Do Not Interfere with the Duel (5)
James was startled, but he immediately used his spirit to catch the fireball with ease.
"Wh-what was that just now? How did you finish a spell that fast?"
"Who's that black-haired little brat? Where did he come from all of a sudden?"
"He's even got ears and a tail, doesn't he? Isn't that a spirit too?"
"What kind of spirit is that, anyway? I've never heard of one like it in my entire life."
Noah's ears twitched in response to the spectators' comments.
"Hmph. This hasn't even begun yet, you foolish humans."
While Noah was busy reacting to the crowd, Roy finished his next spell.
This time it was a massive mass of water.
"I wonder if a flame spirit can withstand this giant water bomb?"
Once again the spell completed at an absurd speed, and not only the spectators but even his opponent James looked as if he could not believe his eyes.
"Wh-what is that!? How can you cast so fast—"
"What else would it be? A spirit!"
The enormous water mass hurtled toward James.
Once more the flame spirit Prominence appeared in front of him and blocked every drop of it.
"Uwaaaaaah—!"
But the moment the spirit was drenched in a torrent of water—its natural weakness—it let out a scream that sounded almost human.
Through his Golden Eyes, Roy saw the flame spirit's mana plummeting at a terrifying rate.
To replenish it, James's mana was sucked out of him in an instant and poured into the spirit.
Roy did not stop.
His third spell was ice magic.
If James tried to defend with the spirit again, it would not last much longer.
Frozen Rock!
To finish the cast as quickly as possible, he used the most basic ice-creation spell.
Even so, a colossal chunk of ice two meters in diameter took shape.
With Roy's mana having increased so dramatically, this much was nothing more than a baseline.
"Go on, try blocking this one with your spirit too! Haaah!"
The giant ice mass tore across the training grounds.
James clenched his teeth and rolled hard to the side.
If he had tried to defend with the spirit, it would have been extinguished for certain.
Water and ice—the flame spirit's greatest weaknesses.
Faced with Roy's cunning, James gritted his teeth and kept rolling.
—Thud!
The ice slammed into the ground with a heavy, dull impact and buried itself deep.
James managed to dodge by a hair's breadth.
A direct hit would have reduced every bone in his body to powder.
Fortunately the ice was so large that its flight speed had been painfully slow.
But his relief lasted only a moment.
Thwack!
Roy's spinning back-kick had already closed the distance and drove cleanly into James's abdomen as he tried to rise from the ground.
"Keugh!"
No mana had been put into the blow, so the damage was not serious—but it was a thoroughly humiliating strike.
The outcome of the duel was already tipping heavily in Roy's favor.
Thwack! Thud! Thwack-thud! Crack!
Roy's merciless violence rained down on James, who was still drooling from the kick to the gut.
Dull impacts continued without pause, and the spectators fell completely silent.
When the beating dragged on a little too long, someone finally could not stand it and shouted at the referee.
"Stoooop! Stop it already! You'll kill Young Master James!"
But the referee, Sam Tomlinson, did not so much as flinch.
He had judged that Roy's attacks carried no mana at all and therefore posed no real danger of serious injury.
Meanwhile James wrapped his body in mana to raise his defense, which was the only reason he was still holding on.
It was simply extremely humiliating.
After kicking him thoroughly, Roy finally stopped and asked,
"Well? Ready to surrender yet? Or do you want more?"
"You think I'd surrender to a bastard like you?!"
A cry full of rage!
James's face was swollen red in places, and some spots were already turning a bluish purple with bruises.
But the look in his eyes still showed no intention of giving up.
He wiped the blood streaming from his split lip and glared at Roy.
Using his Golden Eyes, Roy read the flow of mana inside James's body and leapt backward in a hurry.
Fierce flames erupted the very next instant from the spot where he had been standing.
It was an attack from the flame spirit.
"Whoa! That was close. Almost got me there!"
Roy, who had not suffered so much as a singed hair, put on an outrageously exaggerated performance.
He waved his hands dramatically, pretending he had barely escaped.
It was a childish bit of theater meant to keep the spectators on edge.
A moment earlier, if Roy had truly wanted to, he could have ended the duel right then.
He chose not to.
He intended to crush James far more thoroughly—to burn into the minds of every noble and every noble child watching exactly what happened when someone carelessly laid a hand on him.
Roy raised his voice and shouted.
He carefully chose polite wording, taking care not to insult the margrave's house itself, and focused the words solely on James.
"I applaud that iron will of yours that refuses to give up. But remember this one thing: I still haven't been hit even once!"
Many of those watching the duel swallowed hard.
A baron's child using an Aura Blade, completing magic spells at blinding speed with a spirit's help, and beating the living daylights out of a boy who carried the blood of a margrave—all without taking a single scratch himself, and against a senior student two years above him at that.
