30
Chapter 30
"Where is my army? Form ranks! Intercept the enemy!"
"Urgh..."
As Laevateinn's rampage continued, Minerva's expression, who had contracted with her, began to darken.
"Hey, is that okay?"
"I don't know."
My face stiffened at the unexpected situation. Flames erupted more fiercely from Laevateinn's body.
I'd seen her go berserk a few times in the original story, but not in a situation like this.
"Estella, subdue her."
"Right."
As Estella and I prepared for battle, someone approached.
"There is no need for students to go through the trouble of subduing her."
A woman with long black hair spoke.
She did nothing. Spirits simply spread from her shadow, swallowing the rampaging Laevateinn and Minerva.
Though I was curious about how it happened, I first approached the fallen student.
"Are you alright?"
Judging by the blue badge, they seemed to be from the Magic Department.
"Yes, I'm fine. My professor cast a defensive spell on me just in case. Still, it's a shame I lost. I really wanted to spar with Lady Estella."
The fallen student continued speaking nonchalantly.
Their reaction suggested they had expected this, as if it were only natural.
"The Top Student of the department is certainly strong. To be honest, I thought it might only be possible because she's from the Spirit Department."
Ah.
Since she had a gentle impression and didn't radiate an intimidating pressure, I had forgotten that she was the Top Student of the Spirit Department.
"If you're that disappointed, want to spar with me instead?"
She spoke while glancing at me. She might have just wanted to spar more, or perhaps she didn't want to approach a professor she'd never met, or maybe there was something to clean up, but none of that really mattered.
I gave a slight nod and moved away.
"Professor, do you know what's happening?"
"The balance has collapsed. The gap between the contracted spirit and the contractor was too large, and the latter was swept away."
I could roughly understand the situation from that explanation.
I suppose the difference between current Minerva and the one I saw in the original story is that severe.
Laevateinn suffers from a madness.
Her very identity is rooted in destruction and collapse, and that's where the madness originated.
"You might not see it, but Laevateinn is quite an unstable spirit. She has repeated cycles of collapse and recreation for hundreds of years."
That was why Laevateinn, despite being a spirit, was able to have multiple contractors.
Because once recreated, she existed as a new entity.
"Normally, a powerful Spirit User who could compensate for that instability would have to contract with Laevateinn, but..."
Laevateinn, in the form of a sword, and Minerva emerged from her shadow.
"For some reason, this time she chose a fragile and weak Spirit User."
"I see."
Her gaze was fixed on me.
Suddenly, a question blossomed in my mind as I looked into those eyes.
"Why are you telling me all this?"
Although I asked about the situation, this wasn't the kind of trivial information one would share with anyone.
While Laevateinn was suppressing herself for now, avoiding a major scene, a fully berserk Laevateinn could cause damage on a scale similar to the King of the Demonic Realm.
"I was simply answering a student's question sincerely."
She spoke while watching me with an expressionless face.
"I see."
I felt chills run down my spine.
It was completely out of the blue.
A thought occurred to me, almost as if someone had guided my thinking.
Wait, what exactly did she say when I asked why only two people were left in the class?
'The student count was a bit awkward. After distributing the students, there were about two left, so I placed them here.'
How did she know I had contracted with a spirit?
"Come to think of it, you already knew I had a contract with a spirit, didn't you?"
I asked the question as casually as possible.
"No, I didn't. Today was the first time I learned that student Seo-ha had contracted with a spirit."
"Then..."
"Ngh..."
Just as I spoke, Minerva regained consciousness.
"U-um, hello?"
Sensing that the atmosphere was a bit tense, she offered a sudden, awkward greeting.
"It seems the other matches are winding down. Everyone, prepare for the next round. Student Minerva, are you alright? I can take you to the infirmary if needed."
I watched her figure drift away.
Logically, she seemed like a good professor who cared deeply for her students.
But why did I feel an even stronger sense of déjà vu than when I first met her?
No, was I really the kind of person to be this wary over something so trivial...?
"Daddy! Let's go, hurry!"
Luna materialized out of nowhere and pulled on my arm.
"Yeah, let's go."
With a head full of questions, I prepared for the next spar.
"Next is..."
I looked at the student opposite me. A green badge. The Shooting Department.
