17. I'll Cut to the Chase
17. I'll Cut to the Chase
The upper floor of the circular arena contained a VIP room for faculty and other distinguished guests.
In one of those VIP rooms, three students had gathered to watch the duel.
The group, two male students and one female, each regarded the arena with different thoughts.
All three were members of the Five Pillars.
"I don't like this duel."
The woman who had downed a drink from a crystal glass voiced her displeasure.
The sight of her holding the crystal glass with such elegance was like a painting delicately rendered by an artist.
Even in the dim room, where only minimal lighting had been left on to focus attention on the arena, her golden hair—inconveniently long yet immaculately groomed—shimmered softly.
But in stark contrast, her eyes, narrowed with displeasure, were black as if holding an endless darkness.
The woman was extremely small in stature for her age upon entering the academy.
The two men sitting nearby, both tall and slender, made it seem even more pronounced, but she would likely have seemed small even standing among others.
However, her small frame was no flaw whatsoever.
She was the daughter of the Golden Phrygia family, one of the Five Pillars.
For Shara Phrygia, praised as the most suitable next successor to the Golden Duke who moved the Empire's economy, physical conditions were a trivial matter.
Regardless, she seemed very displeased with this duel.
"What is it that you don't like?"
The man with long hair like a blue waterfall seated to her right... Zeke Albion asked her.
"There isn't a single benefit for me in this duel."
"Benefit?"
Phrygia had weighed this duel on a scale.
As long as they were bound by the name of the Five Pillars, everything the other families did affected Phrygia as well, and she was sick and tired of the other families acting selfishly and doing as they pleased.
"If Lemnos wins, it's just Russell and Lemnos sorting out their ranks. If he loses, the Five Pillars' image gets tarnished."
"If Lemnos loses? Are you saying Lemnos is going to lose right now?"
"Don't change the subject. I'm saying a win just breaks even, and a loss is a loss."
Phrygia's head throbbed at Albion's emotional reaction.
Phrygia hadn't been with them for long, but she was fed up with the actions of these emotional individuals who didn't think before or after.
The Five Pillars was a brand.
And it was clear they still lacked the awareness that, aside from the current family heads, they, the successors, were now the faces of that brand.
"If we win, that's it. There's no way Lemnos will lose."
"Yeah~ if Lemnos wins, there's no problem at all, right?"
Nivas Perda, who had been observing from the side, fanned the flames.
She disliked Albion, who pretended to be rational but was emotional, but she also disliked Perda, who knew everything and still fanned the flames.
"That's what I'm saying. This situation cropping up itself is the loss."
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The crackling sound of the loudspeaker echoed through the circular arena.
-Ah, ah.. We will now commence the duel. The presiding official is Magizoology Professor Niko Praha.
It was the voice of a woman who sounded incredibly annoyed.
Unlike informal, emotionally charged duels between individuals, a duel of this scale required a proper presiding official.
The third-party official would confirm whether the conditions had been properly met and whether the duel was conducted fairly.
It was like a referee, but a referee with somewhat loose conditions.
But Niko Praha...? It was a name I had heard somewhere before....
-Victory or defeat... until one side is incapacitated or admits defeat.
I would remember later.
The victory condition for this duel was the highest level for a student.
The only condition higher than this was a duel to the death.
Since this condition also meant fighting until one side admitted defeat or was incapacitated, and it often ended with one party dying after both went all out, a medical team was already visible preparing outside the arena.
They expected this to be less a sport and more a messy, bloody brawl.
It would end cleanly if one side simply admitted defeat, but in a case like this where emotions ran high on both sides, everyone naturally assumed it would conclude with one party incapacitated.
Hence, it was obvious why Lemnos had brought such a fine treasured sword.
"He's brought quite an excellent sword. Is it even a family heirloom?"
The flamberge that Lemnos wore at his waist was clearly no ordinary sword even at a glance.
The flamberge was a uniquely shaped sword with a blade like a wave... or a flame.
It was a sword more suited to tearing than cutting, like a saw, making it an awkward weapon to deal with using standard swordsmanship.
The blade of Lemnos's flamberge wasn't just flame-shaped; the blade itself flickered slightly, as if truly ablaze.
I had never seen a sword made of iron flicker in real-time like that.
"They say a lion uses all its strength even to catch a rabbit. Consider it an honor to fall to this sword."
"Sure, you'd need something like that so you have no excuses after you lose."
"What?!"
-Take your positions..
Lemnos, whose face had been full of fury, heard the starting command and took the Wolf Stance, the most stable mid-guard for charging in.
I, as always, took the Snake Stance, a low guard.
-Begin the duel!
The moment the starting command dropped, Lemnos lunged forward with a wide advance and swung the flamberge.
The flamberge, which had been flickering like a flame, blazed as if it had truly become fire.
Lemnos had infused the sword with aura.
'So the flaming sword is coming, is it?'
The blazing flamberge, burning like a live flame, truly began to radiate intense heat.
It was as if the sword itself had caught fire.
A sword that, when imbued with aura, granted its aura the property of a flame... that was Lemnos's treasured sword, the Flame Flamberge.
I had wondered what it would be like from just the novel's description, but seeing it in reality, its power was tremendous.
The blazing flamberge wasn't just a sword that looked cool.
Once activated, the flamberge was an Aura Blade, meaning it couldn't be blocked with ordinary weaponry, and its curved, flame-like surface restricted several Sword Grappling techniques.
And even when clashing with another Aura Blade, the flamberge's intense heat would eat away at one's stamina...
