A Cat Hissing at the Witch of Death
Was there ever a fight that deserved the word "toyed with" more than this one? The four of them were nearly entranced, watching the battle between Byeolya and Wichasha unfold.
"You know what? From now on, I'm going to major in Deadly Poison Stud—ow!"
Dick had suddenly spoken up, and Meilin's fist was already buried in the back of his head.
"Don't just decide things like that on a whim, you blockhead!"
Rubbing his bruised skull, Dick offered his excuse. "Aw, come on! Think about it! Professor Byeolya's charming, isn't she?"
Meilin's expression went past disgust and into outright revulsion. "Were you always the kind of idiot who picks his major based on how attractive a professor is?"
"And what about you, huh? Walking around with that moon-eyed grin going on about Pion, Pion, Pion all day long?"
At that, Meilin flushed red and began stammering. "Wh-what does that have to do with anything?! Why are you bringing that up out of nowhere?! That's — that's pure, innocent admiration! Picking a major is a completely different matter!"
"Anyone can see it. If Pion were a professor, you'd be following him into Magic Combat too."
Watching the two of them start yet another round of bickering, Simon let out a long inward sigh.
"R-really though, Professor Byeolya's fighting style is completely unpredictable."
Camibarez couldn't tear her eyes away from the battle, and Simon nodded along.
"She hasn't even drawn a single magic circle. She's fighting him entirely with her body."
"Yes. It's like the poisons keep assembling themselves inside her, like some kind of animal."
Every drop of sweat from her body, every bodily fluid, even flakes of dead skin and the hairs falling from her head — all of it became a weapon. Wichasha hadn't managed a single proper attack, and the poison accumulating in his own body was only growing worse.
"Why!"
Even with purple froth streaming from his lips, Wichasha roared with hatred.
"Why did you slaughter the women and children of my tribe!"
"Didn't I explain that ages ago?" Byeolya tilted her head. "The fight was over and I was hot, so I just took a dip in the pool nearby. Turns out it was your tribe's drinking water, and you morons gulped down water I'd soaked my body in and got a plague going. That's the whole story."
"And you expect us to believe that?!"
Wichasha shrieked and swung his fist, but Byeolya batted it away with ease.
"Pretty pathetic, right? I know. Humans refuse to take things at face value. They pile on meaning, inflate it, drown it in emotion, and insist some grand fate must have been at work. I got banished from the tribe I'd lived in my whole life over that one incident — what more do you want from me? Should I hand you gutless wretches my life on a platter too?"
WHAM!
Byeolya's foot buried itself in Wichasha's stomach, and he staggered backward.
"You're nothing but a monster who couldn't accept reality and let hatred devour you whole."
"Do not mock me!!"
Wichasha came at her again with dogged persistence. When Byeolya raised her fingertip, the rainbow-colored droplets of poisoned sweat she'd been scattering across the ground all this time lifted into the air.
KABOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!
Then they flew at him all at once and detonated.
Each and every one was a different kind of poison explosion. The Jet-Black robe Wichasha wore disintegrated into rags, and spots and welts erupted across his whole body.
THUD!
Having weathered every last explosion, Wichasha finally hung both arms down, his face drained and exhausted.
"Boring. And more than anything — you're just not good enough."
Byeolya yawned and picked at her ear. Wichasha's eyes flared at the sight.
"With this!!"
His tattered Jet-Black robe peeled away from his body and gathered into a single mass, reshaping itself into a spiked sword over three meters long.
"With this technique, I claimed six victories from Hong Peng!!"
The instant he shrieked and swung the spiked sword, Byeolya blew a short puff of air at the finger she'd been digging in her ear with.
A scarlet spark shot from her fingertip and triggered a chain of explosions. Wichasha's skin, caught in the blasts, turned bone-white and began to melt and slough off like candle wax.
"GAAAAAAAGH!"
The sight was so gruesome that the watching four turned their heads or squeezed their eyes shut.
"You ought to know when to stop your damn squirming."
