No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 52

“Still, no matter what…”

“Is it for the sake of your dignity?”

“What? My dignity?”

He seemed to recall the risk of my underlings as a Demillang being dragged away by the professor. And the possibility of me being pointed out as the one behind them.

“Well, what can you do about dignity? It won’t change anything.”

“…”

“Haha. I’m joking. It’s not because of dignity. Would you believe me if I said it’s because of affection for my friends?”

“Believing you is like believing an idiot, but I’ll believe you anyway.”

“What?”

“I’m saying I’ll become an idiot for you.”

“Oh my, what should I do? I don’t have a preference for stupid people.”

Ryuseong must not have wanted to be stupid alone, so he pressed my temple without a word, thanks to which I had to bite my lips and roll my feet on the unlit chandelier, holding back a scream.

And right at that moment, the first matchup was announced.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re cute. I won’t go easy on you.”

“Please stop the mental attacks!”

[Hae Yuna VS Capone.]

They were preparing for the duel.

“If mental attacks work, wouldn’t it be stupid not to use them?”

Capone said that while summoning his weapon. Hae Yuna’s main weapon is her fists. Then what does Capone use?

“Holy fucking shit.”

Capone Jones is a mage. So like Lee Hyang, a sorcerer, he summons something from his dimensional storage to use as a catalyst for his magic.

According to Hae Yuna’s evaluation, Lee Hyang’s arm strength is lacking so he swings a smoking pipe (“No! I’m strong! I just can’t use anything other than a smoking pipe because I got imprinted on cigarettes when I was young!”), but in Capone’s case, it’s different.

Hae Yuna gaped at the ‘thing’ her opponent took out. Capone lightly sneered.

“It’s not holy shit, it’s a hammer.”

That’s right. The second daughter of the Jones family is a strength mage who swings a giant hammer thicker than a grown man.

Hae Yuna saw for the first time in her life the sight of a slender, short-haired woman holding a massive hammer. So she was shocked to the point her hair stood on end.

They had never fought with their real weapons in official settings before.

All they had ever sparred with were wooden sticks or wooden swords provided by the school, or at most, wooden sticks with iron cores that weren’t sharpened.

So for Hae Yuna, Capone Jones’ hammer was something she was seeing for the first time in her life. Naturally, she couldn’t help but scream when Capone swung that hammer around.

“Ah! That’s not fair! I’m bare-handed and you have a hammer?!”

“Did I say we’d fight bare-handed? I didn’t.”

“Ugh! You’re really hateful-“

Before she could even finish her sentence, Capone swung the hammer. The spot where Hae Yuna was standing was smashed with a crunch in the blink of an eye by the hammer with such thickness and weight.

But Hae Yuna took a chillingly fast step, dodging by a hair’s breadth, and caught Capone’s wrist.

Pulling her forward, she delivered a straight punch.

Pow!

Just the fist and head colliding caused a tremendous shockwave to sweep the surroundings.

The expressions of those huddled inside the barrier were split in half. Lee Hyang and Shin Myohan cheered excitedly, while Logan and Diedrich only twisted their lips with a chilled face.

But when Hae Yuna dusted off her fist with an unsatisfied expression, even Lee Hyang and Shin Myohan seemed to sense something strange and their expressions turned odd.

At that very moment, the Capone that Hae Yuna was gripping started to scatter into dust from the wrist. The Capone that Hae Yuna grabbed was probably an illusion from the beginning, and her fist seemed to have only shattered a mere illusion.

It was natural for Logan to become triumphant.

“Stupidly falling for a fake, the sages were right to say not to associate with the uneducated.”

And with just two sentences, Lee Hyang turned them into chicks fed honey.

“Are you insulting your master now? Those uneducated ones are your master’s lover’s friends?”

“…”

Cassice burst into laughter on top of the chandelier, but that place was thoroughly soundproofed by Cassice’ magic, so not even noise leaked out. Anyway, Capone seemed to be deceiving Hae Yuna with an illusion, hiding her presence, and aiming for a surprise attack.

“Ah shit, ruining the feel of my hands.”

But Cassice, who was craving popcorn on the chandelier, wasn’t worried about Hae Yuna.

Early on, the principal had said that the best condition a warrior must have is not having their mental broken when facing a mage. And the one who fits that description perfectly is none other than Hae Yuna.

“Yah. Capone. Come out quickly. We have to take a nap and go to class. Don’t leave me bored. You said I’m cute!”

Hae Yuna had an unbreakable mentality against those who nullify the impact even when she swings her fist.

If it doesn’t work with one swing, she can swing two, three, a hundred, a thousand times. The magic absorbs the impact? Then she can hit until it can’t absorb anymore. They annoyingly run away scattering fake bodies? Then she can kill them when they come to attack for real. What’s the problem? There’s no reason for her mentality to break just because the mage erases the meaning of the attack.

“Are you going to leave cute me alone like this?”

That much couldn’t break Hae Yuna. The fists she swung and the sweat she shed while resenting someone already dead were innumerable. Compared to the futility of those moments, this is nothing.

