[86] The Crowd (2)
"This doesn't feel right. What the hell is this magic? It's not like a teacher. At this rate everyone's going to freeze to death."
Nade was just as puzzled. There were hundreds of students here. It didn't seem possible that those with lost memories could survive prolonged exposure to twenty degrees below zero. Still, the spell was excellent at pressuring Lucas. Cooling the somatic cells weakened the mitochondrial build's effectiveness.
"Damn! This is insane!"
Where Shiina stood, the wind howled, making the felt temperature even lower. Peripheral nerves were already beginning to necrotize.
That's why competent frost mages usually start by laying down a blizzard before fighting swordsmen. Its killing power isn't impressive, but it's a wide-area spell that inflicts constant cold damage—indispensable against sword fighters.
"Ugh, mages are such a pain."
Lucas was fed up with mages tormenting swordsmen with every bizarre trick. But this wasn't the time to give up. Above all, Shiina's condition wasn't normal.
When a sharp ice spear cut through the blizzard, Lucas flung himself away in a panic. The weakening of his mitochondrial build, however, meant he couldn't fully dodge; the spear grazed his side.
"Goddammit!"
Most creatures slow down in extreme cold. Because he'd been swinging a sword against the chill, his fingertips were already showing erythematous frostbite.
'Feels like it just got colder. Are they trying to kill us all?'
If even a schema user could catch frostbite, the students should've been frozen solid. Yet in reality, only Lucas was trapped in the blizzard. The storm's radius had narrowed and it was tracking him like a focused mark.
Lucas, completely unaware of that fact, bared his teeth at Shiina as she cut through the blizzard and stepped forward.
"Are you insane? How long are you gonna keep this—"
He stopped. Shiina's eyes were empty. No emotion, no thought—not even a self.
"No way…"
Lucas's shoulders trembled. She was remembering the magic with her body, not her head.
Literally, a flesh-brain.
Just as swordsmen learn techniques through endless repetition, Shiina had reached a state where, even without memories, she could reproduce a specific brainwave pattern.
Repeat, and repeat again. She'd driven her mind toward death continuously from birth until now.
'How much training did this woman go through?'
His hair stood on end. Beyond raw skill, he could see the path of a warrior she'd walked.
'Damn it. This isn't just stepping in shit—this is catastrophic.'
He had to get out now. No amount of gold mattered in front of one's life.
Lucas drew on the last of his strength and ran. If he could break out of the blizzard, she wouldn't pursue. That thought, however, was delusion; he paid dearly for turning his back on a certified Grade 6 mage.
When Shiina pointed a finger at him, Lucas screamed and was buried in snow a moment later.
"Kyaaaa!"
There was no pain. Yet on his schema's body map, both legs looked as if they'd been cleanly cut away. Lucas twisted at the waist to check—his legs were frozen solid, without the slightest sensation.
"Th-this can't be."
It was Absolute Zero, the kind he'd only heard rumors about.
A supreme freezing spell derived from Conservation Condensation that cripples particle activity to an extreme degree.
Shiina had grasped the domain of Absolute Zero and become a certified Grade 6 mage at just twenty years old.
Even so, the spell demanded such vast mental power that she could only produce it locally.
"Damn it! This pathetic school... students and teachers are all monsters!"
With a flat expression, Shiina cast another spell—Glacier Bombing, an advanced technique branching from mastery of Conservation Condensation. Tens of huge ice masses formed in the sky, draining the color from Lucas's face. His legs were frozen; he had no way to dodge. All he could do was leave his life to fate.
Nade and Iruki ran to the students. The glaciers weren't true area spells, but their sheer size made them just as dangerous. As separate ice blocks froze at different points and slowly pushed each other apart due to their mass, an almond-shaped glacier began to fall toward the students.
Nade grabbed Arin by the shoulder and shoved her to the ground.
"Kyaa! What are you doing!"
"Evacuate the students! If you don't, they'll all die!"
"No! There isn't enough time!"
Iruki bared his teeth and stepped between them.
"I'll do it!"
"What are you going to do?"
Iruki had no time to answer. Could he actually manage it? Those glaciers weighed tens of tons. Even shattering them with Atomic Bombs would produce many fragments. Given the ice's size, he'd have to split them into at least a thousand pieces; otherwise, a single shard could smash someone's skull.
'No choice but to try...'
Momentum can be predicted with math. If he calculated the forces to split, split again, and again, he could shatter the glacier before impact.
"Here I go!"
An ejection-type Spirit Zone drilled into the glacier's center. After triggering the available-limit detonation, an Atomic Bomb exploded; the glacier trembled and cracked into seven chunks.
Iruki activated a Double Spirit Zone and, like a man possessed, fired Atomic Bomb after Atomic Bomb at the ice.
Pf-pf-pf-pf-pf-pf!
A bloom of icy detonations erupted. The glacier shattered into fragments; the fragments exploded and scattered like sparks.
