Duel in the Abyss (1)
"You saw that half-wit show up late! So why are we just letting him walk? Are you fucking kidding me right now?"
They came crowding in, blocking Levian's path and screwing their faces into scowls like a pack of thugs.
…Are these supposed to be back-alley street rats?
A pity, then, that they were not actual thugs. They were only the dorm seniors who had been circling him for any chance to make his life miserable. Inferior students, every one of them dumped into the Abyss dorm, and still they scraped together some cheap satisfaction by bullying a freshman. The sight was almost funny. Then again, that was precisely why the likes of them were still wandering down here in the depths.
"Nine fifty-nine and twelve seconds. I'm not late, so there's no problem with me going in. There are still thirty-nine seconds left until the hour."
"Wow… now this nobody wants to fight with his mouth? You think we're a joke?"
He had answered with nothing but the facts, yet the students flushed crimson and flew into a rage.
"Andreas! Want me to straighten this bastard out?"
The rules of a dorm belonged to the students who lived in it. The hulking figure leaning against the wall and watching gave a silent nod, and in an instant the others had Levian completely surrounded. With the power of the Abyss dorm stepping in, even the dorm supervisor had no way to intervene. Either Levian went to his knees and apologized, or he drove Andreas's whole crew out. It was not a balanced fight.
"Hm."
Even so, he felt no fear. If anything, he found the whole affair interesting. Back when he could not use magic, he would have avoided a fight with other students at all costs.
Their level is pathetic. Revoltingly so.
Unlike Ivy, whose true ability he had never been able to measure, the skill of these creatures of the Abyss was easy enough to read.
"Who wants to come at me first?"
Levian had no intention of letting the chance slip. A legal fight. Not some Move spell fit only for infants, but a chance to use real combat magic—to test, with his own hands, the power he had only imagined, and to take the measure of himself.
At the provocation, one freshman who had been watching Andreas's mood stepped out in front.
"Seniors! I'll show him what's what!"
"Good. The rest of you, don't even think about going back to your rooms. Watch quietly. Get a good look at what happens if you come at me, and learn to listen."
They could hardly brawl at random in a main hall crammed with furniture. Levian had just drawn his staff when Andreas barked a laugh and rapped his own staff twice against the wall.
"Half-wit. You planning to wreck the whole place fighting like this?"
Then the main hall convulsed.
A grinding roar rolled through the room, and the walls shoved outward. Ceiling and floor drove apart as well, until the widened space looked like an indoor arena. Nor did it stop there. Suited to the purpose of a duel, the common dining table, the fireplace, the bookshelves, and the rest fitted together like blocks and vanished. In the emptied heart of the dorm the floor split into tiers, and a circular arena for a magic duel took shape.
"Oh."
Even at a glance, it looked like magic bound up with Creation. For a moment even Levian, eager as he was for the duel, had his attention stolen by the space around him.
Go on. Enjoy it while you can.
Watching the unruffled Levian, Andreas pictured him beaten down by his classmates and forced to his knees.
"Duel rules: incapacitate your opponent. No lethal magic. No holds barred. I'm the judge."
No further explanation was required. Staff in hand, Levian took his place along the left line, just as the lectures had taught. The freshman meant to face him settled onto the right.
Child. Even with Mana Link, you must use only as much as will not harm your body.
"First-year Drek! I'll teach you your place!"
"I'd rather you showed it with skill than with talk."
They all knew his name already, so Levian saw no need to give it. This one and that one had been tossing out "Levian" as casually as if they were close, and calling him a half-wit besides. The answer was only natural. Drek, however, took it for a provocation. He ground his teeth and swung his staff before the signal to begin had even fallen.
"Haaaa—!"
A Basic spell: Mana Bullet.
"Sloppy."
Levian, who had watched without so much as a blink, called on the power of Creation. It was a direct test of the questions he had been turning over—how, exactly, he might use it, and whether the mana of Mana Link would even be enough. Deep blue mana, peculiar to him, lanced out like a solid line, brushed the Mana Bullet's core circuit, and snapped it the way one snaps a dry reed. The spell unraveled and vanished without a trace.
