Chapter 166: Basilisk [5]

"Hm."

Vera turned around and left. The Basilisk had already been taken down, and with barely a minute remaining on the clock, she had seen everything she needed to see.

By the time she returned to the observation room, Professor Nordberg was already there, sitting with a book open in his hands.

He glanced up when Vera entered and closed the book around one finger to keep his place.

"Is it already done?"

"More or less," Vera replied. "I’ve seen enough."

"And your evaluation?"

Vera walked past him.

"It’s not over yet."

Nordberg raised an eyebrow. "Hm? What do you mean? There’s barely a minute left. What could possibly happen in under a minute?"

Vera stopped.

"Say, Uncle. What would you do if you’d spent your entire life at the bottom? Constantly pushed down by everyone around you, unable to fight back, no matter how much you hated it."

Nordberg regarded her for a moment, clearly wondering where the question had come from, but eventually leaned back in his chair and considered it.

"I’d probably grit my teeth and keep my head down. If I genuinely couldn’t do anything about it, then trying to fight back would only make things worse."

"Exactly." Vera turned toward him. "So what if that suddenly changed? What if, after spending all that time believing there was nothing you could do, you finally attained the power to climb?"

Nordberg thought about it again.

"I’d do what any ambitious person would do. I’d reach for the top." He shrugged. "Assuming that power was something I’d earned and invested enough of myself into to take pride in, I’d want to see how far I could go. I’d want to become the very best I could possibly be."

He paused.

"But I’m naturally ambitious, Vera."

"Most people are more ambitious than they realize, Uncle. It’s simply difficult to think about reaching the top when you’ve spent your entire life being told to stay at the bottom."

Nordberg’s fingers stopped against the cover of his book.

Vera continued.

"When you’re already that far down, there are only two choices. You stay there because you’ve convinced yourself climbing is impossible, or eventually, you look up and realize that it isn’t."

"...I suppose."

"And once you realize that?"

Nordberg looked at her.

Vera smiled faintly.

"You climb."

Silence fell between them for several seconds as Nordberg considered her words. Vera didn’t elaborate, simply waiting as he leaned back in his chair and tapped a finger against the book resting in his hand.

"If we’re still talking about me," Nordberg said, "then yes. I’d give it everything I had. And if there were people who’d spent years kicking me back down whenever I tried to stand, I’d make damn sure they could never do it again."

"Yes."

Vera’s smile widened.

"You’d bare your fangs, wouldn’t you?"

* * *

[Time Remaining: 00:01:03]

"Elise," he said. "No hard feelings."

"Huh."

Ilya disappeared. Before Elise could even process his words, he crossed the distance between them and appeared directly in front of her.

"Ilya—"

Her eyes widened as his fist drove into her stomach, the impact forcing her to bend forward before her identification seal immediately activated.

[Participant Eliminated.]

Ilya didn’t stop. He pushed off the ground and shot toward the nearest student, using the blizzard to accelerate himself across the clearing before anyone had fully realized what he was doing.

"W-Wait!"

Too late.

Ilya’s fist connected with his chest.

[Participant Eliminated.]

Everyone stared at the place where Elise had been.

Then Ilya turned toward them.

There were sixty seconds left.

"...Oh, shit."

That realization spread through the clearing almost immediately. The Basilisk was dead, the hundred points were gone, and every student still standing was, for Ilya, an obstacle.

He had spent so much time fighting Tristan that he was no longer confident he was at the top.

They all had to be eliminated to guarantee first place.

"Get away from him!"

Ilya disappeared from where he stood and crossed the clearing before the nearest student could finish raising his staff.

A fist stopped just short of the boy’s face as the blizzard struck him from the opposite direction, forcing his identification seal to activate before the actual punch ever needed to connect.

Another student tried to attack Ilya from behind, only for frost to spread and lock his boots to the ground.

By the time he managed to break free, Ilya had already reached him, and another flash of light removed him from the hunting field.

"It’s either first place or nothing..." Ilya muttered.

Students scattered through the clearing while others decided that running from Ilya was pointless and began attacking anyone within reach instead.

Magic circles appeared in every direction as the final minute of the examination descended into complete chaos, as the alliances that had survived the Basilisk disappeared the instant everyone realized there was nothing left to cooperate against.

Solenne took one look at Ilya coming toward her and immediately raised both hands.

"A-Aren’t we supposed to be helping each other—"

"Only in academics."

"...."

"This isn’t academics, Ms. Vernet."

"Ilya, wait—"

Ilya struck before she could finish, closing the remaining distance and driving his fist into her stomach.

[Participant Eliminated.]

Ilya was already looking for his next target.

"If you were going to pull a stunt like this, you should’ve targeted me first!"

Ilya turned just as several translucent planes appeared around him.

A spell came through the nearest one before he could move, striking him in the side and sending him skidding across the clearing.

Tristan appeared a moment later.

"You’re a bother."

