Chapter 53. Yeah, He's Got Backing
Right after Purion left.
Together with Dahlia, I went out of the waiting room and opened the door toward the training hall.
The training hall of
'...Money really is nice.'
Maybe about 20 meters by 20 meters? The height looked to be at least 5 meters.
The Academy does have training halls like this, but they're shared spaces used by many students, so—
you can't use an area this large all by yourself.
And what about the dummies placed at intervals?
Those too were expensive high-end products—things you could hardly expect to find at the Academy.
There was a reason Dahlia and Purion would bother using an outing pass to come find a training hall.
Well, anyway.
I looked around the training hall for a moment, then turned my gaze to Dahlia.
Munch, munch.
Dahlia stuffed the half-remaining macaron into her mouth.
Her expression was blunt, but there was a faint, inexplicable light of anticipation in her eyes.
It was a look like she was actually looking forward to person-to-person combat training, and seeing that, it finally felt real.
'This is… really something.'
Me teaching Dahlia?
Honestly, I'd guessed it.
The study packet Purion handed over—he acted like it was nothing, but it wasn't an ordinary item.
He must've collected it by putting in plenty of effort in his own way.
But then he hands over a study packet like that and asks someone else—not himself—to train her?
'Then it can only be Dahlia.'
So I'd roughly expected it, but...
Facing her like this made it feel different.
'If I'd known in my previous life, I might've beaten the shit out of him for talking nonsense.'
No, I wouldn't have just beaten him up.
I'd have told him to stop spouting bad-luck nonsense, beat him until he was on the verge of dying, let him live, then come back once he'd recovered and beat him again.
That's how much of a bad connection I had with Dahlia.
No—"bad connection" wasn't enough.
"Today, I'm definitely going to bury you right here." "That's strange. I thought this was your spot. Isn't it nice and sunny?"
How many times did we clash?
Every time we met, we kept fighting until one of us was hovering at death's door.
Of course, I won more often.
'I'm a righteous Troubleshooter. Justice always wins.'
The reason I couldn't cut off her breathing every time was...
Yeah. Backing.
As if to prove she was a direct-line blood relative of Dinai, reinforcements came swarming like dogs.
Every time that happened, I had to swallow bloody tears of regret.
Well, after I became the mage who represented Deculan, I didn't run into her anymore.
No matter what, as the mage representing Dinai, she had weight—too much to go chasing after Troubleshooters.
'And after that, Deculan couldn't easily mess with Dinai either.'
That was roughly the kind of relationship it was.
That was why it couldn't help but feel new.
It's for those reasons, and yet...
"Hm."
I rubbed my chin and looked at Dahlia.
Setting aside the personal grudge from my previous life, let's calculate purely based on objective influence.
'I don't know what kind of enlightenment she gained, but Dahlia's existence kept Deculan in check.'
Even the name Dinai alone was an eyesore to Deculan,
and then a singular, outstanding mage was born—so Deculan couldn't easily look down on them.
Then...
'Should I bring that timing forward a bit?'
To be honest—yeah.
I want to beat her up.
Person-to-person combat training? What "training" is there in a fistfight.
If you hit a lot and get hit a lot, your body adapts and moves on its own.
And something even better than that is...
'Getting hit until you're really about to die.'
If you hit, hit, and hit some more, the one getting hit starts thinking, 'Ah, at this rate I might actually die.'
Then "Please spare me" comes out of their mouth, and from then on you just hit even harder, with everything you've got.
Then they grow on their own.
Because they feel like they're going to die.
And...
'It's more fun that way.'
It'd feel refreshing, too.
How often do you get a chance to beat Dahlia to your heart's content?
Well, if you want to make one, you can.
But a chance like this—where the justification is solid and there's no aftermath—would never come again.
But there was something even more important than that.
Deculan.
Serving those bastards a big helping of misery.
If I can serve them misery, I'm full even if I starve. I'm refreshed even if I don't sleep.
That kind of thing.
'Let's see....'
For a moment, I recalled my fights with Dahlia in my previous life.
I don't know what kind of training she did, but when you look at the magic she uses and how she fights, you can roughly see the direction.
After finishing that line of thought.
I looked at Dahlia.
"Dahlia. Here, look."
"...Yeah."
"In person-to-person combat, what do you think is the most important thing?"
It was the start of "person-to-person combat training"—disguised as training, but really training a Deculan suppressor.
Ding— ding— ding—
The clock tower in Hazen's plaza rang its bell.
Exactly six times.
