Chapter 120
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 120
By the time they reached the arena, it was a foregone conclusion that the first duel would be between Solif and Turan.
Since they hadn't reached a definitive conclusion during their first encounter, they intended to use this opportunity to settle who was superior once and for all. However, unexpectedly, Meisa stepped forward and volunteered to be Turan’s first opponent.
"Sorry, but do you mind if I go first?"
"Hm? Oh, well... sure, go ahead."
In truth, it wasn't that surprising. The very reason the two had grown close in the first place was their shared stubbornness—neither wanted to lose, a trait that had once led them both to collapse after trying to force magic they didn't even understand. Though her upbringing made her seem timid at times, her pride regarding magic was second to none.
I wonder who’ll win.
Solif looked at the empty crystal ball and predicted the outcome in his head. It would have been nice to watch the fight on the screen, but if they did that, everyone in the waiting room would see it. Unless they wanted rumors to spread that powerful nobles were dueling, it was out of the question.
Meisa is much stronger in terms of mana, and their raw talent is about equal. Since she’s been trained since childhood, she’ll be more adept at magical combat...
On paper, it shouldn't even be a contest, but Turan had his own advantages. He could cycle through various bloodlines using the Mimic Relic, possessed lethal physical attack power with his sling, and had exceptional combat instincts.
Still, since both possessed such immense mana, it was likely to be a long battle. Solif gave up his seat so his parents could sit comfortably and stood up.
Just then, a flash of light erupted, and the two reappeared.
"What? It's over already?"
"Yeah."
It was hard to tell exactly since there were no clocks, but it didn't feel like even ten minutes had passed. The match had ended much faster than the average duel.
Unlike the nonchalant Turan, Meisa was wiping her face with both hands. That alone made it obvious who had won.
"Are you okay, Meisa?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah... it’s not as easy as I thought. I can still vividly feel my head shattering into pieces."
As their unharmed appearances suggested, any injuries or property damage sustained within the arena were fully restored, but the pain was no different from reality. Many people were known to wail or suffer from phantom pains long after a duel ended. Then again, if there weren't such drawbacks, there was no way such a useful facility would be managed so loosely.
After seating the pale-faced Meisa and giving her a glass of water, Solif immediately questioned Turan.
"How did it end?"
"I sniped her."
"Is there even enough space for that?"
"I made it myself."
Turan explained the interior of the arena. The overall area was three hundred meters wide and long. The floor, walls, and ceiling were finished with marble-like stone, and the height was a little over thirty meters.
"With that size, it must be a spatial transition. There’s no room in this facility to fit a space that large."
"Right. I couldn't sense anyone else's presence at all."
Spatial transition was another major field that modern magic had failed to conquer. Just as Meisa couldn't use Decay magic because she didn't understand the principles, no one knew the theory behind crossing space. There weren't even any bloodline abilities related to it. In contrast, structures from the Old Empire often featured devices that distorted space or transported people, much like the Tomb of the Gods Turan had entered in the past.
"So, how did the fight actually go?"
"Well, basically..."
The first clash was a standard exchange of projectiles. Turan fired spheres made of Judgment Light while secretly mixing in iron beads, while Meisa used Soul of Fire to move explosively, dodging while constantly calling down lightning. As a bonus, she even used physical attacks with a shockwave-firing rapier—a modified magic tool she had taken from a Zahar noble.
Amidst the flurry of every offensive means at their disposal, various minor techniques were also employed. They used gusts of wind to disrupt each other's flight, bent light to distort their perceived positions, and upon landing, transformed the earth to trap feet or scattered seeds to create binding vines.
For an ordinary person, it would have taken years to master just one of these skills to such a degree, but the two of them used these techniques as naturally as breathing.
The winner of that exchange was Meisa. Though she was bleeding from several grazes by the iron beads, Turan had suffered heavy injuries, including a broken arm and several cracked ribs—not to mention the nerve damage from electrocution.
"From the sound of it, you just got one-sidedly trashed."
"That's why I used my trump card."
Driven into a corner, Turan used the Light-Swallowing Cloth to absorb the surrounding light, then used stealth magic and the Earthkeeper bloodline's earth manipulation to hide underground.
Meisa hurriedly summoned a sphere of light, but light cannot penetrate through soil. While she failed to figure out where he was hiding, Turan created a long firing tunnel from underground, opened an exit, and sniped her, precisely shattering her head.
The propulsion from the Wind Path and Soul of Fire, combined with the momentum gathered from spinning the sling, was enough to pierce through her defensive magic tool.
"So you won entirely through dirty tricks."
"I learned a lot thanks to that. I realized that while my mana is one thing, my actual accumulated skill is still lacking."
Her magical talent was nearly on par with Turan's, but there was a significant difference in the time they had spent properly training. Unlike Meisa, who had been educated as an heir since the age of twelve, Turan had been self-taught and reckless until he was seventeen.
