The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy-Chapter 461: The Heavens Shall Fall (II)

Swiip!

The wind hit me from three directions simultaneously.

Their authority was concentrated into rotating blades that came from the left, above, and directly ahead in a coordinated sequence, with maybe two inches of gap between each arrival.

They’d been practicing the timing.

’Tighter than last week,’ I noted, dropping below the left blade and letting the overhead one pass through the space where my torso had been a half-second prior.

The third one I caught on Midnight’s flat, the impact ringing up my forearm with enough force to push me back two full steps across the reinforced stone.

My boots ground against the platform.

"Much better."

"Don’t compliment us yet," Ruli shot back from somewhere in the compressed current above me.

I looked up.

She wasn’t there anymore.

’Behind me.’

FWOOOOOOM!

Her fist connected with the back of my guard, both of Midnight’s flat sides catching the strike a fraction before it reached my skull, the divine wind authority wrapped around her knuckles detonating against the blade and sending a shockwave outward in a visible ring that cracked the stone platform in a spiderweb pattern beneath my feet.

The force drove me forward three steps.

Good output.

It was already better than last week by a noticeable margin.

I turned.

Ruli landed in a low crouch ten meters back, one hand touching the platform, wind coiling around both arms in tight rotating bands that compressed and released with her breathing.

Her eyes were sharp and completely focused, none of the usual banter in them.

When she fought seriously, she fought seriously. That was something that hadn’t changed since she was mortal, and it hadn’t changed now.

"Leaf," I called out, without turning around.

"...You heard me?" Leaf’s voice came from directly above, the disappointment in it mild but genuine.

"I felt the pressure change."

A soft exhale.

FWOOOOOSH!

She dropped from directly above with both palms pressed together, divine wind authority building between them into a concentrated downward lance that compressed the air ahead of it into a visible ripple as it descended.

I stepped sideways.

The lance hit the platform where I’d been standing, and the stone didn’t crack.

BAAM!!!

A clean circular hole, three meters wide, driven straight through reinforced divine stone as if it had simply decided to stop being solid at that particular point.

Dust and fragments sprayed outward in a flat ring, the shockwave of it rolling across the platform in a wave I felt against my shins.

Leaf landed at the edge of the hole, both feet touching down lightly, and looked at where I was standing with an expression that was obviously frustrated.

"You moved early," she said.

"You telegraphed early," I replied.

"Where?"

"Your breathing changed two seconds before you dropped. You hold it when you’re building that much output."

Her eyebrow drew together slightly. She would probably resolve this error of hers by tomorrow morning, because her combat instincts were extremely sharp.

Fwoop!

Ruli was already moving.

She crossed the platform in a dead sprint that dissolved halfway through into pure current, her body losing its solid form and becoming a moving column of compressed divine wind that left a visible trail of disturbed air behind it, the stone beneath her path etching itself in thin lines from the velocity alone.

’She’s going for the flank while Leaf resets. They’ve been drilling this transition.’

I planted my right foot and waited.

The column of wind arrived, and I drove the Heavenly Swallowing Sword directly into it.

KRRRSHHHHH!

The divine authority wrapped through Ruli’s compressed form stuttered on contact with the blade, the wind losing cohesion at the point of contact, and she was forced to solidify to avoid being fully dispersed, reforming three meters to my right with a sharp exhale that told me it had cost her something to pull that back in quickly.

"That genuinely hurt!" she mumbled, shaking her right hand once.

"It’s supposed to."

"You’re our Big Brother, you’re supposed to go easy on us."

"You both have become Goddesses. You don’t need me to go easy on you... Besides, I matched my power with yours."

"We need you to go easy on us emotionally."

"Ruli. Focus."

She grinned.

And then she and Leaf moved at the same time.

Swish!

Leaf went low.

Her authority spread outward across the platform in a thin, invisible layer, divine wind pressing flat against the stone surface in every direction from where she stood, the entire platform becoming a pressure zone that subtly, persistently pushed upward against anything standing on it.

Not enough to move me immediately, but enough to compromise my footing if I wasn’t actively compensating for it.

Ruli went high.

She launched herself skyward, and her form dissolved again, but differently this time.

Her body spread outward into a vast, loose column of divine wind that expanded as it rose, growing wider and wider until she occupied not a point in the sky but a region of it, a massive rotating system of compressed authority that blocked out a significant portion of the sky above the training platform like a storm that had developed opinions.

