The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy-Chapter 478: The Heavens Shall Fall (XIX)

Cling!

The Heavenly Swallowing Sword met the compressed mass without hesitation, the blade cutting straight into it as if the weight behind the attack meant nothing at all.

The moment the edge touched, the structure of the attack began to come apart.

The divine authority woven through it peeled away first, stripped cleanly from the physical force beneath, the same way it always did when the sword made contact.

What had been a dense, unified strike lost cohesion at the point of impact, breaking apart into fragments that scattered outward across the platform.

A second earlier, they had carried enough force to crush through stone, yet now they fell apart mid-motion, reduced to something far less dangerous.

Emyria felt the loss immediately.

She stepped back on instinct, reacting to the sudden absence of control in her hands, but I was already moving through the opening created by the dispersal.

Fwip!

I closed the distance before she could stabilize, bringing Midnight up in a horizontal swing aimed at forcing a response rather than landing cleanly.

She had no choice but to meet it.

Both of her arms came up, her authority condensing across her forearms into a dense, reinforced layer just before the strike connected.

CLANG!!!

She held the block, but the force still drove her backward, her boots sliding across the vine-covered surface she had spent the entire match building.

She lost two full steps to the impact, and I followed immediately, not giving her the space to recover or begin shaping the next attack.

That was where the exchange between us changed.

Earlier, I had been working around her output power, cutting through what came at me while allowing her the distance she needed to keep generating more.

Closing that space had come with its own risks, and I had treated it accordingly.

Now I removed that option entirely.

Every time her hands moved toward forming something, I was already inside the range required for it to take shape.

Midnight redirected her arms, interrupted the motion, or forced her into a defensive reaction before the authority could settle into anything usable.

The Heavenly Swallowing Sword stayed ready at my left side, positioned for anything that slipped past the immediate exchange.

She tried to drop her hand toward the platform, aiming to trigger the vines through direct contact.

I caught her wrist before her palm could reach the stone.

"—!!!"

Fwooom!-

She pulled back sharply, almost in disgust and reacted without thinking, forming a compact creation lance in her free hand and driving it forward at point-blank range.

THWAMM!

I met it with Midnight, angling the blade so the force slid off instead of colliding head-on.

The lance shot past me and slammed into the arena wall, embedding itself deep in the already fractured stone, where it remained lodged, vibrating faintly from the impact.

She tried again with her other hand, faster this time.

Shing!

I deflected that one as well.

She stepped back, attempting to regain distance, and forced a column of compressed organic material up from beneath my feet, the platform splitting as it rose.

I shifted my footing and stepped off the column as it lifted, letting it pass under me, then landed beside her on the lower surface with my momentum already carrying into another strike.

KOOOOM!

Midnight struck against her guard, the flat of the blade driving her sideways several steps, her white hair breaking loose across her face from the force of the movement.

For the first time since the match began, there was visible strain beneath her composure, but the effort required to maintain it had clearly increased.

"So... this is how you fight using both of the swords," she panted, resetting her stance.

"Yes."

"...It's a bit tricky," she smirked, wiping her lips as if there was something dirty on them.

She studied me across the short distance between us.

Blood continued to run from the cut along my forearm, dripping steadily from my fingers, while the injury at my ribs pulled with each full breath I took.

The platform around us had become something broken, scattered with fragments of stone, tangled vine clusters, and the embedded lance still lodged in the wall behind me.

Her gaze moved quickly, taking in the details.

Across me, the ground, and then up toward the arena walls, where long cracks stretched toward the observation tiers, and further still to the ceiling, where fractures had begun to form where none had existed before.

"Haaah..."

She drew in a slow breath.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

She directly exerted her authority to its fullest power, surging outward from her body in a single overwhelming wave that struck everything at once.

The platform, the walls, the air itself, as if she had stopped restraining it entirely and simply allowed it to exist without limit.

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

The platform shattered.

Fragments rose and rotated slowly around us, catching the arena light and scattering it in shifting patterns, while the vines that had covered the surface rose with them, threading through the debris as they expanded outward.

From every piece of lifted stone, new growth erupted, her authority using every available surface at once.

The arena walls cracked from floor to ceiling.

The observation tiers shook hard enough that people grabbed onto their seats, shouting out loud words that I decided to ignore or look.

