7-9 Assassination, Annihilation, Countermeasures Against Magic Armor

In the end, no assassin came after the first match.

How boring.

The opponent in the second round had not been a match for Antonio.

What was more, he had been absolute cannon fodder.

He did not seem to have been one of their associates, either.

I had been focused on keeping watch around us, but in the brief moment I glanced away, Antonio had already erased him.

And the instant Antonio—careless after relaxing—opened the door to the waiting room, he was suddenly attacked from inside.

Unfortunately for the attacker, the one who exploded and got blown away was him.

Of course, Antonio was perfectly fine, standing there blankly amid the blast flames.

‘Idiot. I had secretly built an auto-reactive interceptor device into his bracelet as an anti-assassin measure. The barrier automatically blocked the attack, then the counter killed the enemy. He did not even know it was there, so you could not have figured it out, either. Who would get attacked in the morning and not respond immediately? They were really underestimating us.’

Antonio, who had frozen at the sudden gale that hit at the moment he was most likely to let his guard down, shot me a sticky glare, so I waved with a smile.

After that, the waiting room—destroyed along with the assassin—was swapped for another room, and we reset.

In the next match, Antonio had been given a bye.

Since it had been a request from the guildmaster of the neighboring kingdom’s Royal Capital Adventurers’ Guild that Antonio belonged to, it seemed the Empire’s people could not meddle that far.

In particular, a request from the Alba Adventurers’ Guild—the birthplace of the Adventurers’ Guild—was something even the Empire’s Adventurers’ Guild could not outright refuse.

And the exam moved on to the third round, but this time the opponent looked anything but ordinary.

His head had been cleanly shaved.

He gave off that “Earth soldier” vibe.

Even his movements had that same no-opening, disciplined sharpness.

He looked like the type who would suit a combat knife in his hand.

Even his outfit carried a military feel.

By Earth standards, it was like a khaki tank top on top, camouflage trousers on the bottom, and military boots on his feet.

When I watched him closely and poured mana into Appraisal, it read: Assassin, Former Mercenary.

On top of that, he held an outrageous title: Great Slaughter King.

“A title earned by one who has killed over a thousand humans by every possible means,” it said?

In a world that probably had a smaller population than Earth, he carried a “thousand-killer” title?

If he tried to enter a country with strict immigration checks like the Albatross Kingdom, that title alone would probably get him declared wanted nationwide.

So that was why he was kept as the Empire’s pet, huh.

Ugh—his magic and skills were no joke, too.

I knew.

I knew without logic, just by instinct.

He had not earned the title Great Slaughter King for nothing.

Crap.

He probably came prepared with countermeasures against magic armor!

No—my Seventh Sense made it painfully clear.

‘Hey. How about this guy? An assassin?’

Antonio’s telepathy came in.

‘Yeah. I don’t care—kill him.He’s probably the leader or sub-leader of the enemy adventurer group. If you leave him alive, he’ll command his people and come after you after the tournament ends. Don’t hold back. This guy… he’s a former mercenary. He’s dangerous as hell. He’s hiding all kinds of things, but still. And he’s probably very skilled. Your magic armor is in danger, too. Looks like they’ve brought countermeasures for magic armor. Finish him fast. Don’t hesitate. Kill him. Use that thing I gave you.’

As expected of a clan that had piled up military merit for years.

In the next instant, without the slightest hesitation, Antonio fired all twenty rounds of the multi-warhead magic missile MIRV I had entrusted to him—straight at the guy.

The warheads were oversized flares I had stuffed full of mana, so when they detonated, the arena was filled not with flames, but with blinding radiance so white you could not look at it directly.

It was like arc welding—bad for the eyes—so I had cut the brightness down a lot, just in case.

It was a grand fireworks show of four hundred and eighty shots.

I wondered which had more shells—this or my town’s fireworks festival.

Converted to two hours, that would be only four shots per minute.

Maybe my town still won by count.

But we were dumping all of it at once with full force, so the destructive power on this side was far more insane.

Even all the gunpowder used in a fireworks festival would not compare to a single oversized flare.