’...When did they develop this?’

The pressure from below increased.

Leaf was feeding her output upward, the divine wind from the platform surface rising in invisible columns that connected to Ruli’s dispersed form above, the two of them merging their authorities into a single system with me at its center.

The air pressure inside the system began to change.

’They’re building a compression zone. Inside the rotation, the pressure will keep increasing until I do something against it...’

Swish!

The first internal strike hit me from the left without warning.

Not from Ruli or Leaf, but from the system itself, a tendril of compressed authority that had built up inside the rotation and released against me the way pressure releases against the weakest point in a contained space.

KOOM!

It caught my left shoulder and rotated me half a step sideways.

Another came from the right two seconds later.

KOOM!

Then from above.

KOOM!

They were using the rotation to generate strikes from every direction without either of them needing to be in a fixed position.

The system itself was the attack, building and releasing in unpredictable intervals, and the platform pressure from below was ensuring that each impact pushed me into the next one rather than letting me absorb and reset.

’...This is genuinely good.’

’This could actually become a problem if they were in my actual realm.’

The strikes started coming faster, but randomly.

The randomness was on purpose, I could tell, designed specifically to prevent my combat instincts from finding a pattern to read ahead of.

KOOM, FWWOOOM!

Left side.

Then the top of my skull.

The second one I caught on the crossed blades, but the force of it drove me down onto one knee, the platform pressure immediately amplifying as Leaf fed more output into the surface layer the moment she saw me drop.

’Smart. She’s watching for moments of reduced stability and increasing output on contact. They’ve thought this through properly.’

"Okay," I said, from one knee, looking up at the rotating system Ruli had become above me.

"Okay, what?" Leaf’s voice came from somewhere across the platform.

"Okay, this is actually good."

A pause.

From somewhere inside the rotating column above, Ruli’s voice echoed down with a distinctly smug quality to it.

"We know."

"Don’t get comfortable."

"We’re not—"

『 First Move! (✦ Ice Lotus Bloom ✦) 』

The petals detonated outward from my position in every direction simultaneously, simply filling the space, and when divine ice meets divine wind inside a closed pressure system, the interaction is not subtle.

The rotation destabilized.

The ice forces the compressed wind into localized state changes, pockets of the system solidifying mid-rotation, causing the continuous flow of their combined authority to develop sudden inconsistencies that propagate outward through the whole structure.

Ruli was forced to solidify immediately to avoid being caught in her own dispersed form as the ice disrupted it.

She dropped from the sky.

I was already moving upward to meet her.

FWOOOOSH!

We met in the air above the platform, my right hand catching her extended wrist before her strike landed, redirecting the divine wind authority wrapped around her fist sideways rather than absorbing it, using her own momentum to spin her past me in a controlled arc before releasing.

She tumbled, caught herself, and landed on the edge of the platform in a low crouch.

"...Good work."

They had truly improved a lot in this single year.

Their talents that were previously at the SS-rank had now improved by a ton. I made sure to feed them a lot of expensive treasures.

And somehow... both of them awakened the Authority of Wind.

Honestly, I was hoping for Ruli to get the Authority of Wind, and Leaf the Authority of Water, but both of them awakened Wind.

I’m also satisfied with this, since that compression system they just did is something that can be really useful in future battles.

"Hehe~" Leaf grinned at my words, jumping to Ruli, giving her two high-fives right above her head.

"We did it!" Ruli cheered.

But of course, they weren’t the only ones that I trained, as I’ve been training everyone. I also got a few of my elites to teach them since I couldn’t teach them all alone.

All of them told me that they were easy to teach and got the key points immediately, which satisfied me a lot.

This way, when they get stronger, they’ll be able to take care of themselves.

But of course, I gave them a seal for them to break when they needed help for me. I don’t want to risk losing any of them.

...Except Lucas and his group.

Those, I certainly don’t have that much affection.

I just decided to bring Lucas to see if I can make his patron god come out, and finally give him a fucking killing blow.

Elohim...

He really is going to be troublesome to deal with.

I do have enough strength to probably kill him... but yeah, I will need to reveal my race, which at this point, I already considered revealing.

I feel like it’s been holding me back... and maybe one day I’ll simply explode, and reveal it before going on a killstreak or something.

That aside...

I need to go to the academy in an hour or so.

They are going to announce my opponent in that damned competition, and also probably explain a few other things.