User:Shrysha

Original Light Novel: Attempt 1

Foreword:

An excerpt appearing at the start of my novel is a bit silly.

But I suppose that now, rather than later, is a good time to talk about the contents of it. Just to let you know what you should expect.

This is a story about the knight rescuing the princess from the bad guys.

This seems to be a traditional plot chock-full of overused clichés and tropes.

Except that the knight wasn’t one of those typical knights in shining armor. Perhaps he could be considered one of those bad guys. Maybe a villain. Wait, could he even be called a knight at this point? I think if I asked him, he would probably reject the “knight” designation.

And this story didn’t just have one princess. Actually there are seven. And did they even need rescuing?

Well there has to be bad guys in the story, right? Well, I’m not even sure if the bad guys could even be called bad guys. I mean, their intentions were good. Probably better than those of Mr. Knight. I suppose it is just a matter of perspective.

So, this is a story about the knight who wasn’t really a knight rescuing the princesses who didn’t need to be rescued from the bad guys who weren’t really bad guys.

I think I did a decent job with my summary.

Enjoy!

 

Prologue:

“Strong…”

These were the only words that the frail young white-haired slave child could mutter. Or rather a former slave. Despite lying collapsed on the ground and with skin covered with filth and body malnourished, and despite having watched the scene of carnage unfold before him, there was no fear in this child’s eyes.

Before the child was the back of a lone dark figure standing on crimson field. With a midnight-black cloak concealing his entire body and a similarly colored long curved sword, he looked like the grim reaper himself. This would seem to be a rather fitting name, as he was the one responsible for having single-handedly stained this battlefield with the blood of hundreds of men.

Hundreds killed with only a single swing of his blade.

Perhaps instead of a battle, it would be better to have described what had transpired as a massacre, or perhaps a mass execution. The reaper was the sole judge, jury, and executioner.

But at the moment, he was the only truth in this part of the world where power was the only law.

Despite the reaper’s imposing presence, the child still did not fear him. To the child, this reaper was a savior, having killed his now former slave merchant owners and their bodyguards.

Perhaps this was too much of a biased view; it was truly a matter of perspective.

Contrary to the reaper’s expectations, the child slowly crawled and reached for the hem of his cloak.

Perhaps having had his interest piqued, the reaper unexpectedly patiently waited for the child’s next actions.

“… Stronger.”

The child continued to speak while struggling to stand up.

“Please make me stronger!”

(Are you not scared?)

Suddenly a voice reverberated inside the child’s head. The intensity of the atmosphere suddenly rose, and the reaper’s presence suddenly seemed to quickly expand, seemingly swallowing up the existence of the surroundings. But the child who was no longer a stranger to death’s doors only stared unwaveringly back.

(Those are good eyes. How amusing… however I cannot save you.)

The child was not deterred and continued to glare back. The voice continued.

(But power is indeed something I can offer you. And the price…)

Without hesitation:

“My soul.”

 

Chapter 1:

Chapter 1: Part 1:

Such a clichéd line.

A child’s soul offered to the devil in exchange for power.

But an unexpected response like, “It had already been paid forward,” or something anti-climatic like that had been the immediate response. It left the child a bit speechless, which was to be expected.

To be prepared to sacrifice everything, not that it was much, only to be told that someone else already paid the bill.

Anyways, for such a memory to have resurfaced after eight years, could this be what people commonly called a premonition?

Perhaps a destined meeting was near…

“Wake up!”

A tight roll of paper lightly tapped his head, prompting him to wake up from his daydream. Shry absent-mindedly used his hands to lightly rub where he was hit, messing up his already messy head of white hair, which was unusual for a eighteen year-old student.

Actually, his entire appearance was actually rather uncommon.

His standard-issue school uniform was ordinary enough: white blazer, shirt and pants with the school insignia on each. Although Shry felt it was uncomfortable wearing it, let alone too flashy, it couldn’t be helped; it was expected that such a prestigious institution should have an excess of unnecessary regulations to maintain and enforce its image to the rest of the world. And to keep its alumnus happy.

