Chapter 24: The Saintess and the Woodcutter (2)
Ivan slowly stepped toward the ring. Tromp, tromp. Ordinary footsteps, yet their quietness had something about it that drew the eye.
The students’ first impression was simple. An old guy who knows how to set a mood.
Even when Ivan drew an axe from his waist, the students thought nothing particular of it. Because this was the Knight Faculty, after all.
In most cases students are steeped in the formula king of all weapons = the sword. In most cases that’s correct.
Because it’s easy to carry, broad in versatility, and well suited to delicate technique besides.
But an axe is simple. Owing to the center of gravity concentrated in the axe head. Accordingly, an axe’s direction of attack must always run in a single direction.
Which is to say, it’s easy to read the trajectory and cut it off. Accordingly most of the students took the axe lightly.
“Enrique.”
Ivan spoke while standing still atop the ring. It was a weighty delivery.
“Yes?”
“How far is permitted?”
“Just don’t kill anyone. There’s a Saintess here anyway, isn’t there.”
The Hero’s Party’s Saintess, Patricia, currently serves as this university’s Theology Faculty department head. Which is to say, it amounted to a trauma specialist superior to healing potion being on standby at all times.
Good. Ivan nodded.
“Eriksson.”
“Yes, seeing you from this distance settles it. The face from back then is still there.”
“If I win, you’ll do volunteer service.”
“……What?”
This fellow is an intelligence agent of the Kingdom of Droan. Nominally a Knight Faculty new student, and outwardly Esidis’s personal escort, but in essence he’s an operator capable of playing the spy Great King Einar planted.
Which is to say, this fellow can join hands with the Princess’s faction or the Crown Prince’s faction at any time under the standing of an “unofficial diplomat.” This fellow is a variable.
Accordingly it was necessary to tie down his feet until Esidis’s course was settled. The easiest method is to keep him close.
For all the hours remaining after school, excluding the hours he must spend guarding Esidis’s side.
“I’ll have you do the laundry at the orphanage.”
Volunteer service is good for character education. This is an undeniable truth. Caring for orphans is a great help in cultivating character.
Therefore it’s also an opportunity to teach “civilization” to this Droan Berserker Housecarl.
“Talking rubbish.”
“Come.”
Ivan raised his axe. The 2 warriors (average age: 40s; first-year university practical class) no longer required conversation.
***
When the 2 men first collided, the new students were rather bewildered. What? Why are they fighting well?
Krraash—!!
Then. When the two axes were striking sparks off each other, the new students were appalled. What is this. How does someone move like that from there? Anyone see that just now? Nobody?
Claaaang! Krrrrunch!!
At last, when the strongest of the new students (in his 40s) sank to his knees gasping, the students were finally able to properly see the man still standing bolt upright.
Two eyes shining deep blue and an expressionless face.
Breathing utterly composed, without so much as a faint tremor even after moving that violently.
“Hff…… Petrovich…… truly…… little Ivan. Hff—! What in the world are you scheming here……?”
“Safety management.”
Ivan walked past Mord, who had been reduced to a rag.
Safety……? Management……? Great question marks stamped themselves over the students’ heads again. What in the world was the safety I’ve known until now……?
“Next.”
“Uh…… Professor, the exam scope is awfully broad. This is our first session, isn’t it……?”
One youth who had flinched at Ivan’s word raised a hand and spoke. It was the noble youth who had first sneered at Ivan.
Enrique nodded, grinning.
“Next in line’s decided. Come on, come on, no time. Let’s move it along.”
“Uh…… uhh……”
Because nobody wanted to climb onto the ring, the youth, hauled up there with the aid of his kindly classmates, broke into a cold sweat and edged backward.
“Come.”
Ivan raised his axe.
***
“Now then, land one stab on our assistant’s body and I’ll stamp an A+ on you straight away. How’s that? Hm? Or, yes…… I’m in the mood! I’ll throw in a one-on-one lesson with an active Hero’s Party beauty lecturer!”
Ivan did not bother pointing out the error in Enrique’s last sentence. Because he was a person of common sense.
Instead he raised his axe. Because he was a person earnest about recruit instruction.
“Next.”
After clearing away 5 corpses (they weren’t), there was no one left climbing onto the ring.
“Oh, come on! If you all give up like this, you fail as a group! Hm? How about this. If you all take an F and retake it, next year’s class will start the same way. Better to take your beating first, wouldn’t you say?”
Watching Enrique smile brightly, the students ground their teeth with a grind.
Fine. We can’t be certain…… but in any case there’s no dying.
Land a single successful attack and a high grade is guaranteed.
It’s a 3-credit major requirement class. It’ll obviously exert an enormous influence on their grade point average, and the Knight Faculty was fundamentally strong in competitive spirit.
