My Yandere Empress

The lodge was quiet by the time the four of them had parted ways for their own rooms.

Enzo, lying on his bed, stared at the ceiling with a blank expression on his face.

Sleep wasn’t coming to him.

Not with the thought of five matches looming over him like a blade about to decide his execution.

Five...

He had barely scraped through five opponents across two days, and even then, mostly using underhanded tactics and a pinch of luck.

Sure, two of his opponents had been stronger than him. Theoretically, and in any ideal world, they should have won those matches.

Life, however, was unfair. And Enzo felt zero guilt over eliminating the worthier candidates. He only felt slight pity for them.

His greatest worry at that moment was regarding himself.

Tomorrow was the third day. Every single candidate standing tomorrow had passed the first two days, same as him.

But unlike him, almost none of the qualified candidates had used treachery to win their matches.

They were as skilled as teenagers of his age could be.

And then there was him...

His stamina was a joke. His sword arm ached just from the memory of holding the hilt for three minutes at a stretch.

His head was badly bruised, and even now, when he turned onto his side, the injured area throbbed painfully.

If he truly wanted to survive tomorrow, sulking in bed wasn’t going to cut it.

He sat up and looked outside the small window.

The pinkish moon hung in the sky, casting its radiance over the empty streets. Small lamps at the roadsides illuminated the area with their yellow light.

Too faint compared to the moon’s glow.

Careful not to wake anyone, he grabbed the wooden sword hanging in the reception area and slipped out into the night.

He intended to return back the sword a tits place before anyone even realized it was missing.

The area behind the lodge was empty. The sand clock left standing at the reception table was the only measurement of time he had come across in this world.

By some rough calculations, he estimated it was, at that moment, somewhere between seven and nine at night.

And people by then were already in their beds. It reminded him of the stories his own parents had once reminisced about, from the time when the internet had just become a reality.

Shaking his head, he planted his feet the way he’d seen his opponents do, and swung.

The strike was clumsy and completely off-balance. His wrist bent at an angle that made his forearm sting immediately.

During his matches, he had positioned himself based on whatever knowledge he had acquired back on Earth. Crude forms, but ones that somehow worked against weaker opponents.

He wasn’t a swordsman in essence. He never had been — not in his old life, and certainly not in this one.

He definitely knew archery, but the organizers of this annual exam didn’t seem keen on keeping that option open to the candidates.

And it made complete sense. Archery in close-ranged combat? That sounded like the biggest tomfoolery ever.

Not that he couldn’t pull off something like that...

But even then, it wouldn’t have been allowed. Every arrow could have penetrated candidates, potentially doing major tissue damage. Who would risk that?

But he still had something. His sole skill.

Enzo closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.

The world shifted.

Where there had been darkness and vague shapes, now there was a faint, shifting current — the bluish threads of mana drifting through the air like heat haze over summer asphalt.

Some pooled near the ground, sluggish and thick. Others danced erratically, chased by the night breeze.

He raised his sword and moved towards the highly concentrated mana regions, which stirred as he placed the blade in their vicinity.

Then he released a faint stream of his own mana into the wooden sword. It spread slowly, like ink on wet paper, before reaching every end point of the blade.

Enzo felt his forehead furrow in concentration as he willed the mana in the sword to "interact" with the mana in the air.

Nothing happened.

With a defeated sigh, he stepped back from the dense, mana-filled region and flicked his sword sideways. The mana stored inside it dispersed outward.

His attempt to learn this specific technique had just failed. The technique itself, in fact, was a common one among the public.

But unlike them, who used their own mana to fuel their weapons, Enzo was trying something different — to use the unending mana reserves of his environment instead.

This wasn’t his own discovery, but rather Thorgar’s, who had learned this technique around this same time.

The technique had a great advantage over the traditional one. Not only did it spare you the muscle strain of pulling mana from your own veins, but you could also use it almost infinitely.

Almost, since maintaining the bridge between your weapon and the outer mana still required you to consume a minuscule amount of your own mana per second.

Nonetheless, that still meant he could activate this technique for hours without worry.

And so, Enzo tried again. And almost immediately, he got the same results.

Keeping the mana inside his own sword did nothing. And pushing it even slightly outside the weapon immediately dispersed every bit of mana he was storing inside the blade.

He tried, and tried again, each attempt astonishingly sharpening his concentration. His focus rose to high levels as he became able to detect the finest flow of mana particles — both his own and the environment’s.

And then, just as a migraine hit him, signaling that his mana reserves were starting to run low from overusing his skill, he figured it out.

His eyes widened in surprise as his focus shattered at that very moment. He quickly deactivated his Mana Vision, intending to preserve what reserves he was left with.

Soon, his widened eyes carried hints of joy.

’The solution is the resonating frequency. If the flow of mana on the sword’s surface could be matched with the mana just outside its boundary, the two would connect with each other.’

Without wasting a moment, he attempted the technique with this newfound understanding. And this time, it worked.

A vibration rang out around the outer surface of the entire sword, soon spreading to Enzo’s hands.

Raising his sword and adopting a stance, he cleaved the wooden blade diagonally.

A distortion rippled through the air as it collided with a nearby tree, leaving a deep scratch across its surface.

[~Ding~]

[You have learnt a Weapon Technique: Harmonic Slash.]

[Descriptions are now available to be viewed!]

Oh. That’s a good name.

Setting aside the notifications, he wiped the beads of sweat forming on his face.

And then, like a diligent swordsman, he practiced the new technique he had just learned.

Since he wasn’t required to use his own mana except for the small amount needed to activate the Harmonic Slash, he was able to practice it as much as he wanted.

Over the course of the next hour, he managed to significantly control the power behind his slashes.

If he wanted, he could leave a tiny scratch on the tree trunk. Or, if he wished, he could even leave behind a thick dent instead.

With the technique secured, he turned his focus to at least shaping his crude footwork into something tangible. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the way Ariel had moved.

The way his shoulder dropped as he struck, the pattern his feet had followed to effectively corner him and force him into a bad position — Enzo had been able to read all of it.

His body simply couldn’t keep up with his mind, just as it hadn’t in his past life.

’But this body isn’t hopeless...’

And with that thought, he moved.

His movements slowly began to resemble the way Ariel moved. By the time the last specks of sand had slipped into the lower cone of the sand clock, Enzo looked as if Ariel himself had been reincarnated in that body, guiding his every movement.

The resemblance was uncanny.

Enzo returned to the reception area, placing back the wooden sword, now scarred with several scratches across its surface, unable to keep up with the force of his Harmonic Slash.

As he lay back on his bed, Enzo hoped that whatever he had cobbled together in that one night would be enough to help him qualify the next day.