—————————————————————–
Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: TushChen
—————————————————————–
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Are you Leonhart Deinhart?” the boy asked coldly.
“Yes, that’s right,” I replied while recalling the boy’s name.
Caiden Adan.
He must be the second son of the Adan duchy.
“I see.”
At my answer, Caiden infused his sword with aura as if he had heard all he needed to.
The sword was enveloped in a silvery-gray light, and the aura emitted a dazzling glow.
Caiden growled like an enraged beast.
“I challenge you to a duel on my family’s honor, Leonhart Deinhart. If you know anything about honor, you’ll accept, won’t you?”
Caiden tilted his head slightly and glared at me fiercely.
The sharp blade at my neck was emitting the light of aura.
Aura was a powerful force that imbued a sword with the spirit of one’s soul.
It was something like the essence of swordsmanship that only warriors who had reached a considerable level could use.
Its destructive power was comparable to magic, and it could be used with weapons to enhance physical performance or protect oneself from magic when wrapped around the body.
‘As expected of the student council. Quite impressive.’
Judging by his round, youthful face, he must be pretty young, but being able to manifest aura was impossible without tremendous talent or soul-crushing effort.
“Isn’t that Caiden Adan? The one who ranked 3rd in the year-end exams last year…”
“Is that… aura surrounding his sword?! At his age? That’s dangerous.”
“Were the Deinhart and Adan duchies on bad terms?”
“Anyway, it’s dangerous, so someone quickly call a professor!”
The students instantly became noisy.
“You wouldn’t refuse, would you?”
Contrary to his words, it wouldn’t matter if I refused.
He had suddenly challenged me to a duel in the first place, and there was no justification.
My honor wouldn’t be tarnished either.
Still, I decided to ask the reason, thinking I should at least know why.
“May I ask why you’re doing this, senior?”
Caiden narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at Leonhart.
“… Wouldn’t it be troublesome for you if I said it here?”
By this point, I had a rough idea of what this was about.
It seemed this boy had seen Yuria crying yesterday.
And he had apparently made some kind of misunderstanding.
Something like… I had made Yuria cry.
In any case, though unexpected, this was fine.
I needed to cause a commotion like this at some point anyway to lure out Livia.
I had initially planned to cause it myself, but now I was saved the trouble.
“Very well. Let’s duel.”
I closed my book and gently pushed away the sword at my neck with magic-infused force.
When his sword was naturally pushed away, Caiden’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You, what… how?! A sword imbued with aura?!”
The reason for Caiden’s surprise was simple.
Aura was known to have the power to repel magic, making it ineffective against it.
In the original novel, the protagonist was closer to a magic swordsman style, simultaneously using both magic and swordsmanship.
So, the original protagonist engages opponents using aura through swordsmanship.
The problem was that handling a sword was very difficult for me, who hadn’t shaken off my frailty.
I hadn’t adequately learned swordsmanship and had to rely solely on magic.
Fortunately, there was one fatal weakness of this aura that was unknown.
Of course, this setting wasn’t in the original novel.
I had filled this gap in the setting in advance, needing a power that could easily counter aura.
Void attribute magic was magic that could remove or weaken other magic.
It was magic that existed only in the novel’s background settings, and no one except me knew of its existence.
I had been anticipating this since childhood.
After using it on Yuria when I was 8 years old, I hadn’t had much chance to use it.
Still, I thought there would be many opportunities to use it at the academy.
I didn’t expect to experience the setting I had filled in so soon.
It was always thrilling to see a properly filled-in setting actually work.
“A duel is fine, but it would be better if we changed locations,” I said leisurely as I stood up.
“Senior, wouldn’t it be inconvenient for you in front of so many people?”
Caiden, who was flustered, looked at me warily before reluctantly nodding.
Fortunately, the new students didn’t know much, or he would have been terribly embarrassed.
As evidence, Caiden’s face was slightly flushed.
“Y-Yes. Let’s change locations.”
I grinned and walked out of the classroom.
Speaking of which, Caiden Adan. It feels like I should remember something about him.
