What an Academy Is (49)
I thrust my sword forward. In that instant, the world slowed to a crawl. The skill Combat Focus had registered my action as the start of battle.
I deliberately loosened my grip on my mana, and the world that had seemed destined to drag on forever snapped back into normal speed. Watching the bone bullet streaking toward me through that brief window, I raised my mana.
"Echidna."
"Yes!"
Thwung!
The tip of her halberd flicked the bone bullet aside just before it reached my face.
Fwoosh!!
A curse of ignition must have been sealed inside the projectile; the moment it was deflected, an ominous black-green flame erupted from the weapon's tip.
Before the fire could devour Echidna's body, the halo floating above her head flared. The flames vanished in an instant.
It was the curse-removal effect inherent in the skill Divine Aura. Weak though it was, the fact that it removed rather than merely resisted meant that as long as she could endure the initial hit, the success rate was effectively one hundred percent.
In other words, so long as my mana held out, my summon Echidna could theoretically tank any curse attack thrown at her.
"Go."
"Yes!"
"Yeah!!"
At my signal Ban Taewung and Echidna shot forward as if racing each other. I followed a step behind, focusing my mana to trigger the shadow trap I had already laid beneath the old man's feet.
"Khuh?!"
The ground bucked like an earthquake. The old man lost his balance, yet even in his panic he seized the nearest skeleton's skull, crushed it, and cast.
"<Death, bar the enemy's path>!!"
The most basic of black-magic fundamentals: sacrifice something of value to fuel the spell.
Consuming a skeleton as the medium and casting immediately—textbook black-magic technique.
A mass of bones erupted from the earth, twisting and interlocking into a colossal wall. That it was laced with curses went without saying.
The true terror of curses lay in how each grotesque effect stacked upon the next, compounding into something far more vicious and powerful.
But that only applied to people who could not cleanse curses themselves.
Ban Taewung swung his sword and launched a blade of sword-ki. The straight line of energy smashed into the bone wall and cracked it open. Echidna seized the opening, wrapping her entire body in mana and condensing it into the axe-blade of her halberd. Faint divine power rippled through the smoothly flowing mana, amplifying its destructive force.
Kra-kra-kraaash!!!
The swinging trajectory of the polearm did not merely shatter the wall—it pulverized it. The earlier sword-ki had scored a perfect perforation line, and the bone barrier disintegrated along that seam. Through the gap I transformed my shadow sword into a wire-mounted harpoon.
I had never doubted Echidna would break the wall, so I condensed my mana without the slightest hesitation and fired.
Thwoong!!
A skeletal hand shot out mid-flight, grazing the harpoon and bleeding off some of its power. The delayed barrier that sprang up finished the job, knocking the weapon down. I reshaped the fallen shadow harpoon even as I reeled it back, then elongated it into a long pole and drove shadow into the ground.
Like a pole-vaulter I launched myself high into the air, transformed the shadow into a bow, loosed several suppressing shots, then reshaped it into a massive greatsword. Weightless, I had forged it for pure sharpness; in truth it was little more than an oversized longsword.
"Haha! Charging through the air is the mark of an amat—ugh...?!"
Bang! Clang!!
Too focused on me, the old man failed to notice Ban Taewung and Echidna arriving at his flanks. He let out a strangled cry. He must have poured an absurd amount of mana into the barrier; both attackers were flung back by the rebound.
Whoom. Clang!
I brought my own blade down immediately, but only managed to crack the barrier. No real damage.
Watching the barrier begin regenerating in real time, I felt a flicker of unease and hastily retreated, scanning the surroundings. I spotted the mana link connecting the barrier to the undead scattered around us.
An application of sacrifice, huh.
He had used the undead as material, binding the barrier's durability to their remaining lifespans.
In short, the barrier would not fall until every last one of them was destroyed.
Riri was suppressing half of them, yet I could feel the number of undead around us steadily increasing with every passing second.
"Khuh...! There's no end to them..."
"Keh-kehahahaha!!! Now you understand the difference!! This is the power of this body!!!"
At Ban Taewung's groan the old man finally recovered his composure. He wiped away cold sweat in secret even as he began to laugh. Growl was helping with defense, but sheer numbers meant the Lucias alone could not hold the line forever.
