The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide - Chapter 299

‘Bell. Do you know why I rate you so highly? It’s because you can bring me plans like this.’

‘I don’t think it’s a particularly well-structured plan. For the most part, I’ll be responding by improvisation.’

‘No, I’m not talking about the polish of the plan.’

‘?’

Setting down the report in which Bell’s plan was laid out, Tanya spoke with a beaming smile. Though the most capable strategist of House Rothstaylor stood before her, the manner she showed was less that toward a subordinate and more that toward kin.

‘Occupying the Rothstaylor Mansion, taking on a bad name, cutting your own salary, by any measure, it’s a plan with nothing but losses from your standpoint, isn’t it, Bell? People who bring such a plan of their own accord, when no one’s forced them to, are rare.’

‘Thank you for valuing my loyalty. I’ll strive to contribute even more greatly to the Rothstaylor Mansion going forward.’

‘Oh my, you still don’t get it, Bell. What I want isn’t some loyal hound mechanically laying everything it has at House Rothstaylor’s feet. Hoo… hoo…’

Tanya had a cat’s tongue, poor at drinking hot things. The sight of her seated before the fireplace, blowing and blowing to cool her black tea, made her look like quite the handful.

She held the rank of youngest-ever duke and led this enormous house, yet here and there in her conduct she still showed a side befitting her age, a truly wondrous girl.

‘You still don’t understand why I rate this plan so highly?’

‘May I ask your meaning?’

‘Acting of your own accord on something no one ordered leaves ample room for interpretation. You say it’s an expression of loyalty to House Rothstaylor, Bell… but from where I sit, it isn’t that at all.’

Bell looked at Tanya with a dubious air.

Bell had been prepared to cut her own salary, take on a bad name, and bear all sorts of disadvantages for House Rothstaylor’s sake. If it helped House Rothstaylor, she figured there was nothing to hold her back.

In a sense, that was only natural. If one was to hold the post of head maid of the Rothstaylor Mansion, loyalty to the head of house and the house members was something that had to come with it as a matter of course. That was her duty, her obligation.

Tanya, who had denied that obvious notion, tapped at the documents Bell had organized and spoke in a languid voice.

‘Bell. You still think you’re moving on blind loyalty, don’t you? You’re a strategist who’s perfect in every way, yet when it comes to self-assessment, there’s a part that’s lacking.’

‘If you have doubts about my loyalty, I’ll prove it in my own way.’

‘I’m not doubting it. I just want to tell you clearly about your own principles of action. Bell, you think and act on your own. You submitted a plan with nothing but losses for yourself not simply because you’re loyal to the Rothstaylor Mansion… but because you yourself judged it to be the right thing.’

Bell stood with both hands gracefully clasped at her waist. The sight of her, with the dignity of a maid lingering in her every gesture, was the very picture of a veteran.

Watching Bell quietly, Tanya understood better than anyone why this young woman drew such a high salary.

‘You actively resolve the crisis your master faces, and if something is needed for that, you mobilize it by any means necessary. You repay the trust you’ve received and give your all to the duty you’ve been assigned. You believe that is what makes a truly capable maid, and you live while proving it yourself. That must be the value you have taken pride in all your life.’

Tanya spoke casually, fidgeting with her fingertips, but Bell could only go wide-eyed and fall briefly into thought at those casually tossed-out words.

‘That’s your pride, Bell.’

The naive girl who led the mansion at such a young age was seeing through to the deepest part of Bell’s inner self with the utmost nonchalance.

As though to say it’d be stranger not to know it.

***

Boom! Fwooooosh!

The dust that had risen once now blanketed the main hall, carried on the updraft born of magic power.

Yennekar, who had thought she knew Bell’s full capabilities well, revised her assessment of her entirely. The rapier in one hand was nothing more than a minimal means of self-defense.

Having been personally delegated the authority to use Celestial magic circles by Ed Rothstaylor, freely commanding the magic circles within the mansion, she was less a swordswoman than a magician.

It was the most powerful protective authority, permitted only to the closest confidant strategist who had to guard the mansion down to the very last in an extreme crisis.

‘Mid-ranking spirits can’t counter it. I need to mobilize a high-ranking spirit at minimum. The mansion damage… there’s no choice but to apologize to Ed and Tanya!’

Yennekar’s eyes went wide as she drew up her magic power.

At the same moment, Bell Maya leapt from within the cloud of dust. Closing the distance in an instant, her figure filled Yennekar’s vision.

Watching the maids of Ophelis Hall drill their rapier swordsmanship, there was a saying that it was like watching a flower field lashed by a fierce gale.

