The Art of Ruin
While she was alive. Even though she had apologized and spoken as she did earlier, Jena was, to be honest, a bit wounded in her pride. 'I am a 3rd-grade knight, yet I am being told to engage in a duel of life and death with someone who only just became a 4th-grade knight. Isn't this treatment a bit too much?' It wasn't about Count Dust's skill, but the Young Duke's reaction. She hadn't thought him the type, but was the Young Duke a man who held discriminatory views that even old men these days didn't dare to harbor? If so, this was an insult to her, someone who had lived her entire life as a knight. 'The problem is... I have no choice but to endure that insult.' The Young Duke, who couldn't even use mana, let alone hold a rank, was not an opponent she could defeat even now. When she had been hiding and watching earlier, the sight of him pinning the charging, full-force Count Dust to the ground with his bare hands, without moving a single step, had evoked something beyond awe—it had evoked terror.
-Clang!!
"!"
While she was lost in such thoughts, Leng's sword struck inward. Unlike the Young Duke, Count Dust was a proper knight. He did not look down on her, and as if acknowledging that he was the underdog, he launched a preemptive strike without hesitation.
-Clang! Clang!! Clang!!
Their sturdy swords collided repeatedly. Yes. This was what a knight, what swordsmanship, was. It wasn't the bizarre and terrifying death wielded by the Young Duke, but the clashing of human techniques with all one's heart and soul. Jena thought this as she crossed swords with Dust. However.
-Clang!! Clang! Clang, Clang!!
"……!!"
However, she had overlooked something. Whose knight Leng was. Who was training him. And who he had been getting beaten up by lately.
"Wai...!?"
Jena caught her own lips, stopping herself from shouting "Wait." Leng's sword was getting faster. The thrusts were particularly threatening. But the problem wasn't the speed.
'This is...!!'
As the number of trajectories increased, as the thrusts repeated, and as the opponent perfectly solidified his own distance, she realized: 'I can't attack!?'
Every time she tried to change her stance or position to transition into a counterattack, his thrusts—as if he could see the future—would strike first, blocking the trajectory of her sword and the movement of her center of gravity. He wouldn't let her attack. He wouldn't let her transition. It was as if...
'I'm being hunted!'
Clearly, she had the advantage in every aspect. But from the moment she conceded the first strike, Jena hadn't been able to take a counterattacking stance even once. It was as if a hunter had shot an arrow and released hounds to make their prey die of exhaustion. A sword that allowed neither resistance, nor escape, nor counterattack, but simply controlled the situation with sticky, persistent precision. In this strange swordsmanship of Leng's, Jena began to feel the 'scent' of the Young Duke.
'I'm going to lose? Me, a 3rd-grade knight? Without even being able to counterattack!? Seven more? No, five...!!!'
-Crack!!
"Ah...?"
Jena had seen her own defeat five moves ahead. But ridiculously, even her reading of the moves was wrong. What broke before her was not her spirit, but the sword she had been holding—the sword that had been taking blow after blow because she couldn't attack or flee. Two moves earlier than her prediction, her weapon had been destroyed.
'I'm going to... lose an eye.'
And the broken blade was flying slowly, like a flash of life before death, toward the space between her eyebrows. But this was merely her perceiving the split-second of that flash. Once real time resumed, no matter which way she twisted her neck to dodge, the broken blade would pierce her other eye.
'T-to think it would end like this...'
Just as the Young Duke had said, she had shamelessly crossed the line to stalk him, and without knowing shame, she had asked for the secret to his strength. It seemed that because she had been greedy and crossed the line, she had reached an end where she would lose an eye.
"Ugh...!!"
Passing through a moment filled only with regret, she twisted her neck, prepared to sacrifice her left eye. And what she heard was the cold sound of iron shards cutting flesh.
"......?"
Yet, strangely, she felt no pain. Had she not only lost her eye, but had it pierced so deeply that she died instantly? Even so, she didn't feel like she had committed a crime worthy of death, so what kind of ending was this...
"Sir Jena! Are you alright!?"
"Huh?"
She felt a slightly damp and hot body temperature pressed against her chest and waist. And the brown-haired man who had been standing there, blocking her left eye with his hand, had approached her incredibly close before she knew it.
"C-Count Dust?"
"Wow. I was so surprised. I mean, didn't your sword suddenly break? That was truly dangerous."
Jena, who had turned her head quickly from their close proximity, had her waist held by him so she wouldn't fall. As he lowered the hand that had been blocking her vision, the broken blade was deeply embedded in his palm. And the moment she saw that, Jena understood. The moment he saw her sword break during the thrust, Leng had lunged forward with all his might, catching the shards without even caring that the blade was piercing his hand.
"Ah...? Y-your hand!!"
