Chapter 146
They’re swarming in so disgustingly.
But if I looked at it positively, this was a chance to raise my level that would never come again.
Melbrit, the hero training institution, was a grand undertaking into which the Kingdom of Daytoon had poured all its national power.
They selected candidates judged to have the qualities of a hero, then concentrated the souls—experience points—gathered from across the nation into them to create imitation heroes, like agents of god.
A system that could only exist because of the spiritual pillar known as the hero.
This country had survived that way until now.
It was as though the soul soldiers swarming toward us were saying,
“Look. This is Melbrit. This is your prey.”
……And I.
“Fireball!”
Without hesitation, I slammed my strongest magic into them and devoured them greedily.
If I didn’t eat them anyway, some other bastard would pick up those souls.
There wasn’t a single reason to hold back, was there?
If I poured everything I had into scraping them all up right now, in this very moment, then the experience points I would have had to travel for a year, no, ten years…… or perhaps decades, roaming dungeons to gather,
I could obtain all at once.
A guy with the qualifications of a true goddess’s proxy was stealing and eating the experience points of imitation heroes. Even if someone called it unfair, there was nothing I could do about it.
There were already two women after my life. One of them was even a god.
Right now, I forgot everything and threw myself into leveling up.
I cast Fireball without pause, and when soul soldiers clung to me, I beat them down and shattered them.
It was an extremely dense span of combat. I even forgot the pain.
“I can’t…… anymore…!”
Ava’s knees trembled as if they were about to give out.
The number of soul soldiers was increasing. Diana was skillfully knocking away the approaching soul soldiers with magic, but
I had been casting magic for quite some time now, even while engaging in close combat.
Was this the limit? No, it wasn’t.
“Karen!”
I called Karen.
Our eyes met, and we exchanged a signal no one else knew.
That signal was the spirit core.
Karen’s and my spirit cores moved as if dancing.
“Here we go!”
As if responding to my voice,
the wind spirit whipped up a gust.
It couldn’t even be called a technique. In terms of simplicity, it was even simpler than a curtain.
You drew out the spirit’s power as much as possible and created wind.
But the aftermath did not end at merely stirring up wind.
Joining forces with Karen, I created a gust strong enough to bind the soul soldiers’ movements.
“Duck!”
I fired a Fireball, sweeping away the soul soldiers with a storm of flames.
“U-uaaaah!”
Ava clutched her head and threw herself flat.
I tried to squeeze out even more wind, but unfortunately, the gust cut off after around ten seconds.
If only we’d been outdoors instead of indoors…….
(Your level has increased.)
(Your level has……)
But with that attack, I had taken down an enormous number of soul soldiers at once.
Suddenly, a heat so intense it was suffocating surged up from inside my body.
(Strength has increased by one stage.)
(Mana has increased by one stage.)
(Stamina has increased by one stage.)
(Agility has increased by one stage.)
It finally came……!!
The goddess’s proxy special bonus!
The first time I received this was when I went to the dungeon with Karen.
This stat-stage upgrade was a cheat among cheats that allowed even a nobody like me to approach the strength of a true hero.
Power filled my entire body.
Fatigue vanished, and my senses sharpened like a finely honed blade.
The soul soldiers I had been barely managing to block came into clear view. Now, I felt like I could tell exactly how many there were with just a glance.
“Dekal! This isn’t the time to be spacing out!”
Diana shouted.
I struck an approaching soul soldier with my fist and smashed it apart.
I crushed it as easily as cracking an eggshell.
“Fireball.”
I cast the spell.
Because it was a spell I had used so many times, I could feel it. An immense heat, incomparable to anything before, was condensed within it.
I fired it toward the place where the soul soldiers had gathered,
and the moment it exploded, I suppressed the spreading heat with a curtain of wind.
Then the heat trapped inside the membrane rampaged within it like a dragon made of fire, turning every soul soldier to ash.
The pressure created by the explosion and the intense light drew everyone’s attention.
Ava murmured in shock.
“Was that just now…… ‘Fireball’……?”
“Oppa, that was amazing!”
“……Dekal. That was incredible magic.”
Everyone seemed surprised.
In the middle of a suffocating fight tangled up with dozens of soul soldiers, if a single spell suddenly went off and resolved the situation, it was only natural to be surprised.
I was surprised by my own magic too.
Because the Fireball I had just thrown hadn’t even been condensed.
On top of that, the curtain had perfectly suppressed the aftermath of the magic, which had far exceeded my expectations.
