Only two people, Rei and Glink, were left standing inside the gymnasium.
Everyone else, regardless of sex, was sitting or collapsed on the floor.
The sweat on their faces came less from moving their bodies and more from the disbelief that they had been so one-sidedly beaten.
Rather than exhaustion, it would be more accurate to say they were sitting on the floor because they could not believe the reality before their eyes.
Starting with Insla, who had fought him first, Rei had fought all forty students and defeated every single one of them.
Moreover, it was obvious from watching him fight that he had not been going all out.
Even when the students swung their weapons, not only did their attacks fail to hit Rei, it was rare for them to even touch the spear in his hand.
On the rare occasions a student’s weapon did strike his spear, the next thing they knew, their weapon was entangled by the spear and vanished from their hands.
Naturally, even when that happened, only their own weapons were gone while the spear remained in Rei’s hand……and before they knew it, the tip of the spear was pointed right between their eyes.
Having something like that done to them so easily was nothing short of a nightmare for the fourth-year S-class, which gathered the highest-scoring students in the top year and who saw themselves as the finest elites in the officer academy.
Many of the students were in deep shock because, no matter how many times they swung their weapons to knock away the spear tip before their eyes, it was pointed right back at them the very next instant.
They could not understand at all how a spear could move to pull off something like that.
Many of them had been confident in their own abilities.
However, quite a few now realised that such confidence only applied inside the officer academy, and that once they took a single step outside, they were nowhere near as capable as they had thought.
「Impressive as expected, Rei. To put on a fight like this against so many people. Honestly, I did not think the gap would be this wide.」
In response to Glink’s polite words of praise, Rei simply shook his head.
「It’s nothing worth praising that much. There are plenty of strong people out there in the world. My strength still isn’t enough to take on people like that. ……Well, more importantly.」
Pausing his conversation with Glink, Rei turned his gaze toward the students sitting dazed on the floor.
He looked at them with mild exasperation.
「Did you all actually think you could beat me? Well, since Set isn’t here and I don’t have my best weapon, the Death Scythe, it’s not strange that you’d think that……but I’m still a B rank adventurer, you know? There’s no way I’d struggle against a bunch of rookies.」
At Rei’s words, all of the students listening ground their teeth.
That was true for both those lying down and those sitting on the floor.
He spoke as if his victory were a law of nature, as natural as falling snow piling up on the ground.
Frustration took root in their hearts, and some of them even felt something close to hatred toward Rei.
Looking at the students, Rei felt impressed inside.
(Oh? Even after being beaten that one-sidedly, not a single one of them has had their spirit broken. The feelings they’re holding onto might differ, but the fact that nobody is dropping out here shows they really are the elites of this place.)
Part of it was probably that they hated losing. Or perhaps it was pride, along with many other feelings. Driven by those emotions, all forty of them remained there without letting their spirits yield.
(At this rate, they might actually become pretty strong. This request was practically just a way to kill time for me, but now that I’m actually doing it, it might turn out to be pretty interesting.)
Rei smiled at the students whose gazes told him that even if they had lost the match, their spirits would never be defeated.
While Rei himself was only smiling at the students in amusement, to the students on the receiving end of it, it could only be described as a ferocious grin.
For a moment, that smile made them wonder if they had made a terrible mistake.
The very next instant proved that their impression had not been wrong.
「Alright, I’m getting into this. What we just did was one-on-one fights with everyone, so next let’s change things up a bit……」
What would Rei say next?
While the students wondered that, Rei met their gazes, smiled, and spoke.
「Just me against all of you. One against forty.」
For a moment, not only the students, but even Glink could not understand what Rei had just said.
Rei had hinted at it at the start, but Glink probably had not thought he would actually go through with it.
Even so, it was naturally Instructor Glink who came to his senses first.
「Rei, are you serious? It goes without saying, but when there are forty opponents, the difficulty goes up dramatically.」
「It’s not a problem. As we go through these mock battles from now on, I plan to do not just one-on-one fights, but also group-on-group, one-on-group, and group-on-one, so you can just think of this as preparation for that.」
「……Understood. That is true, you have fought your way through many desperate battles before, Rei. It was not my place to say such a thing.」
When Glink gave a small bow, Rei shook his head to tell him not to worry about it.
When he turned his gaze back from Glink to the students, he saw the fourth-year S-class students recovering from their earlier loss of confidence.
「Don’t mess with us…… You’re going to take on all of us at once!?」
「Sure, we lost going one by one……but do you seriously think you can manage against this many people at once?」
「He’s younger than me, but I’ve already thrown away any thought of holding back.」
「Calm down, all of you. To begin with, the stories say that during last year’s Spring War, Crimson cut down huge numbers of the Bestir Empire’s army all by himself. In other words, he’s naturally good at fighting large numbers of opponents.」
「Even so!」
「Yeah. Out in a wide open space, he’d be able to use large-scale magic. Plus, he doesn’t have that rumoured Griffon or his huge scythe. Which means Crimson isn’t at full strength right now.」
「……Still, you saw the fight just now, right? You experienced it, right? You had a taste of it, right? Even if he isn’t at his best, we’re simply lacking in skill, aren’t we?」
「We’re still doing it! After being looked down on that much, how can we just leave it like this!? We’re……we’re the finest elites of this officer academy!」
「That’s right. There’s no doubt Crimson’s strength is above ours even right now. Still, that doesn’t mean we have no chance of winning. No matter how much people call him Crimson, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s just one human. Which means he only has one pair of eyes.」
「That’s it! Then if we attack from his blind spots, like from behind!」
「Yeah. Our attacks should be plenty effective that way.」
Naturally, Rei could hear everything they were talking about.
