Kyle being isolated like this was actually an enormous opportunity.
If I subdued Kyle and dealt with the Orc, I could end the mock battle right away.
But as always, nothing went as expected.
CRASH!!
The tree club the Orc swung with monstrous strength struck the ground. Clouds of dust billowed up.
“Aim more accurately!”
I had gone to the trouble of healing it, yet its attacks kept slicing through empty air. It was driving me mad.
Kyle dodged the Orc’s club and thrust his sword forward.
The sword wrapped in Sword Aura aimed for the Orc’s neck, but the Orc twisted its body, and Kyle only managed to score a shallow cut across its shoulder.
“Tsk.”
The fireball I had fired at Kyle missed miserably.
This was no time to be cursing the Orc.
Unlike during our last spar, Kyle was focusing solely on defense.
A knight’s basic approach when fighting a mage was to close the distance, but Kyle did the opposite and kept his distance from me.
The problem was that this choice was incredibly efficient.
It gave him time to respond no matter what attack I used.
As if he wanted to prove that he, too, was a reincarnator, Kyle showed almost no openings.
He seemed to be playing it bold, trusting that the Department of Martial Arts students would likely arrive first.
I opened the Shop and thought hard for a while.
If I spent a little more money, there were plenty of ways to subdue Kyle. But....
“It’s still a waste.”
At most, the greatest gain I could get from this was a single victory in the mock battle.
There was no need to increase my investment when the limit of my gains was already set.
In the first place, my role was to buy time until the main force arrived, not to end the mock battle.
With Kyle taking such a passive stance, time was passing just fine. There was no reason to push myself.
“Hmph.”
Kyle curled a finger at me in provocation, wearing a self-assured expression.
He seemed to think I was at a loss because I had no way to take him down.
It rubbed me the wrong way.
“Kyle, sir....!”
“Sorry we’re late!”
Just as expected, the Department of Martial Arts idiots began arriving one after another. However, they did not attack me right away.
No matter how one looked at it, the Orc exchanging blows with Kyle was the more urgent problem.
As though they had rehearsed it, the two drew their swords and moved to join Kyle.
“Hey, buddy. Doesn’t the situation look a little unfavorable?”
I asked the Orc, which was gritting its teeth.
At the start, there had been two of us and one enemy. Now there were three on their side, and we were outnumbered.
It was time to change the shape of the battle.
I closed the distance to Kyle.
“A mage closing the distance on a knight? What an idiot...!”
The Department of Martial Arts rabble gathered as if to protect Kyle.
They swung their swords to stop my advance.
But their swordplay was utterly sloppy.
Did they think that, because I was from the Department of Magic, I would be defenseless if I did not chant a spell?
“Did you sleep through the entrance exam?”
CLANG.
Our swords locked together.
They had clearly seen me wielding a sword, yet they seemed to have neatly erased it from their minds.
Compared with these idiots, Kyle was definitely on the smarter side.
I scattered Sleep Powder over the startled man’s face.
Utterly unprepared, the idiot inhaled a lungful of Sleep Powder and collapsed in spectacular fashion.
“You bastard...!”
Perhaps the other one was not quite as stupid. Seeing his friend go down, he covered his mouth and nose.
“That way, you’ll be short a hand.”
It would have been better to hold his breath instead. Facing an enemy with one hand sealed away?
Did he think he could take me down with only one hand?
I punished his bravado by driving a needle coated with Paralysis Poison into his side.
SWISH.
A sword passed before my eyes.
It was Kyle, who had shifted his target from the Orc to me after seeing me fight the others.
“Buddy! How can you let Kyle move around freely?!”
“GROOOR!”
The Orc roared as though making excuses in response to my complaint.
In the brief time I had spent dealing with the Department of Martial Arts students, it had lost one of its arms.
In that state, it had no choice but to lose track of Kyle’s movements.
“You think... I was going to let an Orc like you... keep holding me up... forever?!”
Despite his words, Kyle was panting, as though he had pushed himself quite hard.
“Tsk.”
I opened the Shop and made a purchase.
With a motion natural enough that no ordinary person would notice, I threw a bottle toward the Orc.
“I will not let you heal it...!”
Standing between the Orc and me, Kyle snatched the bottle out of the air.
He must have even considered the possibility that I had baited him into cutting the bottle.
Too bad.
“That isn’t a potion.”
The instant Kyle scowled and let go of the bottle, it exploded.
