Memoirs of the Returnee
chapter-166

Second Test (2)

Scarlet beasts endlessly poured into the room. Their forms varied. Some were wolves, some were hawks, and some were octopuses.

I assumed the stance of the [Eight Swords]. I cut them down while standing in place, and Elise supported me from the rear.

The first hour or two was manageable. It was even on the easier side. Their endurance was soft.

Three or four hours were also bearable. They vanished upon death, leaving no corpses behind.

However, I had a gut feeling that something was wrong when five hours had passed.

“…Huff!”

My stamina was rapidly draining. Fatigue surpassed my recovery rate, making my hand holding the sword tremble. My vision blurred due to sweat.

Still, stamina is my weakness.

“Domain.”

Elise quietly muttered. At the same time, a telekinetic barrier expanded like a domain.

Krrrrrrr──!

The dark beasts were pushed outside the window in an instant.

“Are you okay?”

Elise asked. I didn’t have the energy to respond. I pulled out a [Fruit] from my pocket.

It’s a fruit that grew from my head. It’s an enchantment I brought from [Bethune].

I can get one every 12 hours, but they rot quite quickly, so I only have six left now.

Gulp-

I swallowed the fruit. At that moment, I felt like my stamina had recovered by about 30%.

Fascinating.

I threw one to Elise as well.

“What’s this?”

“Think of it as a potion. Eat it in an emergency. More importantly, do you know the cause?”

Elise shook her head.

“I don’t see a cause. They’re just mindlessly pushing with numbers.”

Krrrrrrr───!

The sound of them scratching the telekinetic barrier.

Even for Elise, the 「Telekinetic Field」 is a huge drain on magic power. It’s a level 7 Magic Spell after all. It means she can’t hold it for long.

I rolled the 「Dice」.

[3]

I invested it all in stamina.

“Release it.”

I picked up my sword again.

“Move as efficiently as possible. It’s a long battle.”

Elise advised and released the telekinetic barrier.

Kwrrrrrr───!

Dark beasts poured in again in countless numbers.

Swoooosh──

I swung my sword and cut them down. The enemy was still numerous. They surged like a tidal wave.

I stopped thinking. I didn’t even have time to suffer.

I just focused on the whole situation─my sword and the charging enemy for seven hours.

Eight hours.

Nine hours.

Ten hours……

I don’t know after that.

It must have been 12 hours.

Over hundreds, thousands, almost 10,000.

I swallowed three more [Fruits], and mechanically deployed the [Eight Swords].

Chaaaaang──!

The sword that splits the scarlet form.

That sword path is clear.

The path of my sword, it’s visible to my eyes.

Swoooosh───!

The ‘straight’ line engraved in space.

Staring at it, a thought suddenly came to me.

Efficiency.

Like the efficiency of a Magic Spell, couldn’t I apply efficiency to the way of the sword─the sword path?

The feeling of exhaustion brought up such a thought.

It’s too trivial to be called an enlightenment, but it’s a sudden inspiration.

I lowered my sword.

A straight sword is not efficient.

An efficient sword should not be ‘straight’.

It should produce the greatest effect with the least effort.

Therefore, an efficient sword is probably a ‘continuum of curves’.

Aaaaaaaaah!

Dozens of monsters, mouths wide open, charged at me.

I flicked my wrist.

Whooosh!

One swing, one curved sword.

A curve that felt more like a brush stroke.

I condensed the essence of the [Eight Swords] into a ‘single stroke’.

I drastically omitted the sword dance.

I reduced all unnecessary parts of the initial form and contained it in a ‘single stroke’.

Like a single stroke of a brush.

Swoosh!

They were cut. Even if it seemed like a mere flick.

Swoosh!

They were cut. Even if it seemed like a mere swing.

The curve, like a sign, cut through space itself.

-!

I unfolded my sword with a flick of my wrist.

My stamina consumption was halved, but the power was rather upgraded. They were shredded like in a blender.

Holding onto that sense of ‘efficiency’, I cut them down, and at some point.

“…It’s over.”

Elise said.

I looked back at her.

“It’s over, isn’t it.”

She shrugged her shoulders. As she said, the room was quiet.

Suddenly, my hand lost its strength.

Clang-

The sword fell to the floor.

“…Hey.”

I glared at Elise with a resentful look.

“You didn’t help at all halfway through.”

Elise looked a bit stung, but soon smirked.

“You were immersed. It was clearly a sequence of enlightenment, would it be right to interrupt that?”

“….”

Well, she seemed to be right. If she had helped, I wouldn’t have thought of ‘implanting efficiency into the sword dance’.

