Possessed Mid-Year (5)
My plan was to intervene in the duel — to lend Lutz a hand by quietly slipping a few buffs onto him, without anyone the wiser.
Honestly speaking, I thought it was a pretty good idea.
Letting a faint trickle of divinity leak out was nothing to Niger, which meant it was nothing to me, either — seeing as how I'd spent every night until the end of break practicing with the stuff. A Divinity professor who knew nothing and could do nothing would be a scandal in itself, after all. Between cramming and training, I'd nearly worked myself to death.
So if all it took to wriggle out of this was to covertly buff Lutz, I figured I could squirm like a worm at least once.
"…But how could a professor stoop to such favoritism? This is exactly the kind of conduct Elohim would call unjust."
The problem, of course, was my own position — and Niger's habit of wearing his piety on his sleeve at all times. In a word: for all his outward devotion, I lacked the justification to pull a stunt like this.
"Oh, come on. The matchup itself was rigged from the start. Pairing a mid-tier student against the top student — that's the discrimination right there."
That's right, Professor Elia. So please, grant me just a little more justification.
"You may see it that way, but the very fact that it must be done in secret proves it's wrong, doesn't it?"
"Please. Who lives without doing anything on the sly? Surely even you have one or two things you do behind everyone's back, Professor Niger? Oh — unless priests are exempt from that sort of thing?"
Uh… well.
I was, in fact, doing something rather big in secret. The kind of thing where the people who'd figured out it was a serial killing no longer knew anything — physically speaking.
"…W-well, that is true."
"Then it's fine. I'll look the other way for you, so just slip a couple of Enhance buffs on him and call it a day. If you're going to do it, do it quickly, before the duel ends."
Professor Elia insisted it was fine, over and over, building me my justification — and in the end, I nodded and discreetly raised my hand.
I did not volunteer for this. This was Professor Elia's order, clearly. If I get caught and disciplined, I'm dragging her down with me.
With that thought, I let my divinity flow.
Enhance
Acceleration
A faint light took hold.
Divinity remained an utterly mysterious thing to me. Drawing power that seeped through every corner of my body out into the open — how wondrous that had felt at first. Practicing had only fed the curiosity, and I'd cast it again and again, only to find the warmth of it made a person drowsy as anything.
Anyway, light slipped quietly into Lutz's body as he flailed about, too busy getting beaten senseless to think straight. His brow, screwed up in a deep scowl, relaxed — and for just a heartbeat, his eyes flew wide open.
That much of a buff should be enough to swing a sword, at least once.
Because if he kept getting pummeled even with a buff, the first name on my kill list would truly be those two letters — Lutz — and then Teacher Niger would simply have to pay him a personal visit.
The thought that I could grind Lutz into hamburger pattie — that with my own hands I could smash the original story to bits — genuinely made my heart race.
And whether you'd call it fortunate or not, I was able to set those worries aside. The Lutz who'd received my buffs had finally evolved from a limp worm into a wriggling one.
CLANG—!
The sound of magic being deflected. He'd picked up the sword he'd planted in the ground, wreathed it in mana, and was edging forward, brushing the spells aside one by one before kicking off the earth.
Perhaps thrown by the sudden shift in momentum, Bellatrix tilted her head and unleashed even fiercer magic — but Lutz tore across the ground, batting spells away and dodging what he couldn't.
A gale born of mana swept through the training grounds. Still, Lutz bore the wind down, grimace twisting his face all the while.
Krakrakrak—!
The air cracked with a staccato of shattering impacts. Where his blade had knocked aside the blades of mana, the far wall of the arena now bore a fan of fresh scars. His clothes, too, began to tear, leaving shallow cuts behind — but Lutz paid them no mind, eyes blazing.
Perhaps he disliked the sight. Bellatrix severed her swirling wind and conjured a massive sphere of flame, one that seemed meant to swallow the entire arena and end the duel then and there.
BOOOM—!
But Lutz dropped flat, slipping beneath the explosion that bloomed before his eyes — and then pounced, like a beast. He swung his sword as if he were no longer the man who'd been scrambling just to block, as if that desperate defender were someone else entirely.
