New Life As A Max Level Archmage
31 – Bliss

In the instant before the maid charged her with her enormous battle axe, Vivi incanted two spells.

“[Perfect Form]. [Titanic Might].”

An agility and strength boost respectively. Seeing how this woman was Titled, and her stats were bolstered by defending the Academy, even Vivi might not match her in speed and strength. She was a mage, after all. One that dwarfed most Titled in levels, but still a mage.

Vivi wasn’t excited because this meant she could show off. The opposite. She wanted to see what the maid was capable of. Thus, she would fight with only enough power to push her opponent to her limits. To see what Winston’s pupil could do.

What kind of talent, she wondered, had he fostered in the century she’d been gone?

Nicole watched as, for the first time since its founding, the Academy for the Domestic Arts and Establishment of Excellent Service played host to an uninvited party.

Seated on a second-floor balcony, she—along with three of her classmates—had a premier view of the drama developing down below. Even Etiquette Instructor Annabelle, a paragon of dignity and decorum even among the White Gloves, had turned in her seat to watch.

Though Nicole doubted that constituted a breach of composure so much as common sense. That Deputy Headmistress Constance, a White Glove of the First Class, a Titled, might lose in a duel while defending the Academy was ludicrous to even suggest, but that said, neither had anyone ever bypassed the enchantments the Sorceress herself had laid onto her former place of residence. So caution was well-warranted.

“It seems I’ll need to pause our lesson, dears,” Instructor Annabelle mused, daintily sipping from her teacup. “My, I haven’t seen Constance evict an unruly guest in years. What a treat.” Straight-backed and tone mildly amused, their etiquette instructor remained a picture of grace despite the bizarre development. Nicole didn’t think anything in the world could surprise her. “Pay close attention. Insight gleaned from fights like these can guide your progress for years to come. Assuming that our guest doesn’t disappoint, of course.”

Down below, the Deputy Headmistress’s conversation with the demon woman came to a close, and she pointed her enormous battle axe, Patience, toward her soon-to-be enemy.

Patience. The Deputy Headmistress had named her weapon Patience. When Nicole had learned that, she had nearly gone comatose. The Deputy Headmistress had a sense of humor?

All White Gloves had their strengths and weaknesses, as any individual would, and Constance most decidedly lacked in her weapon’s eponymous virtue. Indeed, she displayed that deficiency now: It had taken all of a few sentences to decide attacking the invader was her best course of action.

Even if violence might be deserved, Nicole thought that surely the Deputy Headmistress was being rash. The demonic girl hadn’t seemed hostile so far…though she supposed that mattered little. An invasion was an invasion, and should be met appropriately.

Nicole neared graduation, and had thus passed the line for what adventurers called ‘mithril rank’—level six hundred—months ago. Her key skill, the one she shared with her peers and which defined their classes, had activated thanks to the imminent threat upon the Academy.

[In Active Service].

So, in that moment, she possessed the speed, strength, and perception of someone two-hundred levels higher. Orichalcum-rank, if merely the low end.

Despite that, she barely saw the Deputy Headmistress move.

She all but materialized in front of the demon, no intervening movement. The silver of her enormous battleaxe glinted in the sunlight for one long, suspended moment before it fell like an executioner’s blade.

The demon turned. The axe missed by millimeters, her robes and hair billowing as the blow carved a huge chunk from the paved path—and far beyond, cleaving dozens of feet forward and ripping up pavement and yard alike.

Constance twisted, her axe cutting toward the woman’s new position without so much as a heartbeat to bridge the blows. The demon ducked, and the blade sailed overhead. She straightened and retreated two unworried steps as the Deputy Headmistress reset her posture.

Constance had taken the fight seriously from moment one. ‘Never underestimate an opponent.’ Nicole was pleased that her instructors practiced what they preached.

But those dodges! That the demon avoided Constance’s attacks at all was nothing short of astounding, but to do so with such economy of motion? She had thought Constance’s opponent a mage from the robes and staff, but clearly she’d been wrong. The demon moved far too fast. Twelve hundreds at least, no? Maybe thirteen. And some sort of physically-oriented class…or maybe a hybrid.

