0. The Entrance Examination
“...Huh?”
Feeling an inexplicable wave of unease, I took a step back.
Because beyond that wall, the Invisible Man should clearly have been lying defeated.
...But I couldn't smell him.
No matter how much I flicked my tongue, no matter how desperately I tried to catch a scent, nothing came.
True to his name, the Invisible Man had become utterly invisible—like a man turned transparent in every sense.
Only then did I finally understand.
How someone whose entire kit was invisibility and physical enhancement had managed to become an A+ Rank hero.
At will, he could erase every trace of anything attached to his body.
The blood flowing through his veins. The scent he gave off. His breathing, and every other small, telltale detail.
He was, quite literally, gone—as if nothing existed there at all.
This was bad.
In this state, I had no way of knowing where he was.
I felt cold sweat running down my back, and laughed at myself for being a sorry excuse for a snake beastkin.
Calm down.
Think calmly, and the answer was actually simple.
The Invisible Man would need to close the distance to knock me out, so he would come running to my position.
And since he'd judged that I had some trick of my own, he'd approach with caution.
Which meant all I had to do was predict which direction he would come from, and prepare for it.
If I were the Invisible Man.
From which direction would I move in to take me down?
It was simple. He'd be reluctant to approach from the front, where my tongue was flicking and scenting the air.
But a surprise attack from the side or above would be impractical for him too.
The Invisible Man subdued villains purely through physical prowess, after all.
He couldn't burst up from the ground, nor drive down from overhead.
“Then... behind me!”
“Correct, my friend!”
“...Huh?”
“Honestly, I'm impressed. You barely have any combat experience, yet you pinpointed my position.”
“You got me...!”
“I am Invisible! The invincible villain!”
With those words, the Invisible Man clamped a hand around my throat and laughed heartily.
I clawed desperately at his arm, trying to pry it away, but it was useless.
His strength was simply a step above mine.
On top of that, I had never experienced a situation like this before.
Not knowing how to handle a chokehold put me at a significant disadvantage.
Perhaps aware of that, the Invisible Man kept the praise coming.
It was good, he said, that I had calmly used the other students as bait to study his fighting style.
It was good, too, that I had tried to exploit every tool at my disposal against him.
One compliment after another kept coming.
Whether he praised me or not, I focused on my Manifestation and struggled to hold on.
But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't tear his arm away.
In the end, all I could do was endure until he gave up.
“...Hold on a moment, student.”
“Yes?”
“How are you still conscious? You should have blacked out by now!?”
“Teacher. Do you, by any chance, know what a glottis is?”
“...What's that?”
“It's a passage that connects to the lungs. To put it simply, it's an airway—a channel through which air flows.”
“...What?”
“And a snake can extend its glottis out of its mouth.”
“Which means...”
I gave a small snort of laughter and slammed my fist into the ground.
The Invisible Man's astonished reaction was so satisfying that I nearly forgot my plan for a moment there.
And this put him before a simple either-or.
Keep strangling me as I slammed into the wall over and over.
Or abandon the chokehold and switch to a straight brawl.
Naturally, there was no question which option he'd pick.
“Tch, no help for it!”
The Invisible Man released my throat at once and leapt back a good distance.
Seeing him drop his invisibility, he must have judged it pointless to keep it up.
It wasn't a bad call. After all, I could roughly pinpoint his location even without it.
But roughly wasn't the same as precisely.
If we fought the way we had just now, he would beat me in the end.
Which made this a misjudgment on his part.
“Seems my invisibility doesn't work on you, student. What a nuisance.”
“Is it appropriate for a teacher to call a student a nuisance?”
“A nuisance is a nuisance. What other word would you have me use?”
“...I suppose that's true.”
“And judging by that look on your face, you seem awfully eager to take down yours truly, the Invisible!”
He struck an exaggerated pose, then leveled his index finger at me.
“In that case, we'll just have to settle this right here and now!”
“You're a bit of a showman, aren't you?”
“Haha, isn't that a bit cold? Showmanship is the foundation of being a hero!”
“...I thought you were a villain.”
“Ah—forget that part, would you!”
With that, the Invisible Man began to run.
True to his usual habit, he seemed to be weaving in a zigzag pattern.
The running style he'd developed while invisible had carried over into his visible form.
And right now, the Invisible Man didn't seem to realize that his tell was showing.
Or rather—even if he had noticed, it wouldn't have mattered.
I broke into a cold sweat trying to gauge the Invisible Man's speed.
At that velocity, even knowing his pattern wouldn't make him easy to counter.
But it wasn't a speed that made outright resistance impossible, so I steeled my resolve.
If I could land just one solid, heavy blow.
Then this fight would be mine.
“...Well, no choice, then.”