However, his left arm was bandaged completely and his left eye was covered with an eye patch. These strange accessories were partially covered up by the sleeve of his uniform and the bangs of his hair, which were grown on the left side to almost completely cover that eye. And with the glasses on his face, it would seem to give him the appearance of some unlucky accident-prone or bullied student.

Standing in front of and in stark contrast to Shry was Professor Ruegger a petite teacher wearing an oversized white laboratory coat, which only seemed to reinforce her rather child-like appearance. Although she was looking sharply hat Shry, it was difficult for him to take her seriously as she had the face of an innocent child pouting. If asked to guess her age, Shry would decline to comment.

“I apologize. I am still a little tired this morning.”

Professor Ruegger smiled and quickly accepted this apology. She turned back around and stated cheerfully, “Now please introduce yourself to the class.”

“Ah.”

That’s right.

Shry and Ms. Ruegger were now standing in front of a small lecture hall, or rather a mini-theatre, introducing himself as a transfer student. And as the Professor Ruegger was making preliminary introductions, he managed to somehow doze off. After a small moment of silence, there were a few laughs and snickers heard amongst the twenty or so students before him, as well as a buzz of whispers and murmurs that he was still able to overhear.

“Are you sure he’s the transfer student.”

“Why our class? I thought that you couldn’t become an A-rank without ranking up.”

“Didn’t you hear he got top scores on the transfer exam? His practical exam results were really good as well.”

“I also heard his practical results were good as well.”

“He beat an exam-proctor in a fight, right?”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Unless he’s on the level of the valkyries…”

“Yeah, he doesn’t look that strong at all.”

“Enough, everyone! Quiet down!”

Shry smiled wryly while Professor Ruegger tried to control the growing ruckus, but to no avail. It seemed that she had very little control over the classroom. Was she even a good teacher? After all, many teachers brought in by this school primarily for research; teaching students, although still important, was of secondary importance.

As Professor Ruegger sniffed and looked like she was going to cry, the students stopped their chatter and brought their attentions to the front.

“Hey, hey everyone stop!” a student called out to the rest of the class

“Stop bullying Ms. Ru guys!”

“Ah, Ms. Ru, don’t cry!”

“We’re sorry! We promise to stop!”

Shry could only observe this strange phenomenon with silence. It seemed that the class didn’t see Professor Ruegger, or rather Ms. Ru, as a teacher but rather a young child. But how sadistic of them to force her to the brink of tears before consoling them.

“H-Hmph. A-As long as you understand, then I’ll f-forgive you,” Ms. Ru stuttered has she wiped her eyes with her sleeves. She then glanced in Shry’s direction. “So again, please introduce…”

“My name is Shry Zei. Nice to meet everyone.”

With a glance at Ms. Ru, Shry gave her a looking that said he was done with his introductions. Apparently she, nor the rest of the class, were satisfied with such a short, information-less introduction. Shry sighed before stating, “I’m sorry but I’m quite terrible at this introduction thing. If anyone has any questions…”

Ms. Ru’s face suddenly paled. This was certainly the wrong approach, not that Shry actually cared enough.

As expected, the classroom once again burst into noise, and Shry was bombarded with many types of questions: likes, dislikes, former school, activities, girlfriends, etc. Ms. Ru attempts to quiet the class and regain order were admirable, but completely futile.

Before Shry could even open his mouth to begin an attempt to start answering, a loud bang could be heard, silencing the rest of the class.

“Yo. So I heard you are strong.”

Shry turned his gaze to the student sitting in the back of the classroom who was had slowly stood up after having hit the wall with his hand. With wild spiky blonde hair and multiple piercings in his left hair as well as the informal way he wore his uniform, blazer off with his shirt untucked and sleeves rolled-up, it was difficult to picture him as anything other than a delinquent or gangster. Without question, this person had the strongest and most imposing presence in the classroom.

