This Is What an Academy Is (33)
I decided to watch the situation unfold rather than jump in right away.
"Ugh...!"
"Kihik!"
Riri, seething with frustration, wove her magic—but the black figure countered it with an identical spell, canceling it out completely. Power, formation time, even the moment of manifestation: everything matched perfectly.
A doppelganger?
The demon's tail coiled at its back, the bat-like membrane wings, the skin pitch-black from head to toe—at first glance I suspected a doppelganger of the demon race. But something felt off.
Doppelgangers perfectly mimic their target. They need the person's DNA or mana to transform, then build a personality from stolen memories, so facing one feels like staring at another you. Like looking into a mirror.
This black girl was different. Doppelgangers don't appear in a different color like that, and they never stray from the original's personality either.
"Imitation, then?"
If a mirror reflects the exact same subject, this was pure mimicry. Looking at that completely black body, it had to be something closer to a shadow in nature.
It could resemble the target yet change completely—so in a way, it was a limited form of copying with clear boundaries.
Click.
The moment that thought clicked into place, something long unused slotted together in my mind, and the Book of Summoning appeared. It opened on its own, without my will, and flipped to a specific page.
Name:Another Shadow
Classification:??? | Race:Demon | Type:???
Trait:Shadow Thief
Threat Level:Medium
The bestiary had shown up for the first time in ages.
Until now I'd just been killing things without deep analysis, so maybe that was why it never appeared. But once it did, I realized the pages were already packed with info on every monster I'd faced so far—plus Hive, Growl, and Kallion. Even the ones I hadn't chosen for evolution were all there, crystal clear.
Right then Kallion yelped and leapt sideways in a panic. I tossed the Book of Summoning into the air and braced myself just as a massive pillar of ice came hurtling from the far side.
It must have sensed the mana when the book activated and launched an attack this way. Something that size was impossible for Kallion to dodge completely.
"Hold!"
"Grrung!!"
We landed just off-center. I wrapped mana around my whole body, calmly formed a shadow shield, and expanded it. Once it was big enough for Kallion to brace against with both forelegs, I still felt the freezing mana pressing from the other side.
KWAANG!!
The impact rattled my bones. We couldn't hold the mass—we kept getting shoved back. Cold seeping through the shield made my skin scream in pain.
Grit.
I clenched my teeth and endured. A grotesque grinding sound came from Kallion's legs, but we were still okay for now.
Thud!
...At this distance we wouldn't take a follow-up hit immediately. I poured more mana into the shield, shaped stakes like anchors at the edges, and drove them into the ground.
Kwang!!
The ice stopped pushing us. In exchange, the force resisting it grew even stronger. I reshaped the shield slightly so its surface angled off to the side.
Kagagagak!
The ice pillar scraped along the outer edge and slid away.
"...Grrreee..."
The earlier stand had shattered Kallion's leg bones, but there were no other wounds. I fed him mana and reinforced him with shadow; soon he could move again.
"Go!!"
I urged him on. Trembling, he started moving.
Once the enemy knew we were here, we had to get out of this spot fast. A mage's attack wouldn't end with just that.
Sure enough, ice spikes sprouted from the pillar I'd deflected and shot toward me like living snakes.
"Grrrk...!!"
Kallion tried to speed up, but he was noticeably slower than before.
It wasn't the pain making him sluggish. Unmelted frost still clung to his body, dragging him down.
"Giiing..."
Unable to move as he wanted, Kallion let out a weak sound. Was he afraid I'd blame him? He should know I wouldn't get mad over something like this. What a foolish guy.
From the moment that black thing attacked with ice, I never once thought of blaming Kallion. Blocking a hit like that head-on was already impressive. Without him I would've been crushed under the ice before I could even dodge.
To show I didn't care, I patted his back, draped shadow over his scales, and at the same time transformed the shield in my hand into a spear, batting away the ice spikes.
Pasak!
