Magic Academy Mayhem: A Class Full of Maniacs - Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Once Cynthia realized she wouldn’t be able to accomplish her goal in a short amount of time, she set the thought aside.

She tapped open the Light Screen again.

Vernel and the other three were all located in the dormitory, so they must have returned a while ago.

There were messages from the four of them in the group chat.

Mostly, they were just informing Griffin that they had won their first matches.

Aside from explaining the rules for freshmen, Griffin hadn’t interfered. So far, he hadn’t sent any messages in the group chat either.

In his own words, the process didn’t matter. He only needed to know the final result.

Cynthia lay flat on the sofa, quietly staring up at the ceiling.

The first round had gone pretty smoothly. The only question was whether she would be matched against a teammate in the second round…

As the number of participants dropped, the possibility would only grow.
As it turned out, coincidences didn’t happen that easily.

Her opponent in the second round was neither an enemy nor an acquaintance, but a complete stranger she had never seen before.

The other party was Sequence 555, also a five-star.

Cynthia sustained a minor injury, but she won in the end.

The other members of her team had all been scheduled for the first half of the second round as well. Sangmo lost because he ran into someone of the Divine Sequence, whose star level was seven-star, slightly higher than his own.

The other three had a much smoother time.
In the blink of an eye, it was the third day.

If Cynthia still hadn’t believed yesterday that coincidences could all cluster together in the same stretch of time, then the moment she saw the name of her third-round opponent, she believed it.

Abel Augupetin.

The only emotion Cynthia had toward this idiot was disgust.

It wasn’t just the original owner’s lingering feelings. She herself found him repulsive too.

Back when she had been reading the novel, if not for her interest in the worldbuilding, she never would have clicked into it in the first place.

Of course, there had been many times when she’d wanted to drop it halfway through, but it was as if some inexplicable force kept pulling her in. In the end, she finished reading it anyway.

Now that she thought about it, that pull had probably originated from the original owner’s summons.

As a member of the Empire’s royal bloodline, Abel was naturally of the Divine Sequence.

However, his Sequence was lower than any previous heir’s: Sequence 97.

The other princes’ and princesses’ Sequences were all within the top 60. The gap could be called enormous.

The reason he had managed to become Crown Prince was, aside from the fact that he was born to the late empress, because his mother’s family was a marquis house known as the lifeline of the Empire and wealthy enough to rival a nation.

The other princes and princesses had all been born to consorts, and in terms of maternal family background, none of them could compare to him.

Thus, with the marquis family’s support, Abel had naturally succeeded in taking the position of Crown Prince.

As the opponent assignments ended, the audience seats became livelier than ever.

“Prince Abel actually got matched with Cynthia… This is a little too much of a coincidence.”

“His Highness is six-star now, and he’s of the Divine Sequence too. What can that wicked woman possibly use to win?”

“Exactly. She made things so ugly on enrollment day. She’s in for it this time.”

“Uh, not necessarily.”

“Stop yelling. If Cynthia doesn’t end up kneeling and begging for mercy this time, it’ll only be because His Highness Abel is merciful.”

–

Down below, the pack of dogs barked up a storm. Onstage, the leader of the pack, Abel, was barking too.

His face was full of mockery. “Cynthia, if you kneel and beg for mercy now, I may consider letting you off.”

“Tch.” Whenever Cynthia faced him, she always felt the helplessness of trying to communicate with some inhuman creature that simply could not understand language. “Abel, do you think learning a few human words makes you human? If you really don’t have a brain, could you please go be a participant in a cage at the slaughterhouse?”

To be honest, he wasn’t bad-looking.

But that face of his was forever wearing such a loathsome expression, and his posture was so high and mighty that it made people want to grab his face, shove it down, and grind it against the floor.

Of course, perhaps that only applied to the original owner.

Abel had already experienced how sharp-tongued she was on enrollment day, but even now, he still found it hard to accept. The fiancée who had always been obedient, who had never treated him like this no matter what he did, had suddenly turned into this wretched thing.

Even more hateful than before, and even more vulgar.

“Crude and uncultured.” Angry and humiliated, he said darkly, “Your etiquette and upbringing really must have been eaten by dogs.”

All he ever did was talk about etiquette and upbringing when he himself had nothing to do with either. Worse, his vocabulary was pitifully lacking, yet he loved to bark. Cynthia truly found it laughable. “Mm-hmm. Yes. Eaten by you.”

Neither of them was willing to salute before the match. Under their mutual hostility, they muddled through that step of the process.

The very second the host announced the start, Cynthia summoned the scythe into her hand and instantly darted forward.

She didn’t have that much patience to waste words on him.

Abel’s Spirit Weapon took the form of a longsword. He hadn’t expected her to take the initiative, much less move so quickly. He hurriedly raised his sword to block the scythe blade slicing toward his face.

