What They Call an Academy (13)

Crack!

The clear, ringing note of mana-infused force split the air at the same instant shadows burst outward ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on either side. A massive wolf and a murder of crows rocketed into the sky.

Caw!! Caw-caw-caw!!!

The discordant screams from every direction sent a chill through anyone watching. The barrier was far larger than I had expected—lucky for us. Otherwise this cramped space would have been nothing but a solid mass of black feathers. The sky was already packed with them.

Hive must have been thrilled. I had poured mana into him so he could swell his numbers for the opening shock, and he was clearly enjoying the free rein. Until now I had kept that trait throttled to save power; letting him cut loose must have felt like pure bliss.

I already knew he was useful without the theatrics, but Growl had been stealing the spotlight. Hive clearly wanted this chance to prove himself once and for all.

That little performance had just carved a solid thirty percent off my mana. The initial probe and the protective shadow cloak had eaten another ten, leaving me with roughly sixty percent. Still, I didn’t regret it. The rough waves of hostile mana that had been crashing against us were shoved back in an instant. That alone made the show worth every drop.

“Grrrrr…!”

Growl stepped in front of me, fur bristling, fangs bared. A thick killing intent rolled off him like heat.

“…A magical beast? No—there’s no mana-stone signature. Then it’s a contracted familiar.”

“That’s right. I’m a summoner. Gang-ups come standard with the job, so the one-on-one you wanted is, unfortunately, off the table.”

I smirked and pointed the pipe at him.

“You told me to come at you with everything. No take-backs now, right?”

“Ha… haha. Looks like my bones are going to ache for the first time in a while.”

Reus Vagna gave a bitter smile, then his face hardened as he reset his grip on the sword. Moments ago his stance had been pure aggression, built to crush a single opponent. Now it flipped to the opposite—tight, defensive, the posture of a man expecting to face many.

“A knight is one who protects. I’ll show you that defense is stronger than offense.”

“Bullshit!”

I charged a half-step behind Growl.

He had locked into a solid guard; that meant the initiative was mine. Unlike him, casually holding that sword aura, I was barely keeping the shadows stable. Mana would burn even faster once the real fighting started.

Hive was already thinning the flock and taking individual control to lighten my load—smart enough to make me click my tongue in admiration. At the same time I issued the attack order.

Whee-eet! Wheet!!

Whistle signals I hadn’t used in ages. Ever since the Book of Summoning leveled up, we barely needed them. We could communicate without any of this, but he didn’t know that. Showing artificial limits one by one was a way to sow confusion—a cheap fake-out.

That first sword aura had already told me the truth: I was weaker than him. That didn’t ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mean I planned to die quietly.

The fight had already begun. If you can’t win with power, lie and lie again. Drag the enemy into the mud. If there’s no opening, make one. The more cards you hold, the easier it is to stab the gap.

“Caw!!!”

Under Hive’s command, dozens of crows dove like moths toward the man blazing with brilliant sword aura. The instant he erased their assault in a single sweep, Growl’s claws raked across Reus’s waist.

“Hup…!”

Shrrrip! Thud!

The uniform tore and scraps fluttered, but the sound was far too dull for flesh. He had reinforced his body with mana, not the cloth. Still, it hadn’t been completely useless.

Growl’s strength was already nearing thirty, and the sheer mass of his body turned even a casual swipe into an impact that reached deep inside. Attacking a reinforced spot was pointless, so I shifted with the shadow crows and went for the legs. Reus simply tanked the birds with his body, lifted a foot to dodge my strike, and stomped the shadow pipe flat.

Boom!

Just a light step, yet it felt like a boulder had landed. I had aimed for his balance; instead the weight threw mine off.

Shhhk!

The sword came in a seamless flow. I warped the shadow, yanking it free of my foot and twisting my stance. Reus swung with unshakable solidity, so I snapped the shadow’s tip into a long pole and cracked it across his body.

Whoosh—

The blade that had been meant for me cut empty air. His expression tightened for the first time. I flipped the pole like a staff and slammed it into him; the shadow turned sticky and bound his limbs. Another shadow whip cracked out at the same moment Growl lunged and sank his teeth into Reus’s shoulder.

Crash! Crunch!!

His face twisted; the shoulder bloomed red. The attack had landed.

Blood flowed and Growl’s fur flushed a deeper crimson—the effect of Blood Feast. I pulled back while Growl dug his claws in and hung on stubbornly.

Crunch!

He chewed as if he meant to tear the throat out.

“Kh… something like this…!”

Boom!!!