If it hadn’t, things could have gone very badly. A chill ran through me, and cold sweat broke out.
Physical ability, the destructive power of offensive magic, even spirit arts.
It was the moment I confirmed that all my abilities had improved dramatically.
Wave 2 ended.
To replenish my famished mana, I gulped down water as if I were going to devour the bottle itself.
As my abilities had improved, my total mana had also increased, so no matter how much I drank, it felt like it wouldn’t fill up.
Just how much stronger had I become?
“Diana.”
I tossed Diana a water bottle.
As Diana drank, she was looking at me with wary eyes.
It was a look I had seen once during class.
Was it when I learned a protective barrier at a speed beyond her expectations?
“……Hmph. So, Dekal, you could use that kind of magic too?”
“…….”
“I had no idea. You must have found it pretty funny deep down, watching someone like me act all superior without even realizing you were an amazing mage.”
Uh-oh.
It seemed she had mistakenly thought I had been going easy on her in every way until now.
It was understandable.
Because right now, I had become so strong it was as if I were a different person.
You could tell just from the aftermath of my magic.
If the Fireball I used before was enough to take down a pack of beasts, then the Fireball I had just used was strong enough that I would believe it had felled an elephant in a single blow.
If I condensed it, what would happen……?
“You’re misunderstanding. I didn’t laugh at you.
Because, well, I only just managed to do that now myself.”
“What……?”
Diana seemed dumbfounded.
Stia, Karen, and Ava didn’t know how to use magic, so they were merely watching our conversation with curious eyes, but Diana was a mage born into a noble family who had followed an elite path.
If she realized such a gap had opened up between her and someone from an adventurer background, it would be natural for her pride to be wounded.
I thought she might say something unpleasant.
But that expectation missed the mark.
“…….”
Diana’s eyes were burning with competitive spirit.
“Next wave.”
A mana reaction I had never seen before arose from Diana’s hand.
“This time, I’ll show you.”
“Everyone, get ready!”
Stia shouted.
Just like during Wave 2, soul soldiers poured in from every direction.
“Thunder Storm……!”
Crackle!
Diana cast a spell I had never seen before.
Like Lightning Square, electric shocks spread out across the floor and through the air like a spiderweb, seizing the space in front of the doors where the soul soldiers were pouring out.
It was an astonishing sight.
And not just one door, but every passage the soul soldiers were coming from!
Diana closed her eyes and maintained the ring of lightning while controlling the electricity that wrapped around the entire trial chamber so it wouldn’t leak toward us.
Just by looking, I could tell how difficult it was to maintain that magic.
She didn’t even have the leeway to pay attention to her own body.
Clenching her fists tightly, focusing every nerve solely on the magic she was using,
she struck down every soul soldier in the trial chamber.
“……Kuh, hoo……. Hoo……!!”
Diana’s breathing grew ragged.
But no one could spoil it by telling her to stop or not to push herself.
That was how overwhelming the sight was.
This girl was a genuine genius, just like her older sister.
For the sole reason that she had fallen behind me, Diana broke through a wall.
As if whipping herself, saying she couldn’t stop here, she showed us what true talent was.
What she had once said, that she would wipe out the bandit gang even on her own, hadn’t been a bluff.
My strength was like a cheat born from possessing the goddess’s proxy.
It was different from Diana’s growth.
When I realized, in my very skin, just how serious that immature girl had been about magic,
something like a forgotten fighting spirit began rising in my own body as well.
The endless battle was exciting me.
That was when it happened.
“Dekal, on the second floor……!”
Stia snapped her head up and shouted.
Doors had opened on the second floor as well. And from there, soul soldiers twice as large grabbed the railing and began leaping down.
I shouted at once.
“Protect Diana!”
Karen, Stia, and Ava turned their backs to Diana.
The bulky soul soldiers charged toward us, dragging their massive bodies along.
If we let those things attack Diana, Thunder Storm would be canceled, and we would be buried in soul soldiers—the trial would end right then and there.
But we should be able to keep this going a little longer.
Diana had instantly altered the structure of her magic to suit the layout of the trial chamber.
There was no way the current me, superior to Diana in both physical condition and mana, couldn’t imitate her.
“Fireball!”
I thought.
As I destroyed the approaching hulking soul soldiers with Fire Balls.
If I were to adapt my magic to suit the Trial Room, how should I go about it?
Its destructive power was sufficient. More than sufficient—overflowing, even.