The hems of the maids’ garments, moving fervently as they traded blade-strikes. The way frill-laden skirts streamed could, at times, look like flower buds bursting into bloom.

The swordsmanship of Bell Maya, who had spent nearly her whole life training at Ophelis Hall, was no different.

Lowering her stance, evading the flames a spirit spat out, leaping high to twist and bend her body in midair, romping this way and that, her hems billowed along with her.

Like a carp with great fins swimming through the depths of the sea, her movements as she plunged forward, calculating even gravity itself, were hard to follow with the eye.

Crack! Whoosh!

The instant she landed, she clenched tight the magic power-wreathed fist of her left hand.

The low-level Celestial Magic ‘Distortion.’

It was magic she’d seen any number of times already in sparring matches with Ed. The power to seize and twist the spatial axis, momentarily contracting and then expanding it, disregarded even the providence of reality itself.

The low-ranking spirits caught up in its aftermath instantly lost their magic power and reverted to a fluid state.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Crack!

Even as Yennekar gathered magic power at her feet to keep trying to open up distance, Bell Maya never once allowed it.

The way to deal with a skilled Elementalist was to keep applying pressure to the summoner’s body without pause. Once your focus was consumed by dealing with the spirits, you would be crushed beneath the endless tide of spirits and subdued in the end. If it became a battle of attrition, you would lose without fail.

Because Bell knew that well, she did not give Yennekar even the slightest opening to call forth a high-ranking spirit.

Once Yennekar started drawing out high-ranking spirits one after another, even a Bell in peak condition couldn’t handle it.

Retreat and pursuit. Within the endlessly repeating war of distance, the number of spirits began, little by little, to dwindle. With Bell’s strength alone, she couldn’t pursue Yennekar and reduce the spirits’ numbers at the same time, but right now, this mansion was on Bell Maya’s side.

‘I really… can’t beat her one-on-one.’

Yennekar bowed her head and admitted it.

When it came to protecting the mansion, there’d be no one who could beat this head maid.

‘If only… I hadn’t summoned Takan in advance.’

But a maid’s domain was solely the interior of the mansion.

Yennekar, who had given the order for Takan to be summoned and support her from before she ever entered the mansion, had been one step further ahead.

Fwip-fwip! Crack!

The main hall’s front doors shattered, and beyond those enormous wooden doors, an eye came into view.

A vertically slit reptilian eye. Its blazing, fiery body could be seen far beyond.

Although the main hall doors of the Rothstaylor Mansion were by no means small, the form of that fire lizard Takan didn’t fit into view as a whole. The more Yennekar’s spirit affinity grew, the more the power of that monster Takan grew as well, exponentially.

Fwip! Whoosh!

Flames surged up into the mansion’s interior.

Bell at once wrapped herself in the Celestial Magic ‘Time Barrier.’ It was magic that momentarily hid her body in the gap between timelines, isolating her from all external harm.

Absolute defense. Celestial Magic was always that unreasonable. It came close to cheating, rewriting law and providence however it pleased.

Crack! Fwooooosh!

But Takan’s intervention was despair itself.

No matter how many Celestial magic circles Ed Rothstaylor had personally inscribed, subduing a high-ranking spirit in a short span was impossible.

The moment even a little time was lost, that summoner would add a second and then a third high-ranking spirit without end. The instant Yennekar was given time to chant a high-ranking summoning formula, defeat was sealed.

And so it was the moment Bell, having sprung out from within the Time Barrier, was about to cast Time Prison at Takan.

“……!”

The scene she looked out upon, magic power fully charged, already held a Yennekar whose oak staff was wreathed in magic power enough to summon a high-ranking spirit.

It took less than half the time she’d anticipated. Baroness Yennekar Palerover, too, had already grown far more seasoned than Bell had expected.

Takan wasn’t even dealt with yet, and the next high-ranking spirit was coming.

The forms of the high-ranking spirits Yennekar commanded rose one by one to mind. Each and every one was an out-of-spec existence against which a counter was outright impossible.

But the next high-ranking spirit was already poised to come crashing in. This was the stage where she had to formulate a plan for how to respond. Lamenting alone would change nothing.

What would be the next high-ranking spirit to come crashing in?

Merilda? Kidax? Velosper?

In a situation where she couldn’t predict what spirit of what attribute would arrive, Yennekar, magic power gathered, let her gaze gleam sharp.

“I’ll acknowledge you, Bell. In this Rothstaylor Mansion, taking you on with halfhearted restraint will only make the damage worse for nothing. I have to take a sure means.”

“……!”

In that instant, Bell realized it.

It wasn’t a high-ranking spirit.

***

Fwooooooosh!

