11

The gaze filled with killing intent that had been directed at Shiala—she recognized those eyes themselves as a harm.

“I won’t kill you easily! I won’t give in anymore!”

Black flames literally burst forth from both of the man’s eyes.

They burned away the very eyeballs that had been turned upon Shiala with murderous intent.

His right arm continued to burn black, still emitting the stench of scorched human flesh, while both eyes burned as if flames were erupting outward from within.

A scream.

A scream too distorted to form words reached the ears of the other men surrounding Shiala, who stood frozen in place before the grotesque sight.

At last, Shiala recognized the very existence of the man—his right arm and eyes wreathed in black flame—as a harm.

Black fire engulfed his entire body, and soon after, the screaming ceased.

When the black flames cleared, nothing remained.

“I’ll burn all of you!”

Shiala swept her gaze across the men, who stood drenched in cold sweat, unable to move, recognizing each of them one by one as enemies.

That glare was not something a young girl should possess.

The black flame burning at Shiala’s chest raged violently.

Some distance away from Shiala and the others, Ains and Talidge faced each other.

With the tip of his blade pointed at Ains, Talidge spoke.

“With this claymore, I won’t let it get smashed like last time!”

Ains, by contrast, held no sword at all and took no stance.

“Our bout yesterday wasn’t entirely pointless. Though, at most, it just piqued my interest a little.”

Here and now, there were no rules between them.

No conditions for a draw, no conditions for victory or defeat. They would go as far as they could, until one of them fell.

Talidge’s intuition spoke to him.

‘No matter the outcome, throw everything you have at Ains.’

“It’s not like I want to fight you, but if you’re going to get in Shiala’s way, then I have to deal with you. You seem to have some kind of grudge against me, after all.”

Talidge unleashed an intense killing intent toward Ains, but the man himself did not care in the slightest.

“…Don’t underestimate me. I’ll strip that distortion of yours bare!”

The words that followed—and then I’ll reach what I seek beyond—Talidge swallowed back.

Exhaling shortly, Talidge reinforced his body with Divine Power.

With enough force to crack the stone pavement, Talidge leapt into Ains’s reach, closing the distance in an instant.

Talidge went all out from the very first move.

Yet Ains still held no sword, merely tapping the ground once with his prosthetic leg.

“!”

The ground to Talidge’s right suddenly bulged upward, and a pillar shot up as if to pierce him.

Judging it unavoidable, Talidge swung his greatsword, the claymore, at the stone pillar. He wrapped Divine Power around the blade, enhancing its strength and cutting force.

It split cleanly in two, as if slicing butter.

Ains yawned, rhythmically tapping the ground with his prosthetic leg.

In the next instant, stone pillars assaulted Talidge from all sides.

“…Damn mage bastard!”

Cloaked in Divine Power, Talidge dealt with every attack, then seized the brief opening in Ains’s assault and closed in.

The blade wrapped in Divine Power became a razor-sharp slash, tearing through the air toward Ains’s torso.

Ains reinforced his body through mana control, dodged the slash at a speed beyond what a normal human eye could follow, and snapped his fingers.

Five fire lances appeared in midair—far more refined than the ones Lyka had shown during the entrance exam.

At the same time, he manifested five ice lances as well—a multitasking feat.

He produced the ice lances without chanting, while generating the fire lances through an incantation reduced to its absolute minimum—a mere snap of the fingers, a spell made magical through extreme simplification. Outputting mana in two separate forms simultaneously was an extraordinary technique, one no mage in the Santia Kingdom could possibly achieve.

A total of ten lances aimed their tips at Talidge, raining down from above and from blind spots.

Moving with agility, Talidge slipped past some of them and smashed others aside with his claymore, swinging the greatsword at a speed more like that of a rapier.

Lances he had dodged corrected their trajectories and attacked him again. Several that slipped through carved shallow cuts into Talidge’s massive frame.

As Talidge grimaced in pain, Ains poured mana into the ring on his finger and unfolded his item box. From within, he drew a crude one-handed sword and wrapped mana around its blade.

“You damn mage! Why the hell are you using Divine Power!”

Ains’s reinforced movements and the mana enveloping his crude blade looked to Talidge as though he were using Divine Power.

‘…Divine Power? This is just mana. What is he talking about?’

From Ains’s perspective, Talidge—supposedly a swordsman—appeared to be crudely reinforcing his body through mana control.

‘Could it be that what he calls ‘Divine Power’ is—’

If so, then Talidge recognized mana under a different name: Divine Power.

Ains struck Talidge with a blow far heavier than his slender body suggested.

Talidge blocked it with his claymore, but was blown backward, widening the distance between them and forcing a reset.

Even if they called it by different names, a swordsman from the Gairine Empire’s sword culture clearly recognized “mana.” This realization further accelerated Ains’s interest in Talidge—no, in the sword arts of the Gairine Empire.

“…Then what do you call this?”

This time, Ains lunged at Talidge.

“Abbreviated chant—‘Simultaneous Reenactment.’”

From Ains’s left arm holding the sword, two translucent arms sprouted from around the shoulder, and three blades rushed toward Talidge.

To Ains—and to the magic-oriented Santia Kingdom—this was “magic.” How would Talidge, standing before him, perceive it? That curiosity drove Ains onward.

“Why the hell does a guy who ain’t even a swordsman have that bastard’s technique—his Divine Art!”

Those two translucent arms of Ains—Talidge had seen them before.

He would never forget them.

They were burned into his mind so vividly they appeared even in his dreams.

—Divine Art: Triple.