The Death Duel Arena
Huh.... Something feels off about this, doesn't it?
"You fucking.....!!!"
Marcus hurriedly hurled magic at my clone, but with a comical poof, the clone turned into fallen leaves and scattered away.
"Haha. Didn't I tell you? You didn't need to press it yourself."
And then the magecraft devices that had been quietly holding their positions sprang to life.
LV10 Training commencing. Trainees, please take care not to sustain injuries.
A mechanical voice rang out across the training grounds, and before long a host of training devices locked onto the Blue Team and launched a ferocious assault.
"Aaaaagh!! Save me!! Please, someone save me!!!"
Ah. That male student who'd just been screaming got wiped out gloriously while trading blows with a swordsman puppet set to maximum level.
Heh. You never treated those swordsman puppets with any care on a normal day, did you?
The performance of training devices dialed all the way up to max level was thoroughly reliable. The Blue Team, which had been boasting an overwhelming headcount of ten, began dropping out one by one at a blistering pace.
Haha. Now that feels so much better—
Whoosh!
I ducked on pure reflex and slipped under a spell.
"Oops. Looks like I'm not entirely safe either."
Maybe because I was still inside the training devices' recognition range, a few of them locked onto me, swinging swords and firing magic. With the devices running, the exits had sealed long ago. In short, there was practically no way out of this space right now, but...
"As expected, people really ought to be thoroughly prepared, don't you think?"
Whoosh!
I lightly dodged the water sphere hurtling toward me, dropped low, and slipped my body through the escape hole I'd dug in advance. Safely out of the training devices' recognition range thanks to that, I was free to sit back and enjoy the spectacle of the Blue Team getting carved up.
"Play! Play! Blue Team! You can do it!"
I waved my arms and cheered them on.
"Shion....!!!"
Marcus glared at me like he wanted me dead. Right then, a vicious sword strike from a swordsman puppet came slicing straight at him.
"Whoa! Watch that sword over there!"
Thanks to my sincerely offered advice, Marcus barely managed to evade the attack—then clawed irritably at his own hair.
"Oh? Looks like you don't need my advice after all."
"Aaaagh!! This is so damn annoying!!"
I go out of my way to help, and this is the thanks I get. I snickered under my breath and tilted my head.
LV10 Training has concluded.
"Haaah.... haaah...."
Marcus ground his teeth as he dragged in ragged breaths. Every last member of the team had been eliminated except him. And not even after a proper fight—they'd been swept up in the schemes of that insolent bastard with the unserious atmosphere.
".....!"
Marcus's eyes flared open like fire. For the sake of avenging his wiped-out teammates, he had to use their sacrifice as a foothold and push forward.
"Urgh...."
".....Phillips? You managed to survive."
"Is that any way to talk to a teammate? Ow....."
Phillips, whom Marcus had assumed was already out, was clutching his side and moaning in pain.
"You hurt?"
"Can't you tell by looking? Beaten half to death with magic, sliced by blades. If it weren't for the Matrix, I'd have gone into shock and died ages ago."
Phillips was still running his mouth in that irritating way, but even that felt welcome to Marcus right now. He needed every scrap of combat power he could get. No matter how much he disliked Phillips, this was the time to set personal feelings aside and act with cold clarity.
"Get up."
"Uncharacteristically kind of you. Thank you."
Marcus held out a hand. Phillips's eyes widened for a moment; then he nodded, gripped the offered hand, and hauled himself up.
"Urgh....."
Phillips managed to stand, but he still couldn't hold back the groans. His limping leg made it painfully clear that his condition was nowhere near normal.
"....From the looks of it, you can barely move properly. Here. Take this."
Marcus clicked his tongue and held out a recovery potion.
".....I'll be honest—I'm a little moved."
"It's because I'll have a harder time if you collapse. If you've got time to spout nonsense, just drink it already."
Phillips smiled faintly, dipped his head slightly, cracked the potion open, and downed the contents in one go.
"Hwah. Finally, I feel like I might liv— Khak!!"
"Ah! What now!!!"
Marcus had just started to think things might finally settle down—only for Phillips to cry out again, and the sheer frustration nearly boiled over.
Phillips's face went deathly pale at high speed, and then he dropped to his knees.
"Wha...t the... hell... did you... give me... you... son of a...."
He looked up at Marcus and spat a venomous curse of pure resentment—then collapsed limply to the floor.
".....Huh?"
