171. Care to Try Me?
171. Care to Try Me?
Zeke Albion, the strongest of them all, had been eliminated right from the start.
Once the most dangerous one was gone, the remaining students scattered again and began fighting among themselves.
Everyone had assumed Albion commanded the largest faction since he dominated his class, but most of the other students had actually allied with one another.
The match-ups hadn't been announced in advance; they were randomly generated and displayed on the spot, and they had formed alliances in that short span of time.
There were a few students who didn't join, but most had decided their odds of winning were higher if they all stormed in together.
"How the hell did this happen?!"
"How is this... even possible?"
The students in the audience stirred.
It could have been mere surprise at Albion's elimination, but from where I stood, it looked a little different.
They looked as though they were genuinely shocked by the very idea that the Five Pillars could be toppled.
Because until now, even when they could have been brought down, no one had dared to do it.
Phrygia, who loathed any blemish on the name of the Five Pillars with pathological hatred, had crushed anyone who dared to defy them root and branch. So had the fact that I—the one who openly resisted—was still attending the academy unscathed made them mistakenly believe the Five Pillars were easy prey?
"Who made the suggestion? There's no way they'd just suddenly do this."
Either way, things had gotten pretty interesting.
A revolt of the ordinary students.
The moment the format shifted from a 1vs1 with few variables to a battle royale with many people, those who had seemed like mere background players feeding the stage had joined forces to try and seize the spotlight.
I was a huge fan of these underdog rebellion stories, so my heart was pounding.
Had this been Hal's plan from the very beginning? Or had they decided on the spot the moment it was revealed?
I didn't know the exact details, but I was thoroughly enjoying it.
"I never caught any sign of this. What happened?"
"Still, if something like that had been brewing, wouldn't we have noticed?"
"There's no reason we couldn't have missed it. Even if we roam the same spaces, if the communities we belong to are different, it's basically the same as having zero communication. For instance, do you know the names of every single student in your class?"
"I know all of them."
"I know them too...."
Damn, was I the only one who didn't?
I regretted bringing it up as the two of them looked at me with pity.
"The professors look incredibly surprised too, don't they?"
"Hey, look at those reporters. They're taking a ton of pictures."
"Tomorrow's paper is going to be worth reading."
Treating it as an unexpected scoop, the Newspaper Club's reporters were frantically recording the situation.
Normally, even if they wrote an article like that, Phrygia would tear it all to shreds, but since she'd been exercising restraint thanks to me lately, it might actually survive.
Eventually, some time passed... and the first battle royale came to an end.
The winner was a Class 5 student whose face I didn't even recognize.
He wasn't someone who had shown any extraordinary prominence, nor someone who had caused some kind of incident.
He wasn't the one who had eliminated Albion... nor the one who had disrupted his magic.
He gave off an utterly ordinary impression, the sort you'd commonly find at the academy.
He was genuinely overjoyed to be the last one standing.
"Hey hey, the next match-ups are out!!"
And soon after, the next bracket was displayed.
The notable names in the next bracket were Lucia Russell and Edgar Lemnos... and my name.
"Since it's not 1vs1 and we're just roughly grouped, it turns out like this, huh?"
The match Lucia had so desperately wanted—a fight against me—had been set.
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The moment Zeke Albion returned to the VIP lounge, slumping like a defeated soldier, Phrygia glared at him with wide eyes, marched right up to him, and jabbed a finger upward.
"Have you lost your mind? Everyone was watching and you lost there?? To ordinary students, of all people??"
"Ugh... I have no excuse."
"Edgar losing to that Atlas bastard could somehow be glossed over. He's a guest who received a share of Russell's crest, and the guy who overwhelmingly took first place on the Academy Newspaper Club's list of worst freshmen this year!! The other students are scared of Atlas too, so they didn't look down on us!! But... in that environment, which was advantageous for a mage, huh??? How are you going to explain this to your father??"
"Uuuugh....."
Back at the start of the semester when Lemnos had lost to Atlas, Sieg had reacted the most violently to Phrygia's words, but now he couldn't say a single thing.
Everything she said was correct.
No matter that it was a surprise attack, no matter how outnumbered he was, he should have won.
Among them, he had been the mage of the highest order, and he'd even had ten guards.
If he'd known this would happen, instead of preparing a grand spell from the start, he would have chosen a different approach.
Activating a bunch of simple defensive spells, or using multiple spells with relatively short preparation times, would have been better.
Whatever the case, the problem was that from the beginning, he had planned to take everyone down in one flashy, immensely powerful spell.
The moment he was ambushed while casting it, everything had gone wrong.
"Hey, Phrygia, don't be so hard on him. He fought well without giving up until the very end."
"No... nothing Phrygia said was... wrong. To have our name up among the Five Pillars... and to fall instantly, no matter how focused the attack was... it's too shameful..."
"No, you just had the bad luck of getting jumped first. If even some of our own people had been in there, they could've helped block for you, but it just so happened that not a single one made it in..."
