webnovel

Chapter 74 - The Entrance Exam [2]

A/N: Very long chap for my standards, nearly 3,000 words. Imma try and post longer chaps from now if the situation allows. I'll see though.

E/N: My opinion, split these 3,000 word chaps into two parts or even three parts at the very least, and then publish them at different times to get more reader retention and better stats.

A/N: Now that I think about it you're right, instead of posting long ass chaps shorter but more frequent ones are probably better.

Examiner POV:

I currently had two youths in front of me, both of whom were of nobility, and high ranking nobility at that. The one to my left was an elegantly built, expressionless young woman. She was around 5'9"/175.3cm. She was a person from the famed Valkyr family. They had the blood of the infamous Valkyries flowing through their veins.

She was the weakest among the nine main 'siblings'. Their family was a rather large family, they almost all exclusively worked as knights for their country's Royal family. They were a marquis house, and their power tended to manifest more in their female offspring than their male counterparts. However, there were occasions when one of the boys from the nine from the main family awakened the power of a Valkyrie.

Their physiology was interesting. The main branch always had 9 children every generation. And supposedly, no more children could be born from the main house until one of the 9 died. But the power of the newly born child and the recently deceased child's weren't necessarily the same. Each of the 9 bore a different power, each power having something to do with Valkyries from Norse Mythology.

Anyways, the child in front of me, Luna Valkyr, was the weakest of the 9. However she, like some of the other 9, was an academic genius.

The other one was Valier Pendragon. The revered 'Ghost Of The Pendragons.' A boy who should have died around six years ago. A person who survived in a foreign country not through strength nor intelligence, but through tenacity.

He was actually a fairly well respected person despite not appearing in an official scene since the Imperial Princess' 8th or 9th birthday a while back. Because of his lack of official appearances, I doubted that he was aware of his reputation.

But anyways, although his talent was only somewhat above average, what we cared about was that tenacity. From the second he entered my- or rather, this Academy, he was registered as a student.

That unstoppable desire to survive and grow was a highly valued talent. But that talent only served to inspire the others and to become the catalyst to their growths.

Valier Pendragon, The Ghost of The Pendragons, and Luna Valkyr, The Weakest of the Nine. Both were strange.

But Valier. His presence, and by extension, his entire being, gave me a weird vibe. Looking at him was... unsettling. Sort of like when you look at some monster on a battlefield, or some gruesome corpse. It made me uncomfortable, and that was honestly embarrassing.

But his entire being seems weird, as if he was not something that was supposed to exist.

It was like he was not a human, but an entirely different existence.

And Luna Valkyr, she should've been much stronger, yet she could not even become a mage. All she had was an all too weak Valkyric Physique.

'Whatever though, this needs to start.'

"Begin."

Valier POV:

'Luna Valkyr.' That was my opponent, she was weak. And she became an antagonist with the power to control blood. At this stage, she could probably only make her own blood float.

She slaughtered her own family, her country's Royal Family and whoever stood in her way. She somehow got a huge boost of power, but was pretty quickly killed off. The main character had killed her for whatever reason, but basically, she was used as a plot device to display the main character's power.

Anyways, she possessed two bloodlines. One of which I'm sure she's unaware of.

The Bloodline of the Vampires and the Valkyries.

The Valkyries have a natural attraction towards items related to Odin while they were practically subservient to Odin. Unless of course they had feelings strong enough to break away from that power.

My goals had always been to take control of Luna Valkyr, 'The Bloodstained Valkyrie.' She was someone whose existence wouldn't affect the plot or me too much, her morality could be described as ambiguous, so she wouldn't judge me too much if I had to do some rather unpleasant things in the eyes of certain people.

I also had the Missing Eye of Odin, so I'd hopefully be able to influence her. But currently, the eye was dormant. Its power had slowly been leaking out though. My power to see what spell was going to be cast was due to the Eye of Odin since he was the God of Magic.

I say 'hopefully' because of how overwhelming her desire to garner the approval of the other 8 Valkyries was. She had an inferiority complex and her entire personality was always about surpassing them. But after she made contact with one of her sisters, she supposedly found something utterly repulsive about the royals and the Valkyr family entirely. And ultimately, this led her to exterminate every person bearing the name Valkyr.

