He grabbed one of the male students by the collar, pulled him close, and looked into a pair of fear-filled eyes. Before the boy could utter a word, Renya drove his forehead into the bridge of the student’s nose. He repeated this a few more times before letting go. The boy crumpled from the knees and fell to the ground, but not before he sent a kick into his victim’s groin, leaving the boy frothing at the mouth as he squirmed and twisted in pain. It occurred to Renya that having this kid vanish would be less interesting, so he left him on the ground. Then, he turned back to Orran and Natalia, who still stood unmoving, and smiled.
“Hey, the two boss apes standing there. You’d better do something before all your monkey mates are gone,” he said tauntingly at the motionless pair.
Natalia continued to stare at him with a blanched face. Her sword shook along with her trembling hands. She was in no state to fight. Orran, meanwhile, tsked as he gripped his sword with both hands. With a roar, he charged at Renya. Like a true one-trick pony, he swung his longsword down in the exact same way as before. In response, Renya lifted the sword in his right hand to meet it. The downward swing of two hands clashed with the upward swing of only one. The outcome should have been obvious.
Renya finished his swing. The impact of the clash sent his opponent’s sword flying into the air. He glared at the weaponless Orran menacingly before bringing his hilt down on the burly student’s forehead.
“Gwah!”
Holding his forehead, Orran contorted backward in pain, only to have Renya forcefully reverse his curvature with a straight kick to the stomach. A rough landing on his rear was followed by a furious assault of words.
“You messing me with, kid?! What kind of swordsman lets go of his sword in battle, huh? Make like a dog and go fetch your damn sword!” he yelled angrily.
Orran had barely managed to get his legs under him before Renya mercilessly sent him flying with another kick.
“I said make like a dog! Do dogs walk on two legs, huh?! Crawl on all fours, you mutt!”
Seeing that Orran was still trying to stand up, he kicked him again. Then, he pressed his foot on Orran’s body and ruthlessly stomped until his victim gaspingly slithered away on all fours to retrieve his sword. Finally, he glanced over his shoulder at a boy who was creeping up behind him. That one look caused the student to freeze. It irked him all the more.
“Don’t stop,” he roared as he threw all his irritation into a full-body swing, “just because somebody looked at you!”
His sword smashed through arm and body alike. The boy fell to the ground before he could utter even a cry. A second later, the boy grabbed one arm with the other, screaming as he squirmed. Had Renya scored a direct hit on the body, it would surely have been lethal. Fortunately for the boy, his arm got in the way, allowing him to get away with nothing more than a complete shattering of the bones in his cushioning limb.
Renya slowly lowered his sword and looked around. The students all cast their eyes downward. None ventured to meet his gaze.
“Th-This isn’t over!”
It was Natalia who spoke. Her hands remained trembling, but she glared at Renya from within her circle of flunkies and yelled her encouragement at her classmates.
“The opponent is only one person! We can do this! Victory is still within our grasp!”
The fact that Natalia had not lost her will to fight combined with their advantage in numbers was enough to hold together the students’ crumbling morale. In addition, though the process of retrieving his weapon was unseemly, Orran was still conscious as well.
“You want to keep going? Hm… I see.” Renya watched as the students brandished their weapons. This time, they moved to surround him. He smiled with glee. “Well, sure. You can’t die here, and there’s no harm in gaining some more battlefield experience… After all, it’s not every day you get to experience the thrill of a massacre from the victims’ side.”
The grounds protected their bodies, but nothing guarded their minds. He took a step forward and scanned the students for his next victim, hoping he wouldn’t have to deal with any mental casualties at the end of it all.
Step after deliberate step, Renya approached the students. Hidden behind his confident gait, however, was a shadow of doubt. He had not expected them to put up so much resistance. Originally, he had hoped the students would cave after seeing two or three of their classmates cut down in an instant. Instead, though his gruesome pummeling had left them shaken to the core, they were still managing to keep themselves together.
He didn’t want anyone to end up dead, so he had been holding back to some degree. Unfortunately, leaving Orran and Natalia mostly healthy proved to be a mistake; the presence of their leaders was doubtlessly a major factor in maintaining the students’ morale. With a tinge of regret, he realized that he should have taken one of them out in the beginning.
Currently, a total of eight students remained: three boys and five girls. Out of those eight, three of the boys and one of the girls had moved in to surround him. Each of the remaining four girls were preparing to use magecraft.
“Hit him from all sides! You don’t need to knock him out for good! Slowing him down is enough!”
The front line would buy time while the back line prepared their spells. By employing hard-to-dodge spells to chip away at their target’s stamina, they would eventually slow him down enough for the front line to go in for the kill. It was a tried-and-true method of fighting group battles. Even if their opponent proved to be far superior in skill, it would take a good deal of time to defeat swordsmen who were focused entirely on defending. All the while, support fire would be raining down from all sides, making it even harder for the target to break through their formation.
“Don’t blame us. You’re the one who wanted to fight a group battle.” Taking Renya’s inaction for hesitation, Orran grinned as he spoke.
In actuality, Renya’s thoughts were elsewhere. If he wanted to, he could have smacked down Orran and silenced the girls behind him. However, faced with a mighty foe, the students had made a sincere attempt to come up with a plan of attack. Crude as it might be, it seemed a tad too heartless to simply walk all over their efforts. Were this a true battle, he certainly wouldn’t have entertained such thoughts. In battles, when given the chance to crush the opponent, it was common sense to take it. In this case, though, Renya found that he had lost interest in the whole affair. Sure, they beat their teacher and their egos were too bloated for their own good, but they were just a bunch of kids with far more bark than bite. Had they been trained soldiers, he would not have hesitated, but they were students. And some truly sub-par ones at that. Faced with nothing more than a gang of spunky kids, he couldn’t muster the resolve to crush them in cold blood.
“Front line, down! Mages, fire!”
Natalia’s orders rang out in the sparring grounds. The defenders at the front retreated, clearing the way for the simultaneous shooting of three firebolts. Those would cause some good damage if they hit, so Renya stepped forward and cut one down with his sword. Unlike when he did so with his own katana, the impact of blade with flame produced yet more flame that blanketed his view. The drastically different result took him by surprise, slowing him by a beat. He barely avoided a direct hit by the next firebolt, but it grazed his left shoulder, leaving a light burn. The sting of pain slowed him yet again, allowing Orran to rush up to him. With the momentum of his charge, Orran made a powerful swing at Renya’s left side.
In the heat of the moment, Renya managed to flip his sword from his right hand to his left, reversing the grip in the process. He pressed the flat of the blade against his side, blocking the incoming sword. The impact of Orran’s swing, however, shot straight through the blades and into his body, causing him to grimace. Normally, he would have leapt in the direction of the strike to soften the blow, but he instead did the opposite, opting to press forward and push back Orran’s sword. In analyzing the situation, he decided that he needed to force the issue or risk being whittled down by a flurry of attacks. This decision of his produced an unexpected result.
“Mage, hit him with a second wave of spells! Don’t worry about Orran! Just fire!”
“What? You!”