“Uhmm…”

However, the delinquent was focused solely on Shry, and completely ignored Ms. Ru.

“So you beat the examiner during the transfer exam?”

Shry hesitated how to answer before simply replying, “I was lucky.”

“Hahahaha!” The delinquent laughed as he ran his hand through his hair before grinning widely at him. “Name is Zyoi, and I am the strongest in this room at Rank 11! I challenge you to a duel!”

What a lame line. To Shry, it sounded like some kid challenging to a children’s card game, or something similar. It wasn’t really in his personality to accept such a troublesome duel proposal.

But with such an opportunity before him, there could only be one response.

“I accept. Where and when-“

“Here and now! Don’t go disappointing me!”

Without warning, Zyoi with one step leapt from his seat towards Shry and sent a heavy punch directed at him.

Screams could… only be heard from Ms. Ru. It seemed that the other students were already accustomed to this type of scene. After all, this academy’s purpose was to raise and produce the country’s strong fighters, and such “duels” were very commonplace. However, most students would agree that Zyoi’s duel etiquette of attacking first and asking questions later was a bit lacking.

Shry, however, foresaw this kind of development to a certain extent and dodged Zyoi’s preemptive attack. However, he was immediately met with Zyoi’s roundhouse kick to the face, which was blocked with Shry’s right hand. With his vast amount of accumulated experience gained on the battlefield, this kind of attack was too easy for him deal with.

Zyoi brought his leg down and grinned ferociously as Shry retreated by jumped back a meter or two.

“So you are the real deal! Let’s see how you handle this!”

His right arm suddenly began to be explosively wrapped with bright red flames. Some of the classroom’s students looked on with a bit more wariness, but most of them were quite entertained at watching this relatively high-level fight between this classroom’s strongest and the mysterious transfer student.

Shry probably wasn’t aware of it, but there was also a small grin in his face. This stint of being a high school student was more interesting than he first originally thought.

“I assume you are ready to give up my rank?”

“Rank, something uninteresting like that? That’s a small price to pay, but only if you can defeat me!”

Zyoi then quickly charged, again closing the distance between the two combatants.

 

Chapter 1: Part 2:

As the two students continued to clash with each other, Ms. Ru could only scrunch into a ball and pout. Some of the other students in the class came over by her side to comfort the poor teacher. Her skills and knowledge as a professor were real. However, she had neither authority nor respect in her own classroom, and instead was treated as an adorable younger sister to tease and play with.

Unfortunately for Ms. Ru, with the exception of the student council’s or the disciplinary committee’s authority, unless there was mutual consent between the two dueling parties, no one was permitted to stop a duel once underway. Not even the teacher of the two students.

Shry vaguely remembered seeing the duel rules in his online handbook as part of his cursory research prior to entering the school. He recalled that a duel had three fundamental conditions. First, there must be consent, implicit or explicit, between the two dueling parties, with exceptions of forced duels. Second, duels can only be taken place in academy grounds so that each participant can be tracked and monitored by the academy. Lastly, a duel is won once the opposing party has conceded defeat or is left unconscious. Killing the other party, however, is considered forbidden and is harshly punished, with very few exceptions. Other than that, everything was essentially fair game.

Power.

That was the primary emphasis placed by this academy, or the International Combat Academy. Despite the school’s name, this was a privately-run institution located on an independent island not belonging to any nation. This academy was founded just only five years ago by a group of the most powerful people in the world and funded by a wealthy mysterious backer, but has since then become famous for producing the strongest warriors and combatants worldwide. As a result, many countries sent many of their promising talents there to be raised and cultivated.

There are two types of relevant ranks at this school.

The first type of rank was the worldwide ranking system.

With combat talent and abilities highly valued throughout the world, there was a growing necessity to be able to rank people objectively and holistically on an international basis. The International Ranking Commission was set up to fulfill that need.

