Royal Guard — Judgment's Arrow
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
The Blood Golem came charging like a siege fortress, kicking up clouds of swirling sand and dust.
Andre's summon, Encifer, hammered its greatsword into the Golem's body again and again in reply, but the Golem didn't so much as flinch. If anything, the greatsword was knocked flying by a casual sweep of the Golem's arm.
'Encifer... losing a contest of strength?!'
Andre bit his nails, visibly agitated. How on earth was a first-year using a third-year's technique?
Of course, Simon's Blood Golem wasn't the real thing. Its body was melting and running off, and it was smaller than a true Blood Golem besides.
'Right. It's just a clumsy imitation. No need to panic.'
Steeled by that thought, Andre swept his arm down hard.
WHAM!
Encifer's greatsword, swung harder than at any point before, drove deep into the charging Blood Golem's shoulder. With a wet shluk!, blood sprayed from Simon's own shoulder as well.
'It's a knockoff, but it actually has the Life Link effect? Then that means...!'
Andre immediately cast a magic circle across the ground. Then, the instant the Blood Golem reached him, he triggered it.
Solutio
The Blood Golem's lower half melted like ice cream the moment it stepped onto the circle.
'Perfect for that pathetic fake Blood Golem of yours!'
With the Golem's melted feet rooted to the ground, Encifer swung its greatsword as if it had been waiting for exactly this. Wound after wound opened across the Golem's body.
And at the same time—
Sluk! Sluk!
Matching gashes tore open across Simon's body, blood bursting from them. Andre clenched his fist in triumph.
'The Blood Golem is a double-edged sword! Better to dispel it entirely!'
Then the Blood Golem, which had been taking a one-sided beating, suddenly planted both hands on the ground. Using nothing but arm strength, it launched itself upward.
CRASH!
Andre was sent flying several meters by the impact and went tumbling across the floor. The noblewomen nearby cried out in shock and scrambled back.
'Kgh!'
That had been close. By the time Andre pushed himself up, Encifer had vanished as well.
"So it was a stationary magic circle after all."
Simon said, panting. It was the kind of dark magic that couldn't be maintained once the caster's position changed.
"I see what you were after. But."
Andre laid a hidden magic circle down on the floor. Thick smoke billowed around him, and Encifer was born once more.
"Of course I accounted for that! Do you think I trained in coordinate recalculation only once or twice?"
The palace-faction nobles cheered wildly.
Simon, meanwhile, showed not the slightest tremor despite his decisive blow being parried. If anything, a faint smile had settled on his lips.
"Ha! You have composure to spare even in a moment like this?"
"The Blood Golem seems to have done its job."
Raising his arms above his head, Simon spread a magic circle wide.
"Come back."
The dissolving Blood Golem's body turned to smoke and was sucked up into the circle.
To Simon, the Blood Golem had been nothing more than a stepping stone.
Sending his arms behind his back, he grabbed hold of empty air.
'Hnngh!'
Then he wrenched them apart with everything he had.
KRRAAAAAAAAANG!
In the direction Simon swung his arms, a portal stretching over twenty meters unfolded in a straight line.
Step.
Chk.
What emerged from within was a skeleton battalion—twenty-three skeletons in total, including an Archer.
"What, you pulled out... just skeletons?"
Andre sneered, but those who knew better were gasping in awe.
Princess Molly in particular was bouncing up and down on the spot, her eyes shining. At last, smiles also crossed the faces of Lorraine and Serne.
The royal-faction nobles, on the other hand, had gone pale.
"Your Highness! You must block it, now!"
"That's from the Kizen exam, without a doubt—!"
It was already too late. Simon swept down the arms he'd raised above his head.
"Go."
Smoke-shaped Cloud poured down from the magic circle and settled into the bodies of all twenty-three skeletons.
White bone was dyed emerald, and the swords in their hands turned dazzling, as though each had caught a beam of light. Behind their backs, the Cloud stretching from their bones unfurled like cloaks.
Fwap.
Fwap.
The transformed twenty-three swept their new capes on the wind and re-gripped their weapons. From the hollows of their empty eye sockets, a cyan light flickered.
'Kgh! What in the world is THAT?!'
The color drained from Andre's face. Twenty-three undead were moving as freely and fluidly as if they were alive.
It was a technique he had never once heard of in his entire life.
'Don't tell me—an Original?!'
Startled as he was, Andre responded with remarkable speed. He tore open his subspace and drew out summons to match the numbers.
Slack, lifeless corpses tumbled out of the subspace and began rising one by one under Andre's dark magic.
