I Killed the Player of the Academy

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  “Uht?”

 

  She was pulled back into the red fog just like that.

  

  “Mr.
Charlie! Get up and run!”

 

  “U, uhh! What about you?”

 

  “Don’t worry about us and run outside until you’re out of the forest! And give me your robe!”

 

  “Huh?!”

 

  After helping him stand back up, I quickly cut off the buttons at the front of his robe and snatched it away.
Then, I quickly jumped into the Crimson Haze.

 

  “W, wait!”

 

  Without worrying about him, I jumped into the fog but as soon as I landed inside, I could feel my entire body being shredded apart with blood being sucked out in bulks.

 

  “I really didn’t want to do this a second time but…!”

 

  I was also locked in this fog once in the previous iteration because of a misstep.
Even though it was for less than a minute, I was still almost dead but I had the regeneration ability this time around so I would be able to last a lot longer.
The problem was Alicia.

  Unlike me who was about at the level of a Grade 2 regenerator, Alicia had nothing and it was questionable if she could even last more than 2 minutes with her bare body.

 

  I turned my eyes looking for her and discovered that she was a lot deeper inside than I thought.

 

  “Alicia!”

 

  “Uhkk, g, go away! Go away!”

 

  Alicia couldn’t get rid of the red hand that was holding onto her and was locked in place.
She was in a panic because of the tough restriction on her body and the constant depletion of her vitality. 

 

  Blood was already being sucked out from all over her body.
She would probably be unable to last very long.

 

  – Guwoooo

 

  – Kuwaaaa

 

  To make everything worse, there were even undead knights approaching from a distance.
Someone had to stop them.

 

  “M,Mr.
K, Korin… T, this is not coming off.
Please… please save me.
I, I might die at this rate.”

 

  Alicia said with a teary voice as teardrops fell from her eyes.
A potential death was always hard to get used to, and it was normal for girls of her age to show such a reaction at the face of it.

 

  I covered her body with the robe I took from Mr.
Charlie.
It would lower her exposure to the fog and would thus buy her a bit more time.

 

  “Mr.
K, Korin…?”

 

  “Calm down, Alicia Arden.
Nothing will happen if you continue doing that mindlessly.
You need to focus and commit your strongest move.
It’s easy.
As long as you calm down, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

 

  “B, but…”

 

  “I will now protect you from those undeads.
You know what you have to do, right?”

 

  “I, I can’t move my hands and, th, the fog is making me dizzy.
It hurts.”

 

  “Alicia.
Alicia…!”

 

  “Hikk…!”

 

  Lowering my head, I looked into her eyes under the robe.
After wiping the falling tears off of her shivering black eyes, I opened my mouth.

 

  “You can do it.
You can do a lot better than what you’re doing right now.”

 

  “Mr.
Korin? What do you…”

 

  “Just continue cutting and keep it up.
Just focus yourself on getting rid of this spell that’s holding you back.
Don’t worry about anything else.
I will protect you, so you focus on one thing.”

 

  “B, but… m, my hands are burning! I can’t clench my hands either…”

 

  “You are the greatest genius I’ve ever seen out of all the swordsmen I’ve met.
You can do anything as long as you want to.
It’s just one step.
Alicia Arden.
One step is enough.”

 

  After that, I held onto my spear.

 

  I trusted her.

 

  I trusted her ability to cut something that trivial.

 

  ****

 

  ｢Alicia POV｣

 

  It was painful and it was scorching hot.
Plus, the feeling of blood being sucked out from every hole around my body gave me goosebumps. 

 

  I could smell a heavy scent of rusted iron, like the one back when I first cut a person. 

 

  The blood-colored hand inside the red fog was clinging onto me like a magnet without ever letting go of me.
A thin arm like this was supposed to be easy to cut.

 

  Swinging my sword once was supposed to be enough.

 

  – Tang!

 

  Uhh…

 

  Unlike what was in my mind, the sword was flung off.

 

  The demon-slaying sword that was said to cut anything in existence couldn’t even cut a simple spell like this and was bounced off.

 

  W, was that not strong enough? One more time!

 

  – Taang!

 

  N, no.
It’s aura.
I need more aura…

 

  – Taang!

 

  Is it my posture? So that’s the problem! Let me straighten my body and…

 

  I knew something was wrong, but I just didn’t know how it was supposed to be fixed, nor what the exact issue was.

 

  Why wasn’t it being cut?

 

  Why was the sword getting parried off?

 

  This is not right.
This is weird!

 

  Meanwhile, the spell was continuing to squeeze my body.
The veins around my eyeballs popped and blood fell like tears, as despair soared from the bottom of my heart.

 

  Ahh… I shouldn’t have tried to save him.
I shouldn’t have come back to help.

 

  I was regretting when I suddenly thought of my benefactor.

 

  I remembered the person who saved me, created an antidote for someone like me who was whining from a simple paralysis and blew on the medicine before bringing it to my mouth.

 

  Wasn’t he so injured that he had to sear his wound with fire…?

 

  Didn’t he willingly give me his hand when I was crying from the bandaging process?

 

  After meeting him, I didn’t want to be a disgraceful person.
I wanted to become someone who could willingly sacrifice myself for the sake of others.

 

  But look at me now.

 

  A quick regret and bursting into tears…

 

  I’m sorry.

 

  I’m sorry.
Someone like me… shouldn’t have been saved by a person like you…

 

  “Alicia!”

 

  That was when the boy came to save me.
He jumped into the fog of death without any hesitation just to save me.

 

  No.
Don’t do that.
Run.

 

  I can’t even last here for that long.
Why did you come in when your Aura Rank is a lot lower than mine? How are you even going to survive?

 

  “Mr.
K, Korin… T, this is not coming off.
Please… please save me.
I, I might die at this rate.”

