The Academy’s Ankle Reaper – Chapter 118

Lucia noticed something strange right after finishing the registration of the scores for the hunted monsters.

She felt groups stealthily approaching from all around her.

‘Are there eight…? No, they’re not monsters.’

They walked on two legs and weren’t particularly large.

Their size was similar to that of humans.

In the Black Forest, there are monsters that are either smaller or larger than humans, but none walk on two legs and are the same size as people.

They weren’t monsters; they were humans.

Were they aiming to eliminate her?

Lucia could glean this information just by standing still.

She felt the faint vibrations of the soft soil in the Black Forest.

She wore shoes, but the ability to sense such minute vibrations was thanks to the special training she had undertaken so far.

‘The rock’ must become one with the ground.

Though it wasn’t physically possible to literally drive her feet into the ground like an animal in combat, it was possible to merge her body with the earth.

It sufficed for the ground to be connected to her body through some means.

Just like Lemnos absorbed the mana in the air with his special mana cultivation method and released it as hot energy,

Russell cultivates her mana by absorbing and releasing the meridians flowing through the ground with her feet—those parts of her body that touch the earth.

As a result, when Russell breathes, her breath spreads in all directions, allowing her to sense the tremors around her like a radar.

The vibrations were getting closer.

Suddenly, a massive wolf, much larger than an ordinary adult, flashed into Lucia’s mind—the Dream Wolf.

She didn’t actively hunt the Dream Wolves herself.

They were the ones that first targeted Lucia when she wandered alone in the forest, gathering in groups to find her.

‘…I guess I’ve been underestimated. Is it because I’m alone?’

The two-handed sword in her hand glowed with a blue aura, like flames.

The footsteps quickened.

Had they realized she noticed them? They had been circling slowly, but now they were charging straight towards her.

“…!!!”

In the distance, she felt the flow of mana and the incantation forming.

It looked like they were using an attack spell.

A very standard tactic: one attacking from a distance while the rest surrounded her.

Unlike usual, Lucia didn’t lift her sword with one hand this time.

This time, she gripped her two-handed sword with both hands, raising it above her head in a high guard.

She assumed a crouching position like a predator, reminiscent of a tiger.

An ‘Inferno’ fireball—the attack spell aimed directly at her—came into view.

Behind it, six students, each tightening their grip on their weapons, rushed toward her.

One held a net, while another had a chain.

First, the chain was thrown, followed by the net spreading wide.

It was a pincer attack from the opposite direction of the incoming fireball.

Behind the net, people armed with various melee weapons like spears and swords appeared.

There wasn’t an escape route in sight.

Even in this life-threatening moment, Lucia remained calm.

She used to tremble at the thought of merely talking to others, but in front of these eight figures, she was completely unshaken.

Merged with the ground, Lucia was like a rock, and the Lucia wielding the sword was one with her surroundings.

Rocks don’t get scared.

“… Falling Rocks!”

The predator struck down with its forepaw.

Instead of striking at the students charging towards her, Lucia slammed her sword into the ground.

-Thunk!!!

Soil soared into the sky.

The ground was turned upside down.

“…… Is this enough?”

Lucia’s surroundings were utterly devastated.

The black soil had been turned over as if a mortar had landed, and remnants of plants were strewn about.

The rock’s sword, ‘Falling Rocks,’ was a technique that delivered powerful physical energy like a boulder plummeting from a cliff.

“Ugh… ugh…”

“That’s just too much…”

Before her lay the eight figures collapsed like corpses.

Several fallen monsters were littered about as well, but humans outnumbered them.

“You attacked first…”

The two groups ended up targeting Lucia and got turned on instead.

They had thought it would be easy to ambush her because she was alone.

Of the five teams that participated, two weren’t that serious, but one was a formidable team, believing they could take down a solitary Lucia.

However, what they didn’t consider was that they had never witnessed Lucia fight properly.

Dueling was forbidden, and aside from a skill evaluation they had seen when she entered the academy, almost no one had seen her wield a sword, so they all forgot about it.

They had forgotten why Russell was called the Sword of the Five Pillars.

“Well then… I’ll be taking this.”

Lucia approached the students sprawled out like sack cloths and removed the rings off their fingers one by one.

Each time she took a ring, a magic circle’s light flickered, and she vanished into the forest.

For the Hunting Festival, if a ring is lost or broken, the rules dictate that it automatically teleports outside the forest, which is why she was removing them in advance.

“Ah… no… I must absolutely… win in this tournament…”

“… Well, you should have won then.”

One by one, as the students began to disappear, the last one desperately twisted his body to shove his arm beneath him.

He seemed determined to protect the ring, but it was futile resistance.

Lucia grabbed his arm and twisted it by force.

“Aahhhh!!!”

