Chapter 27

Booom!

Shannon was blown far away.

The cause was the explosion she herself had triggered.

Though she had awakened, she had also lost control.

Trying to wield an immense amount of mana she had never handled before using the same old methods…of course it didn’t work.

It was like a novice swordsman trying to swing a blade twice their own height and falling flat.

“Cough, cough!”

Shannon bounced and rolled across the ground like a skipping stone. She finally came to her senses just before being knocked out of the ring. She was right at the edge of a ring-out loss.

Not that going out of bounds would have stopped her from fighting anyway.

“Ptoo.”

She spat out a mouthful of blood-mixed saliva. Her mouth must have split somewhere.

This is exactly why I said we should stop the duel.

Did she really want to beat me that badly?

She was always the prideful, stubborn type in the original story too…

I spoke gently, reasoning with her.

“Surely you realize it now? That power isn’t yours. Calm your mana and get treated.”

“Huff, huff.”

Shannon said nothing, only trying to steady her breath.

But I could tell from her intense glare. She hadn’t given up.

A moment later, Shannon began to stagger forward.

Step by step, toward me.

“You can’t even use your magic properly. How are you going to defeat me?”

It was a taunt meant to get her to give up already.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said it.

Because geniuses were always the ones who found the answers to every question.

“I’ll beat you… I’ll prove it by winning. That I wasn’t wrong. That I’m someone who matters…”

Crunch.

Shannon’s foot dug deep into the sandy ground.

At the same time, her mana erupted violently.

I instantly realized what she was about to do.

Mutual destruction.

She knew that trying to use magic would only cause another explosion.

So she decided….if that’s the case, then she’d use the explosion itself.

Get as close as possible… and ignite the fuse.

Undeniably, it was madness.

A grotesque manifestation of her desire to win.

A suicide bomber’s strategy that ignored her own safety.

And even then, there was no guarantee it would actually defeat me.

It was simply the only chance she had. A speck of possibility.

Was she really willing to cling to something that slim just to win?

Why is she so obsessed with this fight?

“What’s driving you to go this far? Even if you win by throwing yourself away, what do you really gain?”

“You don’t know anything! You ran away and left me behind!”

Left her behind and ran?

I had no idea what she was talking about.

In truth, she didn’t even seem fully conscious anymore.

What I could say for certain was this. I couldn’t stop her with words anymore.

I extended my left palm forward.

After much deliberation, I activated the spell I had chosen.

[Casting Frost Breath.]

Whoooosh—!

A fierce wind filled with frost burst forth.

A fan-shaped gust surged from my palm and rushed toward Shannon.

“Hmph—!”

She crossed her arms to shield her face.

The fierce chill instantly coated her sleeves and eyebrows in a layer of white frost.

She curled in on herself, trying to keep from freezing.

But soon, Shannon lifted her head.

“This… this won’t stop me! The room I was trapped in was darker and colder than this!”

As if shaking off the frost clinging to her body, she straightened her back and flung her arms wide.

At the same time, heat burst from her.

Fwoooosh!

A turbulent current erupted around her.

Where frost and heat collided, clouds of white steam flared briefly along the boundary between her mana field and mine. This was a clear sign of elemental interference.

It was proof that Shannon had, at the very least, gained control over her mana.

To already get a feel for it so soon after awakening…

Genius really does mean something, huh?

Frost alone could no longer stop her.

That left only physical force.

I boosted the wind’s output.

[Remaining mana: 95.78%]

Whoooooooosh—!

“Huh?!”

With a roar like a massive fan turning at full speed, Shannon’s body was lifted off the ground.

Her light frame nearly went flying—

After being pushed back several steps, she just barely managed to land on her feet.

“Grrk…”

Under the storm-like wind, Shannon lowered her stance as much as she could.

Purely powered by wind, deep gouges were carved into the floor of the duel arena, and stirred-up sand whipped wildly through the air.

Grains of sand scratched across Shannon’s cheek. But even so, her determination never wavered.

What on earth keeps fueling that unrelenting will of hers?

Just pride?

That’s what I thought at first, but now… I’m not so sure.

One thing is certain. Letting her win was not an option.

It would render all of this effort meaningless.

Shannon’s face twisted in grim determination. She began advancing toward me once more.

[Remaining mana: 87.60%]

Flutter, flap!

Her cloak whipped violently in the wind.

Her long hair streamed nearly horizontally in the gale, blowing at over 20 meters per second.

Her figure pushing forward against the wind… it was like something out of a storybook.

Like The North Wind and the Sun.

In that tale, the north wind does everything it can to strip the traveler of his coat but ultimately fails.