I glanced at Caiden following behind me, feeling something bothering me, so I called the Settings Browsing Window.
I remembered seeing that name in the original work, but there was a strange sense of dissonance.
The lack of additional settings confirmed that he was a character already appearing in the novel.
Even if there were additional settings, adding settings to characters was almost impossible except in cases like Elena, who had already died before the novel began.
Most settings related to characters were already added or managed by the world in advance.
It was as if background settings were being added in real time.
However, it wasn’t impossible to check the background settings added by the world.
It was possible to peek at some settings through the ‘Setting Unlock’ ability, which was unlocked when my Investigator of Settings special ability reached level 3.
*Ding!*
I quickly skimmed through the unlocked settings and discovered one particular setting.
‘I see. I can use this.’
Having found an interesting setting, I smiled slightly.
“Why are you walking so slowly?” Caiden urged from behind.
“Ah, I was just thinking about something. Sorry. Let’s hurry.”
While it was partly because I had been looking at the settings, I walked slowly for another reason.
I definitely wanted ‘her’ to observe Caiden and me going to the duel.
She should have checked by now, so there was no need to stall for time anymore.
“Arrogant bastard.”
I shrugged nonchalantly at his criticism and moved to the academy’s dueling arena.
It was still early.
The academy’s spacious indoor dueling arena was empty.
I felt the chilly temperature of the empty space as I stood in the arena.
“How did a new student know about this place?”
I asked Caiden a question with a mocking smile.
“Does being a new student mean I shouldn’t know?”
“You’ve been maintaining an insolent attitude all this time. Aren’t you afraid of dying?”
“Oh, you were planning to kill me? How scary. Isn’t murder between students prohibited at the academy? Even outside the academy, it’s illegal. Don’t you know that, senior?”
Caiden’s face turned bright red with anger as if about to explode.
“You bastard! How far are you going to look down on me…!”
I pretended not to hear and looked behind me.
As expected, a few students were hesitantly entering the dueling room to watch the duel.
There weren’t many, about 10 people.
Among them, the girl I had hoped would watch the duel wasn’t there, but given her personality, I thought she would be hiding somewhere watching.
Even if she hadn’t seen it, those students would spread rumors, so it wasn’t a problem.
“Well then, let’s finish this quickly so we can return before the morning assembly starts.”
I spoke lightly and cheerfully.
“Senior, would you like to attack first?”
When I spoke as if yielding, Caiden looked as if he couldn’t be any angrier.
“…I heard you’re a mage, so I’ll give you one chance to distance yourself.”
‘Oh, how considerate.’
I inwardly applauded his transcendent patience while giving a small smile.
“No, no. This distance is fine for me. Let’s make it advantageous for you, Senior.”
Even with his great patience, it seemed Caiden couldn’t endure any longer.
He lowered his body and placed his trembling hand, shaking with anger, on the hilt of the sword he had sheathed.
“Don’t regret this, freshman. You’ve provoked me this far, so you won’t mind if your head flies off, right?”
A faint aura light gathered at Caiden’s feet, and the next moment.
Whoosh!!
He charged at me at an ultra-high speed like an arrow.
Most mages would have lost their lives to a swordsman using aura at this close range.
However, I had already spread Void attribute magic in the area around me.
Though incomprehensible to Caiden, his speed noticeably decreased as he entered the range of the Void attribute magic as he charged towards me.
“What?! My body isn’t moving as I want!”
I had cast a speed enhancement spell on myself.
Thanks to that, it wasn’t difficult to avoid his sword, but I deliberately waited for it and dodged it at the last moment.
The purpose was to unsettle him.
“Why can’t I hit you!”
Caiden’s sword, imbued with aura, was still sufficiently threatening even within the field created by the Void magic.
I continued to dodge his sword by a hair’s breadth while watching when his swordsmanship would be most vulnerable.
“What is this? Why?! What’s going on!”
Caiden’s swordplay became faster and more erratic as he grew flustered.
He must have thought he had struck me accurately several times.
But there was no way he could hit me.