“…Resisting is meaningless…”

Without a hint of empathy, Lucia twisted his arm, similar to bending a mannequin’s limb, and despite the sound of cracking from his shoulder, she took the ring with little care.

‘I’ve caught more humans than monsters…’

Up until now, Lucia had only hunted two monsters alone, but she’d just taken down eight people—she resembled a human hunter.

She didn’t have any grand purpose for the Hunting Festival.

It was merely a festival she had to participate in, and getting good results came naturally, so she was doing her best.

“… I miss Atlas.”

Today, she hadn’t seen Atlas at all.

He had gone off early in the morning to prepare for the opening of the tea house on the second day of Class 5, while Lucia should have gone off to prepare for the Hunting Festival as well.

Naturally, Lucia thought Atlas would participate in the festival, but it shocked her when he said he wouldn’t.

It felt as if her common sense had been shaken.

“Why is he being so stubborn…”

Without Atlas, and he didn’t even team up with her, she felt indignant and, out of frustration, went ahead and entered alone.

What a useless stubbornness it was.

Being alone brought a lot of annoyance and discomfort.

While she couldn’t be sure how it looked from a third-person perspective, after entering alone without team members, she was treated as easy pickings, and she had to handle everything by herself.

It was really a lot more inconvenient than she imagined.

“!!!”

Sensing a suspicious presence, Russell swung her sword, and a round sword qi shot forth like a cannon, blasting the trunk of a tree.

The rock’s sword ‘Catapult’—while sword qi is usually manifested as a sharp slash, Russell’s was uniquely powerful and delivered like a stone shot from a catapult.

“Let’s exchange pleasantries.”

“You…!”

Effortlessly evading the cannon-like strike, landing lightly on another branch, was Casey, her silver hair billowing in the wind.

—

-Thunk!!!!

A sound like a bomb exploding filled the air.

It was so loud that the ground trembled beneath them, feeling as if a small earthquake had struck.

“Quite a show…”

“Did they set off some five-circle or higher magic?”

While Amy felt the tremors in the air, she stared intently in the direction of the epicenter, unlike the two who were simply shocked.

“… Let’s head over there.”

“To where the explosion happened?”

“Yes, if there’s been an explosion of that magnitude, we might encounter monsters that fled from there.”

“Come to think of it, that makes sense?”

Having just formed her team, Amy stepped into her role as a leader.

She had a clear plan on how to move and exactly what direction to take, and she issued precise commands.

So far, they had already hunted five monsters according to her orders.

At first glance, it seemed many, but Amy’s words were imbued with strength.

“But other teams will likely aim for that too and move in that direction; do you think it’ll be alright?”

“It’s fine. I don’t think we’ll lose… Besides, if we’re aiming for victory, we have to accept some risks.”

“I’m on board.”

“… Alright. But let’s keep a sharp lookout as we move.”

“Yes.”

—

“Now this makes… nine monsters!!”

The blazing flame sword sliced through the chest of a monster.

Unable to even scream, the bear-like monster, Ratbear, with a face resembling a rat, lay lifeless, its chest torn as if clawed by a lion.

“Aaaaaah!!!”

Edgar naturally approached the Ratbear’s corpse to register it by placing the ring on it, but Cindy screamed after witnessing the scene.

“Damn, didn’t I tell you not to do it like that?! Who hunts like this?! You ruined the hide!!”

“No matter how you do it, the points are the same!”

“I’m telling you; it’s frustratingly inefficient!!”

Cindy Lue, hailing from a noble elven family, learned hunting as part of her essential education.

For elves, hunting means partaking in the forest’s grace, continuing their lives through the sacrifices of other beings, and being part of the grand cycle of nature.

Thus, they learn not only how to hunt effectively but also respect for the prey they sacrifice to sustain their own life.

Elven hunting prefers methods that minimize damage to the corpse, using bows or magic.

This was partly for quality control over what could be harvested from the prey, but it was also their way of giving the utmost respect by sending the prey off without altering its form too much.

However, Lemnos’s swordsmanship was far from such ethics.

His fiery sword didn’t cut but rather tore apart and incinerated, leaving the prey in utter ruin.

This sight was deeply painful for Cindy.

“Then you should have dealt with it before I got here!”

“You’re too fast for me to do anything before it’s over!!”

Edgar was just as annoyed by Cindy, who kept fussing every time he hunted a monster.

It had been an agreement to hunt monsters quickly and win the competition; he couldn’t understand how she kept delaying.

“… Hey, everyone, hold on.”

“Bolt, what’s wrong?”

The most sensitive among them, the tiger beastman Bolt’s pupils suddenly sharpened.

When the pupils of a beastman sharpened like that, it indicated an extreme state of alert.

He stood completely still, holding his breath, his round ears perking up as he slightly turned his head in a specific direction.