Could this duel end the same way?

In truth, this tug-of-war favored Shannon.

The longer the battle dragged on, the worse it became for me.

Wind comes from convection.

Magical wind too was produced by forcefully pushing the air within one’s mana field in a specific direction.

So the volume of mana field I controlled directly affected the wind’s strength.

But as Shannon drew closer, she began stealing control over parts of my field.

As a result, the Frost Breath spell became less efficient, forcing me to spend more mana to maintain wind speed.

[Remaining mana: 72.11%]

The rapidly dropping mana proved it.

There was a way to turn this around.

No, to speak of a countermeasure…. really, it would’ve been enough to neutralize Shannon with something other than wind in the first place.

And it wasn’t even that difficult.

But it was only this wind, not the surge of lightning, not a wall of flames, not a rain of boulders or a barrage of ice arrows that could subdue Shannon without hurting her.

Like a cool breeze calming a fever, I continued casting Frost Breath, hoping her resentment and anger would gradually cool down.

What I needed now was the patience of a matador taming a bull and more mana.

Surely Winter Winslet’s “S-rank” “mana” wouldn’t fall short.

[Remaining mana: 59.89%]

The problem began when the first digit of that remaining mana changed.

It was an unexpected incident.

Craack. Craaack.

Amid the roar of the wind came an unnatural ripping sound.

The sound of the protective barrier around the arena cracking.

A wind of over 25 meters per second had been raging here for several minutes.

On top of that, the mana Shannon and I were releasing had pushed the ambient mana concentration in the air to the level of a pressure cooker at full boil.

The protective barrier of the Luteo Hall that was designed at most to handle rowdy students simply wasn’t sturdy enough to withstand that kind of strain.

At this rate, the barrier would break in no time.

Even if it shattered, the building could hold out for a while.

But the audience in the stands could get hurt.

I hoped someone had realized this and was initiating emergency evacuation or taking some kind of action…

“Bunch of idiots.”

Professors and students alike were too absorbed in watching the fight.

And just like that, all the conditions for a major accident had been met.

With no other choice, I cast yet another spell.

Adding even more work to circuits already under heavy strain.

I channeled mana into the arena’s protective barrier.

The barrier began to recover at a visible pace.

That took the worry of anyone getting hurt off my shoulders—

At least for as long as I could keep supplying mana.

[Remaining mana: 47.01%]

Taking on the burden of the barrier meant I also had to absorb the backlash from my own magic.

It was a ridiculous thing to do. Something I’d never even consider unless people’s safety was at stake.

Mana consumption more than doubled.

It wasn’t exactly double, because running multiple spells at once reduced circuit efficiency.

[Remaining mana: 36.99%]

The distance between me and Shannon shrank in proportion to my remaining mana.

Shannon’s latent ability was stronger than I’d expected—

And my mana was depleting faster than I’d anticipated.

It felt like the limit would come soon.

Twenty percent.

Once I had only twenty percent of my mana left, I’d made up my mind to subdue her by other means, even if it meant she might get hurt.

But then—

[Remaining mana: 33.33%]

It happened when exactly one-third of my mana remained.

[Notification]

[Your Mana Talent Rank has temporarily increased.]

[Warning]

[Willpower and Health have temporarily decreased.]

[An irreversible change has occurred in an unknown stat.]

For some unknown reason, my “Mana” rank had risen.

Stronger, colder, and more refined mana surged from within me.

“SS-Rank” meant something superhuman.

In an instant—

Winter descended upon the world before my eyes.

***

Ten steps.

Ten steps.

That was the distance left to reach Winter Winslet.

Shannon pressed forward against the wind like a silent traveler.

By now, she could no longer feel heat or cold.

At first, she wondered if the harsh wind had numbed her senses—

But that wasn’t it.

The distance between them had grown so small that their mana clashed and canceled each other out before their elemental properties could even manifest.

Eight steps.

Professor Winslet was standing right in front of her.

For some reason, the sight felt oddly familiar.

Shannon remembered an old nightmare.

In it, she was always chasing someone.

Sometimes it was her mother, sometimes her father—

And sometimes her great-grandfather, before he became the stern man she knew.

…And sometimes, it was Winter Winslet.

– Don’t go.

– Don’t leave me in a place like this.

– Take me with you instead.

It was a dream where she screamed those words in tears.

She always woke up just as her voice broke from shouting.

The pillow was always wet.

Why was that dream overlapping with this moment now?

Four steps.

Winter Winslet was reaching a hand out toward her.

It was merely a gesture to assist in casting a spell, but to Shannon, it looked like he was trying to save someone from drowning.