It seemed Perda had spoken sincerely, which was rare for him.
He must have seen himself in Albion's situation.
"But something was strange. Those bastards had the Teeth of the Void."
"Those things?"
"What's the Teeth of the Void, anyway?"
Perda seemed to know what the Teeth of the Void that Albion mentioned were, but Lemnos didn't appear to.
"It's an artifact used by assassins specifically for fighting great mages. Rumor has it it's made from a special mineral from Tartarus... well, I don't know the details either. One thing for sure is that when magic touches it, its composition destabilizes and collapses."
"That's... something you can only get on the black market, and at least five of them were carrying that artifact."
It wasn't exactly a popular artifact, since it only took effect upon direct contact with magic.
Because by the time you got that close, stabbing the caster to death was more effective than using the dagger to dispel the magic.
"Do you remember who it was?"
"Mm... I didn't get a good look, so I'm not sure."
"Still, thanks to you taking the hit first, I think I have some idea how to deal with it."
Perda smiled as if he understood how to handle the situation.
"Is there a need to deal with it?"
But Lemnos questioned Perda's statement.
"We can just break them all, and that's the end of it."
It was a voice filled with the confidence of someone who had the power to crush dozens of attackers, no matter how many swarmed him.
"You're strong, so you can do that... but I'm not, you see."
Being the weakest pure combatant among the Five Pillars, behind the two greatest swordsmen and even weaker than Albion in raw fighting ability, Perda smiled bitterly at Lemnos's overflowing confidence.
"Come to think of it, Russell and that Nemea were in the same group too, weren't they? Yeah, this really isn't the time to be worrying about other people."
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"So it turned out like this."
"Atlas... I'm going to do this for real."
"Yeah, yeah."
Lucia looked genuinely thrilled that we'd ended up taking the test together.
She was already radiating a murderous aura from the waiting room.
Since our turn was next, we'd been waiting there in advance, and the students' stares felt prickly.
"They're giving me one hell of a welcome. So I guess there's no need to hide it anymore?"
Among those stares, I spotted one very familiar face.
"Hey, you guys are on that side too?"
"We're neutral... but still, don't you think it'll be easier to take you guys out first?"
"Heuheu, it's been a while since we've shared the same opinion!"
It was the elf exchange student Cindi Le and the dwarf exchange student Hal Baud.
It seemed they had thrown in their lot with the side that had the numbers.
They'd long since realized that facing me head-on gave them no chance of winning.
"I don't really care if you guys do that, though.
Hey, do you all seriously believe that ganging up like this will actually let you take me down?"
When I bared my fangs at the bastards glancing sidelong at me, all of them flinched nervously.
The circular arena had an odd magical power.
A power that made your blood boil and generated a fighting spirit that hadn't existed before.
The wide-open circular grounds, the sight of the audience surrounding it on all sides.
Those cheers drove a person insane.
You could tell just from the atmosphere in this waiting room.
The moment I stepped up, I was going to be the target of a concentrated attack.
Just as Senior Andy had said, I was an incurable lunatic.
Being targeted like this by so many people was incredibly entertaining.
For Albion, they had used Dispel and artifacts like the Teeth of the Void.
I was looking forward to seeing what on earth they had prepared to deal with me.
The tension between me and the students grew more and more tense by the second.
The mood was such that if even the tiniest spark flared, a fight might break out right then and there.
"Hey, Atlas, is your body doing okay? You're not going to collapse again like last time, are you?"
The one who cut through the tense atmosphere was Edgar Lemnos, who had entered late.
"I'm healthy."
"Good thing for me. Don't go making excuses after you lose, saying your condition was bad or something."
Edgar Lemnos, who used to scowl the moment he saw me, had reached the point where he could even crack jokes now.
But that didn't mean his personality had changed.
He still had the same nasty look on his face as the first time I'd seen him.
It seemed that after a series of incidents, he'd simply started seeing me as equal to or greater than himself, which had actually made him more at ease.
".... Lemnos, don't interfere. I... said I'd go first."
Lucia, who had been watching, stepped in front of Edgar.
"I want to duel this guy again too... well then, are you suggesting we wager a duel against Atlas... and duel each other first?"
The air inside the waiting room heated up.
Lemnos, who could convert his aura into heat, was flaunting his power in all directions.
Clearly, Lucia was still in the situation where her family hadn't authorized her to duel.
She'd ignored Lemnos's provocations before because of that, and this time would probably be the same.
".... Fine, let's do it."
"Is it okay to?"
"This is a test, so it's fine."
I was surprised she agreed so boldly, but since it wasn't a formal duel, it probably was fine.
"Before... you asked me to duel, didn't you? Alright, the stage is... set like this, so let's try it once. I was tired of watching you strut around while being weaker than me."
"Haha..! Now this is an unexpected gain!"
No, you guys, the test hasn't even started yet.