The Enraged Bull
As though the question had stirred something in her, Rachel leaned toward the sparring ground.
Up in the stands, Julbert was beginning to feel that something had gone wrong. By rights this was the moment the matador should have driven his blade into the bull's heart, with every eye in the arena fixed on him. But at the very instant he ought to have looked his most elegant, the matador kept giving ground. The figure he cut was so wretched that the cheers and praise meant for him began, instead, to pour down upon the bull walking forward with blood dripping from its body.
"Blow!!"
"Go!!"
"Hit him again! One more and you win!!"
A wish was taking root in the crowd that should never have been allowed to take root—the wish that the bull would take one step, and then another, until at last its horns found the matador.
Unease prickling through him, Julbert looked around. The other student council officers were watching just as the spectators were, both fists clenched tight. Even Rebecca, whose temperament was said to be ice itself, had her hands clasped as she stared. That alone said everything. The smile that had been hovering on Julbert's face vanished.
What reached Blow's ears was not the roar of the crowd, but only ragged breathing and the pound of a heart. Whatever stamina he might have used to keep running had burned out long ago, so now he was merely choosing which of the spells screaming toward him he would take. They came from every direction. He could not dodge them all; one of them he would have to meet. In that lethal choice between two deaths, Blow advanced on the spell that looked even a little weaker. Flame his defensive magic failed to smother hammered his whole body. Even so, he closed in, little by little. Before he knew it, Greig was ten paces away.
Greig's chant reached him muffled, as if through water. Clumps of mana burrowed in like insects and began to burst across his chest. The blast cracked the air. Defensive magic flung up in haste swallowed the shock, but it didn't seem to have stopped even half the force.
"Ghk..."
Six paces from Greig, Blow went down on one knee. Only then did Greig break into a scornful laugh bright with triumph.
"Hahahaha!!! That's right—what's a nobody like you going to do?! You're already out of mana and out of stamina."
"......"
Blow glared at him through ragged breaths. At the look in those eyes—a starving beast's—fear seized Greig, and he fell back.
"Y-you bastard!!"
As if his own reaction shamed him, Greig's face flushed red in an instant. Then he unleashed another barrage. Blow wrung out what stamina he had left and rolled to the right.
"How base of you, Blow Deblique!"
Having spat the words, Greig turned toward the stands wearing a look of triumph. Surely the crowd was praising his careful tactics and his overwhelming firepower. But the voices rising from the seats were the exact opposite of what he had expected.
"Coward!!"
"You've even got a spirit, you bastard!! You just shuffle backward and sling spells?!"
Jeers poured down. Trash struck the barrier in a rattling rain and fell away, and only then did he feel the cold of the wall against his back.
I—I got all the way back here because I was scared of that bastard? This isn't how it's supposed to go...!!
Into his sight came Julbert, face twisted in a scowl—and his own sister, smiling as she looked at Blow.
"This isn't right!!"
The shout tore out of him, and at last Greig took a step toward Blow. Seeing him come, Blow barely managed to get his body up.
"Said you'd grind me into the dirt."
"I was just about to!"
An acceleration circle began to bloom once more along Greig's right arm.
Even on the verge of blacking out, Blow reached for the joint of Greig's elbow. It was a technique called a stop, one he had often used when he brawled with the cadets of the knight academy—but he didn't have the strength to halt a fist backed by acceleration magic.
"A ridiculous little stunt, Blow Deblique!"
Flesh met flesh with a heavy smack, and Blow lost his balance and went down. Greig didn't let the moment slip. He mounted him at once and pinned both arms beneath his knees.
"You son of a bitch!!"
Greig's magic circle flared again. Professor Arhudin, refereeing from the side, was just beginning to drift their way—when Blow turned a bright, unmistakable smile on the boy above him.
In the brief instant the startled Greig froze, Blow's left hand settled over the left side of his chest. Cloth tore, and a scroll lay bare.
"Wh... what!?"
The enormous magic circle Greig had witnessed earlier bloomed into being once more. He tried to shove himself up, but it was already too late. Blow's other hand was twisted tight in the front of his clothes.
Smoke swallowed the arena. The stunned crowd surged to its feet, hands clapped over their mouths.
"Wh-what? What just happened?"
"Did he just cast that spell again? Wasn't he already in a mana runaway?"
As the spectators craned this way and that, trying to see into the smoke, a deep sigh escaped Yulia. She had lost her usual coolness and was staring down at the sparring ground with her heart in her throat.
"He hid another scroll?"
With the words, the hand resting on her knee began to tremble, ever so faintly.
"Are you saying you endured all of this for that? Young Master Blow Deblique...?"
She was one of the finest mages in the school, and she knew all too well the pain of spell after spell endured without Magic Neutralization. Mages do not like pain. That was true of her, the one they called the Indigo Witch, and it had been just as true of the Blow who lived in her memory. And so she could not understand it at all—why he was bearing the pain, or how he could bear pain like that.
