The Repertoire She Built
The ice around the arena began to gather toward Mayrin.
When she stretched out her hand, the shards reshaped themselves into enormous spikes and shot forward.
Shaaaaaak!
A lance of ice the size of a large carriage tore through the air.
White did exactly one thing in response — simply stretched his open palm forward, without so much as a magic circle.
'!'
And just before Mayrin's spell could touch his hand, it was neutralized and vanished. All that remained were tiny fragments like grains of ice, scattering harmlessly off White's clothes.
"It got blocked!"
Camibarez hopped up and down in frustration.
'......What was that just now?'
Simon's eyes narrowed as he studied White.
For a spell that had stopped such a massive chunk of ice, strangely few fragments had flown loose.
"Then how about this!"
Whrrrrrrooom!
Mayrin manifested a magic circle spread across her left hand.
⟨Dark Flare⟩
That jet-black spell that had once taken her considerable time to prepare back in her first year — she was now conjuring and hurling it without difficulty from the opening moments of a match.
A black flame stretched outward, spewing noxious smoke, and once again White simply extended his palm.
Shalak—
Even the Dark Flare was snuffed out with ease.
"Hmm."
Mayrin lowered her stance, expression troubled. Ice rose from her lifted heels, propping up her body.
"I still don't know what it is, but I guess I'll just keep hammering away!"
⟨Ice Road⟩
Shrrrrrrk!
Mayrin's signature technique arrived. Riding ice that surged up beneath her feet, she sprinted across the arena at high speed. At the same time, she spread a magic circle across her palm and thrust it forward.
⟨Mayrin's Remake — Ice Bolt⟩
Kwakwakwakwakwakwa!
A rapid-fire version of Ice Bolt. Small but fast, razor-sharp shards of ice poured from her palm in an unbroken stream. Simon, watching from the stands, nodded hard.
'Good, she's reading the situation fast!'
Since the big black spells weren't landing, she had shifted her style to a combination of high-speed movement and rapid-cast magic. She whirled in circles around White, showering him with ice.
White began to move as well.
He spread a glass-like barrier centered on his palm, shielding his body. Then, slowly rotating his arm to the side, the barrier moved with it, deflecting the hail of ice shards.
Camibarez, watching closely, hardened her expression.
"Mayrin's jet-black ice barrier. It's not being destroyed — it's just... disappearing."
"Yeah. My guess? That's an extension of whatever erased the Dark Flare earlier."
At the end of his first year, White had defeated Moiran's 3rd-year student council president.
Sure, the presidents of the Three Great Schools who failed to transfer into Kizen were second-rounders, but they were also skilled veterans who had spent three years steadily honing their black magic.
For a first-year who had just transferred in to beat them defied all common sense.
That said, if pressed, there was exactly one plausible way it could happen.
'A special ability.'
Black magic alone, of course, couldn't stand up to a 3rd-year.
Which meant White must have won through a fusion of his innate power and jet-black. And if that power was as formidable as Loraine's or Serne's — something inborn and devastating — victory wasn't out of the question.
If so, then whether Mayrin could figure out what that ability was would be the 'key' to this match. Simon was sure of it.
"Haaaaah!"
Mayrin, still circling and hurling shards, changed tactics. She drew White's gaze, then raised an enormous wall of ice behind his back.
The wall collapsed inward, crashing down toward where he stood.
'A physical attack using the weight of the ice!'
White drew back his right hand and sent it behind him. The moment the crumbling wall met his palm, the middle of it simply vanished, as if hollowed out.
⟨Paralyze⟩
Mayrin seized the opening and fired off a curse. It struck White squarely on the back — but he merely rubbed at the spot a couple of times and brushed it off.
Simon's expression grew grave.
'He shut down that whole combo like it was nothing.'
Jet-black ice barriers, jet-black flames, high-speed movement and spell volleys, physical attacks using the weight of ice, curses.
