NOVEL NEXT RATH 82
TL: Eevee
10. We came, we saw, we won (7)
From inside the light of the magic, I heard a voice that seemingly couldn’t understand.
[Just… why?]
“Waaahh… they actuawwy won.”
“I think they really are insane.”
What was shown to us on the live broadcast, was something not even I could ever have imagined.
[Lady Nermia is ouutt!]
[Marcis’s secret weapon, the genius of the Nermia family, Lady Ria has been defeated!]
[And with that, Semi-final A has been confirmed as Yugrasia vs Yugrasia!]
[And we have the unbelievable situation where even the B semi-final is a Yugrasia vs Yugrasia matchup!]
That No.17, which was deemed a monster in Howling, the evil organization, lost.
And not even against Nerkia or Aris, or even Risen or any of the student council members, but to ordinary students.
“Dey absolutely nuts… ta be honest with ya, when they froze their hands along with her ankles even I flinched as well!”
“To think they’d do something even evil organizations don’t do nowadays…”
Sacrificing yourself to kill the enemy, or to otherwise render them incapable of further combat.
These mutually assured destruction tactics were once used very frequently by villains against heroes or their ilk in the past, but it is hard to see nowadays from modern villains who are very sensitive to their own interests.
Heck, you can even tell by modern manga.
In the past, 5ku(1) who sacrificed himself and got shot by a Li*** of Death(2) along with his brother and died for the sake of the world, but as time went on and he evolved into 6ku and used the Earth as the stake to fight against galaxy-destroying people, it’s a very accurate reflection of how a pure human loses oneself to one’s desires.
And so, oh supreme leader F***za-sama,(3) please kill 6ku.
ASAP!
“Owner, I got no idea whacha thinking of, but ya not gonna check the other event results?”
“No point, there’s nothing we could possibly lose in other than this event.”
The events in the first half of the imperial festival are small-scale events suitable for showing off individual prowess.
Even the numbers participating per event are small, five to seven, tops.
Compared to the siege-type events on the last day where every single student participates, it’s easy to accurately analyse the enemy’s power levels.
Meaning, I didn’t even need to bother looking at how the other events went.
With the remainder’s abilities, there’s no way they could stop Yugrasia’s victory.
“But can’t there be sum weal plot twist that completely tilts owner’s mental off the ends of the earth?”
“And on the flipside, do you think anyone from other schools could fight like our kids just now?”
“Nup.”
No matter how much I thought about it, Marcis’s lineup was overwhelmingly stacked in this last match.
My former disciple, four members of the student council, and the last member was also a nicknamed famous student.
Compared to them, our team was simply a gathering of yesterday’s losers.
Going by pure firepower alone, it wouldn’t be odd for my ex-disciple to just summon Surtr and go on a 1v6 massacre.
But she made three critical errors.
Firstly, she didn’t finish them off with her first attack.
Even when her legs were tied down, if she’d continued attacking she would have been able to win before she was summoned out.
Secondly, she was too flustered when her ankles were caught.
I’m sure I told her that you can’t just reveal your emotions like that in life.
To be honest the looks on our students’ faces were kinda ‘ehhh’ even from my point of view, but even so, you can’t lose your composure that openly.
And finally, she didn’t attack immediately even after summoning Lævateinn.
This, if only this I drilled into them over and over again in the organization!
If you have the time to kindly explain then just do it!
Act first, report later! Isn’t that the basics of combat!
Don’t they say that the ability to listen is more important than the ability to talk?
When a protagonist is surprised by a villain’s new attack and says “how?” then I can guarantee out of the ones that reply “since you’re going to die anyway, I will tell you as a parting gift!” I have never seen any of them survive.
“But we won cuz ‘a that. Innt that good?”
“That it is. But, seeing my ex-disciple do something that stupid, I’m disappointed. Would you say that looking back, I was too weak on them?”
“Owner, I’m being serious here, if you run the kids’ education any harder than this, they’re going to kill themselves?”
“It’s alright. Whenever they feel like suicide I can just send you out.”
“Just whaddaya think I am, owner?!”
“An all-purpose stick that can solve every problem under the sun.”
“And ya dam rite! The one that can do anything and everything, that is this goddess Arcadia’s powah!”