Saying that, I pulled every last narcotic analgesic from my skirt pocket.
I stuffed them into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed, then waited.
A brain flooded with endorphins beyond its limit was already beginning to fray at the edges.
If I hadn't manifested the instant the painkillers hit, I would surely have lost my mind completely.
I'd have soiled myself senseless and ended up addicted to the pleasure for who knew how long.
But right now, it was fine.
I concentrated my Manifestation into my right arm and grinned savagely.
Muscle. Muscle that shouldn't exist. Muscle that must not exist. Muscle whose very existence was a burden—
Muscle.
Muscle.
More muscle.
It was flooding my right arm to bursting.
Of course, this was practically forcing my body to restructure itself.
So agony was guaranteed to follow.
The pain was so unbearable that without the painkillers, I would have been screaming.
But I endured it.
Weighing pleasure against agony on the scales of my mind, I held on.
Which meant that only one thing remained.
“Eat this!”
“That's the spirit, student!”
I swung my right hand with everything I had.
Whether my fist was clenched or open hardly mattered.
What mattered was that in that very instant, I felt something connect—like my hand had struck something solid.
But I couldn't come out unscathed either.
The moment I hit the Invisible Man, a violent agony tore through my flank.
He must have trusted his superior physical abilities and committed to attacking me even at the cost of taking a hit.
And that choice had paid off instantly.
“Gah—hk...!”
I was launched backward at a terrifying speed, smashing through several walls before crashing down.
My whole body hurt so much I could barely collect my thoughts.
Without the painkillers, I would certainly have passed out.
Really, Aunt Ailee's work is first-rate.
The endorphins scrambling my brain made me laugh out loud.
No—it was the only way I could bear it. I had to laugh.
“Invisible Man... you...!”
“Haha... I am... Invisible...! Invincible... in all the world...!”
The Invisible Man was still standing upright.
But I could tell something was very wrong with him.
Showmanship.
A razor-thin defeat.
He wanted to stage that moment, so he forced himself to stay on his feet.
I knew it the instant he collapsed—thumbs raised high, a perfect smile frozen on his face.
I watched for a while as a protective barrier enveloped the Invisible Man, then burst out laughing all over again.
But the laughter soon turned into moans.
The moment the painkillers wore off, the incoming pain was no joke.
I hastily released my Manifestation, but that didn't make the pain vanish.
In the end, I crumpled to the ground as well.
Reflexively, I forced my mouth open.
Clamping your jaw shut from agony could shatter your teeth—a lesson drilled into me back in my specimen days.
Fortunately, the pain didn't last too long.
After several hellish minutes, I could finally stagger to my feet and move.
Having dragged myself upright, I watched the world around me begin to change.
The maze was dissolving, little by little.
And now open fields and trees were coming into view.
How much mastery of magic did it take to stage something like this?
I was marveling at the spectacle when I collapsed face-first into the dirt yet again.
...Naturally. It would have been stranger if I could move properly after forcing a Manifestation like that.
I'd torn my muscle fibers apart into thread-thin strands and woven them back together however I pleased, after all.
My right arm throbbed so badly that tears were welling up in my eyes.
“Oh my, is something the matter?”
“Ah!?”
“No need to be so startled. The entrance exam is over, and I've come to congratulate the winner.”
I stared blankly at the woman.
...She was the teacher who had announced the start of the entrance exam back in the auditorium.
And judging by what she'd just said, she seemed to have quite the mischievous streak.
“...You're not about to prank me, are you?”
That was the first thing out of my mouth.
To shut down any possible pranks before they could start, of course.
“Mm, mm. Not at all. I'm the Vice Principal of this academy. Surely someone in my position wouldn't stoop to pranks?”
“...If you say so.”
“I'm Jang Mi-na. A pleasure to meet you, student. And...”
“...Huh?”
Green light shimmered from Jang Mi-na's hand, and the pain in my right arm vanished as if it had never been.
I felt at my arm in a daze, and only then noticed my ruined uniform.
...When I'd manifested so violently, my arm must have swollen up, and the aftermath had shredded the right sleeve to ribbons.
“Don't worry about that either, student.”
“...Huh?”
I stared blankly as my uniform knit itself back to pristine condition.
So this was... magic...
Something unknowable, beyond the reach of science.
And no ordinary magic, either—this was magic of staggering scale.
Jang Mi-na, for her part, smiled as though it were nothing at all.
“I'm an Archmage, you see. So even this much is easy for me.”
“Th-thank you.”
“And you can walk, yes?”
“What? Yes.”
“Students who defeated a villain in the entrance exam... have to give a speech in the auditorium.”
“...Oh.”
For a moment, I regretted defeating the Invisible Man.
It goes without saying that public speaking was nowhere among my talents.