Nade and Arin watched the chain explosions in the sky in stunned silence. Then the fine rain of ice particles began to fall and they turned to the students. The hail-like shards rained down, but no one was hurt.
Arin's pupils trembled with shock. Arkein always belittled magic academy students—weak, compliant kids who took whatever was handed to them. But the level of the academy students she'd just witnessed far exceeded expectation.
"So this is the Magic Academy. Huh."
Arin realized she was pressed against a stranger's chest. She shoved Nade away and snapped.
"Get off me! What are you doing!"
Nade's face flushed bright red from landing on his butt.
"What, me? I only helped!"
"Why would you help me? We're enemies!"
"Who said that? Break the mind control already! Are you really going to kill all these people? Do you still have a conscience?"
Arin bit her lip. After today she'd be the protagonist of a massacre history would record, but she wasn't afraid. If she hadn't met Canis in Radum, she'd have fallen to utter misery anyway.
"I don't care. For Canis, I'd let the whole world die."
Nade read the hollow bitterness in Arin's eyes. What kind of life had made her look like that?
"Okay."
Iruki slung the fallen Shiina over his back. Then he looked back at Lucas. Does evil have gods of its own? The thief lay wedged between glaciers a few meters away. He'd screamed so wildly his jaw was dislocated and only the whites of his eyes showed. Having lost both legs, he couldn't steal anymore. Seven days after his jailbreak, he was destined to return to Inferno's dim cell.
Bang!
A thunderous roar came from the forest. Nade and Iruki turned; a massive beam shot up, cleaving through the trees.
"Whoa. What's that huge thing?"
"A Photon Cannon. Looks like someone had an awakening."
The forest shuddered and Shirone was flung out as if spat from the earth.
He looked like he'd crawled out of the muck, and Arin's face lit up. Clearly Canis had the upper hand.
But her expectation collapsed instantly.
When the Harvester swung its long arms and felled the surrounding trees, Canis staggered out, limping. His appearance was as bad as—or worse than—Shirone's.
Iruki, unbelieving, said, "A Harvester...?"
"No way. Shirone's Photon Cannon evolved mid-battle. How could he lose?"
Shirone pushed himself up from the ground and said, "I can't beat him."
His friends doubted their ears. Maybe it was the first time since meeting Shirone that they'd heard him say something like that.
"What, man? Don't talk weak."
"It's not weakness. That guy... he's genuinely strong."
Shirone admitted it honestly. If they'd known the man was a disciple of a Grand Mage it might have made more sense, but even without that, each of his spells carried a raw, single-minded will.
A will not to lose. A will to destroy people. A will to prove he was the best.
Shirone had amplified the Photon Cannon to its limit, but the Harvester—borrowing Canis's mental force—absorbed even that.
What followed was a slugfest: the powers of darkness trading blows with the Photon Cannon in a brutal war of attrition.
In the end Canis landed a counter and shoved Shirone out of the forest.
'If he's that strong... why would he harm people?'
Whatever the reason, choosing evil could be understandable—people make mistakes.
But to claim evil itself is strength was unacceptable. Strength should be the product of effort, not an excuse.
"Why are you doing this? What did the students ever do to you to deserve this?"
"Because you're weaker, so you mouth off? Typical weak noble behavior."
Shirone didn't flare up—because it wasn't true.
"Answer me. What you're about to do will be a monstrous act that goes down in history. I deserve at least a reason."
"History? Who cares about that? The abandoned survive one day at a time. If I don't kill someone, I die."
"Don't justify it with sophistry. No life is free from hardship. Everyone carries pains they can barely bear."
"You. Have you ever eaten filth off the ground?"
Shirone fell silent. A cold wind blew.
'Canis...'
Arin's eyes filled with sorrow. Those who hadn't lived in Radum could never understand what it was like.
Radum was another world, cut off from the rest.
Canis and Arin had been abandoned there. They didn't remember when they'd been together or why it had been the two of them.
All they knew was that from the moment they came to, they'd been there, and while other friends died or were sold off, they had survived.
Canis had been sharp even as a child. Though powerless as a kid, he showed how terrifyingly strong someone can become when talent and ferocity meet.
In Radum, a place crawling with villains, Canis wanted only one thing.
To protect Arin for another day.
There were no women in Radum. More precisely, no girls who'd passed infancy.
In a place with such extreme food scarcity, helpless baby girls were devoured as soon as they were born.
Yet Arin had survived until she was ten.
The only woman in Radum.
The person who preserved that chilling emblem was Canis.
He'd always barked like a mad dog. If someone aimed at Arin, he'd throw himself at them with his life on the line.
Because he sheltered Arin, they couldn't belong to any organization. So they scavenged day by day to survive.
The most absurd thing was that even the trash in Radum had owners. People fought, tearing at each other, just to grab scraps others had discarded.
After such fierce battles, Canis had finally managed to win a half-loaf of moldy bread.