I was creating a robust, repulsive force with magic between him and me.
When he got close to me, his sword naturally veered off course.
This was inevitable as long as he kept the aura on his sword, even if repeated tens or thousands of times.
Initially, when a mage and warrior of similar levels fought, there was no instance where aura couldn’t cut through magic.
However, this became possible within the field created by Void magic.
The aura on the sword was weakened, unable to cut through the defensive magic I had spread around me.
Of course, this only applied when purely emitting aura, and it wouldn’t work against higher-level aura users.
‘This is enough for this guy.’
I watched for an opening as Caiden swung his sword and reached out towards his body.
He noticed my movement and shifted the aura he had been focusing on his sword to his body.
This was the moment.
I had been waiting for this all along.
I had been waiting for him to release the aura from his sword, and I deliberately exposed my face slightly to his sword.
If I exposed my face to a sword imbued with aura, it wouldn’t end with a slight injury.
I felt a burning pain and blood splattered, but this was enough.
Meanwhile, my hand had lightly touched Caiden’s chest.
If he had been just a little, just a tiny bit faster in wrapping his body with aura, he could have at least halved the power of my magic.
“Too bad, Senior Caiden.”
At that moment, a solid magical force acted on his body.
‘Explode.’
The moment the magic imbued with that imagery activated, it affected Caiden’s body before the aura could.
Bang!!
With a loud explosion, Caiden’s body floated up into the air.
Although no actual flames appeared, the massive impact of the explosion right before him sent Caiden flying almost to the end of the spacious dueling arena.
Caiden’s body tumbled roughly across the floor, only stopping just before hitting the wall.
The new students who had been watching silently suddenly erupted into noise.
“What just happened? How did a mage so easily defeat an aura user?”
“They said the Duke of Deinhart was a genius… Is this already possible for him?”
“This, this is on a different level from me…”
And one of them showed the reaction I wanted.
It seemed everyone else had just realized it, too.
“There’s blood… flowing from his face.”
“It, it’s true. The wound looks really deep.”
I brought my hand to my face to check the size of the wound.
I could feel a gash about the size of a finger.
It wasn’t a profound wound, but because the torn area was vast, it seemed to be bleeding a lot.
“Ugh… it’s not… over yet…”
Caiden, who had been thrown far away, was already trying to force himself up using his sword as a cane.
But it must have been quite a shock as he slipped back to the floor several times.
I leisurely walked over to Caiden and used magic to snatch away his sword, which he couldn’t even infuse with aura, flinging it far away.
Ting, tinggg-
The sword that had flown far rolled across the floor.
“Ugh…!”
Only then did he seem to realize he had no chance of winning.
I slowly lowered my head towards him as he looked up at me with despairing eyes.
His whole body was trembling finely with the shame of losing to a first-year student, the humiliation of defeat, and frustration.
“Now, just grant me one favor.”
I said, bowing my head slightly to him.
“Wh-why should I listen to the likes of you…”
He spoke, putting up a final act of defiance.
“No, did you think you could just walk away after losing a duel? As someone from the Adan duchy, you should know this much, right? You started the fight first. You have to take responsibility for that.”
I spoke sharply as I grabbed the nape of his neck and lifted him up.
Then, I spread a sound-blocking spell around us so that no sound would leak outside.
What I was about to say was somewhat sensitive.
“The price will have to be paid with your life. Just know that what I’m saying isn’t the same as that petty threat you made earlier, Senior Caiden.”
I grinned.
“Life…? Die…? What if I say… I don’t want to…?”
Seeing his still unrepentant attitude, I considered breaking one of his bones but laughed softly instead.
“Then, shall I reveal that secret you’ve been hiding so carefully, senior?”
When I recited the background setting, I discovered while checking his settings earlier that Caiden’s complexion turned whiter than a corpse.
The trembling of his entire body was even more intense than the humiliation of defeat earlier.
“Will you do it?”
When I asked again, he nodded, seemingly unaware that his lips were trembling.
I smiled with a sigh.
The bait to lure Livia was now complete.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
