Ryuu Kusari no Ori -Kokoro no Uchi no 'Kokoro'-

Chapter 5.03

Dragon Chain Ori : Ch 5 Part 3

Chapter 5 Part 3

Shortly before Nozomu and Mars having a mock battle, the 1st class was having their lesson at another training ground.

The content is combat training in the same mock battle format as Nozomu and Mars.

However, the atmosphere of the 1st class students who gathered at the training ground was different from that of the 10th class, and the class was wrapped in a tense atmosphere.

In Solminati Academy, which was a meritocracy, it was never easy to keep achieving high grades.

If they weren’t careful, their rivals would kick them down. And the treatment of students who have fallen from the upper class to the lower class was by no means gentle.

Humiliated by former classmates and treated as a tumor in their new lower classes.

Around the first year, some students shined in the upper class, but after that, they were unable to keep up and they fell to the lower class. Many of them dropped out of school because of that.

And competition tends to be worse in higher grades.

In such a tense atmosphere, Lisa Hounds stared at the corner of the training ground.

"..."

"Lisa? What’s wrong?"

"Ken?"

Lisa turned around in response to that voice, and there was her childhood friend, Ken Notis, from the same class.

He looked in the direction Lisa was staring with a suspicious expression, where a girl with long black hair and a girl with brown hair fluttering down to her shoulders talked as they prepared for the lesson.

"Ah, Irisdina-san? So, are you curious about your rivals?"

Lisa and Irisdina were almost equal in combat training and were rivals who had collided countless times during combat training classes, mock battles, and exams.

Ken wondered if Lisa was curious about her rival, but Ken thought Lisa wasn’t just curious about that.

"... Or, are you curious about Nozomu?"

" !? "

The moment she heard Ken’s muttering words, her face looks surprised for a moment, but soon she harbored a flame of anger in her eyes, bit her lips, and distorted her face.

"It’s okay. I’m here. You’re not alone."

Ken whispered so in Lisa’s ear, pulled her to his chest, and hugged her shoulders.

"..."

Lisa just silently left herself to Ken, but her expression was still stiff.

A voice that was neither Ken nor Lisa can be heard from behind.

"Oh. Both of you are so hot ~"

When Lisa and Ken looked back to the source of the voice, a girl sighed with her hands raised as if she was amazed.

A girl with reddish-brown eyes whose hair was cut roughly at the shoulders of the same color as her eyes.

Even though her facial features were well-arranged, her facial expressions and demeanor did not look feminine.

"Ca, Camilla!"

"Umm~ Lisa. It’s good to see you two flirting, but please pick another place. Everyone is watching."

" !? "

A girl named Camilla told her, when Lisa realized where and what she was doing she hurriedly moved away from Ken.

"So why did you look at the black-haired princess? Are you curious about something? ... or is it about that guy? ..."

Camilla glanced at Irisdina, and she made a gesture of thinking about what Lisa was curious about, but she seemed to have realized something with a bitter expression.

"Good grief! He’s really a helpless guy! So this time he is going to touch Irisdina! How much does he think Lisa was hurt at that time?"

She is upset and angry.

She is a girl who is in the same class as Lisa since the first year and can be called Lisa’s best friend.

As you can see from the fact that she belongs to the first year, she is also an excellent student, and when Nozomu and Lisa were lovers, she talked normally with Nozomu and also supported Lisa.

But when rumors of Nozomu spread, she was the first to go to Lisa to hear from her, and when she heard about Nozomu’s betrayal, she got angry and beat Nozomu up.

Since then, she started hating Nozomu just like Lisa did.

"Indeed. Well, she is a wise girl, so she is only losing her way for a moment. I’m sure she will get sick of Nozomu sooner or later."

Ken harshly criticized Nozomu, but Camilla tilted her head at his words.

"It’s rare for you to say that much about him. Usually, you’re somewhat covering for him."

As Camilla said, until now, when the same topic came up, Ken made several statements that seemed to cover Nozomu up, but he ended up staying on Lisa’s side.

