Subjugation Test (1)
The instructors of the Griffin Knight Academy were, each and every one of them, veterans who had once carved their names across the battlefield as magic knights.
Instructor Logan was the man who had subjugated the Iron Magic Dragon Lukel, and he held a record of victory against a band of enemy Sword Experts. Instructor Rachel was known as a master of telekinesis, and in her active years she had distinguished herself in the campaign against the Sea Calamity King Haetalos, a terror risen from the deep. The rest of the faculty were no less formidable — every one of them boasted a résumé thick with hard-won glory from their days as magic knights.
In other words, their eyes could pick out genuine talent with uncanny precision.
In the monitoring room near the site of the subjugation test, countless screens floated in midair, casting images of the mountainside and the golems roaming it — projections drawn from the golems' own fields of vision. Rachel, the red-haired magic knight instructor who commanded those golems, sat among her colleagues watching the feeds. Beneath the brim of her pointed hat, her expression was thoroughly unimpressed.
"Instructor Rachel, which student are you most looking forward to?"
Logan — black hair, rough stubble, lively eyes — settled into a chair, draped an arm over the backrest, and asked.
"Don't care. I just want this over with already."
Every time a student felled a golem, a quill pen floating under her telekinetic control scratched a score onto the corresponding file. Screens belonging to downed golems winked out, and as the tally of subjugated golems climbed, the remaining displays stretched wider to fill the empty space.
"Still, there are a few who quietly catch the eye, don't you think?"
"Well, yeah. Hard not to, when kids that big enrolled."
Same as with the train incident, and same again now. The students who seized Instructor Rachel's attention were a fixed set.
Out on the mountain range where the test was underway, a barbarian with gray-brown hair was smashing golems to rubble with ferocious abandon.
Strength like a true barbarian, I'll give him that. Problem is he fights like a complete brute — no thought for front or back.
His intelligence fell short of the standard, but his raw power could stand shoulder to shoulder with active-duty knights without shame.
And then there was the girl with deep violet hair — Violet.
KRAAAASH!!
She was commanding the skeletal corpse of a tiger-type magic beast as an undead thrall. One sweep of its foreleg and a golem shattered to pieces.
That one's a monster… Most knights wouldn't even leave bones behind. …Though that ability of hers has a fatal flaw she'll have to overcome. If she can't, becoming a magic knight will be difficult.
Other exceptional students, and plenty of merely solid ones, drifted through Rachel's field of view.
But even among them, the one who stands alone is…
"Bloom. Scatter."
Shaaaaa!!
At the spoken command, rose petals of pure mana rode the wind and unfurled. Each petal sliced through golems and the surrounding trees alike as cleanly as a blade through paper. A student with magenta hair, sweeping her sword through a murderous storm of petals.
She was, without question, the undisputed first-place finisher of the entrance exam: Elise Lorendia.
Stable, and strong. Technique, skill, mobility, mana, magic — all of it. And by contrast…
There was one student who stood as her complete opposite. The absolute antipode. First place's reverse — last place.
The young man with light brown hair drifted into Rachel's sight.
Ron Hazley.
She had memorized every student's file, so she knew. Weakest physical ability. Weakest mana capacity. A student whose very nickname was "the Weakest" — Ron Hazley.
In the last test, the one that had carried the threat of expulsion, he'd supposedly survived by talking a barbarian and a dark mage over to his side. That was the story she'd heard from her fellow instructor Logan. A last-place entrant scraping by through sheer desperate effort — how hard she'd laughed when she heard it.
"Well… that one's going to fail."
He wouldn't be able to count on last time's lucky break in this test. Unfortunately, Ron's thrashing would meet its period here.
KRASH-KRASH-KRASH!!
Fwoosh!!
Bursts and booms echoed from every direction. The other students had already thrown themselves into combat.
Getting caught in the crossfire would be a bad idea.
I moved with care. No sense getting crushed between whales when you're a shrimp. In a situation like this, rule one was safety. Rule two was also safety.
"Groooan…!"
"Huh."
Before long, a two-meter mass of rock lumbered into view on my side of the mountain. A golem. The target of this test.
Seeing one in the flesh instead of in the game…
Yeah, that looks… a lot stronger than I expected…?
A cold bead of sweat slid down my cheek. This was outside my projections.
"Punch!"
The golem bellowed with unnecessary enthusiasm and swung a fist at me. Why did they even bother giving these things a language function?
The question lasted only a heartbeat. A broad fist wreathed in mana came crashing toward me.
Whoom!
I bent my upper body hard to the side and barely slipped clear. A vicious wind skimmed past the tip of my nose.
Damn…!
If a punch with that kind of force landed clean…
I'd be out cold at minimum.
Okay. Assessment complete.
I can't win this.
"Hup!"
I sucked in a deep breath — and ran.
Thud-thud-thud!
A full retreat… no. A strategic withdrawal.
"Groooan!?"
The golem stared after the fleeing Ron in confusion. The instructors watching the feed were no less baffled. The light-brown-haired student had bolted from right under the golem's nose and vanished between the trees in a blink.
What is with that coward…?
Instructor Rachel let out a quiet snort of laughter. Among students who, whatever their skill, almost always had courage and spirit to spare, behavior like that made him look like a genuine oddity.
"Honestly. No confidence is one thing, but that…"
The display had been so ridiculous that Rachel and several other instructors couldn't help chuckling. At this point it was almost pitiable. Looking like that, expulsion from this test was only a matter of time.
"Groan…"
The golem scratched its head, where a few green sprouts poked through the stone. After a dull, hesitant pause, it turned its back and started to lumber away.
…And then.
Thump!
"Groan!?"
From above the trees, a young man dropped with light brown hair streaming behind him. His feet landed squarely on the golem's shoulder. The golem immediately poured mana into its fist to counter —
Shunk!
