The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy-Chapter 469: The Heavens Shall Fall (X)

I dropped into my seat.

The arena noise was still going, residual energy from the match bleeding through the crowd in waves that hadn’t fully settled yet.

I leaned back, rolled my shoulder once, and reached for the cup of water that had appeared on the armrest at some point while I was down on the platform.

Kael was still vibrating beside me.

Literally vibrating, his knee bouncing, both hands gripping the seat in front of him, the physical state of someone who had been containing himself for approximately as long as he was capable of containing himself.

And it seems that he had arrived at the natural end of that capacity.

I drank the water.

"You’re back, bro!"

"I’m back."

"That was..." he started.

"Mm."

"That kick—"

"Mm."

"When you said thank you and then—"

"Kael."

"I’m just saying—"

"I know what you’re saying."

He turned to the student sitting two rows ahead of us, a young woman who had been watching the match with her friend and was now in the process of turning back around.

Kael leaned forward, and tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned.

He pointed at me with his entire arm, elbow locked, finger extended, the gesture of a man making an announcement of public record.

"SEE!" he said, at full arena volume. "WE’RE BEST FRIENDS! HE’S EVEN SITTING NEXT TO M—"

THACK!

The backhand connected with the side of his face cleanly, the sound cutting through the surrounding crowd noise with a crispness that made the student ahead of them flinch.

Kael’s head snapped sideways.

He sat there for a moment, one hand coming up slowly to touch his cheek, staring at the seat back in front of him with the expression of a man confirming what had just happened to him.

Tyrian, on my other side, took a long slow sip of his own water.

"...You slapped Kael?"

"I did."

"After slapping Seran Voss eight times."

"Nine, counting that one."

Tyrian processed this.

"...You’ve slapped someones nine times today, do you have a fetish for that or something?!"

"The morning is still young."

Kael turned to look at me, cheek red, his eyes wide, pointing at his own face with the energy of someone who had a great deal to say and was currently selecting the order.

"YOU—"

"You were shouting."

"I WAS CELEBRATING—"

"In a public setting."

"WE’RE IN AN ARENA, EVERYONE IS SHOUTING—"

"Not about my personal life."

"I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL—" He stopped, clenching his teeth to reconsider his words.

"I didn’t say anything bad about your personal life."

"You were about to mention the word ’seventeen’."

His mouth closed... before he hesitantly opened it:

"...I wasn’t going to say seventeen."

"You were building to it."

"I was building to something else entirely."

"Kael."

"WHAT."

"You were building to seventeen."

He paused again, his face showing a hint of displeasure as he still had his hand placed on his slapped cheek.

"...Maybe," he finally decided to admit it.

Tyrian set his cup down with the small precise movement of someone who had been waiting patiently for this exact outcome and found it satisfying in a way he wasn’t going to acknowledge out loud.

"The next match is starting," Tyrian casually stated, making me look back down at the platform.

Kael sat beside me in wounded silence for approximately forty-five seconds.

Then he leaned slightly toward me and said, at a much more reasonable volume, "...That kick though."

"Kael."

"I’m just saying. The chin specifically."

"Kael."

"The way he just," he made a small upward arc gesture with his hand. "And then the ceiling—"

"Kael."

"I’m done! That’s the last thing. I’m completely done..."

He folded his hands in his lap, and looked at the platform.

Fourteen seconds passed.

"Best friends," he murmured, to no one in particular.

I raised my hand.

"OKAY!!!" he said immediately.

"OKAY! I’m done. Completely done. Not another word."

"Pfft..." Tyrian held back his laugh, his shoulder shaking as he looked to the side, trying to avoid my narrowed eyes.

I lowered my hand at this, and focused back to the arena.

The next match was already being announced.

I settled back into my seat, the crowd noise reshaping itself around a new name, and looked down at the platform.

Kael had gone very still beside me.

Which was unusual enough that I looked at him.

His knee had stopped bouncing, and his hands had released the seat in front of him.

...This meant that there was something special in the platform.

I looked back at the platform.

Emyria.

Her hair caught the arena light as she moved, and her expression was particularly pleasant, the kind that was eye-candy to the crowd.

Her opponent was already on the platform.

Someone from the Celestial Dominion from the look of him, broad through the shoulders, his stance carrying the settled confidence of someone with a solid record and a reasonable expectation of continuing it.

