Midterm Exams (10)
Despite a small commotion, the preparations for the sparring matches proceeded as scheduled.
If you asked anyone in this Combat Studies class who the strongest students were, two names would leap out ahead of all others.
Lucy of House Alrn, and Frey of House Kent.
In every practice spar held during class, the record between the two was nothing short of Lucy's one-sided slaughter.
No matter how ferocious an offensive Frey Kent unleashed, everything proved meaningless before Lucy Alrn's shield. Like a turtle withdrawn into its shell, Lucy would defend against every incoming strike, and the moment she spied a decisive opening and counterattacked, Frey simply collapsed.
Jackal had felt awe and envy in equal measure the first time he witnessed that sparring match.
Who was Frey Kent, after all?
Was she not the bearer of the finest martial talent among all the divinities that existed upon this continent?
Jackal had faced her once, on a lark, at a tournament hosted by some minor noble, and he knew exactly how absurd her skill was.
He had not managed to land a single wound on Frey Kent that day.
No matter how he swung his spear, no matter what schemes he wove into his footwork—none of it carried the slightest weight. Before the overwhelming speed Frey Kent possessed, everything Jackal had amounted to little more than a child's tricks. Facing the storm of her blade, he could only be thankful he survived it at all.
At the time, Jackal had said out loud that he lost because his effort fell short. The truth was different.
He had already surrendered on the inside.
That no amount of training would ever let him defeat Frey. That piercing that genius standing at the very summit of talent with his own spear was simply impossible. He could not help but arrive at that conclusion.
And yet Jackal did not particularly envy Frey.
How could anyone resent a person born with heaven-bestowed talent in the first place? Frey Kent was someone fated from birth to stand above all others. A genius whose gifts no one alive could rival.
Everyone said so, and so Jackal believed it too.
But he had been wrong.
It turned out that the pedestal she seemed to stand upon existed only because everyone had assumed it did—because Lucy Alrn had dragged Frey Kent back down into the realm of ordinary humans with almost insulting ease.
That girl who, until only recently, had been called the disgrace of House Alrn. The girl who stirred up scandal after scandal inside high society and out, such that people whispered her neck would have rolled long ago were it not for Benedict Alrn's reputation. The girl whose old tutors spread rumors that a skull that empty would never exist again in this world. That frail little brat who used to wheeze halfway up the stairs to the second floor.
She had toppled the genius hailed as the finest on the continent.
At first, people dismissed it as a fluke. Naturally, they did. However much she'd changed, Lucy Alrn—a genuine degenerate—beating Frey Kent? It defied common sense. Frey must have let her guard down. She hadn't been feeling well, that was all.
Every excuse under the sun made the rounds, but Lucy Alrn proved herself all over again.
By defeating Frey Kent a second time.
Lucy Alrn, who has no friends to pass rumors along to, would never know it—that regardless of what people thought of her personality, there were those beginning to acknowledge her skill, one by one. That there were people emerging who wished to witness with their own eyes the majesty carried in the blood of House Alrn.
Now Frey Kent and Lucy Alrn faced one another and took their positions.
Perhaps the outcome of this duel, too, would be no different. Lucy Alrn would prove herself once again.
As he turned that thought over, Jackal ground his teeth against the jealousy boiling up inside his chest.
Talent. Was it always going to come down to talent?
No matter how hard he strove, was it because he lacked talent that he could never beat Lucy Alrn, never beat Frey Kent, never beat Arthur Soladin?!
What was the point of delivering the speech for the entire freshman class? The people refused to acknowledge him! They sung the praises of Arthur Soladin's knowledge. They murmured about Lucy Alrn's transformation. They gasped in admiration at Frey Kent's sword—and nothing more!
Would things have been different if it had been his brother?
When those stars sprinted ahead, blazing with light, could he have run beside them, stride for stride?
Having had his talent stolen by his brother, was he fated to remain a gear that never quite fit for the rest of his life?
He was.
He...
Frey studied the figure before her—Lucy, shield raised.
Afterimages layered on the shield like ghosts of a dozen strikes. The armor was the same.
She was putting on her usual air of leisure, but weariness had seeped into her eyes.
Something was wrong with Lucy right now. That much was certain.
For a girl whose stamina could stand toe-to-toe with active-duty knights to be showing fatigue, something had clearly happened last night.
Anyone else who called themselves a knight would, at a moment like this, show some consideration for their opponent's condition.
Frey could not have cared less.
What did it matter what state her opponent was in? All that mattered to her was driving Lucy into a corner—even a little further. Making even more words spill out of that mouth of hers. And then, feeling that something hot and seething crawl up her spine.
It'd be nice to win at the end of it, sure.
Hm? Lucy's in bad shape? Doesn't that make this worth a try? And she'd just been handed a perfect chance to press the attack first, too.
All right. Today, I win. And then I make Lucy mad. Which means next time, Lucy spits out even filthier words at me.
A flawless plan.
Frey was so pleased with her own line of thinking that she let out a little gasp of admiration before gripping her sword with both hands.