Onohara Erika had to maintain a barrier against corpse poison while simultaneously cleansing the curses on Cheon Jang-mi and Lucia. Riri, for her part, was busy dismantling the old man's spells and searching for an opening to attack.
Inevitably Ban Taewung could not go all-out while watching their backs, and Echidna was still pouring everything into mastering the divine power she had only just obtained through her class change.
Me? I was deliberately holding back, carefully regulating the fight so the enemy could regain his wits and show his true strength. If I had intended to finish this cleanly from the start, I never would have sent Kallion elsewhere.
The reason I had excluded Kallion from this battle was to plant the illusion that the enemy no longer had the leeway for the kind of attack he had just used.
Get a little more careless.
Until the option of retreat was completely erased from his mind, enjoy yourself to the fullest. That moment will be your final pleasure.
These were the sort of people who would openly commit terrorism in a place like this. There was no way they had not prepared an escape route. To uncover it, Hive's shadow crows were even now roaming the vast academy grounds, scouting every corner.
The sheer volume of information pouring in from the crows occupying every direction was enough to make my head throb—so that the slightest suspicious detail would be caught immediately.
Of course that was not all. While goading him, I had also decided to turn this place into a training ground for Ban Taewung and Echidna's growth. Nothing accelerates skill like real combat.
The situation had been handed to us; failing to exploit it thoroughly would be a pure loss. We were sacrificing precious weekend time for this. If he did not perform properly, it would be inconvenient—mainly for me.
In that regard the old man was fulfilling the role of a monster admirably.
"Keh-heh-heh! That's right, mere students could never defeat this body.... Of course!!"
He was reciting such textbook small-fry villain lines that I half-suspected he was sharing a third-rate antagonist script. Goosebumps of a different sort rose on my skin. Did he feel no shame spouting that garbage with his own mouth?
No—if he were capable of shame he never would have gotten cozy with corpses in the first place. That was exactly why I had labeled him third-rate.
He was nothing more than a black mage playing at being a necromancer.
A genuine necromancer would never waste time stuffing curses into each undead one by one; he would simply generate undead and chain corpse explosions to neutralize the enemy.
Setting everything else aside, the man had no obsession with blood or corpses. To a true necromancer those things were weapons. The moment he failed to cling to them, his entire foundation was exposed.
"Haaht!"
"Hup!"
Did he even realize that every second he spent carelessly mass-producing undead, the two of them were improving their coordination?
Attacks laced with curses were either preemptively cleared by sword-ki or handled by Echidna taking the lead in both offense and defense. Even if Ban Taewung took a curse and left an opening, Echidna's support immediately layered divine power over him and stripped it away. When Echidna lacked the leeway, Ban Taewung extended his sword aura and swept the surroundings to buy time.
I occasionally threw in varied attacks to give them breathing room, but the impact of holding back versus going all-out was completely different.
A storm of spear and sword crushed the approaching enemies and struck at the old man mid-cast, forcing him onto the defensive. Slowly but steadily the two of them were advancing.
In my case with Ban Taewung I had taught him personally, so it went without saying—but Echidna and Ban Taewung were different. They had met for the first time today. For Echidna, cooperating with a human at all was a first.
Yet they were already coordinating at this level. It was more than impressive.
Echidna's movements were based on mine, but the vast majority she had figured out and refined on her own. No doubt she had optimized them to suit a woman's naturally fluid motion.
That graceful flow, combined with strikes sharpened by mana and divine power, let her display a level of skill that would not lose to any warrior—despite having no weapon-related skills whatsoever.
"Keh-heh-heh, your desperate thrashing is truly a sight to behold!! Yes, struggle more! And despair!! That is the difference between you and me!!!"
Of course the old man, whose eyes might as well have been buttonholes, could not see their growth. That was precisely why he could spout such empty bluster with a straight face.
By hanging back, occasionally charging forward, and constantly maintaining just enough distance to keep Echidna and Ban Taewung pressed into the enemy lines, I was already reaping pure profit.
Watching Echidna grow more natural with divine power in real time, and Ban Taewung learning with his body rather than his head what it meant to fight while protecting someone, I allowed myself a satisfied smile.