Shards of ice scattered in every direction—then flew straight at me without falling. The shadow covering me prevented cuts, but the impact still slammed through.
"Tsk."
"Kik!!"
Maybe it saw me click my tongue; a mocking laugh drifted from the other side. That high, childish pitch grated on my ears something fierce.
Whoosh!
I glared at the thing preparing a new spell while staring me down, switched the spear back to a shield to shove away the remaining spikes, then turned it into a bow and nocked an arrow.
Chiik!
"...Kyaaaaak?!"
But before I could even loose it, a massive flaming sword crashed down and split the black figure clean in half.
The attack carried clear intent to vaporize it completely. The shadow couldn't even resist and collapsed to the ground. When I approached, what remained looked like a sticky lump of tar.
"Kh..."
Half-melted and writhing, it slowly began reshaping itself into Riri's form. Not fully, but the upper body recovered clearly.
The naked black figure glared venomously at Riri, then turned to me and started posing, flaunting its body as if seeking attention. What the hell did it want? When I stared back with dead, unimpressed eyes, it visibly panicked.
Does this thing even have thoughts?
Ah, right—monster. Expecting human common sense from a monster was ridiculous. But my kids manage just fine. So this one was just an idiot. So absurd I couldn't even find words.
"Disgusting...!"
Kwajak!!
Riri stepped up beside me, snorted a sharp breath through her nose, and with nothing more than an outstretched hand froze the thing solid.
Kwaak.
At the same time she clenched her small fist hard; the ice block compressed into a marble-sized sphere in her palm, then shattered with a crisp pasak. For such a dramatic impression, the end was almost anticlimactic.
When I looked back, Riri was covered in dirt and dust, like she'd rolled around on the ground.
"Tried to protect. Got buried in dirt. Annoyed. Gross. Wanna wash fast."
Whether she was truly furious or not, she rattled off the short sentences like a machine gun, then flicked her fingers. Instantly her filthy appearance became soft and clean. I knew that one—Clean magic, the spell mages used in a hurry.
It required aptitude for the holy attribute, so it was famous as an easy money-maker for priests. Because of the holy property it could combine with other attributes for all sorts of effects, and the variations were so many that the Church even sold branded versions themselves.
"Hwaaah..."
Her skin looked moist like she'd just stepped out of a bath, and her white hair shone with a silky luster. Warm steam rose gently from her whole body; her mood seemed to improve as she let out a dreamy sigh.
Anyway—"tried to protect," huh. Looks like when the ice pillar came at me she tried something and got hit instead.
I hadn't aimed for that, but I felt oddly guilty. Still, it wasn't my fault, right? The monster was the one at fault. I did nothing wrong. So no apology from me.
She kept glancing at me awkwardly, as if she had some sense of shame after all, and that was getting annoying. Better change the subject fast.
"The objective?"
Riri pouted at my words, then stretched a hand toward the sky.
"Changed to different magic mid-disassembly."
Where the original magic circle had been, a similar but different circle now sat. Beneath it stood a tree that hadn't been there before.
Black leaves, crimson trunk—the tree had rooted itself in a black orb as if it were soil, floating in midair.
"Came from there."
"So it's not an illusion inside the barrier?"
"Yep."
That made it worse. As long as that tree existed, more monsters like the one just now would keep spawning. Cold sweat threatened to break out.
"Look."
Look at what? As if answering my unspoken question, Riri fired a spell at the tree—a massive spear of ice.
The tree reacted at once. Part of a root creaked and thrust out, and black fruit began forming there.
Pugwaaak!
The fruit swelled in an instant and split open. What emerged was a pitch-black wolf. It vaguely resembled Growl, but the pure black creature gave off none of the presence of a living being.
Kwajajak!
"Kyaeng...!"
The wolf dropped from the fruit and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, blocked the ice spear with its body—freezing solid on the spot. Even as gravity pulled it down to smash against the ground, the tree showed no reaction.
Clang.
The black wolf shattered into pieces on impact and died instantly.
"Altar complete. But incomplete."
