The Academy’s Doomed Young Lord Dies Ten Thousand Times

Chapter 14 - Sparring Test (2)

After finishing her own sparring test, Serene El Stellia was deep in worry.

Needless to say, she wasn't worried about her own test results. She had ended the test with an overwhelming victory, and she believed it was a fight without a single shameful moment in the process.

The reason this blonde girl was worried was about her…… friend, Rain Enlight.

Serene briefly wondered if it was okay to call him her friend, but since there was no better expression, she decided to think of it that way.

‘……What if he loses heart again, like in the old days.’

The girl still vividly remembered that day. The memory of the day Rain Enlight, who had tried so hard not to break despite various hardships, finally broke.

That day was like today. It was a publicly held test, a sparring test, and……. the opponent was a figure from the prince's faction. Fortunately, this time the opponent was a much weaker student than back then.

‘Should I have stopped him?’

When Rain and Milo confronted each other, Serene wanted to stop them. It was because she didn't want to repeat the same incident as in the past.

“……I don't know.”

Lost in thought, Serene muttered. Thinking rationally, it would be almost impossible for Rain, who had been in seclusion for a year and a half, to defeat Milo, who had received systematic training.

It wasn't as if Rain's talent was overwhelming, and it was unlikely that the House of Enlight would have cared about Rain's training during his seclusion. The House of Enlight was famous for its staunch elitism.

But despite that, Rain was full of conviction. The conviction that he would not be defeated.

Serene looked up with a complicated heart. The nomination spars were already underway.

And the next turn was the spar between Rain and Milo.

‘I really wanted to be of help this time.’

For whatever reason, Serene had turned a blind eye to the injustice that happened to Rain during their middle school days. Even if it was at Rain's request. That's why the girl still had a debt of heart.

What the girl could do now was nothing more than secretly cheering him on.

And because Serene knew that well……. she could only clasp her hands together and cheer.

“Student Milo Gloss, Student Rain Enlight, please step up onto the sparring stage.”

My first impression upon stepping onto the sparring stage following the test supervisor's guidance……. was that I couldn't even say it was positive as an empty compliment.

The gazes pouring down from hundreds of people were tingling. And most of those gazes couldn't be called positive, not even as a joke.

It was a look that said, ‘Why is he being so ridiculously stubborn?’. Those negative gazes soon became pressure, weighing down on my shoulders.

Even this nomination spar might be dismissed by them as just a desperate attempt to get attention.

No, in fact, thinking about it coolly, that would be a much easier explanation to accept.

Rain Enlight was a good-for-nothing who had been cooped up in his room for a year and a half, and Milo Gloss was a prodigy whose skills had been proven since middle school.

In the minds of the ordinary students who didn't know the results of the monster suppression test, the outcome was already decided.

“I'm surprised you didn't run away.”

A voice came from the other side of the sparring stage. I slowly raised my head and looked at the owner of the voice.

“Should I call it courage, or recklessness. If you had just tucked your tail and ran, you wouldn't have had to suffer such public humiliation.”

A green-haired boy with a triumphant expression. Milo Gloss came into view. Along with such cliché lines.

I let out a smirk. I remembered that the lines Milo just said were the ones that came out when Yuna had her sparring test with Milo in the original work.

“Still haven't fixed that habit of climbing up where you don't belong.”

And that smirk must have had the effect of mocking him.

“You know, I absolutely despise those who try to climb up.”

He slowly approached with such a typical line. Since the test hadn't started yet, he wouldn't hit me with the training sword he was holding, so I just watched him quietly.

And as if trying to get under my skin somehow, Milo continued to speak.

“I guess getting stomped by Felix back then wasn't enough?”

At that moment.

Thump, thump.

Felix. The moment I heard that name, I felt something was wrong with my body. My heart was beating fast, and I was breaking out in a cold sweat.

I knew this feeling. The name of that emotion was fear.

I had heard about the name Felix in the game. He was one of the crown prince's trusted aides. A year younger than the crown prince……. so he was a first-year character now.

He was strong enough to rank third in the Combat Department of the first year, where many formidable powerhouses had gathered, so there was nothing more to say about his strength.

In context, it seemed certain that Rain had suffered something at his hands, but I couldn't know exactly what.

Was it a fear, or a trauma, etched into Rain's body? I could only vaguely think so. I knew almost nothing about myself, Rain Enlight.

“……Hoo.”

I took a deep breath and composed my emotions. I drove out the emotion that was not entirely mine.

There was no need to think about what I couldn't know for sure right now.

What was needed now was only to face the fight before me.

And so, with eyes that had regained their resolve, I faced Milo.

And at that moment.

“We will now begin the spar! Each student, please step back.”

The supervisor's voice, announcing that the spar would soon begin, was heard.

“……This time, I'll make sure you can never look at me with that expression again.”

Milo said so and was about to step back, and this time, I responded.

“My answer is…….”

