I blocked Angelica’s diagonal strike once more.
Of course, it was not as though that fight had raised my realm or anything.
I clenched my teeth.
Still not enough.
Sure, I had had the help of the Indestructible Knight, along with a whole heap of ridiculously overpowered buffs.
But even after fighting that monstrous bastard twenty-nine times and finally crushing him head-on, I could still feel a wall before the Angelica standing in front of me.
I had accumulated experience by breaking through that death line, so I thought I would at least be able to land a few hits on her easily.
Yet Angelica’s growth had raced far ahead of mine, as though mocking my assumption.
Were the twenty-nine battles I had endured worth less to her than a single fight?
Still.
"You blocked that?"
A faint trace of excitement seeped into Angelica’s voice, usually hidden behind a mask of utter expressionlessness.
It seemed those twenty-nine fights had not been entirely pointless.
Her sword, which I had previously only barely been able to block by foreseeing possibilities, could now be seen and blocked with my own eyes, without using any skills at all.
Counterattacking was still beyond me, of course. But I could see it now.
The two frenzied storms that had been whirling fiercely as if to devour one another finally crossed paths.
The instant their final exchange, rushing in with enough force to tear space apart, collided head-on in midair—
Crack—!
With a piercing burst, the two wooden swords, unable to withstand the tremendous shockwave, shattered at once and scattered splinters in every direction.
The spar ended with both our wooden swords breaking in that final clash.
This spar had ended the same way as always—with the wooden swords shattered.
Still, perhaps I should take comfort in the fact that I had not ended up sprawled flat on the floor.
The notification announcing that I had leveled up never came.
Before, a proper bout with this girl had easily earned me at least one level.
Did this mean I could no longer level up through the cheap grind of sparring?
Or had I simply become strong enough that my experience requirements had increased?
But seriously, was this insane or what?
"Ian, you’ve grown stronger."
Her face was still masked in expressionlessness, but the corners of her lips had lifted ever so slightly.
But my eyes were not on her face right then.
I did not have the leisure to pay attention to that.
My gaze was fixed solely on the bluish UI floating before me.
【 Angelica de Olivier 】
◈ Level: 55
◈ The target is feeling proud.
Level 55.
She had crossed level 50—the wall of a Sword Expert—in that one death line, then climbed another five levels on top of it.
Objectively speaking, it was already absurd for me to even be competing with her.
Right now, she possessed combat power comparable to that of most professors.
Even if a bunch of mid-boss-class opponents came at her, she would probably just grind every last one of them into dust by herself.
"Still, I wanted to spar with Iris once."
Angelica’s red gaze turned toward Iris, who was quietly swinging a wooden sword beside us.
"Eek!"
Receiving that gaze full force, Iris shuddered violently, as though she had sensed something.
Well, that was only natural.
She had just witnessed Angelica casually deflect a Sword Master’s attacks from right beside her. From Iris’s perspective, it could not have been easy to simply brush that aside.
In the end, I had to barely stop Angelica from brandishing her wooden sword and relentlessly demanding a spar with Iris.
The performance Iris had pulled off back then had only been possible because the Holy Maiden had possessed her body.
If I let them fight now, all I could see was Angelica’s wooden sword splitting Iris’s skull open.
Perhaps because Angelica kept pressuring her with that blank stare, Iris trembled all over like a retriever that had fallen into water whenever she felt Angelica’s gaze on her.
And Angelica’s crimson eyes were filled with regret.
"It can’t be helped."
Of course, it was undeniably true that Iris had grown to level 40 thanks to yesterday’s battle.
Most students in the early part of the academy were, at best, in the mid-thirties, while the major characters were in the high thirties. At level 40, Iris could be considered stronger than most students.
She might even be stronger than those Iris Fan Club Trio idiots.
But unless she used the Holy Maiden’s power...
No, even if she activated the Holy Maiden’s power to resist, the future where Angelica beat the hell out of her would not change.
Unless she had separately accumulated stats like I had, a fifteen-level gap was never something easily overcome.
The same held true even if they competed in technique.
Not long after first taking up a sword, Angelica had an utterly absurd record of defeating one of the lowest-ranked members of the Frank Knights—a group of Sword Masters—through pure skill alone.
And now, she was far stronger than she had been then.
No matter how I looked at it, all I could see was an ending where Iris’s skull got smashed by Angelica’s wooden sword.
"What a shame. Is she really not going to come out again like she did then?"
Angelica tilted her head as she spoke.
At those words, Iris twisted her hair around her fingers and dropped her gaze to the ground, unable to meet Angelica’s eyes.
She barely managed to speak in a voice that seemed to crawl away.
"She said she would not step in unless it was a truly dangerous situation..."
"A dangerous situation?"
As Angelica repeated the words quietly, the broken wooden sword in her hand gave a small twitch in the air.
Her red eyes narrowed.
"Eek!"
Iris recoiled in terror at her reaction.
It lasted only an instant.
But I caught a glimpse of something ominous flashing through Angelica’s red eyes as she watched Iris.
This crazy bitch, don’t tell me...
An ominous thought began to form.
I glanced briefly at the shattered wooden sword I was holding as well.
It was a truly hair-trigger situation.
The thought flashed through my mind that I might have to throw myself in front of Angelica and stop her from lunging at Iris at any moment.
This was not taming a wild beast, for fuck’s sake.