She intended to kill herself too, but the main character sort of killed her. To be fair, she did hold up in her fight against him,

I formed a sword in my hand and cut my hand. Blood seeped from the wound, the blood that landed on the ground made the floor slowly dissolve.

'Poison Blood.' This was an ability granted by the Artifact of Hassan-I-Sabbah and my Weapon Creation working together. I had decided to activate this ability the other day, if one day, my blood randomly started to burn and poison it'd be a bit odd. But since my blood hadn't been drawn in over a year, I couldn't just say that it was my Dragonic Physique doing its thing.

But I digress, I intended to let her taste some of my blood.

The method of awakening the Bloodline of the Vampires was to allow them to taste the blood of an Ancient. You know, a Dragon or an Angel… or, a Demon.

She might have her tongue melt slightly but it was fine, someone could heal her. My poison wasn't strong nor was it too acidic, so I doubted it'd do too much to her.

So far, Irene thought that my 'Dragon' Bloodline granted me a physique, so I'd be going along with that. Like I said, I'd basically just say that Dragon's Blood is poisonous and with how little was known about the Ancients, no one would be able to disagree.

I took a deep breath and slowly circled around towards her, and then, I used flash step to close the distance. I didn't even try too hard, she wasn't a mage and all she had was her physique which wasn't even properly developed. However, when the tip of my sword began to approach her throat, she drew her own sword in a way that would force our swords to make contact.

And so I retreated back and headed back to my side, I pushed off against the ground with such force that a small crater was formed just in front of Luna. I then looked at her, seeing that there was a small knife in her other hand, the knife was placed roughly where my stomach was.

Hold on. Did she predict that I'd go for her throat? She shouldn't be able to react to me, so she decided to predict what I'd do and decided that I'd go for her throat. She was likely aware that I'd be able to pierce through her sword with mine, which was why she had a small knife in front of her, she was hoping I wouldn't be able to see her knife.

Of course, at my height, you wouldn't normally look that far down, but I could see more than anyone else even without the use of my Demonic Eyes.

Her knife seemed to be extremely well made, in fact, it was sharp enough to pierce me. You know, I'd love to copy it, but it seemed that there were copy conditions that I never knew about.

And, with a bit of thinking, I was able to figure out that copying took a significant amount of Demonic Energy, it needed me to fully understand the weapon, and I also just couldn't copy certain weapons.

And I believe I'd mentioned it before, but my copy wasn't always as strong as the original.

But anyways, my blades were far more powerful than anything she had, so now that I think about it I don't really want to copy her knife.

"Your blood is acidic, and not only that, it's odorless? Interesting, it seems like you're also someone who's rather weak. And like me, you have to resort to tricks."

This was the first time I had heard Luna speak, her voice sounded so utterly uncaring. But I knew well that it was merely an act. She cared about this exam to a great extent. Her current goal was to merely get along with her siblings.

She was a pitiful creature, so I'd give her my blood and bring out what she truly was. Ah, and I should mention this, the Valkyrie's power she held was Brynhildr. Her power later on was to manifest armor, as Brynhildr's name originated from a word that meant armor.

Every one of the 9 usually had a power related to a Valkyrie from Norse Mythology. But I didn't really know what name the other 8 bore to be honest. The whole name thing was similar to Demon Blood's 'True Name' thing, Demon Bloods had a lot of different abilities to balance out the existence of Holy Magic.

But it didn't really matter right now. All that mattered was catalyzing her growth and gaining... a puppet? Or maybe a weapon? Or perhaps a hunting dog would be more accurate.

"I'm not particularly skilled with the blade, so all I can do is poison you. Especially since I'm not too fond of the idea of fighting you head on with those tricks you have up your sleeve."

This was a lie. Right now I could see hundreds of ways to kill her, one of which was to simply slice her in half, or I could crush her throat, or I could make her skeletal structure collapse with a punch.

I clenched my empty hand into a fist, it seemed that after killing people for so long, killing people had now become a sort of desire. It had been so long since I had fought, and now there was an opportunity to kill. I wanted to kill her, not for any particular reason, but for the sake of satisfying myself.

This was perhaps... the first true desire I had in this world.