At the ringing that announced 6 p.m., Hazen's citizens realized the day was almost over.
Any Academy students who had gone out would be returning to the Academy by now.
While only a few latecomers hurried their steps back toward the Academy, Purion sat in the cafeteria with a face that had grown hollow over several hours.
'This is....'
Hell.
Purion lifted his gaze and took in the two boys sitting across from him.
"No, Chenbi. You can leave this formula out. So the answer I wrote is still right."
"...?"
Demian, right there, instantly manifested magic.
The way it emitted light like a simple illumination spell made Chenbi's face darken.
Or rather, to be precise, the brighter the orb got, the darker Chenbi looked.
Purion let out a deep sigh.
'How in the world can magic keep its form when you removed the stabilization formula?!'
It was common sense that if you removed the stabilization formula, natural mana would wobble with movement and then fizzle out.
Purion, just in case, tried manifesting magic with the formula removed, but as expected—
Fwoosh...
The spell vanished, giving off only faint sparks of magic power.
It was usually like this.
"No! You can take this out!" "Why is spell manifestation three steps? If you just do it, it happens."
Common sense doesn't apply.
Still, at first there was a decent bit of hope.
'...He has to place 16th, right.'
He didn't have to match himself to that, but once he'd taken it on, he had to do his best no matter how the process went.
That was the responsibility of someone who bore the name Dinai.
And Demian was, indeed, brilliant.
"Oh, I know this." "I learned this too."
He knew basic formulas...
'...So that was just a given.'
If he'd entered the Academy, he would of course know basic magical theory.
And what House was Demian from?
House Brando.
So even if he hadn't studied at all, he must have finished the basics.
Anyway.
Even setting that aside, there seemed to be real hope.
If you explained the meaning of a formula he didn't know, he absorbed it like a sponge.
He stumbled a few times, and there were parts where he looked like he didn't understand, but...
'A genius isn't called a genius for nothing.'
From the look of it, he'd been born with quite a bit of talent in the head, too.
But that was where the problem began.
The more he learned one thing after another, the more "Why?" and "How come?" increased.
Why doesn't this work.
Why doesn't that work.
He'd insist—stubbornly—that you could remove formulas that were obviously supposed to be there, and...
'He actually manifests magic with them removed.'
It felt like common sense itself was being denied wholesale.
And paradoxically, the more Demian's knowledge increased, the slower the pace became.
'...Hah.'
Can we do it?
Worry rose.
Anyway, he'd finished his own studying a long time ago.
And if he thought of it as review while teaching Demian, it wasn't a loss.
Of course, it bothered him a bit that he couldn't be absolutely perfect, but it couldn't be helped.
The real worry was this.
That he might not be able to properly finish what he'd taken responsibility for.
In other words, pressure born from responsibility.
Meanwhile.
"...."
Chenbi, leaving Demian muttering beside him, looked at Purion with a pleased expression.
'Aster.'
Thank you.
Because we were getting hit together, it hurt less.
Purion retired first, but if Chenbi had to handle Demian alone, he would've collapsed long ago.
In that chaos—
"Now, it's mealtime!"
Demian suddenly sprang up.
Purion's face brightened.
Studying is good, but in a growth period, eating meals is more important than studying.
With a kind face, Purion waved his hand.
"Right. Go eat. Eat a lot, and eat slowly so you don't upset your stomach."
He just wanted them to go quickly.
But there was a water ghost who grabbed Purion and dragged him down.
"Purion, you come too. Aren't you hungry? You have to eat properly."
It was Chenbi.
At Chenbi's question, Purion opened his mouth slightly as if dumbfounded, then looked at Chenbi with nothing but a curved smile.
Their gazes met in the air.
'Get lost.'
Maybe he felt that intense will.
Chenbi nodded with a deliberately disappointed expression.
Of course, he didn't back off completely.
As if worried Purion might run away in the meantime, Chenbi added,
"Then wait just a little. We'll finish eating quickly and come right back."
"...Fine."
Purion's expression as he answered was beyond displeased.
Anyway.
After Demian and Chenbi went up to the student dining hall to eat—
"Hoo."
Purion leaned back against the chair with a deep sigh.
Time alone. Normally it wouldn't be such a big deal, but right now, this peace was unbearably sweet.
He almost wanted this moment to last forever.
'That aside… is Dahlia doing okay?'
He wondered if he should've stayed behind and watched.
Who knew what kind of nonsense that Black and White Zone vagrant might pull.
