72. Swordsmanship Exchange
72. Swordsmanship Exchange
What would it feel like to have a finger driven into your skull?
I'd heard the brain had no pain receptors, so there wouldn't be any sensation of pain—but something burrowing this deep inside had to be a bizarre feeling regardless.
As I tried to wiggle my finger, Joong-gyeon, who was drenched in cold sweat, screamed.
"S-Stooooop!!!"
Whether it was from using a demon's power or just the primal terror of having something rummaging around inside his head, Joong-gyeon foamed at the mouth and fainted.
Once I saw he was out cold, I pulled my finger out of his head.
I had clearly driven it in deep enough to bury it past the second knuckle, yet mysteriously, not a single drop of blood stained my finger.
By all logic, his skull should have had a hole the size of my finger, but there wasn't even a scratch that big.
'Does the system allow pressure point strikes? Is that just how the rules work?'
I had intimidated him, but I hadn't seriously stimulated his acupoints yet.
I wanted to confirm whether he was truly a demon-touched human or not... but what would happen if it came to light that a demon-touched had participated in an exchange tournament?
'...The tournament would probably end right there.'
If it ended here, the chance to fuck up Margaret—who was scheduled to come out as the general—would vanish.
I had entered this tournament solely to target Margaret, but the plan got drawn out because she had taken the general's position.
If she had come out as the vanguard, I might have jumped in around the second bout.
Even so, I couldn't just ignore someone I suspected of being demon-touched.
'Hmm... fine. I'll deal with that bastard separately after the tournament ends.'
Anyway, everything would be over before that guy regained consciousness.
--------------------------
Nothing much changed afterward.
The captain who came out for the fourth bout also couldn't last two exchanges before being sent flying.
The exchange tournament, which hadn't been very long to begin with, was now sprinting toward its finale.
The final runner from Clover Academy walked out with heavy, deliberate steps.
Her stride looked extremely confident, but her face told a different story.
She was trying hard to act otherwise, but even a casual glance made it blatantly obvious she felt cornered.
Clover Academy hadn't just been defeated.
They had been crushed so one-sidedly that "they lost but fought well" wasn't even a conceivable thought.
As the general, there was no way she could be free of responsibility for that.
Margaret walked out and stood before me, then spoke.
"Did you really have to go that far...? I'll admit you're strong. I handpicked every one of them, and I never imagined it would turn out like this... But was all of that truly necessary?"
Her voice was shaking.
"If you're that strong, you could have been more magnanimous about it... This is just a friendly exchange, damn it...!!!"
"You're the one who acted disrespectfully first."
"I... did? I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about!"
"Don't you remember what happened yesterday?"
Margaret's mouth snapped shut.
"Ha... Was that it... Ah, yes, I think I remember now... You were clinging to that bitch's side, weren't you...?"
Forcing her mouth open, Margaret let out a hollow, incredulous laugh.
"I wondered what was so great about you to take the spot next to that person, and so that was it... Seems being a master at seducing men is your one true talent.
What are you? Her pet dog? What, you can't forgive someone for insulting your master?"
"...It seems you really want to die."
I had to change the plan.
Since I'd already humiliated her enough, I was going to finish this with a couple of decent hits—but she kept spewing garbage that pissed me off, so I had to give her exactly what she was asking for.
"That's my line...!!!"
Aura blazed from Margaret's sword.
The clarity of her aura was on a completely different dimension from the previous four—more vivid than an actual roaring flame.
An aura blade that vivid was proof of a warrior who had reached the upper rank of Expert. From here on, this was no longer the level of a mere student.
"The plan hasn't changed much at all!! I'll just defeat the rest of you all by myself!"
There was a reason for her overconfidence.
If the exchange had proceeded normally without my interference, it would have been difficult to guarantee a complete victory for the Swordsmanship Research Club.
The minimum cut-off for the Imperial Knights, an order that only permitted rigorously proven elites to join, was the upper rank of Expert.
In the Adventurer's Guild, simply reaching the upper rank guaranteed you at least a Gold Plate.
And once your skills were verified there, you would receive a Platinum Plate immediately—a recognized powerhouse.
It was a dimension apart from the lower-ranked Experts, a stage you could normally reach quickly through teeth-gritting, proper, steady training.
Margaret, an upper-rank Expert, was certainly a swordsman of formidable prowess...
But conversely, that meant at best, she was weaker than Andy, who was a veteran upper-rank Expert.
"Haaaaap!!!"
Brandishing her blazing aura blade, Margaret charged at me.
I could have won much more easily by engaging in sword grappling, but unfortunately, my fingers weren't reinforced with aura.
It was a secret martial art I'd learned from the beastmen, which tricked you into perceiving a soft lump of flesh as being as hard as steel and enabled you to wield the body like a weapon.
For a split second, the movement of Margaret's arm revealed the precursor to her attack.
Seeing the aura on her sword swell up, her intent was to use it to blanket the entire space so I couldn't dodge.
It was a fairly ferocious attack to try and simply wait out and counter with a blow.
This time, let me go on the offensive.
When I kicked my speed into high gear, Margaret panicked.
She had clearly lost sight of me.
That was because, until now, I had been matching the speed of my opponents' attacks and had never moved this fast.
Margaret, who had been winding up a big attack, whipped her head around frantically when I vanished from her sight entirely.
And I was already waiting right in front of her.
"You're slow."
-Puk!
The moment my finger stabbed into Margaret's forearm, the sword she had been gripping tightly clattered to the floor.
