If my opponent had been Celestia, I would have given up on even standing here.
The being known as Celestia was a natural disaster in and of herself.
A ceaseless bombardment of high-level magic, and an overwhelming number of spirits rivaling an army.
Against her, who swallowed the entire battlefield with firepower and sheer numbers, it would be stranger to even think of the word “chance.”
Compared to that, Chloe, who wielded only a single sword and aura, was at least an opponent with whom an exchange of blows was possible.
Unlike a mage who could burn an entire battlefield to the ground, she was someone against whom the physical structure of a one-on-one duel could at least be established.
But the fact that such a structure existed did not mean victory.
During the final evaluation at the end of the first-year semester, Chloe had been the only opponent who had come within a hair’s breadth of defeating that monster, Celestia.
Though she had lost, it had been by the thinnest possible margin.
The density of the aura Chloe had shown that day, and the trajectory of her swordsmanship as it pierced through fleeting openings, had proven with cruel clarity why she was the top student of the Knight Department.
The aura that had cracked the towering wall known as Celestia was now rippling blue before Lowell’s eyes.
This compound, made with Professor Clayton’s help to imitate gunpowder, and the Invincible Bamboo General.
Outwardly, they boasted flashy explosions and overwhelming destructive power, but to put it coldly, they were nothing more than crude prototypes.
What Lowell had created was simply an interesting weapon his teacher had once told the children about in history class before he came to this world, to keep them from dozing off.
Compared to the chanting speed of mages and the refined magical weapons that had been established in this world over thousands of years, its reload speed was abysmal and its accuracy was dreadful.
Though he had secured some stability by wrapping rope around mana-infused bamboo, it still could not escape the limits of an experimental weapon that might explode at any moment and blow off the user’s hands.
Lowell was not optimistic enough to think that he could suppress Chloe’s senses—which had pierced even Celestia’s army of spirits by a paper-thin margin—with disposable firepower of this level.
Firearms were merely bait to shake the enemy’s common sense. They could never be the decisive blow that would bring down a genius knight.
Chloe had instantly seen through the Achilles’ heel of this weapon by cutting the matchcord.
Her adaptability had always outpaced common sense.
But the point of victory Lowell had prepared lay beyond that very adaptation.
“You think you can block my sword with a twig like that?”
Along with Chloe’s shout, blue sword aura poured down like a waterfall.
Her longsword, imbued with aura, fell once more in a fierce arc, as if it would turn a mere bundle of bamboo into fine powder in an instant.
But in that moment, what shattered the silence of Raiden Hall was a bizarre friction that mocked common sense.
Kagang—! Kagagagak!
Where the sharp ring of metal should have sounded, there burst forth a dull yet tenacious noise, like wet leather rubbing together.
The bamboo branches that should, by all logic, have been sliced apart in a single stroke clung to Chloe’s sword like leeches.
Her aura seemed to dig into the surface of the bamboo, but soon slid off smoothly, as if blocked by a transparent film of water.
With an expressionless face, Lowell lowered his shoulder and thrust the langxian forward with force.
“Ugh?!”
Dozens of branches spread out like a fan and pressed against Chloe’s chest.
She, who had been called a genius knight, was pushed back by a mere bundle of branches, staggering three or four steps in an unsightly retreat.
Chloe’s eyes were dyed with astonishment and trembled violently.
“Why... Why won’t it cut? My aura can tear steel apart like paper, so why would a mere wooden stick like this—!”
Instead of answering, Lowell adjusted his grip on the langxian, holding it low.
He had already been reinterpreting every law of this world he knew, in his own way, in order to bring down the genius known as Chloe.
The magic and elemental studies of this world fundamentally used the energies existing in nature as their medium.
They drew out and utilized cold energy from water, hot energy from fire, and so on.
But distinguishing those energies one by one and fixing them as physical substance in the right place at the right time was a high-level domain possible only for an extremely small number of masters.
The aura used by knights was no exception to that category.
Strictly speaking, aura was a technique that maximized and manipulated the energy manifested within living beings—in other words, the thermal energy of life.
A knight’s blazing aura was optimized for burning and cutting an opponent, but paradoxically, its power could only be halved against something with the opposite nature.
Before the duel began, Lowell had asked Celestia, who had come to see him, for help.
His request was for her to keep the bamboo he would use for the langxian as alive and breathing as possible until the match.
Bamboo inhabited by water spirits purified through Celestia’s vast mana.
On the outside, it looked like ordinary bamboo, but within, it already contained moisture and cold beyond imagination.
Each time Chloe swung her sword while emitting aura close to heat, the water energy dwelling in the langxian immediately neutralized that heat, physically refusing to let the bamboo burn or be cut.
Like water extinguishing fire, Chloe’s aura lost its path and dispersed within the grain of the soaked bamboo.
It was, in the truest sense, a dedicated weapon designed solely to counter her genius swordsmanship.
