The Abyss Duel (3)
The duel was over, and Levian had collapsed without warning.
"Mira! H-help me, please!"
Ivy was so flustered she never even thought of the infirmary. She simply carried Levian back to her own laboratory, forcing a warp spell on the way so the other students would not see them. And still—
"Ughhh, where did she go...?!"
Her assistant was nowhere to be seen. Not so much as the tip of a nose. There was nothing else for it. She had laid him hastily on her bed, but the bleeding had not stopped, and his temperature was far too high. Wiping the cold sweat that ran down his brow, she carefully tended the nose that would not quit.
"If you knew you couldn't manage it, you should have withdrawn. Why did you have to fight like that...?"
He was hot. The blood, the nose, the breath—everything burned. It was not even an ordinary bleed. Faint traces of mana lingered in it, and guilt surged up in her all at once.
I'm garbage.
The duel with Drek. The duel with Andreas that followed. Levian had shown abilities and magic she had not expected, and she had failed to restrain her curiosity. That was the mistake. Even a glance had made it obvious he would win, so she had let it go on. She had never imagined he was forcing himself this far. What she had done was no different from the people who were always trying to use her.
Ugh... garbage. You garbage...!
She had already lost count of how many tissues she had used on that nosebleed, and still Levian's face looked pale to her. If she could have had her way, she would have stuffed herself under the blankets and kicked her feet. This was no time to waste. She wiped the blood from her hands on a handkerchief, rattled a drawer in the bookcase open, and took out a medicine case. Inside was the Mana Coagulant she had used on her adventures. It could be employed as a poison, but when a mana circuit was injured, it served as medicine as well. It was an expensive drug not just anyone could obtain, and she did not begrudge it. If anything, she was sorry that this indirect help was all she could give.
"...Is it all right just to put it in his mouth?"
Struggling with those dainty hands, she opened Levian's mouth and fed him the pill. Only after time had passed, and the bleeding from his nose had finally stopped, could she let out a long breath and feel any relief. His ragged breathing had steadied. He would improve soon.
"When you wake up, don't think I'm letting this go...!"
There was so much she wanted to ask. How a student who had never once cast a spell could display skill like that. How, in the duel with Drek, he had destroyed a mana circuit at all. How he had copied Andreas's magic. Unbelievable things—but she had witnessed them herself, so she had no room left for disbelief. Honestly, she wanted to cast a memory-storage spell this very moment and study the duel. She could not even begin to guess how he had copied Andreas's magic and eroded it from within. The only methods her knowledge could parse were the ones he had used against Drek.
Watching that duel, she had been astonished. More than once, her Spirit Form had nearly come undone.
Back then, Levian destroyed Drek's mana circuit, didn't he?
How had he thought of a method like that? It was as if he had memorized the structure of every spell. The way one brings a building down by collapsing its central pillar, he had driven straight into the weak point of the circuit.
Take Mana Bullet, a beginner spell. Mana has no form of its own, so to produce physical force its shape must first be fixed. Carve away only the portion bound to shaping, and it has no choice but to scatter like smoke. Heat Blast was the same: of its forty circuits, he had removed only the heat source at the center and stripped the spell of its power to harm. Water Shot he had ruined by turning outward the spin that ought to have condensed at the center, until the attack was nothing but a sprinkler.
In short—
He turned magic into something that isn't magic.
What an astonishing idea. What an ability. Even Ivy had been able to resolve only two magic circuits in so short a time. Had Levian been hiding his power all along? It was a guess she could not leap to.
She looked down at him as he slept, breathing soft and thin. Unlike his usual coldness, his face seemed gentle. Even Ivy, who had never taken any interest in relations with men, startled a little at that face.
Unlike someone like me, Levian really is a genius. And yet he's hidden his power all this time.... He didn't go through something awful in the past, did he?
The more she thought about him, the more he seemed to resemble her. He had endured people's discriminatory stares. He had never stopped developing his ability. And in the end he had manifested a genius that was real.
If... if I still have a chance to advance as a mage, this may be the last one.