This is a great matchup.
The opponent was Knight-rank, meaning they possessed the skill to guarantee a high win rate against the Magic Beasts and Majin I had struggled against.
"I look forward to our match."
I greeted them first.
The opponent responded, and we both stepped back to create distance.
The engagement distance for this match was shorter than when I fought Estella.
However, it shouldn't be a problem.
I fired first. The arrow of light streaked forward and struck the opponent's body.
"Tsk, it really is less effective against those who coat their bodies in mana."
Estella hadn't used mana, but others did, even in a spar with me; their raw physical abilities were likely higher than mine.
Then, a white line stretched toward me. They were definitely from the Shooting Department. To aim so accurately from this distance without any assistance...
I shifted my weight to dodge the line. Since I could see the trajectory, avoiding it wasn't particularly difficult.
Yet, the sheer sound of the rapidly fired arrows cutting through the wind revealed the destructive power of the attack.
"When they said I could aim for the top ranks if I increased my firepower, did they mean my current output is that pathetic?"
Judging by the perceived power alone, it was stronger than an attack I had launched with full intent.
However, as I first thought, the matchup was more in my favor.
I released a flash of light from the artifact, causing the opponent's aim to waver. Intense light obstructs vision and makes concentration difficult. While announcing one's position is a penalty in areas with plenty of cover, in a wide-open field like this, it could actually break the opponent's focus.
Consequently, their unstable shooting would reduce the amount of dodging I had to do. I redirected the mana I had saved for evasion into increasing my firepower.
"Not all at once, just a moderate amount."
I was used to either dumping all my mana or using just a tiny bit. But because of that, channeling a moderate amount felt surprisingly awkward.
If I just crammed in as much mana as usual and fired, I might actually win.
But it was only a spar. Winning or losing didn't matter much to me. Hoping to get a feel for it today, I continued to draw the bowstring.
***
11 matches, 2 wins, 9 losses.
That was the final result of this session.
Around the midway point, my average firepower improved, allowing me to secure two wins. Toward the end, however, my stamina plummeted, leading to a series of crushing defeats.
"Hmm."
"Why the long face?"
Minerva approached me and asked.
The reason for my dissatisfaction was simple.
I just couldn't take down the kids from the Close Combat Department.
"I'm feeling a real lack of firepower."
Others were manageable, but the Close Combat Department was on another level. The quality of mana they used for Body Reinforcement was simply different. Watching the matches between the Shooting and Close Combat departments, it was always one of two things: either the shooter overwhelmed them with raw power before they could close in, or they lost the moment the fight became a melee.
I was able to hold my own in close quarters to some extent, but it was a cycle of failing to land an effective hit and losing once my stamina ran out.
"Still, you fought amazingly! Your aim was great, and you dodged close-range attacks all swoosh, swoosh!"
Minerva tried to comfort me, but...
"You won every single match except for one."
Her record was 10 matches, 9 wins, and 1 loss.
After her rampage, she had suppressed Laevateinn's power further for the spars. Even so, she had won every fight except for one. The only reason she had one fewer match than me was that she had to rest early on to calm Laevateinn down.
"That's all thanks to Laevateinn~"
"You're a Spirit User, so that's what matters."
"And I did lose once."
Of course, that one loss was to Estella. She had actually tried to let Laevateinn rampage just to see if she could win, but she got caught and scolded by the professor.
"She's just..."
An anomaly.
Just then, Estella, noticing we were talking about her, walked over.
"Of course~. A woman with 48 wins and 0 losses. That's who I am."
She had simply sought out matches for herself. Whenever a fight ended early, she'd find the winner and challenge them to a two-on-one spar.
"You sparring junkie."
"Huh? Did you just..."
"Even the attacks I launched with a determined heart during the spar didn't land a single hit."
I had forgotten about Minerva. Since I had just blurted something out, Minerva looked at me with a puzzled expression.
Professor Kim Hye-ra was providing feedback to those who had just finished their matches.
She explained what would have been better in certain situations or how to execute specific attacks more effectively.
There was feedback for Minerva and me as well. Even if I could dodge by reading the opponent's trajectory, it was based on split-second intuition rather than an optimal decision. Furthermore, looking at the other Shooting Department students, I realized with painful clarity that my firepower was still lacking, regardless of my training.