It was not anything impressive enough to critically wound Kyle.
A cheap bomb that was damn sensitive but pathetic in destructive power.
Still, an explosion at close range was enough to halt Kyle’s movements for a moment.
“This time it was a bomb! You should’ve dodged it, idiot!”
Catching it and cutting it had both been the wrong answers.
While Kyle waved away the acrid smoke, I approached the Orc and splashed it with a potion.
“You son of a bitch!! How is it every time!! Every time!!”
Kyle shouted at me, his eyes bloodshot and red.
“Isn’t it your fault that you keep falling for similar little tricks?”
It would have been better if he had stubbornly stuck to cutting things down.
Trying to be clever halfheartedly was only costing him more.
“GRAAAH!”
The Orc’s second revival.
And then....
“Enemy!”
“Move quickly!”
“Help Kyle, sir!”
The Department of Martial Arts main force arrived.
“About thirty, I’d say.”
I counted the Department of Martial Arts students with my eyes.
Of the remaining twenty, around half would be stragglers. I guessed the other ten had been sent to keep the Department of Magic main force in check.
The Department of Magic students must be quickly dealing with those ten and heading this way, right?
They had to be. Holding out against this much of a disadvantage would make money bleed away by the moment.
“Never surrender.”
With a grim expression, Kyle drew his sword wrapped in Sword Aura.
“Got it. I’ll do my best and won’t give up until the very end.”
I gave a thumbs-up to Kyle, who was cheering me on. Kyle’s face twisted into an even more vicious expression.
“Kill that bastard!”
Kyle gave the order in a loud voice.
“Kill him!!”
“Kill him!!”
Not a single one of the muscleheads from the Department of Martial Arts questioned Kyle.
How bloodthirsty.
This was only a mock battle. They were not supposed to kill anyone, were they?
Targeting people before the monster right in front of them was bad enough. How had things ended up like this?
“Well, then....”
Should I start buying time in earnest?
The enemy team’s advantage was in their numbers. Other than Kyle, none of them possessed enough combat ability to threaten my Orc friend or me.
Therefore, the strategy I needed to choose was simple.
Create a situation where the enemy could not cooperate.
“Fire! Fire!”
I retreated while swinging my staff.
I scattered flames in every direction. Sparks that fell atop the dead leaves rapidly grew into great flames.
“Is that bastard out of his mind?!”
“He’s setting the forest on fire?!”
If they had been mages, they could have quickly put out a fire of this scale with simple Water Magic. But the knight hopefuls could only fluster around even with flames before them.
They only knew how to swing swords. They were utterly useless.
As the flames spread, their routes were restricted, and acrid smoke obscured their vision.
In this situation, a coordinated attack was nearly impossible.
“How pleasant.”
I had bought a cloak enchanted with Fireproofing Magic for a time like this.
Even standing in the middle of the blazing fire, it was only pleasantly warm.
Equipment was not something to be used once and discarded, so I did not mind spending a fair amount of money on it.
However, the cloak could not protect my lungs. I covered my mouth with a wet towel layered with medicinal herbs that neutralized the poisonous smoke and looked around.
“GROOOH!!”
The Orc rampaged about, swinging its burning club.
Its movements were a mess, perhaps because the heat was causing it pain, but the people around it were no more capable of moving properly.
One Department of Martial Arts student was struck by the club and sent flying through the air.
That Orc was finally earning its potion cost.
And Kyle....
“Huh?”
He was nowhere to be seen.
***
“Department of Martial Arts students! Attack!”
Lucia Hayes chanted a spell.
How many times had this been already?
As expected, several Department of Martial Arts students had been deployed to tie down the Department of Magic main force.
Only around two of them had rushed in, and they were subdued by the barrage of magic without putting up any meaningful resistance.
But they had needed to halt their advance for that brief moment, and it took far longer to restore their formation and start moving again.
“We need to hurry. There’s no telling how long Lawrence can hold out.”
Lucia felt her heart pounding with tension.
Lawrence had told her to trust him, saying that he had calculated everything thoroughly, but there had to be a limit to what he could do alone.
Kyle was an undeniable reincarnator, and there were dozens of Department of Martial Arts students. If they did not join him quickly, defeat in the mock battle was certain.
“We’re doing our best too, you know?”
“We can’t move any faster than this.”
“What will change just because you make such a fuss?”
“Lawrence went, so won’t it work out somehow? He’s a reincarnator.”
