The Ivory Tower's Flame
Dick's match hadn't been flashy, but it had a certain charm — the kind that made you lean forward without realizing you were watching.
Simon and Camibarez were applauding enthusiastically from the stands, but Meilyn rested her chin on her hand with a sour expression.
"……Ugh, my own squadmate just won. Why am I the one embarrassed?"
"Hahaha!"
— Would Meilyn Villenne of Class A and Ivan Varshani of Class C please make their way to the waiting room.
At the announcement, Meilyn rose from her seat.
"Well, I'll win this one nice and easy."
"Fighting! Meilyn!"
"Go get 'em."
She was heading toward the waiting room when she ran into Dick, who was climbing back up into the stands. In high spirits, Dick spread his palm for a high-five with a cheerful "Yeahhh!" — but Meilyn just snorted and swept past him with her nose in the air.
"Tch! That girl has absolutely zero friendliness. Not a speck."
Dick grumbled as he came over and high-fived Simon and Camibarez instead.
The three of them were chatting away merrily about the duel evaluations when Meilyn appeared, walking out to the center of the arena.
Her opponent was Ivan Varshani of Class C — a Magic Combat hopeful with a powerfully built frame.
"This one should be a good fight."
Dick said, sliding his hands into both pockets.
"Question is, does Ivan last? Or does Meilyn swat him down before he even gets going?"
"You can do it, Meilyn!"
At the referee's instruction, Meilyn and Ivan approached each other and shook hands.
"Didn't expect to face a heavyweight like you in the very first round."
Ivan said with an easy grin.
"You'd best remember this moment as your family's crowning glory, commoner."
Meilyn withdrew her hand and folded her arms with an air of lofty indifference.
"Because soon enough, you won't even be able to look me in the eye."
"Hm, maybe so. But I figure getting trampled by a commoner right now will be good experience for you."
"Hilarious."
After exchanging a round of light verbal sparring, the two turned their backs and walked to their positions.
A former boxer. A body forged through endless training and conditioning, every muscle honed for real combat — that was Ivan.
And Meilyn, with her slender frame and delicate wrists, looked as though she'd never so much as touched dishwater in her life.
The two finally stood facing each other across the arena. The referee checked both students' conditions, then swung his arm down and shouted.
"Begin!"
The word had barely left his mouth before Ivan kicked off the ground and charged straight at Meilyn.
'Don't let her do a thing! Bury her before she can breathe—!'
Then his pupils dilated. Black flames erupted directly in his path.
Fwooooooosh!
Ivan slammed on the brakes and veered aside. That had been close. He wore the protective suit, but the searing heat sent sweat beading down his face.
"Oh my, how straightforward."
Meilyn said, black fire dancing at the tip of her index finger.
"Did you really think this was a stage where sheer mindless aggression wins the day?"
FWOOSH!
Meilyn poured out flame after flame, and the match settled into a rhythm: Ivan dodging and weaving, hunting for an opening.
From the stands, Simon let out an admiring whistle.
"Impressive. She's completed Dark Flare that fast already?"
"Nope."
Dick shook his head.
"That's Jet-Black Elemental Magic — a tier below Dark Flare. Dark Flare takes a lot longer to cast."
Jet-Black Elemental Magic.
A modern recreation of the elemental magic once wielded by pure mages — a school long lost to time — rebuilt from the ground up using Jet-Black. Its signature tell was the faint black shimmer in every flame and shard of ice.
Even if a pure mage and a necromancer began their incantations at the same instant, Jet-Black Elemental Magic would finish far sooner. It hit harder, too, and gave its caster far better control over the variables.
It was, in every sense, a strict upgrade.
"That's the Ivory Tower for you."
The Ivory Tower had once been a holy land for mages — they used to call it the Mage's Spire.
But the tides of the era reshaped even the Tower, and in the modern age, necromancers made up its mainstream.
Still, some of its old character endured: most Ivory Tower necromancers specialized in Jet-Black Elemental Magic, built upon a foundation of Jet-Black Mechanics.
And Meilyn was no exception.
"Haaah!"
Meilyn swept her arm, and a wall of flame stretched long across the arena, cutting off Ivan's advance. He pulled back by a hair's breadth, gasping for breath.
■ Meilyn Villenne : 100%
■ Ivan Varshani : 71%
'She's tricky for sure. All I did was dodge, and my gauge is already down this much……'
Ivan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and doubled his internal Jet-Black circulation. His body was heating up, burning hotter by the second.
'No need to get impatient. Keep her attention split like this so she can't commit to anything big. Just once. If I can grab one opening—!'
"What did I tell you earlier, commoner?"
Meilyn smiled and unfurled the left hand she'd kept hidden behind her back.
FRRRROOOOOSH!
"You're too simple-minded."
A black flame of utterly different magnitude — nothing like anything she'd shown so far — roared upward from her left hand.
Ivan's jaw dropped.
'Wha— when did she even— Dark Flare?!'
The truth was, Meilyn had only just recently perfected the dual-casting of Dark Flare.
While her right hand rapid-fired light Jet-Black flames, her left hand had been quietly, patiently building the real thing.
With this new growth, the top student of Class A had climbed one step higher toward flawless perfection.
Now that Dark Flare was in her arsenal, she no longer needed to bother with petty harassment.
Meilyn let her right hand fall and fed the flame in her left, letting it swell.
"It's over. Care to continue?"