Not many humans could endure this overwhelming physical saturation attack.

If someone could, he’d be a Demon King-type monster and absolutely a subjugation target.

Ah—right. That was me.

To make sure nothing happened to the surrounding stands, I had spread a perfect, ultra-powerful shield over the spectator seats.

When it was over, only a scorched arena remained.

And there stood Antonio, not moving an inch, wearing magic armor powered by Besmagil and shining with a brilliance incomparable to before.

Every part of the arena except the space beneath Antonio’s armored feet had been pulverized.

Was this arena even usable after this?

Before, the magic armor had visibly wrapped his body in mana, but the current one shone with a presence that felt half-materialized.

Checking the MAP past logs, Antonio had not taken a single step from where he stood.

This guy was really something else.

I quietly refilled the MIRV spells he had used into his bracelet’s item box by sight.

Even though he had flamboyantly blown the opponent to pieces, nobody treated it as a big issue.

Was the A-rank exam always this brutal?

Or was it because it was this country?

Or was it because the Empire was trying to kill Antonio?

When I had been the one taking the exam, I had not really understood.

It had not escalated this far.

Back then, the lineup had also made you want to say “give me a break,” but thinking back now, there had been a lot of straightforward strong fighters.

And then, at last, it was the prelim finals.

By this point the numbers were thinning, so matches came one after another.

The opponent in the final preliminary match gave me an intensely unpleasant feeling.

If I “saw” someone and it felt unpleasant, that meant they were definitely bad news.

This was… no way—could it be…?

I prepared several spells to activate.

Yes—healing magic.

‘Hey. Be careful. This guy is absolutely dangerous. He looks like he’ll do something outrageous. Worst case, he might be willing to take every spectator with him just to kill you. Don’t let your guard down. His image is “killing you comes first.” But I don’t know what he’ll do.’

‘Got it. I feel it too. It’s the kind of nasty feeling you can’t get a grip on. If this were a battlefield, it would be a case for a tactical retreat. No—thank god you’re here.’

What was it…?

I watched carefully, and then I saw people on the far side of the stands—behind the opposing fighter—suddenly collapse.

I appraised immediately: Poison Gas Poisoning.

Severe.

‘Damn, poison gas. Hold your breath for a bit—do not inhale it. Keep generating a massive amount of air with wind magic, and blast it outward in all directions from the magic armor. You’ve got a Besmagil battery, so you can do it. Then use the armor’s output to blow the surrounding air away.’

Antonio’s magic armor grew brighter until it emitted visible light.

And inside, he generated air with wind magic.

This was a lesson from that armored man, and I had drilled it into Antonio thoroughly.

In the next moment, people across the arena began collapsing one after another like dominoes.

“Referee, do something about him. He’s spreading poison across the entire arena!”

When I shouted, the referee signaled the knight order—but the referee collapsed in the next instant.

The knights rushed out, and they, too, fell in heaps.

And then the man fell.

From his own poison.

He died with a gruesome smile on his face.

Those bastards—what the hell was this!?

Enemy, ally, the one who released the poison, and even completely unrelated civilians—everyone got dragged in.

“God Poison Heal.”

In a panic, I spread an ultra-healing spell across the arena the way you would with an area heal.

It also consumed MP at a terrifying rate.

My mana burned away in units of ten quadrillion MP.

I was stunned by how atrocious the fuel economy was.

I had known from the start that the spell worked like that, but this was ridiculous.

He seemed to be using some extremely nasty poison gas.

If someone used this on a battlefield, it would be unbearable.

No—maybe it was the man’s skill or something.

He was using it as an impossible wide-area spell rather than a normal cast, so the mana consumption was even worse.

If this were a car, it would be like getting ten meters per liter.

You’d run out of gas before you even went a kilometer on a full tank!

A really bad one would conk out after about four hundred meters.

Before long, people all over the arena started to slowly get back up.

It looked like nobody had died.

Except the culprit himself, who had taken the poison gas the hardest.

Still—outside of making Besmagil, I had never burned MP like this.

