Ch. 22

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Even though Professor Anna announced the start, Luna simply stood still in place.

She was merely radiating a gloomy air, though in a somewhat different way than Aden had.

Just then, Lewin, standing across from her, pulled a small pouch from her clothes and began tossing something forward.

"Grow!"

The moment Luna's mana touched what had been thrown, something rapidly grew and quickly took on an enormous shape.

[Magic Bean Sprouts]

"Whoa..."

Five giant bean sprouts, as if alive, aimed their glossy, yellow heads at the enemy.

Whenever Lewin fought monstrous beasts on the Northern continent, since the terrain there was mostly forest, she typically dealt with enemies by rapidly accelerating the growth of the surrounding plant life.

But since there wasn't a single plant here in this bare open field, I supposed she'd simply grown bean sprouts she'd already been carrying on hand instead.

Wait, is it just me who finds that funny?

Bean sprouts, of all things, neither thick-stemmed nor particularly intimidating looking.

"Ohh, to think she could grow them that large...!"

"I've never seen Nature-attribute magic before!"

"Nature-attribute magic is a rare attribute to begin with. She's probably the only Nature-attribute mage currently enrolled at the academy."

Looking around at this unbelievable sight, it really did seem like I was the only one who found giant moving bean sprouts funny.

I supposed Nature-attribute mages really were rare, valuable talents.

Now that I thought about it, even before the regression, I'd only ever heard about a few by reputation; Lewin was one of maybe one or two I'd actually seen in person.

"Ahem, ahem!"

As chatter about her spread nearby, Lewin, apparently secretly pleased, was visibly straining to hold back the corners of her mouth from curling upward.

Her ears fluttering was just so her.

"Aria."

"Hm...? What?"

"Is this the first time you've seen Nature-attribute magic too?"

"Yeah! Honestly, even the common attributes were something I only ever got to see once I came to the academy!"

Ah, right.

She'd been a girl from a rural backwater too.

"Aria, do you happen to know anything about Nature-attribute magic?"

"Well, there was a piece in last month's academic journal published by the Tower about the mysteries of Nature-attribute magic..."

"No, not like that, just simply."

"Simply? Hmm... while most other magic focuses on formula and shape, Nature-attribute magic focuses on control."

"Control?"

"Right. Like what we just saw, extremely accelerating the growth of a plant's body and then controlling the grown plant so it can be guided into combat."

"Oh... then why are Nature-attribute mages so rare?"

"Because innate mana is what accelerates plant growth, so if you aren't born with that particular kind of mana, you simply can't use Nature-attribute magic in the first place. You have to be born with it to use magic like that."

'Hmm... innate mana, huh...'

I found myself wondering if something like a Mana Stone's inherent nature might exist in people too.

Thinking about it, even among people, some show talent for the Fire-attribute while others show talent for the water attribute.

Maybe this could be a useful clue to keep in mind when enchanting the human body.

"Move!"

Just as I was starting to feel the need to think more carefully about enchantment, at Lewin's command, the five strands of bean sprouts began moving like snakes.

I let out an involuntary sigh watching the (supposedly) valiant bean sprouts wriggling along.

"The number. Means nothing."

Just then, amid the bizarre sight of the bean sprouts moving, Luna's voice rang out quietly.

Along with that calm but heavy voice, I began to feel a sensation like my heart being squeezed tight.

"Ngh!"

"Ugh! My heart!"

I wasn't the only one who'd felt it; everyone was groaning, complaining of a similar pain.

But just as everyone was puzzled by this sudden, shared pain, I found myself shocked for an entirely different reason.

[Presence]

Two massive characters filling the entire open field.

The lettering was overwhelmingly larger than any spell I'd seen up until now.

But it wasn't just the size that had me shocked.

Presence.

It was the term used broadly for the innate energy a person was born with, or the energy they'd cultivated through hard-won effort.

Ordinarily, it referred to the release of a person's own inherent energy, and strictly speaking, it belonged less to the domain of mana and more to the domain of mental fortitude.

Which was why, according to conventional wisdom, only someone who'd been pushed into an extreme situation beyond what most people could bear could ever release it at all.

And since the presence that formed also varied depending on the circumstances someone had lived through and their own disposition, the Tower Master's, Marey's, and my own presence could each carry entirely different qualities.

But the Presence Luna had just generated was overwhelmingly different from an ordinary person's presence.

"Oho, this is interesting."

Even Marey, who'd been quietly watching from the sidelines, looked genuinely impressed.

What mattered here was that this wasn't a properly cultivated Presence in the conventional sense, but one made purely from mana pouring straight out of her physical body.

Whether it was intentional or something that had simply formed without her meaning to, even that much was unclear, and Luna herself remained utterly composed throughout.

With my own level of knowledge, I couldn't even begin to understand how something like this was possible.

The Presence overwhelming the entire area apparently wasn't limited to affecting people alone; even as she approached, the bean sprouts merely twitched and couldn't move at all.

"I will destroy it!"

And then, along with her cavernous voice, an enormous burst of mana began exploding violently from her right arm.

[Colossal Force]

The name given to the storm of mana that towering burst had created was Colossal Force.

The mana distortion originating from her upper arm amplified through her forearm before being unleashed all at once through a single thrown punch.

KABOOOOM!

A clean, straight punch flew toward the bean sprouts.

