Proving Worth (7)
After cracking open the Floor 100 boss's skull with my divinity-laden mace, the reward for the dungeon's first-ever clear was handed over.
The second semester dungeon reward was none other than plain, ordinary gold.
Gold coins.
Split four ways, that came out to 100 per person—which meant 400 gold coins had just landed in my hands in one fell swoop.
And yet here I was, clutching an absurd fortune, feeling nothing but hollow in the face of all that money.
If only I'd had this during the auction... No. Even then, I couldn't have bought the stone tablet. My opponent was one of the wealthiest magnates on the continent.
She seems weaker than the necromancer we faced last time, does she not?
'On raw specs alone? Probably.'
The reason that guy was such a pain to fight was, purely and simply, that he was a gimmick boss.
Skip the gimmick, and his stats weren't anything special.
Tossing the heavy leather pouch into my inventory, I exchanged a light word with Grandfather while waiting for the message window to pop up.
With the Academy Dungeon fully cleared, my victory was already assured. I'd assumed a reward would follow—but the Lousy Chief God stayed stubbornly silent.
What gives? Tilting my head, I reopened the quest window.
Give the Second Prince a True Education!
⚔ The Second Prince of the Soladin Kingdom has challenged you! Reveal your location to him!
🎯 Objective:Subjugate the Second Prince!
Reading it over again, the completion condition was awfully vague. It didn't say defeat the Second Prince—it said subjugate him.
There is a vast chasm between victory and subjugation.
The former doesn't care one bit what the Second Prince thinks. The latter is different. To clear it, the Second Prince has to acknowledge his defeat from the very depths of his heart.
If that phrasing means exactly what it says, this is going to be a tedious affair.
And just as everyone always says, my ominous prediction proved dead wrong.
Even when I emerged from the Academy Dungeon and was showered with congratulations from Joy and the others, no reward came.
Same when the Dungeon Studies professor, looking half out of his mind, came over to praise my achievement.
No reward. Instead, I got a follow-up meeting scheduled with the Dungeon Studies professor.
Hours more passed, and as the sunset painted the sky—even when the Second Prince finally stumbled outside and laid eyes on the rankings—the reward never came.
Even after he registered his own defeat, the Lousy Chief God said nothing.
At that point, there was only one conclusion left. The word subjugate meant exactly, literally that.
So I provoked him. I made him swing his weapon at me.
The Second Prince is an idiot, but he's also a warrior—a man who measures his own worth by personal strength.
For someone with such towering pride in his own power, the easiest way to break him was to shatter him head-on.
Provoking him the instant he stepped out of the dungeon was for precisely that reason: to trample his pride into the dirt.
He'd burned himself out crawling all the way to Floor 60. Right now was the one moment I could overwhelm him completely.
I watched the desperate black aura straining to pierce the divinity wreathing my shield.
The Second Prince's sword is heavy.
In raw power alone, he stands in a league Frey can't touch right now.
Pure swordsmanship might favor Frey, but in an actual bout? Frey would lose.
Because a gap in specs that size can't be bridged with technique.
At full strength, he might have been genuinely threatening.
But that only holds at full strength.
Exhausted to the bone from pushing through the dungeon without rest, the Second Prince's sword would never, ever get past my shield.
"Second-year aura really isn't all that, is it?♡ What exactly were you planning to cut with this?♡ It'd bounce right off a beetle's shell, I'd say.♡ Prince Bug?"
With a grinding of teeth, the Second Prince tightened his grip on his sword.
He intended to pin my shield down with sheer force—but I denied him that.
I could have obliged him with a strength contest, but that would only drag things out.
And that would be a problem.
I have to overwhelm the Second Prince perfectly.
Make him believe he lost while being utterly unable to do anything at all.
Blow his self-esteem to smithereens.
That is what subjugating someone means.
When his attention was locked on my shield, his midsection lay wide open—and my kick sent him sailing up into the air and away into the distance.
Even caught by an unexpected blow, the Second Prince executed a clean breakfall and touched down without a scratch.
With the distance between us, a brief lull settled in.
But no one intervened between the two of us.
Because I'd announced beforehand that it would come to this.
The professors keeping watch for any mishap. The other students. Joy and the rest of my friends. Everyone simply observed the fight in silence.
Normally this would be the point where someone noticed something was off—but the Second Prince had no room for such thoughts.
My Mesugaki Skill's provocations had landed even on Karia, the boss of Menesteil.
A man incomparably weaker than she was had no hope of withstanding them.
His reason was already gone.
Only a single thought filled his head.
Destroy me.
Teach this rotten little mesugaki a lesson.
A sorry state of affairs, truly—but his wish would never come true.
This arena was not a battlefield where I would be educated. It was a battlefield where he would be.
"Luuucy Aln!"
With a roar flecked with blood, the Second Prince charged, ferocious and relentless.
A frame twice my size at the very least, the intimidating muscle packed onto it, and the mana beneath it all amplifying his strength—a devastating rush.
An offensive most people couldn't even track with their eyes.
Yet I faced him, utterly composed.
