[90] The Crowd (6)
"Light is beauty."
"Huh? What did you say?"
Alpheas repeated the question. It was obvious she didn't know photonics, but that answer was unexpected.
"Light is beautiful. Flowers are beautiful. We are beautiful too. But the kind of light you talk about... it doesn't sound beautiful."
Alpheas felt as if he'd been struck on the head with a hammer. It was a direct hit of pure thought—something language couldn't forge.
"I—I see. But why is light beautiful?"
To Alpheas, light was just photons. Erina, however, answered without hesitation as if she knew everything.
"Because light reveals the dark. Without light, how would we ever see the night sky?"
The world fell silent, as if they were floating in space.
Alpheas could not find words. The truths he'd longed for crashed over him like a waterfall.
Why had he tried to separate the two? Step back a single pace and it became plain.
Because it's beautiful.
No contradiction remained a contradiction.
"Beauty. It's so beautiful, Erina."
Erina turned with a childlike, pure smile. The instant Alpheas saw that smile, he made a decision.
He would remember this moment for the rest of his life.
Alpheas knelt on one knee before Erina and offered his right hand in the most respectful gesture.
"Be my light."
That night forty years ago.
A confession beneath the moonlight was a memory Alpheas would never trade. As the veil of Abyss Nova lifted, a faint smile touched his lips.
Reversed Master and Servant (1)
Kanis glared at the white radiance burning in Shirone's palm. It was an overwhelmingly potent presence. He had the belligerence to rush toward death without hesitation, but even in death he wanted his due.
- Havist. I'm the one who wants to fight. I'll take him.
- That magic—how fast is it? We might not be able to dodge.
- Then you stop it.
- If you can't stop it, you die. If you die, I vanish too. We'll have to fight eventually, but there are too many variables.
Exchanging thoughts at the speed of mind gave them a huge advantage in battle. But when their opinions diverged to extremes, it could leave them unsure of what to do.
"What's going on here?"
An unexpected voice cut through the standoff. A shadow flowed down the cliff like water, and a gaunt old man rose up from the surface of the darkness.
He was Archmage Arkein.
Arkein's face crumpled as he took in the scene at a glance. The reason he had been able to give his all against Etella was his certainty that this place would already be under control.
Arkein trusted Kanis. More precisely, he trusted the Havist who was subordinate to Kanis.
But the reality before him was nothing like he'd expected.
Lucas lay collapsed in a pitiful state, and Kanis and the Havist were being threatened by a single novice.
"I'm sorry, Master."
Arkein was not a man given to magnanimity. Ignoring Kanis's apology, he turned coldly and fixed Shirone with his gaze.
'Now that I think about it, that face is familiar.'
Shirone reminded him of Alpheas—not so much in features as in the temperament he gave off. The nerve to speak brazenly even under an archmage's stare was the same.
"Did you plan this?"
"You're impertinent for your age. What's your name?"
"I won't give my name to a murderer. Remove the mind control and leave the school now. If you don't, I won't let you go."
"Hahaha."
Arkein laughed. He wasn't angry. For him, killing wasn't about rage but about how entertaining it would be. In that sense, Shirone was a ripe fruit he could pluck at any moment.
"I'm afraid I can't lift the mind control. Because Alpheas's students must die."
Shirone felt the killing intent and broke out in goosebumps. Before he knew it, he fired a photon cannon.
It was an obvious accidental discharge.
Arkein twisted his body with ease and avoided the photon cannon. Only after confirming the magic had dissipated did he turn back.
"Spirit Zone radius: 52.7 meters. Not bad. Quite a level for your age."
Even if photons carried mass, speed couldn't break the laws of physics. Still, photon output has a baseline propagation speed, so it's far faster than most flying objects. Dodging a photon cannon in an instant and measuring the Spirit Zone's radius—those weren't human senses.
Shirone ground his teeth and compressed the photons again. He had met a master whose strength he couldn't gauge, but if he wanted to stop hundreds of students from free-falling off the cliff, he had no choice but to fight.
"Stop, Shirone."
Etella emerged from the mountain. Her clothes were torn, skin exposed, and she was covered in dirt from head to toe.
"Don't rush in recklessly. Arkein is dangerous."
Arkein's brow tightened. Fighting her had been entertaining, but he had long ago erased from memory anything already trampled underfoot.
"The defeated sure are thick-faced. If you've kept your life, you should cherish it."
Shirone's group was shocked. Could it be that Etella-sensei had been beaten to the bone by that gaunt old man? Bishop of the Carysis Brotherhood. Joner, authority on the Spirit Zone. An official grade-6 mage. None of the titles that described her were to be used lightly.
"This can't be. Etella-sensei..."
Nayd couldn't imagine it. Sure, there might be grade-5s or grade-4s, but picturing someone stronger than Etella was beyond him.
Supporting Etella, Shirone asked, "Are you all right, Sensei?"
