Academy Magic Is Common Sense (2)
The grand magic show that crowned the final night of the Arcadia Academy festival was vast enough to stand beside the triumphal procession of Belegrad, the hero who had ended the Great War.
Magic education had advanced far beyond the old days, in both standard and circumstance, so in one sense the spectacle was only to be expected. Even so, the students' own labor behind it was not something to be forgotten.
"Ugh. Fourth-year or not, I'm basically a potato with a lot of mana... I'm so nervous I could die."
"Right? What if we just have one drink? Might take the edge off."
"Do we actually have to...?"
"Oho. Liquor, is it? Well... I hear the beer at the black-haired chef's place is excellent. Were you at least going to drink that?"
"P-P-Principal?!"
Ermia had appeared at their backs without warning. The students, who until then had only been shaking, broke into a cold sweat.
She gave each of them a light pat on the shoulder.
"You're trembling stone sober. How do you expect to cast if you're drunk and foggy?"
"We're sorry..."
"Haa. Of course you're nervous. Even so, trust the work you've put in. I trust you, too. Don't go leaning on something like alcohol."
"Yes... yes, ma'am!!"
Little time remained before the show. Ermia moved among the waiting fourth-years, steadying them as she ran the final checks.
Raised as a genius without peer, Ermia had never once, where magic was concerned, known what it felt like to be nervous. She did know how much strength it gave a person to hear that a mage of her renown believed in them. So rather than pretend to share their fear, she told them honestly that she believed in them. Her own master, Grendel, had once said the same to her.
It worked. Resolve lit in the two students' eyes.
Ermia glanced around. The professors of the Magic Department were looking over the spells of other tense students, while a few exceptional ones, Ishilla and Kariel among them, were calmly focused, murmuring their magic over again.
Hm... I don't need to check any further.
An Academy festival belonged to the students, first and last. Ermia's part was to adjust the order and the paths of the spells they cast, and to see to the audience's safety. However beautiful a spell might be, it must not injure anyone. The students would show their skill; she would keep an accident from happening. The mana sensing she was conducting now was part of that same work.
A soft rush of detection spread outward. Would anyone really be reckless enough to make trouble at a festival where the Empire's greatest archmage, the war mages of the next generation, and the escort troops of every great house were all gathered? Even so, the festival's final magic show was the best moment for hostile elements to come crashing in. It drew the largest crowd of the whole festival, and with that crowd came confusion, and a large-scale spell needed only the slightest twist to become a wide-area killing spell in an instant. For anyone whose sole purpose was terror, it was an opportunity they could not afford to miss.
Hm. Safety's clear too. Good.
Just in case, Ermia had been casting mana detection at regular intervals from a week before the festival right up to this moment. Her worry proved needless. The sensing caught nothing.
Reassured, she looked up at the Academy's great clock tower. Three minutes remained until the show. As the start drew near, the nervous students recovered their composure one by one. The audience, by contrast, only burned hotter. Once the countdown began, it would be so loud that speaking would be practically useless. Before that happened, Ermia called them all together.
"Everyone. Ready to show what four years of work has made of you?"
"Yes!!!"
"Do it the way you were taught, and do it with confidence. If you fail, the faculty will cover you, so don't worry. Understood?"
"Understood!"
To stand behind them, so that even if they failed they could rise again — that was what it meant to be a teacher.
Then the countdown of the magic show rang out.
Four—!!
Three—!!
Two—!
Anticipation lived in the voice of the countdown. The students steadied their hearts, determined to meet that expectation and show the fruit of their effort. What rose on their faces was less tension than confidence, and something one might call a fierce hunger to win.
A thin hum of mana gathered. Ermia smiled at those faces and laid a defensive spell over the audience.
One—!
A rising whistle, a deep bloom of light — at the stroke of nine, the long-awaited show began.
First, light magic of every brilliant color embroidered the dark night sky. Then fire and ice collided overhead, a long hiss tearing through a roar of flame. Where the cold blizzard met the fire, it became a cool mist of water: an elemental chain in which, the moment one side grew stronger, it simply swallowed the other.
Ermia looked to Ishilla and Kariel, the two casting it.
"Ehehe, it's so pretty..."
"Ishilla, focus. Keep that up and my flames will eat you."
"Hmph. As if!"
Mages beyond counting stalled at the mere stage of launching a spell high into the air. Those two did it as if it were nothing, and chatted while they did it — and it was not even a simple spell, but wide-area magic that demanded delicate control.
