Ch.286281 – Trap

The day after my participation in the Academy Competition was confirmed and I registered my 3-Circle magic with the operating committee, I remembered being secretly called to a hotel room by the middle school seniors who explained to me about the opponents we would face.

“Lee Jae-hwan, Jo Su-yeon, Park Jun-yong, Lee Min-young. These four have been connected for 9 years already, and except for Lee Min-young, they all come from influential families. Putting it nicely, they’re the group that leads the entire grade.”

“And putting it not so nicely?”

“They’re just bullies with good grades who don’t know how the real world works. Apparently, quite a few students have transferred because of them.”

Due to the closed nature of Altair Academy, where going out was impossible except on weekends, the children built their own society in that small space.

“Especially Lee Jae-hwan, whose mother is the floor leader of the Green Party, and Jo Su-yeon, whose great-grandfather is a cardinal—these two are the core. Lee Jae-hwan mainly uses natural barrier magic applying biomimetic technology, and Jo Su-yeon, being affiliated with the Seoul Archdiocese, has adopted Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica as her philosophy.”

“Who’s the other one then?”

“Someone named Oh Deok-jae, who uniquely graduated from our Cephiron Academy, a senior just one year above us? I think he repeated a year. His parents are just researchers at the Agency for Defense Development and… he doesn’t seem to have any special characteristics.”

“How do you know all this information, senior?”

“Oh, among my parents’ acquaintances, there’s someone from National Intel— oops!”

If you think a little about why America’s foundation took charge of gifted education in South Korea, you could easily find the answer.

Whether Cephiron or Altair, they gathered children of what the public commonly called “deep-rooted evils” in one place—how could it function normally under the supervision of Korean educational institutions?

“Only two left now?”

The tattered shirt sleeve keeps bothering me.

I wrapped aura around my fingertips and neatly cut away the rags.

Meanwhile, Lee Jae-hwan was eliminated, and Oh Deok-jae entered as the last contestant.

These kids were really frustrating, unleashing their finishing moves from the start.

There must be a valid reason why heroes only release their full power in moments of crisis.

“Ugh, my neck is killing me,” said Jo Su-yeon, twisting her head.

According to competition rules, you can’t threaten your opponent during substitutions, so the arabesque knot naturally dissipated.

Having recovered in the meantime, Jo Su-yeon was glaring at me fiercely with eyes full of killing intent.

“Jo Su-yeon, we have the numerical advantage, so let’s watch the situation and take it slow.”

“Shut up, you otaku freak. I’ll kill you if you interfere in this fight.”

Jo Su-yeon sharply cut off Oh Deok-jae’s words, and her aura heart began to surge, manifesting her powerful will to the world.

“I’ll handle this brat.”

Whoosh—

The aura responds to Jo Su-yeon’s will.

Soon after, a pure light burst forth and circled around her head like a halo.

“The beginning of external manifestation?”

Though not perfect, she had already broken through the outer wall of her mental world.

“Bullshit. It’s God’s grace.”

Jo Su-yeon bit her lip and refuted.

Swoosh!

The internal world built on blind faith granted the girl a powerful body.

Her supporting legs explosively propelled her forward.

As she rushed toward me, she stirred up the mana in her path with her hands.

She gathered the twisted mana flow like clay, clenched her fist, and soon white thorns randomly protruded from her fingertips.

“Lord, forgive our sins!”

“Is she a werewolf or what?”

Swoosh!

Every time she swung her nails, dozens of white flashes from the thorn tips tore through the air and rushed forward.

Each one was a lethal attack that I could barely handle.

Whenever I tried to create distance, Jo Su-yeon would leap forward again and indiscriminately spray attacks.

I concentrated aura on my eyes, picking out the deadly thorns and deflecting them to the ground.

Our gazes crossed the arena as we stared at each other, and the breathtaking exchange continued.

“Just take one hit! Just one! Take it!”

“Hup.”

Though she seemed to have lost her reason, her stride and movements were incredibly precise.

She was probably trying to maintain an awkward distance to prevent me from casting Demon King’s Horn again, intending to overwhelm me with her reach advantage.

Whether by instinct or not, she was a born fighter.

After dozens of consecutive attacks pushed me back against the arena wall, she stepped into a fighting stance, glared, and lunged.

“You didn’t expect this!”

Jo Su-yeon threw an uppercut from below, as if sensing this was the decisive moment.

“…!”

I’m much shorter than her.

Therefore, unless she bent her waist severely, there was no way her uppercut would hit my head.

At that moment, a ring of light sprang from the floor where I was standing and wrapped around my upper body.

Boom!

As soon as I was restrained and unable to move, Jo Su-yeon grabbed my collar and pulled me up to her eye level.

My feet left the ground far too easily.

Panting heavily, the sweat-soaked girl looked me up and down before breaking into a sinister smile.

“Haha, shit… You don’t even scream in this situation?”

“…”

“Haa haa hoo… Namei, now do you know why I don’t take the lead in the competition? It’s because I’m on a completely different level from you Cephiron kids. Infidels aren’t even worth facing.”

Crackle—

I write an arc discharge magic circle with my horn once more.

However, Jo Su-yeon brutally grabbed my horn with her other hand and dispersed all the mana.

“Don’t do anything nasty, friend. No matter how much you struggle, I’ll always be 7 years ahead of you. If that bothers you, you should have been born earlier. Did you think you could do anything by barging into a middle school competition with no preparation?”

The shape of my horn gradually distorts.

Just before returning to its mana state, I fully opened my half-closed eyes and carefully examined her expression.

“Does your God free you from pain?”

“What?”

“Let me give you some advice—you shouldn’t touch my horn carelessly. You might get hurt.”

