Ch.55. New Difficulty

Lilith Raffine. The woman who had now simply become Lilith was once a princess of the Raffine Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the Raffine Kingdom was located closest to the territory of the Demon King’s Army.

Because of this, they were attacked by the Demon King’s Army seeking to expand their territory, completely losing the kingdom, and in the process, her family was scattered in all directions.

Eventually, she fled to Rubetia to survive and lived in hiding at a convent, concealing her identity as a princess.

Then one day, following the advice of a priest who visited the monastery, she awakened as a saint while trying to use light magic. Learning that the special power called divine power she obtained was effective against the Demon King’s Army that had destroyed her kingdom, she decided to temporarily postpone her goal of finding her scattered family.

Though she missed her family, she wanted revenge against the Demon King’s Army that had taken her homeland first.

But knowing she was still lacking, she entered the academy with the intention of building her strength. That was Lilith’s early story.

But the current situation was completely different from what I knew. She wasn’t hiding in a convent now, and judging by the pendant with her kingdom’s emblem that she wore, she didn’t seem to be hiding her identity as a princess either.

To begin with, her appearing at the entrance exam was something I’d never heard of. Originally, she should have suddenly entered after awakening as a saint during the first semester’s final season… what was going on?

While all sorts of thoughts were running through my mind, a single statement from Lilith cooled my head.

“My specialty is light attribute magic, you know? Just so you know, tricks won’t work on me.”

Tricks. In this world, that’s how they referred to deceptive illusions through sorcery or underhanded techniques.

Also, since the origin of sorcery itself was closer to evil tendencies, it had the characteristic of being easily dispelled by light attributes.

But is the game system a trick? No way. It wasn’t something to be compared with mere sorcery in the first place.

Even if it were true, it wouldn’t matter. Did she think my avoidance timing Excel sheet didn’t include light attribute techniques?

She’s looking at me like I’m some kind of fraud. She’s completely disregarding my career built on fair(?) fights.

Saint or whatever, you need to be taught a lesson. If you were a newbie, you’d just say “Wow, you’re so strong. Cool.” How dare you doubt me?

“Let’s start right away. You attack first.”

I gave up the first move.

Perhaps she took my confidence as arrogance; she smiled sweetly and activated her magic.

“Don’t regret it later.”

Light mana began to dominate the space, brightening the surroundings.

It was a purification barrier. In common terms, it was domain expansion… ahem. Anyway, within this domain, all evil things like tricks would return to nothingness.

And another spell flew toward me.

Swish!

Light spear. It was a staple skill where penetration power increased according to the user’s mana.

Decent attack power, fast spear velocity, and penetration power on top of that—anyone who had tried light magic techniques would recognize it.

However, the light spear had quite a few flaws for a staple skill.

Due to the skill’s characteristic of shooting a spear, the attack range was narrow, and it only flew in a completely straight line.

Because of this, I could avoid it with just a slight sideways movement without needing to use evasion… but if I did that to someone who was going on about tricks, wouldn’t she really think I was using tricks?

I couldn’t accept that, so I jumped forward instead of to the side. The light spear pierced through my abdomen and passed through.

If I had failed to avoid it, there would have been a hole, but when I checked my abdomen just in case, it was fine.

She boasted proudly that tricks wouldn’t work, but what now? They’re working too well!

“How… using tricks within this space….”

“Then maybe it’s not a trick.”

“That’s impossible.”

How ugly, Lilith. You should admit it by now.

Of course, I’ll admit it looks like some kind of trick at first glance… but it’s not good to judge negatively based on appearances! How dangerous is lookism… oh, maybe you don’t know because you’re pretty yourself?

Anyway. Now that I’ve shown that even light magic doesn’t work on me, the others probably won’t view me in a bad way.

This situation might actually be good?

“Eek!”

But Lilith, perhaps hurt in her pride that her magic didn’t work, suddenly surrounded herself with light and began charging at me.

The variations of light magic are quite broad? What is this? Could she have already awakened as a saint?

“Die!”

With word choice too aggressive for a saint, her fist flew at me. I avoided it again, and as I dodged, magic power burst from her fist… no, not magic power. That light is definitely divine power.

Divine power. Except for the fact that it could only be used with light attribute techniques, it wasn’t much different from magic power, but true to its name, it was like a fatal poison to monsters, demons, the Demon King’s Army, and other things related to dark magic.

And the condition to unlock divine power was awakening as a saint.

It was one of the abilities that the protagonist, fixed as a male character, could never obtain.

But the fact that she’s using divine power now means Lilith has awakened as a saint, but how is that possible?

As far as I know, there’s no route where she awakens without going to the convent….

I pondered while continuing to dodge Lilith’s attacks, but since meeting Lilith at this point was never supposed to happen in the first place, nothing came to mind.

In the end, this situation meant that a completely different story from what I knew was unfolding.

When that thought hit me, suddenly an idea flashed through my mind.

“Hmm, could it be that?”

In the past, a part of the update content planned in the developer’s notes.

[We are currently developing Heaven difficulty, the next level after the existing Hell difficulty. Meet another story with characters who grow faster, and uncover truths that have not been revealed until now.]

I remember they just kept repeating that it was under development for months, then quietly scrapped it and patched it with other new content additions.

