Levia
To be judged outstanding at magic, one had to wring the greatest possible efficiency from the least possible mana. Naturally, then, McDeras neither liked nor respected anyone who burned mana wastefully for the sake of show. In battle, magic was only a tool for killing the other person. How sharp it was mattered far more than how dazzling it looked.
McDeras had always used magic to kill. Everyone around him had refined their craft for the single purpose of ending human and creature lives with cold efficiency.
But these people?
Summoned beasts slapped together from a messy grab bag of attributes.
There were about seven of them in all. Every last one of them looked as if its maker had agreed in advance to prioritize flashy outer form over the cohesion of its mana, and to cram in as many attributes as possible rather than make the mana expenditure efficient.
McDeras stepped forward. A moment later Instructor Arnius’s voice came through the speakers.
Summoned-beast combat will begin shortly. All masters, set your beasts to automatic attack mode. Cael may fight however he likes.
He could almost hear the snickers from the other side of the screen.
Things like: a worthless swordsman who can’t even call a single summoned beast; a boy who can do nothing but swing a sword.
He didn’t care. They would learn soon enough that they were nothing but frogs in a well.
McDeras drew his blade and walked toward the summoned beasts. The instant Instructor Arnius gave the signal, he charged straight into them.
The first was a golem-like creature built on wind and flame. Its massive frame slammed into the ground, but McDeras slipped past the blow with casual ease and slid underneath it.
The fatal flaw of any golem-type summon was its weak lower half. McDeras’s sword carved through the joints of its legs. The thing staggered and spat fire; at the same time its free hand blasted wind, trying to feed the flames.
Pointless.
McDeras kicked the golem’s arm aside, redirecting the jet of fire. The beast set itself ablaze, and the wind roaring from its opposite arm only made the flames surge higher.
Before half a minute had passed, McDeras drove his sword into the blackened skull. One summon, finished in under thirty seconds.
He began dismantling the others the same way. Against the ice-type that sprayed freezing magic, he used mid-air footwork so he never had to step on the slick ground, striking in rapid succession. When lightning came, he shoved the corpse of the golem he had just killed into its path and used it as a shield.
McDeras scavenged every scrap of every fallen summon, even the wreckage. Bodies that had been jammed full of mismatched attributes turned out to be far more useful dead than alive.
Roughly three minutes later, McDeras was the only one still standing in the arena.
“Instructor Arnius. Isn’t it over?”
Arnius, who had been staring blankly at the summons that had either died or dissolved back into nature, only answered once Cael’s voice reached him.
Summoned-beast mock duel… First place: Cael.
When McDeras left the combat space and returned to E-Class, the students’ eyes had changed. Where they had once looked at him with open contempt, they now watched him with suspicion.
As if voicing their unspoken questions, Instructor Arnius spoke to him.
“Cael… you didn’t happen to use some kind of artifact, did you?”
An artifact: a magical tool even someone without magic could wield. In modern terms, something with the punch of a gun. The expensive ones could match a full-fledged mage. Using one in a spar was cheating, of course.
“I didn’t. Search me if you like.”
“Hmm…”
Arnius looked him over carefully before stepping back. There really was nothing on him but the sword.
“Well… congratulations.”
After that half-hearted praise, Cael returned to his seat. No one clapped. They only stared at him with wary eyes.
And sure enough, Tecas’s voice cut through the air.
“What the hell did you do?”
“What do you mean, what did I do?”
The casual answer twisted Tecas’s face in an instant.
“What kind of bullshit trick did you pull to smash my summons bare-handed, you inferior little—”
“Your summons were simply pathetic. Pathetic enough that even this inferior body could break them.”
Tecas started to shout something, then broke into a loud laugh and dropped his head close. He whispered.
“Fine. You’ll talk once I’ve beaten it out of you. I guarantee it—this time I won’t let you run. Time to finish what we started last time.”
McDeras ignored him. There was no point answering a childish taunt.
Even after watching him perform, the people around him still refused to accept what they had seen. They assumed he had used some underhanded method, that he had cheated—or, if not that, that the summons themselves had been defective.
Their defensive attitude wasn’t only because they disliked Cael. They simply could not admit the truth: that their own summons had been obliterated by a magicless, inferior swordsman.
McDeras didn’t care. With time they would have no choice but to abandon their blind faith in magic. He intended to refute magic head-on with the sword.
“All right. Summon practice is over, so Cael will receive the reward he has earned. And as I said earlier, we’re changing seats today. Move according to the diagram on the board.”