Two steps.

Now she was close enough to touch him with a hand.

Shannon reached out—

As if to grab hold of that man’s hand.

But just before she could reach her goal, an immense surge of mana suddenly burst out from Professor Winslet.

A level of cold far beyond anything she’d felt until now.

In the next moment—

Shannon found herself staring at the ceiling.

Her instincts told her everything.

Ah… I lost. To that man.

Even after giving it everything she had, she couldn’t win.

Shannon was overcome with despair.

Winter Winslet.

If she couldn’t surpass that man, then what had all her efforts been for?

What had she shed blood for? What had she endured, carving away at her own body in the dark, underground punishment chambers of the Karaf Tower for the past five years?

Now that it had come to this, strangely, Shannon found herself recalling that glasses girl’s question.

– Why are you going so far?

Maybe that girl had seen through Shannon’s very nature from the beginning.

That must be why she had asked such a sharp question.

Back then, Shannon couldn’t answer.

She hadn’t even understood her own feelings.

But now, she thought she might be able to.

All Shannon had wanted was to ask.

To ask Winter Winslet.

That man who, unlike herself who was shackled by bloodlines and academic ties, had walked away from the Tower without a moment’s hesitation.

That man who could say her great-grandfather Benizelos’ magic was worthless.

She just wanted to cling to him, even if it meant grabbing the hem of his robe, and ask:

– Why do I have to suffer here?

– Why is it only me who’s unhappy?

– What do I have to do to be happy?

– If I’ve done something wrong, tell me. I’ll fix it.

– If there’s a way out of this, show me. I’ll follow it.

– Please… show me. No—save me.

A bitter smile tugged at Shannon’s lips.

In the end, had she simply been waiting for a prince on a white horse to come rescue her?

Had she just wanted someone, anyone, to pull her out of that darkness?

And the person she’d projected that fantasy onto… had been Winter Winslet.

How utterly one-sided.

To Winter Winslet, she was nothing more than a stranger he’d briefly crossed paths with for a few months.

The narrow and dark punishment chamber could drive anyone mad.

The day Shannon could no longer count the days she’d been trapped in that place on her fingers was the day she first wondered…what if she just died?

Death, after all, would free her from all this pain.

But she didn’t have the resolve.

So instead, she began to harbor delusions.

Clinging to the hope that someday, she might escape that suffering.

Now, as Shannon returned to reality, it was as if she could see that rusted iron door right in front of her.

If she went back to Karaf, she’d be trapped in that underground room again.

And now, she couldn’t bear the thought of returning.

She didn’t have the courage.

In that case—

If she were to die by this man’s hand right here, right now…

“Shannon Quinlivan.”

The man called her name.

Shannon was ready.

When she opened her mouth to respond, her voice came out eerily calm.

“Yes.”

“Don’t be hasty.”

“…What?”

“I mean, don’t be impatient with your own abilities. Learn steadily under me. You have talent. The sense you showed today wasn’t bad.”

“……?”

“You’d do well to fix a few bad habits… but for now, I’d say you’ve passed.”

“What is that supposed to…”

“I’m retracting what I said about you being trash. You may return to the classroom starting next lesson. That’s all.”

“So what are you even…”

Shannon couldn’t finish her sentence.

Something tightened in her throat before she even realized it.

Like a gag reflex, something welled up from deep inside.

She clamped both hands over her mouth.

But it still leaked out between her fingers.

It was a sound that could not be distinguished whether it was a sob or a groan.

“You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”

Something fluttered down over Shannon’s tearful face.

It was Professor Winslet’s coat.

The coat was uncomfortably large, oversized, and heavy….and yet, it was warm with lingering body heat.

“I don’t know what happened, but if you want to cry, then cry. I’ll make sure no one comes near for a while.”

“U… uuuh…”

In the darkness, sealed off from the rest of the world, Shannon cried for a long time.

She vomited up every last lump of old, festering emotion, until the weight on her chest began to lighten.

When she finally calmed down, Shannon asked the professor:

“Is it… really okay for me to be here?”

The professor gave a snort.

“What a ridiculous question. Decide for yourself where you belong. You’re an adult now, aren’t you?”

Is that so?

Maybe… this isn’t so bad.

Even if she couldn’t surpass Winter Winslet.

Even if she couldn’t live up to her great-grandfather’s expectations.

Maybe that was okay.

Maybe… I’m allowed to be happy, just as I am now.

Shannon closed her eyes.

A gentle peace filled her chest.

For the first time in a very long while,

She slept without dreaming of nightmares.