Chapter 113: Barely Passing
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 113: Barely Passing
“You fail.”
With Narupa’s merciless declaration of failure, a barrage of Magic Bullets pummeled Resin.
Narupa looked down coldly as Resin’s joints snapped and her body was ruthlessly reduced to a bloody pulp.
“It’s always been like this with you. You only ever chase magic that’s a little bit stronger, a little bit flashier.”
“Cough, ack!”
Even as she spat out blood, a Magic Bullet slapped her across the face, sending her rolling unsightly across the floor.
“Did it feel good when people went ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ after you pulled off one of those stunts?”
“St-stop…!”
“You’re all talk. You act all big and noble, but you have nothing of substance to show for it. Just a few deceptive parlor tricks, and that’s it.”
Narupa’s critique struck a chord with me as well.
Until now, Resin had only used intuitive, straightforward magic.
But looking at everyone from Liras, whom I had fought before, to Narupa, they always built up their moves step-by-step, designing their attacks so the opponent wouldn’t notice until the decisive blow was landed.
That’s why soldiers on the battlefield grind their teeth at the mention of mages and snipers.
By the time you realize what’s happening, your head is already being separated from your shoulders.
Even setting that aside, the people who usually handled and resolved matters in Lukart were either me or Mirei.
Krima took the lead in her own field, and Diane did the same, even if it was just menial labor.
But Resin? She always just stood by with her arms crossed, nitpicking or being sarcastic.
To think that even the application of magic reflects a person’s personality.
“It’s over. You’re being decommissioned. Resin Luna.”
Snap!
With a flick of her fingers, the Magic Bullets didn’t just strike Resin and vanish; they soaked into her like a downpour of adhesive rain.
Dark chasms formed wherever they seeped in, gradually expanding their territory.
“No… No…!”
“It’s the end. Goodbye.”
Finally, a massive spear forged from concentrated black spheres was launched.
Without fail, the spear struck Resin, skewering her and pinning her to the wall like a specimen.
“Heuu… Heuuuuu…”
Her once-dazzling blonde hair was stained with blood, and it was impossible to tell if the fluid dripping from her mouth was saliva or gore.
“Now then.”
Narupa spun around and lightly brushed the dust off her skirt.
“Is anyone hurt? No? Good.”
It was an overwhelming victory.
Diane had already gone over to Rune and Yarismal’s side to watch the battle. Occasionally, she would swat away a stray Magic Bullet that flew toward me.
“Mmm~. That took surprisingly long, didn’t it? Let’s all wash up and head home.”
“Sister Narupa.”
“Oh my, are you finally calling me ‘Sister,’ Yarismal?”
I wondered about that too. I wasn’t sure if she had succumbed to Narupa’s wealth or her magical prowess.
Yarismal pointed a finger haphazardly behind her.
“Regrettably, that thing isn’t dead yet.”
“Hm?”
Narupa trudged over and poked Resin’s shoulder with the tip of her staff.
“She’s still breathing.”
“…alyze… ap… ply…”
“Huh? What was that?”
Narupa leaned her ear toward the muttering mouth, but even with a hound’s hearing, she couldn’t catch it.
However, it was certain that Resin was chanting something at an incredible speed.
Sensing something ominous, I called out a warning.
“Narupa, she’s doing something. Be careful.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. What was that, Resin? Why don’t you say it a little louder?”
“…alyze… apply… adapt… assimilate…”
“I said, I. Can’t. Hear. You!”
Narupa raised her staff and slammed it precisely into the center of Resin’s chest.
Resin trembled, barely able to even grasp the tip of the staff.
It felt like the end was finally approaching.
“Analyze… apply… adapt… assimilate…”
“Heh? You’re certainly trying hard, aren’t you?”
Narupa thrust the black spear deeper.
“For a failing student, that is.”
Thud.
“I am… I am…!”
“Yes?”
“I am the salutatorian—!!!!!”
A violent storm of mana erupted.
“Everyone, get behind me!”
Rune stepped forward with her tattered shield, but with her equipment already corroded, she wouldn’t last long.
I knew it was time for me to step in.
I rushed in front of Rune, but since I couldn’t use Roar or Howling for defense, I simply took the brunt of it with my back.
It felt like a sandstorm mixed with sharp shards was clawing at my skin.
“Darling!”
Yarismal cried out in horror, and Rune bared her teeth at Resin, but I raised a hand to calm them down.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“You are not fine, Alto! Why do you push yourself like this!”
“You’re my women, aren’t you?”
“B-but still—!!!!”
Rune eventually burst into tears. Yarismal’s eyes were also red as she began to heal me.