"Hmm? Oh. It's fine. This much is just a scratch..."
"No! That's a knight's palm!! What if you damaged a nerve!! Count Dust! W-wait a moment!! I carry emergency medicine with me...!!"
Jena, her face flushed even over her copper-toned skin, was flustered and on the verge of tears. She pulled out a top-tier emergency medicine from her pocket, one provided to only a select few in the Royal Knights.
"Oh, what do I do. What do I do..."
"Ahaha... I'm really fine..."
Jena, with a tearful face, carefully pulled the sword shards out of Leng's hand one by one and applied the medicine to the wounds; she looked less like a tough knight and more like a woman in love.
"It's almost summer, but because of the Young Duke, spring has arrived," the Princess giggled. And Carix thought, 'Did Leng come to the Academy to find love?' I clearly brought him here by force, so it's strange that women keep clinging to Leng.
*****
Because of Leng, who had stupidly injured his hand, the training schedule I had gone to great lengths to set up had come to a halt.
"Leng. The thing I asked you to investigate before?"
"It is here."
Then it was time to do what needed to be done. The documents Leng brought were the results of my investigation into the magic professors I had been watching while fulfilling my attendance requirements over the past few weeks. This time, I intended to catch and crush the murderer who had killed my older brother and remained at large.
"Hmm. They're all trash, but the targets are these three."
"Uh... may I ask the reason?"
"Think about it yourself... No. Look here. Among the information you gathered, there are three professors capable of polymorphing. Two of them are trash with no character, but they are both close to retirement age, so they are more interested in side money than promotions or power gained through direct effort."
"Both of them only invest and do business, and are actually neglecting their professorial duties. One of them even took a six-month vacation last year. They are just people whose hearts are no longer in the Academy."
"Ah! But this one is very close to the Dean. In other words, they would do anything if their superior ordered it for the sake of their own protection and status advancement?"
"Not a bad perspective, but a little lacking. 75 points."
"Tsk. I was quite confident this time!"
His genuinely disappointed expression was somewhat amusing.
"To supplement the rest, you just need to look at the connection between the Dean and the professor you investigated."
"Connection... connection? Research?"
"Yes. These four published a joint research paper last year: [Installation of Mass-Destruction Magic Circles on the Demon Beast Front]. But it failed miserably at last year's presentation. Because the moment this magic circle was installed on the front lines, not only would humanity be unable to push the front lines any further, but the cost of maintenance was a stupid method that ground away the 'active-duty lifespan' of mages capable of mana training."
As a result, these four were sitting on a mountain of invisible debt after years of research ended in total failure. No, they should have been sitting on it.
"It's money again."
"It's money. Money is what moves humans most easily. You've used the Silver Teeth, so you know."
Yet, strangely, these four hadn't gone bankrupt, nor had they received any recovery support from the Academy. It was true that a professor's salary was high, but compared to the investment money they had blown, it was a drop in the bucket.
"Then I will gather information on the relatives of these four..."
"No. Let's not do that. I messed up once because of the Princess, so I thought I should change my methods."
In reality, I hadn't been able to kill the wives and daughters of the Marquis of the border region I killed that day, or the idiots who had attacked the Royal Knights and met their end, right in front of their eyes. My father, having received my letter, found evidence that they were involved in my brother's death and ruined their entire family, but I didn't have the money to hire the Silver Teeth to kill them either. In the end, the family survived, and the threat remained somewhere. So, I had no intention of repeating the same failure.
"This time, more thoroughly. I'll make them beg me to kill them themselves."
"What kind of method are you planning to use to say something like that?"
The method of killing isn't limited to kidnapping, assassination, or using one's own hands. The ways to kill someone without even seeing their face are truly endless.
"Take this letter to the Silver Teeth. Tell them this isn't an assassination and no one on their side will die, so the payment will be made afterward. Instead, tell them I'll pay five times the market rate."
"Pardon?"
And while I'm at it, I should recover my empty bank account as well.
****
Over the past few days, a strange rumor had begun to circulate at the Academy.
"Did you hear that?"
"You mean about Professor Beerson?"
"Yes! Isn't it truly terrifying?"
"Exactly. Why on earth is the Academy still keeping such a person?"
Current 3rd-year Dean, Professor Beerson. The rumor was that in the [Installation of Mass-Destruction Magic Circles on the Demon Beast Front] proof experiment he presented as joint research last year, he had used students capable of mana training as consumables and quietly disposed of them to avoid being caught.
"This is a disaster!!"
"Professor Beerson! What on earth is this situation!?"
"You said we wouldn't be caught!"
And naturally, the names of the other three professors who had co-published it began to be mentioned, and they were flustered.