-Kyeng!
-Krr! Krr!
Zombies made from the corpses of dogs and monster hounds. Eight Zombie Dogs.
Using them would dull his control over Encifer, but they would at least even out the headcount.
"Our capital is different!"
Andre roared.
"Do you have any idea how much more was invested in mine than in those cheap, basic skeletons of yours—!"
At that moment, the crouching Royal Guards launched forward like bullets.
Covering ten meters in a blink, they arrived and swept their emerald swords—and with a metallic CLANG!, a Zombie Dog's torso was cleaved in two.
'O-One strike?!'
The skeletons' swordsmanship, like the swinging of laser blades, was all the more vivid and spectacular in the dark of night.
The Zombie Dogs were being carved apart, literally.
"Kgh!"
Desperate now, Andre kept spitting Zombie Dogs out of his subspace.
But Simon's control was every bit as formidable.
Thrust! Thrust!
The swordsmen fell back while the spear-bearing Guards charged in, stabbing forward from the front. The swordsmen circled wide, smashed through the enemy's flanks, and shattered their formation.
Shriek!
Shriiiiiek!
And when emerald arrows came streaking toward the caster Andre himself, he had to cut off his control in a panic and throw up a Jet-Black Shield.
The bow-wielding Royal Guards were fending off the Zombie Dogs while eyeing Andre hungrily, waiting for any opening.
'Damn it all!'
Andre had deployed well over twenty Zombie Dogs by now—and hadn't taken down a single Royal Guard.
Worse still—
Hiiiiiiss!
The wounds Simon had suffered from the Blood Golem began smoking and closing up.
Andre was stunned.
"Wh-Why would skeletons have the Blood Golem's healing effect...!"
The strain on Simon's face—which summoning the Blood Golem had drained considerably—eased at once.
'If they'd never seen it before, they'd be shocked.'
The Royal Guard wasn't something you could whip up just by draping Cloud over skeletons.
First, the Blood Golem had to be completed; only then could the Cloud composing that Golem be transferred onto the skeletons' bodies.
Even now, Simon was maintaining the Summon Blood Golem spell without interruption.
In other words, the Royal Guard were not skeletons wearing Cloud. They were skeletons wearing a Blood Golem.
SLASH!
Slash!
The Royal Guards sliced through the Zombie Dogs and arrived before Andre. Flustered, he flailed and barked orders at Encifer.
CRACK!
One Royal Guard took Encifer's sword strike dead-on and scattered into countless fragments of bone. Even for the Royal Guard, the frail durability inherent to skeletons was unavoidable.
"Kuh!"
Thanks to the Life Link effect, Simon could be seen staggering from far away. A strange light entered Andre's eyes.
'Life Link is a double-edged sword. Using that technique, he's gambling his life too. Stay calm, and this is winnable!'
Encifer swung its menacing greatsword again and again, cutting down the Royal Guards' numbers and dealing Simon damage in turn. But in those same moments, the Guards carved up Zombie Dogs and restored Simon's health.
Damage and recovery, over and over.
This would never end. Left with no choice, Andre recalled his Zombie Dogs back into the subspace.
Ultimately, though, it was a blunder. The moment the supply of Zombie Dogs stopped, Simon used his superiority in numbers to secure the space entirely.
In an instant, two Royal Guards were on Andre's back.
"Kgh!"
Andre dropped low just in time, and the emerald blade that swept past shaved off his hair.
As the assault pressed in from all sides, Andre found himself drowning. He had to keep up the pressure with Encifer, and now even found himself casting spells with his own hands.
Slash!
Shk!
Sword gashes from the Royal Guards opened all over his body. Outnumbered, every attack was converging on him.
"GRAAAAGH!"
Andre flung both arms out violently, and a jet-black shockwave shot out, scattering the bodies of two Royal Guards.
He panted for breath, the corners of his mouth curling upward—and then—
Click. Click.
He realized that the flying bones of the scattered Guards had, at some point, frozen in midair.
Far off, directing the battle, Simon spread his palm wide.
Bone Nail
Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!
Emerald Bone Nails rushed at Andre from every direction—front, back, left, and right. The sharpened ends of bone joints rammed into his body like lances.
"GRAAAAAAAAH!"
CLANG!
The pain snapped his line of concentration, and even the Encifer he'd been maintaining vanished.
A Royal Guard slipped into the gap and swung its sword at Andre.
'Hk—!'
In that instant, Andre used the signature mark of a Spirit Studies major—Spirit Transformation—to slip out of the encirclement. The Guard's blade passed harmlessly through him.
