RATH 88

TL: Eevee

New chapter title, new arc!

11. Not a myth, but a legend (1)

#1 Their story: a certain commentator’s story.

Once upon a time, I was a knight of the empire, when I lost my arm in the Great War and I was at a loss of what to do.

Perhaps out of pity, my senior that was still active as a knight introduced me to a new occupation.

It was a commentator.

It was a role where I could analyzed the tens, no, hundreds of changes and mind games that proceeded over a split second that were invisible to the eyes of common folk, and help them understand what was happening.

I was always a talkative person before I became a knight, and the same applied even when I was one too, so this job was quite suited to me and so five years on, I’d commentated on many events since..

And for the first time in five years, I screwed up as a commentator.

[....]

But it seemed the same was true for my fellow commentator, the magician Merrell.

What would you say was the most vital trait to have as a commentator?

It is the ability to keep talking without stopping

The role of a commentator in explaining the events of a match is important.

But just as important is filling in the odd gaps at the start of an event or any unexpected lulls in the middle of a match.

Normally even a silence of a few seconds, a few tens of seconds would automatically draw criticism as a failure of a commentator, but even though several minutes had passed, neither of us could speak.

Normally one of the imperial festival’s administrators would have barged into the broadcast room already and given us an earful.

But the administrators were not coming into the broadcast room.

They were probably also staring stunned at the broadcast.

[What, is that all?]

A single student was standing alone all too peacefully.

But his surroundings were the very picture of hell.

The grounds in front of him were upturned and obliterated as if they’d taken a magic bombardment, and dotted around the landscape were students that more resembled corpses.

[Ner... kia!]

And standing before him, was the Arucia student council president, down on one knee, barely holding on while leaning onto his sword for support.

I was a former Arucia student as well, so I knew very well how prestigious the seat of the Arucia student council president was.

One of the Four Great Academies that held a name among names as one of the greatest schools of the empire.

And the student council president of Arucia, the school rated as the strongest of those schools, needed to have splendid political acumen and trust of the students as a prerequisite, and also needed top-class strength as befitting of the strongest swordsmanship academy, Arucia.

No matter how talented you were, or how popular you were with the other students, if the teachers decide that you didn’t have the swordsmanship talents to represent Arucia, you were automatically stripped from the seat of president.

Even in reality, every year there were cases where potential candidates were from extremely powerful families, or popular among the students, but were stripped for the right to run for president because their swordsmanship skills were lacking.

That Arucia student council president, was currently on his knees and screaming his throat hoarse in front of the president of the school deemed the weakest, the Yugrasia student council president.

It was a scenario where you couldn’t comprehend it in words.

But it was even less comprehensible when you saw it with your own two eyes.

[Wha, how did it come to this?]

Merrell, my colleague commentator for this match finally broke the long silence and sent his voice out into the magic tool for commentary.

[Th, that’s true.]

I also pulled myself together and tried to say something.. but it seemed that it would take some time for me to offer any satisfactory answer.

[So let’s go back from the beginning. It seemed that Arucia tried to force a quick end to the match, right?]

[Yes, it felt like they were trying to end it before Yugrasia managed to restore their magic power they’d used during the Marcis battle.]

[That’s right. But, someone came out first as the vanguard from Yugrasia’s end. Just a single person, their student council president Nerkia.]

[Yes, and.. that single person..]

[Defeated Arucia all by himself.]

[....]

[....]

We really shouldn’t be doing this, yet we fell silent once again.

Just how were we supposed to explain this.

There were many cases where the difference in abilities were all too clear in fights between students, whom lacked the thing called experience.

They say that out in the real world where it was actually easier to get stomped on, geniuses were the ones who suffered early deaths, but fights between students were not that cruel or lethal.

And so, there were no reason for students to cross beyond the boundary of death and surpass their limits, things that one could only see on the battlefield.

Because those experiences were ones you could only have when death truly loomed in front of your eyes, and you overcame and survived the experience.

There was no way students could ever experience such things. That was why the difference in talent was so overwhelming.

Moreover, the Yugrasia student council president, Nerkia, was an undeniable genius in the field of summoning.

He was rated as a once-in-a-century figure in terms of his affinity with spirits, and even officially recognised as the person contracted to the greatest number of spirits in the continent by the Summoner’s Association. That was the Nerkia, the Yugrasia student council president.

And in last year’s imperial festival he showed his true class.

By managing the monumental achievement of putting Yugrasia in second place by Day 2, and even as far as first place on Day 3.

Even if the student council’s physical and mental exhaustion caught up with them, causing them to lose all the team events and crash back down to third place, there was nobody that blamed Nerkia, their president.

On the contrary, people judged that if the average skill level of Yugrasia’s students were up to par with Marcis and Arucia, the Yugrasia that Nerkia led could have gone on to win the whole thing, such highly rated was Nerkia.

A genius summoner that the empire, no, the entire continent recognised.

He was a genius who earned the title of ‘Elemental Army’ due to his skillful ability to use his various summons no matter what situation he found himself in.

If you looked beyond schools and looked at him as an individual, he was rated even more highly than the presidents of the other three schools!

Even if people said Yugrasia was weak, there was no one who said that their student council president, Nerkia was weak!

Indeed. He was a genius. He was talented.

And because of that, we were all the more surprised.

Because he was a genius recognised by all, everyone was watching him that much more closely

There were professors in the Summoner’s Association who even submitted theses as to why he was loved so much by the spirits, and other schools would have no doubt done their analyses on his strengths and weaknesses.

For the sake of providing quality commentary, I, too, had watched his footage over and over, analyzed him, and had a rough estimation of his maximum and average abilities.

But he had changed. Overwhelmingly so.

In the span of just a single year, no less!

[Just what happened at Yugrasia?]

