“—and absolutely no tormenting your opponent. I can already imagine the earful the Head Professor would give me over Miseria’s duel. Do you understand?”

I yawned. Currently, I was on the platform, listening to Savannah re-explaining the rules again, and again…

Finally, she stopped and started the match.

I gripped my sword, eyeing Artoria carefully. ‘Yeah, I’m purely doing this to test her strength.’

Okay, who was I kidding? I just wanted to beat her up for a bit. But with my current strength, doing so would prove to be difficult. 

‘Onto my first test, I guess.’

“Artoria Kilvillain, I’ll show you my ultimate technique!”

Artoria widened her eyes. Getting into a defensive stance, she eyed me cautiously.

‘Heh, she’s still a complete pushover.’

With this, I could charge up my moves without worry. However, I didn’t want to accidentally kill her with [World Splitter].

‘It’s about time I used that.’

I closed my eyes and muttered,

“[Monarch of Storms]”

Currents of Electricity exploded out of me, a—

[You’ve experienced the buff of Monarchday for the first time. Do you want to view the details?]

‘Huh? Yes, I guess?’

[Revealing…] [Since you're the first one in a millennium to experience this buff, the God of Status, Erza, will hide your STATUS this one time.]

‘What?’

===CURRENT BUFFS===

Monarchday: Increase power by a Major Rank

====

‘T-This is!’

I was now [E-] ranked! Now, I had a chance against Artoria. Grinning widely, I shouted,

“Come! I’m ready!”

With a nod, Artoria rushed straight ahead at me. Her speed was high, but her technique was laughable. At least, it seemed so.

‘Is it a feint?

‘No, it’s too obvious to be a feint. Plus, her movements are too wide.

‘She must be confident in her strength.’

I tried to step out of the way of the attack, but I was too late. Left with no choice, I raised my Sabre up to block it. However…

‘Eh? Why does it feel…weak?’

Don’t get me wrong, her strength was nothing to scoff at. It was just that…I could still manage to parry it if I got the techniques right.

To prove this, I knocked her sword away from me. As Artoria charged at me yet again, I carefully parried the strike.

Sparks flew off, and her sword was deflected.

“T-Truly amazing!” Artoria exclaimed.

‘Amazing my ass.’

This girl…she was seriously weaker than her Novel self. Not just in Rank, but also in skill and technique.

“Haah…Haaah…You’re a worthy opponent! Looks like I won’t be able to hold back anymore!”

‘Oh, so she’s been holding back?’

It made sense. She had me worried for a second there, acting all weak and that. Dashing back, I pointed the tip of my blade at her, waiting for her to unleash her true power.

“[Fire Ball]!”

An extremely basic but reliable spell.

I coated my Sabre in Mana and slashed the Ball in half.

“[Water Ball]!”

I did it with even more ease now.

“[Wind Ball]!”

Slashing~ Seriously, why was she using ball-shaped spells? They were the most basic of spells. Only entry-level Mages that didn’t have sufficient Mana control used them.

“[Earth Ball]!”

Damn, this one managed to make me falter a bit. 

Still, I managed to counter every one of her Magic Attacks.

“Haaah…haaah…you’re truly amazing! You actually managed to survive my ultimate attack! No wonder you were an Examiner for the entrance test!”

‘...What?’

More than the rumors of me being an Examiner spreading, I was more concerned with Artoria. Was she…serious? Was this the full extent of her capabilities?

‘Artoria can’t lie, and that’s a fact. That means…’

…It was up to me to make her stronger.

I met swords with her time and time again, and it would’ve gone that way for an eternity if Artoria hadn’t opened that stupid mouth of her.

“Miss Examiner, you’re powerful, I’ll give you that. However, your sword skills, they have no essence. I can hear the cries of sorrow coming out of your sword.”

“What bullshit are you sprouting?” I said as I deflected another strike of hers.

“Tell me, what is a ‘sword’ to you?”

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to humor her for just a bit.

“A tool to kill.”

In the war, I had no dedicated weapon. Everything broke extremely fast, to the point that I had to bring four spare guns and swords with me at all times.

Of course, Artoria knew none of that. Being the happy-go-lucky Protagonist that she was, her worldview was naive.

“Now I see why your sword was crying! You simply view it as a tool for slaughter!”

“What else are they supposed to be?”

“Swords are your partners and your most trustworthy companions on the battlefie—”

“BULLSHIT!”

This little shit had no idea what she was talking about! Most trustworthy companions? I’d be damned if my enemies didn’t take my sword at the earliest chance and point its blade at my throat! They were more like unfaithful little shits!

