Annie admonished Randy, who couldn’t help but ask out of curiosity.
“A-about that… The whole magic thing… I can’t actually—”
But just as Rix tried to answer that he had never learned to use any magic…
BOOOOOOM!
Even though they were at sea, an earthquake-like impact suddenly shook the ship.
“Whoa!”
“Aaah!”
The force briefly lifted Randy and Annie into the air and sent them tumbling.
“Huh? What was that?” Rix wondered aloud, looking around.
He stood there like nothing had happened.
With his exceptional core strength and stability, it was as if he had been glued to the ship.
“H-huh? Rix…how can you stay so calm…?” Randy asked.
But just then, a shout rang out:
“Monsterrrrr! It’s a sea monsterrrrr!”
The next moment, countless columns of water shot up toward the sky from around the ship.
And then from within those columns emerged a giant tentacle, its surface packed with rows of suckers. It was enough to make anyone instinctually reel back in disgust.
Before long, a huge whirlpool was stirred up next to the ship, and out of its center appeared a giant body.
The squid-like creature that dwarfed the ship was the notorious monster that had doomed countless sailors to their watery graves since time immemorial—the Kraken.
Its two gigantic eyes rolled to glare at the people standing on deck.
And then, as if it had just spotted today’s feed, the humongous Kraken began getting closer and closer to the ship.
“Wh-whooooaaaaaa?!”
“Ah… Um… Er…”
The passengers were like deer caught in headlights.
Randy fell into a state of panic, while Annie froze in place, dumbfounded.
On the ship’s deck with them was a crowd who also seemed to be new students at Estoria Academy of Magic…but they were all simply running around, screaming in terror.
“Dammit, how did this happen?! It’s unfathomable that a sea monster would appear in this area of the sea!”
Before long, the captain and what appeared to be the ship’s crew came flying onto the deck.
“Wh-what should we do, Captain?!”
“Swords or cannons won’t have any effect… Our only hope is to use magic against it!”
“But this area of the sea was supposed to be a safe zone from monsters! We didn’t hire a single mage for the crew!”
“Well, find one, dammit—anyone aboard who can use magic! Luckily, this ship is headed for Estoria! There must be someone here who can fight with magic!”
With that, the crew started searching through the passengers for a capable mage.
Rix watched the crew’s frantic search and thought, Mages have all sorts of marketable skills. That naturally means some take on work that relates to combat… But I myself have no plans to do that kind of work in the future!
That aside, they really needed to do something about that sea monster.
He didn’t want to become some giant squid’s lunch.
Rix turned back to Randy and Annie, and with a rallying smile, he gave them a thumbs-up. “Okay. It’s your turn, guys! Take that thing down with your magic!”
“Y-you’re joking, right?!” Randy howled. “Unlike you with your special abilities, we can’t use our magic yet! We haven’t opened our Spheres!”
“…Spheres?” Rix looked at them blankly.
Annie, shaking in fear, began to explain. “Yes… I’d bet most of the new students on this ship still aren’t able to use magic… And even if they could…”
She glanced at the fearsome beast as it neared the ship.
It wasn’t clear if she had done so coincidentally or intentionally, but the monster’s eyeballs rolled around to meet her gaze.
“Eep…!”
Annie immediately went pale, hugged her body, and started shaking with tears in her eyes.
“Right… I guess you really can’t fight that thing, seeing as it’s so gross-looking. Tch! If only it had been a cute sea monster…!”
“No, that’s obviously not the issue at hand here!”
Even in this dire situation, Randy managed to shoot down Rix’s ridiculous comment.
Sure enough, all the new students on deck were simply panicking. Not a single one dared to face the monster.
Meanwhile, the monster had now closed in on the ship and was swinging its tentacle high—and bringing it down to slap the deck.
Just then, Annie and Randy saw something they couldn’t ignore.
“Ah!”
“That girl…!”
Standing all alone at the edge of the opposite side of the deck was a single girl.
She had distinctive white hair.
Was she stupefied by the sight of the sea monster coming right toward her?
She didn’t try to run or hide.
But the sea monster’s tentacle was about to come crashing down right above her head…
“Hey! You over there! Watch out!” Randy yelled.
“R-run!” Annie screamed.
But their cries were in vain.
The humongous tentacle was ready to slam down on the girl where she stood…but then:
Slash!
Suddenly, a severed tentacle flew up into the air and was launched off in the other direction.
“Huh?!”
“Wha—?!”
Rix was standing in front of the girl, wielding his unsheathed sword.
He was in position to defend her from the sea monster’s attacks.
“R-Rix?!”
“Wh-what?! How did he get over there?!”
Annie and Randy looked surprised as they compared the place where they were standing to where Rix now had appeared.
Now matter how they looked at it, it was a significant distance. There was no way he could have covered it in one move.
But somehow, even though he had just been standing right next to them, he was now all the way over there.
On top of that…judging from what they were seeing, he had also chopped off the sea monster’s tentacle with one hit and sent it flying.
“No way… What just happened…?” said Annie.
“Could it be…? Is this his magic?!” cried Randy.
“Teleportation magic, plus powerful sword enchantment magic…both at an extremely high level?!”
“Scholarship students really are something else! That’s amazing, Rix!”
As the two of them were getting riled up…
Um… All I did was run up to it and slash it with my sword, like I usually do…
Rix wasn’t really sure how he should feel about it.
As a matter of fact, Rix hadn’t used even a bit of magic. More like he wasn’t able to.
And he had even recently switched out his sword for some random normal sword at a weapons shop. (The sword he was using before had been so dirty and blackened with the blood and grease of the humans and monsters he had fought that he’d been a little embarrassed to use it in front of others.)
All this to say he had simply done what he usually did.
Well, more importantly…
Rix looked behind him. He saw the girl with white hair still standing silently.
There was something odd about her.
Her hair was stark white, the color of burned-out ash. Her skin was as fair as unblemished fresh snowfall. Her narrow eyes were pale blue like ice.
But the girl wasn’t looking at anything. Not at Rix who had saved her, nor at the looming sea monster that had just tried to take her life.
The light that filled her eyes was like an infinite void.
She wasn’t cowering in fear; she was simply not interested. Not in the sea monster, not even in her own life.
Wh-what’s up with this girl…? Rix thought.
The whole thing was so strange that it sent a shiver down Rix’s spine.
But even more than that, and despite that—the girl was beautiful. Enough to take your breath away. Her beauty was delicate, almost like that of a fairy. Her silhouette was both trim and voluptuous.
Although she wasn’t remotely pretentious, she was constructed almost too perfectly, like a piece of art.
Her blank, unseeing gaze wandered emptily; the sea breeze played with her white hair… It was like something from a postcard. Like a sacred, inviolable piece of magic glasswork, not to be sullied by human hands.
“Are you okay?” Rix asked her.
The battle-hardened mercenary was almost overcome by the urge to keep staring at her forever.
But he returned to combat mode, broke off his gaze from the girl, and turned back to face the sea monster writhing in pain before him.
“It’s dangerous, so you should stand back,” he warned the girl before focusing on the monster once more.
But then, Rix heard the girl whisper something.
It had barely been clear enough for him to make out.
“…Just stay out of it.”
Her whisper was somehow decadently weary, like she had given up on everything in this world.
Huh?