Nicole wasn’t the only one to stir in surprise at the exchange; her peers did as well.

“Your evaluation continues, dears,” Instructor Annabelle commented, sipping her tea. “By definition, composure is only composure if it survives the unordinary. I expect more from sixth-years.”

Nicole took the harsh rebuke for what it was. She forced her spine to straighten and smoothed the outrageously uncontrolled expression on her face. Her eyebrows had actually lifted, as if she were a first-year! The mortification nearly had her flushing.

She tucked her hands in her lap, calmed herself, and watched the fight as if it were a simple opera play—and not a particularly good one—rather than what would surely be one of the most incredible displays of power she would ever witness.

After several long seconds of the two women appraising each other, Constance said, “You’re fast.”

The demon looked bored. “Don’t hold back on my account. Surely that wasn’t your limit.”

Despite Nicole’s resolution to control herself, she twitched in horror. The Deputy Headmistress was, at least by the standards of the White Gloves, famously hot-headed.

And the demon was goading her?

Indeed, Constance’s grip tightened on her axe, and Nicole read fury in how her posture shifted. A subtle movement, a bare pulling-back of her shoulders, but for a White Glove, even the rashest of them, the action all but radiated anger.

“Insolent,” was all Constance gave in response.

Apparently, she had been going easy on her opponent, because the following attacks were nothing like the previous. Maybe she hadn’t been trying to kill the invader outright, however justified she would have been. Now, she came for the demon with bloodlust.

Nicole could only catch glimpses. A flash of sunlight across a silver blade—there, then twenty feet away, then across the entire forecourt. Great cleaves of brown appeared as the manicured yard was torn up by residual kinetic impacts, the mere shunted-away energy from her errant attacks ripping up huge gashes. To Nicole’s dismay, she watched the resulting gusts of wind shake fruit and snap branches all around the grounds. She liked those apple trees! They reminded her of home!

The demon, it turned out, was a mage. Orbs of black flame burst out of her staff and rocketed toward Constance, who twisted out of the way just in time. Where those churning balls of void-fire exploded, the ground simply…vanished. Blinked out of existence for feet in every direction. Physical matter erased.

Nicole started sweating.

What spell was that? What element? She’d never seen anything like it, and the Academy’s curriculum most definitely included lessons on how to fight mages and deal with their magic.

A pit started to form in her stomach, though she couldn’t place why. This was the Deputy Headmistress. She wouldn’t lose. Nicole couldn’t even conceive of such a thing.

Constance blurred forward again, and her axe slashed in two parts, so fast they seemed like one: a low sweep aimed for the demon’s legs, followed by a diagonal slash for the torso. The demon sidestepped the first and deflected the second with her staff; wood met enchanted steel with a shockwave that had trees keeling over a dozen yards away.

The demon jumped backward, the movement halting mid-air as she cast some flight spell, and a dozen spheres of white-purple fire blinked into existence in a semi-circle around her. Without delay, they shot toward the Deputy Headmistress in a barrage. Constance didn’t retreat. Her axe glowed white as she activated a skill, and, spinning, she sliced through the spheres of magic, splitting them in half. They rained down around her, pieces flying off to explode with huge, booming impacts that rattled the china set in front of Nicole.

Before the last explosion faded, Constance had charged through the dust and smoke. Yet despite her shocking speed, she didn’t reach her opponent in time. Leveling her staff, the demon cast a spell, and something—she didn’t know what—hit Constance. A deafening crack echoed across the grounds, and the Deputy Headmistress went flying backward, tearing clean through a tree in an explosion of wood splinters.

Nicole watched, attention raptly locked on the duel. Much of it, to be honest, she was filling in with her imagination based on what few glimpses she could catch, the flashes of Patience, or those bored red eyes and that slightly downturned mouth.

It didn’t make sense. How could a mage move so fast? Cast so fast? Trade weapon blows with a Titled Glove?

The idea struck her like a hammer.

A mage this powerful. A demonic mage. One who had somehow bypassed the Sorceress’s wards.