"Everyone, calm down. It's just a rumor floating around. The names of the missing students are also completely different from those we actually used in the experiment."
Of course, Carix, who had created this situation through the Silver Teeth, didn't know the truth. He had no intention of finding the hidden truth in the first place. He had simply used the strategy used by the bipedal beasts called [Journalistic Trash] in the 21st century: "Isn't this right? If not, whatever lol." He was using the names of 'students capable of mana training' who had been quietly expelled for causing incidents at the Academy, or who had returned home because they couldn't afford tuition, or who had truly gone missing but had nothing to do with the professors, to drive them into a corner.
"B-but still!"
"Doesn't this mean someone is digging into the experiments we did at the time?"
"It's truly dangerous. If we get caught like this...!!"
One judged the probability to be over 99 percent. Those who make magic that uses others as materials are, in the end, proving themselves to have used people as research materials. And that judgment was generally correct; in reality, the professors were being cornered by a truth only they knew. However, unlike the regular professors who couldn't be considered experienced, the old professor and Dean Beerson, who had repeated such stupid things for many years, scoffed as if this wasn't his first time experiencing such a thing.
"When something like this happens, traces always remain. In the end, you can't shut everyone's mouth. And that doesn't just apply to us."
Even excluding the failed research presentation that would have left him in debt, Beerson was actually a mage who had more failures than successes. And every time that happened, such scandals would come sooner or later, and he had solved them.
"If we find the source of this rumor, it will be solved quickly."
Always by finding the source of the rumor and erasing it. The opponents who spread such rumors were always weaker than him.
*****
Two days later. The old professor Beerson, who had experienced such things many times over a long period and prided himself on having solved them many times, did not know. The fact that the world somewhere rotated much faster than he could move.
"W-what is this..."
Because he had only ever dealt with the socially weak, he didn't know how uncontrollable things could become when someone stronger than him decided to commit to "If not, whatever." He didn't know that the luxury of investigating his opponent would never return.
"Professor Beerson!!!"
"I-it's even starting to appear in the newspapers!! What on earth are we going to do about this...!!!"
The identities of the three regular professors were written in a way that wasn't hard to infer, and Beerson's real name was written and began to spread in the newspapers. That he had kidnapped students for illegal clinical experiments and abandoned their bodies somewhere in the mountains behind the Academy. And what was even more frightening was the fact that it wasn't ending with the work related to the previous research.
"My wife found out about my affair! My father-in-law says he's going to divorce me from my wife...!!"
"Aaaargh! No! It's not true! That was my research!! That girl was trying to steal my research! That was my thesis!!"
"Professor Beerson, how are you going to take responsibility for this? Rumors are spreading that I'm the one who embezzled research funds three years ago. You said you'd take care of it yourself!"
If you have boiled the main ingredient called lies, the next is the spice called truth. Especially for their positions that had already begun to shake, those who cut ties with them multiplied rapidly. At first, it was just suspicion of student disappearances. But humans who caught the scent began to throw new firewood themselves. And they completed the cooking on their own, saying things like, "I didn't know they were that kind of person," "I thought they were good people," or "I was deceived too."
"Professor Beerson. This is a Royal order. We have received intelligence that the information that your sons are veterans of the Demon Beast Front was fabricated by your own hand."
"Uh...? What are you talking about!? My sons are all definitely veterans of the front line!!"
Attacking with lies. "A report has come in that the professor's younger brother worships heresy."
"What? N-no! What does my brother, whom I haven't met in over 15 years, have to do with me...!!"
Tormenting with family. "A report has come in that your parents committed tax evasion through you."
"T-tax evasion? I don't know! I don't know anything about that!"
Driving them with the money they loved so much. Military service corruption. Tax evasion. Starting a witch hunt without evidence to tear their lives apart from the roots. Thoroughly, to the point where they couldn't even borrow the strength of their families.
"This makes no sense. I-it's just one failed research project, it shouldn't have snowballed this much. S-someone! Someone is manipulating this from behind!!"
Beerson screamed belatedly that there was a mastermind behind this situation, but no one listened to him. Because all sorts of lies and truths were already intertwined, breaking the vessel that was his life.
"I will announce the Academy Board's judgment on Dean Professor Beerson and the three professors under him. We have unanimously adopted your expulsion and permanent disbarment. We can no longer harbor you."
"D-don't be ridiculous! The trial hasn't even started yet, and it hasn't been confirmed that I'm a criminal!! I, I gave you people so much money! You can't do this to me!"
"Throw them out."
"Aaaargh!! No! Nooo!"
Thus, the four professors were expelled from the Academy in less than a month.
"Killing is simple," Carix muttered, his cold gaze watching them leave the Academy. "What's important is how many painful ways you can make them lose everything while they are still alive."
He hadn't even started yet.