Conquering the Academy with Just a Sashimi Knife (Novel) - Chapter 97 - Finals (7)

Chapter 97 – Finals (7)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Erio Fine twisted the corner of her mouth.

“What the hell is that idiot bitch doing right now?”

“I don’t know the details, but one thing is certain. She has no intention of standing with us.”

“Do you think I asked because I couldn’t figure that out? I’m asking why, why exactly, that bat bitch Choi Seol-ah dumped us and stuck herself to that little brat!”

Erio let out an irritated shriek. Paul gave one easy shrug and answered smoothly.

“It seems she became soaked through from living too long among humans. Now then, settle yourself, Lady Erio. Will it do to get so agitated with the great task right in front of us? I will handle that black-haired cadet myself.”

“Can you really? No matter how much this is our home ground, that’s the kid who beat Iron Legs at seventeen.”

Erio’s question was ice-cold. Paul placed one hand on his chest and bowed his head as he answered.

“Even if I should lose, I can at least drain his stamina. And I had already been keeping a close watch on that cadet’s strength. I will not be careless.”

“Paul, if you’re speaking with that much confidence, then I suppose you have a method?”

“Yes. Please leave it to me with confidence, Lady Erio.”

Paul cut himself off for a moment and cast a glance toward Kang Geom-ma. The arm gripping the sashimi knife had blood vessels bulging across it. Paul stayed silent briefly, then spoke in a low voice.

“To still be perfectly lucid even with the magic this dense here… as expected, impressive is impressive. Under normal conditions, even if we fought ten times, I’d have lost nine of them, but-”

When Paul narrowed his slit-like eyes, a murky current stirred through the air.

“-The location did not favor you, Cadet Kang Geom-ma.”

Paul gathered the magic floating through the air and stacked it in both his hands. The force was so intense it made his hair float upward.

Uuuuuuuung.

Paul snapped the fingers of his right hand. Six spheres made of earth rose and hovered behind him. Each one was about the size of a cannonball.

Then he snapped his left fingers, and sparks of fire wrapped themselves around the clumps of earth.

‘I really did make the right choice by following Lady Erio and contracting with the Fourth Legion Commander.’

A villain who lost their master could no longer wield magic. Because they only cast spells by clinging to a legion commander and receiving magic power from them, it was impossible to draw it up on their own without a lord.

Erio’s and Paul’s magic power had vanished along with Agor’s death. They had sold away their humanity and only just become villains, yet before they could even enjoy any glory, their power had been stripped away.

But then, one day, an unexpected stroke of fortune arrived.

After Agor’s death, the Fourth Legion Commander Permash offered them a contract. The price of the contract was Leon’s body, the Hero candidate.

For a demon on the level of a legion commander to trespass into the human world, they had to dwell inside a vessel. The stronger the vessel, the greater the difference in the original demon’s power after possession. That was why demons constantly coveted Leon’s body, a vessel close to infinite.

Erio and Paul accepted the demon’s whisper without hesitation.

As a result, thanks to Permash’s grace, the two villains came to wield both fire and earth magic together.

‘I said I wouldn’t be careless, but at this point it felt like I’d have to work to lose.’

The magic power spread thick across all sides raced through every corner of Paul’s veins. A sinister smile spread across his lips.

He tried to remain calm, but it was hard to suppress how the corners of his mouth kept lifting at the exhilarating sensation of his whole body heating up pleasantly.

The phenomenon of using two elements? A sight she’d never heard of or seen before caused a small regret to spread across Choi Seol-ah’s face.

‘…Could it be that if I’d made another contract with a different legion commander, I could’ve handled two attributes too?’

But it was already too late for regret. Bat-like habits or not, she was not so fickle as to overturn her judgment in mere seconds.

‘I have no choice but to trust Geom-ma sir.’

Having forced her resolve into place, Choi Seol-ah quickly stepped back. Far from helping Kang Geom-ma, she would only get in the way. Mixed into that, too, was a small thought about running if things turned bad.

Step, step.

Paul advanced with proud, measured steps.

He had already gauged Kang Geom-ma’s strength to some degree from the spar with Mao Lang. A sword speed so quick it made the process itself look absent. Paul had felt admiration at that overwhelming speed, which seemed to exceed human limits.

‘Under normal circumstances, I would’ve been cut down before I could even lay a hand on him.’