Realizing it had been an attack deliberately meant to make her drop her blade, she glared at me with murderous intent.
She must have been determined never to let go, but she had no choice.
What I stabbed this time wasn't just her forearm—it was a nerve.
Just like a frog's leg moving under an electrical stimulus, her nerve had been stimulated, causing her muscle to contract involuntarily.
"Hey, you dropped your sword. Why don't you try fighting barehanded too?"
"Gah...!!"
When Margaret, flustered, tried to pick up her sword, I kicked it away, sending it flying into the distance.
She looked like she wanted to scramble after the blade as it soared away powerlessly, but knowing she would have to expose her defenseless back to me to do so, she immediately gave up.
Her quick judgment to abandon the sword deserved extra points.
So why on earth did an Expert with such good judgment deliberately spew that kind of shit just to piss someone off?
"What are you doing? Pick up your sword."
"As if I'd fall for that obvious ploy to attack me the moment I turn my back!!"
Why would I do that? My plan was to keep disarming her until her arm stopped moving, just like I had done to Edgar.
"If you want to fight barehanded, I don't mind either way."
"Don't think you're the only one capable of that skill!"
A blue aura swirled around her hands.
Since it was easier to coat the body with aura than to channel it into a sword, she was skillfully sheathing her hands in aura—as befitting an upper-rank Expert—and then adopted a stance similar to mine.
It was the stance of a dagger technique.
From the looks of it, she thought that because I was forming a faint aura blade on my fingers, my destructive power had been generated the same way as before.
"You think that'll work?"
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Gaghh...!!"
Margaret, who had tried to mimic me by turning her hand into a sword and engaging in extreme close-quarters combat, was utterly crushed.
She was knocked down repeatedly until her body was covered in dust and dirt, limping badly and unable to even straighten her waist.
Her left shoulder, thigh, side, solar plexus, collarbone, back—all were already riddled with stab marks.
Curiously, about half of those strikes had bypassed the magic barrier and burrowed inward to stimulate her acupoints, and each time, the struck area stopped moving.
I'd realized it from the moment I shoved my finger into Joong-gyeon's skull: the buff on the arena only reacted to truly serious damage. It didn't function properly against attacks where the judgment was ambiguous about whether an actual wound had been inflicted.
That was because stabbing an acupoint looked like a finger sinking deep into the body, but in reality, it caused no harm whatsoever.
She couldn't land a single proper effective hit and was just beaten one-sidedly, while I moderated my force just enough to keep it from ending in one blow. The hologram displaying her condition was completely filled with orange.
The aura wrapped around Margaret's hand lost its power and grew faint, flickering as if it would go out at any moment.
With one arm and one leg immobilized and the acupoint in her side making it impossible to straighten her waist, she was in a state where she should have collapsed immediately—but she hadn't fallen to her knees.
Gritting her teeth, she glared at me fiercely.
"Ha... You... you've been toying with me, haven't you...?"
"If you don't like it, I'll put you to bed right now."
Margaret dropped her stance.
Completely battered, unable to even straighten her back or stop limping, she stared blankly up at the sky... no, at the VIP room.
Was she looking at the Sword Saint?
I didn't know what she was thinking, but her expression was one of someone who had let something go.
"Ha... haha..."
Suddenly, Margaret started laughing.
Just moments ago, she had been gritting her teeth and enduring, but now she was laughing at the VIP room as if utterly dejected.
"No... it's fine. Anyway... we're finished here."
In that instant, Margaret thrust her hand inside her clothes.
I was on guard, suspecting she might be pulling out a hidden weapon, but she didn't take anything out.
Instead, she tightly gripped something inside her clothes.
"So let's all die together."
"What?"
Margaret still had a smile on her face.
Centered on her, pitch-black Demonic Energy erupted, filling the arena entirely.
-------------------------------------------------
The Sword Saint, who had been observing the exchange from the VIP room, looked very displeased.
Seeing the students he had brought being beaten one-sidedly, he couldn't possibly be in a good mood... Judging by their skills, they seemed to have come with a fairly sincere intention to win, yet only bad results came out, which made it simply pitiable.
'That student must be the one Linda mentioned we needed to keep an eye on.'
To defeat swordsmen who used aura blades using literally a single finger... The Headmaster recalled Linda during her academy days.
"Hmm... I'll step out for a moment."
When even the general, following the captain, was reduced to a state of helpless defeat by Atlas, the Sword Saint—who had been restlessly clacking the lid of his pocket watch—stood up from his seat again.
"Are you going to the waiting room again...? How about just leaving the students be, since it's only an exchange?"
The Headmaster had already noticed that the Sword Saint had slipped out and entered the Clover Academy waiting room the moment the second bout ended.
He probably intended to apply pressure over the consecutive losses. Since suffering a miserable defeat while on an expedition in a foreign country would affect morale, the Headmaster hadn't bothered to interfere with that sort of management.
However, having faced the Sword Saint on the battlefield in his youth, the Headmaster could imagine just how much pressure he was putting on his students, so he decided to dissuade him once—but as expected, it was hopeless.
"Haha, it's nothing like that. A Master is still human, after all. Biological phenomena can come calling at any time, you see."
Wearing a face that seemed to say, "As if I would ever do such a thing," the Sword Saint gave a good-natured laugh and stepped out the door.
"Then I'll leave the rest to you, Headmaster-nim."
Watching the Sword Saint slip away with a smirk, the Headmaster felt an ominous premonition somewhere.