However, if Chloe were to submit to this alone, then all the praise calling her the top student of the Academy’s Knight Department, or the sole prodigy who had fought Celestia to a standstill, would have been nothing but empty bubbles.
The weapons prepared solely for her could not break her noble fighting spirit.
Rather, in the face of this despairingly absurd situation, Chloe honed the cool-headedness unique to a knight even sharper.
Chloe focused on the langxian and soon realized that no real blows were reaching her.
That bundle of branches merely let aura flow away; it did not possess the destructive power to pierce plate armor.
Chloe read the state of the battle in an instant.
Lowell’s intention was clear.
To use the langxian as a shield, pressure her, and gradually push her out of the arena for a ring-out.
Against Chloe, who used a longsword and aura, it was a perfect plan that left no room for response.
But a knight was the incarnation of faith that made the impossible possible.
“...Yes, I acknowledge it. Your preparation and effort were not in vain.”
The blue flame in Chloe’s eyes blazed up as if exploding.
Even as she was pushed back, she put strength into the tips of her feet and split the ground.
Just as Lowell rotated the langxian and tried once more to drive it into her chest, Chloe, instead of swinging her sword, roughly thrust her longsword into the dense gaps between the langxian’s branches.
If she could not cut it, she would push it.
When the blade sank deep between the tough branches of the langxian, a solemn smile spread across Chloe’s lips.
She gave up on swinging her sword and instead gripped the hilt with both hands, lowering her shoulder.
“But I, too... have not been idle!!”
Along with her shout, the monstrous strength of a knight, built up over a lifetime in the training hall, erupted.
It was not simply the output of her aura.
It was strength containing the muscles of her entire body, forged through grueling training, her body weight, and a knight’s resolve to never yield under any circumstances.
For the first time, Lowell’s eyes widened.
Gogogogo—!
Chloe charged toward Lowell, pushing as if to lift the entire langxian with her sword embedded in it.
Even the tenacious energy of water was useless before this overwhelming physical momentum.
The knight’s brute force transmitted through the langxian was like a gigantic wave.
The langxian that, until moments ago, had been trying to push Chloe out of bounds now became a massive log pressing against Lowell’s chest, beginning to drive him violently toward the corner of the arena.
“Ghk...!”
Lowell’s instep screamed as it scraped against the floor of the dueling arena.
An overwhelming gap in physical ability.
Even in the mire where her aura was neutralized, Chloe did not lose the essence of being a knight.
If she could not use her sword, then her body. If aura would not work, then muscle.
The momentum had completely reversed.
Over Lowell’s expressionless face, Chloe’s burning fighting spirit cast its shadow.
The out-of-bounds line at the end of the dueling arena was now right behind Lowell’s heels.
It was at that moment that the strange silence filling Raiden Hall was broken.
When the top knight cadet, who had been overwhelmed by the grotesque weapon created by the Academy’s scapegrace and failing student, reversed the momentum with a frontal breakthrough so blunt it was quintessentially knightly, the stands erupted in thunderous cheers.
“Chloe! Push him out!”
“As expected of the top student of the Knight Department! Show that trash what you’re made of!”
Amid the bursting cheers, Chloe’s entire body was already rippling with brilliant blue light.
In this moment, she was feeling an exhilaration that went beyond simple victory or defeat.
Ever since the day she had lost to Celestia, her time had been frozen.
No matter how much she swung her sword, she had seen a wall she could not reach, and the word victory had only grown more distant, like an unattainable mirage.
This rude boy had forcibly dragged her out when she had shut herself in her room, drenched in helplessness, and had scratched at her pride with all manner of harsh words.
But Lowell was not simply a failing student with nothing but a sharp tongue.
He had twisted the laws of the world to defeat her, prepared weapons that surpassed common sense, and had, in the end, crossed blades with her head-on.
That thorough preparation and sincere hostility, paradoxically, reignited the competitive fire that had been fading in Chloe’s heart.
“Thank you, Mr. Lowell! Thanks to you, I’m burning hot again!”
Chloe gritted her teeth and exploded the aura throughout her body.
The strength transmitted through the hilt embedded in the langxian was now like a battering ram pushing against a massive fortress wall.
“Ghk... ugh!”
A groan burst from Lowell’s lips.
The veins on the backs of his hands, gripping the langxian, bulged as if about to burst.
The difference in their physical conditions was obvious.
The muscle strength of a knight, forged through bone-shaving training, was not something a boy with neither mana nor aura could endure.
Lowell’s heel stepped on the white line at the edge of the dueling arena.
One step.
If he were pushed back just one more step, the entire plan he had woven would come to nothing, and he would have to bear the yoke of defeat.
Lowell endured desperately.
The branches of the langxian bent with a scream under Chloe’s strength, and Lowell lowered his body until one knee almost touched the floor.
His figure, struggling with all his might to keep his center of gravity as low as possible so he would not be pushed out of bounds, resembled a stake driven into the ground before a gigantic wave.