Appearing in a blur of afterimages, Byeolya clamped her palm around Wichasha's face.
"Ngh!"
Wichasha frantically thrust both arms up to grab her wrist — but it wouldn't budge. Not an inch.
Crunch. Squeeze.
He was losing the contest of strength, too. His legs trembled, and then both knees hit the ground.
He screamed with humiliation and dredged up every ounce of power he had, but it made no difference. Worse — the more Jet-Black he raised, the more his organs tore apart and the energy itself flowed backward into him.
Have I grown weaker? Or was this woman always this strong?
"I'm not close with my sister, and I've got no family love to spare, you understand."
Crunch. Squeeze.
By now, Wichasha's face was pressed flat against the ground, his two arms the only thing pathetically gripping at Byeolya's right hand.
"What are you talking about, bringing up some pip-squeak from the old days? The her of now could pin you down one-handed without breaking a sweat."
"Ughk!"
Just then, Wichasha's shredded Jet-Black robe rippled and surged once more. Byeolya sneered.
"Reinforcing your strength with Jet-Black is pointless—"
SHAAAASH!
His Jet-Black coalesced and shot outward like a spearhead. Even Byeolya seemed caught off guard this time, letting go and leaping back to evade.
"Oh, I like this. I gave you a lesson and it actually took, didn't it, student?"
"Hah! Hah!"
Wichasha detonated every remaining drop of Jet-Black from the soles of both feet and began fleeing at full speed.
I was wrong. She's on a completely different level from the days on the steppes!
This was an opponent he could never beat. He needed to fall back for now and devise another approach.
Watching Wichasha bolt, Byeolya clicked her tongue.
"What a nuisance."
Taking a lunging stance herself, she called back to the students. "I'll catch him. You kids find somewhere safe and stay in—"
KABOOOOOOM!
A deafening roar split the air without warning.
Wichasha's mangled body came hurtling straight back the way he'd come, sailed clean past Byeolya, and slammed into the far wall. The blast was so powerful it kicked up a whirlwind.
"?"
Byeolya turned around to see Wichasha's broken, bloody form shudder once — then his head sagged lifelessly.
A moment later, from the direction Wichasha had been fleeing, a man came walking over with heavy, deliberate steps.
Simon cried out, his voice brimming with relief.
"Kajan!"
At Kajan's head, three Thieves' Guild agents draped in robes were making their way toward them.
"What? Why is Kajan here?"
"Kajan, senior?"
Dick and Meilin were equally astonished. Kajan gave the group a casual wave.
"You're late, Kajan."
Simon walked up close and smiled warmly as he said it.
"No. Not late at all."
"Sorry?"
"My mission was never about arresting some oaf like that."
Step. Step.
Kajan walked over to Byeolya and bowed his head with perfect formality.
"I've come to escort you, Professor Byeolya."
"……"
So bringing Byeolya in had been Kajan's objective all along. She snorted.
"Escort me? Escort me where? Get lost. I'll get to Roc Island on my own, so go tell them that."
"The Hoopa Tribe affair, and now this — because of your habit of running wild however you please, the complaints flooding into Kizen have been anything but few."
His eyes glinted dangerously.
"Why did you ignore your escort?"
"Felt like it."
She smiled right back, refusing to yield an inch.
"And look at this, look at the nerve of this one talking down to me. I'm a professor, you know? How easy do you HENCHMEN think I am?"
"The Thieves' Guild maintains a cooperative partnership with Kizen. And you are not yet a Kizen professor. I am fully authorized to subdue you by force and bring you in."
"Oh."
Byeolya's mouth split open, revealing her jagged triangular teeth.
"Try it."
"You don't think I will?"
FWOOOOOOM!
Their Jet-Black clashed in a violent eruption. Meilin, unable to watch any longer, rushed over.
"Whoa, whoa, why are you both getting so worked up about this? There's really no need to fight—!"
CRACK!
Before anyone could intervene, their fists had already flown at each other's faces.