Exactly. The one who set up the circle, rather than let Riri dismantle it and ruin everything, had forced the circle to completion—achieving their goal, however imperfectly.
"Doesn't spawn unless attacked."
"So only you or Growl come out?"
"Probably. Sparkly light. Felt scanned."
Riri pointed at herself and nodded. I pressed a hand to my forehead.
No matter how many times I heard her talk, I never got used to it. So a light flashed, she got scanned, and that produced the black girl and the wolf just now.
When I cleaned up her words and repeated them back, Riri clapped her hands in admiration and nodded vigorously. She must not have expected the whole thing to get across; her eyes sparkled as she looked at me.
If you know, fix it already. Stop making people rephrase everything. Seriously annoying.
"So if we attack again, another one that looks like you will pop out."
"Yep. Killed twelve times."
"What?"
She killed it twelve times in that short span? So their skills weren't actually equal? No—even if she finished one in a single blow, more kept coming, so she must have been regulating her mana and fighting carefully.
She sometimes showed four-dimensional quirks, but she was still a genius-level existence. Her foundation might be weird, but her basic thinking ran rationally.
"...First, get ready to kill them the moment they appear."
"Yep."
I stood beside her as she loaded her magic, and nocked the arrow I still hadn't fired.
This time, though, it wasn't a normal arrow. I attached a thread of shadow to the tip and linked it to my mana so I could draw out infinite length. That way I could adjust its position like a kite, even if it cost a little speed.
Kiiiiiik.
Crimson-black mana reinforced by Pain Tokens condensed, sharpening the shadow arrow even further. The string pulled to its limit and groaned as if in pain. Confirming it was fully charged, I simply let go.
Shuuuk!!
A sharp whistle cut the air as the tree began to move. Seeing that, I immediately nocked a second arrow. This one prioritized penetration—its tip stretched thin and sharp like a sword.
The thicker body left room for an internal structure.
Once it embedded, a cavity would open and suck out the internal fluids. The image I used was a syringe.
Strictly speaking, the overall shape was closer to a stake than an arrow. It had no weight, so calling it a nockable arrow wasn't entirely wrong.
For a human to fire something like this you'd need at least a ballista, right?
The mana loaded was only a quarter of the previous shot, but more than enough to reach the tree.
Kkeudeudeuk!!
Sensing the arrow, the roots moved again.
A black fruit swelled rapidly and split; a hand thrust out from inside. I tried to shift the arrow sideways to avoid it, but a stronger force yanked it toward the fruit like a magnet.
In the end I gave up adjusting the position.
Kwaak!!
The body hadn't even fully emerged, yet that alone was enough to catch the flying arrow. The mana made it pierce the hand, but it stopped right there.
Beyond the tearing fruit husk, pitch-black eyes gleamed and curved into a mocking smile.
That must have been why.
Teoeong!!!
It never reacted to the stake that followed. Roots moved belatedly to block it, but too late.
The stake buried itself dead-center in the tree. Confirming the hit, I manipulated the mana linked to it.
Pugwaak!
I rooted it firmly so it wouldn't come loose, then opened the hollow channel inside. Pitch-black sludge like filthy water gushed out in torrents.
"Kyaaaaaaaaaak!!!!!"
The black girl who had torn free of the fruit saw it and screamed as if her throat would rip.
Even when the first arrow—empowered by Sadism and Torture—had pierced her bare hand, she hadn't even groaned in pain; she'd just sneered. Yet this scream sounded genuinely agonized.
Kwaaang!!
As if answering it, a huge explosion roared from behind. Probably Ban Taewung. That thing looked enough like Riri that its voice was similar too. With a scream that hard to compare, it was easy to mistake.
Perfect timing.
Having the protagonist show up sooner was better. Then we could smash that grotesque thing and get out of this disgusting space as fast as possible.
Somehow this felt harder than running a dungeon. Mental exhaustion, maybe? Crowded places just didn't suit me. Preference aside, it clashed with my personality.