I was perfectly fine, yet they were all sobbing.
Good grief, they might all have sharp personalities, but women are women.
Regardless of our situation, the tension on Narupa’s side was reaching its peak.
“Don’t treat me like a fool! The analysis is complete! All that’s left is growth!”
Sssssss—
As if to prove Resin’s declaration, the black spear began to decompose from its tip, being absorbed into her grasp.
The darkness that had been encroaching on her body vanished, and her ruby-colored limbs began to glow even more brilliantly.
“Shall we see you push your output a bit more, then?”
Narupa, for her part, added more mana to the black spear.
“H-huuuuuuugh!”
The black light surged back up.
“What’s wrong, Resin? I thought the analysis was complete?”
“I won’t… lose—!!!!”
This back-and-forth struggle repeated several times.
The mana storm showed no signs of subsiding; instead, it grew more violent, and blood spray from my back scattered into the wind.
“Narupa, you bitch! Lord Alto is bleeding because of you! You dog-like wench! How dare you wound my husband?”
“Hah?”
At Yarismal’s teeth-gritting insult, the light vanished from Narupa’s eyes.
Simultaneously, the mana storm ceased instantly, as if it had never existed.
“Phew!”
“Darling!”
While Yarismal rushed over to treat me, I turned around to face Resin, bracing for a potential attack.
But as it turned out, there was no need for that at all.
“Guh-ack!”
“Say that again. What did you call me?”
Resin was flailing, her mouth clamped shut by Narupa’s hand.
Resin’s body flickered, turning dark one moment and burning ruby-red the next.
She was locked in a continuous mana struggle with Narupa using her own body as the battlefield.
“Narupa.”
Feeling mentally exhausted, I called out to her weakly.
“How long are you going to keep this up? This has no tension, no excitement—it’s just boring.”
I’d never had a battle in my life that felt so devoid of a sense of crisis.
It was so dull that even that guy inside me had gone quiet.
If it had been Liras, the situation would have been completely different.
In a different sense than Barion, that slimy bastard would have been incredibly troublesome if he had fought in earnest.
After all, he was a man who fought through his clones during the entire Final War without ever showing an opening, manifesting his full power through them.
If he hadn’t been weakened to the extreme by the aftermath of the Demon King’s self-destruction and the Curse of the Magic Stone Crystals, he never would have lost control to Resin.
In fact, the Liras I saw a few days ago was so pathetic that I could have easily slit his throat with a single swing of a dagger if I’d intended to.
Of course, being the devious bastard he is, he probably had some safety measures in place.
“Sorry. She said something so absurd that I got a little carried away. I’ll end this right—cough!”
“Narupa!”
As Narupa turned back to look at us, a ruby-colored magic stone burst through her abdomen.
Yarismal held back Rune, who was about to charge forward, and Diane prepared to react immediately, but even they were stopped by our priestess.
“I’m sick of this too. Let’s end it here, Narupa. All of you will die here, and I’ll take only Lord Alto with me.”
“Cough!”
“Does it hurt? Does it? You should have finished me off at once. Because you tried to play with me like a fool, a genius like me was able to adapt and grow in every single one of those moments.”
Creeeeeak—
Narupa screamed as Resin thrust both hands into the wound in her abdomen and began to tear it open.
“Aaaaaaaagh!”
“To scream at just this much… I’ve endured far worse. How disappointing.”
Narupa resisted, her darkness staining Resin’s arms up to the elbows, but it vanished almost instantly.
It meant Resin had perfectly adapted to Narupa’s mana pattern.
“Goodbye, Narupa.”
With the sound of snapping bones and tearing flesh, Narupa was ripped in half.
Holding the limp pieces of the corpse, Resin let out a grotesque laugh.
“In the end, I’m the winner!! It’s me, Resin Luna! Kyahahaha! I’m the chosen one who gets to stay by Lord Alto’s side! Lord Alto, did you see? I won. I’ll show you right now how obedient I can be and how much pleasure I can give you. Just wait a moment…”
“You did sooooo well~!”
“…?!”
Resin, who had been busy praising herself and begging for affection, froze.
The head of the limp, broken Narupa she was holding lifted up and spoke.
“W-what? You’re dead. I ripped you in half! How are you alive… cough! Ack!”
Thud, thud.
Suddenly, Resin began to cough.
“Hee… hugh… karrrk, cough, blegh!”
Like a cat hacking up a hairball, she scratched at her throat disgustingly before spitting out ruby-colored magic stone crystals.
The Narupa who had been ripped in half picked one up, examined it closely, and gave a thumbs-up.
“Mmm! High-purity, top-grade stuff!”