This is because Ken wants to make Nozomu think that he is on his side.

Ken made Nozomu and Lisa broke up, then acts as an ally in front of Nozomu to control his actions. That was why, even if he remained on Lisa’s side, he had to take some measures to cover Nozomu up so as not to cause a contradiction.

However, the current Ken, who thought that Nozomu had been completely crushed, felt that it was no longer necessary, and his words and actions covering Nozomu had changed. Like those around him, Ken begins to blame Nozomu heavily.

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However, his sudden change in attitude left a feeling of discomfort in the surroundings.

But he had already prepared something for it, and that was...

"You see, the other day in a store ... was it Ushitotei? When I entered that store with Lisa, we happened to meet Nozomu, but at that time, I heard that he asked Lisa, "Why I got dumped?”."

"... What’s that! How crazy is that guy !!"

When she heard Ken’s words, she remembered Lisa’s appearance, her best friend, in the summer of the first year. She crouched down and held her knees in her room believing that she was betrayed by Nozomu.

Camilla didn’t understand why and was trying to talk to her, but Lisa was looking down all the time as if she couldn’t see her.

In the end, Lisa didn’t react until Ken talked to her, who came to see Lisa’s condition.

When Ken spoke to Lisa, she finally raised her face, wondering if her childhood friend’s words had arrived.

Lisa didn’t know why Camilla and Ken were there, she had a shocked look on her face, but soon, large tears began to spill over her eyes, and she began to sob.

And when her tears finally overflowed, she began to cry loudly as if the dam had broken.

She kept crying for about an hour, but when she finally calmed down, what she said from her mouth made Camilla angrier than ever.

"I was really shocked when I heard about what he did. Until now, I thought Nozomu was just a little evil, but now, I can’t take it anymore."

Since Nozomu pressed Lisa for an answer in Ushitotei, Ken can use that as an excuse to blame Nozomu.

To Nozomu, it was an action he took as he was trying to face the reality, but to people who believed in the rumors, they would think that it was the action of the pot calling the kettle black.

"......"

As Camilla and Ken talked about what happened at Ushitotei, Lisa turned her eyes to Irisdina again.

Irisdina was maintaining her rapier, which was her specialized weapon, but perhaps noticing Lisa’s gaze, Irisdina turned her face towards Lisa.

“................”

“................”

The line of sight of the two intersected.

Lisa felt the inside of her heart grow noisy and her anger rise, and she suddenly turned her back around.

However, even after she turned her gaze away, the noise inside her heart did not disappear.

======================================

"Ai, what are you going to do today?"

Tima was talking to Irisdina by her side. Irisdina was maintaining her rapier, but she was quietly maintaining and didn’t respond to her question.

However, at first glance, it seemed that she was only doing preparatory work, but Tima, who had been her close friend since the first year, noticed that her consciousness was not on the preparatory work, but on something else. When Irisdina’s line of sight shifted in a different direction...

"..."

"... Ai"

"Ah, sorry Tima. What is it?"

Irisdina stopped her hand and turned her gaze toward Tima, but Tima’s expression is not good, probably because she is worried about her best friend.

"Hey, Ai. As I thought, you are curious about Lisa and her friends, right?"

"......Um~m, well"

It was Lisa Hounds that Irisdina was curious about.

She was almost sure of what happened between Nozom, Lisa, and Ken, but she still couldn’t tell anyone about it.

However, She wanted to talk to Lisa one more time.

She could be the key to the relationship between the three of them.

Lisa was the woman he loved. Maybe, he still loves her even now. With that in mind, Irisdina felt a tight feeling in the depths of her chest.

"......What do you want to do?"

"To be honest, I want to talk to her again, and she seems curious about us too."

"Eh?"

To that word, Tima looked beyond Irisdina’s line of sight, she found Lisa staring back towards her.

They didn’t know Lisa’s expression staring this way. They had no idea what she was thinking, not because she was far away, but because her face was expressionless.

It reminded them of Nozomu’s rumors that spread to the school.