But there was a countermeasure. Remove the empty space available for movement.

If his movement was restricted, what use would that nimble footwork be? And even if he dodged the first strike, it would only mean continuing the barrage.

This was an environment overflowing with the magic power needed as fuel for spells.

More than anything, that bastard Kang Geom-ma was in an excited state. His eyes might look colorless and transparent, but his inner world was surely violently unsettled. That aftershock would produce the smallest of openings, and that would decide life or death.

“I’ll be going all out.”

Paul widened his slit-like eyes and extended one arm.

He fired the cannonball-like masses, heated by fire, all at once.

Kwagagagagagagang.

An assault hurtling at Kang Geom-ma like falling meteors. Each time one of the stone masses crashed, a thunderous boom rang out as though the very ground were shaking.

The fierce bombardment continued without pause. White dust and violent sparks mixed together, and a dry, burning heat spread outward.

Choi Seol-ah rubbed her eyes. The moisture had dried out of them, and her eyeballs stung.

So she chose to observe the exchange using every sense except sight. She could no longer wield magic now, but she could still detect it.

Her skin drying out.

The smell of something burning.

The roars pounding at her eardrums.

The more she sharpened her senses, the more vividly the texture of the battle came through. It was hot and brutal.

Yet somehow, she could not hear anything sharp, the sort of sound one would expect from something being cut or severed. Beneath her lowered lashes, a tremor of unease ran through them.

‘…No way, Geom-ma sir can’t actually be losing, could he?’

Choi Seol-ah shook her head and chased away that momentary doubt. There was nothing for it but to trust her own choice, or rather, to trust her own instincts.

As soon as her eyes had adapted somewhat to the dry heat, she opened them to a narrow slit. This was a gamble with her life on the line. She meant to take it all in, even if it meant her eyes would be ruined.

Paul’s bombardment of cast spells never ceased. He continued condensing magic into his hands without stopping. Whenever enough had gathered, he immediately snapped both hands and fused the two magics together.

In the sense that he could use two forms of magic at once, Paul was certainly a troublesome enemy. But what made him more irritating than that was the polish in his combat sense.

Charge, cast, bombard.

Those three stages were completed in just seconds in Paul’s hands. A look of shock spread across Choi Seol-ah’s eyes.

‘…When did that bastard Paul grow this much?’

Absorbing magic from the air, converting it instantly into spells, and firing it off. Choi Seol-ah knew exactly how absurd that kind of sense was.

The last time she’d seen him in passing, he definitely hadn’t been like this… No doubt the contract with the Fourth Legion Commander Permash had helped, but there had to have been personal growth on Paul’s part too. Choi Seol-ah decided to believe that.

Because otherwise, for some reason, it felt like her insides would twist. Believing only what one wanted to believe.

This too was one of the straight-and-narrow mindsets proper to a villain.

And so Paul unleashed wave after wave of assault for several minutes. Rather than aiming precisely, he was spraying wildly to restrict Kang Geom-ma’s range of movement. At some point the terrain had become very different from what it had been just before.

Burning clumps of stone were planted into the floor and the inner walls. Paul’s pupils moved quickly in the narrow gaps between his eyelids.

‘…Where did he go?’

The only one he could see was Choi Seol-ah, standing some distance away looking blank. Kang Geom-ma was nowhere to be seen.

At once Paul sharpened his senses and searched for the trace of Kang Geom-ma. There was no way he would’ve simply stood there and let it happen. Paul had already seen for himself the speed of Kang Geom-ma, so fast it was not merely swift, but invisible.

Paul let out a low hum and rolled his eyes quickly. At that moment, a chilling feeling crawled up his spine.

Just as he began to turn his head, a flash of swordlight burst from the blind spot of his vision.

A pointed blade thrust through the dust and struck at Paul’s side and collarbone.

Puk. Kkak.

“Ghk!”

Paul’s mouth flew open and a scream tore out of it.

For a vivid instant, his slit-like eyes snapped wide open at the raw taste of steel.

A sharp, icy pain tore through the inside of his belly.

“!”

Paul’s pupils contracted once and then expanded, and at last captured black hair.

Kang Geom-ma was glaring at him with brilliant eyes from right within his personal space.

There wasn’t even enough time for a reflexive response.

Kang Geom-ma spun his body in a single turn and swung his blade, and a silvery streak passed smoothly through Paul’s arm.

Seogeok.

