Chapter 90
The matches among the lower-ranked first-years were held four at a time.
Consequently, the matches progressed very quickly, and the money piled up in my hands just as fast.
“This victory goes to Lunaris!”
Jingle.
Silver coins dropped into my palm.
“Oh-ho, you got lucky.”
“This victory goes to… Reinhart! Reinhart School of Magic!”
“What a coincidence. I got it right again.”
“This victory goes to…”
“Three times?”
Each time a match progressed, jingling coins fell onto my palm.
Robert's eyes grew wider and wider.
“How have you not gotten a single one wrong?!”
“It's not that I haven't gotten a single one wrong. I didn't bet this time.”
“That's no different from not getting it wrong! How did you do it?”
“It's roughly visible. My eyes are pretty good, so I can gauge things like physical abilities.”
I gauged their rough stats with Observation Eyes.
“When there's too much difference in physical ability or mana, that's the end of it.”
“But there must be plenty of times when their mana reserves are similar, right?”
If anything, those cases were more common.
“Then that's when I use my eyes.”
“Your eyes?”
“The flow of mana surrounding the student, the student's stance, and their mindset as they face the match.”
Since it was an exchange event, there were plenty of students who weren't taking it seriously.
Some people had lots of mana but didn't particularly like fighting.
“You can tell all that?”
“You can read a great deal just by looking at what's visible.”
You just had to use your head. Your head.
So I only entered bets that were certain and won them for certain.
“…All I can say is that's impressive.”
That said, I hadn't won all that much.
Since I didn't enter uncertain matches, I hadn't actually bet on many.
Nor were the stakes very high.
But the fact that I hadn't failed meant…
It was no different from saying that the money in my hands had simply multiplied exponentially without any losses.
—Jingle-jingle-jingle-jingle-jingle!!!
Silver coins kept raining down without pause.
The final amount that fell into my hands was about 500 silver.
Converted to gold, that was five gold.
It was enough money to make an ordinary person's eyes bulge.
“Hey, miss.”
Sure enough, someone with hollow, sunken eyes looked at me and spoke.
“You may not know this, miss, but there's a rule here that anyone who wins big has to spread some of it around to the others too.”
He bared his teeth in a slight grin.
He was saying I should give him some too.
“Hahahaha!”
He looked slightly flustered when I burst out laughing.
But then he squared himself up again.
It was probably because of my looks that he had picked a fight.
In fact, I had noticed people sneaking glances at me for a while.
“Mister. Don't do something you'll regret.”
Robert seemed used to this sort of thing.
But he didn't seem inclined to do anything in particular.
“Help me, you bastard.”
“A dragon and a commoner trying to charge at a dragon. Which one should I save?”
“…Are you talking about me?”
I'm not a dragon.
“Damn it, you're ignoring me?! I'll show you!”
Enraged, he tried to snatch the silver coins from my hand.
Instead, I grabbed him by the wrist.
He looked flustered when he saw that his arm wouldn't budge.
“What the hell? She's a weakling?”
In fact, my strength was comparable to that of a B-Rank melee Hunter.
It was on an entirely different level from this neighborhood thug.
“Gah, you bastard, where did you get that strength…!”
I grabbed him by the collar and threw him over my shoulder.
It happened in an instant.
—Baaang!
A crack of impact rang out from the floor.
“Kgh!”
I lightly stepped on his head as he lay sprawled out.
Then I casually showed him my wand.
His head began to tremble like an aspen leaf.
“A-a noble! A mage!”
“Mister.”
“Y-yes!”
“You know the crime of coveting what belongs to me is a very serious one, right?”
“W-would you be willing to call it a draw?”
He struggled desperately to avoid being treated any more harshly.
“No.”
“Gaaaaaaah!!”
* * *
“Nyahahahaha!!!”
By the time I left the gambling den, my assets had grown to about ten gold.
For the record, he ran away as soon as he came to.
After that, no one picked a fight with me either.
Tomorrow was the match among the top ten.
“Are you coming again tomorrow?”
“Of course I am.”
I heard the stakes would be much higher tomorrow.
Of course, I had nowhere to spend the money right away, but having my pockets full of gold felt good.
“Robert, did you prepare properly?”
Honestly, Linia and I weren't a concern, but Robert and Aris were a little worrying.
It would be unpleasant to hear that a friend had come home beaten up.
Especially by someone from the same school as that obnoxious bastard.
“The heavens and earth must have turned upside down for you to worry about me.”
“What?”
“I'll make it show in my results. Watch closely.”
* * *
“Wow, this really is easy money.”
The next day.
I smiled broadly as I looked at my assets, which had grown to around twenty gold.
Valtor, whom I'd fought the other time.
I bet on him because I thought he fought well, and he lived up to my expectations.
It was a shame this feverish event would end today.
Of course, the seniors' tournament remained, but that had far too many variables.
Now I should bet on Linia and call it a day.
Linia was beyond the norm to begin with.
There was absolutely no way to beat her by conventional means.
I was about to leave the place when I stopped.
“…Still, should I place one bet?”
* * *
“The next match is Reinhart's Aris Script!!! Her opponent is!! Lunaris's Ian Blakeeeee!!!!”
The announcer's booming voice rang out.
Then Aris came out, her expression solemn.
Her opponent was a knight wielding a sword.
In the arena opposite, Robert stood with a Knight School student wearing a fierce expression.
According to the announcer's explanation, her name was Mia Fontaine.
She was a woman of considerable skill.
Not only was her mana in the upper-middle range of A rank, her physical abilities were also quite high.
“What did you do?”
Linia asked.