Irisdina had already realized that the rumors weren’t true, and she somehow wanted to help him.

For her, Nozomu was a benefactor who saved her sister’s life, and she thought he was one of the irreplaceable people.

Therefore, she couldn’t stand seeing him being accused in the school, and she wanted to do something about it, but his reputation that has taken root in the last two years, couldn’t be resolved just by her alone.

She thought she had to know more about these three childhood friends, Nozomu, Lisa, and Ken, in order to get rid of the rumors, but it won’t be easy.

At first, she wanted to ask Nozomu directly, so she talked to everyone, including Mars, in Ushitotei, but Tima at that time told her that she shouldn’t be impatient.

It may be true.

She understands that it’s best to wait for Nozomu to speak.

However, the feeling of impatience in her heart did not disappear, and it only increased day by day. What’s more, she speculated on her own what happened between Nozomu and his childhood friends, and she also began to feel there is a wall between her and Nozomu recently.

It was clear that he had done something reckless recently, but he did not tell Irisdina and the others what had happened.

He forcibly shut himself in the depths of his own heart and showed them his fake smile.

The fake smile was similar to the smile Irisdina had seen so often.

People covered their surfaces with mask-like smiles and approached her with impure corruption in their hearts. It was very similar to the pests clinging to the Francilt Family trying to devour their sweet nectar.

Of course, She knew that Nozomu and the pests had different feelings in their hearts, but the fake smile Nozomu showed her made her speculate things and feel frustrated. This further fueled her own impatience.

She wanted him to talk. But he didn’t talk.

She wanted him to tell her. But he didn’t tell.

She wanted to know more about him.

She wanted him to laugh with his real smile, not a fake one.

Perhaps because Irisdina was too frustrated, she said something that was unimaginable than usual.

"... Then, let me take advantage of this lesson for a moment."

Taking Lisa’s gaze head-on, Irisdina declared so to herself.

==================================

When the lesson started, Irisdina was the first to nominate her opponent for the mock battle, which is Lisa.

Basically, like the other classes, the 1st class is now having group battles.

However, since five students belonged to the A rank and possessed outstanding abilities compared to other students, so in many cases, A-ranked students were added to each group, and then the mock battles were held.

However, this time, Irisdina suddenly proposed for a one-on-one mock battle with Lisa.

At first, her teacher, Jihad, had suspicions, but he accepted her proposal because she was allowed to take some discretion in training content as an A-rank student.

“...................”

“...................”

A black-haired and red-haired girl faced each other with their own specialized weapons in the center of the training ground. Irisdina, with her stance, held her rapier and sticking the tip out, while Lisa held a saber in her right hand and a dagger in her left hand, putting herself on guard by lowering her stance.

Classmates gathered around them in a circle, watching the battle between the two that was about to begin, and there was a feeling of tension in the training ground.

The two of them stared at each other in a straight line.

The eyes of the two reflected their respective opponent they were about to fight, but the same boy was projected beyond each other’s eyes.

"Then ... begin!"

Irisdina moved with a signal to start from Jihad.

The moment she swung her rapier, her *Immediate Deployment* ability activated, and at that moment, five black magic bullets were created and flew towards Lisa.

"Fu~!"

Lisa activated the magic she was already chanting in advance. An invisible barrier appeared in front of her and it stopped Irisdina’s magic bullet.

While watching the black magic bullets scatter with a bursting sound, Lisa continued to cast her magic.

Magical power wrapped around her body and drastically boosts her physical abilities.

Lisa rushed out with her physical abilities enhanced by her body strengthening magic while protecting her own body with her magic barrier and closing the gap with Irisdina at once.

Lisa’s casting speed was clearly not normal. It simply twice as fast as Irisdina did when she strengthened her body.

Irisdina gave up intercepting with her magic bullet and immediately deployed the same magic barrier as Lisa and stopped Lisa’s attack with it.

The two magical barriers collided, and crackling sounds resounded as their magical powers collided against each other. Eventually, their barrier was shattered with a crashing sound, and Lisa launched the saber in her right hand towards Irisdina.