It was a special spell set to forcefully achieve a 100% effect by guzzling MP, so you could say it was inevitable.

This MP-hungry inefficiency was a major flaw of God-type magic, which was goal-achievement magic.

But because of that flaw, it was a super-super powerful spell—so there was no room for improvement at all.

The effect more than made up for it.

This was simply an inherent property of the special spell, so there was nothing to be done.

This spell had been built on the assumption that I—someone with an absurd amount of mana—would be the one using it.

For ordinary people, they’d need a Besmagil battery, or an enormous orichalcum battery, to use it.

There was no way such a thing existed anywhere but with me.

For now, it was a privilege reserved for Mari and Antonio.

Not that you could call those two “ordinary people.”

Mari, for one, was not even human.

The match had not even begun, but the opponent was ruled to have lost by foul play, and Antonio was declared to have cleared the prelims.

Most people did not even seem to understand what had happened.

But what was going on?

Despite all that chaos, it looked like the finals would proceed as-is.

Damn Empire—what kind of insanity was this?

And I acquired the spell God Area Poison Heal.

I learned my own irregular spell through self-Observation.

So this kind of method worked, too.

And the first match of the main bracket was—unbelievably—that cursed armored man.

Of course he would make it to the main bracket.

His ability was a nuisance.

That humanoid dragon kid I had glimpsed had apparently been eliminated in the prelims again.

He probably declared defeat during the prelims again due to some weird obsession or something.

This time, it also looked like the mage I had fought in the finals last time was not here.

To be blunt, his magical ability was strong enough that being called A-rank would have felt natural.

If he wanted, he seemed like the type who could climb to S-rank with ease.

He was probably swamped with work and constantly in demand.

He had so much margin that he had no need to force himself up to A-rank.

Maybe he only entered now and then when he felt like testing his skills.

Originally, he had the strength to have won long ago; maybe last time had been his first whimsical entry.

Well, knowing him, he might have been satisfied just from having been able to fight me—someone with an even more absurd mana pool than his—fair and square at full force.

If I saw him again, I’d definitely invite him out for drinks.

If I hadn’t needed to reach S-rank, I probably wouldn’t have come all the way to the Empire to take an exam either.

I was lucky mine had been hosted in Alba.

I prepared three countermeasures for the armored man, Antonio’s opponent in the first main-bracket match.

The first was the method I had used.

I had enchanted his bracelet with a dedicated containment shield and built a single “package” spell that combined item-box-based air removal by sight, then equipped it to the bracelet.

With that, even Antonio could do what I did in an instant.

The other two were insurance, but at this point we could not afford to choose methods.

This was no longer just about Antonio passing an A-rank exam.

It was an emergency serious enough to call it a covert national war between the Albatross Kingdom and the Bernstein Empire—one that would never come to light.

Antonio’s life and death itself was the trophy.

Antonio—do not die, no matter what!

And the match began.

Antonio immediately raised the shield and went to drain the air, but the armored man casually sliced the shield itself apart with his sword.

Oof.

“I won’t fall for the same trick over and over.”

A special magic sword that could even cut a shield?

I had not known such a dangerous thing existed.

Damn—so he had prepared countermeasures for this approach.

Too bad.

Well, I had felt that might happen.

I needed to make an anti-shield magic sword, and a special shield that could block an anti-shield magic sword.

Maybe I should just build it as new God magic.

‘Do it, Antonio. The second wave—the real one.’

Antonio then fired something from his item box, straight above the armored man’s head.

Splat.

That strange substance—“splat” really was the right way to put it—poured down on him in an enormous quantity.

“Ugh! What the hell is this!?”

Hahahahaha.

Yeah, nobody in this world would know.

Armor guy—that was “hot-melt.”

A special adhesive used to fix a car headlamp lens to its housing.

On Earth, it was used in huge quantities.

In this world, it was making its debut as a standalone material.

Even on my Earth, most people didn’t know it existed—it was a niche specialty material for automotive parts manufacturing.

Though someone who worked at an auto repair shop might know it.