The idea that one could break through the Rothstaylor Mansion by force alone was reckless. Among the upper classes of the Kroel Empire, that was already common knowledge.

There was no one who didn’t know it.

Not simply because the Rothstaylor siblings had broad connections with the Kroel Empire’s key figures. Purely and simply, it was because the forces guarding the Rothstaylor Mansion formed an unbreachable wall.

But that even that had been underestimated… who could have known it?

There was no one ignorant of the existence of Lucy Mayreel, the peerless archmage who wielded the highest-rank magic with nothing more than a flick of her fingers.

That was exactly why the other half bearing the twin wings of House Rothstaylor… the Elementalist Yennekar Palerover, might have looked relatively easy by comparison.

Just how arrogant and presumptuous a notion that was, only those who had faced that terror themselves could know.

The various garrison forces gathered at the Rothstaylor Mansion that day saw the sun die.

There is a black colossus that, merely by manifesting, blots out every source of light and dyes the world in darkness.

The figure of that demon, great enough to make even the mansion look like a toy, everything cloaked over like a shadow, looked as though it heralded the end of the world.

Those who had never once seen an ultimate spirit didn’t know the oppressive force of that existence.

It was a hidden weapon never summoned even once since graduating Silvenia, never drawn out save in a truly extreme crisis.

When the ultimate dark spirit Glasskan raised its head, the lights of the world began, one by one, to go out.

The coming of night. Before this spirit of darkness, even the sun bows its head.

“What… is that….”

Do not carelessly raise the banner of rebellion against the majesty of House Rothstaylor.

As if to proclaim that very fact, the roar of the black colossus that had lifted its head blanketed the area.

The emotion that most powerfully overtakes the human heart is primal fear. Only that fundamental fear, that one might, with a single misstep, die, is the special remedy that quells the seditious hearts of any force that would dare raise rebellion against an imperial ducal house.

The ceiling of the main hall where Bell and Yennekar faced off was blown away.

What came into view above was the night sky. It was daytime, and yet, a night sky.

Darkness without a single star. As if to symbolize this deep darkness in which nothing could be found, Glasskan’s right arm was blanketing the sky as seen looking up from the main hall.

Even the main hall ceiling, which had been covered over with Celestial Magic, was blown entirely away. As if to say that before an ultimate spirit, petty tricks using magic circles meant nothing at all… that monster had finished readying itself to smash everything in the world.

Fwooosh!

The hair of Yennekar, gripping her staff and gathering her magic power, was streaked white here and there. It meant she was giving her all.

The queen of spirits had come to this place. The hottest flame, the fiercest wind, the deepest darkness and the brightest light, all of them pledged their loyalty to her. The wellspring that composed the world, the spirits of every element, bowed their heads wholly before that girl.

The girl who always wore a gentle, comforting smile, with but a single lowering of her gaze, a deep chill ran through the entire main hall. The intent lingering in each and every one of those glances was, to all the spirits manifested in the main hall, an imperial command to be prioritized above all else.

Only then did the garrison soldiers realize. Her gentle, warm nature was a composure she could afford precisely because she was strong.

‘Glasskan…!’

Feeling her brain and bloodflow accelerate, Bell looked up at the manifested giant of darkness.

With things come to this, even resistance was impossible. A fully manifested ultimate spirit was a foe too much even for Ed Rothstaylor himself.

It was as Bell steadied her breathing and looked up at the slowly descending arm of Glasskan.

Fwooosh! Whoosh!

In that instant, a single ray of radiance bloomed up from Glasskan’s right arm.

That radiance, surging up in a flash, held a strength of light so mighty it could purify even this enormous spirit of darkness.

An ultimate dark spirit. On the entire continent, only a handful of people possessed the Holy Power needed to resist that deep darkness.

But against the saint’s inscription, etched by mobilizing all the Holy Power of the Telos Religious Group… even that power did not avail.

Crack! Whoosh!

Saint Clarice, springing out from the main hall’s second-floor railing, was casually drawing out Holy Magic against that enormous spirit of darkness. Even the deepest darkness was, to her, nothing more than an object to be purified.

“Wh… what?”

Whoom!

And then, before Bell, fallen into a state of exhaustion from the recoil of the Celestial Magic, a man landed. It seemed he’d leapt down from a window over by the guest room.

A figure whose authority pierced the heavens, yet this man, clad in nothing but simple blue trousers and a single shirt… wore a complicated, subtle expression.

Boom!

When he thrust out his hand and seized control of the area, the spirits that had dominated the surroundings were swept away in an instant by the aftermath of his magic power.

“That’s about enough, Yennekar.”

Yennekar caught her breath.

“E… Ed…?”