“You… what are you talking… urgh, blegh!”
Clatter, clatter.
While she was spitting them out of her throat, Resin’s ruby limbs were swelling as if bloated, and magic stone crystals were beginning to sprout through the skin of her fleshy parts as well.
I turned my gaze away from where Narupa had been and looked toward Diane, speaking with irritation.
There sat Narupa, perfectly fine, lounging in a chair.
“I told you to finish it quickly. Even if it’s a clone, do I have to watch a woman I love get torn in half?”
“But, but!”
Scolded by me, Narupa’s face, which had been full of mockery, welled up with tears as she began to make excuses.
She pointed an aggrieved finger at Resin.
“It’s because this bitch is so incompetent that the mana wouldn’t age! I purposely adjusted my output to a level where she could absorb the Dean’s power, and it still took three days! She’s as slow as a sloth at digesting it, so it took forever to age her into a magic stone dispenser and train her! I’m so hurt! I’m hurt!”
“It’s not my place to say, but was Resin really that bad? She was the salutatorian of her class.”
“Oppa.”
Narupa tilted her head, looking like she couldn’t understand my point.
“The world is a battlefield where the people who took first place compete against each other to stay first. How could I just seat a girl who couldn’t even take first place in her own little pond at the pinnacle of the Magic Tower?”
“The pinnacle of the Magic Tower?”
So she really was just going to use her as a magic stone generator.
Narupa had anticipated everything.
She knew Liras was a selfish egoist who would prepare to stab us in the back sooner or later.
And she guessed that the reason he kept Resin around was likely as a material to escape the Curse of the Magic Stone Crystals.
“If that happened, my magitech production line would be finished. It would take at least three more years to develop a replacement.”
So, my second wife, knowing Resin would approach me, designed a specific mana training method so Resin could resist Liras and steal his status and power.
By doing so, Resin would absorb not only Liras’s power but the Curse of the Magic Stone Crystals as well.
Narupa’s company would then gain a new, fresh, and less dangerous magic stone production site.
A weakened Liras, Resin, and the Curse of the Magic Stone Crystals.
It was a brilliant plan where all three pieces fell into place—or so I thought. But a variable appeared: Resin’s mana efficiency was so poor that she couldn’t produce enough power to generate the stones.
Right. Just as Narupa said, Resin was so dim-witted that she had dragged out this boring battle of attrition just to “age” her.
“Urgh… blegh…! Haa… haa… Al… to…!”
“Resin.”
Resin doubled over, unable to withstand the weight of the magic stone crystals.
The posture reminded me of Liras’s short, squat frame.
“I really thought you were someone smart and talented.”
“Save… me… I’m a useful… woman…”
“I didn’t want a ‘useful’ woman.”
The ruby magic stones forming her limbs continued to swell and grow, eventually rooting themselves into the ground.
“I wanted a woman I could chat with, laugh with, and seek happiness with in the small moments of daily life.”
“I don’t… want to die…!”
“You never once gave me a sincere apology. You only ever talked about how great you were, or how you wanted me because I was a war hero. You just kept making these ridiculous, stubborn demands.”
“I was wrong… I was…”
Magic stones covered her skin.
The reason she was spitting crystals from her mouth was that they were sprouting from her internal organs as well.
Sadly, she wouldn’t die.
Not with Liras’s power inside her.
“Resin. I had already chosen you. Back in Lukart, I had already chosen you as a woman to be with.”
“Hee… hick… I can’t… breathe…”
“How could you show your face to me after you went and fucked around at that party house with another guy?”
“Sob… urgh…”
As her face was slowly covered and her mouth was about to be sealed by the stones, she let out one last cry.
“SAVE ME, ALTO!!!!!”
Until the very end, Resin never offered a proper apology, meeting her eternal end trapped in despair.
“See?”
Narupa gave me a back hug as I stood there, fuming with a lingering sense of unpleasantness.
“I told you she was too stupid to admit her faults, didn’t I? Whether she knows what she did or not, it’s better to just let her suffer for the rest of her life.”
I knew.
I knew, but…
What was I supposed to do with this old, unresolved resentment?
Diane begged and begged for forgiveness until even my pettiness was appeased, but you, Resin—you left while still intoxicated by your own vanity, didn’t you?
I was angry, and curses sat on the tip of my tongue, but since the target of my ire had already turned into a lump of rock by her own schemes, I could only swallow the bitterness.
“…I guess so.”
I hadn’t done anything, yet my legs felt heavy.
“Let’s just go home.”
Magic Tower Dungeon.
Cleared.
Sigh. Dammit, is this really how it’s supposed to be?