Let’s Go to the Academy (3)
“Melitt, listen carefully.”
The girl took the adult woman by the face and spoke to her.
“I like you.”
“Eh…?”
What a pathetic sound. The ashen-gray eyes that were always weighed down with exhaustion trembled.
“I like your courage. I like how you quietly explain things when I ask about something I don’t know. You’re kind to a fault, hard on yourself and soft on everyone else, and even when you really need to stand up, you throw your life away to do it.”
The girl’s lips curved.
“I really do like you.”
“…!!”
As if in answer to her eyes, her heart began to tremble a beat later.
“So, Melitt? Stop saying something stupid like ‘stay still’ to me. Because—”
A gentle smile.
But true gentleness came not from weakness, but from confidence.
“I’m going to protect you.”
Ellie’s hand pressed down on Melitt’s shoulder, as if to say that she should be the one to sit here, and stay there without moving.
And Melitt did.
She sank to the ground.
She couldn’t resist.
She didn’t even feel like resisting.
“Yes.”
Ellie smiled.
“Then stay right there. Don’t move.”
She could hear the sounds of the pursuers who had chased them here. It was only a matter of time before they found this place.
“I wouldn’t want to hurt you by mistake.”
“There he is! Your Grace, the marquis is there!”
“Hmph!”
The mages swarmed in. One by one, they scattered to sweep the area, building a ring of encirclement.
And in the center of it all, Lord Repeat stepped forward.
“Melitt Sinceregreen.”
In his eyes, there was no orphan girl. She was the sort of thing no one needed to be informed about, even if she were killed.
“Not only did you obstruct my rightful authority over my own territory, but you also attacked me and caused injury.”
Mana gathered at the staff.
“I trust you were prepared to die when you did it, so I will be sure to convey that to the current head of House Sinceregreen.”
The girl’s voice rang out.
“How terribly arrogant.”
Just an ordinary orphan girl. Black hair, black eyes, a girl who had failed to inherit the colors of a mage.
“Before you talk about killing someone, why don’t you consider whether you’re actually capable of doing it?”
And without turning back—
“Melitt. I’m going to show you my secret, so you need to protect it, all right?”
As she watched the girl walk forward, Melitt remembered something.
The one who had come here to search for promising young mages.
For no apparent reason, she recalled words she had heard back when she was still a student at the Academy, from one of her professors.
Idle talk meant to wake up sleepy students in the middle of class. The topic had been: what exactly made a strong mage?
—There are many kinds of strength, but let’s think first about a direct battle between two mages. The goal is to render the opponent incapable of fighting, including killing them.
With a few exceptions, noble mage families were founded by ancestors who had earned military merit.
Many students found the idea of killing an opponent bloodcurdling, but they couldn’t openly show their disgust.
The professor, whose temperament was far from gentle, merely laughed at their reactions and went on.
—When two mages fight, how do you win? Girif, what do you think?
—Uh, um… dodge their magic while landing yours?
—That sounds like the sort of obvious answer you’d mutter after being woken from a nap, but yes, that’s correct. To make sure your own magic lands, you’d better not sleep in class but pay attention and practice diligently.
But—
—Dodging the other side’s magic. That’s actually much harder. Quick reflexes help, but only up to a point.
The professor continued.
—The textbook answer would be to analyze the incantation and mana flow of the enemy’s spell, then neutralize or disrupt it.
But—
—There is one method by which you can nullify an opponent’s magic at all times, with no conditions attached. Anyone know the answer? Sinceregreen, what do you think?
—That would be…
The answer she had given the professor back then—
—Wouldn’t it be possible if you had more mana than your opponent… a truly overwhelming amount more?
Overlapped with the reality before her eyes.
—Correct, Sinceregreen.
A torrent like a waterfall.
Pressure like a typhoon.
A vast, impossible presence, impossible to believe it was pouring from such a slender girl.
—Sufficiently massive mana is law in and of itself. It would make the surrounding mages unable to dare draw even a single sip of mana, leaving only yourself to monopolize magic alone.
Her hair turned pure white.
Her eyes changed to blue.
—Just like standing before someone from a family so far above your own that you can’t even lift your head.
And the star that had descended upon the earth found a sanctuary in the girl’s iris.
—But overwhelming an opponent purely through mana quantity in battle is something you almost never see in reality. If it were truly possible, the difference in rank would be so extreme that no one would even dare challenge you. You lot—do you think you could pick a fight with our headmaster?