"...Hm? Suddenly smiling? Has the overwhelming difference driven you mad, boy?"
Everything was perfect except for this one idiot who still did not realize he was a living experience-point sack and kept snickering in delight.
Had he already forgotten how thoroughly flustered he had been moments ago? Or did he only remember what he wanted to remember? Either way, the convenience of his brain was almost impressive.
The fact that even a creature like him could grow stronger only confirmed that this world was completely insane.
Anyone with a functioning mind would not be crowing about "overwhelming" anything; they would sense something wrong with how thoroughly the situation had stalled.
Time to give him a good jab.
That would make him desperate enough to change tactics.
I could already see Echidna and Ban Taewung growing too comfortable with the current pattern. Too consistent a loop only hindered real combat growth.
Thud!
I planted my feet shoulder-width apart, rolling my weight into the ground. The optimal stance for channeling every ounce of power from the hips into a swing.
I elongated the sword in my grip into a spear, then immediately reshaped it back into a sword—an eccentric little flourish to fully activate the title Free Transformation.
If I was going to crush him, I might as well do it thoroughly. Honestly, the rotting-corpse stench that had been vibrating in the air for a while now was getting on my nerves. It kept dragging up memories of my previous life and souring my mood.
To vent that frustration I would pour everything into sweeping away the vermin in front of me.
"Dodge."
"You think I'll let you pull some cheap—!!"
At my word the two of them unleashed wide, sweeping attacks that cleared as many undead as possible while simultaneously blocking the bone projectiles aimed at me.
Then, instead of pressing the old man, they rapidly withdrew from my attack range. Bone attacks rained down from every direction to stop me, but I paid them no mind.
Their perfectly synchronized movement, as if they had rehearsed it beforehand, drew a note of admiration from me.
More precisely, Echidna was moving on the information I fed her through the link, and Ban Taewung was matching her. Both of them had been taught by me, so their instincts were razor-sharp.
Confirming that, I condensed my mana in a single breath and forged the shadow sword even longer and sharper.
A tactic possible only because shadow weapons had no weight. Extending the weapon itself was several times more efficient than pouring out sword aura to enlarge it.
The image I held was the trajectory of a distant blade I had once seen—one that had cleaved heaven and earth as it advanced.
The firmer the image, the more violently mana could unleash its power. The first thing any mage learned was the unshakable belief that their imagination could be made real.
Mana, the foundation of magic, shared that same nature.
I concentrated fiercely. Mere concentration was not enough. Beyond certainty, beyond firmness—I had to believe without a shred of doubt.
That was the true way to wield mana.
I will cut.
No—it will be cut.
Having already decided the outcome, I swung the shadow sword.
Shiiing!
A strange sound like tearing paper rang out. A faint rebound reached my hand and I frowned.
I cut too deep.
The blade had been sharper than I imagined; I had misjudged the control.
Shluk...!!
"Ah?"
The old man, who had been thrusting his corpse staff forward to attack, let out a hollow groan as his arm—staff and all—was sliced cleanly in half.
As if his brain refused to accept the visual information, he slowly lowered his gaze.
There hung his arm, split open like dried fish, flopping limply and spraying blood like a broken faucet.
"....!!?!!?!!?!"
A delayed, metallic scream tore through the air. The black-mana-laden shriek alone became a banshee's wail that stabbed the ears.
Clutching his own arm and desperately scrambling backward, he looked even lower than third-rate.
I spent every Sadism token that rose from him the moment it appeared.
My intelligence rose, and the property Heightened Pain was applied to my mana itself. The effect stacked in real time with the active Torture and Sadism, making the old man's screams even more wretched.
The instant a blue glint flashed at his throat, I poured every scrap of mana into activating Combat Focus at full power.
A pendant. Reacting to his mana, the pendant was trying to cast some kind of spell. Almost certainly a magic tool of some sort.
In a world so slow it felt as though time itself had stopped, I transferred mana to Hive and issued a command.
Steal it.
An act perfectly suited to a crow.
Even after being summoned and evolving once, the instinct to chase shiny things remained; Hive slipped along the shadow I extended and streaked forward so fast that its movement was visible even in the frozen world.
