35. Inter-School Competition (6)
Baek Yuseol and Zeliel changed locations.
To a private space with little foot traffic, quiet enough for concentration.
Between them stood a table made of high-grade hardwood, and atop it rested a Soul Chess board crafted from costly crystal.
Soul Chess was the greatest mind sport in the magical world, so it often appeared as a gimmick in many dungeons, and in all sorts of situations people would also use it for wagers to test their skill against one another.
Right, so—
using Soul Chess for a bet was not exactly strange in itself, but…
Against me, in Soul Chess?
Zeliel idly touched the chess pieces with an expression slightly less rigid than before.
Of course, even “less rigid” still meant she remained expressionless.
Does he know nothing about me?
Zeliel, daughter of the chairman of the Starcloud Merchant Company, a genius girl who had been granted the status of High Elf in her teens and entered Starflower Tree Magic School as the top student.
And…
Grand Master of Soul Chess.
It was no exaggeration to say she had reached the absolute summit of Soul Chess.
Of course, even among Grand Masters, ranks were divided according to win rate and experience, and although Zeliel was still young enough to be in the lower tier, it was still far beyond the level a mere student should be able to challenge.
Thinking about it normally, she wins.
There was no way she could do anything but win.
I’m a Grand Master.
And yet, she did not allow herself certainty.
She kept even a 0.1% possibility in mind.
Why did he propose a Soul Chess wager against me?
No matter how she thought about it, it made no sense that Baek Yuseol would not know her chess skill.
That Baek Yuseol had somehow never heard the fame of “Grand Master Zeliel,” and then by pure coincidence chose Soul Chess for a wager?
And with stakes this large?
No. Absolutely not.
There was something behind this.
And yet she had accepted the wager…
because she was confident she would win.
A mana pledge was absolute.
And this pledge contained no rules whatsoever apart from Soul Chess itself.
No room for wordplay.
Since Soul Chess could only be contested through pure skill, there was no way to use any other trick either.
If so, then only one possibility remained.
The possibility that Baek Yuseol was better at chess than I am.
She already knew to some extent how skilled he was.
After all, she had heard the news that he had once defeated Edmund Atalek, Stella’s best Soul Chess player.
Edmund Atalek had held the honorable position of first in Stella itself, so no matter how low one estimated him, his skill had to be at least at the semi-pro level.
And they said Baek Yuseol had defeated even him overwhelmingly…
which meant Baek Yuseol’s skill was undoubtedly at the professional-player level.
On my level, or above it.
She drew in a deep breath.
Then let it out.
She must never let her guard down.
No matter how confident the other side was in chess skill, she had won her Grand Master title by crushing every rival with overwhelming skill even in the true professional world.
If she simply played as she always did, with the exact ability she had sharpened all this time to one day play Soul Chess against the spirit of ancient Carmenset…
then she would definitely win.
“You look pretty deep in thought. Nervous?”
Baek Yuseol spoke teasingly, rolling the Soul Orb across his fingers.
That Soul Orb, which had been inside the pendant, was also the evidence proving all the underhanded tricks she had tried to pull until now.
“No. I’m fine.”
The match was a single game.
In that one game, fate would be decided.
“Then shall we begin?”
“Whew…”
As soon as Baek Yuseol and Zeliel began their Soul Chess match, Anella stepped outside and leaned her back against the wall.
Her whole body was drenched in sweat from rushing around and tending to his needs with quick feet.
Ugh, making me prepare the Soul Chess set too—isn’t that a bit much…?
Lately, ever since Baek Yuseol had found out her identity, Anella had been obeying his words as much as possible.
That was not because he had broken through her ability, nor even because he had the power to kill her.
My ability… still won’t activate.
Ever since she had tried to use [Nightmare’s Return] on Baek Yuseol and failed, for some reason the ability had vanished entirely.
It was an incredibly strange feeling.
As though the existence called “me” had been cut in half and partially erased.
Was this ability really that important to me…?
Then again.
In most of the missions she had carried out so far, if not for this ability, things would have been extremely difficult.
Thanks to that wildly overpowered Trait—one of the very few in Aither World that let her dig into another person’s heart—she had somehow managed to survive despite her own lacking ability.
Ugh, what in the world happened…?
Now that her ability had disappeared entirely, even if she went back, she would only be treated like leftover scraps.