Thanks to that, I received useful advice on how to handle those specific scenarios.
Minerva, on the other hand, struggled to get meaningful feedback. Since she handed all the fighting over to Laevateinn, her only real role was trying to keep the spirit from rampaging.
Among the students heading back, I spotted some of the faces from class this morning. Quixote was more troublesome than I had imagined. Between the limits of my attack power and his armor, he was the second most impossible opponent after Estella.
"Good work, everyone. Since this was the first class, it might not have felt like a traditional lesson, but I appreciate you all following along. I am especially grateful for Ms. Estella's cooperation."
Professor Kim Hye-ra spoke and gave a slight bow.
Estella left after receiving the thanks. Minerva followed suit and departed shortly after.
Eventually, only the professor and I remained.
"Student, do you believe it's possible to coexist with a Majin, a Magic Beast, or a Demon?"
It was a sudden question. Her tone was so dry that I couldn't even tell if she was looking for a positive or negative answer.
I did have some knowledge from living in this world. While the Magic Beasts of the Fifth Continent were particularly threatening, other continents had succeeded in suppressing the Demonic Realm, and some beasts were even bred for commercial purposes. Whether that counted as coexistence or exploitation was debatable.
Beyond that, a small number of Demons actually lived in interaction with humans. In the original story, one of Estella's friends was a Demon she had met in the Demonic Realm. Actually, considering the beings called 'Demons' in this world, the term might not even be accurate, but I decided not to dwell on it since it wasn't important right now.
Nevertheless, most humans hated Magic Beasts, Majin, and Demons. They loathed them. Whether it was the inertia of a history fueled by hatred or a trace of malice deeply embedded in their genes, I couldn't be sure.
"I don't think it's impossible."
That was my thought. It was a somewhat vague and ambiguous answer, neither confirming nor denying the possibility, but she didn't seem dissatisfied.
"I see."
She gave another dry response.
And for some reason, I didn't feel the usual skin-crawling sensation this time.
***
Late at night.
Two people sat in a room, quietly drinking tea and gazing at the moon in the sky.
"It's a full moon tonight."
Actually, I should correct that.
A man and a spirit who took the form of a woman were quietly drinking tea in a room.
"Yeah, it's a full moon."
Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating the room.
"Maybe it's because we just finished that big task, but the moon looks exceptionally beautiful today."
"What's this? Are you flirting with me?"
The spirit replied with a laugh to the man's joking tone.
"Maybe."
Knock, knock.
The sound of someone knocking on the door broke the mood.
"Come in—no, wait. I'll have to open it."
The man stood up and opened the door.
"What brings such a busy person here this time?"
He welcomed the visitor kindly, seemingly unbothered by the interrupted atmosphere. However, the visitor spoke in a voice devoid of emotion.
"The White King."
As those words were spoken, several documents were placed on the corner of the tea table.
The gentle smile on the man's face twisted.
"Why again? That was already settled a while ago."
The 'big task' he mentioned was cleaning up the test subjects from the experiments the Alchemist had conducted using the White King's corpse. Because of the sheer number and strength of the subjects, he had worked day and night for weeks, leaving dark circles under his eyes.
"There were so many that we had to call in others; you and I handled about eighty percent of them. The other twenty were taken care of by others, and the Alchemist said all recorded subjects had been captured or killed."
While the man spoke, his spirit began scanning the documents.
"Calm down, Mikhail. Why get so worked up with them when you could just look at the papers? They might look the same, but they're just a spirit."
"Ahem, sorry."
The man bowed and apologized to the visitor. The visitor showed no reaction, whether they were offended or simply didn't care.
"Right, let's have a look, let's see..."
The moment she started reading.
Crash!
The window and the teacup shattered into pieces.
"Wait, is this for real?"
The spirit, who had been gently calming Mikhail, suddenly stood before the visitor, holding two of the documents.
There was no significant difference between the two papers.
Except for one single line.
AS-1-a.
One document had an additional line of text.
"I'm certain this wasn't here when we first handled the cleanup."
It wasn't rage directed at the person in front of her.
Rather, it was a suppressed anger, yet it was so intense it could be felt on the skin.
And the visitor simply offered a word of affirmation.