174. What I Couldn't Do
174. What I Couldn't Do
Even after that, Cindy kept pressuring me with all sorts of tools.
She brought out so many things — sticky bombs, tear gas — but I neutralized every last one.
I dodged the sticky ones and blew the tear gas away with my sword wind.
Whatever she brought, it wouldn't have mattered.
The most dangerous thing she had was trapping someone in Tartarus, but if she used that during a test, it would no longer be just the students' problem.
Even after she ran out of tools, Cindy and Hal made several more attempts to take me down, but it was futile.
Once I seized the momentum, I rampaged through the crowd, cutting in every direction and eliminating students one after another. After swinging my sword about eight times, just as I'd originally planned, most of the regular students were gone.
The ones with some skill who remained couldn't hold out long either.
"This...! This is too much! Do you really have to take out every single one to feel satisfied...?!"
The last one left, Cindy, burst out in anger and fired flaming arrows, which I deflected with my sword.
"I've been pretty easy on you, you know. I could've ended all of this right from the start, but I let you do whatever you were trying to do. You should be thanking me."
"Of all people, to end up on the same team as someone like this..."
Cindy kept trying right until the very end.
She used her fire arrows and magic without restraint, and even when I went after other students, she constantly disrupted me.
She really gave it her all.
"Still, you lasted nearly to the very end, so your scores will be high. Don't get so worked up."
"That's one thing and this is another. It's frustrating..."
"Yeah, yeah."
The moment I swung my longsword, even Cindy's bristling figure vanished.
"Let's see... anyone else left?"
I swept my gaze across the entire arena, checking if anyone was hiding in a corner.
-Kwakwang!!!
Right then, another explosion rang out from the center.
The side where Lucia and Edgar were fighting.
They'd been at it from the start, and they were putting on a truly spectacular fight.
Every time they used a technique, it was followed by loud noise and shockwaves.
No, wait. Looking closely, this time was different.
Only one silhouette was visible, so it looked like it was settled.
The one left standing in the center of the arena was Lucia.
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She'd been exposed to Lemnos's heat and had used major techniques consecutively — maybe because of that, Lucia looked a bit exhausted.
Just in case, Atlas made a suggestion.
"It's just the two of us left. Want to do this now? Or do you need a moment to rest?"
"...No. Let's do this right away."
It seemed like unnecessary consideration.
Without a trace of strain, she lifted her sword with a resolute expression.
In the end, she looked pleased just by the fact that the two of them were the last ones standing.
"If that's what you want... as you wish."
As if answering, Atlas raised his sword as well.
He hadn't even wrapped it in aura, and compared to the two-handed sword Lucia was holding, it was exceedingly small — yet the pressure it exuded surpassed hers.
Even though he was merely holding a single sword, Lucia felt a pressure that made it difficult to approach Atlas readily.
"Then here I go."
"?!"
Atlas, who had been right in front of her eyes, vanished.
Without trying to find where he had gone, Lucia slammed her aura-laden sword into the ground.
"Falling Rock..!"
Shockwaves rippled out in all directions from the point of impact.
She was trying to catch Atlas, who had escaped her field of vision, using Falling Rock — a technique capable of attacking in every direction with a single motion.
-Kung!!
"That's just mean..!"
Atlas, who had vanished from in front of Lucia's eyes, dropped down from the sky.
In that brief moment, it seemed he had shot up above her head.
"Ha... at!!"
The distance Atlas had fallen just happened to be right where Lucia was.
It was a rare moment of Atlas being left defenseless.
She couldn't let this chance slip, so Lucia pressed forward and launched a chain of attacks.
The massive two-handed sword tore through the air with a terrifying sound.
Every time she swung, a horrifying noise echoed, as if the entire surroundings were being ripped apart.
Russell's sword held the opponent it touched in place.
It seized them with a wide force field and crushed them with its weight.
Atlas retreated backward, dodging Lucia's attack, which covered a much wider area than it appeared.
Lucia's sword strike grazed the spot where he had collapsed moments ago, leaving a mark that looked as if a giant three times his size had struck the ground.
Watching Lucia fiercely chase after him, Atlas seemed to feel a strange, subtle emotion.
He was smiling, yet his expression somehow looked displeased.
"Got... you!!!"
Atlas, who had been dodging backward, soon reached the wall.
With nowhere left to retreat, he raised his sword and met Lucia's attack.
-Kung!!
Rather than the sound of metal clashing against metal, a far duller sound echoed.
The swords hadn't made direct contact.
Lucia's Aura Blade generated an invisible force field around it, so Atlas's sword was being held back by empty air.
It had collided with the force field generated around the two-handed sword.
With her sword entangled with his via the force field, Lucia attempted to seize Atlas and lift him up.
"Ugh.. so heavy...?!"
Lucia couldn't lift Atlas.
Russell's secret technique, built on the principle of preemptive strike and post-emptive restraint, lay in the heavy sword.
It wasn't a metaphor; it truly seized the surrounding space so that a single swing could devastate the entire area.
Atlas was blocking that very sword so nonchalantly that she had tried to lift him.
Even Edgar had been swung around by Lucia's sword and, trapped by the force field, had been sent flying through the air multiple times. But Atlas didn't budge an inch.