Second, there is the in-school ranking, which was how students at this academy were assessed. Similar to grades from a more traditional institution, ranks were the benchmark that national government armies and corporations used when hiring from the academy. Strong written and practical exams results, as in any traditional school, were indeed important to achieving higher ranks. But this school had a unique feature; perhaps even more influential on ranks were the so-called ranking duels. With ranking duels, one could fight another higher-ranking student and, if victorious, trade for their higher ranks.

Normally higher ranked students would not allow lower rankers to challenge them, but there are a few exceptions. The first and most common exception is that there exists an academy rule permitting those with lower ranks to “force” a duel from a slightly higher ranked with the purpose of encouraging more school-wide competition, thus the “forced duel” rule. A second common scenario where a higher ranker will voluntarily accept a duel another is when “prize” is offered by the lower ranker as compensation.

There was also a rare third scenario. There were people in this academy who enrolled just to enjoy fighting other strong students, without care for his or her ranking. Ranks were just a means to an end. Such students in the academy were very few in number. And such a person was in front of Shry.

Having been on the receiving end of a few attacks, he quickly assessed Zyoi to be one of the strongest students in the academy. However, that was not enough.

This time he did not dodge Zyoi’s subsequent dash attack and instead took his attack head on, catching his flame fist directly. Zyoi did not expect such a response, and his blood-red eyes widened in surprise for an instant. Afterwards, they returned to normal and he started laughing wildly again.

“It doesn’t seem that you tree-lovers burn as easily as I thought!”

Shry stared back at Zyoi with his only visible violet-colored eye and wryly smiled, understanding the deeper meaning of his words.

Each person born with a certain level of talent for magic also had affinity to at least one of the seven elements that exist in this world. And a person’s primary elemental affinity was directly correlated with the color of his or her eyes. A person with red eyes, like Zyoi, was someone who excelled with fire magic. Likewise, a person with purple eyes was more skilled with wood and plant manipulation.

Additionally, there certain elements were more “effective” than other elements in certain matchups. In this case, to fight fire, wood was the absolute worst element to use.

But by concentrating mana into his right arm, Shry was able to easily withstand Zyoi’s flame-infused punch.

“Oh? Your hand is still fine, but are you sure you’re fine with only using one?”

Zyoi had quickly glanced down at Shry’s bandaged left hand, which had largely remained motionless since the beginning of the fight, before igniting flames in his other hand and throwing another punch. This action prompted Shry to let go of Zyoi’s fist and sidestep the attack.

“One arm should be more than enough. No need to go easy on me.”

“Haha, that’s a great response!”

For several moments, Shry and Zyoi continued to trade blows. Or rather, it was Zyoi throwing an increasingly complex combination of punches and kicks whereas Shry was continually on the defensive, forced to dodge or deflect incoming attacks.

From the surrounding spectators’ perspective, it seemed that Shry was continued being pressed back, and only being able to use one arm was a crippling disadvantage to Shry in Close Quarters Combat. It was only a matter of time before Shry’s impressive defense would show an opening and Zyoi would land a decisive blow to end the fight.

But this was not the same view that Zyoi held. Zyoi prided himself in his strength, but he was quick to acknowledge and assess the strength of others with almost a beast-like instinct. After Shry effortlessly dodged his first punch at the start of the fight, he was made immediately aware that Shry’s was strong. His mana levels were nothing incredibly special, and neither were his physical speed in strength; in fact it can be said that his stats were almost too average. However this one armed opponent was actually able to easily maneuver around Zyoi’s aggression with only the most basic of attacks or movements, which required an almost ridiculous amount of real combat experience and knowledge.

With each attack that was deflected or dodged, Zyoi’s belief in his estimation of Shry’s strength only grew stronger. Where the seemingly increasing gap in power may have deterred other students, this only fueled Zyoi’s fighting appetite, as it wasn’t very often that he could battle against this caliber of opponent. However, he felt that Shry was only testing him and his strength to get a general feel of the combat strength of this academy’s students.

“So it’s more than just luck! Haha, how annoying!”

