformed into an undead, prepared for the possibility that he might run wild. Luke was bound to obey the commands of whoever held Me.
That was why he and Ash had disposed of every last Me remaining in the world. They should have. So why did the Twilight Sect have one?
Scaramuccia shrugged as he picked up the fallen golden spear.
Scaramuccia walked past Luke without doing anything further. Luke let out a hollow laugh as if he found it absurd and spoke.
Scaramuccia answered in a indifferent tone.
With those words, he slowly approached Silves.
Silves grimaced as he reassumed a combat stance. The skeleton he had thought would be their problem-solver was now immobilized.
All of his upper-class spirits, which could be called his true combat strength, had been reverse-summoned. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that both of Silves’s arms had been cut off.
But—
Even if both arms were gone, two legs remained. He couldn’t summon mid-to-low-class spirits. There were still students who hadn’t evacuated.
Even borrowing the power of mid-to-low-class spirits would barely be enough, yet Silves chose not to do so. He simply drew upon the remaining spirit power within himself.
However, Scaramuccia merely scoffed at the sight.
Silves shot back while returning the scoff. The man was right. Silves’s combat strength—his four upper-class spirits that each symbolized an element—had all been reverse-summoned.
But there was still something left.
Me. Silves Fraxinus himself.
Not manifesting the power of spirits from the spirit realm into this world, but—
—assimilating with the spirits themselves.
Blue. Red. Brown. Green. Four colors enveloped Professor Silves, and the distinct traits of each spirit manifested within the elf’s body. Green wings sprouted from his back.
A mane of flames spread across his entire form from his neck. Droplets of water formed around him and aimed at Scaramuccia. A hand holding a greatsword made of stone circled once around Silves before slamming into the ground.
The pinnacle of spirit magic—Spirit Assimilation.
Yet Scaramuccia merely looked unimpressed even after witnessing the pinnacle technique.
Silves nodded in agreement. He already knew. He knew he couldn’t kill the man before him with this. Since the power of the spirits hadn’t worked at all, it was possible that his own attacks, now fused with them, wouldn’t work either.
But so what?
At the very least, he would hold out until the students could evacuate. He had lived a long life. He would continue to live a long life. He had become a professor to watch over their brief lives. He had chewed through stomach medicine to help make those short lives shine even brighter.
If those fleeting lives were to end here, wouldn’t that be far too regrettable?
Therefore, he would fight. Because that was the courtesy a long-lived being could offer to those with short lives.
With that thought, the elf threw his fist.