Although the stick turned into a goddess somewhere down the line, it’s true that after this thing was completed, I did solve all my problems with it.
“Yep! Well, leave it ta me! This Lady Aru will treat all the bad kiddies who’ve lost the will to live!”
Very good, you sound as reliable as Racoon man, hero of justice.(4)
“Now, the moment the students lose, I have a reason to raise the difficulty of the academy even higher!”
#13 Their story: Ria el Nermia’s story.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a white ceiling.
“I lost…”
As I stared blankly at the ceiling, I listened to the background sounds of my surroundings.
This was the treatment center for the imperial festival.
I was here because I lost to the Yugrasia students.
“I lost. And to students whose names weren’t even well-known. I lost.”
-Owner. Those were not students. They are lunatics. You don’t need to beat yourself up over it.
“No, I need to. I didn’t even lose to people stronger than me, they were weaker than me. And even before we started fighting, I lost to their pressure, and was scared.”
I prided myself on having been trained beyond human limits in the organization.
I experienced the imperial magic bombardment from the very beginning, and the moment I escaped I was put through all sorts of different training regimes without a moment’s rest.
Even when it was just No.1, No.1000 and I left, we were trained to survive at high altitudes, the middle of the ocean, a desert, all sorts of different biomes you’d be hard-pressed to encounter in the empire.
And as for the maze that the instructor created, to survive while getting the living daylights beaten out of us by the bat-wielding ex-disciple of the instructor, no, to avoid getting beaten by the bat, we tried our hardest to survive.
When you compared my life now to what it was back then, right now is the much better environment.
From my bed being wherever I put my head down, to the luxurious bed I was lying in now.
From an environment where I fought tooth and nail against my cohorts just to eat, to where I could eat anything I wanted, whenever I wanted.
From an environment where I wasn’t even treated like a human, to a life where I was respected by all as a daughter of a prestigious noble family.
“I… have gotten weak.”
This wasn’t a matter of skill.
In such an overwhelmingly good environment, my mental fortitude had gotten far, far too weak.
“If it was me from two years ago, I could definitely have beaten them.”
If it was the me from two years ago.
When the two of them had fallen, clutching onto my ankles, I would have ended them right then and there.
I hit them with an attack an ordinary person wouldn’t have gotten back up from, but an unordinary person could.
What if my enemy had been No.1?
What if my enemy had been No.1000, whose food was on the line?
I would definitely have broken both their legs, both their arms, and even that wouldn’t reassure me enough so I’d shackle them with magic-restraining cuffs, and put down a magic formation over them as well.
But I didn’t do any of that.
In a corner of my heart, the feeling that this place was different from what I had experienced made me weak.
No, to be accurate, it made me conceited.
“Yugrasia is different from the other people on the outside that I knew. Those people, are the same as me. They were all people that had something they feared worse than death.”
-Although I don’t want to believe that…
As the wooden bat was to me, something similar also resided in Yugrasia.
When I thought over it, they did not fear losing in itself.
They feared that after they lost, they would meet with this so-called silver devil.
“In that case, I will also return to what I used to be!”
I’d already shown off enough of my pathetic side.
If the instructor could see me now, he’d probably be thinking that his education methods up till now had been too lenient, and was deliberating over it.
And he would have shown me some other hell I had yet to experience.
Once again, I will revert to myself of the past.
Myself of the days back when I would struggle and flail purely to survive.
Myself of the days back when I fought with my life on the line, all for the sake of a single meal!
And the next day.
Three days into the imperial festival, for the first time, I managed to steal away a victory from Yugrasia.
#14 Their story: A certain student council president’s story.
“Damn it…”
Day 3 of the imperial festival. Our goal of a total victory was shattered.
And moreover, with the loss of our most trustworthy card, Lady Aris!
[This, Young Lady Nermiaaaa!]
[Incredible, simply incredible! We knew that she was a daughter of the Nermia family, a long-established family of magicians, but who knew how splendid her swordsmanship was!]
[And she’s also the master of the archdevil Surtr, a summon that won’t fall behind to Lady Aris’s!]
[And with this, three days into the imperial festival, the undefeated Yugrasia have finally recorded their first loss!]