Elise crossed her arms and asked.

“Your swordsmanship has changed, hasn’t it?”

I let out a deep sigh.

“Haah… I’m so tired I could die.”

“Leave the rest to me.”

If that’s the case.

I fell asleep right there.

* * *

Elise laid Shion on the bed. She also slipped a [fruit] into his mouth. Gulp- Shion swallowed in his sleep.

“…Hmm.”

Looking at the sleeping Shion, Elise stroked her chin.

“What could it have been?”

He is a swordsman. A swordsman aspiring to be a knight.

His ‘unorthodox’ style, like an invertebrate, is somewhat famous in the world.

A famous scout wrote a column about it, and Elise had read it herself.

But, just now it was a bit different.

Unorthodox… it seemed.

But it was a very minor deviation. Just a single stroke of the sword coiling like a snake.

“It’s good talent.”

Of course, not as much as me.

-Aaaaaah!

Suddenly, a scream echoed from outside.

-Sa, save me!!

Elise looked at Shion. He was already asleep.

She didn’t have the leisure to help someone else either.

-Sa, save me! Please save me!

But the voice echoing from outside, somehow, sounded familiar.

Elise heard it every morning when she bought coffee….

“…Terence, the owner of the cafe.”

Terence.

After some hesitation, she opened the door. Terence was being chased by crimson beasts.

“Ah-ah-ah─?”

Terence looked her way. Elise pulled him in with telekinesis.

“Whoa!”

In an instant, he was pulled into the room, and Elise promptly closed the door.

“Huff, huff….”

Terence lay on the floor, gasping for breath.

“Calm down.”

At Elise’s words, Terence looked up at her.

“…Miss Elise!”

His face was filled with emotion, but there was no time for that.

“Hush.”

Elise warmed up her Magic Body and looked towards the door. She prepared for the impending enemies….

Nothing. It was quiet. Peaceful.

“Gasp! Shion!”

Just then, Terence spotted Shion.

“He’s asleep.”

Elise explained and sat in a chair. Terence let out a sigh of relief.

“Phew… That’s a relief.”

“What’s the situation on the first floor?”

“I just ran away from the second floor, so I don’t know the details….”

“Is that so?”

Elise took a piece of paper from her desk drawer, folded it like a bird, and infused it with magic to animate it. She slightly opened the door and let it fly.

“Wow.”

Terence was amazed, and Elise closed her eyes. She shared her vision with the paper bird.

The situation on the first floor was visible. At first glance, it was very bad. The beasts’ claw marks were everywhere in the corridor, and blood was splattered.

The room seemed much safer in comparison.

─Aaargh!

A voice filled with pain. Elise shifted her gaze in that direction.

─I, I surrender! Spare me!

A senior was being mauled by a crimson creature and cried out in surrender. His student ID oxidized, and he was teleported somewhere.

Elise continued to fly the paper bird.

The half-broken dormitory door. Room 115. Inside, three people were barricading themselves.

─What’s that? Looks like a familiar spirit, right?

─Is anyone there? Please help us!

Elise passed them by too. She spotted someone on the stairs leading to the first floor.

Red hair. A sword at the waist. An impassive face despite the sudden chaos.

It was Soliette.

─…Oh. Is that you, Miss Elise?

Soliette recognized Elise just from the magical waves emitted by the paper bird.

─Where are you?

Elise glanced at Shion on the bed. She hesitated for a moment.

Should she tell him, or not?

“…Tsk.”

Suddenly, she found herself repulsive.

The emotion she just felt, the discomfort spreading like fog in her heart, was petty jealousy. A malignant lump she should never harbor.

Elise moved the paper bird.

Room 106. Room 106.

─1… 0… 6. Room 106. Understood.

──You can give up at any time!

The voice of the stone statue echoed from the ceiling again. Elise stopped the operation of the paper bird.

“They’ll be back soon.”

“What, what is?”

“The monsters.”

“Gasp!”

Elise opened a drawer. She took out a container filled with mana stones and gems. Some were collected from the Planarium, and others were brought from home.

She used the mana stones as a medium to deploy a Magic Spell on the floor.

Zzzap-!

With a spark, a ‘Magic Bullet Turret’ sprouted from the ground. It was a college-level 「Ductile Formula」.

“Whoa.”

Terence looked on in astonishment, and Elise created four more in the same way.

“They should be of some help, right?”

She asked Terence. Terence nodded blankly.

“Ye-yes. Yes.”

Knock-knock-

Just then, probably Soliette’s knock. Elise opened the door.

It was indeed Soliette.

“Miss Elise. Are you okay?”

