7-10 The Hell Match Came To A Close

Antonio had gotten a round off here.

Two more to go, and the family could be restored.

Don’t psych yourself out.

He was probably finally catching his breath and feeling relieved, too.

And I was sure the rest of them were assassins anyway.

The next opponent looked fairly normal.

He was skinny, kind of like a praying mantis, and didn’t look strong at all.

But we couldn’t let our guard down.

This guy was an assassin too.

I knew it—not by logic, but by instinct.

‘This one’s guilty too. Be careful. There’s no way they’ll come at you with anything honest. Don’t forget what just happened.’

‘Got it. I’ll be cautious.’

Right after the match started, Antonio moved.

But the moment he moved, an attack launched by the enemy’s skill landed exactly where he went.

Hmm. So he had some kind of foresight ability.

The attack was something faintly glowing, and it didn’t look like much.

But for some reason, Antonio dropped to one knee from that seemingly harmless hit.

‘W-What happened!?’

I sent telepathy in a panic.

‘I don’t know. For some reason, all the strength drained out of my body at once. Do you know what it was?’

‘No, but it’s not normal. Don’t fight him straight. Even if it doesn’t kill you, being disabled is fatal. They don’t care if they get disqualified—if you go down and the referee tries to stop it, they’ll still come in to finish you. I don’t like it, but we’ll go with the MIRV. I already showed it once, so he might still dodge it. But this time we’ve got “that” ready too.’

And Antonio fired the full MIRV barrage again.

This guy really didn’t hesitate.

And when the curtain of fire cleared, the opponent was somehow completely fine.

What the hell.

Even though the arena was once again a wreck.

But this was too strange.

To come out without even a scratch from an explosive firestorm made of bundled violent magic—magic strong enough to drop that Fenrir with ease—was impossible.

Unless you were me.

Then the radar blared a warning alarm.

What?

On the radar MAP showing the arena, about fifty red dots appeared automatically.

Ah. I got it.

They were supporting him from outside the ring.

The fighter in front of us was just a router—nothing but a terminal.

Using him as a relay, fifty people had been launching a lynch-like barrage at Antonio.

That was nothing but cheating.

A fifty-one-versus-one fight.

The reason Antonio had dropped to one knee had probably been some skill attack fired from outside the match space.

Even now, Antonio’s attacks—sword and magic alike—kept cutting nothing but air.

Was it a sensory misrecognition skill, or some sort of spatial manipulation?

Even support skills that couldn’t directly deal lethal damage—if you combined them in massive numbers, they could become this kind of power.

And with that many supporters, they could even contend with a super magic armor user whose mana was effectively infinite thanks to Besmagil power.

That was a dangerous tactic.

I’d need to plan countermeasures in case they tried this strategy again.

But too bad for them.

In reality, it was fifty-one-versus-two.

I pushed my stealth-type skills to the limit.

Of course, I used my signature Dissearch too.

Then I assaulted the red dots one by one, carefully erasing them.

Each of them had been standing off in some corner, watching.

At a glance they looked like they were just standing there, but in truth they held the most natural, ready stance—able to move at any moment.

So they could run the instant something happened, huh.

Damn, they were practiced.

Since I couldn’t just fire magic in a place like this, I had no choice—I stayed stealthed, ambushed them, covered their mouths, and killed them with a single thrust of my sword.

It felt awful every time.

And the moment I killed one, I immediately stored the body into my item box.

It really helped that they had each taken unobtrusive positions.

Thanks to that, I could move fast without alerting the others.

They were so focused on their “job” that I managed to finish them off.

If they’d been in full “watch for ambush” mode, some might have escaped.

They all seemed like experienced types confident in their ability to run.

There was no way I could leave people like this alive.

For all I knew, they’d originally been gathered as countermeasures against me.

Even I—normally mild and averse to pointless killing—couldn’t show mercy here.

If I let them live and later they attacked again as a group in some off-stage brawl—

Right now they were careless, but if they hid somewhere along a highway, it would be a hassle.

Worse, there was even a chance they’d come to the Beast-Ear Garden.

The only option was to decide fast and kill them.

They had been smirking with vulgar laughter, enjoying an unfair fight like watching bullying from above—

And that became the last laugh of their lives.

Damn it. This turned into my biggest massacre since that first bandit attack.

I blew past my lifetime kill count by a wide margin.

I was closing in on triple digits now.

I didn’t like killing people, but I could sense this wasn’t going to end with just this.

From the vibe, these didn’t seem like adventurers.

They might have been from an assassin guild, or mercenaries.

Even searching through what I’d stored, they carried nothing that could identify who they were.

But in this world, the truly dangerous ones were the unlicensed, fully “underworld” types—that was how it always went.

The opposing fighter’s eyes widened in shock.

Because the support suddenly stopped coming entirely.

‘Antonio, he was receiving support from fifty people outside the ring. I eliminated them all, so you’re fine now. Bring out that thing. Make him understand.’

Antonio nodded and brought it out.

