Chapter 220 : Chapter 220
Chapter 220
Duke Crownhardt and the Spear God finished their spar.
Their physical abilities were nearly evenly matched.
On any given day, victory or defeat would have hinged on the slightest variance in condition or luck.
"Heh heh heh. Strong. Truly strong. What a delight."
"......Impressive."
Yet in the majority of their many spars, the Spear God had come out on top.
It couldn't be helped.
The Spear God had over ten years of accumulated combat experience from the past.
No matter how many barbarians and monsters Duke Crownhardt had fought on the frontier, it couldn't compare to the Spear God's experience.
"You're quite skilled yourself. No—considering you've never fought a demon, it doesn't make sense. If I'd had even five fewer years of experience, I couldn't have matched you."
"Five years."
Duke Crownhardt accepted the assessment gracefully, nodding.
"......That's insane."
A knight who'd been watching the spar shook his head in disbelief.
Being lower in skill didn't mean his eye was equally poor.
Moreover, Akarind Academy emphasized observation as part of its foundational training.
Why the body moved, what intent it carried, what function it served.
As a result, everyone could proudly claim their eyes were at least at the level between Sword Expert and Master.
Through those eyes, the gap between the two looked like the thinnest of margins—a single hair's breadth.
And yet that gap supposedly amounted to five years.
Then how vast must the distance be between themselves and those two?
And beyond those two, the two who were even stronger......
Their gazes drifted naturally toward Pan and Rozalin.
"Yuria. Watch closely. This is the teacher's number one! The Top Disciple's sword!"
"Yuria. Watch well. This is the teacher's real number one—the sword of humanity's hero, the beloved disciple who once reached Grand Sword Master!"
"Please, both of you, calm down. Your devotion to the teacher still falls short of mine. How can the heart of one without faith ever run deeper than true devotion?"
"What? You wanna throw down with me?"
All three were barely in their mid-teens, yet their strength defied common sense.
Rozalin was the world's second Sword Master and currently held the title of youngest Sword Master.
Pan was the third Sword Master and was expected to reclaim that youngest title.
And Yuria was the next Saintess, said to surpass even the current one in power.
How much time and effort, then, would it take to surpass those three?
"Don't be so disheartened."
Behind the knight, Zelta spoke with a hint of amusement in his voice.
The knight flinched and looked back.
"What?"
"It's obvious. We've all been there. When you look at those two and make that face, we know—ah, right now they're feeling disgusted that their own skill only goes this far."
The knight ran a hand along his jaw, wondering if his expression had been that transparently wretched.
The skin beneath his fingertips felt rough.
Days of marching without proper sleep or washing.
It had been routine in the Duchy of Crownhardt, but a few days of rest had apparently made readjusting difficult.
A pathetic sight.
"But we've got Cassian, right?"
"That teacher."
"Yeah. Rozalin and Pan were both shaped by Cassian. The Spear God and Duke Crownhardt took his classes too."
The knight knew that well.
He knew Duke Crownhardt's abilities better than anyone.
The Duke had been monstrous even on the front lines, but after coming to the Academy, he'd become a monster in the truest sense.
The difference was that enormous.
"And Cassian trusted us enough to assign us a demon. That means our skills have come a long way too. We beat that Spear God."
The knight nodded.
It had been ten against one, sure, but there was not an ounce of shame in that.
He was a soldier before he was a knight.
He had to face powerful enemies and win at all costs.
What mattered was the simple fact that they'd brought home a victory.
"When we defeat the demon and go back, we'll grow again."
Zelta spoke with absolute confidence.
If the Cassian he knew saw them return with a result like that, he'd welcome them warmly—and on top of that, bestow teachings like a reward.
If so, Zelta himself might soon rise to the level of a Walker or Runner, capable of emitting Sword Aura.
"Let's give it everything and take that demon down."
The students who'd been listening nearby each nodded in agreement.
***
I went straight to Berlis and asked about methods for dealing with the parasite myself.
After hearing Ulf's account, Berlis looked at Bonnie with a peculiar expression.
"Hmm~ will that parasite really not transfer to our Bonnie~?"
"Ulf said she's dealt with a Doppelgänger before. That means she handled it once through a curse doll."
"Mmm~ I don't like the idea of using our Bonnie as a test subject when things aren't certain~."
Berlis pouted in a manner unlike her usual self.
I understood.
Bonnie wasn't just any familiar that Necromancers typically commanded.
He was a Dragon-Fang Soldier, crafted from the tooth of a dragon thought to be extinct.
I looked at Bonnie.
A handsome young man in butler's attire.
But that was only what the exterior looked like—beneath that blue-tinged skin lay material harder than almost anything: dragon fang.
It was precisely why his combat style relied not on a sword but on unarmed martial arts, using his entire body as a weapon.
With that approach, he'd handily dispatched even Expert-level fighters, the Spear God included.
Prickle.
