The Final Exam (16)
Meddling with a magic circle an opponent is casting demands an enormous number of capabilities.
First and foremost, you had to be able to stand up to the opponent's mana. Fail that precondition, and your own mana would be devoured by theirs before you ever got the chance to interfere with the circle at all — leaving you unable to even attempt the intervention. Under normal circumstances, Joy simply could not match the mana the Derelict possessed.
It was true that she had outstanding ability, and equally true that she refused to rest on her talent and was growing at a breakneck pace through sheer effort — but she was still only a first-year at the Academy.
For Joy, who had more yet to bloom ahead of her than she had honed behind her, not enough time had accumulated for her to go toe-to-toe with the Derelict in a contest of raw power.
So she reached for her trump card.
The jewel Lucy had once gifted her. By releasing the mana stored within it, she forced the scales into a fragile balance. Her own mana, reinforced by the jewel's reserves, could now at least face the Derelict's mana eye to eye — but the standoff could not last.
The mana Joy was handling now soared far past her usual limits.
A pain like the mana circuits carved into her body being slowly torn apart. A heat like the blood in her veins gradually coming to a boil. Gritting her teeth, Joy endured the agony as she moved her mana.
The second condition for interfering with a magic circle: knowing the shape of the circle your opponent was trying to cast.
Scattering a magic circle once it had taken form — once the mana had coalesced and bound together — was extraordinarily difficult. Short of possessing overwhelming power and simply crushing it, it was practically impossible.
But if you intruded before the circle was complete, everything changed. Slip in between the strands of mana reaching for one another and prevent the circle from forming at all, and you could unravel the spell even when the gap in power was vast — even when you were, frankly, outmatched.
And Joy, who had challenged the Derelict dozens — hundreds — of times in her bid to bring him down, had the magic circles he would cast memorized perfectly.
How the pattern was drawn. Which portion formed its core. Where the bonds were weakest. How he compensated when something unexpected arose.
Every single one of these matters.
That was why, even in the midst of excruciating pain, Joy could feel the corners of her mouth curl upward.
She already knew exactly what to do. All that remained was to move the mana.
With a light twirl of her staff, the mana spread around her stirred as though each thread possessed a will of its own, streaming to the positions where each belonged. The talent she had awakened after asking for Lucy's help — the peerless multi-thread mana manipulation that had made her Magic Theory professor weep with praise — was unleashed without reserve, and the magic circle the Derelict had been painting came to a halt mid-formation.
"Astonishing, little one."
It had never happened before. Not once. Even the Derelict himself — a mage — could never have imagined it. He ought to have been dumbfounded.
And yet, faced with exactly that, the Derelict remained perfectly composed.
"The talent you carry within you is truly wondrous."
"...Of course. ...For a young lady of the great House Patran... this much is nothing at all!"
As Joy forced down her pain and raised her voice, the Derelict's mouth curved at both ends into a deep, unhurried smile.
"But it is not over yet! Did you think this much could stop me?!"
As if in answer to his cry, his mana surged with another layer of momentum. As though the standoff until now had merely been his courtesy — as though he had played with them long enough and now meant to end it. Facing the steadily thickening mana, Joy screamed inside.
That wasn't his limit?! He wasn't flailing out of desperation — he still had room to spare even then?!
That's impossible!
Joy struggled desperately to push back the Derelict's mana, but the gap was simply too wide. If his mana was a raging storm, hers was nothing more than a spring breeze. No matter how she thrashed against it, there was only one ending that awaited her: swallowed by the storm and vanishing without a trace.
What do I do?! What am I supposed to do?! What could possibly let the me of right now block this?! What card could anyone play against a situation like—
"The great Chief God once spoke these words."
Just as Joy's eyes, lost in panic, found nowhere to land, a voice came from beside her. Even amid the desperate circumstances, not a thread of it wavered — a voice carrying only warmth.
"He said that a miracle follows those who refuse to give up."
Turning her head toward it, Joy saw the face of Phoebe — no, of a Saintess — standing at her side without her noticing. The face of a priestess who, by the will of God, wished to carry hope into the world.
"We shall not retreat."
The moment the prayer ended, the pain that had settled into Joy's body scattered, and into her heart — brimming with panic and confusion — resolve quietly seeped in. A blessing forged for those who fight against evil had lent Joy its strength.
Having finished her prayer, Phoebe flashed a bright smile at Joy, who was staring at her blankly, then raised her divinity and faced forward once more.
"Now then, everyone? Let's show him this is all we've got."
"You needn't tell me, Saintess!"
"Going."
A powerful man's voice and an indifferent woman's voice blended together, and in the same breath Arthur and Frey swept past Joy's side and broke into a sprint.
Seeing their charge, the Derelict tried to hinder it with the crimson mana that dominated the room — but his mana's movements could not help being clumsy now. The mana pervading the room was currently bound up by Joy's own.
"All that noise for nothing much, huh!"
"Heo~jeop."
Arthur and Frey had grown as accustomed to an enemy like the Derelict as anyone could be. These were two who had carved their way here through his very best — were they going to stop for a half-hearted interference like that?
The two slipped past every obstacle with ease and reached the Derelict.
"You dare interfere!"
"What, is it burdensome now?!"
"A complete about-face. How ugly."
