◈ Mistaken for a Masked Monster
──────
Declaration of Victory
Screech!
The air tore open with a sharp, ripping cry.
A dozen-odd arrows came screaming in all at once.
Blazing tongues of flame, the air around them shimmering, fracturing apart in the heat.
The inferno writhed, hungry to swallow him whole.
"Get away from me!"
The girl's glare could have killed.He clicked the watch button anyway.
Click.
His vision dulled. Every current in the world slowed to a crawl.
Through that gap, the colorful blade swept out.
The next moment.
"Hmm."
Bang, BOOM!
The deflected arrows detonated behind him.
A wave of heat washed over his back.
His gaze didn't shift.
One step, then another. That was all.
Neither hurried nor slow, his pace easy and relaxed.
"Didn't I mention it? It won't work."
A light, deliberate taunt.
Her attacks had kept coming and coming. Now they simply bored him, and he made sure she knew it.
Was she thrown off by that?
Shariel's rhythm was coming apart at the seams.
Between ragged breaths, the girl bit down on her lip.
"Shut up... I told you to shut up!"
"Oh my."
Fwip.
An ambush, caught and parried.
The arrow's path bent wide, burying itself uselessly in the floor.
He gave the balloon sword a lazy wave.
"Missed again."
"How dare you, Class E trash!"
"That line is getting stale. Is there anything else you know how to say?"
"I don't know what you're doing, but you will regret this!"
"Heard that one too. Eleven minutes and twenty-four seconds ago, to be precise."
"You!"
She was nothing like she'd been at the start.
That smile of hers, beautiful and deceptive in equal measure, was gone.
In its place, nothing but a furrowed brow.
Click.
Heavy beads of sweat ran down pale cheeks.
Her stamina was clearly running dry, her movements losing their edge.
'Then again... she went all-out like that.'
After his first parry.
Shariel had thrown herself at him like a woman possessed, wave after wave of attacks, as though sheer refusal might somehow change the outcome.
'In a way, it makes sense.'
A lifetime spent honing her craft.
The field she had devoted herself to, bent and broken by a single balloon sword.
Laughable.
And worse, crumbling in defeat precisely because of that absurdity.
-- Aren't you getting worried yet? About the kind of humiliation that's coming your way.
-- You could always forfeit. Crawl on all fours in front of the whole school and I might consider going easy on you.
All of this from an opponent she had written off not long before.
There weren't many people who could hold themselves together in a situation like that.
And on top of that, she was still a kid.
Click.
At an age when the mind hadn't finished hardening.
Picking at pride, one careful nick at a time, was a perfectly sound strategy.
"Hah, hah..."
"You sound winded."
"Ugh, be quiet... I've still got plenty left!"
The bout had begun. Ten minutes had passed since.
The momentum was entirely one-sided.
Click.
She attacked. He parried each one.
The one pushing the pace was obviously Shariel.
He had done nothing but defend, not a single counterattack thrown.
"Well."
But.
"No matter how many more times you try, the outcome will be the same."
The room had already tilted his way.
Pressing the attack and controlling the fight were two entirely different things.
Click.
He reset the watch and deflected the next arrow the moment it came.
Bug and parry working in tandem, turning each shot wide.
Not a scratch on the balloon sword.
'Good matchup.'
He turned the thought over.
Parrying demanded intense concentration. It could only be applied to one thing at a time.
Against projectiles especially, the timing was difficult.
'The clock bug is squeezing out as much efficiency as it can, but...'
Against pure volume, it would always put him at a disadvantage.
Shariel had been deliberate and precise with every shot, which made each one easier to read.
Click.
If she had put the bow down,
if she had overwhelmed him with quantity over quality,
if she had spread her fire magic the way any ordinary fire sorceress would...
'I would have lost. There's a hard ceiling on defending with parries.'
A technique honed to its absolute sharpest edge.
That very precision was what was now catching at Shariel's ankles.
Click.
"You deflect everything so neatly!"
"Heh, thank you."
"You're like a fly! Just one hit... one hit and you'd go down on the spot!"
"Feel free to try."
"Ugh, you...!"
Fwip! KABOOM!
The exchange kept cycling, attack and counter.
The more elaborate the arcs drawn across the arena, the louder the crowd noise drifted over to him.
-- What's going on? The Class E top seat is actually holding his own against Shariel-nim...?
-- Holding his own? He's completely dominating from where I'm standing.
-- Is that... is that a balloon in his hand? He's been deflecting magic with that thing?