Even with little mana left in the bindings, a full-body release of power blasted the shadows and Growl away. Reus didn’t stop; he closed on the retreating wolf and swung.

“Caw!!!”

“Out of my way!”

A crow that tried to block his vision was bisected in one stroke. The sword aura stretched on and carved a deep gash across Growl’s back.

Shhhk—

Blood sprayed. Unlike the gradual flush of Blood Feast, the fur was now wet and dark. I didn’t panic. I drew fresh shadows and hardened them into razor edges on every beak and talon of Hive’s flock.

“Grrrr…!”

Reus’s intent was clear: eliminate Growl first. He kept swinging the aura-wrapped blade with restrained killing intent. Even with the crows’ help I was forced into pure evasion, and the small wounds kept multiplying.

The moment all ten crows and Hive were armed with shadow blades, I blew the whistle again.

Wheet!!

Reus spun the sword in a wide arc that covered every angle—and hit nothing. Startled, he flicked his gaze sideways. No crows were diving at him.

He looked back at Growl, only to find the wolf already outside the aura’s reach, limping to my side for healing. Shadow-bladed crows had already taken positions around him.

“…Hah.”

In the blink of an eye he had become the dog that chased the chicken. He forced his breathing steady and reset his stance, but the slight tremor in his eyes was impossible to hide.

“That familiar is far too dangerous.”

The wound kept reopening; the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Understanding Growl’s threat, he ignored the crows and forced himself forward—but we simply pulled away faster than he could close.

Occasional blade-crows among the ordinary ones nicked him with shallow cuts. While he struggled with the flock I focused entirely on healing Growl.

In the end his choice only tightened the noose around his own neck.

Mana-reinforced flesh has limits. Without a skill that directly heals or strengthens the body, the combination of Growl’s traits and skills is structurally nightmarish to endure.

Proof: the red stain from his shoulder had already soaked his entire upper uniform.

Massive blood loss.

From my side, the fact that he was still standing after losing that much blood made him look like a monster.

“…A disaster. I should have cut you down from the start.”

“How about surrendering now?”

He shook his head and reset his grip. His movements had grown sluggish, yet his fighting spirit hadn’t cooled. So even this wasn’t enough to break him.

A dangerous hunt. If I failed to kill him, I would be the one who died.

Just as awakened hunters whittle dungeon monsters down, I had treated Reus Vagna as prey from the first exchange. Overwhelming numbers alone create pressure simply by surrounding a target. Hide blades that can take a life at any moment inside that press, and the psychological fear becomes something else entirely. I felt no pity. If I hadn’t done this, I would have been the one getting trampled.

Failing to finish it with Growl’s first assault was a genuine regret. The longer the fight dragged, the worse it was for me; I had wanted a short, decisive end.

I had succeeded in dragging him down to roughly equal footing, yet even now I couldn’t picture winning a pure one-on-one.

I had to admit the truth. Growl could take those hits and walk away with only that much damage. If I had been the one struck, my limbs would have been gone on the spot. Even now my arm throbbed where the pipe had been stomped and forced into a bad angle.

Simple impact shouldn’t leave this much residual effect. That meant one of his skills was applying some kind of additional force.

Once Growl’s major wounds were roughly closed, I settled onto his back, drew a shadow longsword, and settled into a ready stance. Nothing fancy about the shape, but the edge was a different story.

I had learned it the first time I swung the pipe: a half-hearted weapon could never trade blows with him.

When strength is lacking you make up for it with weapon weight—but everything made of shadow shares one trait: zero mass. Only form, sharpness, and hardness change. No matter how large I made it, it never got heavier. And zero weight means you can never press with mass.

So I chose pure sharpness and surface area—a longsword. At least the handling was close to the pipe.

“Let’s go.”

“Awooooooo!!”

Even without the Howling skill, Growl still let out the cry. A habit left over from before evolution. It was basically announcing “We’re attacking now!” but it split Reus’s attention, so I decided to call it a win.

We leapt and closed the distance; Reus held his defense without a flicker of change.

Clang!

The instant my longsword crossed his blade, the sword aura exploded outward into the shape of a colossal greatsword.

Krrrrrk!!!

It wasn’t the sound of mana colliding. My shadow, saturated with my own power, was shredded as if fed into a blender. The longsword was flung back and snapped cleanly in the middle.

I ignored it and remade the blade as I brushed past him. I braced for the follow-up strike, but Reus neither pursued nor exploited the moment I was weaponless. Instead he hardened his guard even further, drawing in mana and using the aura greatsword like a shield.

…Crazy.