Arnius projected the rearranged seating chart onto the board. Students began shifting one by one. McDeras changed seats as well, without fuss.
Then someone approached with hesitant steps. A glance to the side showed it was Levia. He wondered if she had come to speak to him, but that wasn’t it. The chart made it clear she was now his seatmate.
Of all people, she has to sit right next to me.
From the posts left on the community forum, Levia found Cael uncomfortable. In other words, she found the current McDeras uncomfortable. He had no desire to force feelings on her, nor any wish to become her friend against her will. So he offered no small talk and simply stared ahead, whether she sat or not.
“Um…”
Levia spoke first. When he looked into her eyes, she seemed intensely curious about something.
“Speak.”
“In the summoned-beast duel just now… how did you do it? How did you kill every single one without using even one spell…?”
“I was simply stronger than those summons.”
It wasn’t a lie. Even if you used magic, it meant nothing unless the blow actually landed. They had packed their creations with flashy, showy spells and left them without enough binding or linking magic to pin an opponent down. Because of that, their magic never delivered a decisive hit, and swordsmanship alone had been enough to dismantle them.
But all of that only held when the fighter possessed ample real combat experience and knowledge. In short, the summons these students had built were simply overwhelmingly weaker than McDeras—that was why they lost.
Levia hesitated, then spoke in a small voice.
“My younger brother can’t use magic either… just like you.”
“And?”
“He’s being bullied at school… There’s a culture of ostracizing anyone who can’t use magic.”
“I can imagine.”
“He came home covered in bruises again yesterday. I went to his school to confront them, but it was useless… One of the kids doing it is from a noble house, apparently… Even telling the instructors didn’t change anything.”
“If you care about your brother, why not use a stronger method, noble child or not? Or ask your parents for help.”
“I can’t… I… don’t have parents. I want to settle it with words as much as I can, but nothing works…”
“Bullying doesn’t vanish because a third party pokes at it half-heartedly. If those bastards were the type to stop just because someone told them to, they never would have started that garbage in the first place.”
As he listened to the girl, things finally began to make sense. The words she had spoken before—
That’s true, but… we made a promise… If you found the courage… I would help you too.
She had promised that if Cael found the courage, she would help him escape the bullying. McDeras had no way of knowing the atmosphere in which those words had been exchanged. It had always felt off. She had clearly posted on the forum that a boy she felt no romantic interest in kept confessing to her and made her uncomfortable—yet she was still willing to help him escape bullying? Why bother? he had wondered.
He had questioned whether she was simply kind by nature, but now the question was answered. Her younger brother was trapped in the exact same situation as Cael, and she had superimposed Cael onto her brother.
Levia looked at him with hopeful eyes.
“Cael… if my brother had sword skills even half as good as yours, he wouldn’t get bullied… No—even if he could only imitate half of what you do, the other kids wouldn’t look down on him.”
“Get to the point.”
McDeras cut the conversation short. Levia blinked at him in momentary confusion, then spoke.
“Could you… maybe teach my brother a little swordsmanship…? I know it’s a selfish request. But you’re the only person I can even talk to about this…”
McDeras looked at Levia.
Cael had liked Levia until the very end and had been rejected. In return, Levia had called Cael a good friend but insisted she felt no romantic interest whatsoever. Lately she had even admitted that the repeated confessions made her a little uncomfortable.
What had their relationship been like? Had Cael listened to her worries one by one whenever she came to him like this?
Perhaps Cael and Levia had been closer than he thought. The fact that Cael had found so many chances to confess meant they had talked that often.
What would Cael have said if she asked him this?
McDeras only knew Cael in fragments: the posts and comments left on the community, the short lines written in a diary.
Even so, he was certain. If Cael had been standing here, he would have accepted her proposal with a glad heart. He might even have spun some empty dream of growing closer and confessing again.
That kind of relationship was wrong. Cael would have been led around by the nose the whole time. From an overwhelmingly inferior position, he would have kept begging for love without end.
Cael might have scolded him for it if he could see this, but McDeras acted according to his own convictions. Looking straight at Levia, he spoke with absolute clarity.
He still remembered the expression on her face the first time they met. Looking at him—wearing Cael’s body—she had been unmistakably uncomfortable.
He needed to draw a line with her. No matter how pitiable her circumstances were. McDeras did, in Cael’s borrowed body, the thing Cael should have done long ago.
“Why should I help you? You found me uncomfortable from the start.”