Irisdina immediately activated her body strengthening magic. She parried Lisa’s saber with her rapier.

As Lisa rushed over, her saber, which was swung by her overwhelming physical strengthening, should be blown away if it was properly deflected by Irisdina, but that wasn’t the case.

Actually, her previous rush was made possible because Lisa’s ability was activated.

Ability *Niveei Witch*

Ability to interfere with any magic and double its effectiveness.

Lisa doubled the effectiveness of her own body strengthening magic with this ability.

Lisa narrowed her distance with Irisdina at once and tried to slash Irisdina again.

However, Irisdina’s competence was not inferior. Aiming at the moment Lisa drew her saber, Irisdina used the lightness of her rapier to shot a thrust at Lisa’s shoulder.

However, Lisa is also a student who has the same A rank as Irisdina. She calmly wielded her dagger, parrying Irisdina’s thrusts, and she, in turn, slashed at Irisdina’s torso with her saber.

They rushed and slashed at each other as they were.

A number of sword flashes gleamed in a few seconds, and high-pitched metal clashing sounds were heard.

They had crossed swords for a while, but suddenly Irisdina kicked the ground and retreated.

The next moment, Lisa’s saber was mowing down without stopping.

The saber that mowed down, cut through the atmosphere, and the surroundings were swept away.

*Niveei Witch* was activated again.

Once again, Lisa tried to shorten their widening distance with her rush doubled by body strengthening magic.

Irisdina couldn’t easily use the same hand twice. She immediately activated an earth-type magic *Sajō no Jōheki* (Castle Wall built on Sand).

The ground between Lisa and Irisdina rose, and a large sand wall appeared.

This magic is a magic that temporarily creates a strong wall using the surrounding sand. The wall created is durable enough, but they don’t last very long and the only way to maintain them is to continuously send in magical power. This magic is named *Castle Wall built on Sand* because this magic will return to the sand once the magic power runs out.

Irisdina’s goal was to gain time.

Lisa’s *Niveei Witch* ability doubles the effect of any magic, but after activating the ability, the user will not be able to activate the ability for some time, and that time will be proportional to the amount of time the ability was previously used.

In other words, the more Lisa used her abilities, the more unfavorable the future developments for her would be.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t compete with Irisdina, who had *Immediate Deployment*. Lisa’s characteristic was to breaking through using the power of *Niveei Witch*, and that was as a means to counter Irisdina.

However, Lisa also knew Irisdina’s goal. That’s why she didn’t use it for a long time.

Lisa pulled her right hand and sent magical power to the saber. The saber’s blade burned bright red, and the next moment, the burning flame was concentrated on the blade.

What she did was one of the magic injections, rather than simply strengthening her specialized weapon with magical power or giving it specific attributes, she added her own offensive magic to her specialized weapon.

The magic she added was an attack magic called *Explosion Vortex*. As the name suggests, it is an attack magic in which explosively scattered flames blow away the surrounding objects and burn them out.

"Fu ~~"

Lisa gathered the burning flame onto the saber’s blade while exhaling. After seeing the flames settled on the blade, she rushed towards the wall in front of her.

She used her physical strength that was drastically strengthened by the *Niveei Witch*, and accelerated in an instant, she slammed the bright red sword against the wall.

Flames danced through the air and in the next moment, with a thunderous sound, a large hole opened in the wall.

Lisa ran through the hole and rushed towards Irisdina at once.

Instead of receiving her attack, this time, Irisdina also rushed in the same way as Lisa.

" !! "

Lisa didn’t expect Irisdina to rush towards her, who was still activating *Niveei Witch*, but Lisa shot the saber in her right hand towards Irisdina.

Irisdina also applied enhancement magic to her rapier and took Lisa’s slash head-on.

"Kuh~ !!"

"Wha !?"

Anguished voice escaped from Irisdina’s mouth, she was pushed slightly, but she managed to stand her ground.