Skill: Dark Dash.
It allowed movement while hidden in darkness, and with additional mana it could approach teleportation speed.
The restriction of "only within darkness" was no restriction at all for me right now.
"Caaaaaw—"
Hive's drawn-out cry echoed through the slowed world. Having burrowed into the shadow, the crow shot upward as though defying physics.
"—aaaaaagh!!!"
The old man's clothes tore, and in Hive's beak glittered the blue pendant.
Before I could even give the next order, Hive followed its own instinct and moved its beak to tuck the prize into the shadow beneath its wing. Confirming that, I released Combat Focus.
Shraaak!
"Nooooooooo—!!!!!"
The delayed sound of tearing fabric and the old man's desperate scream formed a duet that split the air. For the first time, something beyond impatience—true terror—settled in his eyes.
So that had been his escape method after all.
Abandoning the commission and choosing flight over a mere lost arm was third-rate through and through, but unfortunately I could not allow it.
No matter what you do, you die here. I will kill you. So thrash as uglily as you can. Burn everything you have and die struggling.
And then quietly become the protagonist's experience points.
Hive returned to my side and I took the pendant. I dangled it so the old man could see it clearly, then opened my mouth with the maximum possible sarcasm.
"Oh dear, you tried to run away looking so pathetic and failed. What a shame."
"Grrrk...! G-give it back!!! That is not something the likes of you may touch!!!"
"...Oh, is that so?"
He had bitten his own tongue while screaming; bloody foam bubbled from his lips even as he howled in desperation.
He used bone to roughly bind his trembling arm and staggered to his feet. I could almost respect the grit—except that clinging to that attitude while looking like that made me suspect he had been completely consumed by his own concept.
"Then take it."
At my words the old man widened his eyes as though seeing something bizarre, then caught the mocking smile on my face and twisted his brow in fury.
Anyone could tell it was pure mockery, yet the pendant was so desperately important to him that he began crawling toward me—slowly, but with absolute certainty.
Moments ago he had been scrambling to flee; now he was crawling back. If this was not comedy, what was?
Once he was within arm's reach I deliberately flourished the pendant one last time and dropped it straight onto the ground.
"If you can take it."
Then I slowly lifted my foot. Mana condensed into my leg so densely it was visible to the naked eye.
"S-stop..."
He cried out and stretched out a hand, but I did not stop. He even threw his body forward, yet my foot was faster.
In the brief instant the pendant was hidden by shadow, I ordered Hive—concealed within it—to recover the real item and produce a mana stone of similar color.
It was a crucial clue that could lead us to the enemy's base; I was hardly going to smash the real thing.
This way the academy would not seize it, and I would have testimony that I had stolen and destroyed a magic tool.
I planned to hand it over to Lee Se-rin separately. She had been keeping an eye on the Black Magic Tower as well, so she would gladly accept it. She had so much free time she had deliberately come all the way here on a golden weekend just to harass a law-abiding citizen like me, right? Give her work and she would put it to good use.
Of course this little performance also served to make the old man thrash even more desperately.
If he simply broke and became useless, I would not even be able to kill him openly. The ideal outcome was for my mockery to drive him into a mana rampage, ready for mutual destruction.
Timing was everything, so I had even used full-power Combat Focus to set it up.
Crunch!
"...Ah."
The moment Hive confirmed recovery, I released Combat Focus and stomped the mana stone under my foot with all my strength. The mana sealed inside burst outward in every direction.
It mixed with my own mana, yet a clear third-party energy still dispersed faintly into the air. Emptiness and fear settled simultaneously on the old man's face.
"...Oops, it broke. What am I going to do?"
I looked down at him with the most mocking tone I could muster. Even after throwing himself, the distance had been far too great. There he lay, a pitiful old man covered in dirt.
"But it shouldn't matter, right? You're a great black mage, aren't you? Self-proclaimed, sure, but after all that shouting you can just make another one of these in no time, can't you? Hmm?"
The hollow look in his eyes gradually filled with rage. Watching the black mana swell as though it would explode at any second, I let my smile deepen.
"Ah~ if you can't, then I'm really sorry. I had no idea and just smashed it. So? Can't you? Or can you?"
