Chapter 23
Chapter 23
Shiiiiiik-!
Along with the sound signaling the start of the spar, Eriksen hurled his spear forcefully at me.
At the ominous sound of it tearing through the air, I lightly twisted my head, and his reddish spear pierced past my side with only a sheet of paper’s difference.
“Your footwork’s pretty good. You’re different from the other guys, is that it?”
With an amused look, he spoke to me cheerfully.
When I casually glanced around, all the students taking the test alongside me were struggling to block the examiner’s attacks with strained expressions. Ah, one just got eliminated.
There was a difference in skill, sure, but he really was attacking without mercy.
Tap.
“You should focus, yeah? Unless you want holes in your body.”
Eriksen brought my gaze back by tapping the spear tip once against the floor.
No, you could’ve gone for a sneak attack too.
Tadat!
As if saying he was going again, he lightly kicked off the ground. Red trajectories flashed through the air, and almost simultaneously, they stabbed toward various points of my body.
I charged forward as well. And before colliding with him, I twisted my body into a reverse motion, letting most of the attacks slide past.
“Hup!”
Despite his spear missing, there was no sign of panic on Eriksen’s face.
With a look that said this was decent, he merely adjusted the trajectory and followed through.
‘Is this about it.’
I exchanged blows with him while matching his level appropriately.
Each time a red glint flashed, spear and sword collided, and our attacks perfectly canceled each other out.
Chang-!
Eriksen struck my sword hard, then retreated with the recoil to open some distance. I, too, stepped back without bothering to chase him, drawing my sword in and watching his movements closely.
“…Well, this is something.”
Holding the spear in one hand, Eriksen scratched his cheek.
“Are you really an academy applicant?”
“I am.”
“Then why are you this good at fighting?”
At Eriksen’s grumbling, I felt the surrounding gazes gather in this direction.
In fact, in these roughly five minutes, almost all the tests had ended.
The ones left were simply watching the duel between Eriksen and me.
‘Nice.’
The more attention, the better. I needed to firmly imprint my presence on them for things to go smoothly going forward.
“Normally, I’d want to call it here and say you passed, but······.”
Eriksen trailed off.
Judging by the subtle look in his eyes, he didn’t seem to want to end things this ambiguously. In response, I grinned and said,
“It’d be a shame like this.”
“Yeah. You really do know your stuff.”
“Eriksen.”
At the bold reply, the examiner beside him called his name with concern. Eriksen waved his hand once to signal that it was fine.
“One bout. We’ll decide it with one final bout.”
“Yes.”
When I nodded, he spun the spear he was holding in a flashy manner. As it rotated splendidly in his hand, at some point he grabbed it with a sharp motion, then pulled it in tight to his waist while gripping it in his right hand.
“Then.”
I didn’t stay idle either. I lowered my body with one foot pulled back.
What should I use.
At first, I considered the Fiore Style, but I wasn’t yet proficient enough to use it in real combat.
When I was at the imperial palace, I had relied on Tyrfing’s help and luck. It wasn’t a technique I, with my lacking qualities as a swordsman, could choose rashly.
Then.
‘…It’s my first time using it on a person other than the Sword Saint, though.’
The Sword Saint had taught his swordsmanship to someone like me, who couldn’t properly wield even a single decent sword technique.
It was called the ‘Sword Saint Style Secret Art.’
It was a name that made your hands and feet curl up if you said it out loud, but the Sword Saint seemed quite proud of it.
In reality, it showed destructive power not inferior to the Fiore Style, so the title of Sword Saint was no empty boast.
For a month, the Sword Saint had hammered his swordsmanship into me.
As for real combat, I’d gone through it countless times while cutting down monsters, so now I could even execute it with my eyes closed.
The only concern was whether Eriksen could withstand my attack in its entirety.
‘If I use it so that it misses, it should be fine.’
Taaaat-!
Without giving me time to ponder, Eriksen kicked off the ground and charged at me.
The ends of crimson trajectories intertwined in the air as they ran wild. And their destination was pointing straight at my shoulder.
Swaeaeaeek-!
‘Not bad.’
Eriksen’s attack, aimed at a single point, was sufficiently sharp. If I failed to block it, my shoulder would be pierced.
Perhaps because those around us realized it as well, they sucked in sharp breaths and let out brief warning cries.
Eriksen’s level was roughly that of an upper-tier Sword User. For his age, it was an outstanding level. Elysia was a top-tier Sword User, but she was different from the start in terms of birth and talent, so that comparison itself was flawed.
Shuuuk-
As the spear tip came so close that I could feel its killing intent, I stopped my breathing.
At the same time, the world began to slow down.
The movement of the spear Eriksen thrust out came into view one by one, appearing in meticulous detail.
Amidst sensing his breathing, his muscles, and his gaze, a pure white trajectory pierced straight through the center.
Sword Saint Style, Secret Art Star Cluster(Constellations).
Because I did not raise aura, there was no flashy afterimage, no dazzling sword light. There existed only the result of having cut.
Srrk-
“…Huh?”
Eriksen passed straight by me.
He came to a stop at the end of the training ground in the posture of having thrust his spear out, staring at his own weapon with a vacant expression.
Tidik.
A thin crack appeared along the reddish spear. It soon spread like a spiderweb, and before long it lost its original form.
Pasak.