With senses sharper than an ordinary human’s, that was not difficult for Rei.
However, as he chatted with Glink, he said nothing to the students and let them talk freely.
About ten minutes passed like that……
「Now then, are you about ready?」
With the mock battle spear in hand, Rei called out to the students.
The unmistakable provocation in his gaze fired up the students even further.
All forty students held mock battle weapons in their hands.
The expressions on the students’ faces showed a mix of emotions, including hostility, rivalry, desperation, fighting spirit, self-mockery, and smiles.
However, there was not a single trace of resignation among them.
They would beat Rei and make him acknowledge them.
With that single thought in their chests, they stood before Rei.
Seeing from their attitude that the students were completely ready, he readied the spear in his hand.
「Come on, let’s get started. Show me how you struggle. What do you do when you run into an overwhelmingly powerful enemy you can’t do anything about? Since you’ll likely become knights or adventurers from here on, that’s something you’ll need to know.」
『……』
Only silence answered Rei’s words.
Even so, the atmosphere coming from the students showed now signs of giving up.
Confirming that, Rei nodded in satisfaction before turning his gaze toward Glink.
「Glink, go ahead.」
「Understood. Both sides, please make sure not to inflict fatal injuries on your opponents.」
Although he said both sides, Glink’s gaze was directed at Rei.
Naturally, that warning was meant for Rei rather than the students.
The students felt dissatisfied by that, but since the earlier mock battles had made them realise the difference in their levels, they did not talk back.
Right now, watching for even the slightest opening from Rei to find a way to win came first.
「Begin.」
The moment that word left Glink’s mouth, the students present moved all at once.
Rather than charging at Rei thoughtlessly, each of them moved according to the plan they had worked out beforehand.
Some headed straight for Rei to act as decoys, others readied bows and fired mock battle arrows with blunted tips to support them, and still others moved into positions to surround Rei.
「You’ve got the hang of fighting in large numbers.」
Rei said that, though in truth, he almost never fought in cooperation with others.
He often worked together with Set, of course, but Set, who had been created through the Magic Beast Art, could hardly be lumped together with other adventurers.
With ordinary adventurers, the gap in strength between them and Rei was so large that they would only get in the way, forcing Rei to divide his attention to look out for them.
On the other hand, there were very few adventurers skilled enough to fight alongside Rei.
As a result, it was fairly rare for Rei to work together with other adventurers.
「Then again, you’re still just students. You’ve got a long way to go.」
With the tip of his spear, Rei caught and parried a long sword strike swung straight down at him from the front by a student acting as a decoy.
After parrying the strike along the shaft of his spear, he entangled the blade of the long sword and flung the weapon straight at a man who was about to swing his own long sword from behind to the right.
Pulling his spear back in the same motion, he used the shaft to knock away a spear thrust from a girl attacking from behind, then forcibly changed his spear’s trajectory with a flick of his wrist to sweep her legs out from under her and send her tumbling to the ground.
Not only did she fall to the ground, her body rolled right into the path of a man charging at Rei, forcing the man, who had been aiming for an opening, to awkwardly change his landing spot to avoid stepping on her……and that split-second delay caused him to miss Rei’s next move.
Swung in a horizontal sweep, the shaft of the spear sent the man flying sideways, crashing to the ground and taking down another man standing in his path.
「What’s wrong? Come at me more seriously!」
At those words, the students’ attacks grew even fiercer, yet not a single one of them landed on Rei.
In fact, Rei rarely even blocked their attacks with the spear in his hand, dodging almost all of them instead.
And the moment any of them let up on their attacks even slightly, a strike from Rei’s spear sent them flying and knocked them unconscious, or left them too battered to stand even if they were conscious.
And yet, the fact that he had not delivered a single fatal blow was proof that Rei still had plenty of room to spare.
「Damn it, everyone focus your attacks on him properly! He’s completely toying with us!」
The one shouting was Insla, who had fought Rei first in the mock battles.
He was one of the strongest students even within the S-class, yet to Rei, that difference was nothing more than a margin of error.
The blade of the long sword Insla swung as he shouted naturally sliced through empty air without ever touching Rei.
Ducking under the swing of the long sword to dodge it, Rei passed right by Insla’s side and swung the spear in his hand.
The butt end of the spear struck Insla’s right shoulder from behind, sending him flying forward.
「That leaves……six of you.」
Before anyone knew it, only six students remained standing and conscious.
Having watched Rei fight up to this point, they must have understood the overwhelming gap in strength all over again. The gazes they directed at Rei now no longer held the fighting spirit they had at the start of the mock battle.
Even so, refusing to give up and determined not to go down for nothing, they all exchanged glances and charged at him at once……only to be sent rolling across the ground by Rei’s swinging spear, either losing consciousness or left unable to stand from the pain of their bruises.
「Well, I guess that’s about it. ……Still, you put up a much better fight than I expected. You really live up to being called the finest elites of this academy. ……Even so, you’re ultimately just the finest elites among students. I think this fight made you understand how different that is compared to real combat. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be going a bit harder on you, so think carefully about what went wrong today and how you can fix it. Make sure to pass that along to the ones who passed out, too.」
With those parting words, Rei’s first day of class with the fourth-year S-class came to an end.
……After this, Rei held the same kind of class with the third-year S-class, the other class he was in charge of, and showed them the difference in their strength as well.