Roy's words forced everyone to confront that fact once more, and the crowd soon began to murmur.
"There's no doubt about it. He's a mutant. An extraordinary one!"
"Seems that way. Just how much mana must he have been born with…"
"That child has clearly received the grace of the gods. He may even possess the qualities of a hero or a champion."
"Ominous. Whenever a champion is born, something terrible always befalls the continent…"
"How is that the champion's fault? The gods simply foresee the coming disaster and send us a special child in advance."
"Everyone be quiet! You think anyone can just become a champion? Even if he is a mutant, at the end of the day he's still only a baron's bloodline. Half-baked, I tell you—half-baked. At the very least you'd need to be born into a count's house like ours before you start talking about champions. How dare a mere baron's family…"
Even the conversations people had been whispering to their neighbors began to spread from mouth to mouth among the packed spectators in the narrow stands.
They reached the ears of the young students nearby and of the servants who had accompanied the nobles as well.
Within a few days, rumors would be circulating throughout the entire royal capital.
That the boy named Roy Greenhilt was something extraordinary.
That even a margrave's bloodline had been helpless against him.
People would certainly whisper among themselves, wondering whether a champion had been born in their kingdom.
"Haa… haa… It's not over yet!"
James shouted as if he wanted the entire audience to hear him.
He was not wrong.
The duel was not finished.
I drank two doses of Dragon's Breath, yet in pure mana quantity I still fall short of a marquis or margrave house…
Roy felt a bitter taste as his Golden Eyes registered the immense mana still swirling inside James.
Well, just one more dose and I'll be far ahead.
He no longer felt envy.
He now possessed the certainty that, given time and a little luck, he could surpass that level as much as he pleased.
"Come on then! Land even a single attack if you can!"
True to the blood of a margrave house, the vast mana still filling James's body remained more than half full.
His last desperate struggle using the flame spirit began once more.
"Prominence! Please! Burn that bastard to ash!"
Whoosh! Whoooosh!
Having poured mana into the spirit without restraint, multiple flames flared up at once.
But to Roy, who could sense the flow of mana, even flames that manifested without a chant were meaningless.
Where the next blaze would erupt, how far the reaching flames would stretch—everything was predictable.
"That spirit of yours is pretty impressive. Amazing. To think you managed to summon something like that. You have my applause for the effort."
He meant it.
He could see exactly how hard the boy named James must have studied, how many failures he had endured, and how much anguish he had suffered to summon such a spirit.
"But that is the limit of what you have. That much will never be enough to face me or my spirit."
Noah, standing behind him, seemed to take it as praise; the corners of her mouth curved upward without limit.
"Heh-heh. Of course. How dare you even compare us."
An ancient spirit whose power far surpassed that of a mere high-ranking flame spirit.
Watching a spirit converse like a human left the onlookers utterly stunned.
In this age it was common knowledge that the higher a spirit's rank, the more smoothly it could communicate with people.
"…!?"
And yet.
Had he grown too complacent?
For a single instant Roy's movements came to a dead stop.
As if time itself had frozen for him alone.
I was wondering when he would make his move… Looks like he managed to cook up a scheme of his own.
Roy assessed the situation with cold clarity, as if he had anticipated exactly this.
But his body remained locked in place, and a moment later the crimson flames unleashed by James's flame spirit all surged toward him at once.
Among the spectators watching today's duel were, of course, the vermin as well.
Vermin Number One and Number Two from a viscount's house.
Numbers Three, Four, and Five from barons' houses.
Those were the nicknames Roy had given them when he told Jack and Chloe, "Those kinds of bastards aren't even worth remembering by name or house."
Vermin Number Three asked the others,
"Young Master James will win for sure, right?"
"Obviously. Just because the guy's a little strange doesn't mean he can do anything against a margrave's son."
"The real problem is the pretext. Getting caught for lying to Young Master James is way more dangerous for us."
"Damn it… That's the real issue. Why the hell did His Highness the First Prince have to stick his nose in? If the duel had gone by the old rules and Young Master James had just killed the bastard, then even if our lies came out, the margrave's house would have looked the other way for the sake of their honor. They might even have cleaned up the mess for us. Having our story turn out to be true is far better for their justification than word getting out that they killed someone because they were tricked by a lie."
"Then we just make sure the bastard dies, right?"
"What? How?"
"Well, during the duel we could secretly…"
The vermin's conspiracy was not over yet.
Hidden where no one could see them, they continued to hatch their scheme.
It was a plan so simple, so cowardly, and so filthy that no one would ever imagine it coming from first-year students who had only just entered the Knight Academy.