I Hate Pain
I hate pain. Sure, I could endure it if I had to, but who in the world actually enjoys hurting? No matter how high your pain tolerance or threshold might be. As long as you're human, pain is something you'll naturally want to avoid.
“But if I don't do it like this, I can't see any chance of winning...”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Then I felt the immense amount of mana circulating inside my body. An ocean of mana. The nuclear fusion reactor burning hot at my heart never stopped producing mana, constantly replenishing that vast sea.
Honestly, it'd probably be better to just pull out the sun or surrender rather than do this, but at this point it wasn't really about winning anymore. It was closer to a battle of pride. So.
I held my breath and drew up every last drop of mana flowing through my body in a single instant. The mana that had only existed inside me began to permeate my entire being, endlessly strengthening my body. Body reinforcement—the absolute basics of the basics for espers.
Even someone like me, who couldn't create so much as a barrier let alone proper magic, could use this technique. Its principle was simple: pour mana in, and the body gets stronger. Of course, trying to reinforce beyond a certain level was ridiculously inefficient, so most people who specialized in body reinforcement usually learned proper body-strengthening spells or close-combat techniques. Still, body reinforcement had one unique merit.
It came with side effects, but theoretically, if you had infinite mana, you could destroy a planet with a single strike.
But my freakish mana supply made that theoretical possibility somewhat realistic.
“Ughhh...”
My entire body flushed bright red as steam began rising from me. The technique looked eerily similar to that one move from a famous pirate manga, but the scale was on a completely different level.
Feeling the boiling power surge through me, I quickly closed the distance and dove beneath Dana. In terms of speed alone... it felt like I'd gotten thirty to forty times faster than before.
Anyone watching would probably scream about what kind of insane reinforcement multiplier this was, but if I had to put the amount of mana I was burning through into concrete terms, it'd be like running dozens to hundreds of nuclear power plants simultaneously just to keep up with the consumption rate. The only reason I could even manage it was because of all the mana I'd stockpiled since entering the academy. Even my nuclear fusion reactor couldn't keep up with this kind of expenditure on its own.
But the results were just as decisive.
“Ugh...!”
Dana, who had barely blocked my punch, let out a groan as she stared at both her arms. Even though she'd wrapped them in as much mana as possible, she couldn't completely absorb the impact and had suffered fractures.
“Ahaha... Miss Dana? How about you just surrender?”
“Don't say ridiculous things, Plea.”
Tsk... Even after breaking both her arms with the first hit, her fighting spirit was still completely intact. Of course I hadn't expected her to lose her will to fight from a single blow, but she looked way too fine. If things kept going like this, it was obviously going to turn into a war of attrition...
I bit my lip. This body reinforcement couldn't be maintained for long. It was only natural for techniques that dramatically boosted combat power to come with time limits. This was no exception. No matter how much mana I'd saved up, the rate of consumption right now was hard for even me to endure. Even if I poured out every ounce of my mana, the absolute limit was about twenty minutes. And considering the side effects... I wasn't even sure I'd last ten.
There was no point wasting time thinking about it anymore. I pressed the attack, driving Dana back with relentless momentum. She seemed to adapt to my sudden change in tactics, stopping her barrage of arrows and instead using all sorts of trap magic to hinder my movements.
She'd create steam to block my vision or raise and lower the dirt beneath my feet to throw off my footing, making my movements incredibly awkward. And whenever I seemed to stumble, she'd immediately fire off a high-powered technique she'd prepared in advance. As a result, I couldn't easily overpower her either.
We clashed endlessly within moments split into fractions of a second. And the first one to reach their limit was me.
-Crack.
A sickening sound of bones twisting came from my clenched fist. The power drained from the punch I was about to throw.
“Ah.”
The side effect I'd desperately hoped would come a little later had finally arrived. A technique that multiplied physical abilities dozens of times naturally required that much mana to be infused into the body. But a human body isn't that resilient. Even though my naturally mana-rich constitution let me endure far better than others, there was still a limit. Just like how even the world's number one competitive eater couldn't stuff an entire elephant into their stomach, there was no way a body could remain unharmed after being pumped full of enough mana to sustain an entire nation.
The amount of time I could maintain body reinforcement now was at most a few dozen seconds. Any longer and I'd definitely suffer permanent damage.
But Dana knew that too, which was why she was desperately forcing a battle of attrition. That left only one answer.