Of course, since he was also a genius, the gap in their current skills wasn't massive, but in any field, it was the minor differences at the top level that created major results. They hadn't noticed it during their usual training sessions because they held back, but in a real fight, the feeling was entirely different.
"At least your head being crushed in one hit means it didn't hurt for long."
"Fortunately. Though it meant the near-death experience was a failure."
There were two main ways to slowly enter death. One was strangulation, and the other was inducing excessive blood loss. Unfortunately, Meisa's death this time was neither, so it yielded no results for her cultivation.
"But I'm not sure if I can keep doing this."
"Doing what?"
"The killing part. Even knowing it's fake, it doesn't feel great."
Turan recalled the sight of Meisa's body rolling on the floor with her head shattered. It was a sight he had seen countless times from the enemies he had fought, but the fact that the target was a close friend made it utterly unpleasant.
Just then, Solif gave Turan a light punch in the stomach.
"Even if you say that, I'm not going easy on you, man."
"...Neither am I."
Despite his mocking tone, a faint smile played on Turan's lips.
*
While Meisa recovered from the shock of death between the Baraha couple, Turan and Solif entered the arena next. Since mana was also fully restored upon returning, there was no reason to delay.
The arena attendant's eyes widened when Turan said he would fight twice in one day, spending two hundred gold coins.
"Aren't you exhausted?"
"I can manage."
"Hmph..."
Of course, one could fight as many times as they wanted as long as they kept winning, but few did so because of the fatigue of battle and the pain of injury.
Leaving the impressed attendant behind, Turan entered his second match and suffered a narrow defeat against Solif. He used the various tricks he had learned from his first fight with Meisa to drive Solif into a corner, but it wasn't easy to break through when a noble of the powerful Guardian bloodline was determined to stay on the defensive.
Furthermore, unlike typical Guardians who were helpless at long range, Solif possessed the highly offensive Sun bloodline. Solif advanced stolidly, parrying every attack with Judgment Light, while Turan kept retreating and throwing iron beads.
After a long battle lasting over an hour, it was Turan who declared surrender due to mana depletion.
"I lost."
"Yes! I won!"
Solif stomped his feet in joy for a moment, but he soon clicked his tongue, knowing he would have lost one-sidedly if he hadn't awakened his Guardian bloodline. Of course, by that logic, Turan had at least five bloodlines, but the Zahar bloodline wasn't exactly suited for combat.
After the match was decided, they began the near-death experience they hadn't been able to do in the previous fight. The method was blood loss. Solif cut both of Turan's wrists deeply and then sat quietly behind him, waiting for death to arrive.
"How is it?"
"What?"
"The blood. Is enough coming out?"
At Turan's question, Solif nodded with a grimace. Seeing his friend dying and bleeding from his whole body, he felt he understood why Turan had felt uneasy after killing Meisa earlier. Even though his head knew this was just an illusion and that not a single hair on Turan's body was actually being harmed, the act of killing a comrade himself was sickeningly unpleasant.
"I'm... getting a bit sleepy... and cold..."
Turan spoke in a languid tone and looked up at the slowly blurring ceiling. He hadn't noticed before, but now the ceiling of the arena seemed to be spinning like a whirlpool. A sense of lethargy took over, as if his entire body was sinking into a hollow void.
As his consciousness flickered due to the lack of blood to his brain, Turan constantly recited the contents of the Soul Magic Book.
Within every human lies a unique self, and that self is a god. This world is a fake, and only that is the truth...
Unlike the physical body that is easily wounded, withers, and dies, the soul that has transformed into the True Self—the Jin-a—is immortal and unique.
Reciting sentences he didn't even fully understand, Turan fell further and further down. It felt like an instant, yet also like an eternity. Just as he thought he might fall all the way to the center of the world, Turan saw something appear below.
More accurately, he felt it.
This is—
Gray clouds and golden lightning, pitch-black darkness and an eye opened within it. The moment he saw the four symbols representing his bloodlines, Turan's consciousness snapped back to reality as if he had been doused with cold water.
"Hey, hey! Are you okay?"
"Huh?"
Only then did Turan realize he was back in the real world, and that what he had just seen was merely a vision right before death. He was already sitting in the lobby outside the arena.
"How long... have I been like this?"
"Almost thirty minutes. You were just standing there blankly without saying a word, so I thought something went wrong."
Before he could even apologize for worrying them, Turan felt his cheeks burning. When he asked why, Meisa, who was standing next to him, lowered her head.
"Sorry. You wouldn't wake up, so I slapped you a few times..."
"It's fine. I think it actually helped clear my head."
Turan patted Meisa's head a couple of times and suggested they leave the arena for the day. Since he and Meisa had each died once, only Solif and his parents could still use it, and there was no way a fight would happen between those three.
After taking a room at a small, shabby inn near the arena, Turan spread out some cheap beer and sausages and explained what he had felt.
"You saw your bloodline symbols inside yourself?"