The content that was added then was really fun, so the new difficulty was completely forgotten, but I was kind of looking forward to it, so it was a bit disappointing.

Well, enough of those sentiments. What I needed to look at now was this sentence.

‘Meet another story with characters who grow faster.’

In other words, in that difficulty, the characters would grow faster, causing changes to the story.

Given the game story’s characteristic of strictly following the cliché that one becomes stronger through hardship, it made sense that only Lilith, who had experienced hardship at the current point, was greatly affected by it.

I couldn’t be certain right now whether it was true or not, but it seemed right to judge based on that assumption for now.

I’d be sure once I saw the growth rate of the others going forward.

“Everyone grows rapidly after entering the academy anyway. I might be able to confirm it sooner than expected.”

“Eek! What the heck! How does a human body pass through like that! It’s really creepy!”

“But if the kids get stronger faster, how am I supposed to keep up? The balance is really messed up.”

“What have you been muttering to yourself? We’re in the middle of a duel! Focus on the duel!”

For now, I’ll just play with this noisy one until she gets tired. Her patterns are diverse, so it’s actually quite fun to dodge.

But if she’s a saint, not to mention a princess, shouldn’t she be elegant like Celia? She looks like a classic saint, but why does she act like this?

Many people liked this gap, but there was still some awkwardness from the difference between her appearance and behavior.

In the end, she rampaged wildly until she exhausted all her mana, and finally collapsed from mana depletion and was carried away.

“…You shouldn’t judge people by their looks.”

“She’s really pretty… but kind of disappointing.”

Lilith’s achievement that day was selected for the “Top 10 Conversation Topics to Bring Up When Meeting Awkward Acquaintances” and was talked about for a long time, and she ended up with the nickname “Mad Dog” for a while.

Even former royalty gets preserved in the same way. What a scary world….

The subsequent duels all went smoothly.

In fact, from the moment I could use evasion, I could never lose in this one-on-one format duel.

I was confident that I wouldn’t lose in a one-on-one even if the protagonist came with his final specs later. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to win either….

Thanks to this, I was able to hold out on the dueling ground until all the characters finished their tests.

“…Is it over?”

“Yeah. There’s really nothing left to be amazed about.”

“Isn’t he a monster? How can he fight for hours without even panting once?”

At this point, I’m certain that my stamina is also being affected by the [Irregular] trait.

No matter how you look at it, facing this many opponents, and only passing them after letting them show their full abilities, couldn’t be explained just by having a lot of stamina.

Parrying, evasion, dash cancel, automatic stamina recovery.

Just listing what’s been revealed so far is already at an unreasonable level, but it seemed like there was more to come, which was even more frightening.

Now that I think about it, the game system really is the epitome of absurdity….

Since I was possessed with it intact, I do feel guilty… but I have to just sit and watch while you all grow. Cut me some slack on this much. Eventually, my stats will lag behind and I won’t even be able to join you guys.

Thinking about it suddenly dampens my enthusiasm.

Sigh. The future looks bleak. Well, the test is over, so should I go up?

“…Hm?”

At that moment, someone came down to the dueling ground.

Was there still someone who hadn’t taken the test? With that thought, I turned around and saw a familiar face.

“Ludion!”

My first duel opponent. Celia had come down.

How on earth did that extremely shy Celia walk into this place where everyone’s eyes were on her of her own accord?

‘Oh no.’

Suddenly, the crime I had committed flashed before me. The great sin of elbowing her and knocking her unconscious.

And Celia, who appeared before me with such a sin… with her personality, if she’s coming out in front of others like this, does it mean she’s really angry?

No way. Is she going to publicly execute me in front of all these people? That’s… well… can’t be helped. I was in the wrong.

Without hesitation, I slammed my head down.

“I’m sorryyyy!!!”

“W-why are you suddenly doing this?! Wait… why are you putting your head on the floor… Stop it! I said stop it!”

A head-banging apology with all my might! Still not enough? Then all that’s left is a full kowtow!

“What on earth are you doing?! S-stop it, it’s embarrassing, get up quickly!”

She started hitting my back, but her strength was only 4. It wasn’t to the point where there was no impact at all, but it was bearable enough.

“Are you forgiving me?”

“What exactly are you sorry for and what are you asking forgiveness for? I have no idea…. Sigh, fine. There are many eyes watching here, so just follow me out for now.”

Seeing that she started to care about the watching eyes, it seemed fortunately her anger had subsided a lot.

As I said, when you’ve done something wrong, you should bow your head first.

But follow her out… where exactly is she trying to go?

I was very scared, but because I had committed a sin, I had no choice but to do as she said.

After Ludion followed Celia out, in the spectator seats of the exam hall.

“…Are they dating?”

“How could they be? Don’t you know who that girl is?”

“I do know. But… why does she only look like a girlfriend suffering because of her weird boyfriend to me….”

“Honestly, Ludion? He’s handsome too, so they look good together.”

…

…

…

“But when we first came, weren’t they dueling alone?”

“…Now that I think about it, that’s right?”

“At that level, were they actually secretly dating?”

“No way. But if that’s the case, it would be really juicy. I like secret romances, you know.”

The memory of Celia getting elbowed and fainting seemed to have long disappeared from their minds.

If Celia had heard this conversation, how red would her face have turned?

We’ll never know.