162. The Violet Devil vs. the Indigo Witch (4): The Line Called Limit
Before the match between Herbena and Yulia, in the referees' waiting room.
Finished with her preparations, Aurora sidled over to Mnevoir.
"Mnevoir."
"Hm?"
"This match. Who do you think is going to win?"
"We're the referees, Aurora."
"I'm not asking you to cheer. I just want to know who you think wins."
Aurora burst out as if she'd been wronged. Mnevoir looked at her, lifted her coffee cup, and answered as though thinking aloud.
"If I had to say... Herbena."
"Right?"
"And you?"
"I mean, I think Herbena wins too, but..."
"Now that I think of it, things are still awkward between you and Yulia, aren't they?"
"No. If anything, Yulia's been the warmer one with me. Like she's worried I might still mind."
"You know, you sound an awful lot like you want Yulia to win."
"It's less that I want her to win, and more that... I heard from the younger students what Yulia did at the Noble School..."
With those words, the waiting room grew solemn.
Mnevoir drank her coffee and let her gaze sweep the students in the stands.
"If, by some chance, Yulia wins, it would light a fire under a lot of them. Everyone knows how hard that girl has worked."
Both Aurora and Mnevoir were remembering the desperate face, the desperate voice, from the day Yulia had come to them for counsel.
As if heaven itself had turned its face away, her progress after her third year had done nothing but stall. Many of the teachers, the two of them included, had advised her then with all the sincerity they had, but nothing about Yulia changed. It was like watering a tree that had already finished growing.
In the midst of that, Herbena enrolled. Feeling a kind of pressure, Yulia drove herself even harder, and she looked so unwell that Aurora once called her aside, clasped her hands tight, and tried to talk sense into her.
"Yulia, I think you've already worked hard enough."
"No, Teacher. Even so, I have to do as much as there is to do."
"I'm only saying it because I'm worried you're pushing too far. You know perfectly well that magic doesn't grow just because you grind yourself that desperately, don't you?"
"......"
"Why not pause, catch your breath, and give yourself a little room? You might start to see some things differently."
But Yulia shook her head and added a few words more.
What she had said then still sat, vivid, in the deepest part of Aurora's heart.
"When Lady Lisleia comes this time, could you ask her something for me?"
"Ask her what?"
"What Yulia would have to do for her magic to grow."
Mnevoir considered it for a moment, then nodded.
"I'll do that."
"Aaaaagh!"
The instant Herbena's scream tore across the dueling ground, Aurora confirmed that the girl's mana had dropped sharply, rose from her seat, and looked down.
A moment later the smoke born of the two manas colliding drifted apart, and only then did everyone—Aurora included—see the battleaxe buried in the ground in front of Herbena.
No way...?
The situation finally registered. Aurora stared at Yulia with her mouth open.
As she was now, Yulia was doing everything she could to hide the indigo mana breaking out across her skin, her eyes fixed on Herbena ahead of her.
It landed. It actually landed!
It was the plan she had told Rachel about the day before: hide a candle inside the sun. Behind Perun's Manifestation, the supreme-tier spell she was capable of casting, she had concealed an axe hauled in by Attract.
It was a move she could use only once, so she had waited from the very opening of the duel until now—until the moment when everyone in the stands, Herbena included, believed Yulia had nothing left. She endured all the way to the instant when the only fate left to her seemed to be getting swallowed by the ice spikes. Then, behind the surging goddess of lightning, behind a flash bright enough to blind, she hid her axe.
Her magic and Herbena's collided, and most of the ice across the dueling ground shattered. For several seconds their mana snarled together. Hidden behind her as she flew at Herbena, veiled to the very end, to the last of the last, the axe revealed itself only in the instant she reached her.
She had used a supreme-tier spell, wrung from nearly all her mana, as bait. Herbena never read a move so far outside common sense. She never even got a proper defensive spell up before the axe cut into her.
"Kh—!"
The result drove Herbena past mana offset, to the very brink of Mana Overdrive.
While Herbena failed to gather herself under a dizziness she had never felt before, Yulia, deciding she had to finish it, thrust out her left arm.
A longsword was sucked into Yulia's left hand. She caught it awkwardly in both and raised it overhead.
With that, she raked the thoroughly clumsy sword across Herbena's body, here and there.
Herbena, still dazed, saw the flashing edge and answered it however she could, but she could not stop every line of the cut. The sword passed over her some three times, and violet mana burst from the wounds like a broken dam. An ominous violet began to trace itself across her face and neck as well.
"Waaaaaah!!"
"Yulia! Yulia!"
Mana Overdrive had taken Herbena.
At the sight of a mouse catching the cat, the cheers from the stands swelled. In the midst of them Herbena forced her body back under control and opened distance, while Yulia, sword in one hand and eyes blazing, clung after her however she could.
...Right now, while Herbena is reeling, I have to drive her as hard as I can!
Yulia held the longsword in one hand and built a magic circle with the other.
Herbena's circle lit first. A single violet wave came surging toward Yulia.
Forced to stop in order to evade it, Yulia's brow drew tight. In that gap Herbena, having opened as much distance as she could, fought to settle the Mana Overdrive.
Yulia kept her eyes on her, let out a long breath, and twisted her hair up with a tie. Then she raised the sword point-down and began to close in.
Seeing it, Blow murmured before he could stop himself.
"Isn't that a little too cool?"
"Agreed."
This might actually...?
The same hunger Rachel had felt during Blow's duel began to kindle in her chest.
...Shit. She wrecked me.
Herbena stared at her clothes, torn here and there, and at the palm where the overdrive had surfaced.
Seventy percent.
That was how much of her mana had evaporated so far. In duels against anyone else, it had never fallen this low. It was a point she reached only now and then in solo practice—after casting several supreme-tier spells, and only once she had spun a Mana Bead for hours on end.