It wasn’t just luck that Shry was able to beat his transfer exam proctor was what Zyoi was referring to

“What is?”

“I know you’re stronger than you’re letting on. It’s just annoying that I can’t make you fight seriously unless I do so first.”

For just a moment, Shry was caught off guard at Zyoi’s words. During his limited exchange of blows and words, he had expected Zyoi to be an all-brawn-no-brains type of character, as many of the student spectators had. But Zyoi was much sharper than everyone gave him credit for, and his hot-headed idiot personality was perhaps merely a calculated façade to lower the enemy’s guard. Whatever was the case, Shry mentally upgraded his evaluation of the opponent before him.

With a huge grin, Zyoi suddenly stepped back away from Shry and released an enormous wave of pressure and heat, blowing away the air in his vicinity before enveloping his entire body in raging red flames. These flames were on a much higher level than the smaller ones used when he was using them to enhance his punches earlier.

Although the sprinkler system was activated, it did absolutely nothing to mitigate the intensity of these flames. However this did awaken the student spectators from their trance-like state, having been bewitched just by watching this high level fight.

With this much higher level of fire magic being contained in such a relatively small classroom, the spectators started murmur with worry, and some even were on the verge of panicking. A few of the more prepared students cast makeshift magic barriers to minimize the collateral damage that could possibly result from the seemingly inevitable clash. It was extremely rare that such a fight between such high-ranked students should occur so informally inside a classroom. Usually they were schedule beforehand and fought in an appropriately-sized spectator-filled stadium, as it was very likely that larger scaled magic abilities were going to be used. Only low level attacks had been used so far in Zyoi and Shry’s, but it looked like that would soon quickly change.

As a side note, Ms. Ru admirably tried to go forward to make a few last ditch attempts to interfere with and stop the fight. But as expected she was quickly stopped and carried off by her own students to safety.

Shry was actually reasonably impressed with the quality and durability of the academy-issue combat-ready uniforms, as Zyoi’s clothing were largely unaffected by his flames. However, the uniform is no substitute battle-armor: its defensive properties were actually quite minimal. The material of the uniform was made to let magical and elemental attacks go through the cloth unobstructed rather than to block them, and sharp objects could easily cut through it as well.

On another note, Shry was somewhat disappointed at the level of Zyoi’s flames. Although it was without a doubt far beyond the average strength of the average magic user, this academy was supposed to boast the strongest and most talented students in the world. He had expected to see something a little more powerful. In all fairness, as he had fought countless fights against stronger enemies, his expectations could be considered unreasonably high from an objective point of view.

There was nothing much more to be learned from this fight and it was about time to end it. These were the thoughts of Shry as he inwardly sighed. Well he had more fun than he expected, of course while it lasted. Shry returned his right hand to his side and started to gather mana.

Noticing that Shry was preparing to go on the offensive for the first time this battle, Zyoi, who was about to launch headlong into an all-out attack, suddenly stopped.

Dangerous.

His instincts, which have rarely failed him and have helped him win fights time and time again, were loudly screaming at him that Shry was indeed extremely dangerous. If he made just a single mistake, the fight could be completely over in one strike.

Zyoi had fought his fair share of opponents, and only a handful had alerted his instincts as strongly as Shry had. And none of them had been around his age, until now.

“Damn, just who exactly are you?”

In sharp contrast to Zyoi’s animal-like grin, Shry only responded with a light smile.

Both combatants, with just a few meters separating each other, waited for the other to make an opening. Or rather, it was Shry that waited for Zyoi to make the first move. Although Shry felt that his opponent had many openings that he could exploit and that the fight was all but decided, he felt lenient enough to let the fight end on Zyoi’s terms.

Wild flames on one side on the classroom. Zen-like calmness on the other.

Everyone in the classroom was silent. The tension created by not only the combatants, but also by the student spectators, could be said to be thick enough to cut with a knife.

Inching ever closer, the two opponents…

…were rudely interrupted.