Chapter 713
‘Ah.’
Jessica swallowed dryly as she stared at the headless knight—Dullahan.
Where there should have been nothing but emptiness, a neatly placed skeleton skull was brazenly displayed.
Though the appearance was somewhat unbalanced, the skull, bound together by crackling violet mana, radiated an overwhelming sense of dread.
That very Dullahan now carried a greatsword and was charging toward Jessica.
‘Kuhk!’
Jessica felt as though a colossal tidal wave, an unstoppable natural disaster, was crashing down upon her.
‘I have to do something!’
Resignation did not suit her nature. She threw out her arms. After hastily unfolding a magic circle in the air, she intended to stir up the wreckage of the factory to mount some kind of defense.
‘Huh?’
But the circle would not manifest.
To be precise, when she tried to spread Darkness into the air, it simply scattered into nothingness.
‘T-then what about this?’
She dashed forward and grabbed an artifact that had fallen to the ground, directly infusing it with Darkness. Yet even that flickered to life only briefly before shutting down again.
‘What the hell did you do!’
—Back to the Stone Age.
Ever since Simon’s spell-like words, everything had changed.
With no other option, Jessica picked up a fallen iron bar from the ground and held it like a sword. That was the only means of resistance left to her in this predicament.
Boom!
The Dullahan reached her in an instant. A hulking, monstrous frame—and in contrast, the small skull flashed its violet eyes.
Kuaaaak!
The massive greatsword descended like a mountain, splitting the air itself. Jessica felt her single iron bar was unbearably pitiful.
‘Ah.’
Sensing the blade falling toward her, she closed her eyes.
‘I should’ve worked harder in Magical Combat…’
Tuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!
“Match over!”
The referee raised his hand.
[Simon Follentia : 2%]
[Jessica Kananor : 0%]
“The winner is Simon Follentia of Summonology!”
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Thunderous cheers erupted.
Students already on their feet clapped like seals, while scouts, faces flushed with excitement, frantically activated their mana-cameras.
“Maelyn! Maelyn! Simon won!”
Kamibarez jumped up and down with joy. Maelyn, who had been covering her eyes in fear, finally lowered her hands and looked.
“Kyaaaaaaaa!”
Maelyn screamed at the top of her lungs and threw herself into Kamibarez’s arms. Beside them, Dick plugged his ears and snickered.
“Whoa, he just wiped out a 100% barrier gauge in one blow? Now that’s what I call a comeback.”
Off in the distance, the newspaper club’s president, Tae, clicked his tongue and left. Seeing this, Dick stretched his legs with a look of relief.
“Simon-oppa!”
“You’re amazing!”
“As expected of the Student Council President!”
The first-year trio, late to burst into the stands, hugged each other and cheered wildly.
It had truly been razor-close. Simon’s barrier gauge had been steadily dropping from poison; had the Chaos Dullahan’s completion been delayed even slightly, the match would have ended in Jessica’s victory.
Jessica collapsed to her knees.
‘What happened? Why did my black magic…!’
“You did well, Jessica.”
Simon approached. Jessica bit her lip in frustration, glaring at him as though demanding an explanation. Simon answered without hesitation.
“It’s simple. The Dullahan absorbed all the Darkness in the area.”
“…Don’t lie. I’ve never heard of a Dullahan’s darkness engine absorbing fixed black magic. And besides, it hadn’t even reached me yet, so how…?”
“That’s exactly the property I maximized in my Chaos Dullahan.”
Simon lifted the skull of Manus, set atop the Chaos Dullahan’s torso. The skull chuckled eerily.
“The Chaos Dullahan sucks up nearby Darkness and mana like a black hole, creating a kind of mana vacuum. Darkness and mana exposed to the air cannot form magic circles before my Dullahan.”
From afar, the staff of the arena were shouting in alarm.
—The barrier is about to collapse! The damage is severe!
—We’ll have to hold the next match in another arena!
Even the protective barrier around the audience had been damaged, having been partially absorbed by the Chaos Dullahan.
Her pupils shook.
‘Strong enough to damage the arena’s barrier?’
“Jessica, your chemical factory setup was amazing. But—”
She tried to control every single minor detail. Artifacts, slimes, steel beams, conveyor belts, pillars, even toxic fumes, nothing existed in her factory that wasn’t infused with her Darkness.
She was the type who could not be satisfied unless she personally controlled every process.
At first glance, it was near-perfect. She even managed the feat of lifting the factory itself to dodge Simon’s attack.
However—
“That’s exactly why, once the Chaos Dullahan absorbed all the Darkness around, everything collapsed instantly.”
If only she had used a slightly more primitive approach…
Instead of controlling everything with slime and Darkness, if she had simply powered some devices with ordinary energy or anchored them physically, she wouldn’t have fallen apart so helplessly.
“Of course, that’s just hindsight. Really, we were just a bad matchup. Still, it was a good fight, Jessica.”
“……”
“And, uh, um.”
Simon scratched the side of his head.
“Sorry.”
“?”
Jessica turned her head back to him.
“During last year’s midterms and now, it’s never been about looking down on you or going easy.”
Back then, Simon had bombed his first ever test and, desperate to salvage his midterm scores, had been overly fixated. The dueling evaluations came second.
And now was no different. He hadn’t relied on Magical Combat, but instead unveiled his new weapon—the Chaos Dullahan—for a reason.
“I have a goal.”
Simon’s eyes turned toward the stands. Jessica followed his gaze and gasped when she saw the third-years sitting there.
“Y-you! Are you seriously planning to beat Senior Aizel…!”
