“Just hold on!” Ivo yelled. The fourth-years were politely waiting for them to speak with each other. Ivo, who was thinking at top speed trying to come up with some way to get Yui to fight, didn’t have any spare time to deal with them.
“Gah... This is the one thing I didn’t want to use...” Clois said, his expression twisting with deep frustration.
“Cloey?” Lyle asked.
Clois took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and showed it to Yui. “If you win, I’ll give you this coupon to the sweets buffet at a high-class capital restaurant!” he shouted.
Yui twitched. That got a response. As always with Yui, sweets were the answer. Clois knew that sacrifices were sometimes necessary, but he loved sweet things too, and the difficult decision to offer the coupon to Yui had been enough to bring him to tears.
Ivo and Lyle understood what Clois was trying to do, and they chimed in.
“I’ll treat you to pancakes at that place you’ve been wanting to go to!” Ivo shouted.
“And a parfait!” Lyle added.
Yui had seemed so unhurried moments earlier, but they could tell that she was now filled with determination. They were confident that victory was certain.
“All right, let’s continue,” Ivo said.
“Finally...” the fourth-year replied. “But are you sure? I don’t want to attack a Liefe who can’t fight. It’ll be like I’m bullying her.”
“That won’t be an issue. If you don’t take her seriously, you’ll get hurt.”
“I see. Then let’s begin.”
The match restarted with Ivo and Yui at a disadvantage, each facing two opponents. The fourth-years moved to attack, but the next moment, the two facing Yui were blown backward. Their glass broke on impact, instantly changing the shape of the battle. The two remaining fourth-years were stunned.
“Wha—?!”
“Whoa, what did she do? She didn’t even chant... Was it chant cancellation?!”
The two students had been sent flying without any time to recite a spell. Chant cancellation was one possibility, but there was no way a first-year could use that technique. They blankly looked at Yui with disbelief on their faces.
“All I did was hit them with magic energy,” Yui explained.
“Hit with magic energy...?” the student repeated.
It was nothing impressive. She had just gathered energy in one spot and released it, then strengthened it with an amplification spell. Because she had simply released it, she hadn’t needed any time to chant or activate a spell, and from the start of the match, she had made it so she could activate an amplification spell at any time. But to the students who didn’t know that, it seemed as if the fourth-years had been suddenly blasted out of nowhere. Yui’s spell had instantly knocked out two opponents, and they’d been unable to put up any resistance. That being said, Yui could also cancel chants—she just hadn’t done it then. There was no need to reveal all of her secrets, so she’d remained silent.
“Amplify not a spell, but energy itself... I didn’t know nonelemental magic could be used like that,” the fourth-year student said. He seemed astonished by Yui’s use of magic energy. After all, to them, nonelemental spells were meaningless. But the usefulness of magic all depended on how it was used—even if Yui could only use nonelemental magic.
“I see. So the morning wasn’t just a fluke. If I don’t take her seriously, I’ll get hurt—quite right.” The two fourth-years seemed to have gained a new understanding of Liefes. “Then, Liefe or not, I won’t hold back.”
They gave off a terrifying, overpowering aura, just as if they were in a real fight and not a mock battle. It was clear that they had the strength and the ability to last until the end. The next moment, they targeted not Ivo, but Yui, whose actions they were less able to predict. Yui opened her mouth to chant a defense spell, but one of the fourth-years had physically enhanced himself and increased his speed, and he rushed at her without giving her any time to speak. Yui then tried the same instant energy release that she had done earlier, but it was easily neutralized.
“It’s easy if you know the trick. I can cancel it out if I just hit it with my own energy.” As fourth-years, they had plenty of real combat experience, and they weren’t soft enough to get tripped up by the same attack twice.
Yui tried to avoid the approaching foe as quickly as she could, but the physically enhanced student was faster, and he broke the glass on Yui’s arm. Ivo used that moment for his attack, and he was able to successfully knock out the student who had defeated Yui. This left one remaining on each side, but then the final fourth-year unceremoniously knocked Ivo to the ground.
“Too bad. But I bet you guys can win next time, so keep at it.” With victory in his grasp, he consoled the losers, but Yui and Ivo responded with a pair of bold smiles.
“That’s our line,” Yui said.
The fourth-year looked at them quizzically, confused by what they were saying, but the next moment, there was a cracking sound, and his glass shattered. Unable to comprehend what had just happened, he silently stood there in a daze.
Yui waved at someone behind the fourth-year. “That was perfect, Finney.”
At that moment, the fourth-year finally noticed that there was one more first-year student, but by then, it was already too late. He turned around to see a boy wearing the same class H tie that Yui was wearing. Yui and Finney were the only low-ranking students at the camp.
Finney had been out of sight the entire time, but he had actually been staying right next to the rest of his group. He had just cast a barrier spell that made him blend in with his surroundings—this had enabled him to avoid the fighting, and he’d waited for an opportunity. However, that didn’t mean that he had been impossible to see, just difficult to see. Anyone who could sense the presence and location of magic energy would’ve been able to see him if they had just focused their eyes hard enough. He would’ve been hard to notice when there had still been many students casting spells all over the place, but that hadn’t necessarily been the case when there had only been a few of them left. In fact, Yui and Ivo had known where Finney had been, and Yui had taken that into her calculations and behaved flashily in order to draw their opponents’ attention toward her. The fourth-years were strong enough to have noticed Finney, but they had been distracted from their surroundings by Yui’s unexpected power.
Finney had let them think they’d won, then he’d taken the last, best part for himself. The fourth-year students had been so certain of victory—it must’ve made them all the more frustrated to have it so anticlimactically taken away. This was a very fitting strategy for the truly nasty Finney.
The fourth-year student who had remained until the end dejectedly crumpled to the floor.