The roar of the wind intertwined with the ringing clash of metal.
Cynthia drove her power through her waist and hips, moving as fast as a flash of lightning. Not once did her attacks show the slightest hint of retreat.

Abel twisted aside to dodge. With a hard flick of his wrist, his blade slid rapidly down the long shaft of her scythe, scraping out a dazzling trail of sparks.

The sword tip was aimed at her wrist. A little farther, and it would be her heart.

Cynthia sensed his intention. She followed the momentum and pressed the shaft downward, using that force to launch her entire body into the air.

Riding the centrifugal force, she carved out a perfect semicircle of demonic blade energy and sent it straight at Abel.

“You refuse a toast only to drink a forfeit.” Abel’s face had long since darkened. Being held back by a piece of trash-and even being forced onto the lower hand-made him especially furious. His tone was edged with coldness. “Then don’t blame me!”

He raised his hand and cleaved the incoming blade energy apart with a vicious strike, then barked, “Sacred Sword Myriad Fall!”

Cynthia lifted her eyes toward the sky. Magic was gathering all around them, and countless long swords were forming at tremendous speed.

Shouting the name of his skill that loudly-was he afraid people wouldn’t know he’d lost his temper…?

Cynthia had little interest in yelling slogans, but in this world, calling out a skill’s name really did make it stronger than silently reciting the spell in one’s head… According to the books, it had something to do with the influence of willpower.

It was a little cringey, but not exactly unacceptable.

Since that idiot Abel wanted to play, she would play with him to the end. This was the perfect chance to test the second Sequence Skill she hadn’t been able to use in the previous match.

Cynthia spun her scythe. Its edge tore through the air, opening a rift in the void. In a calm voice, she said, “Domain of Death, open.”

As the girl’s words fell, the bright day was abruptly replaced by a heavy, pitch-black night.

Light twisted into shattered afterimages, all of it squeezed outside the barrier.

Weblike cracks spread densely across the ground, and black-purple mist condensed into form even faster than the unfinished myriad swords.

In an instant, it transformed into a massive barrier that enclosed the entire arena. Within the diffusing black fog, countless undead emerged from the ground. Some had only broken torsos left; others were riddled with bloody holes.

Their forms were horrifying in every imaginable way, and their blood-drenched eyes shone with a crimson, venomous resentment.

But at this moment, they were no longer aimless wanderers. They were guardian spirits awaiting orders.

The instant Abel’s myriad swords finished forming and began to descend, Cynthia gave a light snap of her fingers. “Exterminate.”

Within this domain, her will was the supreme law.

The undead obeyed. In an instant, they surged upward like swarming wraiths. They died and resurrected, repeating the cycle over and over, until the number of undead within the domain grew instead of shrinking.

Abel watched as the myriad swords formed by his skill were torn apart by brute force, shock rising in his heart.

He had heard she had defeated Rafael, who possessed Divine Sequence 9, but he also knew Rafael had been close to her since childhood. There had to have been some exaggeration in that result.

Her second match had been against a low-Sequence opponent as well. Winning that had merely been luck.

But now…

Abel narrowed his eyes. “…Looks like you do have a few tricks.”

He forcefully cut down the undead wrapping around him, then his figure flashed and appeared right in front of Cynthia.

His longsword came slashing straight down. Cynthia immediately responded.

Her whole body bent backward like a willow branch in the wind, nearly parallel to the ground. After dodging completely, she drove force through her ankle, rotating her waist with it. Using the power of that turn, she swept the scythe in her hand upward from below, the blade chopping fiercely toward Abel’s sword-wielding wrist.

Abel hurriedly retreated. A mass of magic gathered at his sword tip to resist the impact, and he used that force to push himself out of her attack range.

When he landed, his knees were already bent, power coiled in him like a drawn bowstring.

After the briefest pause, he charged forward again.

The two figures crossed the arena at high speed, clashing, separating, and colliding again, so fast that only blurred trails remained.

The scene, originally obscured by the fog of the Domain of Death, was transformed by the sparks of Magic Element produced by their battle into a grand fireworks display.

When the longsword came at her again, Cynthia twisted, used the force to step through the air, and kicked at his shoulder.

Abel was forced back.

Cynthia glanced around from the corner of her eye. The myriad swords and the undead were locked together, mutually restraining each other.

Abel’s realm was higher than hers. Though he was brain-dead, as a prince, his close-combat ability naturally wasn’t weak.

The longer the battle dragged on, the more disadvantageous it would be for her.

Abel’s Sequence-exclusive ability was called Blood Rage. It could amplify all of his advantages for a short period of time. He had yet to use it, but once he did, the scales of victory would certainly tilt in his favor.

Cynthia felt a little troubled. If it were someone else, she probably wouldn’t care so much about winning. As long as she won the first match and didn’t give Griffin an excuse to punish her, that would be enough.

But of all people, she had to be facing this idiot. If she lost to him, it would feel as if a scar of humiliation had been carved straight onto her face.