It was embarrassing to admit, but Levian was as good as an opportunity sent down from heaven. So she could not approach him carelessly. She had to learn why he had been ignored all this time under the name of half-wit. It might be the same reason as in her own past: We can't make a deficient little child like this the school's representative! Or he might have been hiding his power on purpose, to keep clear of someone's eyes.
It isn't only me. Bring my master in, and Levian's power would be coveted for certain. So... someone may already have played a nasty trick.
And if, on the contrary, he had shown this ability without knowing how to use magic, that was fine as well. It would mean that despite never having been properly taught, he possessed the ability to draw upon Mystery itself.
Hmph. This time I'm not letting go. Not for anything.
She had happened to bring him to her laboratory, and she had no intention of letting him out until he accepted her offer to become her exclusive disciple. She was not abusing a professor's title.
Noxisia's eyes were strange.
Ivy knew the woman who had been staring at Levian. Long violet hair. Amethyst eyes. Unlike stubby little Ivy, a height long enough to match the men, and a voluptuous figure. A presence that drew every gaze simply by standing there. A fourth-year of the academy, and of the Necromancer Clan.
It's wrong to discriminate against someone just for being a necromancer.... But even so, Noxisia is a criminal, isn't she? I can't let a criminal take an interest in Levian!
By rights she should already have been a fifth-year, long since graduated. The reason she remained a fourth-year was simple. She had committed a crime people balked even to mention, and had been suspended for a year. A student that sinister would not take an interest in Levian for no reason at all. If the rumors were true, she might mean to turn him into one of her undead, or to collect pieces of his body.
"Ugh, that gives me the creeps!"
Ivy shuddered for no good reason and hurriedly latched tight the window that had been standing wide open. Whatever else was true, she had her reasons for shutting Levian up in the laboratory.
Levian won't think this is strange, will he!
In case Mira came back and was startled to find him, she took out her Ouija Board. It was a broad slate the size of a book. She poured mana into it, and a bluish light rose as the sleeping screen surfaced. Unlike those of the other students and professors, the background had been left plain, unadorned, exactly as it came. She pressed the contact saved as Mira Shadow★ and opened the messenger.
"Eek!"
She flinched. Had she run into Mira when she stopped by the laboratory, before she went looking for Levian? She had no memory of it, and yet she could almost hear Mira's cold voice.
Even so, she was afraid of hearing Mira's scolding. The board kept buzzing and buzzing. Ivy quietly set the Ouija Board down, went to Mira's bed, and lay herself out on it.
Hehe. It'll work out somehow... right?
And all the while—
Mira's messages did not stop.
Meanwhile, after Levian had gone, the Abyss Dormitory.
"Hmm... Levian, was it..."
He had beaten the strongest student in the Abyss dorm, and still he walked away as if it meant nothing to him. That retreating back was interesting. Had he been hiding his claws all this time?
No. He wasn't deliberately hiding his magic.
A child who until now could not use so much as a fingernail's worth of magic had brought forth a Mystery like this. He had clearly been through something. This was no simple guess. The proof was Levian's eyes. In childhood they had shone like sapphires; now they had died black as the abyss. When a person's eyes died like that, it meant the heart had died with them. She had watched plenty of fellow necromancers break for no reason other than being necromancers. He had been through some incident. Of that she was certain. Whatever had happened to let him gain a power like that, it was well worth watching.
"H-hey, Noxisia...? You're just going to leave him like that?"
She did not so much as glance at the classmate who had spoken. She answered as if the question bored her.
"And who are we speaking of? That brainless lump who can't read a situation? Or the handsome little freshman from a moment ago?"
There was something strange in the tone. For an instant the question felt like a blade laid against the throat.
"Uh... uhh..."
Pressed down beneath her Malevolent Qi, the fourth-year trembled and dropped his head.
"If you have no ability, you shouldn't even think of leaning on someone else. Isn't that right?"
"Y-yeah. You're right."
With Noxisia's declaration, no student meant to throw himself at Levian anymore. Unlike Andreas, to defy her words was to mean a true death.
"What are you doing? Clean this up."
In that moment, power in the Abyss Dormitory changed hands.