Mightiest Melee Magician - Chapter 55

Chapter 55

The triathlon.

Athletics, combat, and swimming. An obstacle course that fused these three categories.

Naturally, it wasn’t a simple running contest.

It was also a battle event where you could directly attack the backs of fellow competitors while running.

It was also a comprehensive exam where you needed to overcome traps and monsters that blocked your path. There was even an ocean you had to cross.

The method of determining the winner of this event was quite simple.

Either get to the finish line first, or eliminate everyone else.

It didn’t matter which one.

‘19.5km.’

Representing the 195 years the Rynac Empire had stood strong, you constantly battled through this entire long course.

I had awaited this day from the moment it was confirmed I would be participating in the Grand Festival.

This was the event that I was most confident in.

“Ruin! Ruin! Ruin!”

“……”

And this was the event that most people were looking forward to for me.

For the first time in this festival, I received thousands of cheers from the spectators as I stood at the starting line.

To my side stood Seta Malkiri.

“It’s finally the last event.”

“……It seems so. This was the longest half a month in my entire life.”

“How is it? How do you feel?”

“About what?”

“Everyone’s shouting your name. How does it feel to be the main character of this festival?”

“……I don’t know.”

I was overflowing with emotion and I wanted to enjoy this moment more than any moment ever before.

I wanted to wave back in that instant and respond to the audience.

However, I hid my emotions with an, ‘I don’t know’.

The reason was simple.

“I think I’ll know after this event finishes.”

Because it wasn’t too late to enjoy the celebration after confirming my victory.

I smiled brightly at Seta.

“You know that today isn’t a team game but individual, right?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I?”

“I won’t go easy on you, so stay out of my way.”

“Kekek. Sure. Obviously I would try to avoid you.”

“……”

I readied myself in the starting position and looked at the sky.

The Grand Festival started at the end of spring.

However, today, with the last event of the Grand Festival, a fresh summer was starting.

After I completed this 19.5km course, would my life have changed, just like the seasons?

Would I be able to rid myself of nicknames like ‘Acadummy’ and ‘Failure’?

“Everyone on your marks!”

“……”

I don’t know.

For now…

“Go!”

I’ll just start running.

* * *

Bam!

As the host signalled the start with the flare, Altein Stadium rumbled like it was going to collapse.

The 31 other magicians simultaneously cast their own spells.

“Woaaaaaah!”

Yeah.

It was quite the spectacle.

As many spells exploded out at once, the audience could only exclaim at the scene.

Magicians that summoned a guardian to protect their back.

Magicians that summoned something to ride on.

Magicians that cast invisibility to disappear from sight.

Magicians that used a short-range teleport to get past everyone else.

Magicians that started fighting to stop others from getting past them, and so on.

Everyone chose their own flavour of magic.

Naturally, there weren’t any students that were ‘just running’.

Hoping for a ‘reversal of fortune’ at the end of this event, every magician pulled out their own specialty.

I was the same.

“What? Ruin? Aren’t you going?”

“Yeah. You can go first.”

“What? Are you going easy on me?”

“It’s nothing like that, so don’t worry about me and go first.”

“……You’re being suspicious. Then, I’ll be going first!”

“Ok. Go. Go far away.”

After receiving a gaze full of suspicion from Seta Malkiri, I also pulled out my specialty that I was the best at.

Yeah.

My best ability that none of the others had and only I could use.

My extraordinary stamina.

And my immense strength.

The greatest way to utilize these factors,

‘I’ll just run.’

Was to just run as hard as I could.

However, there was no point if I was running ahead of everyone else.

Regrettably, I became one of the people everyone looked out for, and was also known as a mighty ‘melee’ magician.

If I show my back toward an enemy chasing from far away, it would definitely be disadvantageous for me.

To defeat these guys,

‘I need to set the rules.’

Rather than playing by their game, I needed to pull them into my pace.

And so, the strategy I selected to do this,

‘I’ll eliminate the stragglers from the back one by one.’

Was to become the apex predator that wouldn’t show its back, eating them up one by one.

That was why I waited patiently at the starting line.

I waited for the initial battles to end and for the ranks to start organizing themselves.

“That Ruin Ardell… What’s he doing? Why isn’t he going? Is he going easy on the others?”

“Hey, hey! Let’s just shut up and see what he does! He’s the magician that beat Doom Prime! He must have a plan.”

“……”

Everyone in the audience was looking at me, but I focused my attention to the front.

The wait,

‘……Now.’

Wasn’t too long.

Boom!

Doom had obliterated his surroundings in an instant and broke through, in front of everyone, while holding a different magic sword to the Sword of Brilliance.

As Doom Prime became the front-runner, the fierce battle started to end and 2nd, 3rd, 4th…

Everyone started running in the order of their ranks.

‘Now!’

Fwoosh!

I kicked off the ground and broke through.

The target,

‘Back.’

Was the student that was lagging behind.

It wasn’t hard to catch up to him.

Since strength affected my movement, this supported movement of mine wasn’t ordinary at all.

After striding forward to the 31st magician, I lightly tackled them with my shoulder.

Bam!

“……Ack!”

Since he thought he was last place, he was shocked by the shoulder charge that came out of nowhere and flew off far away, tumbling on the ground.

Then, I accelerated faster and targeted my next prey.

Maybe because of the explosion sound he heard from his back,

“Hup! R-Ruin?”

The 30th student could recognise my form that approached him, and he stopped moving, as if he had seen a ghost.

Then, he said with a pale face,

“Y-You can go first… past me.”

But I just shook my head.