Using sword aura like that? How much mana did he have to pull such an insane stunt? And it was still “sword aura”—a technique meant for cutting. Using it for defense?

Best defense is a good offense, sure, but that saying wasn’t meant to endorse this kind of brute-force nonsense.

The principle was simple: raise sword aura with mana, then use it as a shield. Extremely simple—except the mana cost was something even a veteran mage would never dare attempt.

And mana wasn’t the only issue. Controlling and fixing that form also burned mental strength. He was probably feeling his brain being eaten in real time.

By dumping mana without restraint he had forged the ultimate shield—one that left him almost unable to attack properly.

Worse, that wasn’t the end of it.

Right now Reus was conserving stamina. He knew that if he kept moving and trading with me he would collapse without accomplishing anything, so he was burning the one resource he still had in abundance—mana—like a madman.

He was grinding ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his body down for a single decisive moment. In game terms, he was centering himself before firing an ultimate.

“…Tch. What a pain.”

I had to stay on the offensive here. Give him time and he would unleash something even more annoying than the aura I had already seen.

His breathing was rougher than before, and a thick pool of blood had gathered at his feet. Even this endurance had a limit. He would throw a finishing move to break past it. Before that, I had to put him down.

A sudden time attack. I clicked my tongue.

“Growl!”

The name and the order came together: attack. Stop him before that technique finished charging.

I sprang from Growl’s back and swung as the wolf charged.

Clang! Krrrk!

He blocked both strikes with the same absurd defense. Impatience flared. To maintain that level of technique while burning mana so wastefully—skill power, no question. Skills that ignore every law of the world are unfairly overwhelming.

The only reason I had driven him this far was because I had enjoyed the same unfair privilege of skills.

Clang! Clang-clang!!

I didn’t care if he blocked. I kept swinging to steal his focus and drain his stamina. Growl came from behind; Reus twisted just enough to let the attack slide past, then released a pulse of mana that shoved the wolf away.

Thud.

At the same moment he stamped the ground. I kept my eyes locked on him and dropped my waist low.

Whoosh!

Sword aura scythed past where my head had been a heartbeat earlier; hair whipped wildly. Even while watching Growl he had aimed a perfect cut at me. Cold sweat ran down my spine.

I snapped upright and swung.

Kang!

He simply adjusted wrist and aura length and batted it aside as if he had expected it. No openings no matter how I pressed. Time for a variable.

I rode the extended aura surface instead of fighting it and drove my sword into the ground. Mana concentrated; shadows erupted and collapsed the earth beneath his feet.

“Caw!!”

Hive seized the opening and brought every remaining crow down from the sky in a black rain. Maximum exploitation of Violence of Numbers—the more bodies, the higher the damage.

“…!”

Even he couldn’t help the shock when both firmly planted legs suddenly found empty air. He swung desperately at Growl, but the strike carried no weight and posed no threat.

Thud!!

“Keh!”

“Kh?!”

For the first time the strength contest went against him. The rebound forced his blade back, leaving his torso wide open. The crow flock fell on him without pause, raking and pecking.

“<By the oath, reveal yourself>!!!”

Mana-laced words rang out. Instantly a transparent shield of power flowed from his outstretched hand, wrapping him against the birds.

Thud-thud-thud!!!

The crows hammering the shimmering aurora-like barrier sounded like a torrential downpour. Even mana-reinforced, the shield began to crack under the relentless assault, and small wounds started appearing on his body again.

The moment he tried to retract the shield and swing, Growl burst through the flock and clamped his jaws on the blade.

Crunch!

The sword froze mid-arc. While he was locked in place I drew a sharp spear from the shadows and drove it into his unprotected side. He tried to free the blade, but Growl hung on like iron.

Thuk!!

“…!!”

The shadow spear punched through his flank. The protective shield around him swelled larger still, and the mana currents thickened. The instant a silent scream left his lips—

KRAAAAAANG!!!

A massive, unheralded release of mana. I poured shadows into a huge barrier in front of me and rooted my feet to the ground so I wouldn’t be thrown.

Creak, crack!

The shadow wall spider-webbed and began to shatter. I poured every scrap of remaining mana into reinforcing it. When the storm finally died, every crow was gone. Growl had been hurled far away.

At the eye of the storm, Reus stood gasping, one hand pressed to his abdomen. Exhaustion was written all over him. Now. I reshaped the defensive shield into a sword and closed in.

He raised his own blade again; our weapons met.

Kang!