-- What the hell, I've never seen anything like this in my life.
Snatches of conversation, drifting over.
Shariel's color darkened another shade.
Desperation leaked from between cracked lips, something she couldn't hold back.
"Krgh...!"
Eyes pressing in from every direction.
All that focused attention squeezed the breath a little tighter in her chest.
-- She can't even pop a balloon? Wasn't she supposed to be a high-level fire sorceress?
-- No matter how unusual the opponent, should she really be struggling this much? Kind of a letdown...
-- Always walking around like she owned the place.
-- Class C top seat and she can't take down one Class E student?
-- The Class E guy though, he's actually impressive. Viktor, wasn't it?
Voices erupting from all sides.
Confusion, disappointment, mockery, amazement.
Emotion became pressure. It bore down on the arena.
And it was Shariel taking the full weight of it.
-- Don't tell me she's actually going to lose like this.
-- No chance. She's Class C top seat.
-- Looking at how this is going, it does seem about even...
-- She might as well drop out. How do you show your face at school after this.
With every fresh remark, the girl's steps grew more desperate.
Arrow paths wavered, mana scattering in all directions.
"You seem to be growing anxious."
"Hah, hah... be quiet!"
"Well, it would be embarrassing, struggling against Class E's top seat."
"Shut up! You're the one who's done nothing but dodge this whole time!"
A pride that had stood sky-high.
Words and circumstances, aimed right at the root of who she was.
'Almost time.'
She was at her limit.
Shariel's stamina had been running on empty for a while now.
She had still been wrenching the bowstring back through pure stubbornness.
But even that was reaching its end.
The girl readied her final attack.
Whoosh!
The air turned scorching in an instant.
The karmic fire strung on her bow was vicious, and the world around it bled red.
She must have scraped every last drop together, because this one far outstripped everything before it.
Shariel's voice rang out sharp and clear.
"I'll end this now! Against trash like you, I'll show you the difference in class!"
The arrow, compressed at high heat, was black, unlike the ones before it.
Layer upon layer of flame, concentrated into a single direction.
Shariel's fingers released the taut string.
-Shariel-Style Fire Sorcery, Secret Art-
'Karmic Fire'
A vicious storm shot free.
It bore down through shimmering heat haze.
Powerful enough to startle even the watching crowd.
KABOOM!
'But.'
The trajectory was obvious.
A scattered mind woke the instincts, and instinct spat out something direct. Something straight.
And he had anticipated that reflex from the beginning.
In other words.
'Easy to dodge.'
Click.
The scene slowed, as it always did.
He skimmed past by the narrowest margin, parrying the arrow clean.
Fwip.
"...!"
BOOM!
A crack of sound rang in both ears.
Without pause, he drove into the gap she'd opened.
Shariel had swung wild and exposed herself completely.
"Ugh...!?"
He was already closing the distance.
A flash of panic crossed her face.
The girl scrambled to recover her footing and drew the string back one more time.
But a spell thrown together in a hurry was bound to be rough at the seams.
Flames still crackled around it, but their force was a shadow of what it had been.
'Break through.'
Click.
Click.
Click.
He pressed the watch again and again, swinging the balloon sword in quick, sharp arcs.
The weakened flames scattered before they could even reach him.
The distance between them had closed to arm's length.
"Got you."
A quiet murmur.
He raised his foot and drove it hard into the girl's stomach.
Not much strength in his arms, so his full weight went behind it instead.
A beat later, the impact rang out across the entire arena.
Thwack!
"Kugh...!"
She gasped and flew.
Maybe it was the exhaustion.
The blow landed far harder than it had any right to.
Shariel stayed airborne for a few long seconds before she came down.
Thud.
Sprawled across the floor in a heap.
She didn't get up.
Just lay there, chest heaving.
"Hah, hah..."
"Oh dear."
He stood straight, looking down at her.
Not a single scratch on him.
The colorful sword slid back into his grip.
He leveled it at the fallen, red-haired girl.
The taut, springy surface of the balloon settled against her pale throat.
"That's the end, isn't it?"
A smile curled at the corner of his mouth as he said it.
No one had any objection.
"...Match over. Winner, Viktor."
The duel ended.
Right behind it, a familiar chime.
Ding!
[Condition met! A new title has been obtained!]
[One hidden function in the status window has been unlocked!]
[Reward Details]
-Title 'Collector of Windfalls' obtained
-Status window function 'Windfall Collector' unlocked
A blue window floated up before his eyes.