“Yes. Fortunately, we have plenty of supplies. What’s the situation on the second floor?”

Soliette shook her head.

“It’s similar. Beasts have invaded….”

──Congratulations to the survivors!

The stone statue spoke again.

“Ah… so noisy.”

Shion woke up from the bed. Soliette looked at him. Elise looked at Soliette’s face. She saw the smile blooming on her face as she looked at Shion.

“……”

She quietly lowered her head.

Shion spoke.

“What’s up. Soliette?”

“Shion. So you were here.”

“Yeah. I thought you’d be busy with Bethune.”

“I don’t play Bethune at times like this.”

Soliette shrugged her shoulders.

──Try to hold out as long as possible!

At the statue’s words, Shion sat up.

“……But we have to trust what it says.”

“Don’t trust it.”

Elise also chimed in.

“Unless it swears on its soul that its words are true. But it’s fortunate that we have a lot of supplies.”

The cart that Shion brought was filled with a lot of food and materials. It was enough for four people to last a week.

Elise looked out the window again.

It was too dark. Too cold. Even the dust flowing in the air was ominous.

Wheeeee───!

The siren rang again. Elise’s four Magic Bullet Turrets were activated first.

Bang─! Bang─!

They fired Magic Bullets out the window, and beasts larger than before poured in.

* * *

At the same time.

In the VVIP monitoring room set up outside the [Planarium].

In the spacious and cozy place prepared by the college board, Igris, the head of the Arkne family and Soliette’s father, was sitting. He was looking at Soliette on the tablet.

More precisely, at Shion, who was standing next to her.

“……”

Igris felt a bit strange.

No, he was uncomfortable.

Shion Ascal.

This guy had deployed the [Eight Swords].

It was unpleasant enough that a mere senior was deploying the [Eight Swords], but he even dared to increase or decrease the number of swords at his whim.

Moreover…

The way Soliette looked at this guy.

The smile blooming on Soliette’s lips.

──Squeeze.

He clenched his fist.

Everything about him irritated Igris’s nerves. It was like a single mosquito clinging to her.

Probably, the Eight Swords were also taught to this guy by Soliette. Without the family’s permission.

“He’s doing well.”

Someone next to him said. Igris looked at him with a somewhat furrowed brow.

“Isn’t he?”

The VVIP monitoring room was spacious. However, that man was looking directly at him.

A man with blue hair fluttering proudly.

Jade, the second son of Libra.

He tried to ignore him, but Jade had been snooping on who Igris was observing since a while ago.

“Who, you mean.”

“The student that Lord Arkne was just watching.”

Jade said with a poker face.

He meant Shion Ascal.

“What do you mean he’s doing well? He’s just showing off some insignificant skills.”

“Insignificant skills?”

Jade echoed his words. Then he looked at Shion in the tablet screen again. Now, observing the swordsmanship that Shion Ascal was showing, he twisted the corners of his mouth.

“It rather seems more efficient to me.”

“…”

“Aren’t you too conservative, Lord? There’s no rule that a sword always has to be straight.”

Igris’s jaw twitched. He tilted his head again and glared at Jade.

“If you don’t have a deep understanding of swordsmanship, it would look like that. It’s the law of seeing as much as you know.”

Jade still had a dry expression and his eyebrows twitched.

“There’s no need to know. My body doesn’t need to learn swordsmanship.”

“A body that doesn’t need to learn swordsmanship. Are you pursuing weakness?”

“Ha.”

Then Jade let out a scoff. He put his finger on his nose. With an incredulous, casual smile, he said,

“……It’s a strong body, far from weakness.”

Jade’s head shaking with disdain left Igris speechless.

The madman of Libra. Daring to talk about a strong body in front of Arkne’s Igris.

But he decided to ignore it.

Jade was always like this.

He just looked at the woman next to Jade.

“……Is she the youngest?”

Her name was, probably, Zia.

“Yes……”

The woman sitting next to Jade, it was even questionable how she received the VVIP invitation.

“You didn’t necessarily have to come.”

“I also…… have a subject…… I’m keeping an eye on…… as a knight……”

“I see.”

Igris waved his hand. She must have been raised wrong when she was young, she can’t even speak properly.

He focused his gaze back on the tablet, but the situation was already over.

The chaotic swordsmanship of Shion Ascal, who twisted the [Eight Swords] had concluded.

Because Jade suddenly picked a fight.

Igris was displeased with that, but he soon focused on the tablet again.

The way Soliette was looking at Shion.

Although he couldn’t hear her, the way she was softly smiling and saying something.

The ‘atmosphere’ of it all.

Igris deeply engraved it in his eyes.