I held. I wasn’t pushed back, and my strength didn’t fail. That once-overwhelming sword aura was now nothing more than a thin coating of mana. Possible. At last the knight’s majesty had fallen to the same level as mine. I offered silent praise.

Impressive.

If our positions had been reversed, could I have lasted this long? I doubted it. He was remarkable. He had simply met the wrong opponent.

In the end he was still only a student. That was the ceiling. With that much mana he could have considered other methods, yet he had stubbornly faced everything head-on.

In other words, he was needlessly obstinate. He couldn’t set himself aside.

Combat leaves only one result: kill or be killed. The victor is the one who remains standing at the end. Whatever means you use, the one who lives wins.

Whoosh!!

I swung without hesitation. My stamina was intact; his ragged breathing grew worse with every exchange. I focused on the arm Growl had savaged.

Sometimes I lengthened the shadow into a spear to catch him off-guard; sometimes I tangled his footwork so he couldn’t launch a clean cut. Against the now-obviously slowed attack lines I planted shadow rods to deflect the flow, then stabbed the empty openings with shadow skewers.

He had fallen for the same tricks multiple times, yet he kept taking them. Immunity to feints? No. He was deliberately accepting the hits—simply to keep the conviction he had declared at the start.

He was a knight. The kind who steps forward fairly and protects everyone. A rigid existence that called itself a sword.

What the hell is that conviction worth?

Watching him cling to it even while his life hung by a thread made my brow furrow. It felt like he was deliberately demonstrating the difference between us. Noble me versus you rolling in the mud—do you understand?

What a joke.

I answered by repeating attacks so underhanded they would make anyone click their tongue: aiming for vitals, blinding him, striking from blind spots, yanking hair, raking with nails, kicking up dirt into his eyes. All I had ever learned was this kind of filth, and that was all I had.

This was everything I was.

Even reborn, the combat style carved into my bones moved my body on its own.

One by one the skewers multiplied in Reus’s flesh. I could have reclaimed the mana, but I left them. Moving would be harder that way. I even reshaped the ones already buried so they opened holes and let blood trickle out in steady streams.

“Cough…”

He quietly brought up bloody phlegm. The gauge on the cell over his chest had already dropped to ten.

The moment he used his shoulder heavily to deflect my latest strike, the two-digit number became one. At the same instant an indescribable chill crawled over me; I reflexively leapt far back.

…What was that?

The sensation was identical to the earlier mana storm. Vast power began crushing the surroundings as if it had been waiting for his stamina to hit bottom. I let out a low groan.

“Shit… damn it…”

My whole body creaked.

A pressure similar to when Hong Su-ah had suppressed me began to dominate the space. This was clearly abnormal. Hong Su-ah had limited her target to me alone, which was why the output had been manageable. He felt like he was painting the entire interior of the barrier with his own mana.

Simply standing there was draining the cell. I clenched my teeth hard enough to ache.

Too late.

I should have forced the attack through instead of retreating. Now I had no choice but to look for another way. I scanned the area.

Growl’s condition? Not good.

Even though he had tried to dodge, he hadn’t escaped the storm completely. One front leg was gone, and a deep crater in his side leaked blood steadily.

Only Berserker’s Fighting Style reducing the damage had kept him alive—those were fatal wounds.

Yet Growl still refused to quit. Battle Ecstasy kept his body moving. He was telling me he could still fight, that it wasn’t over.

“…Huu.”

I dumped half of my remaining mana into Growl’s recovery. Glowing fragments gathered and began filling the empty spaces. The belly could wait; the leg came first.

“Do you know why the Vagna family is called a house of knights rather than a house of swordsmanship?”

His body seemed to grow. No—it felt that way. A giant. A mountain of condensed mana that made his presence even more oppressive. He slowly raised his sword.

“Because mere swordsmanship cannot define us.”

Clear golden mana-light spilled from his eyes. Mana flowed toward the blade as if determined to match the giant I sensed. I immediately reclaimed the mana I had been feeding Growl and dismissed him.

Already too late.

The completed colossal mana sword pierced the air. It looked like a pillar of pure light. I wanted to step forward, but the pressure pinning me was too strong to move.

“The first Vagna single-handedly toppled an enemy fortress. A giant’s strike that can cleave even the thickest walls—that is the power of the founding Vagna.”

Click.

“I will prove that it is no inflated legend.”

The mana in his words and the previously wild shape of the blade condensed into a solid, absolute form. This was beyond ordinary application. I felt the force of a skill take hold.

“Sss…”

He drew a breath, and every scrap of oppressive mana vanished. The paralysis lifted, yet I still didn’t move. Even if I scrambled now, I would never escape the trajectory of that sword.