That was what I said after I gathered my thoughts.

Just one year. Each and every one of their individual skills had improved so drastically in just a single year.

Up till now, we’d thought that Lady Aris had just been an overwhelming genius.

Even from a young age, she was known as a female general among the empire’s nobility.

And although I wasn’t really one to talk because I had never even come close to the realm of a swordsmaster even at my peak, because I was a knight, I knew that the beings called swordsmasters had something that surpassed mere talent.

The same went for Yugrasia’s other students.

I had thought that the addition of the ex-military teachers had created enough hardship and critical situations for them to surpass their limits.

Because in reality, the majority of them were of similar levels to the students of the other academies, and that all they did was simply defeat opponents stronger than they were through overwhelming grit and determination.

Things that were only possible because they were still growing students.

But all of us realised through the Yugrasia student council president that that was all a giant misconception.

He had surpassed the limits of individual talent.

By single-handedly defeating, no, overwhelming a hundred enemies by himself, he had proven to everyone watching that Yugrasia itself had changed at a fundamental level!

And an even more shocking truth came from the Yugrasia student council president’s mouth.

[I, really did get strong.]

[Are.. are you mocking us!]

[No, I seriously didn’t know. Because even with our entire academy combined, we still couldn’t beat Professor Nicerwin’s single summon, we all thought we were hella weak.]

[What?!]

Nerkia had just annihilated a hundred of Arucia’s students without even allowing them to get close.

And moreover, Yugrasia even had a swordsmaster in Lady Aris.

Those two alone could slaughter an ordinary knight brigade by themselves

Was that all they had? Their vice-presidents, Loki’s contractor, the Trickster Risen, and the woman judged the strongest in aerial dominance in the entire imperial festival, the Empress of the Skies, Karen. Each and every one of their student council were powerhouses in their own rights.

And among the first years, even excluding Lady Aris, there were still a whopping four other god-class summoners.

And even the ordinary students who had undergone tremendous growth, so much so that you couldn’t even call them ordinary anymore!

If it were them, they could probably face off against an entire division of the imperial army.

And in contrast, just what was Professor Nicerwin’s evaluation!

An honorary professor of the Summoner’s Association, and in theory alone, he had no equal.

But due to his overwhelmingly weak constitution from the moment he was born, he was frail enough that rumours had it he lived in the elven forest to recuperate.

And right now, Nerkia, the student council president of Yugrasia, was saying that that person could defeat a contractor of a Spirit King, a swordsmaster and numerous other summoners all by himself.

? I’m serious, Kiir. Why do you think we got so desperately stronger to survive? Of course, not that I think we could win no matter how much stronger we got.]

[Just.. just what the hell is Professor Nicerwin’s summon! Is it a god or archdevil as the rumours say? Or is it a Spirit King?!]

Such rumours did exist.

Due to his overwhelmingly superior knowledge of summons, rumours had it that he was contracted to a god of knowledge, or that he obtained that knowledge by offering his soul to an archdevil.

That or that he’d made a contract with the Akashic Records, an existence that recorded everything in the world. Beginning with rumours such as those, to rumours that he had personally contracted all of the summons he was knowledgeable about previously in the past!

The Summoner’s Association denied all those rumours due to how outlandish they were, but when you heard that not even all of Yugrasia’s student body together could defeat him, not having a secret like that made it all the more suspicious.

[Idiot, think about it. I contracted a Spirit King, Lady Aris is a god-class summoner. Risen’s also a god-class, and we’ve also got four other god-class summoners out of the first years. If it was an ordinary god, archdevil or Spirit King, do you think we couldn’t have beaten it with sheer numbers?]

[Then, just what is Professor Nicerwin’s summon, that you can’t defeat him even with your insane fighting abilities!]

[That’s..]

[That’s?]

Let alone the Arucia student council president, Merrell and I also swallowed reflexively.

That was probably something that everyone watching the broadcast right now would be doing.

The summon that note even a Spirit King, swordsmaster, six god-class summoners and a thousand other students all working together could defeat! There was no one that wouldn’t be curious as to the identity of that summon!

To the question that everyone wanted the answer to, after a brief moment of thought, the Yugrasia student council president, Nerkia, smiled brightly and..

[That’s, a secret.]

Didn’t tell us!

[Are you making fun of me?!]

[No no, we don’t exactly know either. She calls herself a metal elemental, but that’s definitely not the case, she calls herself a goddess, but none of the other gods know a goddess by that name. But we do have a nickname for her.]

[Being?]

[If I say it I think I’ll get hit. I don’t wanna. I’d rather kill myself instead, I don’t wann get hit.]

At those teasing words, the Arucia student council president scowled.

[Are you.. are you still mocking us! With just.. just that kind of a threat..]

[Just? Threat?]

[Kugh!]

But at the Arucia student council president’s words, the Yugrasia student council president, Nerkia’s face turned stone cold as he pressured his opponent.

[Just, just! Do you know what we experienced ‘just’ because of that?]

[Kuhuuk!]

The Spirit King of Lightning exerted more power as if to match Nerkia’s anger.

[For someone who hasn’t even experienced it himself, you dare call it ‘just that?’ Do you know what resolve we came into this imperial festival to avoid ‘just’ that? ‘Just’ because of that, Lady Aris became a swordsmaster, and I contracted a Spirit King. Because of ‘just’ that, we despaired, and because of ‘just’ that, we became stronger!]

The bright sky began to darken.

Those dark clouds were all thunderclouds.

The shattered earth and heavens sparking lightning gave the impression of the end of the world, and standing in the middle of it, the Yugrasia student council president screamed.

[If you haven’t experienced ‘just’ that, don’t even put those words to your mouth, you little brat!]

With those words, not a single Arucia student was left on the field.