What's So Special About Being a Sword Demon Grandmaster?
What's So Special About Being a Sword Demon Grandmaster?
"Chancellor."
Conet, head of the Magic Department, did not answer the voice that addressed her. She simply moved a chess piece in silence.
For a long moment, the only sound inside the chancellor's office was the clack of chess pieces striking the board.
"The Subjugation Festival preliminaries are about to begin."
Violet delivered her report with due formality. She had come to brief the chancellor on the situation before the match.
"Ah, has it come around already? Is everything prepared?"
"We have no issues fielding a team. We added one more representative this morning... and their confidence seems as overflowing as ever."
"That is good to hear."
Violet let out a low sigh.
'At least their confidence is overflowing. That's a relief.'
Defeat was one thing, but what had truly grieved Violet all this time was the mages' attitude.
The representative spot that everyone tried to foist onto each other, their motivation scraping rock bottom, the skills they couldn't even display in actual combat because they were too cowed...
Every time she witnessed such things, it pained her heart—not just as a professor, but as a mage herself.
At that moment, Chancellor Conet spoke.
"It's quite remarkable, really. Thanks to that single person, Plan... we have come this far."
Violet nodded quietly.
No matter how noble a cause, no matter how loudly you proclaim it, if there are no results, people will not lend an ear. That was the cold, harsh reality.
But Plan had produced those results.
Plan had seized victory in the first discipline with a flourish and salvaged the Magic Department's honor. The chancellor's words were impeccably true.
Conet's eerie Reverse Eye remained fixed on the chessboard.
She suddenly asked,
"At this juncture, I find myself curious about Professor Violet's thoughts."
"My thoughts... you mean."
"Yes. As before, you need only share your thoughts. Your thoughts on these preliminaries."
At those words, Violet's face darkened slightly.
"Chancellor."
"I am listening."
"To be frank, I am also afraid."
"I imagine that is true for most. May I ask the reason?"
Violet looked down at the tips of her shoes and continued.
"Thanks to Plan, a great many young mages have found their motivation. But precisely because of that, I can't shake the thought that if they break this time, it will hurt all the more."
"Ah, so you are anticipating defeat."
"I want to expect only victory, too. But as you know, the Subjugation Festival is..."
Violet could not finish her sentence.
That Plan was extraordinary was now a fact known to both the chancellor and Violet.
However, the Subjugation Festival was not a discipline one could push through alone.
Teams were formed of four, and to make matters worse, the Magic Department's roster was composed entirely of first-years.
Even setting Plan aside, the notion that the remaining three could defeat second-years from the Knight Department was staggeringly difficult.
Violet was worried.
She feared that the young mages who had only just begun to harbor hope might be broken too painfully and never rise again.
Conet nodded calmly. It was an entirely understandable sentiment.
"Indeed, one might well question whether they are adequately prepared."
Conet flicked a finger, and several issues of the Merhen Daily unfurled in midair.
The vanished Plan and representatives, the three days left hollow because of it, the flood of articles on the matter...
They adhered to the form of a newspaper, but in substance, they were nothing more than mockery of the Magic Department and Plan.
Violet simply found Conet's demeanor mystifying.
Whether she had completely resigned herself and abandoned all greed, from the first moment they had met in the chancellor's office until now, she had not shown a single trace of tension.
This time, Violet was the one to break the silence.
"Pardon me, Chancellor. If it would not be impertinent."
"Yes."
"...I would presume to ask what your thoughts are."
"Ah."
The chancellor was still gazing at the chessboard. Conet parted her lips.
"Before that—do you happen to know why I am so fond of chess?"
"...Pardon?"
At the sudden mention of chess, Violet's head tilted slightly.
"If that is too difficult, let me rephrase. In chess, to reverse a highly disadvantageous situation, how many moves are required at minimum?"
Violet deliberated for some time before opening her mouth.
"At least... three moves?"
"One move."
Conet cut off Violet's words with finality.
"A single brilliant move is sufficient. That is why I adore chess. I do."
Conet smiled faintly and went on.
"What difference does the Magic Sword Grand Festival make?"
The chancellor's finger nudged a knight, tipping it over.
"...Let us see. What sort of brilliant move Plan has prepared."
◈
"They're not little brats anymore... honestly."
The female knight's jet-black bangs completely shrouded her eyes. Ela, the eldest of the Knight Department's 'Four Siblings,' voiced her displeasure.
A variable had suddenly materialized right before the preliminary match.
"Couldn't hold it in that long and got into a brawl..."
This morning, while the academy was steeped in a festival atmosphere, a serious brawl had broken out among students at a tavern.
The cause was, naturally, the three siblings of the Knight Department—excluding Ela.
The shop building was entirely demolished, and every student inside had sustained severe injuries. Saying the situation was extremely serious was an understatement painful even to voice.
Worse still, they had singled out mage students to beat up, so the nature of the crime was vile. Heavy disciplinary action would be unavoidable.
"Me, acting as a representative... I never imagined it."
"Still, there's no need to be tense. The opponents are first-year mages."
The chatter of knight cadets drifted over. This was the direct result of that brawl.
With the three siblings other than Ela all hauled before the disciplinary committee, she had recruited three new team members this morning.
"But... why hold the pre-match press conference at the Magic Tower?"
Someone muttered, sounding incredulous.
Of course, the rest shared a similar sentiment.