The technique had been designed that way.

“<Carve it into those eyes>!! This—this is ‘Genesis’!!!”

Vagna family secret art.

First Blade.

Genesis Sword.

He roared the name as if wringing it from his lungs and brought the blade down in a vertical arc aimed straight at me. Watching the enormous sword descend in real time, I let out a dry laugh.

Fuck.

This world really was full of things I hated from start to finish. I quietly closed my eyes and poured every last drop of mana I had into the shadow beneath his feet.

Flash!

“Caw!!”

“…?!”

Hive, who had been holding his breath hidden in the shadows the entire time, erupted. Reus’s eyes went wide with shock even as the sword continued its path. He couldn’t pull the strike back. This wasn’t merely swinging a blade; it was a phenomenon that carried the mana itself.

Secret arts are always like that. If you want to break one, you aim at the user, not the sword.

Throughout the entire fight I had never taken my eyes off his body. Observation had built a model of his patterns from that data; the tiniest shift told me where, how, and how far an attack would go.

“Extend.”

The shadow blades clinging to Hive’s body ballooned in an instant and shook the ground he stood on. A slight tilt of the axis—that was enough.

Ting!

The sword cut empty air.

Hair whipped in every direction; the aftershock alone produced a blinding flash. The earth shattered and split. If the gates of hell were opening, they would look exactly like this. A colossal crevasse had opened right beside me.

Strangely, for all that destruction there was no sound. Only the result—“it was cut”—was carved into the land.

The problem was that the aftershock alone had gouged a huge chunk out of my cell. The same was true for Reus. I walked slowly until I stood in front of him as he half-collapsed, gasping.

The cell on his chest read 1%.

The original him would never have staggered just because the ground collapsed. But he had crumbled. Accumulated damage had finally detonated. Ongoing blood loss had done the rest.

“…I… have lost.”

“Yeah.”

The calm acceptance on his face somehow looked refreshing. I squeezed out the last of my mana into a shadow blade and set it against his throat.

“You lost. Why do you look so pleased?”

“I confirmed that my eyes are not yet clouded. Of course I’m pleased.”

With those words and a short breath, Reus sheathed his sword at his waist and simply flopped onto his back, arms and legs spread.

“What does that mean?”

“I told you from the beginning. I trusted the words of Ban Taewung, who trusts you. Yet everyone around me called you a villain. I had to prove that my faith was not wrong—that I am not yet a fool. That is all.”

I half-understood and half-didn’t. A guy who looked like a rock-headed brute was spouting riddles with half the subjects missing; the cognitive dissonance made my head throb.

More importantly, what the hell was the protagonist telling people about me? I was going to need a talk with him soon.

“…Whatever. Why should I care about your personal issues?”

“Keh-heh. That answer alone taught me even more about the kind of man you are.”

What was so funny that he kept grinning? As expected, among people called geniuses there are no normal ones. Source: me. I’ve lived it. Even the ones who look normal turn out to have a screw loose somewhere once you get to know them.

“Just go to sleep already.”

If I kept getting tangled with types like him, my own screws would start coming loose. Better to end it quickly. I lowered the blade and tapped the cell on his chest.

With that, the barrier surrounding us dissolved. Looking up, I saw the giant “Victory” mark floating in the sky. At the same time a system alarm appeared at the edge of my vision.

I hadn’t even killed a monster, yet levels rose on their own. Apparently sparring counted as experience. That explained why the ones trained professionally by their families were so absurdly strong.

The system itself had admitted it: he was far stronger than me. If not for that bizarre conviction about “proof,” the one lying on the ground would have been me, not Reus.

I had won, yet it didn’t feel like a win. A sour residue sat in my chest and I hated it.

I glanced at the medics running over from the far side, then looked down.

Whether he had lost consciousness or simply closed his eyes, his breathing grew fainter and fainter—so weak I wondered if he was still managing to inhale at all. He looked ready to die at any second, yet he didn’t die.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

With the barrier gone the cell must have taken over its function; the wounds on his body rapidly closed and vanished. His overall condition, however, remained terrible.

Separate from the injuries, he had simply lost too much blood.

His face was deathly pale, and his body kept twitching with involuntary tremors. Even so, a faint smile lingered at the corner of his mouth.

“…Tch.”

I clicked my tongue, reshaped the shadow blade into a blanket, and draped it over him. The approaching medics gave me odd looks; I ignored them and walked past, leaving the field.

From beginning to end, what a pain-in-the-ass guy.