In the game Soul Academy, the Second Prince could be used as an ally, but I'd run into him far more often as an enemy.
So naturally, I knew every technique in his repertoire.
The Just Parry timing for that charge: 0.8 seconds after his foot left the ground.
Which meant...
Now.
CLANG!
The Second Prince's sword, swung to split my shield clean in two, bounced away into empty air with almost comical futility.
Off-balance from the deflection, a dozen openings bloomed across his body.
Had he been at full strength, he'd have forcibly recovered his footing and pressed the attack.
In reality, landing a Just Parry doesn't feed you a guaranteed critical stun like it does in games.
But the Second Prince, right now, couldn't do that.
Even if rage had burned his fatigue from his mind, his body still remembered every ounce of it.
Willpower alone has its limits. And I did not let those openings slip by.
A strike with the divinity-laden shield.
A shield of thick iron is, in and of itself, an excellent blunt weapon.
What happens when that thing connects with your face?
The Second Prince, watching the shield come for his head, seemed to be certain of his own future.
Without even realizing it, he screwed his eyes shut.
But the shield never touched his face.
It stopped a hair's breadth from the bridge of his nose.
Because I deliberately held it there.
Why?
Because he needed to be humiliated.
When I gave his nose the gentlest of taps with my shield, the Second Prince stumbled backward, clutching his face with both hands.
Watching the bewilderment and confusion swimming in those eyes, laughter spilled out of me, entirely unbidden.
"Fufu♡ Puhaha♡ You squeezed your eyes shut like a little kid!♡ Oh no, is our Idiot Prince scaredy-waid?♡ Shall I pat-pat you better?♡"
"You DARE mock me!"
The battle resumed.
Sword and shield clashed again and again.
Again and again, the Second Prince was driven backward.
The outcome was already decided.
Exhausted beyond measure,
his reason burnt away by provocation,
swinging his sword wildly, thought abandoned—he
could not touch me.
Could not get past my shield.
How many times did that repeat?
Once more the Second Prince went down, pressing one hand against the ground.
"This is getting boring. Could you maybe just give up?♡ There's nothing uglier in this world than a man clinging pathetically to a girl.♡"
I called out as I watched him plant his sword into the dirt and haul himself upright, but he didn't answer.
"Your Highness...!"
"You must stop!"
"At least fall back—!"
The shouts from the Second Prince's clique in the rear were no different.
Swallowed whole by his fury, even the pupils at the corners of his eyes had vanished. He had reached a state where he could no longer stop of his own will.
This is a problem.
My provocations worked too well—he's been consumed by them entirely.
If his reason flies away completely, subjugation becomes impossible, you know?
Haah. Idiot Prince, why do you have this pointless bottomless reserve of grit? That's not who you're supposed to be!
You were supposed to scream 'uncle' ages ago and fold. Why are you still standing?
Arriving at the conclusion that I'd need to knock him out cold to bring him down, I shot a glance toward Luka, standing with the faculty.
I still don't trust my own fine control.
Blowing someone to pieces? Confident. But snuffing out only their consciousness? That's the hard part.
So my glance meant please, professor, step in and wrap this up—but Luka interpreted it, of course, in the worst possible way.
"It seems the young lady has no intention of letting anyone interfere!"
No.
What is this bastard saying.
I said help me!
I said stop the Second Prince, dammit!
Why are you twisting it like that?!
"It's your own doing, so naturally you wish to finish it with your own hands! Truly worthy of the heir of House Aln!"
Hey. You did that on purpose.
You're screwing me over on purpose, aren't you!
You goddamn troll bastard!
"...Not yet."
Just as I was about to call out despite myself, the Second Prince's voice reached us.
Having finally, after countless efforts, managed to rise on his own two feet, he gripped his sword with both hands.
And then, a black aura enveloped the blade.
Not a mere coat of black aura.
An aura that carried weight of its own, pressing down on everything around it.
An aura with his own individual concept, no less.
That's not something the Second Prince should be capable of right now.
An awakening wrought in the crucible of the extreme... I see.
Huh?
Huuh?
...
Nooooo! Why is the Idiot Prince having a shonen-protagonist crisis awakening?! Am I the villain here?! Am I the BAD GUY?!
No! HE'S the one who pulled every dirty trick in the book first—why is HE the one getting the cool dramatic moment?! Explain that to me!
So I live to see it once more—what I witnessed so many times on the battlefields of old.
Grandfather?! Aren't you being way too relaxed for someone who's just spectating?! This is a crisis! A MAJOR crisis!
And what of it? It is nothing you cannot stop.
Listening to Grandfather's voice, devoid of even a shred of alarm, I let out a sigh.
Really, that old man knows me far too well.
Taking a deep breath, I gathered divinity to the tip of my shield.
What I was about to attempt was a rough imitation of the ancient Hero who once withstood an Evil God's wrath with his shield alone.
At my age, still far from fully mastering divinity projection, this imitation would be infinitely distant from perfection.
But that's fine.
My shield is not so fragile as to break under an attack of that caliber.