So the only time that worked was when the stronger side had concealed their power, and the weaker side had struck first.
Exactly as it was now, spread out before Melitt’s eyes.
“Wh-...”
Lord Repeat’s mouth fell open in a daze.
“A s-star…?”
When the words left his mouth, referring to the star nestled within royal blood, the mages who had followed him finally shook themselves free of their stupor.
“W-we’ve committed a capital offense!”
“Spare us, please, just spare our lives!!”
They all dropped to their knees at once. Foreheads and hands pressed into the dirt.
How outrageous.
The one they had tried to kill. No—surely not. It couldn’t be…!
But that was only a handful of them. The rest of the mages shouted instead,
“You idiots! You think begging will do anything?”
“Just kill her! Kill her and bury her here, and who cares whether she’s royal or not?!”
At those words, even the ones bowing their heads raised them again.
Come to think of it, they were right.
It was too late to beg for forgiveness now. Besides, that royal already knew about the drug production here—and about their lord, Lord Repeat.
If they killed her, they could return to yesterday as if nothing had ever happened.
And yet. Even so.
In the end, the retainers looked to the marquis for an answer.
The one they had sworn vassalage to was the marquis. The emperor was only sacred because the marquis himself was the emperor’s vassal.
And the marquis’s answer was—
“He’s right. If we kill her, that’s the end of it.”
As he drew mana into his staff—
“I won’t hold any sin against those of you who bowed your heads just now. However, gather your mana at once!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Thank you for your mercy!!”
Watching them, Melitt was bewildered.
Why?
Why were they still trying to fight Ellie in a situation like this?
Couldn’t they feel it? Couldn’t they sense the terrifying mana making the very space tremble, mana so immense it seemed to reach the sky itself?
Then, all at once, she remembered something.
The fact that House Repeat had never produced a student for the Academy.
Then the current marquis, too—
Wait.
Was he simply too large to notice it?
Like a water flea unable to tell the difference between a well and a lake, was he incapable of sensing Ellie’s overwhelming mana at all?
So vast was the difference in rank that it did not merely prevent one from looking up—it made one unaware there was anything there to look at in the first place.
“Ha….”
Melitt’s laugh held three emotions.
First, disbelief. Had she really intended to protect this lady from this sort of thing?
Second, contempt. For all their malice, their magical skill was laughably pitiful.
And last of all, admiration. Another name for it was longing.
At a beautiful girl, at a great mage.
That was the moment.
It was then that Melitt Sinceregreen, both as an individual and as a mage, found the lord she would serve.
“Then this is goodbye, orphan… hm?”
“M-marquis, your Grace. The mana….”
“W-we can’t gather mana!”
Of course they couldn’t.
Mana was, in the first place, the world’s ether converted into an individual’s power.
To pile up that much mana meant to monopolize all the ether in the surrounding space.
To borrow an analogy of water, the water level had dropped so low they could no longer draw it up; to borrow one of air, they had slipped into a near-vacuum and found their breathing growing short.
—Of course, that state couldn’t last for long. The ether would flow in and fill the emptiness.
But—
—If the other side can’t use mana at all for a short time, while this side has already gathered more than enough?
The professor had said then that the fight was already as good as over.
“‘To everyone within a ten-meter radius except me and Melitt, let every heart come to a complete stop.’”
It was an incantation she had never heard before.
An unfamiliar language.
What kind of spell is that?
Melitt’s question was answered moments later.
“Gah!”
“Hrk, urk…!”
The marquis and his underlings clutched their chests and collapsed all at once.
“Kh, kuh…!”
“Nullification… c-cancel it…!!”
They tried to gather mana to stop the spell, but nothing would come to hand.
Twenty seconds.
On average, that was how long a human could remain conscious after cardiac arrest.
One by one, consciousness slipped away before Melitt’s eyes.
Once it came to that, it was already over.
Even if the heart was no longer forcibly stopped, a heart that had already suffered cardiac arrest would no longer produce normal electrical signals.
Stopping the spell did not mean the heart would suddenly start beating normally again and restore consciousness.
“…It’s over.”
Ellie slowly let out a breath.
The second time in her life she had used this spell, it still felt unfamiliar.
“You’re not hurt, are you? I was careful, but—Melitt?”
Ellie turned around and tilted her head.
“What’s wrong?”
Because Melitt had bowed her head, her fingers digging into the dirt.
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