The joint press conference, where athletes from both sides gathered just before a Subjugation Festival preliminary, had traditionally been held in the Knight Department.
"Did the Magic Department pull some strings?"
"What strings do they have to pull?"
"True. So they just groveled and begged to have it at the Magic Tower?"
Ela, who had been listening in silence, suddenly sensed a golden-hued Qi Sense.
The only person who carried such an aura was... Ivan.
"...What's she doing here? Who gave her permission?"
At Ela's sharp voice, someone else answered.
"They're putting Ivan in the press conference too. She lost in the combat discipline, remember? Probably going to ask questions about that."
"..."
Ela quietly ran her tongue over her lower lip. For a moment, she seemed to be suppressing her anger.
A short while later, they set off toward the Magic Tower.
"There really is nothing to this place."
The moment they set foot in the Magic Department, someone muttered. Subtle sneers hung on the knights' lips.
A library, books, papers... the Magic Department, dominated by such things, looked endlessly shabby to them as knights.
One knight cadet asked Ela,
"Ela, you know that story? About the Magic Department once placing second in the Subjugation Festival?"
"I know."
"Sounds like nonsense. There really is nothing here."
Ela walked on in silence.
Her bangs completely covered her eyes; even though her shut eyes did not open, she showed no sign of stumbling at all.
This time, another knight spoke up.
"The Magic Department as opponents... it's a free win, so that's fine for us, but honestly, I don't get why they bother slotting the Magic Department into the Subjugation Festival at all. Right?"
"Everyone probably thinks that. What's the point of dragging in mages who don't even know the sword and beating them up? You'd gain more from just cutting down a few more straw dummies."
At last, Ela opened her mouth.
"It's a matter that the Knight of Embers herself approved. So you've got a problem with it, is that what you're saying?"
"..."
The moment they met Ela's closed eyes, the two felt goosebumps prickle all over their bodies. They hastily changed their tune.
"Th-that's not what we meant. We wouldn't..."
"Just shut your mouths. If you got lucky because the situation happened to work out and you barely filled a roster spot, know your place."
"Fine. We get it, so..."
Ela clicked her tongue at the cadet who was breaking out in a cold sweat.
However, a moment later, Ela's lips curled up slowly, as if something had occurred to her.
She opened her mouth again.
"But hey. Why do you think the Knight of Embers allowed this match? Because I can guess all of it."
Ela gripped her scabbard.
And jabbed the pommel into the target's cheek.
"A disgrace to the Knight Department was born, so she's telling us to go pay it back. What other reason could there be?"
It was a blatant provocation, a sneer laid bare.
"..."
But the very person on the receiving end of that scorn, Ivan Rose, merely maintained her silence with a composed expression.
Ela narrowed her brow slightly and spoke again.
"No reaction. Did you drop your mind along with your sword? Even I, with my eyes blind, have never dropped my sword by mistake. Huh?"
Even as her cheek was jabbed repeatedly, Ivan showed no reaction. Even until a wound formed.
Ela's expression visibly crumpled.
"They say you were at the Magic Department dormitory until dawn. Is that rumor true? You went to find Plan yourself and got wrecked?"
The fact that Ivan had been defeated in the first discipline combat was now known to everyone at Märchen Academy.
The person who had provided the catalyst for the Magic Department to rise—naturally, the knights' gazes toward Ivan were far from kind.
"Hey. Answer."
Ela kept prodding Ivan's cheek with the sword pommel.
"I said answer."
It had long since passed the level of a mere poke. Now she was applying full pressure, shoving Ivan's head aside.
"..."
But Ivan still showed no particular reaction.
"Ha, boring..."
In the end, Ela was the first to stop.
After her defeat, Ivan had become a completely different person.
She had always been dead serious about everything in the past too, but now she had surpassed even that, as if possessed by something.
And then.
"Ah, this way."
A reporter who had been waiting greeted them.
A grim reaper, a death god, a mad dog... she possessed a variety of epithets. She was the Knight Department's reporter, Eliza.
"As I mentioned beforehand, we'll do a short interview just before the match. Please speak as unfiltered as possible."
Ela asked,
"What about the Magic Department kids?"
"Not yet. I hear there's a change in their representative list too. But it's not because of disciplinary action like the Knight Department... Let's go inside and talk first."
Eliza pointed toward the Magic Tower behind them.
Ela let out a scoffing laugh.
"Not yet...? Have they got no fucking manners...?"
The party filed into the conference hall one by one, but Ivan halted abruptly.
Suddenly, Ivan lifted her head and looked up at the Magic Tower.
'Mage.'
There was a time when she had been utterly unconcerned with that word.
But now, whenever she heard it, she naturally thought of one man.
'Plan.'
The reason Ivan was in a daze right now was also because of him.
The sparring opportunity she had wrung from Plan in exchange for facing the three representatives in the World Within the Painting, and the new magic of Plan's that she had encountered there.
"That was..."
Something as deep as the abyss and as vast as the sea.
Something that made it impossible to find purchase no matter how she tried to steady herself, that made her lose her way no matter how she tried to focus.
A sensation of something beyond thousands and hundreds—something numbering in the hundreds of thousands—meticulously interlocking and ruling over her very being.
"...Plan."
The female knight murmured the name without reason.
It felt as though she had glimpsed something she ought never to have seen.