Chapter 86
Chapter 86
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 86
Chapter Title: Multitudes (2)
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"I don't think so. What the hell is this magic? This isn't like her. At this rate, everyone's going to freeze to death."
Nade was just as perplexed. There were hundreds of students here. He couldn't imagine them, with their memories lost, surviving long in the -20 degree cold. But for that very reason, it was exceptionally effective at pressuring Lucas. When somatic cells cooled, the efficacy of Mitochondria Build plummeted.
"Dammit! This is insane!"
Where Lucas stood, strong winds made the wind chill even lower. Necrosis was already setting in at his peripheral nerves.
This was why high-level cryomancers typically started battles by casting a blizzard. While not particularly lethal, it was a wide-area spell that dealt fixed damage through cooling, making it essential in fights against swordsmen.
"Mages are so damn annoying."
Lucas was sick and tired of mages tormenting swordsmen with all sorts of bizarre magic. But it wasn't time to give up. Above all, her condition was clearly not normal.
A sharp spear of ice flew through the blizzard, and Lucas hastily threw himself aside. But with his Mitochondria Build weakened, he couldn't dodge it completely and it grazed his side.
"Damn it all!"
Most living creatures become less active in low temperatures. On top of that, from swinging his sword despite the cold, symptoms of erythematous frostbite were already appearing on his fingertips.
'The temperature feels like it's dropped even more. Is she really trying to kill everyone?'
If a Schema user was getting frostbite, the students should have already frozen to death. But in reality, only Lucas was trapped in the blizzard. The snowstorm, its radius now narrowed, was zeroed in on him, following his every move.
Completely unaware of this fact, Lucas bared his teeth at Shina as she emerged from the blizzard.
"Are you crazy? How long are you going to keep up this damn blizzard...?"
Lucas stopped mid-sentence. Shina's eyes were still empty. Devoid of emotion, of thought, even of self.
"Don't tell me..."
Lucas's shoulders trembled. She was remembering the magic not with her mind, but with her body.
A body-brain, literally.
Just as swordsmen master techniques through endless repetitive training, Shina had reached a state where she could manifest specific brainwave patterns even after losing her memory.
Repetition, and more repetition. She must have relentlessly pushed her mind to the brink of death, without rest, from the day she was born.
'This woman... just how much has she trained?'
The hair on his head stood on end. Beyond her skill, he could picture the hellish path she must have walked.
'Damn it! This is way worse than just bad luck.'
He had to get out of here. As much as he loved gold coins, they were just pieces of metal in the face of death.
Lucas summoned all his remaining strength and fled. He figured she couldn't chase him once he was out of the blizzard. But that was just wishful thinking, and in the end, he paid a heavy price for turning his back on an official Grade 6 mage.
Shina raised a finger and pointed at Lucas. A moment later, he screamed and collapsed into the snow.
"Aaaaargh!"
There was no pain. But on his Schema's anatomical diagram, both his legs were gone, as if snipped off with scissors. Lucas twisted his torso to look at his legs. Frozen solid, they had no feeling at all.
'N-No way.'
It was Absolute Zero, something he had only heard of in rumors.
A spell that extremely restricts particle activity through Preservation Condensation, considered the ultimate precept of cryomancy.
By mastering the realm of Absolute Zero, Shina had become an official Grade 6 mage at the young age of twenty.
Yet, it was a spell that demanded such immense mental energy that even she could only produce a localized effect.
'Damn it all! They said this was some third-rate academy... but the students, the teachers, they're all monsters!'
With a blank expression, Shina cast her next spell. It was Glacier Bombing, an advanced spell derived from the precept of Preservation Condensation. Dozens of massive chunks of ice formed in the sky, and the color drained from Lucas's face. With his legs frozen, he had no way to escape. He could only entrust his life to the heavens.
Nade and Iruki ran toward the students. It wasn't an area-of-effect spell, but the glaciers were so large they couldn't be complacent. As the chunks of ice, freezing at different points, slowly pushed against each other with their heavy mass, one almond-shaped glacier began to fall toward the students.
Nade rushed to Arin, grabbing her shoulders and tackling her to the ground.
"Aah! What are you doing?!"
"Evacuate the students! Or else they'll all die!"
"No! There's not enough time!"
Iruki stepped in front of the two and shouted.
"I'll do it!"
"How?"
Iruki didn't even have time to answer, simply gritting his teeth. Could he do it? It was a glacier weighing dozens of tons. Even if he blew it up with an Atomic Bomb, the dozens of resulting fragments would be a problem. Calculating from the glacier's size, if it wasn't broken into at least 1,000 pieces, a single one could easily smash someone's head.
'I have to try...'
Momentum can be predicted with mathematics. If he could calculate all the physics involved in breaking the glacier, then breaking it again, and again, he should be able to blast it to bits before it hit the ground.
"Here I goooo!"
A Detached Spirit Zone penetrated the center of the glacier. After a detonation process at its maximum yield, an Atomic Bomb exploded. The glacier heaved, then cracked and split into seven chunks.
Iruki activated a Double Spirit Zone. Then he frantically fired a barrage of Atomic Bombs, blasting the glacier.
A series of deafening booms echoed through the air.
Flowers of ice bloomed in the sky. The glacier exploded into fragments, and those fragments exploded again, scattering like fireworks.