He looked at Emyria.

Emyria looked at him.

She smiled.

He shifted his weight slightly without seeming to realize he had done it.

RINGGGG!

The signal dropped.

For two seconds nothing happened.

CREAACKKK!

Then the floor of the platform moved as the stone simply... parted, quietly and completely, and from the gap something green emerged.

Rustle...!

Vines.

They crossed the platform floor before the man had completed his first step, wrapping around his lead ankle with a gentleness that was somehow worse than force would have been.

He looked down at them with the expression of someone who had expected a different kind of problem.

Curiously, he tried to move, but strangely... the vine wouldn’t budge.

"...What the hell?" he mumbled in confusion.

Rustle...!

The second one found his other ankle.

A third curled upward toward his wrist, slow and deliberate, and the third year burned his mana output trying to break the first two before the third reached him, which was clearly the intended sequence because the moment his attention concentrated downward, the vines at his ankles pulled in opposite directions.

THUD!

"AGHK!!"

He was slammed into the platform floor.

"Pheww!!!"

"That must haven hurt..."

The crowd let out a pinated groan aswell.

Emyria hadn’t moved from her original position.

She was watching him with that same smiling expression, her hands loosely at her sides, and more vines were rising from the platform’s gaps now, not rushing towards the man yet, but just rising, surrounding the third year’s position.

"Dammit!"

He instantly condensed a few spikes, erupting from the ground, and spliting the vines apart before trying to space between his position and Emyria’s.

Swip!

However, a compartment of compressed vines closed around his torso before he reached his knees.

"Shit...!"

His breathing changed as the compartment tightened by one increment.

"Mhm~"

Emyria tilted her head slightly, the way someone tilted their head at something that interested them.

The compartment tightened again.

"GRAGHHHHHH!!!"

The man strained inside the tight coil around his torso, teeth clenched, breath rough. Green strands pressed into his body, sliding along his skin as if they studied every weak point.

Emyria watched him with calm eyes.

Another vine slid across the floor.

Rustle...!

It reached his arm, so he instantly swung at it with a spike of hardened mana.

CRACK!

The spike cut through the vine, but just as it did, two more rose from the floor at once, and instantly wrapped his wrist.

The spike fell from his grip.

"Get off!" he shouted, forcing the divine energy through his arms again.

But the vines squeezed as if they were absorbing his divine energy, not letting him use a single bit at all.

CRACK!

His shoulder suddenly jerked with a sharp snap of pressure.

"AGH!"

The crowd groaned in response as if feeling the man’s pain.

Tyrian leaned slightly forward in his seat.

"...She is taking her time."

Kael whispered beside me.

"That guy is done."

Down on the platform, the man tried another burst of mana.

Stone spikes erupted from the floor around him.

CRACK!

CRACK!

Several vines split apart.

"Finally!"

For one moment he broke free from the coil around his torso and rolled to his side.

He pushed up on one knee.

A vine slid across the floor beside his neck.

Another wrapped his ankle again, and if that wasn’t enough, more and more vine appearing, and within the matter of seconds, all of his limbs were pinned in four different directions.

Emyria stepped forward for the first time.

Her smile stayed gentle as she moved her finger slowly, almost in a mesmerizing way...

"UGHH!"

But that mesmerizing manner wasn’t so great for the man who was wrapped, after all, the vines pulled stronger, causing his arms to stretch wide, standing in a crucified manner, his feet lifting from the ground.

Rustle...!

A tight green cage formed around his ribs again, and then, Emyria sadistically smiled and pushed her middle finger towards her.

The pressure increased instantly.

"GRRRAAHHH!!"

His shout echoed across the arena.

The vines tightened another step.

CRACK!

His bones cracked, not letting the poor mana even breathe, and when he thought that he had a single second of rest...

Rustle...

"KUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!"

The cage squeezed again.

The crowd shifted uneasily as they watched this practical show of torture, even making some of the cheers fade away,

Kael leaned toward me.

"...Okay that part looks painful."

On the platform Emyria tilted her head.

"Mhm."

The vines lifted him higher than before, and then... she stretched the palm of her hand, in a manner that she was then going to close it.

But before she could do that...

THRUUUUUM!

A sudden pressure from the sky appeared, instantly crushing her against the ground, almost like she had been stepped on by a giant.