Chapter Chapter 88: 11. Not a myth, but a legend (1) (1/2)

RATH 88

TL: Eevee

New chapter title, new arc!

11. Not a myth, but a legend (1)

#1 Their story: a certain commentator’s story.

Once upon a time, I was a knight of the empire, when I lost my arm in the Great War and I was at a loss of what to do.

Perhaps out of pity, my senior that was still active as a knight introduced me to a new occupation.

It was a commentator.

It was a role where I could analyzed the tens, no, hundreds of changes and mind games that proceeded over a split second that were invisible to the eyes of common folk, and help them understand what was happening.

I was always a talkative person before I became a knight, and the same applied even when I was one too, so this job was quite suited to me and so five years on, I’d commentated on many events since…

And for the first time in five years, I screwed up as a commentator.

[……]

But it seemed the same was true for my fellow commentator, the magician Merrell.

What would you say was the most vital trait to have as a commentator?

It is the ability to keep talking without stopping

The role of a commentator in explaining the events of a match is important.

But just as important is filling in the odd gaps at the start of an event or any unexpected lulls in the middle of a match.

Normally even a silence of a few seconds, a few tens of seconds would automatically draw criticism as a failure of a commentator, but even though several minutes had passed, neither of us could speak.

Normally one of the imperial festival’s administrators would have barged into the broadcast room already and given us an earful.

But the administrators were not coming into the broadcast room.

They were probably also staring stunned at the broadcast.

[What, is that all?]

A single student was standing alone all too peacefully.

But his surroundings were the very picture of hell.

The grounds in front of him were upturned and obliterated as if they’d taken a magic bombardment, and dotted around the landscape were students that more resembled corpses.

[Ner…. kia!]

And standing before him, was the Arucia student council president, down on one knee, barely holding on while leaning onto his sword for support.

I was a former Arucia student as well, so I knew very well how prestigious the seat of the Arucia student council president was.

One of the Four Great Academies that held a name among names as one of the greatest schools of the empire.

And the student council president of Arucia, the school rated as the strongest of those schools, needed to have splendid political acumen and trust of the students as a prerequisite, and also needed top-class strength as befitting of the strongest swordsmanship academy, Arucia.

No matter how talented you were, or how popular you were with the other students, if the teachers decide that you didn’t have the swordsmanship talents to represent Arucia, you were automatically stripped from the seat of president.

Even in reality, every year there were cases where potential candidates were from extremely powerful families, or popular among the students, but were stripped for the right to run for president because their swordsmanship skills were lacking.

That Arucia student council president, was currently on his knees and screaming his throat hoarse in front of the president of the school deemed the weakest, the Yugrasia student council president.

It was a scenario where you couldn’t comprehend it in words.

But it was even less comprehensible when you saw it with your own two eyes.

[Wha, how did it come to this?]

Merrell, my colleague commentator for this match finally broke the long silence and sent his voice out into the magic tool for commentary.

[Th, that’s true.]

I also pulled myself together and tried to say something… but it seemed that it would take some time for me to offer any satisfactory answer.

[So let’s go back from the beginning. It seemed that Arucia tried to force a quick end to the match, right?]

[Yes, it felt like they were trying to end it before Yugrasia managed to restore their magic power they’d used during the Marcis battle.]

[That’s right. But, someone came out first as the vanguard from Yugrasia’s end. Just a single person, their student council president Nerkia.]

[Yes, and… that single person…]

[Defeated Arucia all by himself.]

[……]

[……]

We really shouldn’t be doing this, yet we fell silent once again.

Just how were we supposed to explain this.

There were many cases where the difference in abilities were all too clear in fights between students, whom lacked the thing called experience.

They say that out in the real world where it was actually easier to get stomped on, geniuses were the ones who suffered early deaths, but fights between students were not that cruel or lethal.

And so, there were no reason for students to cross beyond the boundary of death and surpass their limits, things that one could only see on the battlefield.

Because those experiences were ones you could only have when death truly loomed in front of your eyes, and you overcame and survived the experience.

There was no way students could ever experience such things. That was why the difference in talent was so overwhelming.

Moreover, the Yugrasia student council president, Nerkia, was an undeniable genius in the field of summoning.

He was rated as a once-in-a-century figure in terms of his affinity with spirits, and even officially recognised as the person contracted to the greatest number of spirits in the continent by the Summoner’s Association. That was the Nerkia, the Yugrasia student council president.

And in last year’s imperial festival he showed his true class.

By managing the monumental achievement of putting Yugrasia in second place by Day 2, and even as far as first place on Day 3.

Even if the student council’s physical and mental exhaustion caught up with them, causing them to lose all the team events and crash back down to third place, there was nobody that blamed Nerkia, their president.

On the contrary, people judged that if the average skill level of Yugrasia’s students were up to par with Marcis and Arucia, the Yugrasia that Nerkia led could have gone on to win the whole thing, such highly rated was Nerkia.

A genius summoner that the empire, no, the entire continent recognised.

He was a genius who earned the title of ‘Elemental Army’ due to his skillful ability to use his various summons no matter what situation he found himself in.

If you looked beyond schools and looked at him as an individual, he was rated even more highly than the presidents of the other three schools!

Even if people said Yugrasia was weak, there was no one who said that their student council president, Nerkia was weak!

Indeed. He was a genius. He was talented.

And because of that, we were all the more surprised.

Because he was a genius recognised by all, everyone was watching him that much more closely

There were professors in the Summoner’s Association who even submitted theses as to why he was loved so much by the spirits, and other schools would have no doubt done their analyses on his strengths and weaknesses.