The half-wit Levian had stopped the attack.
"…W-what?!"
"Whoa, did he just fail the cast?"
"N-no! That bastard did something!"
No one was willing to believe anyone else, and the students' opinion drifted, naturally enough, toward the conclusion that Drek had simply botched the spell.
"Hm. So this is about the level."
Levian's sighing jab made the whole thing sound pathetic.
"Grr!"
Drek, pulling himself together a beat too late, began dumping spell after spell without pause. Failed a cast? Then he only had to throw more. Levian's luck would hold once, twice at most. He swung his staff, and from its tip Mana Bullet, Heat Blast, Water Shot, and more came pouring out in a chain.
"Yeah! That's it, Drek!"
White, red, and blue magic burst like fireworks, and the freshmen threw up their hands and cheered. Not one of them imagined Levian could stop all of it.
"Every one of them has the same form. The same weakness, too."
But the moment Levian swung his staff, the Mana Bullet winked out into nothing, the Heat Blast wilted into a warm breeze, and the Water Shot broke apart into a sprinkler.
"…Huh?"
Silence settled over the hall. By now even the students who were not Drek had to admit one thing. Something was wrong.
"Is this all?"
"U-uaaah! Just die already!"
Firing the same spells afterward changed nothing. There was no guarantee he could land a stronger, more complex spell without a mistake, and an unfinished spell would obviously be swatted aside with ease. At last Drek's will gave out entirely, and his staff dropped to the floor with a dull clack.
Nothing left worth testing, then.
There was no reason to drag the duel on.
"This is really all?"
Even at Levian's sullen question, Drek only stood there blankly, unable to answer. Try anything else and it would be dismantled. Fight on, and he would only lay bare how thin his stores were.
"Haha… ha…"
Terror had hollowed him out, and all he could manage was a foolish, empty laugh.
"So this is the Abyss class. Understood."
It had been a useful stretch of time, in its way. He had learned that if he used Creation not to complete a spell, but only to revise its mana circuit, the mana consumed dropped to almost nothing. Exploit that, and he might even repair the incomplete Mana Link the caretaker had made for him. Insight earned, he granted a little mercy. He used no attack magic. He swung his staff in a form no one there had seen, and before Drek could so much as react a violent force seized him and flung him onto the bare floor.
Not attack magic. Not even Beginner magic. He had lost to Basic Move.
The result of the duel was plain. Faced with a result no one could believe, the dorm stayed sunk in silence even after the match was over.
"I won, so is it finished?"
The victor himself looked entirely unmoved. He swept a slow look over the silent hall, then shook his head as if disappointed.
The sample is still too small. Even Basic magic has grades. I want to confirm, objectively, how far my power actually reaches.
The look around was a provocation, and a deliberate one.
"Ha… leave him be, and he climbs right up over your head."
It worked beautifully. Andreas, reason returning late, ground his teeth and strode out to the front. The half-wit must have brought some special artifact for dismantling magic, just to screw him over. Otherwise there was no way trash like that could win a magic duel.
"Next, I'll take you myself."
He drew his staff against the insolence that had ignored his authority and very nearly made a loser of him. A duel between an upperclassman and a freshman was forbidden to begin with. He was angry enough, though, that any such rule had already vanished from his head. His face had gone a furious red that anyone could see, and even his fellow fourth-years could not hold him back.
"You do know how to use magic?"
The corner of Levian's mouth curled, just slightly. The freshmen of the Abyss had fallen short of even what he had expected. Which left him curious how much better a fourth-year on the verge of graduation might prove.
"…Crazy bastard."
Someone's mutter drifted low through the hall at a sight that hardly looked sane.
"Same rules. No lethal magic. No holds barred. Until one of us is incapacitated."
Andreas and Levian settled into their stances. A strange tension drew tight. Mana swelled as if it might burst at any moment. Rotten as the man might be, a fourth-year was still a fourth-year; the pressure of him alone was ominous enough that Drek could not begin to compare. His staff, too, was no standard issue. It hooked in a peculiar curve, and because a staff's shape altered the structure of its magic, Levian did not take his eyes off it.
"First, a little taste!"
Andreas's attack began.