They were close enough that their ragged breaths touched each other’s faces.
Chloe’s burning fighting spirit and Lowell’s solemn endurance clashed violently with the bizarre medium called the langxian between them.
“This is the end!”
Chloe wrung out the last of her strength and rammed her shoulder into the langxian.
Lowell’s body lurched backward sharply.
In that instant, when victory had completely tilted toward Chloe, the muscles in Lowell’s kneeling leg trembled as if convulsing, yet his eyes still had not lost their cold gleam.
And in that moment, a sharp, almost screaming sound of rupture swallowed the cheers of the audience filling Raiden Hall in a single breath.
The heavy resistance that had been transmitted to Chloe’s fingertips as she poured all her aura and strength into pushing Lowell out of the arena vanished into empty air in an instant.
Her longsword, buried deep among the tough branches of the langxian—the sword that had shared countless hours with her in the training hall—shattered into pieces like fragments of glass.
“Ah...!”
Chloe’s eyes widened in shock.
The cold metallic sound of the shattered blade falling onto the floor of the dueling arena seemed to pierce her heart.
Only then did she realize it.
What she had overlooked on the threshold of victory, and what kind of fatal foreshadowing those crude attacks Lowell had thrown at her had truly been.
The bizarre firearms Lowell had fired at the beginning of the duel had never been mere threats.
Heavy iron balls shot out without even the wave of mana.
Chloe had shown off her skill by striking them away with her sword, but the physical impact, far beyond imagination, had minutely twisted the grain within the blade.
The metal fatigue that had already accumulated to its limit had engraved countless hairline cracks in places unseen.
And the one who had delivered the decisive blow, paradoxically, was Chloe herself, with her rekindled fighting spirit.
The burning competitive drive she had tasted for the first time since losing to Celestia.
To push Lowell away, she poured every ounce of strength in her body into the hilt, without regard for the sword’s durability or the overload on her aura.
In the end, unable to withstand the pressure from both sides—the explosive impact of the Invincible Bamboo General and Chloe’s explosive strength—the blade screamed and blew itself apart.
“Ah...”
Chloe’s stance collapsed as she stood there hollowly, clutching only the hilt.
With the axis of strength that had supported her gone, her body pitched forward instead, losing balance and staggering.
On the other hand, Lowell, who had been kneeling on one knee just beneath the out-of-bounds line and desperately holding on, did not miss that instant.
Before the broken blade could even touch the floor, he swung the langxian that had been pinned down and struck back with force.
Having lost her support, Chloe took the full pressure of the bamboo branches Lowell pushed against her and was driven far backward.
Lowell rose to his feet, breathing roughly.
He did not even have the leisure to brush the dirt from his knee.
But on the other side, with the sound of the shattered blade scattering across the floor, Chloe’s world collapsed once again.
The afterimage of the day she had lost to Celestia clouded her vision.
The emptiness hidden behind the title of genius, the time that had stopped while she remained excluded from the word victory, seemed to mock her.
Because she had poured everything into it, her despair was all the deeper.
Still holding the hilt, she closed her eyes in hollow resignation.
Now, if Lowell simply pushed her out with that crude, filthy bundle of branches, her honor would plummet to the ground.
But the dull impact she had expected never came.
“...Huh?”
When Chloe slowly opened her eyes, an unbelievable sight unfolded before her.
Lowell had thrown to the floor the only weapon with which he could have pushed her out of bounds—that stubborn langxian.
The sound of bamboo rolling across the floor echoed quietly through Raiden Hall.
Chloe stared at Lowell, seized by shock.
‘Why? If he just pushed me with that, I’d lose. Why is he throwing away victory with his own hands?’
Countless questions flashed through her mind.
But the moment she saw Lowell’s next action, her thoughts came to a halt.
Standing with his feet planted on the floor, Lowell slowly raised both fists toward her.
A boy’s bare body, with no aura, no mana, and now not even a weapon in his hands.
And yet his gaze was hotter and clearer than it had ever been since the duel began.
Only then did Chloe understand.
Why Lowell had prepared weapons that looked so cowardly and crude.
The firearm and the langxian had not been mere tricks meant to let him defeat her easily.
They had been desperate steps, built one upon another so that an ordinary human without mana could stand on equal ground with the monster called a genius and reach a distance where they could clash fists.
He was proposing it to Chloe now.
To set aside every stratagem and tool, and as human against human, bring the final chapter of this duel to a fair and honorable close.
A hollow yet clear smile spread across Chloe’s lips.
The heart of a knight, forgotten while she had been crushed beneath the fear of defeat, began to beat.
Without the slightest regret, she threw the now-useless hilt in her hand to the floor.
“...Honestly, you’re unpredictable to the very end.”
Chloe also clenched both fists tightly and met Lowell’s gaze.
The top student of the Knight Department and the failure. A genius and a dullard. A knight and a scoundrel.
On the dueling ground, where every label that had defined them had vanished, only two fighters longing for victory remained.