"Could it be because of the holy relics?"
The two Mimic Relics Turan possessed—the mask and the necklace—had the effect of allowing him to peer into other people's symbols when used together. At Meisa's suggestion, Turan shook his head in denial.
"It's hard to explain in words, but the feeling is different. If the relics allow me to 'peer into' them directly, this was more like 'feeling' that those things are me..."
He felt it was a vague explanation even as he said it, but there was no other way to describe it.
"Perhaps our bloodline abilities are one of the essences of the soul. After all, the gods use special powers by moving their own symbols."
It was strange that Soul Magic, which was said to be the power of humans, was related to bloodline magic derived from the gods, but given the circumstances they had seen, it wasn't an impossible theory. In fact, the gods—specifically Ymir and the head of the Arabion family—had shown such forms when revealing their true power.
Solif, who had been listening quietly, asked in a low voice.
"So, do you feel any of that Spiritual Awareness?"
"Not yet. But I think this is the right direction. It's very faint, but I feel like I'm moving forward."
This kind of training was something they wouldn't dare attempt in a place without an arena. The closer one got to death, the stronger this mysterious sensation—presumably Spiritual Awareness—became, but if they made a mistake and actually died, that would be the end.
"Anyway, I'd like to stay for a few more days and keep using the arena. I've learned a lot by fighting with everything I've got. Don't you guys feel the same?"
"I suppose so."
Meisa, who lacked combat instincts; Solif, who lacked magical talent; and Turan, who lacked total mana and experience in utilizing diverse abilities. Since all three had realized their shortcomings by clashing with full force in the arena, they decided to stay for a few more days to continue dueling and attempting near-death experiences.
Since dragging it out too long might allow Baraha to regroup and find their location, the limit was one week.
*
Five days since their first visit to the arena.
Turan, sitting quietly and waiting for his turn, heard the people around him whispering as they looked at him and Solif's parents. It wasn't anything related to Baraha; they were just talking about the madmen who had been using the arena like crazy for the past few days, spending over a thousand gold coins.
Should we leave soon before the rumors spread further?
While he was contemplating, Meisa and Solif suddenly appeared.
"I won!"
"Dammit! I lost again! I can't even land a single hit anymore!"
Meisa shouted with her arms raised high, while Solif stomped his feet and grumbled. Their joy and sorrow were starkly contrasted.
"How many times have you lost now?"
"Three. How on earth do you beat her? No matter what I do, I can't find an opening."
"I just work hard, I guess."
Since combat involved many variables, the outcome wasn't always fixed, but as they summarized the results, a certain rock-paper-scissors relationship emerged.
Turan was strong against Meisa but weak against Solif; Meisa was strong against Solif but weak against Turan; and Solif was strong against Turan but weak against Meisa.
Every time a match concluded, the three of them would grant death to the loser to train their Soul Magic. Since experience showed that blood loss was the most stable method, they stuck with that.
Solif's parents expressed some concern at the sight of them constantly killing each other, but fortunately, the trio had grown strong enough to look upon each other's deaths with composure. Humans were beings that easily adapted and improved through experience.
As a bonus, these duels contributed greatly to the improvement of their combat prowess. While their tangible abilities like mana and magic tools hadn't improved at all, they had become better at utilizing the power they already had. Turan guessed that if the current three were to fight their past selves from before they came to the arena, they would all win without much difficulty.
Afterward, Turan dueled Meisa, beat her until her face was a pulp to get her to surrender, and then granted her death.
When the duel ended and they returned to the lobby, he felt a strange presence a short distance away.
This is...
Three high-ranking nobles, five mid-ranking ones, and one top-ranking noble. An elite force capable of easily crushing several ordinary mage families was waiting outside the arena.
"It looks like we have guests."
"Guests?"
"I'm not sure exactly who. If it's Baraha, the force is too small..."
If they had witnessed their power back then, they wouldn't have come with such a small force unless they were insane. It was a level that any of the three could wipe out in an instant.
Had they been waiting for their duel to end? Sensing the presence of those approaching the arena, Turan immediately ordered them to take a combat formation. Solif stood in the front, with Meisa and Turan on the left and right, shielding the Baraha couple.
Just then, Solif, who was standing at the very front, pointed a finger at the approaching opponent in surprise.
"Wait, you...!"
"Long time no see, brother! I heard you were spending quite a bit of coin at the arena, so I stopped by to see your face."
A massive man approached, muttering jovially. He was nearly two meters tall, and his thick forearms looked like they could match Meisa's waist circumference. Furthermore, his entire body, as well as his sideburns and beard, were covered in thick hair that exuded an excessive amount of masculinity.
Somehow, Turan could guess his identity even without an introduction, but he asked to be certain.
"Who is he?"
"Kalais Ruban. We met once a long time ago when the heirs gathered for some socializing, but this is the first time since then."
As expected, the opponent was the next head of the great family that controlled the entire Frostwind Forest region.