[Who knew she’d move into close combat against a swordsmaster?!]
[With close combat skills better than most battlemages, top-class firepower even amongst magicians, and a splendid ability to be able to utilise both skillsets! Who could possibly think of Young Lady Nermia as just a fifteen year-old girl?]
I honestly didn’t think of defeat.
Just yesterday, the young lady of the Nermia family had lost to a bunch of third-year Yugrasia students, students that were considered some of the weakest among their cohort.
Rumours had it that she was Marcis’s secret weapon, but after yesterday’s victory, we saw her as just another immature brat.
Why had we forgotten?
That she was someone who Professor Nicerwin personally approached to scout to Yugrasia on the grounds that he saw apititude for summoning in her!
She, Young Lady Nermia, completely changed in a signle day.
No, to be accurate, you could say that she showed her true colours.
The moment we saw her fight, we realised.
She was the same as us.
Only those who had experienced hell, and struggled with their all, would have those eyes and actions.
Compared to men, women were at a disadvantage in the imperial festival which was broadcasted around the entire empire.
Because compared to men, women have fewer freedoms in terms of their marriage.
And especially among Marcis and (old)Yugrasia, where many noble girls enrolled, there were multiple cases where they forfeit winnable events to preserve their image.
Not even a man of Arucia who trained in the sword, would roll around in the dirt to avoid enemy blades out of their sense of pride, and yet she did it.
Moreover, the areas on her uniform where Lady Aris’s blade had nicked her showed her wounds and soft white inner skin, yet she cared not one bit about any of it and charged right in.
That was the appearance of a warrior who had overcome death, which was for some reason, familiar.
Lady Aris was shocked momentarily by this revelation, and was immediately sucked into the Young Lady Nermia’s pace, and eventually lost to her.
“That was amazing. Who knew that a magician would deliberately throw herself into a swordsmaster’s range and duke it out with swords.”
“What’s more amazing is her change overnight. She brought out Surtr’s sword Lævateinn yesterday as well, but she didn’t use it properly then, did she?”
“Yep, even if it was fake, it’d still drawn upon the power of the original. You could die if something went wrong.”
“But this time, there was no sign of those weaknesses.”
“Was it because her opponent was Lady Aris? That she won’t die because she’s a swordsmaster?”
“You idiot, can’t you read the mood? She’s completely different from yesterday. She’s definitely like us.”
“It is… but how? That’s impossible in Marcis which only has brats?”
“Does that mean that House Nermia trains them it feels like what we’d gone through?”
“Her grandfather’s one of the Lords of the Magic Tower so it could be on that side, too.”
“Damn it, that’s the empire’s high-ranking nobles for you! That’s exactly what you’d expect from the highest family among the Counts!”
“We truly were just frogs in the well. The outside world is full of monsters like the silver devil!”
As I looked at the other students shiver in fear, I couldn’t say anything.
Because in all honesty I was scared too!
“Excuse me, pres…”
“Ah, Lady Siir.”
As I felt the fear of the world, Lady Siir, who always accompanied Lady Aris, approached me.
“President, I wish to visit Aris in the healer’s tent, will it be alright?”
“Ah, yes, I’ll come with you.”
Lady Aris had been hit point-blank by her enemy’s lightning magic, and was sent to the healers.
Checking on the injuries of one of our most powerful members was a matter of course for me as the student council president.
And so after a few more student council members decided to come along and we approached the location where Lady Aris was.
“I’ll be taking my leave now.”
Lady Siir, who, at the front, had been the first to open the door and enter, turned around and started running without looking back.
“Si, Siir? Siir!”
Followed by Lady Aris’s desperate pleas.
Slam!
“You know what it was, right?”
“Yep, I do.”
“At least her healing’s guaranteed.”
The moment I heard that voice, I didn’t even bother looking inside, and slammed the door shut immediately.
“Heeheehiit! Unni-ya! Now let’s spend some sweet quality time, just the two of us!”
“N, Nooooooaoaoooooooo!”
As we had expected, that person- no, devil had arrived before us and did exactly what we expected her to do, as she made it so that we could hear the screams that we heard so often in Yugrasia, at the healer’s tents of the imperial festival as well.