It was 180 years ago.
I can no longer remember the voice.
Even if I don’t want to forget, memories cruelly fade away.
However, the way of speaking, the way of standing.
Those were things I couldn’t forget even if I wanted to.
“E-Eh… Hel-kun?”
Changing her smug grin into a fawning smile, Hresvelgr broke into a cold sweat.
Now she understood the mystery of their one-sided reunion at the Guild.
It wasn’t that they had given up——he had returned.
That information, which should have been joyful, for some reason cast a dark shadow over Hresvelgr’s heart.
■
“Start!”
As the referee’s signal echoed, the audience erupted in response.
The massive cheers were so loud they gave the illusion of the arena shaking.
Pastime, money, expectations.
The torrent of emotions directed at the fighters became sound and rose into the Sleepless City.
“Blessing of the Wind Spirit——Wind Enchant!”
Aleu was the one to make the first move.
He combined the mana in his body with the mana particles floating in the air to trigger a reaction.
The mana humans in this world are born with, and the mana particles produced by the hidden realms.
The principle of magic is, so to speak, close to a chemical reaction.
And its scale is determined by the magic level, which grows through one’s talent and effort.
The basis of magic, Elemental Enchantment.
It is the very first step—wrapping oneself in mana to increase physical abilities. However, because its effect changes significantly depending on the user’s magic level, it is also called the ultimate magic that can never truly be mastered.
It is the most popular magic used by almost all martial-type warriors.
Fire provides attack power. Water provides healing. Earth provides defense.
And Wind provides agility.
Even with attributes other than these four, it is a broad technique with unique characteristics for each.
“…I knew it.”
“I’ll hit you with everything I’ve got! I don’t know if it’ll work, though!”
While saying weak things, Aleu charged at the man opposite him with a face filled to the brim with killing intent.
The dash, making full use of his increased agility, left the spectators’ gazes behind. The gale that blew through the arena became a divine wind pushing Aleu’s back.
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
The fist thrust out with a shout of spirit——hit nothing but air with a roaring sound.
“…Eh?”
The fist that missed created a gale on the spot, spreading to the spectator stands.
The shock was caught by the magic barrier, but the spectators, buffeted by the strong wind, braced themselves as they witnessed the scene.
“The output is pretty low for Fu-chan’s magic.”
“Gofuh——”
The tip of the man’s toe, which plunged into Aleu’s stomach, blew him away to the edge of the stage.
After bouncing a few times, Aleu rolled on the ground.
“Guh… why!?”
As Aleu raised his head, stomach acid spilling from the corner of his mouth,
“You said it yourself, didn’t you? That it might not work. That’s why.”
“…!?”
The gray cloak was already over Aleu, swinging a fist as a matter of course.
Aleu, who hurriedly sprang up, immediately dodged the spot with a side jump.
Hizaki, who relaxed without swinging his fist down, looked back at Aleu, who was desperately gasping for air and glaring at him.
On Hizaki’s face was a mocking sneer.
“Why are you making that face? You said it might not work, so you must have known you were the weaker one, right? What are you surprised about?”
“…I’m just being cautious. Because you were stronger than I thought. If I don’t fight with everything I have, I’ll lose… because I’m not a strong person like you.”
“Then——why are you holding back?”
“…Huh?”
Hizaki cut in annoyingly as Aleu rambled on.
And then Hizaki focused only on Aleu, as if blocking out the audience who were excited by the brief exchange just now.
“Since you’re my opponent, I had someone look into you. Well, more like I had them do a detailed investigation. Aleu Carry. Undefeated, a skilled user of wind magic, and your catchphrases are things like ‘accidentally’ or ‘normal’ or even ‘I’m weak’………… It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone as ‘itai’ (cringy) as I used to be.”
“…What the——”
“No, I get it! I really do! I had a phase like that too~. That pattern where you think you’re normal but from everyone else’s perspective you have outrageous power! Sure, the ‘Careless protagonist’ type is interesting… but there’s a limit. If you keep it up, you just become a brain-dead idiot. And I can’t believe you’re actually doing it in reality…”
Hizaki, who whispered so the audience couldn’t hear, nodded as if he truly empathized.
Though he said “empathize,” in reality, the majority of it was secondhand embarrassment.
The grinning face visible inside the hood—his eyes and mouth were distorted as if he were looking at someone truly embarrassing.
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“Besides, even though you say you’re weak and supposedly fighting with everything you’ve got, you still haven’t seriously injured a single opponent… your ‘setting’ is full of contradictions. You can’t avoid hurting your opponent unless you’re fully aware of your own strength. …My classmate actually killed someone who picked a fight with him because he really didn’t understand his own strength… I thought, ‘So this is what a real accident looks like.'”
“You… you bastard——”
“I used to read novels like that a lot too… but as you keep reading, it gets forced. You clearly recognize a lower-ranked opponent as stronger than you, but in the end, it ends with you just knocking them out. They definitely should have died if you were really fighting with everything you had… I wonder why that is?”
“…Guh… uuu!”
Hizaki, who was talking with his eyes sparkling as if he had found a fellow Chunibyo patient, tilted his head at Aleu’s furious expression.
Then, he lowered his voice awkwardly and looked down.
“Oh… wait… were you actually… doing that ‘setting’ seriously? It wasn’t just a performance…? ——Whoa, for real?”
“——I’ll kill you!!”
It was his full power.
He released the strength he had been suppressing to avoid causing casualties.