Another spell came toward him.

Ilya launched himself sideways before it could connect, but Tristan had already positioned another plane along his escape route.

The spell changed direction and followed him, forcing Ilya to twist in the air before forming and launching several ice javelins back toward Tristan.

Two translucent planes appeared.

The first javelin changed direction, and Ilya immediately moved.

The redirected projectile passed behind him as he shot toward Tristan, but two more spells were already waiting for him.

One came directly from the front while the other passed through a plane above him, forcing Ilya to change direction before they could catch him between them.

[Time Remaining: 00:00:21]

"Twenty seconds!" someone shouted.

Neither of them cared. Ilya accelerated again, this time staying low as he closed the distance between them.

Tristan sent another spell toward him, but Ilya raised a wall of ice in its path and allowed the impact to shatter it, using the scattered ice to obscure Tristan’s view for a second.

He broke through.

Tristan immediately reinforced his body with mana and brought his arm up as Ilya’s fist came toward his face.

The blow crashed against his guard and pushed him backward, but Tristan held his ground long enough to form a magic circle directly between them.

"So we’re doing this again?" Ilya asked.

"You’re the one standing this close!"

The spell detonated.

Ilya was thrown backward, but the blizzard caught him before he could hit the ground and sent him straight back toward Tristan.

Frost spread across his arm as he pulled his fist back, while Tristan formed several translucent planes around himself.

[Time Remaining: 00:00:09]

The remaining students had stopped trying to understand them.

Even with the examination seconds away from ending, neither Ilya nor Tristan seemed interested in hunting easier targets anymore.

Tristan continued forcing Ilya away with spell after spell while Ilya kept breaking through the distance between them, and every time one appeared to gain an advantage, the other found some way to take it back.

[Time Remaining: 00:00:05]

Ilya slipped past another spell and reached Tristan.

Tristan raised his hand. "Got you!"

"Same."

Ilya’s fist came forward at the same moment a magic circle appeared in front of Tristan’s palm, leaving barely any distance between the two attacks.

Neither backed down despite the timer reaching its final three seconds. Mana gathered around Tristan’s hand as the blizzard surged behind Ilya and drove his fist forward even faster.

[Time Remaining: 00:00:03]

Tristan released his spell just as Ilya’s fist reached him.

The two attacks collided between them, and the resulting impact sent a blast through the clearing as both of them tried to overpower the other rather than retreat with what little time remained.

[Time Remaining: 00:00:01]

Boom——!

Before either could break through, the timer reached zero.

[Time Remaining: 00:00:00]

[Hunting Grounds Examination Concluded.]

The identification seals of every remaining student activated at once, cutting the fight short before either Ilya or Tristan could gain the advantage.

Light enveloped both of them while they were still trying to push through the other’s attack, and a moment later, the two disappeared from the hunting field without ever settling their score.

* * *

To everyone who hadn’t encountered him during the examination, Ilya’s results came as a surprise.

After all, Ilya Valentinovich Belozersky had ranked first with the following results:

[1st Place — Ilya Valentinovich Belozersky]

Hunting Points: 187

Combat Merit: 168

Additional Evaluation: 62

[Total Score: 417]

The gap wasn’t small either.

[2nd Place — Elise Margaux de Beaumont]

Hunting Points: 136

Special Target: 100

Combat Merit: 12

Additional Evaluation: 27

[Total Score: 275]

A difference of one hundred and forty-two points separated first and second place.

Naturally, everyone immediately wanted to know what the hell had happened.

Elise had been the one to land the decisive blow against the Basilisk Tyrant, earning the full hundred points from the special target on top of everything she had accumulated throughout the examination.

Yet even that hadn’t been enough to bring her remotely close to Ilya’s final score.

The answer was sitting directly beneath his Hunting Points.

Combat Merit.

It was a category that had never been mentioned before the examination, and the students quickly discovered why.

Eliminating another participant had secretly awarded points based on several factors, including the strength of the opponent, the circumstances of the fight, and the manner in which they had been eliminated.

More importantly, those points weren’t taken from the defeated student.

That particular detail caused an immediate uproar.

Most of the students had assumed the exact opposite.

Since the examination allowed them to attack one another, the common assumption had been that being eliminated would either reduce their accumulated score or transfer some portion of it to whoever defeated them.

It was one of the main reasons many students had avoided unnecessary fights, especially after accumulating enough points to be satisfied with their performance.

They had been wrong.

Getting eliminated didn’t diminish the points they had already earned in the slightest.

A student who had accumulated a hundred points before being knocked out still finished the examination with those hundred points, while the person responsible for eliminating them received Combat Merit separately.

Which meant Elise had lost nothing when Ilya punched her out of the examination during the final minute.

Unfortunately for everyone else, Ilya had gained something.

The students who had encountered him earlier in the examination suddenly understood why his score had become so absurd.

"...That’s bullshit."

For once, quite a few students agreed.