Could it be—?

No. Surely not.

Yet, despite how many statues depicted the Party of Heroes, she knew better: the stature of history’s greatest spellcaster was far more diminutive than most commoners assumed. The Headmaster was quite vocal about his distaste of that misrepresentation.

The woman’s small, petite build fit. Her class fit. The sheer power on display, most of all, fit. This woman was easily upper-Titled rank. Thirteen hundreds. Fourteen?

Or perhaps much higher, and she wasn’t fighting seriously.

Was this…?

The idea was too ridiculous to consider. Besides, why would the owner of the estate mask her identity, much less attack it?

…the Deputy Headmistress had been quick to jump to evicting her.

An explosion of white-and-violet lightning blew Constance across the yard, throwing up soil in a long streak—the most explosive impact yet. She climbed out of the resulting crater, ripping her axe from the stone it had embedded in, and smoke flowed from the woman in huge billows. Even the Academy’s obscenely durable uniform had torn with the force of that magic.

Constance wobbled on her feet as she stabilized. It lasted only a moment; a flicker of weakness. Then she disappeared with a burst of speed, reentering the fray.

But Nicole had seen it. She had seen the Deputy Headmistress falter.

Her stomach sank all the way to her shoes.

This…wasn’t the Deputy Headmistress kicking out an unruly guest, was it?

She was actually fighting.

And she wasn’t winning.

Instructor Annabelle’s teacup had frozen halfway to her lips, coming to the same realization. She set the porcelain down with a soft click.

“Nicole, dear?”

“Y-Yes, Instructor Annabelle?”

She said nothing about the mortifying stutter, which drove home how dire the situation was. “Go fetch the Headmaster, please.” She set her plate aside and stood. “My service is needed elsewhere, it seems. Class dismissed. Jessica, Claire—please request the other Instructors join me in the forecourt.”

Nicole obeyed instantly, already flying through the doorway and into the halls of the Academy. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind, not with the Deputy Headmistress having been the one to meet the intruder.

The Academy. Her friends, her Instructors, her home.

They might actually be in danger.

This was the best day of Vivi’s life.

Was that dramatic? Having a thought like that just because she was getting to fight a Titled-rank combat maid?

No, definitely not. It was the simple truth.

The maid was fast. Insanely fast. She wasn’t pushing Vivi to her limits, obviously, but she could recognize the sheer power this woman was wielding. What level this fight was operating on. 1300s? 1400s? The maid was doing her best to avoid damaging the yard and manor, but when the two of them could trade twelve elaborate back-and-forth attacks across a two-second timespan, the sheer energy in play meant that even slightly miscalculating resulted in huge amounts of energy going astray and demolishing sections of the yard.

Vivi herself wasn’t paying much attention to the collateral damage, beyond making sure nobody would get hurt. For now, the only thought in her head was how much fun she was having.

She didn’t know exactly how strong this maid was, but even Vivi’s tier twelve spells were merely knocking the woman around, not seriously hurting her.

“[Netherflame Column].”

A molten bar of magma exploded forward, igniting the grass anywhere its brilliant light touched. Incredibly, the maid cut the spell in half, dispelling it like she had earlier, and immediately appeared in front of Vivi with her axe raised. Her expression was furious. Vivi knew that there was nothing in her mind, in that moment, besides delivering the ultimate judgment. There was nothing in those eyes besides hot, bloody murder.

Again, Vivi almost swooned.

Slipping backward, she avoided the attack by a hair’s breadth. She had taken to the air a while ago, not that the aerial advantage posed much problem to the maid, who could jump off solid air and twist around in complete contradiction to physics.

The woman traded another half-dozen attacks with her, each blow carrying enough power to cleave the manor in half, and Vivi ended the exchange by jabbing the butt of her staff forward, catching the woman in the stomach. She blasted backward with enough force to spawn a crater below. She paused in concern, but the maid climbed to her feet, wobbled slightly, and charged right back toward her.

Vivi suspected she would have to drop an actual meteor on this woman to keep her down.