The count was a full ten thousand units.

Since it was thoroughly concealed by my skills, not many people would be able to see it.

Yes.

They were the combat pods we used in the dungeon.

This time, they were loaded with ridiculously powerful magic.

With his support gone, the guy no longer had any chance.

Antonio went all-out.

No hesitation at all.

Man, that ruthless decisiveness was honestly beautiful.

The isolated opponent shattered into pieces in sheer panic.

And as a bonus, the arena—already destroyed earlier by the MIRV—got pulverized even further.

It was the second time today, but the arena from earlier had apparently been restored at some point.

Maybe a magical architect had hurriedly repaired it with a rapid crash job?

No matter where you went, the backstage workers had it rough.

Though, to be fair, I was extremely good at that kind of work too.

Especially with the Regeneration skill, I could restore something like this in one shot.

And after killing two opponents and smashing the match space to pieces, Antonio still got no punishment at all.

Of course.

They couldn’t exactly drag the target—Antonio—off a stage crawling with assassins.

That was why state-run events were never safe to take lightly.

Without a pause, the finals started immediately.

It was obvious they meant to make Antonio fight without rest.

Well, the Adventurers’ Guild was an organization that was indifferent to that kind of thing—more like it didn’t care at all.

It had been the same for me.

Since it was all part of the competence test, anyone who became an A-rank adventurer was basically abnormal.

So what was the next move?

At this point, it was almost fun.

Next, a huge man in armor appeared.

This guy was enormous too.

He held an especially massive greatsword in his hands.

Huh? His movements were strange too.

Not human-like—more like a creature from a movie, with a dragging, unnatural motion.

Looking closer, extra-thick chains were wrapped around his armor, like he had been bound to something.

The eerie scraping sound of the chains dragging across the ground rumbled low through the kill-—no, the coliseum.

This one really stood out.

He felt deeply wrong.

It raised every hair on my back—an indescribably bad sensation.

And even my overwhelmingly powerful Appraisal didn’t work on him.

Was he… not human?

Even that dragon man could be appraised, so this was something else entirely.

Maybe he wasn’t even a living thing?

And then a violent wave of impulse surged up from deep inside me.

Danger. Danger. Danger.

A physical, red-alarm feeling slammed into me like the meaning itself was being transmitted directly.

‘ANTONIO! Kill that thing right now! It’s probably not human. No—maybe it’s not even alive. It might be—’

But Antonio sensed the danger and instantly leapt back.

And somehow, his supposedly unbreakable magic armor had been slashed open.

The thing had suddenly swung its sword at him.

It had switched from slow motion to sudden speed—an abrupt, agile blitz—and Antonio hadn’t been able to fully avoid it.

Worse, the slashed portion of the magic armor didn’t repair.

Gah—this wasn’t a “curse,” it was…!

‘Al! What is this!?’

‘Probably something like a curse. That sword is likely a cursed magic blade. But the bigger problem is the thing itself. That is seriously dangerous.’

‘Th-Then what do I do!?’

‘Actually, I created the remaining God-class spells and planted them in your bracelet.’

‘Again!?’

‘First, crush that annoying sword. Use God Discurse. I’ll support the mana.’

Antonio used God Discurse, and it devoured an obscene amount of MP.

In an instant, more than half of a two-hundred-quadrillion-MP Besmagil battery got eaten as startup torque for casting.

Then the MP kept dropping fast.

You monster—how cursed are you!?

That was enough MP to manufacture over five thousand of those ten-times-oversized giant orichalcum swords with magic stones, where even one took two hundred trillion MP to make.

Or to make five giant Besmagil swords of the same size.

That amount of mana could create five million normal-sized orichalcum swords from nothing.

And it got eaten just for the initial casting load.

That was impossible!!

With that much, you could issue orichalcum swords to every soldier on this continent.

I was replenishing the consumed mana remotely, so Antonio’s Besmagil battery stayed full.

I had built a “charging link” into the battery for this very reason.

I also tossed an additional eight hundred quadrillion MP worth of Besmagil-made mana batteries into his item box.

After the holy magic’s glow continued for a while, it finally converged, and even that magic blade crumbled away.

But the crisis wasn’t over.

‘Heh. Looks like the main body is coming out now. Antonio, prepare God Holy. He’s probably—’

As if to cut off my telepathy, the thing roared.

It “loaded” a curse into that demonic bellow—one that felt like it could rot your soul—and unleashed it across the entire arena.

It wasn’t the roar itself; it was a skill carried on the roar.

The roar was just a feint to slow reactions, and you couldn’t block it even if you covered your ears.

In fact, even if you covered your ears or used a silence spell, you still couldn’t stop it.

In a way, it was like my missile magic.

Even if you dodged, it kept stubbornly tracking the target.

This bastard.

Not even human, and yet it used such an elaborate method.

Smart.

It was a high “special-grade class.”

Unbelievable.

And everyone in the arena got cursed.

Even me.

I couldn’t use magic!

Damn it—I got my magic sealed completely.