Bonnie's gaze was sharper than usual today.
It felt as though he were watching me with wariness.
Had I done something wrong to him...... ah. Right. I'd touched him with the Holy Sword that one time and turned him back into a tooth.
Berlis seemed to remember that loss as well.
She sidled up to Bonnie, linked arms with him, and sank into a worried what to do~ sort of deliberation.
Nothing for it, then.
"If you help, I'll provide appropriate compensation."
"Compensation~?"
Berlis's narrow eyes widened.
My offer had caught her interest.
"Hmm~. Then let's go~!"
Berlis beckoned to Bonnie and stepped out of the lab with a spring in her step.
Her bright expression made the earlier hand-wringing seem like it had never happened.
"Hehe. Of course~! I heard the Alchemists are going wild over the World Eater mineral~? Then we could attach some of it to our Bonnie, couldn't we~?"
Berlis was apparently fascinated not just by the ore but by the Doppelgänger's very existence.
"The black magic of mimicking another's form has a long and proud tradition~."
From there, Berlis launched into one story after another.
A man who'd impersonated a husband to seduce the wife; a villain who'd mimicked a child's form to steal an inheritance.
"Aren't those all terrible?"
"Ohohoho~ black magic is evil by nature! If I wanted non-evil magic, I would've studied standard magic!"
Fair point.
"Ohoho~ what interests me is the idea of an inorganic object transforming into another inorganic object~."
"You mean converting the Fantasy into a sword?"
"Yes~. In the old lore, black magic transformations don't change the subject's essence. There's only one type of magic that does. Polymorph—said to have been used exclusively by dragons!"
In the old tales, black magic disguises always left a trace—the voice would remain the original person's, so a child's form might speak with an elder's voice.
Or the eye color alone wouldn't change, allowing a parent or lover to discover the impostor.
The essence remains unchanged.
That was the core principle of transformation magic—but dragons were the exception.
When a dragon polymorphed into a fish, it became a fish; when it took the form of an orc, it became an orc.
Not just in appearance but in behavioral instincts, and even the structure of its organs, including the brain, would approximate the new form.
So if a dragon polymorphed into a goldfish, its intelligence would drop to that of a fish, and only a powerful attack that broke the Polymorph spell could restore its original form.
The extinction of dragons surely owed something to their overly advanced magical capabilities.
"But even dragon magic couldn't turn one inorganic object into a different inorganic object. Think about it—if it could, you could turn a stone into gold."
Hearing that example, I understood why Ulf had specifically mentioned Sihan.
Turning stone into gold.
That was the Alchemist's eternal dream.
Why else would they literally be called "gold-crafting" mages?
"So I want to take just a teeny~ peek at that principle. Ohoho~."
I caught a subtle note of unease in her words.
Peek, she said.
"If you peer into a demon's principles......"
"You mean I'll become a demon? Hehe. I know~."
Ultimately, what she intended to examine was the Doppelgänger Fantasy's underlying order.
No matter that the Doppelgänger was a parasite—at its core, it was a demon.
Probing too deeply into that order could lead to the same fate as Ban of the Magic Tower.
"I don't want to become a demon~. 6th-circle? Not interested~. Ohoho~."
Berlis said that with a laugh.
I considered saying more, but we'd arrived at the research building in the meantime.
"We're here~."
Berlis smiled again, as if to reassure me.
"Don't worry~."
Then she walked into the building ahead of me, Bonnie at her side.
It really would be fine. Surely.
I steadied my thoughts and followed her in. Inside, Berlis and Sihan were already deep in conversation.
"I see. So that's what Ulf said."
"I'm merely relaying what Ulf told Cassian, who told me, who's now telling you~."
"Hmm. So essentially you want us to perform a man-in-the-middle attack—MITM hacking. Make Bonnie pose as a base station and intercept the signal?"
"Strictly speaking, it's closer to seduction than interception~. We need to lure the target this way without letting Blue Light actually die in the process~."
"Hmm...... tricky. But my past self pulled it off?"
Sihan's eyes gleamed as he grinned.
And it wasn't just Sihan.
The graduate students who'd overheard Berlis's explanation gathered in clusters around Sihan, gazes blazing.
The mania they'd shown when staring at the World Eater Fantasy's ore was nothing compared to this.
Before, the frenzy had been mostly performance; now, they looked ready to breathe fire and lay down their lives on the spot.
"We can make gold? That kind of opportunity exists?"
"The laws of a demon rather than the laws of this world? Then all I have to do is sell my soul and I can make gold?"
"If I can transmute stone into gold, I'll tear that advisor's thesis apart—the one who claimed elemental transmutation was impossible—and become the foremost authority in the field......!"
Sihan glared at his students with narrowed, triangular eyes.
But not one of them so much as flinched before him.
If anything, they looked ready to kill their own master and seize his position, so long as they could pursue this research.
"Give me two days. Two days and I'll have everything ready, those wretched little bastards included."