In an instant, they lost four fighters.
Including Victoria, who had to focus on healing, that made five—more than half their forces were now out of the battle.
But the situation wasn’t entirely against them.
Slash!
“Miss Luna! That was amazing!”
“Tch! Too shallow! Don’t let your guard down!”
Arrows, spells, magic bullets, and sword wounds.
One by one, injuries began accumulating across Daike’s body.
“P-Please come to your senses! We’re friends, remember? Best friends, even!”
“Will you please shut your mouth?! You’re only making him angrier!”
Every one of Daike’s attacks was quite literally a killing blow. He was putting his full strength behind each strike, leaving them with no way to block him.
However—
“Shield!”
CRAAACK!
“…!”
Even Daike was helpless against magic.
“You’re not the only one who’s improved since then!”
And so the exchange continued, with Yuridia slowly but steadily wearing Daike down through repeated uses of [Shield].
‘We clearly have the advantage.’
Then why—
“Why doesn’t it feel like we’re winning?”
The wounds covering Daike’s body continued to multiply, yet his momentum hadn’t diminished in the slightest.
Yuridia was once again reminded of just how incredible Zero was.
‘If Zero hadn’t been there, I would’ve had no choice but to fight him at the beginning of the semester.’
Facing that monster one-on-one? The mere thought made every hair on her body stand on end.
KABOOOM!!
At that moment, one of Rezé’s mana bullets detonated.
Daike had tried to use one of the forest’s trees as a shield, but his eyes widened.
RUMBLE—!!
The tree caught in the blast was vanishing without a trace.
In truth, the dense forest wasn’t the only reason Rezé had been unable to attack Daike until now.
Her first concern was that her allies might be caught in the powerful explosion. Her second was that she didn’t want to hurt another person.
Then why had the timid Rezé finally attacked him?
‘Th-That thing is a monster, so it’s an exceptionnnnn!!’
Since that wasn’t human, perhaps it was all right to kill it(?).
Daike’s monstrous strength had been more than enough to send Rezé into a panic. With her reason gone, she had launched the attack without hesitation.
“…!”
An attack that erased dozens of trees without leaving a trace.
Even Daike had no choice but to evade it.
He threw himself aside and rolled across the ground.
‘Now!’
Yuridia didn’t let the opportunity slip past her.
Daike might be the enemy, but she didn’t want to kill him. It would be enough to leave him incapable of fighting.
And the spell best suited for that situation was—
“Ice Needle!”
More than a dozen spikes of ice shot toward Daike.
Fwish-fwish-fwish!
“Urgh…!”
The ice spikes pierced several places across Daike’s body.
They had inflicted considerable damage, but Yuridia could only click her tongue.
‘Even in that position, he twisted his body at the last second to protect his vital points… This is absurd.’
Should she have used wind magic to sever one of his limbs instead? Would that have been the correct choice?
Without a word, Daike pulled the ice spikes from his shoulder and leg.
Blood streamed from the holes they left behind, but he didn’t seem to care in the slightest.
At that sight, Yuridia understood.
Even if she had cut off an arm or a leg, the result would have been the same.
“…Monster.”
“This is nothing compared to the wounds Lord Teron endured.”
“Then tell us what wounds he endured!”
“…”
“Argh! So your plan is to frustrate us to death, is that it? I never took you for the scheming type! Fine, then! We’ll both die together!”
“M-Miss Luna! Please calm down!”
Having finished treating Steve and the other injured children, Victoria joined them and wrapped her arms around Luna’s waist.
With Victoria back in the fight, Daike’s chances of victory had fallen even further.
“Mr. Daike, that’s enough. Let’s stop this here.”
“Indeed. If you push yourself any further, you may suffer permanent damage.”
“…I don’t care.”
Not as long as he could protect his friend.
“Let’s talk. If you explain the situation you and Mr. Teron are in, then perhaps—”
Had they assumed the conversation would continue?
Or had Daike’s grievous injuries caused them to relax?
Whatever the reason, all of them lowered their guard.
It was a fatal mistake.
Crackle—.
Smoke began rising from Daike’s leg.
At first, Yuridia wondered whether he had somehow caught fire. Then she realized what it was.
“A healing artifact!?”
“Everyone, watch—!”
Daike was already high in the air.
Yuridia, who had been trying to draw him into a conversation, had missed her casting window.
She couldn’t use [Shield]. All she could do was watch as Daike’s shadow grew larger beneath her.
CRAAACK!!
“Mr. Raymon!”
Raymon shoved Yuridia aside and took her place.
He sheathed his sword, then raised the scabbard with both hands.
The two swords crossed vertically. Just as everyone thought Raymon had blocked the attack with his unique evasive ability—
“U-Uwaaaaaagh!”
Raymon’s body collapsed.
Both of his legs had broken from the impact.
“I-It hurts! It huuuuurts!”
“Please hold still!”
Victoria scooped up Raymon as he rolled around crying in pain and immediately began treating him.
All she could do was heal.
For the first time in her life, Victoria understood what helplessness truly felt like.
Daike followed up with another swing, and Yuridia reacted at once.
“Shield!”
Thunk!
“!?”
The sound was far too light for one of Daike’s attacks. The barrier hadn’t even been scratched.
As Yuridia wondered what had happened, she spotted Daike’s back disappearing into the distance.
They had never been his target in the first place.
The most troublesome opponent on this battlefield was—
“Rezé! Watch out!”
“K-Kiiiiiiiiiiiiek!”
Rezé, who had been firing mana bullets like cannon shells.
