An Unexpected Bug
After the Magic Tower thesis presentation, Amy Pewter had spent her days basking in the fervent praise and thunderous applause of countless people. She had grown rather confident in her own abilities. She might not amount to much as a mage, but as a scholar—particularly in the fields of magical interpretation and analysis—she believed she fell short of no one her age. Not even Princess Marily Raymond, hailed as a once-in-a-generation genius among scholars, could possibly be her match. That was what she had believed… No, that was the delusion she had been clinging to.
This doesn’t make any sense…
The magic circle floating above the tablet screen appeared and vanished in the same instant. The correct answer was entered the moment the problem was transmitted. The solving speed was so absurd that it made her wonder if Marily was even solving the problems at all, or simply staring at them. It seemed faster than scanning an OMR card straight down the number one column. No matter how much the questions had been prepared at a student level for the competition, that kind of speed was simply impossible.
Monster.
There wasn’t even a proper solving process. Marily Raymond simply slashed out answers one after another, dismantling the magic circles at a blistering pace. Within her eyes lingered a clear trace of disappointment that the problem difficulty fell so far below her expectations.
That’s just cheating.
She no longer felt any motivation to solve the problems herself. The other students seemed to feel the same; instead of interpreting the magic circles on their tablets, they simply stared blankly at Marily. The gazes that had once looked upon her with affectionate amusement gradually transformed into ones of pure awe. Just as the magic researchers had done when they first witnessed her dazzling talent.
For now, I need to focus my interference on Baraki Nepiri, the highest priority threat.
Setting skill aside, the Benedict Academy representative team was the most likely champion of this competition. A single grain of sand could eventually build a mountain; therefore, preventing them from earning even the smallest points was one of the essential conditions for victory. I’d rather build up a solid lead while the student council president isn’t competing.
In any game in the world, there existed cheat players capable of rendering every strategy and tactic meaningless. In this competition, that role belonged to Aaron Dice, who had nearly reached five-star rank. In this particular match, it was Marily Raymond, the genius possessing an overwhelming intellect that no one could rival.
They would keep their secret weapon—the Anti-Magic Sword, a bug capable of flipping the outcome of any game—hidden for as long as possible. Other academy students either didn’t know of its existence or had never experienced it firsthand. They would save it for the decisive moment while dominating the current match.
Anyway, whether my abilities become known now or later won’t make much difference to the other teams.
No matter how outstanding one’s formula interpretation ability was, the fundamental nature of this competition remained a magic contest. Exceptional magical prowess was indispensable in the high-point events. While Marily’s capabilities might surprise the participants, they weren’t quite enough to plant genuine wariness in their hearts.
That was why Marily—not Togun—needed to shine in this match. She would lead the event to victory through her own power. With such determination, Marily continued solving problems without pause. However, she had no idea.
What others considered little more than a warm-up or preliminary scouting run—the obstacle race—contained a cheat on par with Benedict Academy’s student council president, Aaron Dice.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
At a speed that surpassed even the rate at which Marily was applying handicaps, the restraints binding one boy’s body began shattering into pieces. Unlike Marily, who reverse-calculated the magic circle and dismantled it from its foundation, this was a method of forcibly piercing and destroying the weakest points in the mana flow.
Emotionless, eerie pale eyes. A boy with a mane of pure white lion-like hair casually walked out into the center of the group that had frozen at the sight of Marily’s magic circle.
Who the hell is that guy?
Watching the scene on her screen, Marily’s eyes twitched. It was a clear sign that this unexpected development had disturbed her composure. She solved the next problem appearing on her tablet at blinding speed. The weight amplification penalty at the very top of the shop menu. Without hesitation, Marily selected it and targeted the lion-maned boy.
Countless magic circles flew toward him. At that exact moment, Marily had the strange sensation that her eyes had met the boy’s across the screen.
The magic circles collapsed on their own before they could even reach him, disintegrating into mana dust that swirled around the boy. From within that swirling cloud, Chris emerged with an utterly indifferent expression, kicked off the ground, and charged forward.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
Marily ground her teeth, refusing to tolerate the action. All the points she had distributed across multiple targets now poured entirely onto him. The ground beneath his feet suddenly sank as though a sinkhole had opened. But Chris had apparently anticipated it; he stepped on empty air and leaped high into the sky.
He sprinted across the heavens as naturally as if invisible platforms existed beneath his feet. Marily’s hands moved frantically as she watched him replicate the advanced martial technique of aerial movement through magic alone.
The next obstacle was a barrage of massive boulders intended to knock him down into the pit. She must have invested a considerable number of points. The rocks possessed a huge surface area and clearly carried power comparable to decent magic.
Since this was a virtual world, there was no danger of actual injury, but a direct hit would undoubtedly deliver a tremendous shock. Yet before the boulders could reach Chris, they shattered into tiny fragments in mid-air. The only damage he took was a few pebble-sized pieces smaller than thumbnails bouncing lightly off his cheek.
“Then how about this!”
At this point, it had become a matter of pride. Just wait and see. She would absolutely stop those leisurely steps of his.
