Knight Class vs. Magic Class (3)
Aside from a scant handful on either side, neither the Magic Class nor the Knight Class managed to follow Ahmed’s movements.
This was on an entirely different level from anything the Knight Class had shown so far. Had Irina not existed, the second-ranked knight student would have claimed first place by an overwhelming margin. His speed was anything but ordinary.
The Redburn family to which Ahmed Redburn belonged was famed for its swiftness. Their family’s mana heart technique itself specialized in generating pure speed.
Some even insisted that every knight the Redburns produced deserved a shared epithet: the Crimson Comet, red hair streaming as they carved through foes at velocities the eye could not track.
Even if magic activates, I’ll dodge it with speed!
Every trap Ahmed had observed the Magic Class lay never ended as a single burst. Once triggered, their duration stretched on and on.
That was surely meant to thoroughly neutralize the Knight Class and its high magic resistance.
What will the first magic be, Princess Iren!
Ahmed slammed into the first magic circle.
Crack. The world around him began to freeze. It was Iren’s specialty—cold magic.
The cold did not instantly freeze Ahmed’s body; instead it eroded the space itself, pressing in on him. Ahmed laughed.
“Do you really think you can afford to give me this much leeway?”
“I wonder.”
“You’ll regret it.”
By Ahmed’s calculation, he still had a dozen-odd seconds before that cold overtook him.
In that much time I can try more than twenty ways to smash a magic circle!
Whoosh!
Flames bloomed along Ahmed’s blade. It was not elemental mana. He had simply scraped mana against the air until friction birthed fire.
“Flame Slash Sword!”
His flame-wreathed sword hammered the magic circle.
Clang! Exactly as he expected, the first strike bounced off uselessly. So he shifted to the side—the classic weak point of any circle. Nothing. Next the binding seams, then the ground around the circle itself.
Blow after blow his sword landed, yet no progress showed. Meanwhile the cold had already frozen the air right up to his skin.
“Haaah!”
Ahmed roared and swung at the oncoming cold. Cold magic, by its nature, had to be weak against heat.
Yet the cold showed not the slightest sign of melting. Bewilderment flickered across Ahmed’s face.
“It doesn’t melt at all?”
“Are you looking down on imperial attribute mana as mere water?”
Iren chuckled—a clear, open sneer, nothing like the playful teasing she reserved for Frey.
“My cold is not simply the idea of dropping moisture below freezing. When a thing loses temperature it loses activity. That is no different from stopping. And so my cold magic is—”
Slash! The flaming sword carved frantically through empty air, yet even the flames themselves began to freeze.
“—nothing more than the concept of stopping given physical form. It is fundamentally different from ordinary cold.”
“Well, thank you for the thorough lecture!”
Ahmed clenched his teeth. At this rate a single magic circle would end him in pure absurdity.
Frey was chewing his nails to the quick.
Make him burn through all three circles! Ahmed! Damn it— is the second rank of the Knight Class really going to stop here?!
Frey snuck a glance at the evaluating professors. They were openly admiring Iren’s cold magic even as they coolly scribbled notes on their sheets.
Every eye was locked on the exam grounds. Then… wouldn’t a little cheating go unnoticed?
Mana stirred in Frey’s palm. His own flame mana was the polar opposite of Iren’s. He had already casually unraveled an Unobserved Area once before.
Magic of this caliber would dissolve under a single thin stream of his mana. Frey wrestled with the temptation.
Then he lowered his hand.
This is too dishonest.
In the end, Frey simply could not bring himself to cheat.
That was when it happened. Had the heavens decided to reward the honest boy?
“But you’ve grown far too confident, Princess Iren!”
Thud! Ahmed planted a palm flat against the floor. Mana poured from his body in a visible flood.
The mana began cycling between the ground and his own flesh. Iren’s eyes widened.
“Don’t tell me—?”
“To grasp it the instant you see it—truly impressive!”
Clang!
Iren’s cold magic, which had ignored even open flame, shuddered. The earth itself trembled. Durum marveled aloud.
“Indeed! The Redburn family’s mana heart technique aims for acceleration! And acceleration is activity itself! So Ahmed’s acceleration-laden mana has conversely restored activity to the environment Iren’s cold had frozen solid!”
The Knight Class students gaped, utterly lost, while the Magic Class students stared at Ahmed with faces of pure disbelief.
They understood Department Head Durum’s words—that was precisely why they looked so dumbfounded. Saying it was easy; actually producing the phenomenon was another matter entirely. Was this truly the second-ranked knight student?
The cold that had shackled Ahmed’s sword visibly melted away. He swung.
Crack!
The wall of cold that had sealed the surroundings split open. At the same moment a fracture spider-webbed across the magic circle. Ahmed gave a bitter smile.
“How foolish. So this was the secret?”
“Haa… so you found it.”
“To think you’d keep the circle from breaking this way. Just what kind of training has the Magic Class been putting you through?”
“I never took that training, so I won’t tell you.”
Oh dear—had he also figured out the reinforcement secret?
Ahmed took a slow step forward. The first magic circle was already broken. He continued speaking as he approached the next.
“This magic circle was never a magic circle at all.”
“Congratulations. You’re the first in the Knight Class to solve the problem. But can you explain it?”
“The principle was simple. This circuit that looks like a magic circle is nothing more than an activation trigger. The real magic circle is—”
Whoosh! Amid the scattering shards of cold, Ahmed snatched something out of the air.
It was a fragment so tiny it would have been invisible without careful scrutiny. Inside it, intricate lines writhed and pulsed with life.
“—cleverly hidden inside the magic itself, I expect.”