Holding the spear that had split into two, Eriksen wore an expression of disbelief. Soon after, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed onto the floor.
“E, Eriksen!”
Several people who looked like his friends rushed toward him in alarm.
Even without making such a fuss, there shouldn’t have been anything wrong with him.
I had merely struck his solar plexus once and knocked him out. Breaking the spear was just a bonus.
Whirik.
I swung my sword, reversed my grip, and slid it into the scabbard.
As I did, one of the other examiners came up to me and spoke.
“…You pass. Seriously, to think someone would knock down an examiner during the entrance exam.”
He spoke as if dumbfounded, but his expression wasn’t unpleasant.
Bayern Academy was thoroughly meritocratic. As such, respecting the strong was only natural.
“I was lucky.”
Still, there was no need to act too sharp-edged. When I bowed my head slightly, he placed a small plaque into my hand.
“This is your pass certificate. When you take the second exam tomorrow, you can use that to prove your score.”
“Thank you.”
The academy entrance exam was divided into a first and second round.
The first, the practical, ended today, and the second exam held tomorrow consisted of a written test.
One of the reasons I had tried to draw as much attention as possible during this exam was precisely because of that.
Why?
Because there was no way I could solve the exam questions here.
Reading and writing could somehow be managed thanks to the status window’s correction.
But what if questions like history or arithmetic came up? There was no way I’d know what happened a hundred years ago or what the most famous tactics were.
When I was preparing for academy admission, I tried every way I could to hammer it into my head, but none of it stuck. If it had been the college entrance exam, I might have been able to muddle through somehow.
That was why I decided to go all-in on the practical instead. If I crushed the exam overwhelmingly, they’d probably understand even if I messed up the written test a bit.
Fortunately, it seemed I’d drawn more attention than I expected, because as I walked outside, curious gazes poured toward me from all around.
‘Good, then at least I won’t fail because of the written test.’
Feeling slightly relieved, I stepped out of the exam venue and wandered around to take a look at the academy. It was then that I spotted a familiar figure approaching from afar.
“······.”
He must have seen me too, because his face crumpled in an instant. He immediately turned away and left, but for some reason, I felt mischievous.
Tadadadat.
I ran straight over and slung an arm over August’s shoulder.
“Hey, little brother.”
“…What do you think you’re doing.”
His hair and eyebrows had changed from their original brilliant blond to a bluish hue.
Since he was definitely handsome, there really wasn’t anything that didn’t suit him.
August shook off my hand and glared at me with a face like he’d bitten into something unpleasant.
“Don’t act familiar. Getting involved with you is a disgrace.”
“Don’t be like that. You’re out of the imperial palace now, so let’s talk openly. How long are you going to keep chasing after your older brothers’ backs.”
“…You bastard.”
His inferiority complex toward his brothers was a nerve no one knew about.
The moment I brought it up, he ground his teeth as if he were about to punch me at any second.
Well, since he valued appearances, he wouldn’t dare cause a scene in a place with so many eyes on him.
“Well, I look forward to working with you. We’ll be classmates, after all.”
“Don’t hold me back. If you smear the honor of the imperial family, I won’t forgive you.”
Even to the end, his words were nothing but threats toward me.
Seriously, what a yapping puppy.
The way he strutted around when a single snort of air could blow him away really got on my nerves.
Trip on the road and crack your head open, tch.
After August left, I wandered around various parts of the academy.
It wasn’t just sightseeing. I familiarized myself with the faces of supporting characters who would play important roles and observed from afar as they took their exams.
The ones I knew had been characters in a novel, not actual living, breathing people. In other words, what I knew about them was only a very small part.
That was why I ran around everywhere, putting in the legwork to gather even a little more information.
“…Wooh.”
That aside, there were an insane number of pretty kids.
Maybe because it was the continent’s top academy, all the guys were tall and handsome, and the girls were beautiful enough to make your heart flutter.
Considering my original appearance, it was unavoidable to feel a bit intimidated, but with Leios’s looks, I wasn’t losing to anyone.
As proof, women I happened to meet eyes with while walking would occasionally give me slight eye-smiles. Some even went so far as to ask what I was doing after the exam.
…At this rate, it’d be fine to date one or two girls, right?
“Still, I really can’t see him anywhere.”
It had already been half a day since I started walking around the academy.
Perhaps because the entrance exam was more or less finished, the number of students heading outside was steadily increasing.
Amid all that, I was searching for the protagonist.
Black hair and black eyes.
In such a colorful world, I thought he’d stand out enough to be easy to find, but I really couldn’t see so much as a trace of him.
“If he was taking the exam, he’d have to come this way no matter what…….”
Could it be that he came to take the exam earlier than me?
No, the guy had said he slept in because he was a heavy sleeper and barely made it to the exam on time.
At the very least, he shouldn’t have taken the exam before me.
Taktadadat!
Just then, someone squeezed through the students heading out.
When I turned my head toward the figure moving without rest as if in a great hurry, the black hair and black eyes I’d been searching for so desperately came into view.
“…Huh?”
But I soon rubbed my eyes. His appearance was unmistakably that of a Korean person.
But what on earth was with that flowing hair and that skirt?
Unable to comprehend the information coming in through my eyes, my mind fell into confusion.
The protagonist of the SSS-Rank Otherworld Absolute was a Korean man.
There was no way he wore flowing hair and a skirt like that.
Then why.
Then why were you a woman?