Marily’s blue eyes blazed with fiery determination. At the same time, something massive thudded down in front of Chris on the screen. Thick forearms that resembled massive logs. A colossal figure clearly exceeding three meters in height. A monster with a distorted, furious face appeared before Chris and unleashed a savage roar.
GRRRRAAAAAHHH!
An ogre. One of the monster species that had once inhabited the western parts of the continent before the Ellemental Kingdom’s large-scale subjugation campaigns. Known as the king of the mountains, its immense strength and ferocious nature meant that its mere appearance would create countless casualties. Subjugating one required at least an expert-level mage. While they had nearly vanished from the Ellemental Kingdom itself, they were still occasionally sighted in the border regions between the kingdom and Yggdrasil.
It can’t possibly be a real ogre.
It was a fake created within virtual reality. Its power had surely been heavily nerfed compared to the real thing. Still, it didn’t matter. No matter how weakened, an ogre was still an ogre. It was clearly a being that students would struggle to face. In fact, among all the obstacles available for purchase with points, it ranked among the most expensive. For an ogre to be summoned this early was highly unusual, and Marily had unknowingly set a new tournament record.
“Perfect!”
Records meant nothing to the current Marily. The only thing that mattered was whether she could stop Chris. And the ogre lived up to her expectations by blocking his charge for the first time.
The thick arm swept horizontally with brutal force. Chris took a small step back to avoid the savage grasp. Yet his eyes still showed not a trace of tension as he pointed his index finger at the ogre.
Light gathered at his fingertip. The kinetic energy of light condensed into a single point, then shot forward as a compressed beam straight toward the center of the rampaging ogre’s chest.
The kinetic energy of light, compressed to a single point, instantly converted into intense thermal energy upon impact. A technique commonly called a “laser.” The heat that began at a tiny point burned through the mana composing the virtual ogre, rapidly incinerating its massive body.
Rather than confronting the ogre directly, Chris had neutralized the very formula that created it. His ability to instantly pierce the weaknesses of magic far more solid and intricate than the previous weight amplification penalty left every mage watching the match in awe.
“Those eyes are impressive.”
This assessment came even from the Death King, the pinnacle of dark mages. No—he went a step further. He understood that the boy’s skill originated not from personal ability, but from the supernatural power engraved in those eyes.
Can he see mana?
Mana was an invisible element that could never be perceived with the naked eye without special methods. Yet that ridiculous lion-headed brat appeared to have been born with the supernatural ability to visually perceive the flow of mana.
It was an ability specialized in vision, much like his own Evil Eye that saw death. Its scale seemed to reach at least six-star, possibly even eight-star at its peak.
However, it looks like he still can’t control it properly.
The choke-style Mana Restriction Collar around his neck proved as much. He had likely placed the limitation on himself because he couldn’t control the power. It was perfectly normal for ability users to be unable to manage their powers immediately after awakening them, so it wasn’t strange. Especially for someone born with such strong mana affinity. In fact, Kain himself was the unusual case—having awakened an absolute-level ability from the beginning and controlling it with relative perfection.
Judging from his current performance, he can handle about four-star?
Five-star if he pushed himself. That put him on a similar level to Aaron Dice, who was being called the greatest genius of this competition.
Apparently Kain’s evaluation wasn’t far off from those around him. He could hear the scouts seated nearby talking.
“As expected of Sirionella Private Academy’s ace. The rumors that he’s comparable to Benedict Academy’s student council president Aaron Dice don’t seem to be baseless after all.”
“His name was Chris, right?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
Chris, huh… He hadn’t come with high expectations, but there were more interesting kids here than he’d anticipated.
Well, no matter how you slice it, they’re still just kids fighting.
No matter how much the people beside him chattered about geniuses and prodigies, it failed to stir even the slightest interest in him. After all, he possessed a truly monstrous talent that the King of the Dead had acknowledged as one that would never appear again since the dawn of creation.
Overhearing the scouts’ conversation, Kain yawned and stared at the screen with a bored expression.
“Ah…”
The screen showed Marily’s face as she let out a deep sigh. Had she not expected the ogre to vanish so pathetically either? Her fingers, which had been moving busily across the tablet until now, had stopped completely. She simply stared at the screen with a hollow expression.
“That’s cheating, isn’t it?”
She understood instantly. She didn’t know exactly what he had done, but that lion-maned boy possessed bug-level power comparable to Togun Masao. Was this the same feeling the other competitors had experienced when they watched her solving problems at such ridiculous speed?
Watching Chris dominate the match with near-divine, borderline-cheating power, Marily slowly shook her head.
I can’t stop that.
I’m sorry, Togun. I really did my best.
It’s just that the guy himself was ridiculously overpowered.
Muttering a crude curse unbecoming of a princess, Marily clicked her tongue. Chris, having broken through every penalty she had thrown at him, sprinted at high speed through the burning hologram of the ogre.
He fiercely chased after Togun Masao, who had wrapped his body in mana and taken the lead. With that ferocious sprint, the distance between Togun and Chris closed rapidly.