Nor was it only them. The students who had sent the light magic up, the Alchemy Department students preparing pyrotechnic sand behind them, and the student who would lift that sand on wind magic all looked unburdened. Not being nervous was well and good, but composure and mana output were different matters. If the output itself was low, the whole display was useless. And yet every one of the students boasted mana swollen as if they had swallowed an elixir.
Ermia smiled, wry.
I ought to set aside a separate reward for Kang Jinwoo.
Milk Peach, tteokbokki, and the toast he had been selling steadily from the start. Every student at the Academy had eaten Kang Jinwoo's food at least once, and that alone had been enough to raise the volume of their mana. The mana-rampage incident caused by Milk Peach the other day had been a temporary buff from the food. That buff was gone now. Only the result of genuine growth remained, and the students could show their magic with far greater ease.
A sharp patter, a muffled bloom, then a boom that did not belong.
Hm? There's a noise mixed in that isn't our magic.
Fireworks spilled in profusion through the thick mist of water. Ermia did not let the beauty bewitch her. She fixed on the sound that had broken out at a suspicious moment, and her instinct proved exactly right.
"Kyaaaaaaah!!!!"
"Uwaaaah!!"
"R-run!!!"
The central plaza was packed shoulder to shoulder. From the very middle of it, pitch-black smoke climbed, and people screamed.
"Wh-what? What happened?"
"That isn't our magic... Professor, what do we do?"
"Haa. Wait just a moment."
The students mid-cast were thrown into confusion by the sudden turn, and so were the professors assisting them. Ermia calmly checked the defensive spell she had spread over the audience. It was intact, without a scratch. Then the impact had occurred among the spectators, or beneath them.
"Pause the show, but don't let the students move until every spell is fully withdrawn. Rush, and someone gets hurt."
"Y-yes. All of you!! Draw your mana back in. The show is paused!"
"Whaaat?"
A deflated wail rose from the students. It could not be helped. That black smoke was far too ominous to dismiss as some minor accident.
A sharp prickle. There had been no sensation at all until a moment ago, and then, with the explosion, a chilling presence rushed in and stabbed at Ermia's skin.
"Once the wrap-up is finished, guide the audience and keep them under control. I'm going over there."
"Understood!"
It was a magic show watched by half the population of the capital. Guards were posted and watching everywhere, of course. Even so, Ermia trusted her instinct. If she did not step in here, something irreversible would happen.
Her body shot to the central plaza in a streak.
The closer she came, the clearer the scene.
"Hhk—hkk! P-please, save me..."
"Kwooooo—!!!"
A monster? How in the world?
At the center of the plaza where the explosion had gone off, every person had fled. In their place, monsters filled the square in numbers to match the crowd that had packed it. A girl was crying, clutching a leg swollen a livid blue-green — swept up in the stampede, she must have twisted her ankle. An ogre a good three meters tall looked down at her with eyes drunk on appetite. Then a brutish foot rose over the girl's head.
"Ah, aaah..."
"Krk, kuhahaha!!"
The ogre burst into wild laughter and stamped that enormous foot straight down. The light left the girl's eyes, and she groaned in blank terror. An instant before her head was crushed like an insect, Ermia clapped once, short and clean.
The ogre's body compressed in a heartbeat, flat as a sheet of paper.
"Uh, uhhh??"
"Little one. I'll send you flying to the Academy building, so go to the infirmary and get treated."
"Huh? Uwah..."
The girl stared at Ermia in a daze, as if she had just taken a brief look at the underworld. Ermia was sorry, but there was no time now to soothe her at length. She raised a wind spell and floated the girl gently all the way to the Academy building. The control was exact; the child would settle softly in front of it.
Ermia turned, having sent her off safely, and looked around.
The plaza fountain was smashed to pieces, and monsters were heaped around it. Ogres, goblins, ghouls, orcs, and more — everything from the weakest of monsters to ones that boasted formidable strength. They roared at Ermia, foul saliva dripping.
"Kwooooo!!!!"
"Kiruk, kerruk!"
"Haa... filthy monsters. Do you even know where you've crawled into?"
Ermia's snow-white hair whipped in a rough gale. Her precious Academy had been damaged. The students had been denied the chance to properly show their effort. A young girl had nearly been killed. Rage at its limit bled into her mana, and a baleful power, raging like a storm of blades, circled around her.
She rose a short way into the air. The monsters thought she was fleeing and leapt about, mad to kill her.
"Kuwooooo!!! Kaaa!!"