“Sorry. I don’t like my back being in danger.”

“……!”

In that instant, maybe he thought of what would happen to him.

As I finished talking, he clenched his eyes shut, and I didn’t hesitate as I threw a punch.

Pang!

“Kuack!”

After being struck in the abdomen, the student couldn’t do anything as he flew back and tumbled on the ground.

And I looked towards the front again.

In that place,

“Damn it… Ruin Ardell? Why are you here? Didn’t you run past everyone?”

“……”

29th, 28th, and 27th.

All these students who were fighting over last place were looking at me, and I charged towards them.

Like a rhinoceros.

And then, I crashed into them like a beast.

‘The path is long.’

But I wasn’t hurried at all.

19.5km

Since it wasn’t a distance that could be crossed in a short amount of time, I could slowly catch up.

After all…

The front of the pack would still be fighting each other.

* * *

At the front of the triathlon, a total of three magicians were having a fierce battle against each other.

Doom Prime.

Irene Prius.

And Dylan Marken.

As all three were part of the 11 Children, they were the three people that received the most attention from the start of this competition.

“Huah!”

Doom had summoned a Gray Spirit Horse that matched his attire and was riding forward.

However, the summon duration of a Spirit Horse wasn’t that long,

And when the summon was released, Irene froze the ground with ice magic and shot forward, as if sliding.

Dylan waited patiently in 3rd for an opportunity to disrupt the other two and break past them, tenaciously pursuing them.

1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

While these ranks kept changing as they ran, they all stopped after finding something.

“…Damn. So this is where we start getting delayed?”

Something was blocking the way of these three.

Monsters.

“Chiaeek!”

There were about 30 kobolds that had blocked the course.

“We’ll need to take care of these kobolds first before going forward.”

“Huu… I guess. How about we work together for now before starting again? A temporary alliance, perhaps?”

“Dylan, you really like alliances.”

“Haha. Why wouldn’t I like a good thing?”

“Well, I don’t care too much…”

Irene looked at Doom.

It was an expression of wanting answers.

“……”

Shwing!

But Doom didn’t even look at her and just pulled out his sword expressionlessly.

Irene shrugged her shoulders.

“Seems he wants to go individually?”

“Hm… I’ve seen Doom for 6 years now, but it’s still hard to be friends with him. Fine! Let’s solve this our own ways then.”

And so, a fierce individual match had begun.

Among the three people, the first one to move was Doom.

Looking familiar with combat against monsters, he charged toward the kobolds.

Crush!

“Chieaak!”

“……”

He calmly slashed away at the kobolds with steady sword strikes that made it hard to believe that he was a magician.

However, something was off about him.

He looked as if he couldn’t focus on the battle and he furrowed his brows once in a while, constantly looking behind him.

His focus wasn’t on the kobolds from the start.

‘Why?’

Neither Irene, nor Dylan was the target of his attention.

There was another reason that his thoughts became complicated.

‘Why isn’t he appearing?’

Right then, there was one person who grabbed his attention.

Ruin Ardell.

He was nowhere to be seen.

Even if Ruin was held back in the middle somewhere, with his abilities, he would’ve already appeared some time ago.

Even more so since he was wasting time here being delayed by the battle with the kobolds.

However, Ruin Ardell, or anyone else for that matter, was nowhere to be seen.

‘Is he already in front of me?’

No. There was no way.

He was the first to run at the start.

And the only others that were running at the start with him were these two.

That meant that it was confirmed that Ruin was behind him.

‘Why?’

But why couldn’t he see Ruin Ardell?

This discomfort slowly started to turn into a weird sense of uneasiness.

Unbeknownst to himself, Doom had become too fixated on Ruin.

As these thoughts led to more thoughts, the one who became impatient was Doom.

‘……Am I keeping tabs on someone else right now?’

An uneasiness that formed because of someone else.

It was because he had recognised that he was experiencing this unfamiliar feeling for the first time in his life.

This worrying feeling…

It persisted long after the horde of kobolds was gone.

And it was amplified even more when he arrived at the ‘trapzone’, a place riddled with hundreds of traps.

“Where’s Ruin?”

“……What?”

“Ruin Ardell. Why isn’t he appearing?”

“I don’t know. Even I don’t know that much…”

“……”

It was enough for Doom, who hadn’t talked once this entire time, to ask Irene directly to her face.

But then,

“……Uh?”

After hearing this question, Irene also spoke, sensing something was wrong.

“Now that I think about it… isn’t it really odd?”

“What is?”

“The kobold horde and even this trapzone. These ate into our time while at the front. But why hasn’t anyone else appeared?”

“……Yeah? Oh yeah.”

Dylan Marken tilted his head too, finding this situation odd.

“4th and 5th place. It would’ve been enough time for them to catch up and overtake us by now. But… why is there no one?”

It was true.

Behind these three were just clouds of dust.

Not a single person had shown themselves.

“Where is everyone? Did something happen behind us?”

While they were contemplating this question…

“Look over there!”

In that growing cloud of dust, the shadowy figure of a human could be seen.

“Who is it?”

“……”

Everyone’s gaze was locked on the middle of the dust cloud.

The figure soon grew larger, and then a person was seen.

As if he had busted through the dust cloud, the boy was just running like a madman.

No summons.

No guardians.

Not even movement magic.

Just with his own body.

He was,

“……Ruin?”

The man that Doom had been waiting for.

It was Ruin Ardell.

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Having found the front-runners, he smiled while catching his breath.

“Huu… I finally caught up.”

Seeing him appear alone, Irene asked in shock,

“……Where’s everyone else?”