"Both sides ready?"
"Yes."
"Yep."
"Confirmed. Then we begin."
Still not a single gap to be found.
Exhausted or not, Lucy was still Lucy. This was a girl who had trained herself to fight at full capacity even in the most extreme situations. Frey had never expected her to show an opening from the start anyway.
No—if she wanted to create a gap, there was only one way. Hammer down on that turtle's iron shell over and over until a crack finally spidered across it.
With her mind made up, Frey charged at Lucy without a flicker of hesitation.
Against Lucy, what you needed wasn't a powerful strike. It was speed and frequency. Attacks that rattled her thinking. Pressure that shook the turtle hiding in its shell until it had no choice but to stick its head out.
The instant she swung, the shield was already there to meet her blade. A movement so precise it was as if Lucy had read her mind.
That's Lucy for you. She knows exactly how to make my life hardest.
As her sword rebounded away, a dozen thoughts spun through Frey's head.
How do I swing this time? Where do I aim? What kind of attack makes Lucy anxious—
"Sloppy little swordswoman♡ Looks like the word 'improvement' isn't in your dictionary♡ A dummy who knows nothing but swinging that sword, and even the sword itself is garbage♡ So duuumb♡ So cluuumsy♡ Puhuht♡"
That laugh.
That laughter, piercing through every other sound in an arena packed with people and planting itself right against her ear.
Frey felt her heart slam into overdrive as the corners of her mouth curled upward.
This time—for sure—I'm going to smash Lucy flat. And then I'm going to watch her sprawled on the ground with tears in her eyes.
Absolutely.
'I'm so tired I could die.'
"You're moving around just fine for someone about to drop dead."
'Moving and being tired are two separate things, okay?'
Perhaps because she hadn't stopped moving for a single hour since the previous evening, the fatigue had piled up sky-high in her body. Enough that if she just closed her eyes on her bed right now, she half suspected she could sleep clean through a sunrise and a sunset and wake at the next one.
Which was why her spar with Frey had gotten genuinely dangerous at points. Her head would go foggy mid-exchange and her thoughts would lag behind her body.
If the Iron Wall skill hadn't kept feeding her the right position for her shield, she would have lost to Frey.
Ordinarily, losing to that girl wouldn't have bothered her much—but this was an exam. Even if the sparring exam was graded on the content of the duel rather than victory or defeat, she couldn't help being bothered.
Anyway, she'd scraped through the sparring exam fine, and with just one more test to go, she'd be free of today's schedule.
Strictly speaking, this next course barely counted as an exam at all. For Dungeon Studies, if you'd cleared Floor 30 or above of the academy's first-semester dungeon, your midterm was automatically recorded as a perfect score. Even if she showed up to the exam hall, there'd be no exam for her to take.
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have needed to set foot there at all. But she had no choice.
Because she had to go to the Dungeon Studies exam venue and observe who had received Nakrad's patronage.
Back when Soul Academy was still a game, the midterm event triggered at the exact moment the Dungeon Studies exam was administered. Midway through the test, an entrance to an unidentified dungeon would suddenly appear, and monsters would come pouring out of it.
As later revealed, the reason a dungeon had materialized inside the academy was that a single student favored by the Evil God's apostle had used a magic tool.
Presumably, at this Dungeon Studies exam as well, some student would use that magic tool.
In the original timeline, Lucy had erased the dungeon entirely, so the apostle's patronage shouldn't have existed in the first place—but that son of a bitch Nakrad had cheated and conjured a dungeon of his own making. He'd clearly handed some student a gift, something capable of linking to a dungeon.
That student, knowing nothing, would use the magic tool exactly as Nakrad instructed—and absolutely nothing would happen.
Because she had already erased that dungeon.
Come to think of it, the thought was chilling.
What would have happened if Adri's mansion—a place that should never have existed in this era—had gone berserk and spewed its monsters out into the open? Even with the professors responding immediately, the damage would have been catastrophic. Students injured. Adri hunted down and purged. And Vishy...
Vishy would have grieved.
It had been a rough night, but rescuing Adri had absolutely been the right call.
Times like this called for a word of thanks to that Heojeop Chief God. If it weren't for Him, who knows what choice she might have made.
Heheh! Just for today, and only out of special generosity, I shall address You as Lord Armadi!
That's a pretty good deal, isn't it?
She was busy distracting herself from the exhaustion with idle thoughts when she arrived at the Dungeon Studies exam venue—and the moment she did, Joy, who had been chatting with a cluster of other young ladies in the distance, spotted her and started walking her way.
"Lady Alrn."
Joy's expression was as ferocious as ever. This was a girl who radiated intimidation even when offering a perfectly ordinary greeting, so her sour look hardly registered as unusual.
Still, why did she seem in an even worse mood than usual?
'Yes, Joy?'
"What's wrong, Airhead Lady?"
"Where exactly were you last night, after sneaking out of the dormitory?"
Huh?
How does she know I wasn't in the dormitory yesterday?