She had contingencies in place, naturally; she wouldn’t risk this woman’s life just to indulge in a spar, no matter how much fun she was having. [Elethelea’s Saving Grace]—by far the highest-tier spell she’d cast since the fight started, or indeed since arriving in this world. If Vivi went too far by accident, the spell would be a complete and total save-from-death from all known attacks—though it would leave her in bad shape afterward. A last-resort defense.

More and more of the yard converted to a ruined battlefield as they fought, and Vivi delighted in the process of testing her opponent’s limits. To her dismay, though, even this woman had her limits. It wouldn’t be long before she had to stop.

Almost as soon as she had that thought, though, her worry was dispelled. Because a woman with a blonde ponytail wielding twin daggers flew into the fight seemingly from nowhere, two golden crescents shattering impotently—though with enough force to make the ground tremble—against Vivi’s [Prismatic Barrier]. Red eyes flicking in the direction of the newcomer, she saw a lapel displaying two silver bars. Then a second opponent entered the fray: a butler, lunging with a black steel rapier. She sidestepped. A third Glove flew in—no doubt these were the instructors and other prominent Gloves coming to fend off the ‘invader’. Then a fourth, too.

And so, Vivi’s bliss ascended into wholly new domains. She fought not one, but five White Gloves at the same time, the weakest of them wielding the strength of a Titled.

Truly, she was in heaven.

Constance didn’t understand. What kind of monster borne from the burning hells was this?

Nobody climbed to the heights she had without understanding how weak Titled were. The mortal races liked to herald the thousand-level mark as the pinnacle of power on this world, and while it did separate a person into an ultra-elite tier less than a hundred across the mortal kingdoms could claim, the discrepancy between the strongest Titled and the weakest was like that of an orichalcum and a bronze-rank. Never mind the immortal races that lurked, dragons and phoenixes and far worse.

Was something of that ilk what she fought now? What else could be this strong, yet unknown to her by face or reputation?

Perhaps she could have drawn the obvious conclusion—could have realized that a clear explanation existed for a powerful demon-mage appearing at the Academy—if not for the battle-rage pouring through her veins, and how every ounce of her consciousness was dedicated to erasing this abomination. This monster that threatened her brothers, sisters, and Academy.

Even five Gloves of the Second Class and higher working in concert, though, couldn’t break that impassive, disdainful expression. Where earlier Constance had thought she was at least pressing the demon, she realized, with horror, that the demon had been toying with her from the start.

This monster had never considered this a serious fight. Nor did she now.

Her mouth tasted like ash.

Her goal changed. She couldn’t kill this thing, not even with help. Only one person on these grounds was capable of putting the beast down, as much as it stung her pride to admit, and perhaps not even him. All she could hope for was survival. She needed to buy time.

She bought it. Over the course of an agonizing forty-five seconds, the longest of her life. Struggling like she never had before to keep up, to merely occupy her opponent’s attention.

Then, blessedly, a clap rang through the air, and the shockwave of noise seized everyone’s attention.

The fight came to an abrupt stop. Dust settled and gusting wind calmed.

“My apologies for the delay. I was requested by name?” Father’s voice carried across the forecourt with all the easy authority of one of the most powerful men in the Central Kingdom. There was a dangerous tone there, one Constance hadn’t heard in years. “Have no fear. I will personally see to your needs, miss.”

In the aftermath, the demon was facing away from Father, and the five elites of the Academy surrounded her on all sides—not that she seemed concerned by the tactical disadvantage. All five of them, Constance included, were battered and exhausted. The demon was unscathed.

Though none of them were injured, somehow. Even Constance only felt drained, with a few bruises and sore spots adorning her body. This monster really had just been playing with them.

At Father’s words, a strange emotion seemed to dawn on the demon’s face, the impassive mask breaking for the first time—something five White Gloves trying desperately to kill her hadn’t come close to managing.

Constance must surely have misinterpreted what she saw. An impression influenced by her role at the academy, her status as Deputy Headmistress. Because she swore, nonsensically, that the expression that flickered across the demon’s face was that of a student caught after curfew.

Guilt?