Arms crossing as they landed simultaneous counter-punches, the two of them then traded kicks and Magic Combat techniques and collided in earnest.
CRASH-BOOOOM!
"Wh-what's happening?!"
Camibarez trembled all over. Dick looked utterly incredulous.
"Are those two insane? Why are they even fighting!"
"Simon, stop them!"
Simon shook his head. Short of donning Pion or summoning Prince, there was no way anyone here could break up a fight between those two.
"Besides, I don't think they're actually fighting."
"Sorry?"
"Just watch."
Simon was slowly analyzing the battle.
FWOOSH!
Byeolya twisted at the waist to slip past Kajan's fist and grinned.
"Well, well. You're more fun than that tribal chief of yours."
The fight between Byeolya and Kajan — Kajan was unquestionably one of the strongest, but he couldn't defeat a professor-tier necromancer. Part of it was Byeolya deliberately holding back, but there was something else: Kajan possessed resistance to poison. No matter how many toxins Byeolya layered onto him, he kept fighting as if nothing had happened.
"Hahaha! Are you even human?"
A prospective Deadly Poison professor facing a man her poisons couldn't touch — a catastrophically bad match-up — and yet Byeolya was laughing. She evaded his attacks, backed away a few steps, pulled a clump of brightly colored powder from the belt at her waist, tapped it into her mouth, and swallowed.
No magic circle, no potion. Inside her body, the compounds broke down, bonded with existing ones, and began to rebuild themselves anew. Soon the sweat running down her forehead changed color, and the very nature of her secreted fluids transformed with it.
"……And you, I ask — are you truly human?"
Kajan charged fiercely, and the two locked together again. After several more exchanges of combat techniques, both sprang back at the same moment, and Kajan looked down at his own skin.
Grey blotches were beginning to bloom across his body, one after another.
"Found it."
Byeolya licked her lips with a smile. Even against a poison-resistant opponent, she had endlessly altered her toxin formulas throughout the fight — until at last she'd synthesized a poison uniquely calibrated to Kajan alone.
"So this much counts as passing Kizen's little exam, does it?"
"……You knew about that?"
"Their methods are predictable."
If a Kizen Deadly Poison professor gave up on poison the moment she met someone resistant to it, she'd be a disgrace to the discipline. Byeolya had, it seemed, been satisfied all the way through Kizen's final test.
"But this whole idea — that you people get to judge me? That's what's insulting."
She cracked her knuckles one by one with a series of pops.
"I know it's not your fault — you were given orders. But whatever. I'm going to beat you black and blue."
"Be my guest."
Kajan raised both fists and burned with fighting spirit, clearly intending not to simply take it lying down.
Just as the two were about to collide once more—
Clap! Clap!
"Now, that's enough! No more of that!"
Someone was entering the ruined building.
A tiny girl with silver hair that shimmered like moonlight came bouncing in, a half-eaten ice cream in one hand and her mouth smeared an absolute mess.
"This much is plenty!"
L-Lady Nephthys!
Simon nearly died of shock on the spot. Kajan and the Thieves' Guild agents — not to mention every one of the group members — bowed at the waist in deference to the master of Kizen.
Trailing behind Nephthys came a calm, composed girl with black hair and ruby eyes. Lorraine spotted Simon and gave a small wave; Simon smiled and waved back.
"……?"
And Byeolya was staring at Nephthys, utterly bewildered.
Fearless as ever of any poison, Nephthys strode right up to her and blinked her big round eyes. Then she beamed and threw her hand up in the air.
"Hiya!"
Byeolya just stood there, frozen in place, looking more than a little dazed. An uneasiness crept over Simon.
Professor Byeolya won't recognize Lady Nephthys, will she.
Lorraine seemed to reach the same conclusion and spoke up first.
"Professor Byeolya. Please pay your respects to—"
FWIP!
Byeolya shot backward in one enormous leap and landed on all fours — both feet and both hands pressed flat against the ground. Then, like a wary cat, she began to hiss.
"What is this monster brat?! Get it away from me, NOW!!"