Gah… I’d been played perfectly.

This was a double trap that included “countermeasures against me outside the ring,” too.

Shock.

That thing was definitely undead.

And vicious.

There was no way something like this had been in the prelims.

Why was it in the finals of the main bracket?

It hadn’t even fought in the main bracket!

This kind of “bye” was outright cheating.

Screw this.

Why was the Empire keeping something this impossible on a leash?

They were completely insane.

The undead swelled huge, and even the armor it had been wearing shattered to pieces.

Had they bound the thing sealed inside the armor with chains that also had sealing power, forcibly controlling it as they dragged it onto the arena?

It was a monster like a mass of pitch-black miasma, yet it also pushed a disturbingly vivid, biological presence.

Damn—maybe because it used to be human.

Maybe it was forcing those remnants forward by its own will.

What a tragedy.

For both of us.

But it wasn’t alive anymore—just a dead undead creature.

What madness.

The spectators had been through disaster today.

They’d already eaten poison gas earlier too.

Oh—right. I was one of them.

Good grief.

I gave Antonio instructions.

‘End it. Give it its final send-off.’

‘But how? I got cursed by that roar, and even my magic armor—the one that should’ve been reinforced—disappeared.’

‘Check the “Alphonse Magic Inventory” inside your item box. Even if your own magic is sealed, my spells themselves are stored in there in large numbers.’

‘Th-This one?’

‘It’s there, right. God Holy Place.’

‘It is.’

‘I stuffed my nastiest piece of work in there. Use it with Besmagil wide open. I’ll give you my Besmagil stock too. God-type magic is goal-achievement magic. It will keep eating mana without limit according to the load. But if you have enough mana, it will always succeed at maximum output. Don’t be stingy with mana.’

As I said that, I remotely shoved more and more Besmagil batteries into Antonio’s item box.

‘How many of these obscene things do you even have…?’

‘Shut up. Just kill it already!’

Antonio fired my God Holy Place, pulled from the item box.

The torrent of light in the realm of gods—forced to evolve from the magic taught directly by the Alba High Priestess Jessica—hit the thing as if it were being drawn in.

And it kept drinking mana.

It was like hooking up an entire one-million-kilowatt nuclear power plant at full output just to make a flashlight slightly brighter.

In exchange, it would brighten everything all the way up into the sky like a searchlight illuminating the night.

That light looked like it could punch straight through the solar system.

Normally, of course, the flashlight itself would melt and evaporate.

That light spread across the entire arena—overflowing with cursed people—like a carpet or curtain of blessing.

Including me.

‘Hey… are you sure this is okay? Besmagil power keeps draining empty.’

‘Don’t stop. We still have plenty, so it’s fine.’

All right—mana contest with Demon King Alphonse.

You monster.

Antonio, looking slightly sick of it, maintained the absurd magic as-is.

Just when it seemed like the arena might shine forever, after burning roughly a hundred quintillion MP, the pitch-black body—like the curse itself—began to crumble.

It slowly fell apart like dirt, then turned to dust and vanished without leaving a single fragment behind.

Silence ruled the area, as if it were an empty field with no one around.

We hadn’t used God Discurse, but whether because we destroyed the source, or because everything was bathed in maximally radiated holy light, the curse disappeared completely—even from the spectators.

I registered this irregular, ultimate undead purification spell as God Discurse Place.

This really was a world of brute force.

If it hadn’t been me, there was no way we could’ve survived that.

Damn Empire—there were limits to messing around.

Know some restraint.

They’d turned into pure spite.

That’s what strong-arm states were like.

There were participants from all over the world in this exam, and ambassadors from various countries were in the venue too as part of scouting.

In fact, the Empire itself had likely invited those ambassadors to this lavish venue built solely to flaunt its power.

That was totally different from the Albatross Kingdom, which left A-rank exams entirely to the Adventurers’ Guild.

“Hey, referee! What about the match result!?”

I heckled on purpose in a loud voice.

The referee snapped back to reality and kept glancing toward the important people, but of course no instructions came.

There was no way to cover this up no matter how you struggled.

The finals opponent had collapsed—so even the imperial emperor had no way to fix it now.

Even if they wanted to hold a “final special match” after the finals, there wasn’t anyone suitable left.

That undead bastard had been their final weapon.

They surely hadn’t expected it to get taken down.

Or were they pretending that earlier abnormality never happened?

Seriously.

What a forceful country.

I was glad I didn’t have to take my exam here.

Before long, the referee gave up and made the announcement.

“Winner: Antonio. With this, all matches have concluded. This A-rank exam is won by Antonio.”

Now then—the real work started from here.

The Besmagil we used earlier was less than one percent of my stock, but I refilled all the drained ones with mana.

And I returned the same number of fully recharged ones to Antonio in exchange.

With me as I was now, even the MP we spent earlier would refill to full through time recovery in under two hours.

Come at me, assassins.

The public stage was over.

From here on, it was my turn—the real player behind the scenes.