It would be ideal if I could increase my rate of fire while maintaining that destructive power, but that was no easy task.
The casting time for Fire Ball was at least one second.
Three seconds if I included aiming it properly before firing.
If I added the time it took for the Fire Ball to leave my hand and reach the target, it took four to five seconds in total.
In an ordinary situation, that was fast, but here, it wasn’t enough.
If I couldn’t prepare my magic even while aiming and firing, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the speed at which the soul soldiers were surging out.
But that didn’t mean I could just fire hastily.
Fire Ball was dangerous magic.
If I didn’t suppress the aftermath with a barrier of wind until the very last moment so my allies wouldn’t be injured, it would cause a catastrophe.
If I had been the only one in this room, I would have unleashed every bit of firepower I had and swept them away, whether the flames swallowed my body or not, but that wasn’t a good method.
Unless we were in a situation where we were charging in to die together.
Damn it, this is complicated.
Trying to think while fighting makes it impossible to concentrate.
“Oppa!”
“Urgh!?”
A hulking soul soldier dropped down right beside me.
The ground shook, and I staggered before regaining my balance and blocking the fist the hulking soul soldier swung at me with my arm.
I immediately counterattacked, but perhaps because of its size, I couldn’t easily subdue it with my fists.
With no other choice, I shoved it away by force and retreated.
Just because I wasted a little time on a single one, the soul soldiers swarmed in without restraint.
Is this the limit now……!!
My eyes met Neris’s, who had been watching us from the corner.
She was looking for an opportunity to intervene.
Stubbornness pointlessly welled up inside me, and I decided to struggle as long as I could to buy time.
“Karen, protect yourself with the barrier!”
“Okay!”
“Fire Ball!”
I destroyed the hulking soul soldiers.
And the soul soldiers I failed to destroy were handled by Stia.
Her lightning-fast rapier thrusts swiftly destroyed the hulking soul soldiers’ limbs and heads.
“……”
Neris relaxed her body.
She crossed her arms as if supporting her large breasts from below and watched us.
With eyes that had withdrawn all expectation.
That made me want to wring out even more.
After all, this wasn’t a life-or-death duel, but a bonus stage determining how many rewards we could take.
It was the perfect environment, with a ranker standing by to save us.
Compared to risking our lives in a dungeon, it was true that the danger was far lower.
That was why none of us said a word about giving up.
“Fire……”
I suddenly transferred the image that surfaced in my mind to the tips of my fingers.
The flames condensed at my fingertips surged out as if erupting, engulfing a hulking soul soldier.
“……!”
The three of them, except Diana, looked at me.
Surprised myself, I looked at my hand.
What is this?
I focused again.
I pointed at a soul soldier with my hand and cast Fire Ball.
But I didn’t fire it.
I only condensed the heat with the barrier, and condensed it, and condensed it again.
The moment I opened a small hole in the barrier.
The suppressed heat stretched forward.
“Ngh!”
Karen and Stia seemed to find it hot, covering their faces with their arms as they stepped back.
A little more precisely.
I brought my spirit arts to bear as much as I could.
If, when using a compressed Fire Ball, the ratio had been two parts spirit arts and eight parts Fire Ball.
Now it was the opposite.
Two parts Fire Ball, eight parts spirit arts.
Not only did I compress the heat as much as possible with the barrier, I also created a single path to guide the heat as it erupted.
A path of wind.
Along that path, the heat surged.
And then it became an entirely new magic.
At the place I pointed to with my fingertips, something like a laser condensed from flame extended outward, locally destroying the soul soldier’s body.
(Your proficiency in Fire Ball has increased.)
(Fire Enchant has changed.)
(Your proficiency in Magic Compression has increased.)
(You have acquired the Unique Skill, “Fire’s End.”)
I had reached something.
Once again, I had broken through a wall and reached a Unique Skill.
It was not a skill derived from applying Fire Ball, but an entirely new skill.
Thud, thud, thud!
Hulking soul soldiers fell from the second floor one after another like meteors.
They straightened their crouched bodies and charged toward us.
As if bewitched, I raised my hand and pointed.
“Fire’s……”
I used an “Incantation” to draw out the power of the new skill.
The mana consumption was actually lower than when I used Fire Ball.
But the pounding sense that something dangerous was about to happen was far stronger than when I used Fire Ball.
“End.”
Then, a blindingly intense heat ray shot out and, following the movement of my hand, split every last soul soldier apart.