Unlike the top and second-place students, the matches for third and fourth place were held simultaneously.
Consequently, I had to place the bets simultaneously as well.
After seeing me join the gambling, Linia had entrusted me with her funds because she was bored, leaving all the choices to me.
It was a whole one gold.
“All in on Aris and Robert.”
“An interesting choice. Why?”
“I just didn't think they'd lose.”
Of course, Aris and Robert were actually a little unreliable.
They could win, or they could lose.
So I wouldn't have bet under normal circumstances, but…
“Well, at least one of them should win.”
…They had better.
I sat on the railing and activated Dragon Eyes to the fullest.
“Looks like you're nervous.”
“How could I not be nervous?”
Twenty gold was riding on this!
A full 2,000 silver!
Damn it, I shouldn't have pushed myself just to stay loyal.
“We will now begin the match!!!”
But there was a good chance they would win.
“Casting, Bullet, Deca, Guide!”
Aris shouted, and dense mana bullets rushed at Ian.
“H-huh??”
Ian seemed unable to respond to the fierce attack flying at him from the very beginning.
He tried to dodge, but it was a guidance spell.
There was no way he could evade it.
In the end, he had no choice but to respond by cutting them down one by one with his sword.
—Baaang!!
But he ended up taking one clean hit.
“Yes!”
If she kept pressing him like this, she would definitely win.
‘Have I at least recovered my principal?’
…or so I thought, but Linia opened her mouth.
“The Blake family's true strength lies in their Arts.”
“Hm?”
Ian's muttered voice was caught by my enhanced hearing.
“Blade Arts.”
The moment he muttered that, several swords appeared in midair.
In fact, that wasn't the important part.
Those swords were surrounded by aura.
“Aura floating in the air?”
That's ridiculously overpowered!
Aura possessed cutting power incomparable to mana bullets.
If she blocked them with a shield, the Protector would activate and the match would be over.
She had to deflect or dodge them.
Had she prepared a way to respond?
“Domain Casting, Script, Reverse.”
But Aris had devised an entirely different response.
“…A barrier?”
She deployed a localized barrier centered on herself.
Then she imbued it with a spell I was hearing for the first time.
I knew every spell that could be imbued into barrier magic.
If Aris knew a spell I didn't…
“Unique magic?”
“The Script family's unique magic is reversal. I imbued that attribute into the barrier.”
The mana swords that touched the barrier seemed to pierce straight through, but gradually lost their strength.
Eventually, the aura broke down into pure personal mana.
Ian was thrown into utter confusion.
Aris didn't miss the opening. She fired her magic, and every mana bullet slammed into him head-on.
“Graaagh!!”
No matter how much physical enhancement increased his durability, everyone had a limit to their total reserves.
Sensing its master's crisis, the Protector blocked Aris's mana bullets.
“The match is decided. So is the one over there.”
“Hm?”
“I'm going to go prepare for my next match.”
Linia left for the waiting room with a yawn.
I looked toward Robert.
Robert fought incredibly well. It was almost uncanny.
“Casting, Bullet, Triple, Delay.”
“Kgh!”
His opponent fought with two short swords, wielding them in both hands.
Her aura wasn't perfect, but the increase in her stats from physical enhancement was no joke.
“Casting, Shield, Wide.”
However, he blocked calmly and struck calmly.
Robert was capable of doing that.
“Casting, Enchant, Haste.”
He applied pressure from mid-range, appropriately blending his specialty support spells with Karnarof's fighting style.
He calmly built up fatigue in his opponent and accumulated damage.
Yet his expression never changed.
He forced an exchange ratio that was absurdly unfavorable to his opponent.
“Casting, Bullet, Triple, Delay.”
“Ah!”
And then his opponent made a mistake, and one of the three mana bullets struck her body.
“Kgh!!”
The Protector activated.
“He won.”
“Winner! Reinhart's Robert Carter!!”
“Winner! Reinhart's Aris Script!!!”
“What is happening!! It's an upset!! Reinhart is overcoming its losses from the past two years and preparing to get its revenge!!!”
The cheers rose higher than ever.
They'd said the Knight School had won overwhelmingly for two years in a row.
If so, this was definitely an upset.
Amid that atmosphere, preparations for the next match were completed.
The match between Linia and a Knight School student.
“Yaaawn…”
Linia stretched.
The announcer called for the start, and the opponent spoke to her.
Linia didn't seem particularly interested, though.
“I'm Kyle Renhart. I look forward to fighting you.”
Kyle was a muscular warrior wielding a massive greatsword.
His body seemed to be over two meters tall, and his armor made him look even bigger.
The second-place student.
Judging by his mana alone, he was S-rank or higher, and his technique seemed no less impressive, but…
Before Kyle could even draw his sword, Linia muttered an incantation.
That was the end of it.
“Index, Bullet, Guide, Hecto, Repeat.”
Mana bullets filled my field of vision so densely I couldn't even see ahead.
“Guh, I can handle this much, urghhhhh!!”
Kyle tried somehow to block them with physical enhancement and his greatsword.
But it was no match for that absurd firepower.
Wow.
That's seriously brutal.
A spell that fired one hundred guided mana bullets.
It would be difficult for anyone seeing it for the first time to respond, and she bombarded him twice with Repeat.
Even the announcer was left speechless.
‘That isn't even at a student's level to begin with.’
“I should probably head out too.”
It ended far too anticlimactically, and I went to the gambling den to collect my winnings.
I used Silver Shoes to head straight to the waiting room.
Then, after hearing a few rules…
I strode out confidently.
Richard was waiting across from the arena.
It had been a long wait.
“You've arrived.”
“Yeah.”