Marcus couldn't even begin to grasp how the situation was unfolding. He stared blankly around him. The only one still standing was him.
"Ha, ha, hahahahaha!!!"
Laughter spilled from Marcus's mouth.
You've got to be fucking kidding me.
Of course it was a mad laugh born from pure absurdity at the situation unfolding in front of him. Where exactly had everything started to go wrong? Because he hadn't shown the qualities of a leader? Because the teamwork among the members had never quite clicked?
And then—
"Pff. Well, I didn't think you'd actually drink it. Didn't anyone ever teach you not to accept food from suspicious people?"
Someone's mocking laughter drifted over. A voice rising in the middle of total wipeout. Whose it was needed no guessing.
"Shion.....!"
Marcus turned toward the source of the voice, and there stood the owner of that perpetually smirking face—Shion—looking down at him with his head tilted just so.
Yes. It was that bastard. From the moment Marcus first crossed paths with him, everything had started going wrong. That bastard was the root of all evil.
So—
"I am going to kill you for certain."
Marcus pointed a finger at Shion and unleashed his mana.
And then—
"Oh my? Where is this..."
Marcus and Shion were instantly transported to another place. A spine-chilling stretch of ground lined with dilapidated buildings and structures that looked for all the world like a ruined city.
"This is my Death Duel Arena. Until one of us—you or me—stops breathing, this place will remain in effect."
Marcus glared at Shion with murder in his eyes.
"There's nowhere for you to run."
"......In other words, this place is completely cut off from the outside? No one can enter?"
"That's right. What, getting scared all of a sudden?"
Hearing Shion's stiff, rigid voice, Marcus allowed a faint smile. It felt as though a thousand years of grime had been scrubbed clean away.....
"Hah! If you had such a fine ability, you could have used it from the beginning. Using it only after every teammate has been eliminated—could it be that you have a taste for watching your allies die? That's a preference I find rather difficult to understand."
The thousand-year grime had evolved into ten-thousand-year grime. Marcus gave up on conversing with Shion any further. Past the point of mere rage, a sensation like his entire body boiling over took hold.
I will kill him. Without fail.
Fwoosh!
Marcus's eyes rolled wide as he summoned a swarm of fireballs and hurled them at Shion.
"Hmm. This is going to be a difficult fight, isn't it?"
With roughly three seconds left before impact, Shion kicked off the empty air, launched himself upward, and dodged every last fireball as if he were doing gymnastics. Marcus was briefly thrown by those fluid, practiced movements, but he quickly recollected himself and resumed the attack.
Calmly—and with burning emotion poured into the arrangement of his mana—he sculpted two enormous hands of flame. When Marcus moved his own hands, the hands of flame answered his will and closed in on Shion at high speed.
"Something that looks dangerous at a glance sitting on either side of me—this is a problem, isn't it?"
In that state, Marcus clapped both hands together—smack!—and the hands of flame rushed toward Shion like someone swatting a mosquito.
And in that very instant, another Shion appeared right beside the first one.
Clang!
Clang!
"Calm down~"
"I'll pass on that, thanks~!"
The moment the swords left their scabbards, Marcus's magic was perfectly deflected.
"What?"
A sword technique that bounces magic? Is that even possible? Marcus's brow furrowed at a sight he had never witnessed in his life.
And right then, someone tapped Marcus on the shoulder.
"Ahem. Standing around this defenseless in the middle of combat is going to get you in trouble, you know?"
It was Shion's voice.
".....!"
A chilling sensation crawled up his spine as Marcus spun around and, on pure reflex, forged a spear of flame and flung it at the Shion standing behind him.
That was a major mistake.
Another Shion grinned, swung his blade, and when Marcus's spear of flame collided with Shion's sword—
Clang!
"Whoops~!"
With a sound of crystalline purity, ink-black sword aura erupted from Shion's blade. Wrapped in that black sword aura, Marcus lost control of his body as if it had gone completely numb—
KRA-KOOM!
"Khak!!"
—and was pierced clean through by the spear of flame that had come flying straight back at him.
"Looks like I won by a hair."
While Marcus still couldn't move properly under the aftershock of the sword aura, one of the Shions closed right in on him, pulled a scroll from midair, and tore it open without the slightest hesitation.
"Then I'll leave you to it!"
Marcus clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, bracing for the pain that was about to come.
. . . . . . .
"Hm?"
And remarkably enough, nothing happened at all.
"Wha.....t?"
Cold sweat began beading on the back of Shion's neck.