Above all, the searing high heat instantly cauterized any wound it cut, making it incredibly effective against monsters with rapid regeneration.
There were records that Lemnos's ancestor had used it to finish off a monster said to regenerate infinitely.
Swordsmanship that utilized a blade blazing like a flame just as its alias suggested—that was the Flame Swordsmanship Lemnos prided himself on.
Lemnos was giving his all against me.
Not wearing any notable protective gear was partly to avoid hearing any talk of cowardice, but also because ordinary armor was useless against such an Aura Blade.
Naturally, Lemnos clearly assumed I was an Expert-level fighter capable of using an Aura Blade.
That was true, but... there was one other thing.
"You...!! Why aren't you using your aura?!!!"
Contrary to Lemnos's expectations, I still hadn't used any aura.
The longsword I held was still just an ordinary longsword.
If it made contact with the flamberge's blade in this state, it would probably snap in half like taffy cut by a thousand-degree kitchen knife.
But I had no intention of using my aura.
"Why should I?"
The flamberge was undeniably a fearsome sword.
But if it didn't hit, wasn't it just a burning stick?
"You have to be at least that level for me to use it."
"Arrogant... that arrogance will cost you your life...!!!"
The blazing sword, the flamberge, swung with terrifying momentum.
If I took even one direct hit from that attack with my bare body, I would be incapacitated immediately, but the flamberge couldn't even graze me.
I felt like a matador taming a bull in a bullfight.
Each strike was an unblockable, one-hit kill, but he couldn't get a handle on my footwork, which seemed to close distance when he thought it was close and widen when he thought it was far.
After I watched the movement of his gaze, mixed in a few feints, and slipped into his blind spots a few times, this was the result.
He should have had eyes on the back of his head too... it seemed he hadn't reached that realm yet.
"Cost me my life, so you're going to kill me?"
"It's just a figure of speech!!"
"Do it if you can. You're well within my range and still haven't landed a single effective hit. In this situation, do I even need to use my aura?"
"Keuk!!"
As his attacks continuously failed to connect, Lemnos's strikes grew rougher, as if he were growing anxious.
Maintaining that flaming sword had a time limit.
The fiercely blazing flame was clearly consuming something of Lemnos's as fuel.
"Uaaaaaah!!!"
I dodged the wildly swinging sword and analyzed Lemnos's condition.
He was expending a great deal of stamina unleashing his family's Secret Swordsmanship, and when not a single attack landed, Lemnos became extremely agitated.
Now that he was so focused on attacking and had uselessly tensed his body, 'this' would work perfectly.
'Now's the time..!'
I clearly saw an opening.
I swung the longsword, which I had held like a decoration until now, toward Lemnos.
Lemnos's eyes went wide.
He probably hadn't seen this elsewhere much.
The tip of my sword changed into a cross shape.
It wasn't that the longsword had suddenly turned into a hammer.
'Half-swording.' It was simply holding the longsword 'in reverse' and striking with the crossguard and grip.
After all, once you reached the early stages of Sword Expert and began using an Aura Blade, they stopped teaching these techniques, dismissing them all as dirty tricks.
"Wha... what is this??"
What was the advantage of a longsword held this way...
First, the sturdy crossguard, being cross-shaped, was excellent for hooking things.
The blade of the reverse-gripped longsword I swung struck Lemnos's hand as the crossguard 'interlocked' with the lower part of the flamberge's crossguard.
His hand, struck by the blade of the longsword, loosened slightly from the impact.
Aiming for that fleeting moment of relaxation, I pulled the interlocked crossguard.
"Ugh?!!"
Then, like a fish caught on a fishing rod, the flamberge soared into the air.
Simultaneous exclamations burst from the spectator seats.
Several emotions crossed Edgar Lemnos's face.
Perplexity, shame, and rage at having lost his sword... but it was already too late.
The treasured sword, the flamberge, had left Lemnos's grasp.
"But.. still!!!"
Still, his fundamentals were sound, as his gaze immediately fixed not on his weapon flying off, but on me.
He clenched his fist as a replacement for the sword that had flown away.
However, the moment I hooked the flamberge, the crossguard of the reverse-gripped longsword came down in a continuous motion like a bludgeon and struck Lemnos's head hard.
Ppak!!
"Kuaack!!!!"
Struck on the head, Lemnos toppled to the side.
The second advantage of half-swording was that a longsword, a weapon designed for cutting and thrusting, could deliver blunt-force attacks.
He probably didn't expect me to immediately follow up by striking with the crossguard.
"Dirty... tricks...!!"
"But it worked, didn't it?"
Perhaps the blow to the head had been quite severe, as Lemnos staggered and couldn't properly control his body.
Leaving the immobilized Lemnos behind, I walked over to the flamberge that had fallen behind me and tapped it a few times with my foot.
As I nudged his treasured sword, Lemnos's expression grew even more ferocious.
"You didn't think this was the end, did you?"
And with that, I kicked the flamberge.
Spinning round and round, the flamberge stopped precisely in front of Lemnos.
My passing skills hadn't died yet.
"What is your scheme?!"
Lemnos shouted as he looked at the flamberge delivered right to his front.
He wouldn't understand... If I kept Lemnos from grabbing his weapon here, I would win smoothly without any incident.
He probably thought I had twisted his weapon away and thrown it to do just that, so it must have been dumbfounding when I gave it back.
"What, will you admit defeat?"
"As if I would."
"Then pick up your sword again, stand up, fight back. The duel isn't over yet."