Paul’s right arm floated into his field of vision, spraying fresh blood. His thoughts slowed, and he blanked out for one short instant.

“Aaaaaaaaaah!”

Then the hot pain struck him belatedly, and Paul let out a belated scream.

“You motherfucker!”

Spitting as he cursed, Paul desperately threw himself backward to widen the distance. His eyes had gone even blacker with fear than before.

Even though he could’ve cut off his neck from the start, Kang Geom-ma had deliberately inflicted only sword wounds. And not to the vital points, either, but to the arm and the flesh at the side.

A short thought of `Why?` flashed through his mind, and then his gaze shifted toward Leon. One arm crushed, blood pouring steadily from his side.

‘D-don’t tell me…?’

Paul’s pupils shook. That bastard Kang Geom-ma was now repaying him exactly the way Leon and Saki had been injured.

‘Th-this was never a matter of winning or losing to begin with.’

Only then did Paul realize he hadn’t merely been failing to stall for time. He had been utterly toyed with.

“……”

Even now, Kang Geom-ma was looking at him with clear, colorless eyes. Black pupils packed with something beyond mere killing intent. Just meeting them made his body shrink and his jaw chatter.

“Aaaagh! Aaaagh!”

Paul’s brain turned completely white, and he shrieked in panic. At last he frantically snapped the fingers of his remaining hand again and again. A desperate flailing, like someone squeezing out the very last of their strength while begging for life.

Then, behind Paul once more, vicious boulders covered in jagged spikes began to float up.

Without his right hand, he could no longer wield fire. So instead he gathered every bit of scattered magic power into one place.

Paul pushed the destructive force to its very limit, and then fired the spell.

Kugugugugugugung.

Kang Geom-ma watched that silently for a moment, then gripped the hilt of his blade tightly. Intense power began gathering from the joints of his fingers first, then coiled itself around the blade in its entirety. A blue-white gleam ran along the length of the steel.

‘…Th-that is.’

Paul screamed inwardly in shock.

Wasn’t that aura, the thing only masters at the absolute peak were said to wield?

At a phenomenon beyond the bounds of his comprehension, his face changed completely to stunned disbelief.

In the instant it took Paul to blink, Kang Geom-ma raised the blade upright.

And then he spoke in a low voice.

“Die.”

The blade moved.

Seo-geok.

The split stone masses flew away in separate halves and embedded themselves directly into the wall. The sharp blue light continued straight onward and, without losing force, passed clean through Paul. At the same time, a single red line was drawn from the crown of his head to his groin.

“Th-this can’t be poss-”

Paul fumbled at his solar plexus, and then his body split into two.

Thud.

The villain Paul became a vil/lain.

* * *

The sight was impossible to believe.

Choi Seol-ah’s pupils watching the scene swelled to three times their size and then shrank again. She rubbed both her eyes with her hands like a cat washing its face, then opened them again.

Her gaze shifted toward the thing that had been Paul. The corpse, neatly split in two, was rapidly losing its warmth. A dull ringing spread through Choi Seol-ah’s head.

‘This is insane.’

It looked, for the briefest instant, as though Kang Geom-ma’s arm had blurred. And then something flashed.

And now things were like this.

That had been an attack? To Choi Seol-ah’s eyes, that single exchange had been faster than lightning. On top of that, it had looked as though aura had wrapped itself around the blade as well. To be wielding sword aura at that age.

The shock was so numbing she could barely speak. It was a sword strike that defied the laws of physics, truly demonic in nature.

Choi Seol-ah’s gaze naturally shifted toward Erio.

Her face had fallen completely into confusion and despair. It was not so different from her own reaction. But their positions were clearly different.

To Kang Geom-ma, Choi Seol-ah was an ally, and Erio was an enemy. Erio’s lips, drenched in shock, puckered on their own.

A deep smile curled at the corner of Choi Seol-ah’s lips as she looked at her. Even back when she had been a villain, she had openly belittled and looked down on her, and now she was trembling like a drowned rat.

‘Idiot.’

She looked at Kang Geom-ma’s back. Smoke drifted up from his shoulder blades. The smell of something scorched, born from friction heat sweeping through the air, lingered at the tip of her nose.

‘……’

As she looked at Kang Geom-ma, she became certain.

Certain that the safest place in the world was undoubtedly by his side.

For Choi Seol-ah, that was enough.