No…
she had already been treated that way before; now she might be thrown out altogether.
Because she knew very well what happened to Dark Mages who lost their affiliation and wandered the streets, she hurriedly shoved the terrifying thought away.
If I get cast out… will I have to eat people?
Dark Mages lived by absorbing the blood of mages.
But Anella had never, not even once, properly done anything like directly killing a person or consuming a corpse.
She had simply survived on blood packs issued after completing missions.
Not a coin to her name.
Barely able to sustain one meal a day with the issued blood packs.
Enduring each night among piles of buildings little better than ruins.
That life had already gone on for twenty years, and she had nothing left to show for it.
If she were thrown out…
she would have no choice but to wander the wasteland, waiting for the day she was hunted down.
“Haah. If it comes to that, maybe living here as an actual bread shuttle wouldn’t be so bad…”
Of course, that was not why she had stayed by Baek Yuseol’s side.
Don’t you want to become human again?
That incredibly seductive thing he had told her before.
If anyone else had said it, she would have snorted.
There was no way to turn a Dark Mage back into a human.
If another Dark Mage had heard it, they would have laughed it off.
There was no Dark Mage who wanted to become human again.
But this case was extremely different.
Baek Yuseol was someone who really seemed able to do anything.
And Anella too…
really, truly wanted to become human again.
“It won’t be easy. You’re a complete Dark Mage, and to reverse that, you’ll have to pay a considerable price in effort and pain…”
But.
If she did that much—
“You can return. With that same appearance, from your teenage youth onward… it means you can start your life all over again from the beginning.”
It was a seductive promise.
Baek Yuseol had not presented any proper proof.
He had not even said the easy thing—something like that he had once returned a Dark Mage to being human before.
He only said that it was possible.
That he could do it.
“In exchange… you become my eyes and ears. Will you accept that?”
Before she realized it, Anella thought she had nodded.
She did not really know why.
Was it because even if she left his side, there was nothing she could do anyway?
If I really started a new life here instead…
then could I really become happy?
“Haah.”
Anella patted her stiff shoulders.
Even after becoming a Dark Mage, her naturally weak body had not been fully fixed.
Then again… maybe it had gotten a little better.
Back when she had been human and dying of illness, she had not even been able to walk.
Anella, unable to properly use magic, with pitiful physical ability.
And now even her ability had been sealed.
If she ran afoul of some random Stella student passing by, she would probably die a pathetic dog’s death.
Well… it’s not like anyone can figure out my identity.
Just as she thought that and turned around to rest for at least a moment—
Grab!
“You.”
Someone caught her by the shoulder.
“Ugh…!”
There were very few people here who would approach and speak to her.
Instinctively, Anella sprang backward and clenched her fist.
If necessary, she would解除 the seal on her dark power—
…Come to think of it, I don’t know how to do that, do I?
How did one even undo sealed dark power again?
“Hey, you don’t need to be so wary.”
“…What?”
As Anella put on a guarded expression, the other person raised both hands in a joking gesture of surrender and took two steps back.
It was a man with slicked-back hair and red eyes, and the aura rippling inside those pupils felt familiar.
A Dark Mage…
“Right. We’re the same kind, aren’t we? I’m almost offended I didn’t realize sooner. What group are you with? If you managed to get into Stella, then you must hold at least some decent position yourself.”
Anella hesitated for a moment, then finally opened her mouth.
“…I infiltrated under orders from Black Knight Blackkingdom. Do not interfere with my mission—unless you wish to trespass on the territory of the Dark Magic King.”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down. I’m not planning to. I’m in a similar situation to yours.”
He tapped the badge necklace hanging around his neck.
The name written there was “Kabaren.”
Whether that was his real name or an alias was another matter.
“You see this? I’m actually a management staff member for the inter-school competition. There are a lot of places I can go. Ah, is there anywhere you want to see? I could show you around, you know?”
“No thanks. I’m busy.”
“Really? That’s a shame… I was going to show you something really fun.”
“Something… fun…?”
“Yeah! I’m showing it to you specially because we’re the same kind. Something veeery, veeery, veeery entertaining is about to happen in Magic Survival~!”
Anella twisted her closed lips.
To be honest, she had absolutely no interest.
Just because they were both Dark Mages did not mean all Dark Mages were the same.