What would she have done, in his place? Nothing came to mind but something ugly. She would surely have healed herself with the hidden scroll wrapped along that left side. Because it was an opponent she could not beat anyway...
When the thought had run its course, she found both hands covering her mouth.
"Young Master Blow... why go that far in a duel you cannot even win?"
In the moment Yulia's vision swam, the smoke over the arena cleared. Blow's left sleeve was burning red, and he was forcing the red mana down with everything he had. After two casts of Explosive Blaze and the brunt of Greig's countless attacks, the wounds across his body were splitting open all over again. And yet Blow, looking almost refreshed, let out a single breath and began to rise.
"Waaaaah!!"
The cheer burst from the stands and rushed toward him.
"Aaaaaagh!"
And with it came Greig's scream. At the sound, the strength ran out of Blow's whole body, and a hollow little laugh slipped from the corner of his mouth. So even that blow wasn't enough to finish him? I really don't think there's any mana or stamina left now. Greig's spirit let out a bright, tinkling laugh and drifted through the air as if toying with him. Everyone in the stands clutched their heads, and groans of lament spilled out with the gesture. Hervena, who knew that every bit of this had been the planned course of things, bit down hard on her lower lip.
It was the day they had all gathered to watch the flame Blow called up. Hervena stood well apart, watching them practice: the fire he raised, and everyone marveling at it; Melo's face, brightening as she looked at his flame. But inside Hervena, watching, everything was a breath away from crumbling into ash.
When practice ended, she called Skadi and Jane aside. The only light in the pitch-black alley was the faint glow leaking from a magic circle hung on an oak barrel. Jane, who had already guessed what this was about, could not even meet her eyes. Skadi stood with her arms crossed at a crooked angle, glaring.
Hervena stared at the two of them for a long while before she asked, in a voice that shook.
"What the hell are you two doing?"
"Doing what?"
The dryness of Skadi's tone pushed Hervena's patience to its limit. She spoke through gritted teeth.
"Are your ears stuffed? I asked what you're doing."
"We were drinking."
"You know exactly what I'm saying. You're doing this just to piss me off, aren't you?"
"You already look good and furious. So what's the point?"
"Skadi!!"
The flatness of it made Hervena shout.
"You know this can't work."
"......"
"It can't work! Were you asleep through Magic Offense and Defense? There's no way!! What—feed him a potion? Use a scroll? Are you actually serious? You're sending that man into a duel right now?"
And then, without warning, a violet magic circle unfurled in her right hand. Jane's eyes went wide. So did Skadi's.
"Hervena!!"
Hervena swept her hand once, and every frost spell Jane had laid down vanished in a single stroke. Mana used with anything but purity seemed to warp the air around them. The bottom of the oak barrel burst, and beer came gushing out.
"This is the gap—the gap between that piece of shit Greig and Blow! You know it better than anyone, Skadi!"
"So?"
"So? So? You should have stopped him! I really want to know—what is wrong with you? Fine. The underclassman brats, I'll give them that. But you. Why are you really like this?"
Skadi's hand, which until then had been holding her anger down, began to tremble. She stepped in close to Hervena and glared.
"I don't know either! How the hell would I know!"
"What?"
"He said he was going to do it. Said he wanted the duel. And he asked us to help a little. So we helped. Why? Is that a problem?"
"You should have stopped him! What could that man possibly gain from that damned duel?"
"I told you I don't know!"
"No. There has to be something. There had better be something."
Watching Hervena shake her head, contempt settled over Skadi's face.
"Then why didn't you, Miss Perfect, come stop him yourself? Oh, right. You couldn't make it again—busy with that fucking assignment."
"What did you just say?"
"You heard me just fine. Why the hell are you asking me to repeat it?"
"Hey!"
"What? Or did you put it off again? Should've put it off two more days, then. All you're doing right now is souring our mood."
"So this is right, then?"
"And why exactly shouldn't it be?"
There was something in Skadi's voice that genuinely could not understand her, and Hervena let out an incredulous, empty laugh.
"So what you're saying is you want to watch him fail at everything and turn into a laughingstock for people. That's what you want to see?"
"......"
"You think being a laughingstock would be getting off easy? There's no way that piece of shit Greig holds back! It's going to hurt. I'm telling you, it's going to hurt!!"
With the words, a tear dropped from Hervena's eye. Seeing it, Skadi let out a long breath of a sigh and murmured in a lowered voice.
"You didn't see it, did you."
"...See what?"
"When he said he was going to duel. It wasn't something you could talk him out of. Maybe I was wrong. But that's how it looked to me. So I didn't stop him."
"......"
"And while I was at it, I didn't ask. What good would asking do? To someone who'd already made up his mind."
Silence flowed out after those words. Jane, who had kept quiet through all of it, came and stood in front of Hervena. For the first time since she had come up to Caipol, she looked her straight in the eye. Those eyes were deep and blue, and full of sorrow. A long time passed before she finally spoke.
"...The young master doesn't know what he's supposed to do."