It wasn't that he wasn't caught by the force field.
Even now, he was within the force field's area of influence, and Atlas simply smirked with his sword still pressed against hers.
Yes, it was as if he too, like Lucia, was using the earth veins, with the soles of his feet fixed to the ground.
"How... are you doing that?"
"How am I doing it? I'm just doing it."
-Kagagak!!
As if it were nothing, Atlas slid Lucia's sword along his cross guard and slipped inside her guard.
Because she used a far longer sword, having the distance closed like this was disadvantageous.
But retreating here would simply mean being swept along by Atlas's intentions.
So instead, Lucia pressed forward.
"Hwaat!!"
-Kung!!
She poured her internal energy into the ground and struck it hard.
A shockwave erupted, and as the footing shattered into fragments, Atlas's body floated into the air and retreated backward.
"That just now... that's Russell's swordsmanship... how..?"
The technique of drawing in the earth veins from the ground, using them as her own power while simultaneously becoming immobile — it was unmistakably a fundamental technique of Russell's secret swordsmanship that Lucia had studied since childhood.
Hearing Lucia's words, Atlas seemed to ponder for a moment, then grinned.
"You could think of it that way. Then, if I beat you, I'll tell you."
"...That's a promise."
"Yeah."
Lucia once again gathered power from the earth veins.
The space around her Aura Blade appeared warped into a circular shape, and a correspondingly enormous amount of power had condensed there, gathering more and more.
Until now, she had never once sparred with Atlas completely in earnest.
Lucia's techniques had such a violent impact on their surroundings that they drew the attention of too many people.
The Academy's facilities could get destroyed.
Therefore, she had always lived while regulating her own power.
Because she was backed by a height almost grotesquely large for a woman and that innate monstrous strength — all of it — Lucia had been able to master Russell's Heavy Sword (重劍).
As a woman, Lucia hated this large frame and monstrous strength. But as the successor of Russell, Lucia affirmed those two things, which were essentially her very foundation, because she had swung a sword her entire life.
She hated them but liked them.
This contradiction was a pain lodged deep inside Lucia's heart.
Since she herself couldn't sort it out in words, Lucia swung her sword.
The sword would carry her heart.
It was a sword she had tempered by devoting her entire life.
It was the clearest means to hold everything of who she was right now.
If it was Atlas, Lucia believed he could certainly take her sincerity, her everything, and receive it.
"Gyeongcheon-dongji (Heaven-Shaking Earth Strike)!!"
The strike of the rock that shakes heaven and earth fell upon Atlas.
Earlier against Lemnos, she hadn't been able to bring out its proper power due to the pressing time, but this time she used it properly.
It was the best and greatest technique Lucia could perform at this moment.
Once more, a loud explosion echoed from the center of the arena, and dust soared high into the sky.
The entire arena shook from a stronger impact than before.
A massive crack formed across the arena floor.
The arena floor, which had been protected by magic, was shattered, and the spectator seats buzzed with commotion.
The spectators who had witnessed Russell's technique, which shook the entire arena, wondered whether even Atlas could withstand that technique head-on and endure.
But Lucia, who had used the technique, felt differently.
'He blocked... it...'
The sensation in her hands was different.
Lucia's sword hadn't struck the ground.
It had been firmly blocked, and he was still receiving it even now.
Amid the hazy, rising dust, a pure white light flickered.
The light was the glow of the Aura Blade that Atlas emitted.
Atlas had received Lucia's lethal blow with a single hand.
"...Beautiful..."
She thought Atlas's Aura Blade, shining brilliantly even through the thick dust, was incredibly beautiful.
And then her view changed.
Just moments ago she had clearly been in the arena, but now she was back in the waiting room.
Around her, the students who had been in the arena until just now were looking at Lucia in surprise.
Having grasped the situation, the strength drained from Lucia's legs, and she slumped to the floor with a thud.
"...I lost."
She hadn't even been able to see the attack Atlas had made at the end.
In the end, it seemed she had been defeated.
It was frustrating, but somewhere she felt unburdened.
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"...Was I a bit too harsh?"
Left alone in the arena at last, Atlas stood tall and replayed the sparring match that had just taken place.
Controlling his strength had been quite difficult.
Finishing it too quickly was no good, and going too easy was no good either.
I had managed that difficult tightrope walk.
'Lucia must hate it, but... I envy that height.'
Russell and Titan's swordsmanship shared the same roots.
Since both families held their territories straddling the Blade Mountains, they were closely connected houses.
The prerequisites for mastering the secret swordsmanship passed down in each family were also similar.
Seeing the Rock Sword that Lucia wielded so skillfully almost brought back faint old memories of learning swordsmanship from my father.
-Final Victor: Atlas Nemea!!
When all the dust cleared and it was revealed that I was the only one left in the arena, my name rose up on the electronic scoreboard.
"You all did well!"
"Yeah!!"
Rarely, they greeted me with applause.
Among the spectator seats, a few people were visible who seemed displeased that I remained, but they couldn't openly jeer at me.
I think the fact that I was glaring at them, making eye contact one by one, played a big part.
Well, anyway, with this, my final skill test came to an end.
It meant one semester had ended, but what I had to do was only just beginning.