— but a blade already laced with silver mana had slipped like the wind into a gap in the stone armor.
Crack!
It punched straight through the mana core — the power source hidden near the golem's shoulder joint.
The sword's owner, Ron Hazley, gave a small smirk.
"Knew it. The core was on this side."
Drawing on his knowledge of the game, Ron had already mapped out the telltale signs of where a golem's core was hidden. The stone around a core always showed faint grain patterns under the influence of mana. Look closely enough and you could spot them.
His earlier judgment that he couldn't beat a golem had applied only to a straight fight.
The core went dark. The golem froze. Ron wrenched his sword free and leapt down.
Boom!
The golem toppled uselessly to the ground.
Watching it all, Instructor Rachel's mouth hung open.
He stabbed the core dead-on…? How?
Every golem had its core — the critical power source that drove it — concealed in a different location. The whole design was meant to force students to destroy various parts of a golem in combat, gather information, analyze it, and then strike at the enemy's weakness. Whether they cooperated with classmates or relied on sharp observation, the method didn't matter. A knight was supposed to find a way — any way — to read an enemy. That, too, was a scoring factor.
And Ron had done it first among all the first-years.
The corner of Rachel's mouth twitched. She gave a low hum of amusement and stroked her chin.
Not bad, Ron Hazley. More insight than I gave you credit for?
The type who, because he was weak, focused on other strengths and hunted for the best path to survival?
Interesting.
"I've got one."
"What?"
Rachel smiled as she spoke to the instructor beside her — Logan.
"The student I'm most looking forward to this time."
"Ron, huh?"
Logan had been just as startled watching Ron drop a golem in a single stroke, so he knew at once who she meant.
"Yeah. He's fun, that one."
It was precisely because he was weak that he drew the eye. How was this student named Ron going to survive from here? In a way, it was entertainment. Watching the polished excellence of the obviously gifted was far less enjoyable than watching the distinctive, desperate survival of someone who looked ready to break.
Shing!!
Crack!!
Out on the mountain range where the test continued, Ron ambushed golem after golem with careful precision, driving his blade cleanly through each core. The golems were slow, and both their offense and defense were honest and crude. Ambushing them was not difficult. His method made him slower than the other students, but the results were certain.
Before long the sun was sinking and the light of dusk began to pour across the slopes. The time limit for the test was running out.
That's nine.
Just one more and he would clear the expulsion line.
Perhaps because so many golems had already fallen, finding the remaining ones grew harder as time wore on.
And then.
Thud.
An unusually heavy footfall. A golem's footfall. Ron's head snapped toward the sound.
"Ah."
A sound halfway between a gasp and a groan slipped out of him on reflex.
Framed in his vision stood a golem of gray-brown stone, a practice sword gripped in its hand. Green light burned in its eyes. Even without dredging up knowledge from the original game, he could tell at a glance: the golem before him was on an entirely different level from every one he had taken down so far. The mere fact that a normally blunt construct was holding a sword was already anything but ordinary.
This was it. The strong golem Instructor Logan had mentioned.
"Ah… it's over."
"Honestly. All that thrashing to stay alive, and then this. Tch. What a shame."
A bitter taste settled in the mouths of the instructors who had been watching Ron with genuine interest. That golem was deployed in the latter half of the test specifically out of concern that still-green students might wash out. It was a golem prepared for the honor students — and last-place Ron had stumbled into it before he could even finish his count of ten.
From everything the instructors had seen of Ron's ability, he wouldn't manage an ambush against that thing, let alone an easy escape. Charging it head-on would be pure recklessness; he would lose, and lose one-sidedly. In short, this had to be the end.
A pity, but… it can't be helped.
Rachel swallowed her disappointment. He had been entertaining, but this student had not crossed the baseline the Griffin Knight Academy required. That meant he failed. Farewell, Ron Hazley.
FWOOSH!!
The golem's sword came sweeping in. A heavy blow. Blocking it with Ron's strength would be useless.
But in that instant, Ron's vision flashed with the image of the demon Maslo charging him down. How had his hand moved then?
Ssshk.
The swordsmanship he had glimpsed and unleashed in his Swordmaster state. That sensation raced up through his hand like an electric current. Instinct outran reason. A hand that had tasted the extreme of the art drove out fear and stray thought and simply moved.
Fssshh!
Silver lower-tier mana bloomed along the blade. The motion he had rehearsed countless times since the day he subjugated the demon Maslo. Mana control, distribution of force, the angle of the sword. A counter technique unfolding with precision against the enemy's attack.
Ron stepped forward and brought his sword up to meet the golem's strike.
KRAAANG!
For a fraction of a second the golem's blade slid along Ron's edge, then sprang away with a sharp metallic cry.
One of the knightly sword styles of the Escrad Empire.
Light Wing Sword — Opening Wing.
Oh, it work—! Ugh!
Before the thrill could settle, the hand gripping his sword rang with pain. Ron's brow clenched hard on one side. Compared to his Swordmaster state, his strength and technique were far too lacking; he hadn't fully bled off the golem's blow. Even so, it was enough to count as a success.
Thud!
Robbed of its balance, the golem toppled under its own weight.
"……!!"
Instructor Logan's eyes went wide. He leaned hard toward the screen showing Ron, staring intently.
"Ron, that kid…! Was that just Opening Wing…!?"
Opening Wing. A high-difficulty technique that could only be used after one had truly taken in the essence of the Light Wing Sword. A technique that even the celebrated geniuses among the first-years still struggled to pull off…
Imperfect though it was, that last-place student had just succeeded.
"Instructor Rachel, did you see that?"
"I did."
At some point, Rachel's mouth had curved into a full arc.
"Looks like the kid's got a sprout or two on him."