Subject Runes - V1 Chapter 3

“Now that we’ve picked a club, it’s a little early, but want to go take care of the dorm registration?”

Blonmarch Knight Academy had separate dormitories for male and female students, and we were about to head over to complete the move-in procedure. The dorms stood on the opposite side of the forest from the academy facilities like the research and training buildings, about a ten-minute walk away.

As we strolled through the forest on the way there, taking it easy, someone called out to stop us.

“Hey. Hold it, you little shits.”

When we turned around, Hardin was there waiting for us with the same lackeys from the cafeteria. There were six male students in total.

“You didn’t seriously think you were getting away with that, did you?”

Hardin raised his magic wand and grinned. The five boys with him drew their wooden practice swords as they smirked and surrounded us.

“This spot’s in the way. Come with us.”

Apparently these bastards were dead set on hurting us no matter what. Running would only mean they’d keep hounding us forever, so the only choice was to protect Marl and fight.

“Fine.”

We let Hardin and his group lead us deeper into the forest.

At this knight academy, duels between students were a common thing, and safety measures had been put in place to prevent deaths or severe injuries. For example, the only weapons allowed on campus were wooden practice swords. If anyone used anything else, they would be expelled.

On top of that, the entire academy was constantly covered by a magical defensive shield. Any spell cast would vanish the moment it activated. In exchange, the system calculated how much damage the spell would have dealt and converted that amount into a stun attack.

As we walked, Hardin’s lackeys kept running their mouths.

“You idiots really screwed up. If you go against Hardin-san, he won’t show mercy.”

“You should surrender before you get wrecked. Starting tomorrow, we’ll use you as our errand boys.”

“And that girl over there? We’ll pamper her like our little pet.”

Surrounded by those grinning, disgusting little creeps, we eventually reached a slightly open patch deep in the woods. The second we got there, Hardin stepped back from us and began chanting a spell.

【※●▽X◇％◎・・・・】

This asshole was planning to fire the moment he could.

At the same time, the lackeys all raised their swords and came at us in a rush. Faced with a group that clearly had no intention of showing even a shred of restraint, Neon and I exchanged a quick glance. Shielding Marl, I aimed my wand at one of the lackeys.

【Burn them to ash.】

Neon’s spell and mine took only two seconds from chant to activation.

The two flames launched from us almost at the same instant, each hitting a different male student and throwing them into a stunned state. In that opening, we pulled Marl with us, broke through their encirclement, and managed to put some distance between us.

“What the hell?! Their magic activated almost instantly…”

Hardin had started chanting before we had, but our Fire spells activated long before his own. The sight completely stunned him.

Normally, for magic to activate, even beginner-level spells with the shortest chants still required at least ten to twenty seconds from chant to activation. And yet we had triggered ours instantly with a single line.

From Hardin’s point of view, a couple of low-ranking noble brats had just pulled off high-speed chanting that shattered common sense. He was so shaken that his concentration broke, and his spell dispersed midway through the chant.

“Damn it!”

He began chanting again, but the panic was already obvious in his face.

Hardin’s group weren’t the only ones rattled. Dan, who had been fighting multiple boys at once, also couldn’t quite make sense of what he had just seen. But…

“We’re taking down Hardin first. Dan, Marl is counting on you.”

“Got it.”

He shoved aside the stuff he didn’t understand and refocused on the fight. While the lackeys were still confused, he pulled back for a moment and ran over to Marl.

“I’ll leave Hardin to those two and deal with the rest of these bastards myself. Stay behind a tree.”

“Okay. But I’m good at healing magic, so leave that to me!”

Marl hid behind a tree and began chanting so she could cast Heal at any time. Dan fired himself back up, pointed his sword at the three boys still standing, and charged them with a yell.

Neon, who had attacked Hardin first, kept firing off repeated Fire spells. Hardin really did have high magical defense, as expected of the child of a mid-ranking noble. Beginner-level Fire spells alone weren’t enough to stack enough damage to bring him down.

Still, every time he got hit by magic, his own spell was interrupted and erased, so if this kept up, he was screwed. Sounding almost like he was shrieking, Hardin called for his lackeys.

“What the hell are you idiots doing?! Take these two down first!”

The two boys who had recovered from being stunned staggered to their feet and moved toward Azoth in response to Hardin’s order. As for the other three, they were barely managing to stay even with Dan while fighting three-on-one. If even one of them broke away, Dan would crush the rest immediately, so they couldn’t spare anyone for support.

“This guy’s strong!”

“We still can’t beat him even with three of us!”