“Right. We have the advantage with two reincarnators on our side, so there’s no need to push ourselves....”
The Department of Magic students grumbled.
Unlike the Department of Martial Arts students, who underwent repeated physical training, the Department of Magic students placed greater weight on magical practice. Physically, they were no different from other children their age.
Nor had they mastered magic to the point where they could freely move their bodies with it.
Making their way through the unfamiliar, rough path was exhausting.
They could not pick up speed, and their breaths only grew more labored.
On top of that, the Department of Martial Arts students kept jumping out to hinder them.
The Department of Magic had never wanted victory as desperately as the Department of Martial Arts had in the first place.
Their motivation rapidly drained away, and they repeated the pattern of walking a few steps more quickly before slowing down again.
“Are you refusing my orders?”
A little anger flared within her.
In a real battle, such behavior would warrant military discipline.
But Lucia had no such authority now.
They were her peers, not soldiers under her command.
She could persuade them, but she could not order them.
Such limitations were as uncomfortable as wearing clothes that did not fit.
“It’s nothing as grand as refusing orders. It’s just that we have opinions like this too.”
“It’ll be a while before those Department of Martial Arts students arrive too.”
“Right. It’s not as though they’re much different from us, is it?”
“If we rush and exhaust ourselves, we won’t even be able to fight.”
Listening to her peers, Lucia felt her strength draining away.
The urge to compromise crept up on her.
They were not cooperating, so it could not be helped.
Even if she worked hard alone, nothing would change.
There was no need to get worked up over it, was there?
Then she caught a faint but acrid smell.
Lucia turned her head toward it.
“...Ah.”
In the distance, smoke was rising.
The Department of Martial Arts students could not even properly use flint, let alone Fire Magic. There was no way they could have started a fire that large.
Lucia instinctively realized that Lawrence had done something.
It was as though he was urging them to hurry.
He was fighting hard, so they needed to run to him quickly.
It was as though Lawrence’s voice was echoing in her ears.
“...Hoo.”
She shook her head and cast aside her distracting thoughts.
It had been quite some time since she had been reincarnated into this world, but her habit of running from problems would still rear its head.
She had lived a cowardly life.
Because she had no strength, because she had nothing, because she had no room to spare.
She made excuses, stood by, and turned away.
Now, things were different.
She had the ability, so she had to make the right choice.
Otherwise, saying there had been nothing she could do would become a lie.
Otherwise, the loathing she would feel for her past self—who had known what was right yet looked away—would be unbearable.
“Fine. I won’t force you.”
She was not trying to rigidly pursue justice alone.
But she would at least do what she had to do. She would help those who needed help.
She would not harm others for her own benefit.
In this life, she had decided to live without shame, even if no one praised her.
After entrusting the most dangerous task to someone else, how shameful would it be if she could not even bring the rest along?
“Anyone who thinks it’s fine to lose, follow at your own pace. But....”
Lucia looked over her Department of Magic peers.
Why had she forgotten what she had to do before heading into battle?
A speech to the soldiers.
It raised morale and bound soldiers together as one.
At times, it could wield greater power than any strategy.
“At this very moment, Lawrence is struggling for our Department of Magic’s victory. Lawrence—the very one you looked down on because you thought his magical skill was lacking. Aren’t you ashamed to give up just because it’s a little difficult, when you’re supposed to be so exceptional?!”
Lucia’s voice grew more impassioned.
“If you have the will to prove that you are the kingdom’s greatest talents, if you want to walk the path of victory with your own strength....!”
Someone might say she was using overly grand words for a mere mock battle.
But to breathe life back into the spent motivation of the first-year Department of Magic students, this much fanning was necessary.
“Stop complaining and run!”
Lucia did not wait for an answer and strode forward.
“....”
The first-year Department of Magic students, who had been left stunned by Lucia’s words sweeping over them like a storm, stirred.
Defeat.
It was an unfamiliar word to children who had received nothing but praise before entering the academy.
Even in the entrance exam, they had only missed first place because there were reincarnators. They had not considered it a loss.
But now, defeat stood right before them.
Victory.
Until now, it had been something they took for granted to have in their grasp. From now on, it was something they had to pursue with effort. They could never let it slip away.
Now, they had to run for victory.
Fear of defeat and longing for victory mixed together.
“L-Let’s go together!”
“Me too...!”
Amid their confusion, the Department of Magic students were seized by the urge to move together with Lucia.
The Department of Magic main force picked up speed.