"I’m joking."
Her narrowed eyes gradually relaxed.
The heavy atmosphere that had hung over us for an instant returned to normal as though it had all been a lie.
A joke?
A joke?
Angelica made a joke?
Was this girl originally that kind of character?
No.
Just now, she had looked as though she was about to devour Iris whole.
Perhaps because her expression was always so consistently unchanged, I trusted her words even less.
Besides, Angelica was not the sort of character who cracked jokes in the first place.
"But... were you someone who knew how to joke?"
"I make jokes too."
Angelica replied calmly.
With that face?
The words nearly slipped out, but I did not bother opening my mouth.
I swallowed them back down.
I did not want to spar again.
What a pain.
#
After that long, long training session ended,
I found myself standing in front of the Ancient Documents Club room.
But should I go in or not?
There was a reason Angelica and I had not immediately entered and were lingering around outside.
At the entrance to a place where an incident has occurred, there is usually police tape telling you not to enter, right?
Exactly.
In front of the door, I could see a red cord bearing the words [Knight Line], much like that.
And there was the musty lingering odor and the smell of moss that stung at my nose.
Even without going inside, it was painfully clear how severe the dungeon’s encroachment had been; the hallway walls were covered from top to bottom in damp green moss.
All the documents had been destroyed too.
The dungeon had spawned right in a perfectly normal club room.
The vines that had emerged through the dungeon’s encroachment had wrecked the materials we had gathered until now.
Even estimating only from what I had personally seen, roughly two-thirds of it had been lost.
When Eileen saw that horrific sight, she fainted on the spot.
I heard that when she woke up, she wandered toward the club room in a daze, mumbling incoherently, then saw the scene again and fainted once more.
Anyway, I had heard that the terrorists who crawled out of the dungeon had all been taken into custody by the Empire’s knight order.
Eileen had apparently threatened the commander of the knight order to give them the maximum sentence.
What were they going to do about it if they did not like that?
No one had held a sword to their throats and forced them to commit terrorism.
Too bad for them, I suppose.
I pulled out a note that had been wedged in my locker.
It was neither a love letter nor a challenge to a duel.
[Underclassman, report to the club room by 4:00 p.m.]
- Club President -
That was all it said.
The handwriting was so atrocious that it made me doubt whether an imperial princess had really written it.
It seemed I was not the only one summoned. The same order had been slipped into Angelica’s locker beside mine.
But had the internal investigation already finished?
I had heard that the knight order and the academy were still conducting a thorough investigation because the Dawn Troupe had artificially spawned this dungeon.
The Knight Line had not even been removed yet.
Should we open this door or not?
Well, it was the club president who had told us to meet here.
If anyone questioned us, we could just sell out the club president.
Careful not to touch the Knight Line, we stepped over the cord.
Then we opened the club room’s door.
The sliding door opened with a scrrrk.
When it opened fully, the damp, musty smell unique to moss rolled out even more thickly.
Inside was, as expected, a complete mess.
The first thing that caught my eye upon opening the door was the dungeon entrance sitting all by itself in the middle of the room.
Unlike the dungeons we had encountered thus far, this one had neither a boss nor a reward. Unless the core within was completely destroyed, it would not count as a normal clear, so the dungeon entrance still sat abandoned in a corner of the club room.
Moss and vines had spread outward around it.
"You’re a little late, Underclassman."
Beside it, Club President Eileen sat in a chair, putting on an exaggeratedly grand air.
Dolnesia and Isabella sat on either side of her, holding teacups from who knew where and calmly enjoying tea.
They were raising teacups while using a club room devastated by dungeon encroachment as their scenery.
This spectacle was truly something else.
"Didn’t you say this place was still under investigation?"
Then why had she told us to gather here?
"Oh, the investigation is over. They said we can use it now."
Without ceasing her ostentatious posing, Club President Eileen answered calmly.
No, was that really true?
The Knight Line was still outside, and the dungeon gate here was still perfectly active.
As I alternated my gaze between the undulating dungeon and the club president’s face, unable to comprehend it—
Bang!
Club President Eileen suddenly slammed both hands down hard on the desk.
"Hehe, right? You’re wondering why the dungeon is still here, aren’t you, Underclassman?"
After suddenly flying off the handle, Eileen was now grinning to herself.
I could not possibly keep up with that woman’s emotional trajectory.
Just a little while ago, she had fainted. Then she started acting grand, and now she was suddenly flooring the accelerator.
She had clearly finally gone insane.
Then again, two-thirds of the materials she had gathered until now were gone, so it would not have been strange for her to lose her mind.
But whether the club president went mad or not, Dolnesia and Isabella on either side of her continued sipping tea as though nothing were wrong.
I could not help but admire their dedication to teatime while the person beside them was losing her mind.
But that was not what mattered right now.
In any case, it seemed I was the only one in this room who could return that woman to normal.
So I decided to humor her madness a little.
"So why is that dungeon still here?"
"I knew you, at least, would be curious!"
Judging by the club president’s overreaction, those two ladies at her sides had apparently chosen the option of saying, “I’m not curious.”
"Then, for our curious Underclassman, I’ll tell you especially!"
With a triumphant expression, the club president pointed at the dungeon entrance.
"This dungeon! We’ve decided to use it as the Ancient Documents Club’s research room!"
As I watched our club president proclaim that proudly, I thought:
She really had gone insane.
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