"You're calling it way too early!"
Ivan's mouth twisted. His heart pounded like a war drum; his blood boiled in his veins.
'Doesn't matter how powerful a black spell is if it never lands!'
Ivan kicked off the ground and launched himself. He moved so fast that afterimages seemed to trail behind him.
The instant Meilyn swung her left hand head-on, Ivan's body twisted in the opposite direction.
She flinched and yanked the hand back. If she'd cast it then, she'd have hurled her painstakingly prepared Dark Flare straight into empty air.
'Heh heh. She'll never get it off, no matter what!'
Among the many Magic Combat hopefuls, Ivan was a speed type built entirely on internal Jet-Black operation. For these one or two minutes at peak tempo, he was confident he was faster than anyone at Kizen.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Ivan orbited Meilyn in mocking circles, toying with her.
Meilyn kept Dark Flare primed, twisting her head and turning her body, but she just couldn't pin him down.
'You see that, noble?! The level of your black magic and winning an actual fight are two completely different things!'
Ivan cut his acceleration dead, slipped behind Meilyn, and exploded forward like a flash of light.
His Jet-Black-reinforced fist drove toward the back of her skull. A grin of anticipated victory curled at the corner of his mouth.
'……!'
But.
Meilyn's shoulder rolled naturally with the motion, her head tilting aside.
'She REACTED to that?!'
The fist carved through empty air, and in that crossing moment, their eyes met.
She smiled, slow and deliberate.
"Did you think my Magic Combat was weak?"
The black flame churning in her left hand swallowed Ivan whole in a single heartbeat.
FWWAAAAAAAM!
The two of them slipped past each other and out of the blast.
Closest to the enormous detonation and its wash of heat, the front-row spectators threw their arms up over their faces.
■ Meilyn Villenne : 94%
■ Ivan Varshani : 0%
The referee raised his arm.
"Match over! Victory to Meilyn Villenne!"
Crackle!
Engulfed in black fire, Ivan knelt on the ground with an expression of sheer disbelief. Meilyn tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a faint smile.
"Try harder next time~ commoner. Down in the Low Squad, that is."
For a match run at nearly textbook perfection, applause and praise poured in from every corner of the stands.
"Ah— seriously."
Dick snickered.
"She's insufferable, but she's just too good to knock down."
Simon nodded with a smile.
"Kizen is meritocracy, after all."
Watching Meilyn from the stands, Simon found himself lost in thought.
If he kept winning, match after match, wouldn't the day come when he'd have to fight her too? And when it did — how was he supposed to answer her Dark Flare?
Then, at some point, the right side of their group had gone conspicuously quiet. Simon turned his head.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Camibarez was bouncing her leg, her face drained of color.
"……Camibarez?"
"It's my turn now."
She wiggled her fingers.
"……Simon won, Dick won, Meilyn won. So if I just…… if I just do well too……"
"Y-you don't need to put that much pressure on yourself."
Meilyn had also returned to the stands.
Her face was flushed with the high of her victory, but seeing Camibarez trembling like a leaf, she didn't let it show.
Two more matches came and went after Meilyn returned, and with each passing one, Camibarez's face grew a shade paler.
"Guys! Look over there!"
Dick thrust out his arm.
"It's Professor Silaje! He came to watch the match—mmph!"
Simon clapped a hand over Dick's mouth, but it was too late. Meilyn glared at him with a look of pure exasperation.
"You have an absolutely pathetic sense of timing, you know that?"
It was only natural that Silaje — a professor of Hemomancy — would take an interest in Camibarez, a vampire of the Ursula family.
At the sight of Silaje, Camibarez's trembling grew even worse, and Dick scratched his head, looking sheepish.
— Would Camibarez Ursula of Class A and Aegir Atelier of Class C please make their way to the waiting room.
"I-I'll be right back!"
She shot to her feet, and the three of them did everything in their power to soothe and cheer her on.
"So what's Aegir's style?"
Simon asked once Camibarez was gone. Little by little, even Simon was finding himself drawn into the fun and intrigue of the duel evaluations.
"The textbook. Nothing but the textbook."
Dick summed it up neatly.
"He's got no single standout specialty, so he'll probably fight by mixing a broad range of fundamentals. The question is how Camibarez — an extreme offensive hemomancer — breaks through that."
"On paper, our Camibarez overmatches him completely. She's an Ursula."
Meilyn said, arms crossed.
"The real question is whether she can keep her nerves in check……"
"Yeah."
Before long, Camibarez and Aegir were seen walking out to the center of the arena.
Aegir was a tall, neatly handsome student with a polished, courteous air. At the referee's instruction, the two shook hands.
"I look forward to it."
"N-no, the pleasure is all m-mine……"
A face wound tight with nerves, and a voice with not an ounce of confidence in it.
Aegir had been expecting the ferocious Ursula vampire of legend, and his opponent's appearance had thrown him completely off balance.
'Is she really an Ursula?'
Looking at the girl's slumped shoulders, he felt a pang of pity — but he absolutely could not afford to go easy on her.
Soon the two had put distance between themselves, powering their Cores and readying for battle.
"Are both students ready?"
"Yes!"
"Y-yes……"
The referee nodded.
"Then we will now begin the duel evaluation between Camibarez Ursula and Aegir Atelier."
Under a knife's edge of tension, the referee dropped his arm and shouted.
"Begin!"