"So-so. But it'll take time to recover."
"What happened? Who is that man? Why is he doing this?"
"Viltor Arkein. An archmage who attained unofficial grade 3 forty years ago."
Shirone's group faltered. Any Magic Academy student knew the significance of unofficial grade 3.
Mage ranks are divided into ten steps, but there are certain leaps where the honor and achievement points required for promotion soar beyond imagination—
from grade 7 to 6, and from grade 4 to 3.
If grade 6 marked the executive level in mage society, grade 3 could place one in charge of key royal facilities. Considering Alpheas was only an official grade-4 mage and yet a private school's headmaster, it was easy to guess how high Arkein had risen.
"Arkein bears a grudge against the headmaster. He won't back down until he gets what he wants."
"Don't babble. Complaining to your pupil will only make you more miserable."
"I don't care about winning. I'm a teacher. I'll do anything to protect my students."
"Then what? What can you do? Do you think you can stop me now when you couldn't before, even if you throw everything at me?"
"That's excessive bluffing, Arkein."
Arkein's expression turned fierce.
"True, I couldn't stop you before. But you too probably don't have the mental stamina to fight properly anymore, do you?"
Etella's words were half right and half wrong. Indeed, the magic Arkein had used to summon the darkness had left him at only a tenth of his normal power. But one-tenth of an archmage was still more than enough to sweep away an exhausted Etella and a flock of fresh-faced novices.
"Times have changed, huh. I pampered you because you were cute, and now you yap without knowing your place?"
Arkein drew up his magic power. It was the remaining ten percent he had been saving to kill Alpheas, but he didn't care. Piddling calculations didn't suit his way of life.
"Master, leave it to me."
Kanis stepped forward. Abyss Nova consumes an enormous amount of mental power—ordinary mages wouldn't even try it. After casting such a spell and fighting, even a master couldn't be expected to be fully fit.
Arkein glared at Kanis in displeasure. He wouldn't tolerate a disciple challenging his authority. Still, after a moment's thought, he turned to Shirone with an intrigued look.
"Hey, kid. You're one of Alpheas's pupils too?"
"Don't call the headmaster by name, murderer."
"Krkrk! Is that so? You must respect him quite a lot."
Shirone felt no need to answer. How could he not respect Alpheas? He was the one who'd opened Shirone's eyes to magic and the benefactor who helped a commoner like him enter the Magic Academy.
"I don't care if you're an archmage or grade-3. Compared to the headmaster, you're not even a mage."
"Puhahaha! Puhahahahaha!"
Arkein burst into raucous laughter. But his eyes burned with fury.
'Alpheas. How many pretenses have you worn all your life? You know it, don't you? You have no right to be respected.'
Arkein made his decision and nodded.
"Fine. It will be entertaining to watch your pupils fight. Kanis—duel him."
"Yes. Thank you, Master."
Kanis finally breathed a sigh of relief. This was his chance to make up for past mistakes. But Havist's thoughts were different.
- Kanis. Think again. It's better to leave this to Arkein.
- What are you talking about? I've already disappointed Master. Now I must beat Shirone even if I die.
Disagreement right before a fight was far from ideal.
- Havist. Answer me. Even you can't back down this time. We fight no matter what.
Havist gave no reply. He'd never been like this before and was unsettled—but with Arkein watching, they couldn't show weakness.
Using Dark Port, Kanis instantly closed the distance to where Shirone stood. Shirone countered with teleportation and flew out over the cliff, trying to minimize the impact on the students below.
"Hmph! An aerial fight, then?"
A dark night sky wasn't an unfavorable field for Kanis moving by Dark Port.
Over the thousand-meter precipice, the two of them reenacted their past duels in the air, unleashing their firepower.
Shirone gathered seven concentrated photon bolts at his front and fired them all at once. The photon cannon, activated within the Infinity Domain, hit with several times the force it had before—but with that came tremendous recoil.
Each time he cast the spell, his consciousness slipped for an instant. The Infinity Domain's power threatened the enemy while eroding the caster's own mental strength—it was a double-edged sword.
"What on earth is that..."
Etella stared up at the sky in a daze. The photon output producing shockwaves was something she'd never seen.
The dazzling beams of the photon cannon cleaved the night sky like a gold pen on a black canvas.
Iruki and Nayd were entranced by the rays. To spray normally powerful photon cannons indiscriminately was practically turning Shirone into a weapon.
"It's immense, all right. But is this really okay?"
"We have to trust him. He did well at the recital, too."
"But that's different. Now they're fighting for their lives. He could cross the line without realizing it."
Etella looked between them and asked, "What do you mean? Has Shirone entered an Immortal Function before?"
"Huh? Ah... actually... I think he does it whenever he's bored these days."
Etella sighed. She had warned him he could lose his life, yet he didn't even bother to pretend to be careful. Then again, without that kind of passion, such rapid growth would have been impossible.