What Dark Mages from a different faction did was, to her, no more than a distant story.
But still.
If Dark Mages were about to do something at Stella Academy, there was only one likely answer.
Terrorism.
What kind of terrorism?
Dark Mage terror attacks were no longer like they had been in the past.
Now they were more intelligent.
The kind of terror capable of swallowing the magical world into chaos all at once.
…Baek Yuseol probably doesn’t know about this either.
This was a chance.
A chance to earn Baek Yuseol’s trust.
She could find out what that Dark Mage planned to do and tell him.
She was sick of the life of a Dark Mage—
a life where, just to survive from day to day, she had to repeat revolting acts, taking in blood by piling someone else’s pain on top of them.
Making up her mind, she looked straight into Kabaren’s eyes.
She curled her lips upward as mischievously as she could.
“Go on, then. Show me. If it’s something fun… I’m looking forward to it.”
“Good, good! I really wanted to show this to someone! Khh, let’s go right now! Let’s go, let’s go!”
Following behind Kabaren, who strode ahead with bizarre, excited steps, Anella made a vow to herself.
I’m definitely going back.
Back to those days, when I could still find happiness in small, ordinary things.
— Read only on MugenCodex —
“Ah…”
Zeliel stared blankly at the chessboard.
An unbelievable result lay before her eyes.
The king has fallen.
At Baek Yuseol’s word,
my king…
had collapsed.
How…?
She could barely accept the result.
She had undoubtedly done her best, throwing every scrap of experience and strategy she had built up until now into thoroughly attacking her opponent.
And yet…
she could do nothing.
It felt as though she had been thrown out naked before the world.
Her opponent had seen through every move she had, every weakness, even every secret, in naked detail.
It was more shameful than truly being stripped of her clothes.
Since Zeliel’s sense of sexuality was nearly nonexistent and she was instead completely devoted to intellectual values, the fact that all her thoughts had been read laid her bare in a way so humiliating that it made her want to bite her tongue.
She had to admit it.
That he possessed moves and strategies superior to her own.
But…
for Zeliel, who had always believed herself the smartest one, the being who stood above everyone else and manipulated them like chess pieces,
that was a truth she could not possibly accept.
It was only one game of chess. Calm down, Zeliel.
She forced her expression back into composure as best she could, but there was no stopping the trembling in her pupils.
“I won.”
Baek Yuseol spoke with an expression so calm and relaxed that it was hard to believe they had just played such a fierce game.
“Then you’ll keep your promise, right? Well… I’ll keep your secret too. As long as you agree to that promise, I can overlook a little underhanded scheming like this. Ah, and I’ll be keeping this as a gift, okay?”
He stood up, putting the Soul Orb back inside the pendant.
This was an object with all kinds of possible uses.
If nothing else, he could even use it later as an entry pass for meeting the King of the Elves.
“I’ll get going now. Magic Survival is about to start. You were a participant too, weren’t you? Don’t feel pressured—do your best. I won’t interfere with you there. Ah, and this is a gift.”
Baek Yuseol placed something on the table that looked like a suspicious fragment of a stone monument.
“It might become something precious to you, so keep that in mind.”
At last Baek Yuseol left, and Zeliel, a hollow emptiness spreading through her chest, slowly leaned back in her chair.
She had lost.
And as the price, she had to fulfill the terms written into the mana pledge.
An absurd promise, perhaps—
but to Zeliel, it was practically the deepest wound imaginable.
[First, do not love your father.]
[Second, if the first clause is impossible, do not see your father for three years.]
[Third, if even the second clause is impossible… love someone else.]
Human feelings were not something easily changed.
Love least of all.
Which meant the first clause was impossible, so she had no choice but to fulfill the second…
My father… for three years…?
With trembling fingers, Zeliel touched the mana pledge.
The first and second were both impossible.
And even the third clause…
how could that be possible either?
Her life had been lived entirely for the sake of her father.
There was no way, now of all times, that she could fill that place with someone else.
What am I supposed to do…?
She bit down hard on her lip and held back the tears that somehow felt about to spill.
She was someone who had no emotions to begin with, and yet for some reason, today of all days, her head felt complicated and her heart pounded violently in her chest.
Baek Yuseol.
He had left after inflicting upon her…
the cruelest punishment imaginable.