It didn’t matter that Logan looked at her with contempt, Diedrich shrugged his shoulders as if he couldn’t stop her, and Lee Hyang looked displeased.

She was just annoyed that the feel of her hands was ruined.

‘Grandma always said to know how to finely chop up moments, but if I could do that, would I be a cadet?’

Hae Yuna had never transcended a moment by her own will.

But she had experienced it.

However, Hae Yuna never told her grandmother that she had experienced that moment. Because it felt so sharp and slow, the blade penetrating the fabric, at that very moment when her parents were being murdered.

She only confessed to Lee Hyang. And according to what he heard through the grapevine, it seemed that she had temporarily transcended that moment due to the desperate struggle to survive when faced with a life-threatening situation.

The condition to become a ranker is transcendence. How finely one can break down a moment determines the hierarchy. It was said that to face a Named, a human must become a transcendent. So Hae Yuna’s dream was to become a ranker. She trained martial arts with the resolve to die in order to paint over that slow-motion scene with new memories.

Perhaps, someone may not understand how Hae Yuna can seem relaxed.

They may not understand why she’s so carefree despite saying she trained desperately.

‘But a person can appear carefree because they’re desperate with the resolve to die…’

Since the target of her revenge was already dead, she had to be even more desperate with the resolve to die. She had to cling on desperately to live each day happily. She was a person who had to be desperate just to maintain her daily life.

So Hae Yuna sometimes hated Cassice Demillang’s underlings. Honestly, while Cassice Demillang showed unexpected aspects (in many ways), his underlings were as expected. Because they lived a life where it was natural to despise someone, they would look down on some cadets when Cassice wasn’t around and often clashed with Lee Hyang and Hae Yuna.

They couldn’t truly perceive what it means for a person to die, so they could despise people that much. So Hae Yuna had no choice but to hate them, and at the same time, she could only be sad knowing that it wasn’t even their fault.

Therefore, Hae Yuna’s best was this:

“Capone, when do you want to go eat mascarpone cheesecake together?”

Hae Yuna smiled, slowly dragging her shoes as if taking a walk, and as expected, there was no answer.

On the other hand, Capone Jones didn’t like Hae Yuna putting on a relaxed air with her hands behind her back. She hated her carefree attitude, not knowing at all what kind of excruciating life others were living.

Cute, soft, kind…

She desperately crafted a magic circle, hating how those greenhouse flowers raised with care spouted sweet and soft words. She inserted the language of magic like a woodcut print.

The main sentence floating like a halo behind her head had [Strengthen] and [Reinforce] connected in series.

– [Strengthen and Reinforce]

The main sentence without particles won’t have a delicate and sharp taste, but it will help in simply and brutally increasing firepower.

For the subs, [Weight], [Impact], and for the modifier, [Square].

– Strengthen the [Weight]. Strengthen the [Impact].

And [Square] all of that.

After much deliberation, she chose to arrange the mana circuit in series.

Even if the sentence is simple, a series with high power but considerable resistance is difficult for a cadet to handle, so if the magic circle breaks unexpectedly, she may not have the strength to create the next one. But the very purpose of the magic circle was a one-hit fight.

The magic circle was gleaming like a radiance, clearly revealing the purpose of bringing down a person with everything loaded into a single blow.

‘I’ll finish it with this one hit.’

If the attack lands, even if she guards with her arms, the bones will shatter. But conversely, if the magic circle shatters, the one who will have to endure the corresponding impact will be Capone herself. Capone was used to moments like this. Walking a tightrope was no different from her life.

So she decided to jump down from the chandelier where she had been hiding her body.

Not knowing the silly anecdote that two people held their breath that didn’t need to be held when Capone Jones snuck into the chandelier.

– She fell with the hammer.

At that moment, Capone felt the gravity and the effect of the magic engraved on the hammer being strengthened. And she clearly saw Hae Yuna, who had her hands behind her back, smoothly stepping like dancing, pulling her arm back, precisely aiming at herself, and extending her fist.

And.

Bam!

“Ugh, sorry! I even broke the hammer. I’m sorry. Ack. How much is this? Is it very expensive?”

“…”

Hae Yuna wailed in front of the shattered hammer.

But Capone definitely saw it. She twisted the trajectory of her fist right in front of her eyes. So she herself wasn’t hurt at all, but Hae Yuna’s hand was bleeding from crushing the hammer.

Even though she could have easily smashed her, she forcibly twisted it to show mercy.

As if it was a mistake…

“I, I’ll pay for it. Transfer the hammer price to my account!”

She was spouting nonsense.

Eventually, the outcome of the first match was decided, and in that momentary gap of deciding the next turn, Cassice Demillang, who had been expressionless as if about to disappear, quietly asked.

“How was it?”

“What?”

“Their match. Well, they seem to call it a duel, but how can such a cute scuffle be called a duel?”

When saying that, Cassice Demillang was languidly lowering his eyebrows like a satiated lion. As if he had torn and killed all the enemies after countless battles and made a mountain of corpses.

At that, Ryuseong absentmindedly asked.