"Kerruk, kieeek!!"
"Human. Don't go, don't go, don't go."
"Ha... haha. I genuinely cannot believe this."
She snorted as if the sheer absurdity had struck her speechless, and spread her right hand wide. Then she clenched it so hard her palm went white.
As her fist closed, the monsters' formation began to warp with it. This was not merely ranks collapsing. They were being drawn together into one.
"Ki, kieeek!!"
"Kwoooo!!"
Sensing, too late, that something was wrong, the monsters screamed and thrashed. It was already too late to escape.
"Die. You trash."
The slender muscle of Ermia's forearm stood out enough to see. Cold as if she were looking at insects, she clenched her right fist with everything she had. The dozens of monsters massed to her right crushed inward in a single breath, packed into one grotesque lump of flesh, and sticky blood burst from the mass.
Forcing one's way into a living creature's mana in order to exert physical force was extremely inefficient compared to other magic. Even so, Ermia seized the monsters' mana and compressed them like wringing out a rag. That a mage who pursued efficiency would do such a thing was proof of how furious she was.
"Strong, as expected. The Empire's archmage."
"And what are you?"
Just as she was about to clench her other hand, someone sprang out of the pack. A suspicious figure wrapped in a black robe from head to toe. That thing of unknown identity addressed her.
But Ermia was not the fool who politely heard out a villain's speech and then ate one heavy blow for the courtesy. She released killing intent and locked the black robe in place.
"Who you are. How you got in. Why you came. Speak."
"If I tell you everything, will you let me live?"
"No. I'll make it quick."
"Haha. All that confidence is nice to look at. Though I wonder how long you can keep it."
The black robe laughed as if she were ridiculous, and slipped free of her binding. It was not that Ermia's restraint had faltered. It was simply the same principle by which a hand cannot grasp smoke that has no substance. Judging by the handling of a duplicate of that caliber, the black robe's skill was not crude.
Ermia raised her guard another notch and prepared dozens of instant-cast spells. These terrorists had chosen a chaotic moment and carried out the raid with intent. It was clearly a crime planned with care in advance, so they would have prepared for Ermia herself as well. Her name was famous enough that even a housewife in some remote country village knew it. She had every attribute she could use at her fingertips, and whatever spell the opponent cast, she meant to tear it apart with the perfect counter-element.
The black robe's next move caught her in the blind spot. From within the robe came a bead black as pitch, hurled hard against the ground. It shattered with a sharp crack, and as it broke, its contents crept out and coiled around Ermia.
"Keeek!!"
"Kuuk, krrk..."
The instant the bead broke, the attack spells Ermia had held ready fired. They only pierced monsters that had nothing to do with this. They did not so much as touch the black robe.
"Stay in there a moment. Even so, you're far too strong."
"Ha. A binding spell? You think something like that can stop me?"
"Well. Shall we see?"
Fire was countered with water, lightning with earth, darkness with magic of the light attribute. Binding magic had no such matchup, but it carried a fatal weakness to match: the structure of the spell itself was complex, so disrupting the flow even slightly made a dispel possible. There was no way Ermia, who had mastered every magic in the Empire, could fail at something so simple.
And yet, somehow, she could not find that flow in the black smoke surrounding her.
This can't be. I can't see anything. There's a magic I don't know?
Badly shaken, Ermia resisted the black smoke, to no avail. From the tips of her feet to just beneath her chin, dense black smoke wrapped her tight, without the slightest gap.
"Ermia. Ermia Belfast. Your pathetic master praised you a little, and your arrogance pierced the heavens."
"You... piece of trash. You think I can't break a spell like this?"
"In the end that arrogance will drag you all the way to the bottom. The master will have killed his own disciple! Hahahaha!!"
"You— you little shit. Get ready. The moment I get out of this filthy smoke..."
A dull, final weight settled. The black smoke covered even the crown of Ermia's head, and her figure was swallowed completely.
The smoke could inflict no harm from the outside. In exchange, it was a binding from which escape was impossible. Mixed with the Demon King's curse, it had grown firmer still, so even Ermia would not find it easy to undo. And even if she did get out, by then the demon forces would already have slaughtered every human at the Academy.
"Now, go. All of you, advance, and catch and kill every human."
"Kieeeek!!!"
"Kuwooooo!!"
With Ermia successfully sealed, the raid was as good as a success. The black robe gave the monsters the order to attack. They had been barely holding themselves back; they burst forth like things gone mad.
And so the reek of blood began to drift over the Academy.