"Youuu...! Youuuuu...! Youuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!"
Even knowing the answer, I had asked with deliberate innocence. The gradient of rage I had carefully built finally overflowed; bloody tears streamed from the old man's eyes.
At the same time, tar-like black mana began seeping from his feet and devouring the ground.
Shluk! Shlurrrk...!!
Seeing the horde of undead crawling out of that black mana swamp, I sighed. Even at the very end he was still only imitating a necromancer.
No—he had been hired for this job precisely because he was a low-ranking nobody who could do nothing else. He had received some support for bearing the name of the Black Magic Tower, but that was the limit of this old man's power.
Those bloody tears were literally his final struggle. Proof that he had gone beyond sacrificing others and placed himself on the scales. The last resort a black mage could take.
Of course a true master could use that power without offering himself, but for this old man it was a tale from a distant island nation.
The fact that even after placing himself on the scales he could only manage to corrupt the area immediately around him was enough to show how pitiful his achievements truly were.
"If only you!! If only you hadn't been here, I...!!!!"
As the mana began to writhe as though it would crush me, I wiped the smile from my face and answered coldly.
"Blaming others when you're the incompetent one—aren't you ashamed?"
Seizing the initiative in a fight was crucial. Anger was a fine seasoning, but the moment a stronger emotion took over, people gave up far too easily.
What I wanted was not simple venting, but the desperate thrashing that came from a genuine desire to live.
I raised my mana. The stats already boosted once by Subjugator were reinforced again by the Torture tokens stacking in real time.
Once the number exceeded ten, my once dark-red mana began to burn pure black, rivaling his own.
I seized the mana pressing down on me and slammed it back, crushing it in reverse.
"Grrraaagh...!!!!"
The old man staggered yet somehow forced himself to endure, wringing out every drop of mana.
Every capillary in his eyes had burst, turning them scarlet; blood continually poured from his mouth. The more his body became a wreck, the stranger it was that he began standing straighter and straighter.
Whether from the adrenaline of rage or something else, he no longer trembled with pain. Then his body jerked and abruptly froze.
At the same time his pupils went slack.
Even after all this, he still could not believe he might actually beat me.
Emptiness. Rage. Hatred. Agony.
Of course he felt wronged.
The realm he had barely reached after a lifetime of hardship, this blue-blooded brat in front of him had attained as easily as twisting a baby's wrist.
Inferiority.
The thick shell of arrogance he had plastered over himself peeled away, and the true emotion that had been seeping out finally revealed itself.
He realized it himself, yet made no attempt to hide it; he ground his teeth hard enough to draw blood.
I curse you. I hate you. I want to kill that brilliant sprout with my own hands. If I sacrifice them, I can surely reach a higher realm.
Yes, that's right. Show me your power. Quickly. Before it's too late.
At the whisper Echidna sent through mana, the old man's eyes rolled back. He clawed at the skin of his own face and began screaming whatever came to mind.
"Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! Die!!!! Die!!!! Die and become my nourishment!!!!!!"
She peeled back a human's true nature. She guided his emotions. For the first time Echidna performed a truly demonic act, yet she merely half-closed her eyes and continued her calm prayer.
The old man's body began to bloat. The surrounding undead converged on him. Flesh was forcibly grafted onto bone shards. One piece attached, then the next, then the next after that.
What finally took shape was a colossal flesh giant composed entirely of undead. The old man had been reduced to nothing more than a ruined fragment of the giant; Ban Taewung and everyone else's faces twisted in disgust.
"GUuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-----------!!!!!!!!!!"
No longer human speech but a beast's roar tore from the giant's throat. Ban Taewung tightened his grip on his sword.
Because the source of the curses had concentrated into a single point, the oppressive weight that had filled the air vanished in an instant.
Onohara Erika finally caught her breath, dropped her barrier, and focused entirely on cleansing Cheon Jang-mi's curse. Lucia, who had suffered less from the curses, immediately regained her senses and, trembling, used her sword as a cane to rise to her feet.
Riri, for her part, sat atop a magic book she had pulled from thin air and began preparing a spell.
Watching them one by one prepare for battle against the giant without a single word from me, I finally let out a small, languid sigh and reined in my mana.
The end was drawing near.