Aura ignited along both their weapons. The shape of a decisive strike, committing their everything as if to say they would think of consequences later. The instant the Derelict saw that aura, he desperately swung his sword — but his blade could not drive Frey and Arthur back. At most, it was turned aside by Arthur's sword alone, leaving him wide open.
"Damn it all!"
Under normal circumstances, the Derelict would have handled Arthur and Frey's pincer attack with ease. His peerless skill, his hardened body, and his overwhelming mana were all far beyond what the current Arthur and Frey could withstand.
But now was not normal.
Now, after countless trials had dismantled the majority of his arsenal.
Now, having poured every last drop of his mana outside his body to cast his final spell.
Even the Derelict had to fight with everything he had just to fend off their pincer.
"Honestly, the sword alone bores me. Heojeop."
"Just as you say! Without your mana, you are nothing!"
"You damn wretches!"
Joy stood staring blankly at the sparks born where aura clashed against aura, until she felt something settle on her shoulder and came back to herself.
"Joy. This is no time to be daydreaming."
"...I'm sorry?"
"The chance has come, hasn't it? If you keep spacing out, I'll start calling you the Airhead Lady too, you know?"
"What?! No, what's that supposed to... ah."
Startled by Phoebe's words, Joy raised her voice — then quickly understood what she meant. The crimson mana was steadily unraveling. As Arthur and Frey pressed the Derelict, the mana under his command was slipping free of his conductor's baton.
"Can you do it?"
"...Of course."
Interfering with mana slipping loose from its master's control was no harder than interfering with mana that existed naturally! The Joy of the past might not have managed it. For the Joy of now, this much was nothing.
"I'll help you, Joy."
Joy did not ask how. Knowing Phoebe's abilities as she did — friends since childhood — she answered with a light smile of trust and set her staff moving once more. Her mana seeped into the gaps between the Derelict's unraveling power, and along the paths her mana carved, Phoebe's divinity flowed, accelerating the dispersion.
"Stop this! I refuse to end like—!"
Sensing something wrong, the Derelict raised a frantic voice and tried to resist —
"Where do you think you're going!"
"Responding in turn is proper etiquette. Not getting through."
"Move, damn yoooou!"
But with his composure shattered, he could not bring down one who bore the glorious Blood of Soladin, nor one blessed with the blessing of peerless talent.
"No."
The crimson mana that had dealt Arthur's party death after death scattered into nothing.
"No!"
The sinister air that had filled the room settled beneath the divinity.
"I refuse to accept this!"
The moment the source of the spell he had been weaving collapsed —
"No, I ref— *hack*! *hack*!"
Blood seeped from the Derelict's mouth along with his coughs, cutting off the shriek-like, wretched cry. The backlash of the spell collapsing — the spell he had poured his every ounce of mana into. A side effect that, to any mage, amounted to a death sentence.
Judging it to be the opening, Frey dashed in to finish him — and Arthur cut across her path.
"...Why'd you stop me? Pity?"
"Our opponent is Lucy Aln. There's no telling what trap she left for the very end."
"Ah. Understood."
Even as Frey obediently withdrew, the Derelict's death progressed, step by inexorable step. The armor guarding his body rusted, then crumbled away into powder. Wrinkles spread across his once-youthful skin at a terrible speed, and from those creases the flesh began to rot. Bones too weak to bear the weight of his own body snapped, and he crumpled, rolling across the floor.
At the end of it, after repeating collapse after attempt after collapse, the Derelict gazed at his body disintegrating from the feet up and let out a hollow voice.
"So this is the end of one who chose the wrong means."
In that tableau — as though the god who governed time were reclaiming every moment the Derelict possessed —
"Haha. Yes. This must be what they call the natural order."
The Derelict, surveying the room with eyes full of regret, turned at last to the party that had brought him down.
"I congratulate you. You turned the impossible into the possible and surmounted this mansion. I hope you will take proud ownership of the miracle you have wrought."
Hardly the words of a loser, I suppose, he murmured with a chuckle — but the laughter did not last long. Even as it rang out, every remaining moment of his time was reclaimed from him.
Thus the great adversary who had driven Arthur's party through hundreds of failures dissolved into ash with that faint smile as his last, and where he had vanished, only a bracelet of cold, exquisite beauty remained — the sole proof that anything had ever stood there.
"...Joy. I don't know much about accessories, so I have to ask — is that the thing I think it is?"
"Your Highness, Third Prince! Can't you tell just by looking?! Exquisitely crafted jewels! All those countless colors within! And above all, that signature engraved there — it is unmistakably Pret's!"
"He's right, Your Highness. That is without doubt the work of the Apostle of the Art Order."
"Which would mean... we are the First Clearers of this dungeon!"
Unable to contain his joy, Arthur clenched his fist.
"It's overrrr!"
Joy, having poured out every last ounce of strength moments ago, forgot all noble dignity and whined between tears and smiles about how exhausted and how much it had hurt.
"It's over, isn't it."
Phoebe drew close to Joy's side and healed her with her magic.
"Barely put up a fight at the end."
Frey, entirely unaware that a smile had crept onto her own lips, sheathed her sword with a show of bravado.
And so the six-day journey that had run without a single moment's rest since the Academy's final exams began came to a close — with the victory of Arthur's party.
[The Final Exam Dungeon has been cleared!]
[A penalty will be applied for quest failure!]