If anything, I was an indoor type.
When I had nothing to do I'd sleep like the dead, and only crawl out of the blankets once I couldn't sleep anymore—to read novels or play games.
"Keuk...!!!"
After clutching its head for a long while, the black girl stretched a hand toward the tree in pure rage. I seized the opening and aimed for her mouth.
"Kill it."
"Eiit."
Tididik.
A limp battle cry, and tiny sparks crackled around her head. For an instant her hair floated from the static of surging blue mana; I layered sunglasses over the shadow mask I was wearing.
Flash.
Light erupted. The polar flash was so fast I couldn't even see it, yet my whole body shuddered. Just that single blink of light carbonized the black girl; starting from the fingertips she had stretched toward the sky, she crumbled into ash.
Kuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!
Only afterward did the ear-splitting roar shake heaven and earth. I quickly formed spikes under my feet and drove them into the ground to hold on; Growl sank his sharp claws into the dirt and barely avoided being blown away.
"Grrung?!"
Even Kallion, over four hundred kilos, lost his balance and staggered. The air that had been blasted outward rushed back in, whipping hair and clothes in every direction.
Riding the wind came a faint scorched smell and an indescribable prickling that pierced the shadow and touched my skin directly. One single attack had changed the very air around us.
...Insane.
I could only gape. What the hell did you have to do to pull off an attack like that? Even more amazing: despite the power, there was zero collateral damage. Not a single scorch mark on the ground.
Not a drop of mana had leaked. That meant she had controlled her power perfectly and fine-tuned the spell.
Saaaaa...
Maybe it was my imagination, but the tree floating in the sky seemed to tremble. Whether it truly sensed danger or not, the thing that had been sending out one root per attack now began thrashing roots in every direction at random.
Gulung, kureureureuk.
The black orb supporting the tree rippled; something inside was draining at high speed. I realized it wasn't an ordinary sphere—it was a mixture of all the energies extracted from the students until now.
As the orb emptied, fruit formed rapidly at the tips of the spreading roots. Compared to the earlier ones they looked much smaller, but the numbers were overwhelming.
It changed tactics.
Quality couldn't win, so it was going for pure quantity. But even if you gather endless numbers, there are some things you simply cannot beat.
Kwaaaaaaaaaang!!!
A meteor wreathed in gold-black light slammed into the ground. Scattering the dust it had raised with the sheer volume of energy it released, the one who arrived was this world's protagonist.
"Riri!!!!"
Ban Taewung.
"Hi~"
"...Huh?"
He scanned the area in a rush, only to find the girl answering his call with her usual limp greeting. The grave expression on Ban Taewung's face melted away in an instant.
He released his mana, approached Riri with empty hands, and brushed her cheek to confirm she was real. Still looking half-unconvinced, he turned a dazed face toward me.
"Fine, but the scream and the mana..."
"Short version: that tree is mass-producing doppelgangers of her. Like that."
Pang!!
The moment I finished speaking, fruit burst open and countless black girls—smaller than children, fairy-sized—poured out.
Two or three emerging from a single fruit at once was enough to make even me feel sick.
Probably rushed out because of Ban Taewung's arrival; some had underdeveloped arms or legs, others were fused like conjoined twins.
What the hell were those, zerglings? Sticky fruit juice splattered everywhere, making them look even more disgusting.
"Taewung-ssi!! Riri is—ah."
Luicia arrived right after.
Seeing us perfectly fine, she wore the same drained, blank expression as Ban Taewung. Then she looked up at the sky full of grotesque enemies and her mouth fell open.
For the record, Ban Taewung was also staring at the sky with his mouth hanging open. Riri was debating whether or not to stick a finger into that dazed mouth.
Birds of a feather—people who like each other start to resemble each other. Even their reactions matched. From the sidelines it was pretty funny.
"Get ready."
Time to finish this for real.
Watching the endless cascade of magic unfolding on the far side, I drew my shadow sword.