There were jobs where you replaced only the plastic lens that had gotten scratched up over time.

Bugs drawn to light slamming into it at speed, sand and dust, and all kinds of other things scratched up just the lens surface and made it look filthy and ugly.

It also reduced the headlamp’s function.

Since it was an important safety component, if the light got too dim, the worst case was failing inspection.

Heat could also yellow it and ruin the appearance, and like a windshield, pebbles kicked up by oncoming cars could hit it.

Small beetles with hard bodies could even ram into it, so the lens surface—plastic with only a surface coating—inevitably got damaged.

I’d even gotten swarmed by a huge mass of fireflies once on my way home from work.

You could at least see them coming because they glowed.

Maybe they thought the headlamp light was one of their own.

I felt like they were some kind of nationally protected species, too.

They had important bodies, so they shouldn’t throw their lives away like that.

Local elementary school kids worked hard to care for them and protect them, and all.

Didn’t they even raise the river snails they ate?

They were like unavoidable guided missiles drawn to light, which was a problem.

For owners who cared about their car’s appearance, lamp manufacturers supplied replacement lenses only.

Outside the headlamp manufacturing process, that was what hot-melt was used for.

Even if you requested that sort of repair, most people wouldn’t stay and watch the work, so they’d never even see hot-melt.

You might notice it if you looked at the removed headlamp, but ordinary people weren’t interested.

You might see it when you opened the hood, too, but nobody paid attention.

Anyway, it was a bit hot, but deal with it.

From the neck down, the guy was beautifully buried in hot, gooey adhesive.

And yet the person inside took no damage—what an absurd suit of armor.

Thanks to that, we could use unreasonable methods without worry.

Normally, he would have been steamed to death long ago.

That stuff didn’t turn gooey unless you heated it to around eighty degrees for a long time.

It was designed to withstand even the blazing desert sun in the Middle East.

And in the parts assembly process, it would be heated to several hundred degrees.

Antonio cast Blizzard, an ice spell, and the mountain of hot-melt—three meters across and over five tons—solidified perfectly under the powerful snowstorm.

Or rather, it was worse because it had extremely strong viscosity to keep the lamp airtight.

Even if it cooled and hardened a bit, it stayed tacky and didn’t shatter easily.

And since it was so heavy, if you sealed him in along with the already hard-to-move armor, he wouldn’t be getting out anytime soon.

It looked small, so people got careless, but if you tried to lift a small box packed full of brick-like hot-melt blocks wrapped in yellowish acid paper, you could easily throw out your back from the weight.

After that, I did a bit of research.

His swordsmanship was terrifying, but he wasn’t that good with magic.

In that case, he wouldn’t be able to melt himself free from the outside by his own power.

All that remained was…

Whispering a single magic word.

Antonio leaned to his ear and whispered it.

The armored man jolted and immediately declared his surrender on the spot.

It wasn’t like I said anything complicated.

I only told him that if he didn’t give up, I’d use Discurse to peel off the armor’s curse.

I had upgraded that into God-type too, so it should work for sure.

He needed the armor’s power.

When I looked into it, he had put on that insanely inconvenient armor of his own will.

I didn’t know why, though.

Antonio stored the hot-melt away, and the armored man was freed.

Looks like he didn’t have a storage skill.

That was fortunate for us.

And it was fortunate for him, too.

If he didn’t want his precious “can’t-take-it-off” curse torn away.

He stared at me with a resentful look.

He seemed to have seen through it immediately that this was my doing.

Heh.

Orston House folks were all battle-obsessed and straightforward.

Someone like him—who had fought me before—would immediately understand that dreaming up something this bizarre and vicious was the work of me, the second on the sidelines.

I walked over to where he had descended from the stage and showed him a bright, wonderful smile.

“Hey, don’t make that face. This is a match, you know. Next time we meet, I’ll buy you a drink.”

But he scowled and shot back:

“Damn it, you promised. Don’t you dare forget those words. You’re absolutely buying my A-rank promotion celebration!”

Hahaha—yeah, I’ll look forward to it.