Because they were chicks who had grown up each hearing themselves called a prodigy of the martial arts or a genius of the blade back in their own neighborhoods.
Just once.
Just one single time!
The new students did not give up even until 30 corpses (they weren’t) had been cleared away.
“Next.”
***
And at last Yuri’s turn came.
Yuri raised her sword, trembling. In all the time she had held a blade, its edge had never once felt this heavy.
Onto the ring where thick killing intent swirled, over the bleakly blowing wind and the bloodstains sticky on the floor.
Even after mustering the courage for a step forward, one look at the man before her and she shrank back again.
Because there was something that came to mind every time she saw those shabby work clothes and the worn towel around his neck.
“Yuri Frank.”
“Yehk! Yes! Yep?!”
Ivan gazed steadily into Yuri’s eyes. A sharp gaze that seemed to rummage through her mind bored into her vision.
Yuri’s pupils shook wildly side to side. Her head swam and the strength kept draining from her hands.
“Knight Faculty top of class.”
“Yep!!”
“Lee Yu-ri?”
“……Hic?!”
“Kim Yu-ri? Park Yu-ri? Choi Yu-ri?”
“Th-tha? What do you? Mean by that, I don’t quite……?”
“In Krasilov, Yuri is a man’s name.”
“Yeeees…… i-isn’t it? I have circumstances, that’s……”
“Come.”
Ivan raised his axe.
“I’ll hear the circumstances slowly.”
“No, no, no. I, I’d like to forfeit? Is th-that all right? Fail! I’ll just fail! Kyaaaah!!”
Before Yuri could drop her blade, Ivan’s body lunged.
Reflexively raising her sword to deflect the axe blade, Yuri forced down the scream welling up.
It coils in. Like a snake……! The axe blade climbs up along her sword edge as though it would tear out her nape that very instant!
Clang!
It was an attack pattern she had already watched until the students before her were reduced to rags. But even so, it was an offensive one simply could not grow accustomed to.
Ivan’s axe seemed to have reached a certain kind of realm.
Each individual blow isn’t heavy. Mord Eriksson had been fiercer in that respect. But it’s fast. In the instant of one slip she was already entangled in the strike.
He is versed in the method of employing an axe. Not merely swung, but striking the blade, using centrifugal force to close again, driving down, and immediately after that sweeping in on the diagonal.
Krrrunch!!
Using the curve of the axe head to drag the sword in, then twisting the handle to wrench the blade out. Lose the sword to that shock and it’s over.
Ivan looked down at the kneeling Yuri and nodded.
“You fight well.”
“Thank…… you……”
“I’ll be watching. Next.”
Yuri staggered down off the ring on legs gone weak. By some miraculous result no wound remained on her body, but that only gave the impression that the freak had gone easy on her.
She looked at Ivan with a terrified face, then squeezed her eyes shut.
***
What? Kim-Lee-Park-Choi, what the hell was that! K-Korean? He’s Korean……?
Lee Yu-ri had been an illustrator.
The last job she had done was a freelance commission for a degradation-genre academy eroge.
One called Farce 3.
The kind where you flee from a gardener who seizes on students’ weaknesses and does……improper……extremely extreme things to them.
That gardener had been a middle-aged man with a towel around his neck and worn work clothes.
And she is now dropped precisely into that damned world. Right after staying up all night and sending off the first rough of the commission.
Into a world where a bearded gardener with an axe glares greedily at female students (a misunderstanding) with bulging eyes.
If I’m found out……. Something extremely……extremely extreme is going to happen to me……!
She trembled all over, recalling what became of the “students” whose weaknesses had been seized. The “gardener” had his eye on her.
And if he found out she was from the same hometown, a fellow possessor at that, the genre might shift to blackmail through some means or other.
She is…… the protagonist……. Well, an orphan who’s a full scholarship student and a swordsmanship genius. How else could an illustrator who had drawn pictures her whole life manage that.
Naturally she was the protagonist……
She wants to go home.
***
Isabelle held out 3 moves, and Oscar held out 2 exchanges.
By ranking, that would be Mord, Yuri, Isabelle, Oscar. Mord wasn’t a student to begin with, so set him aside. The order had been decided exactly along the line he’d projected.
My eye hasn’t dulled yet. Thinking so, Ivan nodded with satisfaction.
“Are you smiling right now?”
“A misunderstanding.”
“It looked like you smiled?”
“My face simply looks that way.”
“Khup……! Madman……!”
At the sound from directly in front, Ivan had to manage his expression again. Beside him was Enrique with both hands raised. Enrique was hiccuping as she forced down the laughter bursting out of her.
Ivan, being a person of common sense, did not react to his elderly master’s antics.
At the moment when Yuri was terrified, at that same point in time, Ivan and Enrique were being scolded by the Saintess.
It was the price of stuffing 50 patients into the Theology Faculty department head’s office.
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