Nade and Arin watched the chain explosions in the sky, mesmerized. Then, noticing the shower of ice pellets, they turned their heads toward the students. Fine fragments rained down like hail, but not a single person was hurt.
Arin's eyes wavered in shock. Arcane had always looked down on the magic academy students. Weak students who lacked a spirit of challenge and the will to fight, just passively accepting what was given to them. But the level of the students she'd witnessed firsthand far exceeded her expectations.
'So this is the magic academy. Huh?'
Arin turned her head. Realizing she was being held in a strange man's arms, she shoved Nade away forcefully and shouted.
"Get away from me! What do you think you're doing?!"
Nade, who had fallen on his butt, flushed red.
"What? What did I do?! I was just trying to help!"
"Why would you help me?! We're enemies!"
"Who said we weren't? Just undo the mind control already! Are you really going to kill all these people? Can you do that and still call yourself sane?"
Arin bit her lip. After today, she would be the protagonist of a massacre recorded in history, but she wasn't afraid. If she hadn't met Canis in Radum, her fate would have been to fall to the lowest depths of misery anyway.
"I don't care. For Canis, I'd let the whole world die."
Nade read the nihilism and scorn in Arin's eyes. What kind of life must she have lived to have such a look?
"Heave-ho."
Iruki hoisted the fallen Shina onto his back. Then he looked back at Lucas. Did God truly exist, even for villains? He was wedged between glaciers, spared by a mere few meters. But he had screamed so hard his jaw was dislocated, and only the whites of his eyes were visible. Having lost both legs, thievery was no longer an option. In the end, just seven days after his escape, it was his fate to return to the gloomy prisons of Inferno.
Kaboom!
A loud explosion from the forest made Nade and Iruki turn their heads. A thick beam of light was shooting up through the sea of trees.
"Whoa. What's that big thing?"
"It's Photon Cannon. Looks like he had a breakthrough."
The forest shook violently, and then Shirone was spat out from it.
Seeing his state, as if he'd just been pulled from a mud pit, Arin's face lit up. Canis must have gained the upper hand.
But her expectation was utterly shattered.
As Harvest knocked down trees to the left and right with its long arms, Canis limped out. He looked just as bad as Shirone, if not worse.
Iruki spoke in disbelief.
"A stalemate...?"
"No way. Shirone's Photon Cannon evolved during the fight. And he still couldn't win?"
Shirone pushed himself up from the ground and said.
"I can't beat him."
His friends couldn't believe their ears. Was this the first time they had ever heard Shirone say such a thing?
"What, man? Don't talk like you're giving up."
"I'm not. That guy... is seriously strong."
Shirone admitted it frankly. Had he known Canis was the disciple of a grand mage, it would have made more sense, but even without that knowledge, he could feel the man's will in every single spell.
The will to not lose. The will to destroy people. The will to prove he was the best.
He had maximized the power of his Photon Cannon, but Harvest, borrowing Canis's mental strength, had absorbed even that.
After that, it was a slugfest. They waged a war of attrition, trading the Power of Darkness and Photon Cannons, a battle that wore them both down to the bone.
In the end, Canis had landed a successful counter, knocking Shirone out of the forest.
'He's so strong... so why is he trying to hurt people?'
If he had chosen evil for some reason, that was one thing. Everyone makes mistakes.
But he couldn't accept that evil could be strong. Strength was the fruit of effort, not of mistakes.
"Why are you doing this? What did these students ever do to you?"
"Running your mouth because you're outmatched? A typical pattern for weak nobles."
It wasn't true, so Shirone didn't get provoked.
"Answer me. What you're about to do is a horrific act that will be recorded in history. I deserve to hear the reason, at least."
"History? Who gives a damn about that? The abandoned just endure to live one more day. If I don't kill someone, I die."
"Don't try to justify it with twisted logic. No matter what kind of life you've lived, there's no one in this world who doesn't have it hard. Everyone lives while bearing their own unbearable pain."
"You. Have you ever eaten excrement off the ground?"
Shirone fell silent. A cold wind blew.
'Canis...'
Arin's eyes filled with sorrow. No one who hadn't lived in Radum could ever know what kind of place it was.
It was another world, isolated from the rest.
Canis and Arin had been abandoned there. They couldn't remember since when they had been together, or why it was just the two of them.
They only knew they had been there since they could remember, and they had survived while other friends died or were sold off.
Canis had been clever since he was a child. Though just a powerless boy, he proved how strong a person could become when talent met venom.
In Radum, a place teeming with villains, Canis wanted only one thing.
To protect Arin for one more day.
Women did not exist in Radum. To be precise, women past infancy.
In a place with an extreme shortage of food, powerless female children were usually consumed the moment they were born.
But Arin had survived in Radum until the age of ten.
The only female in Radum.
And the one who protected that ghastly symbol was Canis.
He always barked like a mad dog. Whenever an enemy targeting Arin appeared, he would charge at them, ready to die.
With Arin, he couldn't join any organization. So they survived day by day, digging through trash cans.
The truly ridiculous thing was that in Radum, even the trash had an owner. He fought, not caring if his flesh was torn, just to get the filthy scraps others had thrown away.
After such a fierce fight, Canis would manage to get just half a piece of moldy bread.