[Pre-cast: Demon King’s Horn – Inscription]

[Cast: Pain Synchronization]

Crash!

The horn on my head shattered into pieces and struck her face.

“Aaaah! What the—!”

Startled by the mana fragments hitting her face, Jo Su-yeon frantically shook her head.

But soon the mana dispersed into its natural state and disappeared.

She made a dumbfounded expression as nothing seemed to happen.

“The horn is not only a semi-permanent organ but can also be used as a medium for inscription, like tablets or mana stones. Do you know what this means?”

“…?”

“In gaming terms, you’ve triggered my trap card.”

While scrolls cannot be brought into the competition, inscription magic itself is not prohibited.

So just as Jo Su-yeon hid a chain-casting magic circle in Longinus’s Spear, I also placed a special inscription on the Demon King’s Horn.

The activation trigger: horn damage and physical contact.

And the inscription magic: pain synchronization.

I pinched my left cheek hard.

“Ah!”

Jo Su-yeon squinted and rubbed her face.

This time I pinched my right cheek.

“Mmph!”

“I’ve lost all interest in you now. Please surrender quickly.”

“You think I’d surrender because of such a crude magic? That’s just tickling—”

[Formation: Silicon Dioxide – Amorphous Solid]

I immediately created a glass shard.

I held the sharp fragment high in the air to show it to her clearly.

“What are you doing! Are you crazy…?”

“In the old days, this was everyday practice for dark wizards.”

“Hey! Stop!”

Of course, that’s by the standards of the past life world teeming with mana.

The cold, sharp touch of glass against my palm.

Crack—

I applied more force to break through the particle barrier.

Blood flowed from where I scraped my skin, dripping in droplets onto the sandy floor.

The ear-piercing scream came immediately after.

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!”

The crowd stirred at Jo Su-yeon’s raw scream.

“Jesus was nailed to the cross, yet how weak his follower is.”

Jo Su-yeon’s once-strong legs collapsed miserably.

Even as she clutched her hand and rolled around, the pain continued to scramble her brain in the form of electrical signals.

“Didn’t they teach you at the academy? It’s easy to break an interconnection magic circle. I believe it’s part of the middle school curriculum.”

I slowly walked toward her as she moaned in pain.

“Hnnngh…! Stooooop!”

Hearing my words, Jo Su-yeon reached out toward the magic circle.

But I couldn’t let her break it.

I slowly moved the glass shard embedded in my palm toward my wrist.

Crack!

As the barrier repeatedly broke and reformed, more blood splattered on the floor this time.

A straight line of fracture crossing my left arm.

“Hnnngh! Hup! Aaaack!”

I lifted the chin of Jo Su-yeon, now covered in tears.

Fresh blood flowing from my arm fell onto her face, mixing with her tears.

“I’m scared… It hurts… hic, sob, hic. Please. Stop it. What did I do so wrong?”

Pitiful cries and desperate screams burst forth.

Her once vicious face had softened considerably.

I threw away the glass shard, knelt down, and hugged her tightly.

“So let’s promise to speak nicely from now on and stop looking down on people. Oh, and that cringy way of talking has been bothering me, so make sure to fix that too. Understand, sis?”

“Hic…”

“Good job. Now rest.”

I patted the religious girl’s back a couple of times and stood up again.

‘For someone who’s exaggerating, she’s really stubborn.’

She could have surrendered midway, but it seems she hated losing to me more than death itself.

Eventually, Jo Su-yeon was judged unable to continue fighting by the judges and was immediately carried away on a stretcher.

[Cast: Tissue Regeneration]

The cleanly cut surface, made by magical glass, was perfectly sealed.

Then I turned my attention to the boy who, true to Jo Su-yeon’s words, had not interfered even as the battle reached this point.

“I thought it was all over…”

“NoName…”

“But the most interesting part was still left.”

Having recently met Katsuhata Emika, my standards had become too high, and I was hardly satisfied with the children participating in the Academy Competition.

I had been planning to just leave for Japan and enjoy endless duels with her, but seeing Oh Deok-jae made me temporarily put that plan on hold.

While I was reading the mana flow to identify Jo Su-yeon’s threatening thorns, I simultaneously sensed his presence.

His attitude of analyzing from a distance as if it were his own fight was excellent, and his judgments even matched mine exactly.

I wasn’t the only one surprised.

“NoName, how far does your talent go?” asked Oh Deok-jae, adjusting his glasses.

“How did you perceive all of Jo Su-yeon’s aura? Is this even possible for a human… no, for an eight-year-old?”

Just over 160cm tall—somewhat short for his age—with a broad build and bumpy skin due to secondary sexual characteristics.

At first glance, his appearance seemed unremarkable, but the reality was different.

Whenever Oh Deok-jae exerted force, the muscles in his arms and legs bulged significantly, and his horizontally slit eyes were always focused on the core of the battlefield.

He suddenly rolled up his shirt sleeves, loosened his tie, and threw it on the ground.

Bending his knees to lower his center of gravity, he kept his left hand facing the ground and hid his right hand behind his waist.

This is the textbook starting stance for a “duel.”

By performing actions that could meaningfully affect his win rate by even 0.1%, he showed his intention to pour his heart into this duel.

He had shed all prejudice about age and properly recognized me as an opponent.

‘Finally… finally…!’

Then I can’t fight carelessly either.

I threw the golden hairpin and hair tie—magical items gifted by Teacher Baek Bong-gon—into the corner of the arena.

Then I took out a simple rubber hair tie I had prepared in my pocket and tightly tied my long hair into two high ponytails.

The stifling feeling that limited my aura heart’s output disappeared completely, and I enjoyed the sensation of clarity, like having eaten a mint candy.

“If you’re so curious, senior, please check for yourself. How far my talent goes.”

I’ll definitely take you down.