A hollow laugh escaped her. She could not believe the situation she was in. Eyes sharp and lifted, the indigo-haired young lady was closing in, and Herbena found herself retracing everything from two months ago, when their lives had become so viciously tangled, up to this moment.
If I hadn't taught her mana control in Roten.
If I hadn't made the young master's bracelet, and had focused on preparing for the duel instead.
If I hadn't used reverse calculation at the start of the duel.
If I had built the duel to crush her from the very beginning.
Regret stormed through her, and only now did it feel as if her eyes were beginning to open.
Thinking about it, the whole thing had been strange. That Yulia Edfolk had provoked her so hard before the duel.
...I let my guard down. Against someone I never should have.
Only now did Herbena try to grow calm. From the first spell of the duel, she calculated every technique Yulia had used, every measure of mana she must have spent.
The result was simple, and clear.
Yulia was at her limit.
Those sharp eyes were still fixed on her, as if she would not yield a single inch. But after a few more rounds of that dreary cycle—magic thrown, defense scraped together at great cost—even standing would be too much for her.
Having reached that conclusion, Herbena steadied her breath and offered a formal bow to the Yulia closing in.
"Senior Yulia. I'm sorry."
"What do you mean, Herbena?"
"I think I've been seeing you wrong."
"......"
At last Herbena acknowledged her. For Yulia, who had yet to force the duel to a conclusion, it was not a particularly welcome thing to hear.
A moment later, with Yulia five paces away, Herbena raised a hand.
Vivid violet flame wavered once more.
Yulia, who had at least expected she would not go down quietly, drew a single wave from her magic circle.
The two spells collided again, and soon both were gone. Herbena opened the distance once more and extended a hand toward Yulia.
The residue of the earlier overdrive still clung to Herbena's face, though it had settled a little in that short while. Yulia's Mana Pond, just as Herbena had calculated, was in poor shape. If drawing mana was like hauling water from a well, she had come far enough to see the bottom.
...Herbena went into overdrive, and she still has room to spare.
What came into her eyes was her own longsword, trembling in a way that was ugly to look at. Holding it only seemed to advertise how exhausted she was, so Yulia drove it into the ground.
...Earlier, I should have taken Wave 1 and gone in to end it. And I backed off. Again. Like a fool.
She had no choice but to blame herself for the choice she had made. With every breath her strength seemed to leave her, and her vision blurred. The mana she was forcing down felt ready to rampage at any moment. And Yulia knew, in her very senses, that the place she was touching now was the wall that had stood in her way for years.
Even in the brief while she pulled herself together, Herbena held her distance and kept changing attributes, flinging spell after spell.
...She noticed the overdrive.
Yulia caught the spells somehow, leaning on the advantage of her attributes. But far from closing in on Herbena, even keeping her feet planted where she stood had become too much. The magic hurled at her only grew fiercer.
The cheers that had poured down on Yulia for so long died away entirely.
"Even like that, it looks like she can't beat Herbena."
"Senior..."
"I really thought she was almost there."
Everyone looked down at her with faces as grim as if they had come to a funeral. Skadi, seated beside Blow, was no different.
"I think Senior has already done everything she can."
But Blow, never taking his eyes from the dueling ground, answered in a voice that was clear and certain.
"No."
"Why?"
There was a stubbornness in his voice that felt almost like faith. At that firmness, Skadi could say nothing more.
Perhaps because the hall had gone solemn. Or because Yulia had been aware of him all through the duel. Blow's words reached her.
Turning them over, Yulia smiled.
"If the young master says it like that, what am I supposed to do?"
And for some reason, Blow's duel rose in her mind. Blow, drenched in blood, stepping toward Greig. In the moment that duel unfolded behind her eyes, Herbena judged she could not afford to give her any more time, and her violet magic circle blazed vivid once again.
...I have to focus. Focus! If I'm going to—!
Light returned to Yulia's eyes. She yanked the longsword from the ground at once.
And then—
"Wh—?"
Every mouth fell open at the choice she had made.
Yulia drew the sword across her own upper arm.
When her vivid red blood pattered onto the dueling ground, unrest stirred even in the referees' seats, and Deschamp shot to his feet. But Yulia's eyes shone more fiercely than they ever had.
A storm of ice arrows flew at her. In the instant before they arrived, she barely raised a defensive spell.
Watching the ice arrows die, Herbena looked at Yulia and thought there was almost nothing left. Then she saw her standing there, blood dripping, and flinched back a step in shock.
"She turned off the offset and cut her own living flesh...?"
Aghast, Herbena drew her brows together.
Meanwhile Yulia felt her mind return with uncanny clarity.
...It's only an emergency measure. It won't last.
But because of it, I can still go further.
And Yulia brought her hands together.
"Why in the world is she going this far? Did I miscalculate?"
But Herbena could only shake her head. She had checked the figures again and again. There had been no mistake.
There was, however, one variable she had never considered.
That the line called a limit is drawn in a different place for every person.
Some stop running the moment their breath so much as catches. Some take one more step, no matter when. Even if death is bearing down right in front of them.
And the Yulia before her belonged, unmistakably, to the extreme of the latter.
Herbena, who had no way of knowing that, felt a chill race up her spine and for a moment forgot even to build her magic circle.
Yulia tore the sleeve from her clothes and bound the bleeding upper arm tight.
And then—
Yulia rushed her once more.
First, open the distance. Think after that.
Herbena tried to move her feet, but they were impossibly heavy, as if shackles had been locked around them.
...Me?
In the moment her body trembled under a feeling like she could not breathe, Yulia, having closed the last of the distance, cast Blow's magic upon her without hesitation.