She stopped mid-sentence and looked back at Simon.
Eyes fixed on some faraway horizon.
Seeing those eyes, she couldn’t help but accept it deep down. With a showdown against the third-year top, Aizel, looming ahead… someone like her would never even register in his sight.
‘This guy is just…’
Someone who lived in another world.
It felt a little ridiculous, how she had always gotten so worked up, angry that he wasn’t treating her as a proper opponent.
“Anyway, what I can say for certain is, back then and now, I gave it my all.”
Simon walked up and extended his hand to her, still seated on the ground.
“It was a good match, Jessica.”
This sight.
It was the same as during the first-year midterms. She bit her lip.
‘That guy has grown so much, yet I… I haven’t changed a bit since then…’
-Jessica!
Then, from the back of the stands, came a shout calling her name.
“You really fought well!”
“Leaving only 2% of the Student Council President’s barrier gauge! Isn’t that a first?”
“In the middle, when you pressed him, I really thought you were going to win! Such a shame!”
All around, her name was echoing.
Jessica, stunned, forced a smile and waved to her peers from Toxicology, who were clapping as hard as they could, afraid she’d be discouraged.
‘Right. The reason I was able to corner him like that wasn’t Simon’s mercy, and it wasn’t thanks to Senior Aizel either.’
With force, she stood up and took Simon’s hand.
‘It was the result of my own effort. I’ve changed.’
She bared her teeth in a grin.
“I hope my record of pushing you down to 2% stays unbroken.”
Simon laughed.
“I’ll do my best.”
* * *
Simon and Jessica’s match had ended.
But the heat still lingered, and the aftertaste of that comeback was strong. Simon’s victory, overturning the difference between 100% and 2%, would surely be talked about for some time.
Clap, clap, clap.
Aizel, who had watched Simon’s duel in person, smiled with satisfaction in the stands and applauded. To others, it seemed like the relaxed composure of a powerhouse.
‘Amazing! Simon! Truly, truly amazing!’
But inside, he was in a flustered frenzy.
‘So that’s what you had prepared! A summoned beast that makes black magic unusable! You’re the best!’
“It was worth making time to come watch.”
Leonard, the Summonology representative and overall 4th place, spoke.
“That’s a real trump card. If that thing’s completed, even you might be in danger, Aizel.”
“Bullshit.”
Sota, the Spiritology representative and overall 6th place, interrupted with a scowl.
“You think Aizel’s just going to sit around sleeping until it’s finished? Against someone like Aizel, who presses from the early and mid-game, relying on a summon that takes that long to prepare is reckless. The success rate is zero. In a real fight, for that to be completed—”
Sota’s eyes narrowed.
“—it would be impossible unless it’s rigged.”
At those words, goosebumps prickled up all over Aizel’s body. But he forced himself to act nonchalant, pushing up his elite glasses with trembling fingertips.
“O-of course. The match would end before it could be completed.”
“Right? That’s the Keyzen strongest for you. Ahaha!”
Sota laughed boisterously, slinging his arm around Aizel’s shoulder like a friend.
Aizel stirred the air to dry the cold sweat trickling down his neck.
‘Sota’s not wrong. If Simon drags things out until that Dullahan is ready, people will definitely start suspecting foul play.’
He pressed his forehead.
‘And on top of that, Simon unveiled the technique in front of all these people. Pulling off an upset by catching me off guard isn’t possible anymore.’
The Aizel Bringer people imagined was an overwhelmingly strong, flawless genius, who left no stone unturned in analyzing his opponents.
If Simon broke through his assault and managed to complete the Chaos Dullahan, even that alone could bring suspicion upon him.
‘…Being Student Council President is really tough.’
* * *
Simon, after treatment, was heading back to the student council building with the other members.
Up ahead, Kamibarez chirped like a sparrow.
“Simon! That was an amazing match! It was worth sticking it out to the end!”
“Thanks, Kami.”
“See? I was right! Pulling out the Chaos Dullahan against Jessica was the best move you could’ve made!”
Following Kamibarez, Dick added loudly.
“With this match, the whole school’s mood has changed! Before, lots of people thought the result was too obvious, right? But now that they’ve seen your Chaos Dullahan, a lot of them are thinking, ‘If he brings that out, maybe he can win!’”
To put it another way, it had been like the obvious fight between a cat and a mouse.
But in reality, it turned out the mouse’s teeth were venomous.
Of course, it wouldn’t be easy for the mouse to bite the cat, but shifting from a 0% win rate to even the possibility of landing one strike, that carried a different meaning.
“I think a little differently.”
Maelyn spoke next, wearing a sour expression.
“I do congratulate you on the victory, Simon. But honestly, I wonder if it was right to reveal the Chaos Dullahan in this evaluation.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious! With such an important match ahead, how could you show your trump card already? Now Senior Aizel will prepare for it and fight desperately to block your summon!”
Dick cleared his throat.
“Hrmm! But Simon needed a live test too, and besides, the mood—”
“Does mood feed you, dumbass? Now the whole school will be gossiping about the Chaos Dullahan and discussing countermeasures! Then what will you do?”
Hearing that, Simon chuckled.
“That’s exactly what I’m aiming for.”
“?”
The members stopped in their tracks, bewildered. Kamibarez tilted her head.
“What do you mean, aiming for that, Simon?”
“It was hard, but in the end I managed to complete the Chaos Dullahan against Jessica. Now Senior Aizel and many others will focus all their attention on this technique. And while they’re doing that—”
Simon clenched his fist tightly.
“I’ll be preparing a real, practical move to win.”
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