'But I suppose I can't kill anyone for a bit, I'll just have to hold myself back.'

I reached into my pocket, and using the 'Spatial Storage' ability I had obtained from a Hassan long ago, I pulled out a box of cigarettes. I just reached into my pocket to make it look like they didn't appear out of nowhere. I took a cigarette out and slipped the box into my pocket.

Then, I heard Godsbane's voice.

'I never thought I'd see a 15 year old who was addicted to killing and to smoking. But still... how bad is your addiction? You're smoking in the middle of an entrance exam?'

Godsbane reprimanded my 'addiction', of course, he, she, or it? Was very wrong.

'Shut it, I can stop whenever I want. Smoking just calms me down, how else am I supposed to ward off my cravings? Would you prefer I went on a massacre every time I felt the urge to kill, to crush or to destroy?'

'You've made your point, I suppose smoking is fine if it satisfies your cravings. Not sure why it does that, but it's fine I suppose.'

I used regular flame magic to light it, and I placed the cigarette in my mouth. Blood was still slowly flowing down my hand, my sword still had some blood left on it as well.

There were multiple efficient ways to force her to ingest my blood, but I couldn't use those. It'd be odd if I somehow were able to out skill an actual genius. She was a talented fighter, for someone who was physically not that strong, she was impressive.

I concentrated and changed the shape of my sword, it changed into a spear. The blood from my hand began to coat the spear in its entirety. I spun it around in my hand and began to advance.

And then, I pushed against the ground, at the same time I intentionally tightened the muscles in my legs and slightly damaged the bones in my legs.

I had performed a 'pseudo flash step', it was a weaker version of Flash Step that I had thought of. I had designed it to be significantly less effective than the original, but if I wanted to be accepted I had to have some amount of strength.

As my body began to get into her range, I twisted my body and sweeped her feet off the ground with my spear, causing her to fall. I then aimed my spear at her, her mouth was wide open and my blood seeped into her.

The announcer looked at us both and told us to leave, the winner was obvious.

I had shown that I was at least reasonably proficient with at least two weapons, I had decided that it'd be more fun to be an 'averagely powered yet rather skilled' type of person.

I had mentioned that I would allow myself to be good at a few things, but I thought it'd be more fun to show off some of my skills.

Examiner POV:

Once the match was over, I informed the two youths that they'd both been accepted. Usually, they'd be told after, but I was different. I headed up to a room that had cameras watching every exam being held. I placed a hand on my face and my face began to warp.

I took off the mask I had been wearing, and took a deep breath. My body began to shiver. I had found what I had been looking for. I had been wanting to see someone, or something like him.

Not a talented young person, not a genius.

But a monster. He was a genuine monster, not only that, but he was also a Demon Blood. My instincts told me that he was an extremely pure blooded Demon Blood. Not only that, but he wasn't an actual living being.

He was something between being dead and alive, and I could sense something weird about his heart. My gut told me that he was an impossibility.

"Some might call him a miracle."

'Man, being the principal at this school is an awesome job.'

"But still, I wonder if it's fine. Letting mere geniuses step foot into the same room as that monster. But then again, there is another monster."

On one of the cameras, two young men could be seen. The entire room had craters in it, scorch marks along the wall, and the terrain had been completely altered.

On one end, there was youth with blonde hair and blue eyes. He was in a crater on the wall, and on the other end there was a young man with black hair and white, glowing eyes.

The black haired boy was none other than Artorius Astedalle. The other 'monster' in this Academy. He possessed no Bloodline ability, he only had three things in his arsenal. His overwhelming Mana Capacity, and his Heavenly Restriction which allowed him to exclusively use Holy Magic.

Well, I (Anastasia) didn't know what that third thing was. But I could tell that he had something up his sleeve, I believed it was a Rune but I honestly have no clue.

And the other one, Leon Gladius. His skin was unnaturally durable even for his family. I surmised that he too, had a Rune. Perhaps it was still developing or forming.

"Either way, this year is going to be interesting. A monster with a nearly boundless Mana pool, a monster who's got so many cards up his sleeve that I can't even count, and of course the geniuses and talents in between them."

Edited By: WorthyAdversary

Nächstes Kapitel