Except in special cases like Cindy Vivace, Spirit Transformation required a cooldown before it could be used again.
There was even a saying that to fight a spirit mage, you make them burn their Spirit Transformation first.
Which meant—now was the chance to attack. Unable to sustain the transformation for long, Andre soon reappeared in the material world.
'Final stage.'
Simon threw his winning move.
He activated the circle above his head once more, and every thread of Cloud composing the Royal Guards drained out of them and back into it. The skeletons all went still, like machines with the power cut.
Then Simon modified the circle's formula, twisting the ratio of the Cloud until it broke, and drew a bow and arrow out of the circle.
"It's over, Your Highness. Surrender."
Simon warned as he nocked a greenish-black arrow to the string. Andre's lips trembled as though seized by convulsions.
"Sur... render?"
If word spread that he had been defeated by a first-year, this was beyond recovery. Truly unrecoverable.
He had even staked the dungeon monopoly rights—never approved by his mother the Queen—on a royal oath. If he lost, sinking to the bottom wouldn't begin to cover it. He'd be buried underground.
"I have nowhere left—"
His two arms turned to face front.
"—to retreat!!"
Multiple layers of magic circles unfolded before him as the high-tier defensive art, the Black Gate, stacked on top of itself again and again. It was the maximum defense Andre was capable of.
'Nothing for it, then.'
The emerald hue bled away from the arrow entirely, replaced by jet-black.
Simon released the drawn string.
Simon Remake — Blood Arrow
SKWAAAAAANG!
The arrow tore loose with the report of a cannon and slammed into the five-layered Black Gate.
Crack! Crack!
Two layers shattered on contact, and the layers behind burst one after another. In the blink of an eye, only a single Black Gate remained in front of Andre.
The clothes he wore were ripped away and scattered, but he somehow managed to hold his stance.
Then he let out a scream that was half shriek.
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
The arrow erupted in a greenish-black explosion that spread outward. The ground split apart whole, and shards of rock went flying everywhere.
"Hnnngh—!"
The instant a massive shard threatened to drop on the watching nobles, Lorraine flashed past, twin daggers in both hands.
The fragments crumbled harmlessly into a fine dust of stone.
"You make us work for it."
Serne had likewise floated up into the air, crossing her legs leisurely as she manipulated countless feathers. The sight of her lifting a boulder-sized shard with a single small feather was genuinely impressive.
Grumble-rumble-rumble!
Simon exhaled a long breath and stared straight ahead.
"Heh-heh-hih! Heh-heh!"
Laughter rang out.
"Heh! Hahahahaha!"
There was Andre, in the heart of the explosion, in rags, blood streaming down his body. Both legs were shaking so badly they seemed about to give out at any moment—but he was holding on through sheer spite.
"I endured it! I endured it! Now what will you do, Simon Polentia?!"
Pier's other half clicked his tongue at the sight.
'...Of course I did. I can't kill royalty. But—'
Simon slowly lowered his finger. Andre's gaze followed it down.
"!"
His shadow was red. And that red shadow was fused with Simon's own.
'You bastard! When did he cast a curse—?!'
"Indolence. The curse of painlessness."
"Such a curse exists?"
It was only natural Andre didn't know. Indolence was one of the Four Great Curses that Bahil had crafted for Simon's sake.
"It's a curse that seals away all sensation—pain included—inside a magic circle so that my body feels nothing for a set duration. Though its duration is nearly spent by now."
Simon smiled.
"Shall we... share the pain?"
GULP—!
All the agony Simon had accumulated came flooding in like a tidal wave, and Andre's rational mind was obliterated into white noise.
'...GRAAAH!'
Indolence stored away every scrap of pain and, the instant its duration expired, split it evenly with the partner whose senses were linked.
'M-My shoulder—it feels like it's tearing off!'
As a child of the royal house, he had never known suffering like this. While he froze for a moment, dominated by the pain, Simon—who had been through every kind of hell—charged in with only the barest grimace on his face.
WHUMP!
In a duel fought for one's very life, stiffening your opponent for even a heartbeat was more than enough to take it.
Simon's jet-black-infused fist drove straight up into Andre's jaw. His body floated up into the air, then crashed to the floor.
"...!"
The head butler came sprinting over, breathless, and checked on the fallen Andre.
His eyes were rolled back, and he wasn't moving a muscle.
"M-Match over! The winner is Simon Polentia!"
Simon dusted off his hands, light and easy.
'I'll be taking that dungeon, thank you very much.'