A calm, subdued voice. I could feel that my composure had returned. And, I said.

“You will hear it with my sword.”

At those words, Milo made a displeased face, which might have made me feel a bit more at ease.

The situation hadn't changed. The gazes still felt like they were poking my body, and those gazes were still filled with contempt and ridicule.

But that was not a factor that would make me despair.

Because my conviction in victory had turned these gazes into my driving force.

Turning contempt and ridicule into astonishment would be quite an enjoyable task.

And, the supervisor's solemn voice was heard.

“Begin the spar!”

Now, it's time for proof.

The spar between Rain Enlight and Milo Gloss began like that. The Masked Knight, Acaite, was watching the spar with his own expectations.

The opponent, a student named Milo, seemed to use the swordsmanship of the Siegfried school, judging by the way he held his sword.

‘Siegfried swordsmanship, not bad. A troublesome style of swordsmanship that uses its unique flashy movements and combinations to make it impossible to predict where the sword strike will land.’

Even in Acaite's eyes, the student named Milo's stance was……. better than the riffraff students. Although it felt like his stance was forcibly drilled into him, seeing how rigid it was.

‘Now, what will you do, Rain.’

The two were facing each other at a precarious distance where their sword strikes could not reach.

And at the moment when it was noticeable which side would take the initiative-.

Dash!

It was Milo who took the first move. He quickly advanced two steps and then swung his sword towards Rain's ankle.

‘Textbook stance.’

It was rigid in Acaite's eyes, but since it was a sword strike drilled into him, there was nothing to fault in the strike itself.

But.

Whoosh-.

The attack that Milo confidently unleashed only cut through the empty air.

And, everyone who saw that scene couldn't help but be bewildered.

He hadn't dodged the sword strike with some flashy move. No, it might have been less shocking if he had.

Rain had avoided the attack by simply lifting the targeted ankle. As if dodging a tree branch swung by a child, nonchalantly.

Acaite couldn't help but let out a dry laugh at that.

“……Heh.”

By the standards of Acaite, a Master Knight, the highest practical rank for a knight, it was a pathetic sword strike, but by absolute standards, it wasn't that bad.

Acaite also thought that the attack just now would have been effective enough at the quasi-knight level.

But it didn't work.

The sword strike wasn't blocked by a hair's breadth; it missed futilely. And that was even though it was the first attack, delivered in a state where their respective skills and levels were still veiled.

The implication of this was special.

A clear difference in level.

‘It wasn't a reaction. He read it from the stance. A guy's swordsmanship he's seeing for the

first time……!’

Yes, Rain had read it. From Milo's stance, what kind of sword strike would follow.

If the battle had continued, reading the swordsmanship from such a rigid stance wasn't particularly special. A Regular Knight could probably do it without much difficulty.

But what was astonishing was that he had read the first attack without any probing.

Objectively looking at the facts, it was just that the first attack had missed. But everyone

watching this spar in the examination hall must have felt it.

That with just that one evasion, the flow had already shifted.

And as if to prove that feeling, what followed was a series of shocks.

Milo Gloss couldn't hide his bewilderment at the flow of the duel.

‘This, this……. what on earth is happening……?’

According to his thoughts, this spar should not have flowed like this. It should not have been flowing like this.

For Milo, this spar should have been a judgment. It should have been a lesson that would not be forgotten for the filthy blood that was climbing up, not knowing its place.

But the reality that was unfolding now was developing so differently from his thoughts.

He thought the first attack being dodged was a fluke. That he had just happened to lift his leg and dodge it by luck.

But all the following attacks…….

‘They're not hitting……!’

Whoosh-.

Whoosh-.

Swoosh-!

No matter how much he swung his attacks, they didn't reach Rain.

Some attacks were dodged by lightly twisting his body's axis without even blocking with his sword, and other attacks were lightly parried by meeting them with his sword. As if there was no burden at all.

The result was the same even when he mixed in fakes. Milo's ten attacks had all missed.

To those watching, it might have given the impression that Rain was ‘toying with’ Milo.

The auditorium was filled with murmurs of bewilderment.

-Is he dodging all of those?

-Is his opponent just failing to hit him?

-But his opponent is Lord Milo……?

It was something that shouldn't have happened, something that couldn't happen. For Milo, who was confident in his own skills, it was even more so.

He even felt as if his pride was being trampled on.

‘That failure……?’

The loser who had crawled on the floor during their middle school days was making a fool of him. Milo could not accept that humiliation.

Therefore, he created his own hope somehow.

If he had accepted the current situation, he might have seen other possibilities…….

‘No, that's impossible…….’

If I push him more, if I do a little better.

‘He's only dodging, he can't attack. He's desperate just to dodge……!’

Falling into such a quagmire of rationalization, Milo was running towards a faint hope.

‘Looking at him, my strength and speed are superior. Just one hit is all I need……!’

Without even knowing that it was the rope that was binding him to his own defeat.