Mayrin kept broadening her repertoire, trying desperately to crack White open — and nothing was landing.
Kwakwakwakwakwa!
Left with no choice, Mayrin resumed circling him, spraying ice on and on.
The match dragged, and the spectators began turning away or heaving sighs.
"I don't see a path to victory here."
"Even Kizen's Vice President can't do anything, huh."
The same picture was playing out again, exactly like every necromancer who had fallen to White before.
Convinced the match was already decided, the crowd began rising from their seats one by one.
Camibarez fidgeted anxiously at the sight.
"Mayrin......!"
Thud!
Then it happened. A single ice shard struck White's body.
"......"
White's head dipped. His transparent barrier, the one deflecting her attacks, still stood intact.
Thud! Thud!
Two more hits landed, then a third.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
More and more strikes began slipping through the transparent barrier.
That White was being hit.
Murmur murmur murmur!
The spectators who had been leaving flooded back to their seats in a surge of excitement.
Simon swiftly checked the Barrier Gauge displayed on the mana screen.
It was confirmed.
The attacks were getting through.
"White just took a hit!"
"WAAAAAAAAAH!"
Colossal cheers erupted from every direction. Mayrin brought Ice Road to a halt.
"I've never even heard of such a thing — the power you use."
Her finger pointed straight at White.
"It absorbs jet-black, doesn't it?"
"......"
White gave no reaction whatsoever. As if she hadn't expected an answer anyway, she straightened up and rested a hand on her hip.
"Did I hit the nail on the head? Because what I just fired was jet-black elemental magic mixed with — well, you saw."
Wmmm!
She revealed the magic circle spread before her.
A vivid, brilliant blue — with not a trace of black energy in it.
"Pure elemental magic, made from mana alone."
Simon gripped the fence and rattled it, face alight with excitement.
'That's it! Mayrin!'
Mana and mages are a subset of jet-black and necromancers.
Even the Ivory Tower — hailed as the cradle of every mage in the world, a bastion of history and tradition that once commanded greater prestige than Kizen does today — had acknowledged that truth and restructured itself around necromancy.
But Mayrin had joined the Pure Magic Research Club back during Club Season. She'd heard that learning pure magic formulas would later help her understand jet-black elemental ones, and that was why she'd decided to join.
Of course, there were plenty of people who'd snapped at her that she should reread her textbooks instead of wasting time on some club like that.
And yet here, right now, that unusual repertoire of 'pure magic' she had built up was finally landing.
"Here I come!"
Mayrin stomped down hard on the magic circle drawn across the ground.
KUUUUUUNG!
The ice frozen along the water channels shot up into the sky. She had painstakingly etched her pure-mana magic circles into the ice, one piece at a time.
Then she raised the jet-black ice barrier she had held in reserve, launched the ice shards skyward, and sent jet-black freezing magic hurtling in right behind them.
Kwakwakwakwakwakwa!
Ordinarily, hurling bare ice was weak, so the standard practice was to reinforce it with jet-black before throwing. But now that she knew White's secret, she refused to do it that way.
Tadat! Tat!
White, too, began moving to evade the attacks. If he used his ability, the pure magic punched straight through; if he raised a jet-black shield, the jet-black ice barrier tore the shield apart.
PWOHAK!
Thud!
His barrier flickered, winking in and out again and again.
"Not yet!"
Mayrin drew a jet-black flame circle in her right hand.
"Still too far!"
Then she drew pure elemental magic in her left.
Her signature multi-casting. She spread two different black spells, one in each hand, and began firing both at once.
White's barrier gauge was being gnawed away, bit by bit. Her eyes turned deadly serious.
'I'm going to win. No matter what!'
Three days ago.
"So THAT'S why a Kizen junior came all the way out here to Shahed for her Mission Assessment."
The woman adjusted her glasses and gave a hollow laugh as she looked down at Mayrin, who stood with her head bowed.