Lisa also made a surprised voice, perhaps because she didn’t think Irisdina could take her current slash head-on.

The reason why Iridina was able to stop Lisa’s slash was due to repeated physical strengthening using *Immediate Deployment*.

Before Lisa broke the sand wall, Irisdina cast body strengthening magic on herself several times with *Immediate Deployment*, and she temporarily gained the physical ability to stop Lisa’s slash with *Niveei Witch* activated.

However, the control of multiple magics required tremendous concentration, mental strength, and control power. Even for Irisdina, it was a tough act to do. Unlike Lisa, who only needed to activate *Niveei Witch*. Irisdina was pushed by Lisa, albeit slightly, probably because of intense exhaustion.

(But, even so, I’m still in a condition where I can face and state my circumstances to Lisa!)

Irisdina had doubts about what Lisa was talking about before.

So, she was aiming for an opportunity to talk to Lisa in mock battle. She thought Lisa could escape even if she spoke to Lisa properly and she thought Ken would get in the way.

"Lisa, do you think Nozomu is really having an affair?"

"W, what?"

Lisa’s face turned upset. She probably didn’t expect to be told of such a conversation in such a place.

"You should have known. How hard he exert his effort."

Nozomu and Lisa had spent longer time than Irisdina and the others. When Irisdina thought about it, her chest hurt, but she continued to speak.

"I’ve spent a little time with him. It’s been a short time compared to you, and I don’t fully understand him either."

Irisdina continued to speak, but Lisa lowered her head down and the expression on her face was nowhere to be seen.

"But he’s not the kind of person you’re thinking about right now! I can assure you!"

Irisdina really hit Lisa with her impression of being with him, albeit for a short time. Since she didn’t know what to say to Lisa, she had no choice but to hit her with what she really felt.

"...Are you really......"

"...Then why didn’t he say anything to me?"

"......Eh?"

Irisdina tried to continue her words, but Lisa, who was looking down, opened her mouth to block the words.

"There’s no proof that he betrayed me ... But why? Why didn’t he say anything up until now? when I thought I was betrayed and shut myself up in my room. Only Camilla and Ken were there for me. He didn’t even come ... "

At that time, Nozomu continued to train day and night against his Ability Suppression that was activated.

He repeated self-training in the suburbs of the city. He had Ken go out with him and repeated the mock battles. He slept while collapsing on the spot.

Since the first year, Nozomu and Lisa have been divided into different classes due to differences in their abilities, and Nozomu spent his days training without knowing what happened to Lisa.

When he was training in the suburbs, he asked Ken why Lisa didn’t come to school, but Ken insisted that Lisa was sick and kept Nozomu away from Lisa.

However, Lisa didn’t know that.

For her, Nozomu was a bastard who had never made any excuses or explanations while betraying her, considering that no matter how much Ken continued to maneuvering behind him, Nozomu was also taking part in the cause, because Nozomu kept running away from facing Lisa.

"Why you bring that up now ... Don’t screw with me !!!"

Lisa’s magical power blows up from her body at once. She pushed back Irisdina at once, and Irisdina’s rapier was blown away as it was.

"Kuh~ !!"

"Aaaaaaa!!"

Lisa turned the saber around and slashed it at Irisdina.

However, Irisdina made a judgment as quickly as Lisa. She conjured a magic bullet with *Immediate Deployment* and fired it at Lisa from close range.

The swung saber was sucked into Irisdina’s abdomen and blew her away.

Lisa also had no way of preventing the magic bullet that was fired in front of her, and she was blown away in the opposite direction.

"Gah~ !!!"

"Guuuu !!"

Naturally, the weapons they used were for training. However, Lisa’s slash strengthened by *Niveei Witch* was enough to make Irisdina lose consciousness.

Irisdina felt her self-consciousness drift away. She regretted that she couldn’t do anything for her benefactor. Just before she lost consciousness, Lisa who was lying on the ground like herself came to her sight.

While looking at Lisa who was on the verge of tears in her distorted field of view, she felt something hot rolling down her cheeks.