He hadn't escaped the great fireball cleanly — the clothing across his back was scorched, and bits of his hair had burned away — yet he only lunged harder, snapping at her like a wild animal.
Quite the impressive sight, honestly.
For now it took my buffs to see him like this, but a year from now he'd charge in like that as a matter of course. The protagonist really was the protagonist — with ability to back it up, he was turning magic aside on pure instinct.
So Lutz slipped past and deflected the incoming spells one by one until he'd closed the distance to Bellatrix — and swung.
His face lit up with triumph, as though this swing alone would seal his victory, and he brought the blade crashing down on her.
Needless to say, the sword broke against Bellatrix's barrier, and in the very next instant a freshly conjured fireball struck him dead-on, sending him flying in spectacularly unglamorous fashion.
BOOOM—
A heavy, dull thud followed. Where the sound had come from, Lutz was embedded in the wall, head lolling as though he'd been knocked clean out.
WAAAAAH!!
The cheering of the watching students rang out across the grounds. The other faculty murmured their admiration, and there was Professor Elia, staring at Lutz with the same dumbfounded expression I wore.
And threaded between it all came the gaze of Bellatrix, fixed squarely on me. What a hell of a protagonist moment. Seriously.
No, seriously — what mage fights without a barrier?
You should've accounted for a magic shield, you idiot.
Hoo.
I'm writing at least the letter "L" on the kill list for now.
From what I can see, that bastard's due for a little one-on-one consultation with Teacher Niger before long.
Teacher, I'm sending the first one up to you.
And then.
As the duel ended and the cheers thundered on, I stood quietly among them, eyes closed.
It wasn't that I wanted to close them. Not even a flicker of a desire to. It was that the moment the duel ended, the stares flying my way had become just a little frightening.
Bellatrix was looking at me. Not rejoicing in her victory — just staring at me with a perfectly blank face.
"Professor Niger? Why did you suddenly close your eyes?"
"Ah… it seems some dust got in. I'll keep them shut just a moment."
"Really? Hold still, let me take a look for you."
Professor Elia's voice reached me, but I couldn't answer. There was a more pressing matter than responding to Elia.
Hmmm…
I've been caught, I think.
And not by the Chairman or the other professors — by a mere student. Not that "mere student" did Bellatrix justice; she was already a first-rate mage and the jewel of the Empire. But still.
Half hoping I was wrong, I cracked my eyes open and looked toward the arena. Maybe she'd merely noticed me because I was so devastatingly handsome.
Then I met the most piercing glare I'd ever seen, and abandoned the thought entirely.
Right. Of course not. If she's glaring at me like that, the fault is mine for fantasizing, even for a second, that it was a look of affection.
If I ended up face to face with her, I supposed I'd have to explain myself — that I'd only stepped in because the poor boy was getting battered half to death.
What is he?
Even as the duel ended and I descended from the arena floor, my eyes never left a certain man. I didn't know who he was, but he was the one who had been secretly casting divinity buffs on my opponent throughout the duel.
A place where light had seeped in, however faintly — and the man standing dumbly beside it. Platinum-blond hair caught my eye first, and then the physique that no priest's robe could quite conceal.
Faculty connected to divinity, most likely — or a priest dispatched from the Elohim Order. Either way, for a priest of the Order that worshipped god to commit foul play in a student duel? Truly, the joke wrote itself.
And the one he'd cheated to help was pathetically weak, besides. That boy who'd raged around like a beast — the whole display was beneath dignity. He'd been reckless, and he'd lacked even the most basic knowledge.
Call it curiosity, then, laced with suspicion.
Ignoring the cheers and the eyes on me, I walked. With my duel, the matches had concluded; the other students seemed to be heading to their assigned classrooms, but my purpose lay with the priest and the priest alone.
He seemed about to leave his post — he descended from the dais and soon slipped out through the back door.
And I followed him.
A corridor nearly empty of people. Tap, tap, tap — the echo of footsteps on stone rang out, and trailing behind him, I let the words slip quietly from my lips.
"Hm. So it's you, then — the priest who meddled in a student duel."
The priest turned at my voice. The face that met me was expressionless to the point of being chilling.