“If you don’t believe me, why don’t we prove it in a contest of Swordsmanship? Neither of us will use Mana.”

‘As if I wasn’t fighting with pure Swordsmanship from the start.’

But still, I grinned. This was a good opportunity to make her stronger. Simply put, she needed a goal, and I was willing to be that goal.

Distancing myself from here, I shouted,

“I’ll count! Is that alright?”

She nodded.

“Five…”

Artoria tightened her grip on her sword as she looked at me warily.

“Four…”

She got into a stance and tried to look for the smallest of openings that I had.

“Three…”

We tensed our muscles, getting ready for the clash of pure Swordsmanship—the clash of two opposing ideologies.

“Two…”

The cadets spectating our match all held their breaths in anticipation.

“On— [Nortia]!”

I disappeared from the spot and appeared right in front of Artoria. Heh, she really thought I was going to play fair.

Not giving the pushover any time to react, I grabbed her throat and started lifting her into the air. I smirked and reached into [Alternate storage] and took out a purple potion.

“I-It’s a potion! Professor, she’s cheating!” I could hear Marie shouting. “You’re not supposed to have any potion here!”

“As long as she doesn’t drink it herself,” Savannah explained. “She’s fine.”

With the Professor basically giving me permission, I uncorked the bottle with my teeth and poured the content into Artoria’s mouth.

Choking on the liquid, Artoria gasped, 

“W-Why? Y-You promised th—”

“What did it look like?” I smirked. Positioning my foot right in front of Artoria’s crotch, I continued. “I fucking lied.”

Crunch—!

The crunching sound came from my foot making contact with Artoria’s crotch, crushing her balls.

No, she wasn’t a “futa.” She only had them because of the potion I’d just fed her—Futa potion, which gave her temporary dick and balls. I…didn’t want to explain why I had it.

Anyways, Artoria was rolling on the ground in pain, and rightfully so. I’d read somewhere that the pain of your testicles being crushed was among one of the worst.

But in a true Protagonist’s fashion, Artoria soon recovered and stood up. Though, tears and snots were still on her face, which was actually more determined than before.

‘Good! It’s working!’

Let’s push it a bit further, shall we?

I stood still and watched as Artoria dashed at me again. Looked like she still hadn’t learned her lesson. 

As she was just inches away from me, a torrent of red Electricity flowed out from under my foot, paralyzing her.

Artoria convulsed wildly and tried to find a way to escape, but as if stuck in mud, she couldn’t lift her legs at all. She couldn’t even fall down to the ground.

After letting the Artoria-torture dish simmer a bit, I stared straight into her eyes with a grin.

“Weak.”

“A-A-AH!”

Seeing that Artoria couldn’t form a proper sentence, I amplified my Lightning. Let’s give our Protagonist a defeat to remember!

“I’ll show you the depths of despair! I’ll show you just how powerless you are!”

Mana converged around me and was transformed into Lightning mana at a never-seen-before rate. As the Mana agglomerated around my body like a membrane, I slowly opened my mouth and pronounced my next words slowly; my grin widened with each word.

“I. AM. THE ALMIGHTY—”

I snapped my fingers.

“ELECTRIC.”

Nothing happened.

What? I furrowed my brows. Lightning was supposed to strike wildly everywhere and—

“Astrape Gray! You’re disqualified!” Savannah suddenly shouted.

I snapped my head to the side to look at her. In her hands were red Lightning bolts… Lightning bolts that should’ve come out of my spell!

So this bitch was responsible for it!

“Why!? Why did you do it?” I shouted.

“Didn’t you remember the rules? No tormenting others. What you’re doing is akin to torture! I want you to see me after class for detention!”

Fuck! What the fuck was wrong with this bitch!? How could Artoria grow stronger if she didn’t taste defeat? And what was that about no torturing? Did she have any idea how bad the real world was!? 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Savannah said sternly as if she actually read my mind. “This is the Ark, not the battlefield. There will be a time when everyone here will go through what you went through, but not now. Not here.”

Strangely, her words…calmed me down. I might have taken things too overboard there. Well, at least in her mind Artoria would feel that she should’ve lost, not me.

So, without much more fuss, I left the training ground to wait for my detention.

“ART! ARE YOU OKAY!?”

The crazy bitch Marie ran past me. She was probably too worried about Artoria to actually care about me.

Though, Artoria herself was more focused on me than her childhood friend.

“Astrape! Mark my words! I will defeat you, my…rival!”

‘Heh, so it worked, after all.’

I simply waved my hand without turning around and left the training ground. Though, I couldn’t help but notice the Imperial Princess glaring daggers at me… Shit, have I wronged her somehow?