“Correct. Pretty sharp for a knight student.”
“Assuming the Knight Class is stupid is just prejudice.”
Yes. That was the trick the Magic Class had kept hidden all along.
What looked like a magic circle was in truth only the activation device, massively reinforced. The actual circle launched into the air the instant the trigger fired, then rained magic down on whoever had fallen into the trap.
All this time the Knight Class students had been hammering nothing more than a glorified on-switch. No amount of thrashing could destroy it or halt the magic. How could anyone spot a circle that was concealed inside the magic and scattering every which way?
“Th-that’s advanced technique, y-yet the entire first-year class can use something like that…”
Professor Violet grinned goofily. She was secretly engraving something onto a few of the students. Professor Alketo likewise regarded the Magic Class with proud eyes.
“Now that I know the trick, I’ll break through.”
“Ahmed. Sorry, but that’s exactly why the Knight Class is simple.”
“Pardon?”
“I actually wanted to finish you with the first circle alone. But why do you think I prepared three?”
Whoosh!
A magic circle Ahmed had never even touched flared to life. He flinched and snapped into a guard.
“I took out thorough insurance!”
BOOM!
A colossal fist of ice smashed into Ahmed. Miraculously still conscious, he tried to reorient in midair—only for spears of cold to erupt from every direction in the same instant.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Even as the spears punched into him, Ahmed fought to locate the hidden circles. His acceleration heart technique shattered cold; his flaming sword lit the surroundings as he hunted for the answer.
It was not enough.
Three minutes later he hit the floor. Department Head Alketo declared the result in a calm voice.
“Iren von Valencia wins. Magic circles used: three. Time elapsed: six minutes forty-two seconds.”
An overwhelming result relative to the number of circles expended. Iren chuckled and glanced at Frey. Frey’s insides were boiling.
Ahmed was clearly inferior to Irina.
Ahmed was outstanding, true—but from Frey’s perspective he still fell short of Irina. At this rate things were dangerous.
While Frey fretted over how to take Irina down more efficiently, the exam rolled on.
Thanks to Ahmed cracking the secret of the circles, winners finally began to appear from the Knight Class as well. Once they possessed any means of cutting the magic, a breakthrough became possible.
By the time Frey’s turn arrived, the score stood at Magic Class thirty-two wins, Knight Class nineteen.
Irina was reasonably satisfied. After the disastrous early losses, clawing back this many victories was impressive in its own right.
The bitter part was that she herself would also lose. As the top of the Knight Class, it was a disgrace.
But even if she lost—
Thud!
Irina rose from her seat and slowly descended into the exam grounds.
“Gulp.”
Someone swallowed hard. Someone else felt an inexplicable chill crawl down their spine.
With every step Irina took, an unidentifiable pressure crushed the arena. Clear footprints remained on the path she walked.
She had not literally stamped footprints into Adamantium, yet considering that the illusion magic faithfully recreated the apparent hardness of every surface, the feat was astonishing.
Thud!
Irina came to a full stop on the exam floor and faced Frey.
“Frey.”
“Yes?”
“I will give everything I have.”
“Haa… I figured as much.”
Frey had already felt she would. Throughout the midterms her eyes had burned with fierce intensity.
Irina held a certain fondness for Frey, yet she showed not the slightest intention of going easy on him. Even if she herself were to fall, the resolve to fight at full power radiated from every line of her body.
“Where is your sword, then?”
“My sword?”
Irina grinned. Then she flicked her arm downward.
The instant her hand pointed at the ground—Fwaaat!—a long azure blade bloomed into existence.
An Aura Blade, the dream of even fully graduated Academy knights.
“My body is the sword. And the exam grounds should stay clean, don’t you think?”
Irina pointed at something right beside her.
A trigger disguised as a magic circle still lay there, left uncleared by the previous Magic Class student. Irina swung her blade.
Seok!
Everyone except Frey gaped.
The reinforced trigger that no Knight Class student had ever managed to cut now lay in two pieces like a fallen leaf in Irina’s hand.
She leveled the blade with savage intent.
“Let’s begin quickly.”
“Haha… well now.”
Frey admitted his own arrogance.
He had thought he understood Irina. He had been wrong.
There is no comparison with Ahmed. This is why they call Irina the top of the Knight Class.
Then there was only one course of action left to him.
“Irina. I prepared three magic circles.”
Behind Frey three circles rose into the air. Each groaned under the mana packed inside it, emitting ominous creaks.
“But I respect you. I will also give everything I have.”
Crack!
The three circles crumbled into dust. The shattered fragments then fused into a single whole.
Until now the largest circle any Magic Class student had set was roughly two meters in radius—because they had to hide the circle from knight eyes. Larger circles were also exponentially harder to craft. An ordinary student topped out at a ten-meter diameter; even Iren managed only a hundred. Yet the circle Frey had just formed on the spot was… wrong.
Professor Violet blinked furiously. Professor Alketo rubbed his eyes, certain he was seeing things.
What began the size of a palm swelled to the bulk of a human torso, then to a vast ring that could have held a hundred people, and then—
Thud.
The expansion stopped. The finished magic circle measured a full kilometer across. Ahmed shouted.
“Department Head! That’s a foul! Young Master Katram is limited to five circles or fewer! That thing is clearly thousands of—”
“No.”
Having confirmed his own eyes had not lied, Alketo murmured in a voice thick with rapture.
“That is a single magic circle. Its circuits number fewer than ten. It is simply… one enormous magic circle.”
“What?”
“Come, Irina.”
Frey smiled brightly.
“Show us the might of the top of the Knight Class.”