 

  Unlike the thoughts that were going through my mind, my mouth blabbered about something completely different. 

 

  However, I knew this was my honest self.

 

  You idiot.

 

  Selfish Alicia.

 

  A stupid coward.

 

  Why didn’t you tell him to run away? You should’ve told him to leave you behind.
Why are you asking him to cut the spell for you when you couldn’t even do it yourself?

 

  – Rustle!

 

  It was then.
I was crying in an unsightly manner when Mr.
Korin threw a robe over my body.

 

  “Mr.
K, Korin…?”

 

  “Calm down, Alicia Arden.
Nothing will happen if you continue doing that mindlessly.
You need to focus and commit your strongest move.
It’s easy.
As long as you calm down, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

 

  “B, but…”

 

  His voice was very low and was reminiscent of a similar voice that I heard before.
Why was I suddenly thinking about that now?

 

  “I will now protect you from those undeads.
You know what you have to do, right?”

 

  Only then did I see the undeads that were slowly walking through the fog.
I was crying so much that I hadn’t been able to see them through my foggy eyes.

 

  Was he going to protect me here? By himself? Even though he was stronger than me… was he going to protect me inside this red fog? Why?

 

  “I, I can’t move my hands and, th, the fog is making me dizzy.
It hurts.”

 

  He was risking his life for me, and yet the only thing I could say in return was something like this.

 

  Whinging and complaining that it was painful and scary.
Someone like me was incomparably worse than the benefactor let alone the boy in front.

 

  It’s because I was a fool like this that I could not say anything in front of Sister Lunia…

 

  “Alicia.
Alicia…!”

 

  “Hikk…!”

 

  In this pressing situation, the boy grabbed on my shoulders and wiped the tears from my eyes before opening his mouth.

 

  “You can do it.
You can do a lot better than what you’re doing right now.”

 

  “Mr.
Korin? What do you…”

 

  “Just continue slashing and keep it up.
Just focus yourself on getting rid of this spell that’s holding you back.
Don’t worry about anything else.
I will protect you, so you focus on one thing.”

 

  “B, but… m, my hands are burning! I can’t clench my hands either…”

 

  “You are the greatest genius I’ve ever seen out of all the swordsmen I’ve met.
You can do anything as long as you want to.
It’s just one step.
Alicia Arden.
One step is enough.”

 

  Leaving those words behind, the boy lifted up his dazzling silver spear.
Showing me his back, he faced the undeads.

 

  He was not throwing me away.

 

  “…”

 

  If you stand up like that, I really have to force myself to do it then, don’t I…? But I don’t feel confident.
I’m sure I’ll fail.

 

  The fallen ego and the endless sense of self-doubt was burying me alive.

 

  ｢Lack of practice from over-reliance on talent.｣

 

  Yes.
I was lazy until now.
I never even tried working hard.

 

  Ever since that day when I first cut someone… my sword had been stagnant.

 

  I’m just a fool, so why…

 

 ｢But talent-wise, you’re better｣ 

 

  Why did he have so much trust in my talent even when he was comparing me to unni?

 

  ｢You can do it.｣

 

  “Kuhup…!”

 

  Swallowing the scorching beads of tears, I held onto my sword.

 

  The words, ‘give up’ were gone from my head.
I didn’t even have the time to think about anything negative.

 

  There was someone believing in me. 

 

  There was someone who saved someone like me, as well as someone who was trying to save me.

 

  My Benefactor and Mr Korin had planted it in my heart – trust for myself.

 

  Grabbing the scabbard with one hand, I sheathed the cold blade back in.

 

  Grandpa’s killing move – the strongest sword strike in the world.
This move was something that could slash through anything in existence.
And thus… I knew there was something I had to use beforehand when using this.

 

Eyes of the Boundary.

 

  A cursed talent that forced me to look into the Domain.

 

  Inside the darkness of the Domain, I was all alone.

 

  It made me feel like I was left alone by myself in the world.

 

  An endless sea of darkness that made it look as if I would drown with a single misstep.
The darkness that I would see through these eyes was so scary, and because I knew no-one could help me from falling into that dark ocean with no bottom in sight…

 

  I had been frightened of opening these eyes until now.

 

  —–————–

 

  The world stopped.

 

  In a world of utmost concentration… even the sound of blood drops was no longer reaching my ears.

 

  I was all alone in this shivering world.
The coldness brought by the ebb threatening to swallow my ankles made me tremble.

 

  Am I alone?

 

  Am I… by myself in this place again?

 

  As soon as I was about to be swept away by the wave, my eyes met with someone’s.

 

  Korin Lork.

 

  He was looking at me from the front with his spear in hand.

 

  Ah… I wasn’t alone.

 

  You were with me in the same world as me.

 

  A coward.

 

  You stupid retard.

  

  You idiot who needs someone to be by your side just to take a single step forward.

 

  I finally opened my eyes in full.

 

  For the first time, I gazed into it.

 

  Looking at the foreign substances of this world, I accepted the darkness and stared into the boundary.

 

  The falling tears, the dripping drops of blood and the torrent of emotions… they all became fuel for that one step forward within the suspended world.

 

  – Guhahaha.

 

  I saw a hazy figure through the fog.
An old evil that looked horrendous was showing a nasty smile while looking at his two sacrifices.

 

  ｢It’s just one step.
Alicia Arden.
One step is enough.｣

 

  Finally, I took a step forward in the black ocean for the first time – it was a full and complete step forward.

 

❰Arden First Sword Style: Domain Severance❱

 

  The sword that was swung inside the Domain while ignoring the limitations of physics —

 

  —- It slashed through the restriction,

 

  Through the crimson fog,

 

  And cleaved every evil hidden inside the mist.