Emyria stood at the center of the rising field, her arms open at her sides, her white hair lifting slightly in the current of power moving around her.

The glow around her had reached full intensity, and her golden eyes held a steady, unwavering focus that left no room for restraint.

"[Domain of Creation]"

A deep vibration followed, spreading outward from her in a single expanding pulse that filled the arena in less than two seconds.

The debris, the vines, the authority itself all folded into that expansion, no longer separate actions but part of a single system governed by her will.

Inside the domain, her authority existed everywhere.

It filled the air, settled into every fragment of stone, spread through the ground that had once been a platform and was now something entirely different.

The atmosphere changed instantly, carrying the scent of rain and the presence of a space defined by the act of bringing things into existence.

Growth began to form in the air itself.

Not from her own power, but from... nothing.

Vines, roots, and compressed lances took shape spontaneously, her authority using the ambient energy of the domain as raw material, producing continuous generation without requiring direct input for each instance.

It was far worse than before.

I moved through the first wave, Midnight cutting a path while the Heavenly Swallowing Sword stripped the divine component from anything that came too close, but the rate of generation outpaced the space I could clear.

Every gap I created filled again almost immediately, new growth forming faster than I could remove it.

This space belonged to her now.

Everything within it answered to her authority.

A lance formed beside my face without warning.

I caught it on the flat of Midnight, less than an inch from my cheek, the force snapping my head sideways from the impact.

"NGH—"

Another formed at my feet. I jumped over it, only to land in a cluster of vines that wrapped around my left boot before I could move again.

I cut myself free with quick, efficient strokes, but more attacks were already forming, two lances taking shape above me and dropping in the same instant.

One struck my back.

THUMP!

The impact drove me forward onto one knee, and I felt the attempt to take root again at the point of contact.

I pushed Karma through the area harder this time, forcing the intrusion out before it could establish itself, though the effort required was greater now with the domain feeding into it.

At the center of it all, Emyria watched.

Her eyes found mine through the shifting debris and constant growth, through the light of her domain filling every part of the space between us.

"...What are you going to do now?" she asked, tilting her head with a victorious smirk.

By the look on her eyes, the only thing she was worried about right now, was my Heavenly Swallowing Sword.

But of course, I also had my other trump cards...

"Ugh..."

I rose back to my feet.

Looked around at the space she had created, the arena completely overtaken, every direction filled with her authority generating endlessly.

Because there was only one answer to something like this.

And I had wanted to avoid using it here, but that was no longer an option.

My right hand tightened around Midnight, while my left one steadied the Heavenly Swallowing Sword.

I looked at her through the domain.

"I obviously have my own."

I released it.

『 The Domain of Silence 』

It did not arrive with light or sound or any visible display of force.

It spread outward quietly, a pulse without color or noise, defined only by the effect it had on everything it touched.

Sound disappeared first.

At the boundary where the two domains met, it stopped completely.

The movement of vines, the shifting of stone, the distant noise of the arena, all of it cut off at a clean, invisible line as the silence established itself.

Then the domains collided.

The boundary between them became visible, a clear line in the air where creation pressed against silence and silence pressed back, two opposing forces occupying the same space with incompatible rules.

The arena is divided.

On her side, everything continued to grow and shift, light and motion and constant creation filling the space.

On mine, everything stopped.

No sound or any movement at all.

The generation that filled her domain ceased the moment it crossed into mine, her authority meeting silence and losing the ability to manifest.

Fragments of stone that drifted into my half hung motionless in the air.

Vines that had been reaching toward me froze where they were.

Above us, the lower tiers of the arena fell quiet, not from choice, but because the silence reached them and erased all sound.

Emyria stood within her domain and looked across the boundary, more specifically, at the space where her authority no longer functioned.

Her gaze returned to me.

I stood at the line between both domains, one sword in each hand, Midnight resting within the silence, the Heavenly Swallowing Sword extending into her creation, watching her through the pressure where the two forces met and held.

"…This is your domain?"

Her eyes shifted to the boundary again.

To the absolute stillness that replaced everything her authority had been sustaining.

For the first time since the match began, something beneath her composure changed. into uncertainty.

Above us, the observation tiers remained quiet, filled with the kind of silence that came from people witnessing something extremely shocking.

Between us, the two domains pressed against each other, neither yielding, both holding the line.