'Lose everything, or take everything.'
In short, it was a gamble.
I planted strength in my legs and charged straight into Dana's embrace. Naturally, she wasn't going to let me get close so easily and immediately cast magic to bind my feet, but...
“Agh!”
I took the spells head-on with my body and charged forward like a brute. Damn it... The spells had been designed with my enhanced physical abilities in mind, so taking them directly hurt like hell. My legs nearly gave out and I almost fell right then and there. Almost.
That was it. My body was reinforced enough to withstand Dana's magic, so even after taking direct hits I could keep charging forward. Before I knew it, I was right in front of her nose.
The distance needed to make my gamble had been secured. Dana, who had been running away because she didn't want to gamble, was now trapped with nowhere to run. Like it or not, she was now forced to take the bet.
“Ah, got caught...”
“You can't run anymore.”
If she tried to escape from this range, she'd just get hit and sent flying. Dana frowned and prepared to block my attack.
“Haaap!”
With a light battle cry, my right arm shot toward Dana. My fist, accelerated to its absolute limit, flew straight at her abdomen.
-Thud.
“Got it!”
A small hexagonal barrier had appeared over Dana's lower abdomen at some point.
“Hehehe, so this means I win?”
Dana let out a sinister little giggle and flashed a bright smile, but I just frowned and stuck my tongue out at her. What? This means you win? Aren't you underestimating me a little too much?
“It's the opposite.”
“What?”
“I said I won.”
Avoiding Dana's gaze—which clearly said she had no idea what I was talking about—I focused mana into the fist I'd just thrown.
-Vrrrrrm.
An overwhelming amount of condensed mana created a vibration that rang in my ears. I unleashed a technique from the past once more.
“Mana Discharge.”
“...!”
Dana's expression twisted noticeably as her mana fluctuated, but her judgment had come far too late. The massive amount of mana that could have maintained my body reinforcement for another five minutes surged out through my right arm as a medium. Dana's perfectly hexagonal barrier shattered into pieces as if its strength had been meaningless.
“Kehek!”
Blood-mixed spit flew from Dana's mouth. The mana discharge that had struck her directly sent her flying all the way to the edge of the room.
With a loud bang!, Dana slammed into the wall. She slid down and sprawled out in the shape of a 大, apparently unconscious. For a second I wondered if I'd killed her, but even if I'd let my guard down, she was one of the beings at the peak of this nation. Her chest was still rising and falling with breath, so I let out a sigh of relief and collapsed right where I stood.
“Haaaa... I barely won...”
That really was by the skin of your teeth.
“Yeah, I know...”
Even in the middle of that fierce battle, this brooch somehow didn't break... I stroked the brooch from which the director's voice was coming and replied.
“If Dana had really tried to win thoroughly, I probably would've lost.”
If it had been an all-out fight with the sun available, maybe things would've been different, but in this battle where both sides were limiting their full power, the more experienced fighter held the advantage. But Dana had been so certain of her victory when she blocked my final attack with that barrier. That certainty became arrogance, and ultimately led to her letting her guard down.
You're right. If Dana had predicted a follow-up and deployed her barrier accordingly, she might have been able to deflect your Mana Discharge. But even so, the winner is still you. The result doesn't change.
“That's true. There's nothing more pointless than saying 'what if I had done this instead...'”
No matter what tricks Dana might have had up her sleeve, the fact remained that Dana had lost and I had won. That was the end of the story.
I savored the joy of victory for the first time in a while, stretching both arms high into the air.
“Gyaack!”
The excruciating pain shooting through my right arm made tears spring to my eyes as I clutched the throbbing limb.
Are you injured?
“Yeah... I already pushed my body to its limit and then slammed that much mana discharge into it. There's no way it'd be fine.”
It won't leave any permanent disability, will it?
The director's suddenly serious tone made me chuckle as I answered.
“It's not that bad. If I just wear a cast for about two weeks, it'll heal on its own.”
That's a relief.
“By the way, Dana looks surprisingly fine...”
That's because Dana only took internal injuries. Most of your damage is external, so it's more noticeable. If you only look at the wounds themselves, you're both about the same. That Dana... even though she's one of the 5 Greats, she still hasn't fixed that habit of letting her guard down. Tsk tsk...
“Hehe, yeah. I hope people don't just look at the injuries and assume Dana won.”