All five bean sprout friends vanished without a trace, and the ground where they'd been rooted split apart into multiple fissures in an instant.

She'd clearly just thrown a punch, yet the ground didn't just crack, it actually erupted upward.

I found myself wondering if it was even fair to call that a "punch" anymore.

A shockwave? A bomb?

Either of those names felt more fitting, honestly.

"Hic!"

All that could be heard was the hiccup of a thoroughly shocked Lewin, stunned by the terrifying result.

As I'd worried, Lewin glanced back and forth between the spot where the bean sprouts used to be and Luna a few times, and her eyes soon welled up with tears.

It had, quite literally, been an act of pure violence.

For someone as gentle as her, it must have brought on a considerable amount of fear.

Luna's face might well end up appearing in her nightmares.

"I-I surrender! It's too... too scary... waaaah!"

Lewin promptly collapsed to the ground and burst into tears.

Maybe because of her plump cheeks.

I felt a pang of pity, but I also found myself wanting to give her tear-flushed, rosy cheeks a little pinch.

"To think there was someone like this! I need to fight her myself right now, mmph mmph!"

"Calm down, Professor Anna."

At Luna's tremendous strike, Professor Anna's eyes had lit up and she'd twitched, half-drawing her sword, but Marey quickly restrained her.

"What just happened?"

"...Is this a dream?"

"What did I just witness?"

Since the destructive power she'd unleashed was beyond imagination, the surrounding reactions were, without exception, all equally bewildered.

Understandably so.

Even I hadn't expected her to be this powerful, honestly.

That comment about getting hit and dying hadn't apparently been mere bravado after all.

"Ahem, ahem... the winner of this match is Luna Delsia!"

Anna, having barely calmed down thanks to Marey's restraint, declared the winner, but everyone nearby still wore equally bewildered expressions.

It was a clear demonstration that even admiration required some degree of understanding to actually feel.

The only thing the students seemed able to grasp with any certainty was that she was absolutely not on the level of an ordinary student.

The moment the match ended, she suddenly began glaring at me with that terrifying gaze again.

Why does she keep looking at me like that?

Or wait, maybe she's just looking normally, and I'm just startled?

Unable to figure out what it meant at all, I tried my best to avoid Luna's gaze, and Aria, poking me in the side, spoke up.

"B-Benjamin... she's glaring at us again? Did we do something wrong?"

The more terrifyingly Luna glared, the more Aria trembled and pressed herself closer to me.

And every time she did that, Luna's expression grew visibly more hostile, right on cue.

Wondering if this was the cause, I was in the middle of a small tussle pushing Aria's clinging arm away when I overheard some Magic Department students talking off to one side.

"But we've already lost four out of five matches, what's going to happen to us?"

"Haah... yeah, seriously... but what's Professor Marey writing over there?"

"Hey, you go ask her."

"No way! You go ask her!"

"Let's do rock, paper, scissors!"

A few students, each trying to push the task onto someone else, launched into a quick, high-stakes game of rock, paper, scissors.

In the end, the one student who'd lost every round approached Marey, who was still writing something, with a face like a corpse, and asked.

"P-Professor... what exactly are you writing right now?"

At the student's question, Marey lifted her head and gave a slow sweep of her gaze across every Magic Department student.

Then, with a mouth stretched wide in a grin, she spoke, clearly intending for everyone to hear.

"Ah, this is a letter I'll be sending to your families."

"A letter... to our families?"

"That's right. At the very least, it seems only polite to let them know their children have died."

At her answer, Lewin, who'd just barely managed to stop crying, immediately welled up with tears once again.

"P-Professor!"

"I'll work hard and definitely win next time! So please...!"

At the student's desperate, tearful plea, Marey paused for a moment, glanced at me, and then broke into that same rotten smile once more.

"Well, if you can win at least one match, then I won't need to send this letter after all."

At her words, every single student's head snapped toward me at once.

"...What are you looking at?"

I had absolutely no idea what this damned old hag was after.

I couldn't tell if she was mistaking me for some kind of Black Wildcat, wanting to see my sword skill, or genuinely wanting to confirm the ability a pure Magic Department student ought to have.

"Maybe both?"

Even at my small, disconnected mutter, Marey nodded as if she'd understood exactly what I meant.

To begin with, I had planned to demonstrate a certain level of ability, enough that the Magic Department kids wouldn't even think of trying anything with me.

But that had strictly been about magic; I'd had no intention whatsoever of using swordsmanship.

And with things having taken a strange turn, forcing me to face a knight instead of a mage, I wouldn't even be able to use residual mana to cast spells.

I briefly considered whether it was even okay for a Magic Department student to just beat down a Knight Department student with a sword and no magic at all, but decided that wouldn't fit the spirit of the sparring match and quickly gave up on that thought.

Another problem was that, of all people, my opponent happened to be Jane Snowtier.

True to being a member of the Snowtier family, home to the Sword God, she was already the top-ranked first-year in the Knight Department.

She'd beaten everyone who'd come up against her in the sparring matches so far and claimed the top spot.

Though, of course, probably not on par with the regressed Aden.

Anyway, she wasn't some random nobody, and she was surely bound to have mana infused into her sword, while I had neither a sword capable of blocking hers nor a body score capable of withstanding it.

'Ah, wait, no...? Don't I have a sword now?'