"You're asking me to teach you the duties and tricks of being Kizen's Vice President?"
"Please, Senior! I'm begging you!"
Mayrin bowed even deeper and raised her voice.
"I heard you were the true driving force behind the golden age of last year's student council under President Phantassus! I came here because I wanted to learn everything you know!"
"That's your problem. Why would I let you eat into my time off work? I'm still the new hire at this job, and I'm exhausted."
"I'll get up early and handle your entire morning schedule tomorrow in your place!"
"Absolutely not!"
The truth was, Mayrin had come all the way to Shahed from the start for the sole purpose of meeting last year's Kizen Vice President. And Camibarez had gladly come along.
"Senior! I finished all the cleaning!"
"I told you not to."
"You must be hungry! I left some fruit on your desk!"
Having completed her own share of the Mission Assessment, Mayrin trailed the former Vice President around like a loyal puppy. Finally, worn down by her sheer persistence, the older woman asked, incredulous:
"Why are you going this far?"
"......"
Mayrin's fists clenched tight.
"Because I want to be worthy of helping the person who believed in me."
Simon had placed her in the Vice President's seat.
Of course she knew what the other students were whispering.
Made the right friends, didn't she.
Riding Simon's coattails.
Getting the top student of Kizen as her first group-project partner? Talk about luck.
Granted, at Kizen it was standard for an elected Student Council President to staff the council with his most trusted aides, and she knew the criticism aimed at her was nothing but petty jealousy.
But Mayrin couldn't be satisfied with that.
Kizen was a meritocracy, after all.
"I thought of you from the very beginning."
"Of everyone in this school, you're the most suited to be Vice President."
Her face still burned at the memory — but Simon had said that much to her.
So she could stomach people insulting her. What she couldn't stomach was letting those insults splash onto Simon, the one who had chosen her.
If she was going to be Vice President, she had to prove she deserved it.
"Professor Jane! May I ask you to look over my report?"
Every single day since entering Kizen.
"When we ran the evaluation system, how should we push back against the cafeteria's objections?"
"Hi, everyone! I'm Mayrin from the Student Council! We're running a quick survey, if you have a moment......!"
Cutting into her sleep, she had kept grinding away, stubbornly and endlessly. Before Eisel, a 3rd-year, returned — even if it was only ever a makeshift student council for a short while. Even if it was just a passing midsummer night's dream. Even if everyone only ever had eyes for Simon, the Student Council President.
She wanted to prove the reason Simon had chosen her.
Through her own skill, and nothing else.
Beyond just striving to surpass Serne, Mayrin had studied to truly fulfill her duties as Vice President.
"Senior! Where should I clean next?"
This Mission Assessment was another round of the same.
In the end, even the former Vice President was moved by Mayrin's sincerity.
"These are the notes I used back when I was Vice President...... haa, why am I even doing this."
"Thank you, Senior!"
She had to work harder.
She had to work even harder.
Four days had honestly felt far too short to learn the Vice President's duties — but the moment Jane told her that Simon was fighting in the Transfer Evaluation Match as Student Council President, she had crossed straight over to Moiran.
"I—!"
Mayrin flung both arms wide and unleashed her black magic.
"—will NEVER lose!"
Krarararara!
Pillars of glossy black ice erupted from the ground and engulfed White. He tried to melt the ice with his ability — but Mayrin hadn't relied on the jet-black ice barrier alone.
'!'
Both his arms were seized and locked in place by ice of pure magic.
Tat!
Riding the ice, she launched herself up above White.
She formed the handle with jet-black ice, and the body of the hammer with pure magic.
⟨Mayrin's Remake — Frozen Hammer⟩
KUUUUUUNG!
The handle shrieked as its mechanism engaged, and the great ice hammer came crashing down.
White's body buckled violently and collapsed, white frost and ice crystals scattering in every direction.
The crowd's roar exploded like a bomb going off.