Even that action seemed to prove what Hizaki was saying, which made him feel incredibly angry.
“[Garuda: Dance of the Wind God]!!”
The wind swirled, and wings spread on Aleu’s back.
The maximum output and firepower given to him by Hresvelgr.
A Magic Level 7 Super-Class Magic that allowed one to soar through the air in all directions.
“See, you weren’t serious after all.”
“Uooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
A roar.
Aleu, who let that voice stained with humiliation and inferiority echo through the arena, performed a high-speed glide toward Hizaki after a momentary ascent.
From the tips of his outstretched hands, blades of wind were pointed at the man.
Without thinking of the consequences, a lethal strike was unleashed just to shut that mouth.
“You were calling that power weak, huh… but it’s true, it is weak when you’re the one using it.”
The man, who leaped without hesitation toward Aleu approaching at super speed from the air, slammed a full-force fist into Aleu’s face.
“Bugoh!?”
Directing the vector of force toward the ground just like that, he slammed Aleu into the earth.
The cratered stage threw up dust, hiding the lying Aleu from the spectators.
“It’s probably that, right…? Fu-chan teased you into it? That girl has a bad habit… her hobby is mocking lazy people who don’t know effort. You just happened to catch her interest. Seriously, sorry. I’ll make sure to scold her. Right, Hresvelgr?”
“——Th-That’s not it, Hel-kun!!”
The sky-blue ball of light that flew out of Aleu’s body.
Hizaki shook his head at the voice emitted from it.
“Yes, yes, we’ll talk later. You went a bit too far, Fu-chan. At this rate, ‘Careless-kun’s’ life would have been a total mess.”
“Ugh, no way! No way!”
“I’m not listening. ——I told you a long time ago that you shouldn’t do things like that.”
The words that spilled out of Hizaki naturally.
At those words, Hresvelgr’s eyes welled up.
“…Wh… what is… that…!”
As if it were a continuation of 180 years ago.
——As if nothing had happened.
Faced with the sight of the man talking to her in an unchanging manner, Hresvelgr grit her teeth inside the ball of light.
A tone like one reasoning with a disobedient child. Aleu realized that Hresvelgr and Hizaki were apparently close acquaintances.
Feeling the torrent of immense power draining from his body, Aleu desperately reached out.
“W-Wait, Hresvelgr! Come back! You fell in love with me at first sight, didn’t you!? If so——”
“…I see. ‘Careless-kun’ needs to learn to distinguish between good and bad intentions. Pretending to have no confidence while easily believing in a beautiful girl’s affection… that’s just too convenient for you.”
“Shut up! Hresve—”
“Whoa, there it is. The ‘unaware of his own power’ protagonist-kun’s ultimate move: not listening to what people say.”
“Shut up alreadyyyyy!!”
A gaze filled with hatred that went beyond anger.
Through Hizaki, he spat out a curse at someone who wasn’t here.
“You too… you have the same eyes as those villagers! Don’t look down on me! Just because you got a slightly strong special ability… if I didn’t have this inconvenient ability and had the same one as you guys, you’d all be—!”
However, Hizaki, who received that, looked unimpressed.
“An ‘Ability Complex,’ huh… how pathetic.”
He spat those words out.
“There are plenty of people with inconvenient abilities. Besides, to only be able to do that much while receiving Fu-chan’s magic… that’s not a lack of talent, it’s a lack of effort. You can use magic even without an ability, and there are actually Level 8 explorers like that. Despite that, directing your hate at your birth or environment is beyond saving. …Come to think of it, there was a guy like that in high school too. Someone with messy hair who kept saying he wanted to be popular. Someone who can only wish for things to be given to them. It’s always those types who complain about the unfairness of appearances.”
“Guh, giii!”
The Corpse King, who was relentlessly berating Aleu, approached him once more and looked down with eyes of absolute zero.
The sight of Aleu using the power he received from someone while calling it weak was an object of such disgust that it made the Corpse King’ skin crawl.
For Hizaki Shiou, who achieved his goals while borrowing his classmates’ abilities through their sacrifices, this was his ultimate trigger.
“Don’t you dare fight while calling my subordinate’s power ‘weak’ when you’re receiving it for free, you creep. …’Careless-kun,’ you should start by acknowledging your own strength. That also means knowing your own weakness. This is a lesson I learned in this world. I hope it’s useful. Someone who knows their own strength is stronger… and above all, cooler.”
Immediately after, wrapped in wind pressure strong enough to clear the dust, the Corpse King kicked Aleu through the torso.
Aleu, who took a direct hit, rolled across the ground.
However, he was uninjured and merely unconscious.
The spectators, seeing the revealed scene, erupted in a massive cheer mixed with all sorts of emotions.
“Winner——Hizaki!”
With the referee’s declaration, the cheers jumped up another level.
Since more than half of the arena had bet on Hizaki, that was only natural. Conversely, the unbearable insults from the people who bet on Aleu also reached his ears, mingled with the cheers.
Striving not to let those cheers bother him, Hizaki——the Corpse King—directed a weak smile toward Hresvelgr.
“Fu-chan, everyone else is with me too. For now, let’s at least have a reunion after all this time, okay?”
In her ball-of-light state, he shouldn’t have been able to see Hresvelgr’s expression.
Even so, he must have sensed the unsettling atmosphere.
His perceptiveness was sharp even at a time like this.
In contrast, Hresvelgr felt that he was very unreliable right now.
“…Seriously, I hate you.”
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