The damage kept piling up on those three, and their movements were getting worse by the second. Dan, meanwhile, was being healed from behind by Marl’s Heal. In other words, the longer this dragged on, the more the battle tilted in Dan’s favor.

“Neon, keep him pinned a little longer. I’m going to use that.”

“Got it.”

“They’re planning something! Get over here and help me already!”

Ignoring Hardin’s panicked screaming, I began my chant.

【Burn them to ash, endless flames: Intermediate Fire Magic, Flare.】

There was no way the lackeys could stop Azoth within the span of a chant that short, and a magic circle for the intermediate fire spell Flare appeared above Hardin’s head. The academy-wide defensive shield erased the spell just before Flare could activate, but the damage taken in exchange far exceeded Hardin’s magical defense, and the resulting stun attack knocked him out in a single hit.

“Gwaaaaahhh!”

Hardin collapsed to the ground and went silent. He was out of the fight.

That only left the five lackeys.

“W-Wait a second.”

“We give up. We lost.”

They had already lost their will to fight. Not wanting to get hurt any worse, the lackeys surrendered fast. But since these idiots had let Hardin wind them up into attacking us in the first place, they might try this shit again.

Just to be safe, I needed to hammer some fear straight into their bodies.

“No. The weak aren’t allowed to defy the strong. That’s the other rule of noble society in a time of war.”

Neon and I drew our practice swords and brought them down mercilessly from overhead, smashing the lackeys’ swords out of their hands. Then I slammed my blade hard into one boy’s torso. He let out a pained grunt and doubled forward.

I kicked him in the back and sent him sprawling face-first onto the ground.

“Don’t ever show your face in front of us again.”

“…Like hell. This won’t be the end of it with Hardin.”

“Then I’ll make it hurt worse. I’ll beat you until you start wanting to stop that idiot yourselves.”

“H-Hiiiii!”

As I kept pounding their backs, shoulders, arms, and legs, I repeated the same order over and over.

“So? Ready to stop that idiot now?”

“…O-Okay. We promise, so please stop already.”

That was finally the answer I had wanted to hear, so I stopped.

“Good. Then get your friends to the infirmary before the school closes. And don’t ever let me see those faces again.”

When I looked around, the rest of the lackeys had already been knocked unconscious. The boy who had gone after Neon had been stunned by magic, and the other three had been beaten down by Dan and passed out.

“The two who got stunned won’t be waking up for a while. Wake those three up, and then deal with the rest yourselves.”

With that, we left Hardin and his group there and headed back the way we had come.

“Hey, that spell earlier had a really short chant. How the hell did you do that?”

Marl asked, clearly intrigued.

“Normally, if you chant the whole incantation, even a basic spell takes at least over ten seconds. But there’s actually a way to shorten the spell.”

“No way! I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

Dan was staring at me with the same shocked look.

“It’s our little secret, but maybe I’ll teach you sometime.”

““Hell yes!””

Watching Dan and Marl celebrate, I found myself remembering how I had first discovered that secret.

I was a reincarnator.

I had originally been an ordinary Japanese high school student, but I had been reincarnated into this world ten years ago. And because I had come from Japan, I was able to notice something.

There was a secret hidden inside the magic of this world.

All magical incantations were in Japanese.

Over time, the pronunciation had changed as the words were passed down orally since ancient times, so right now I could only clearly recognize a few parts. But the long chants were definitely all Japanese. That was why I discovered that if you pronounced even just some of those words correctly, in proper Japanese, you could activate magic with plenty of power without chanting the whole spell.

When had I realized it?

It happened when I was still a child, during one of the many days I spent practicing chants over and over. In the middle of one incantation, I heard a phrase I recognized. The moment I tried pronouncing it in Japanese, the spell activated.

After that, I started examining several other spells, and I found more Japanese words hidden inside them too.

Because of the fight with Hardin and the others, way more time had passed than I thought. Even though we had wrapped things up early after joining the club, the sun had already started to sink, and the trees in the forest were dyed by the evening glow.

Dorm registration had probably already started. We’d better hurry. The four of us quickened our pace and headed for the dorms. As soon as we came out of the forest, the dorm buildings came into view. The boys’ and girls’ dormitories stood side by side, one building each. Since the school was fully residential, both were pretty damn huge.

For the next three years, this was where we’d be living. It was my first time living apart from my family, and that alone was enough to get me fired up.

“Thanks for today. See you tomorrow.”

Marl waved and headed toward the girls’ dorm.

“All right. Let’s hurry up and finish our own registration.”

With the darkening sunset sky behind us, the three of us ran into the boys’ dorm.