Well, since House Brando vouched for him, it was probably okay to feel reassured to some extent, but...
'He's like ink.'
It felt like he'd blacken everything around him.
And indeed.
Purion's gaze landed on the seat where Chenbi had been sitting.
Look at Chenbi.
No matter how little interest Purion had in his surroundings, you naturally learn what your classmates are like as you live day to day.
But how should he put it.
'He's been stained.'
It was hard to point to something specific.
But the chilling sensations Purion felt when facing Aster—those same sensations flickered from Chenbi, too, now and then.
Like watching a drop of ink fall into a glass of water, slowly staining it black.
If you thought back to the start of the semester, even at a glance his disposition had changed quite a bit.
And Demian...
'That guy was always like that.'
That rumor was quite widespread among the noble houses.
He was originally supposed to enter the Academy last year, but he canceled right before admission, they said.
It hadn't been confirmed, but there were also stories that he'd run away from home this year.
The Academy's Basic Track admission age range was so all over the place that it didn't stand out, but if you got technical, he should've been a year senior.
Just by disposition, he wasn't any different from Aster at all.
But wait.
"Mm!"
Thinking that far, Purion straightened up.
Don't tell me... he isn't going to stain Dahlia too, is he?
As that ominous thought surged, a shadow approached Purion.
"...Dahlia?"
It was Dahlia.
"Are you okay? Did that Black and White Zone vagrant bastard do something rude—"
Purion trailed off.
Thinking about it, the bastard's very behavior is rude. It would be abnormal if he wasn't rude.
"No, anyway. Nothing happened?"
"...."
At the question, Dahlia stared blankly at Purion.
It was a face that said she didn't know what he was talking about, and Purion let out a relieved sigh.
'Right, if that guy has even a shred of conscience, he wouldn't act up in a deal where payment already changed hands.'
That faith wasn't in Aster so much as in House Brando, who had vouched for him.
Confidence that a great noble house on par with Dinai wouldn't be blind in judging people.
After easing up—
Purion quietly watched Dahlia take a seat at the neighboring table.
'The vagrant bastard is....'
It looked like they'd separated in the middle.
Just in case, Purion looked around once more and asked Dahlia,
"How was the training? Did he teach you properly? If there's anything lacking, tell me right away. I'll go and demand an explanation from him."
To be honest, he didn't really trust it.
'He can fight well, sure, but....'
Just look at that fight back then.
What mage would imitate a fight like that?
Of course, he'd explained this to Dahlia repeatedly, but she had stubbornly refused to change her mind.
Meanwhile.
At Purion's question, Dahlia recalled the training from earlier.
"You want me to tell you my method? Why? You have to find the method that suits you."
That each person had to find what suited them.
Honestly, up to that point, it felt like her 기대감 deflated a bit.
Footwork that didn't lose to an Aether user despite being a mage.
If she could learn that, it would certainly help compensate for her magical talent.
But.
The lecture Aster continued with after that struck Dahlia's heart quite strongly.
"Alright, let's see. Let's say a certified Rank 8 mage and a Rank 9 mage fight. Then who wins?" "...Rank 8." "No. No."
Aster's answer was this:
"The one who cracks the other guy's head first wins." "...." "Flashy magic? Don't need any of it. Just one thing. If you want to win, you only need one thing."
And what was that one thing?
"A spell with enough power to crack the other guy's head."
He said the type didn't matter.
A spell with the fastest manifestation speed, that you could deploy like breathing without even thinking.
He said you just had to train that single spell to the extreme.
'....'
Dahlia gained a certain realization.
'...Even a genius dies if their head gets cracked.'
So what she needed might not be many methods to compensate for her talent...
but one spell, honed by pouring her entire talent into it.
She couldn't learn everything to 100 like geniuses, but she felt a strange hope that she could learn one spell to 110.
That hope tickled at Dahlia's chest.
"Dahlia? I asked what you learned."
Dahlia folded away her thoughts and looked at Purion.
Then she recited the training method she understood from Aster.
"Ilgyeokpilsal (一擊必殺)."
"...What?"
It was more than enough to shock Purion.
"Th-th-th-this bastard... Ilgyeokpilsal? I ask for person-to-person combat training and he gives her Ilgyeokpilsaaal!"
Purion raged.
But he had no idea.
This was an enlightenment Dahlia had already reached in her previous life.
Aster had simply presented the method.
The one who accepted it deep in her heart was, in the end, Dahlia—because it was something that was going to happen.
In other words, it meant sapi-gwijeong (事必歸正).