‘I worked out the general direction she was hiding in from her last attack.’
The problem was that Rezé’s exceptional concealment made it impossible to pinpoint her exact location.
But that was enough.
Daike launched himself higher than ever before.
Daike’s Second Original Secret Art.
Sturzschlag.
RUMBLE—!!
The earth quite literally overturned.
Trees were ripped out by their roots and sent flying, while boulders shattered into chunks of stone that tumbled across the ground.
Standing amid the cloud of dust, Daike clicked his tongue loudly.
Two things displeased him.
The first was that the attack’s range was far narrower than Zero’s [Ring Annihilation Slash], which he had observed before.
The second was—
“…She escaped.”
He had failed to catch Rezé.
The moment she became the target of an attack, her [Survival Instinct] trait had activated.
She had successfully escaped before Daike’s strike could reach her.
The problem was that she could no longer rejoin this battlefield. That was the penalty of the [Survival Instinct] trait.
Of course, Daike knew none of this, so the possibility of an attack from behind continued to bother him.
“Phew…”
Luna breathed a sigh of relief. Daike’s reaction confirmed that Rezé had survived.
‘This isn’t looking good.’
Several of them had broken arms or legs, and even more had lost the will to fight.
“U-Uwaaah…! I need a little more time!”
Victoria was occupied with healing, and Rezé had fled.
That meant the only ones still capable of fighting were Yuridia and Luna.
Just the two of them.
Noticing Luna’s gaze, Yuridia spoke.
“We aren’t at a complete disadvantage. Mr. Daike is exhausted as well.”
She was right. The artifact had healed some of his injuries, but it couldn’t restore the blood he had already lost.
That much was obvious from the way he dragged one foot as he approached.
“Three hits. No… Two more should be enough to bring him down. If it’s a powerful attack, one might do it.”
The problem was that they needed someone to block Daike’s attacks.
And—
“If he ignores us and charges the others, some of them are definitely going to die.”
Fighting while protecting everyone would be difficult.
“Th-That is true.”
Luna thought for a moment before opening her mouth.
“How about we trap him and beat him down?”
“Ah! Of course. If we restrict his movement, he won’t be able to attack the wounded. I happen to have the perfect spell for that.”
[Electro Cage], a spell she had recently created.
Zero had destroyed it with ease, but only because Yuridia had made the mistake of trapping herself inside the cage with him.
If she trapped Luna and Daike together while casting magic from outside, they would gain a decisive advantage.
However—
“I don’t have much mana left. If I use a spell that large, I won’t be able to support you afterward.”
“That’s fine. I’ll take him down myself.”
“What!?”
Luna glared at her, and Yuridia desperately began explaining herself.
“I-I’m not underestimating you, Miss Luna. It’s only because your opponent is Mr. Daike.”
“…”
“It might be better if I support you with defensive magic while you fight—”
“You can’t protect everyone that way. This is our best option.”
Was it really their best option?
What if her poor judgment led to—
‘What if something happens to Miss Luna…?’
Yuridia squeezed her eyes shut at the horrifying thought.
Luna firmly took Yuridia’s cheeks in both hands, gently lowered her head, and forced their eyes to meet.
“Don’t you trust your friend?”
A friend.
She had called her a friend.
Luna had officially acknowledged her as a ‘friend.’ When Victoria’s jaw dropped in shock beside them, Yuridia felt as though she might float into the sky.
‘I-I need to calm down. Miss Luna’s life is at stake.’
Fighting, politics, grades, hierarchy, cliques.
The academy she had entered with such grand dreams was infested with a wretched culture.
Even those she had trusted as companions would readily betray her for the promise of a slightly greater reward.
And in this place, filled with beasts wearing human faces—
“What’s with all of you crowding together? I’ll bite every last one of you to death!”
She had met Luna.
A girl who paid no attention to what others thought and followed her own convictions.
Yes. She was a girl overflowing with the ‘pride’ Yuridia had only ever encountered in books.
‘It would be so much easier if she only cared about her own life.’
Why was she going so far as to risk it?
Was it because Zero had asked her to stop Daike?
If that was the reason, Yuridia didn’t want to help her.
“We have to knock some sense into him. Even someone like that is still our classmate, right?”
Luna gave her a broad smile.
…I see. It wasn’t because of Zero.
Luna simply wanted to stop her friend from going down the wrong path.
‘That’s right. This is who Miss Luna has always been.’
She was kind enough to look after even a rabid mutt that went around biting everyone.
That must have been why Yuridia had fallen for her so completely.
Yuridia bit down hard on her lip.
She had a duty to answer that resolve—Luna’s pride.
If she truly was Luna’s friend.
“Go, Miss Luna.”
“Thanks. Don’t worry. I’ll win.”
Luna strode toward Daike. Once Yuridia confirmed the distance between them, she cast her spell.
Electro Cage.
Crackle—!
An electrical field spread around the two of them.
A narrow yet spacious octagonal arena made of electricity.
A dueling ground meant for Luna and Daike alone.
“This reminds me of that day.”
The day Teron’s scheme had forced her into a duel with Daike.
She had suffered a crushing defeat and only survived because Zero had helped her.
But one thing was different this time.
“This time, I’m going to win.”
Luna’s eyes were deadly serious.
Daike didn’t mock her. Instead, he met her gaze directly.
“I won’t offer a pathetic excuse about losing because of my injuries.”
So give it everything you have.
“You can try.”
“If you’re capable of it.”
–TL Notes–
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Luna have open the Heroic path