If Gojo had to deal with these knights himself, he wouldn't have bothered. Zero challenge. One by one they'd crumble like ants underfoot, and where was the fun in that?
But letting Beatrice do the fighting while he watched from the sidelines? Now that was a different story entirely.
There was something deeply satisfying about watching his own Spirit get worked up. Like teasing a cat. Or poking a small, very proud child.
"Why should I fight your battles? You could crush these people without breaking a sweat!"
Beatrice's eyes went wide, rejection instant and absolute.
"Aw, come on, Betty. You'd let me suffer like that?" He clutched his chest in mock agony. "I only agreed to this for your sake. Didn't you want to spread fear of Yin magic? This is your chance. Yesterday you didn't get to go all out. Today, the stage is yours."
He leaned in, voice dropping to something conspiratorial.
"Think about it. If you single-handedly demolish every knight here, imagine the psychological damage. And once word gets out that the entire Royal Guard Knights fell to one Great Spirit of Yin... your name will be on the lips of tens of thousands. Maybe more."
He knew her well enough. Ordering Beatrice to be his workhorse would get him nothing but contempt. But dangle the right bait, dress it up in a few compliments, and despite whatever her mouth said, she'd never turn it down.
The mention of advancing did it. Hesitation flickered across her face. She tried to hide it behind that haughty mask, but the cracks were showing.
Time to press the advantage. "Please, Betty? Help me out here. Think of it as saving us both. You don't want to spend the future broke and miserable with me, do you?"
"W-who said anything about a future with you!" Her voice hitched. "We have a Contract. That doesn't mean we're... living together forever!"
Something about that particular phrasing had flipped a switch. Color crept up her cheeks, half-embarrassed, half-furious.
"Either way, for my sake and yours, give it your best shot, Betty!"
"Hmph! Enough talking!" She spun away from him, chin lifted. "I know what I'm doing. I don't need you to tell me."
Her gaze locked onto the first knight who'd paid his fee and stepped into the arena.
"I am Cormac Lennox, member of the Royal Guard Knights..."
"I don't have time for introductions."
A flick of her wrist. Yin-attribute Mana erupted from her small frame, blooming into brilliant violet light that crystallized in midair and surged toward him like a crashing wave.
The knight's pupils contracted. He didn't even finish his sentence before snatching the sword from his hip, scrambling to mount a defense.
The Royal Guard Knights were elite by any measure. One in ten thousand. The best any nation could field.
But Great Spirits were rarer still. Fewer than ten walked the world. Outside a handful of exceptional individuals, fighting one alone was a fool's errand.
It was over in a blink. Dust billowed across the arena floor. When the breeze swept it away, Cormac Lennox lay sprawled on the ground, covered in grime, thoroughly unconscious.
Beatrice had shown restraint. She hadn't done anything lethal. But the speed of it was absurd. The man hadn't even finished introducing himself.
"What is this?!"
"We came to challenge him, not his Spirit!"
"This isn't fair..."
Protests erupted from the line of waiting knights.
Gojo cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted back.
"I'm a Spirit Arts User. Having you fight my Spirit is perfectly fair, wouldn't you say? If you want a shot at me, beat her first."
The knights paused. Then, one by one, the realization landed.
He wasn't wrong. At yesterday's assembly, Gojo's own display had been so overwhelming that it overshadowed everything else. Nearly everyone had fixated on his personal abilities. Watching him reduce Rickert and Bordeaux Zergev of the Council of Wise Men to hollow shells had burned his image into their minds. Even Felix, the legendary Blue, renowned across all of Lugunica for healing magic, had been powerless to undo whatever Gojo had done to those two.
All of which meant most people had forgotten a rather important detail: the man was also a Spirit Arts User. And his Spirit was a Great Spirit of legend.
"Don't worry, there are plenty of you. Put your heads together and it's not impossible." Gojo's smile was pure sunshine. "You've got the numbers advantage for a war of attrition. Use it."
Reinhard stood off to the side, listening, and a look of weary understanding crossed his face. So that was why Gojo had agreed. He'd planned to dump the entire workload on Beatrice from the start.
The knights exchanged uncertain glances.
Felt, terrified they might quit, poured fuel on the fire. "So this is the Royal Guard Knights? Some 'knightly spirit.' You don't even have the courage to keep going?"
The taunt hit exactly where it was aimed. Wavering resolve hardened. The challenges resumed.
Beatrice showed no mercy. Her approach was ruthlessly efficient: step into the arena, and the conversation was over. Yin-attribute magic crashed down in relentless barrages.
The knights were genuinely unlucky. Against most opponents, they'd have put up a decent fight. But Beatrice was something else entirely. The stronger ones managed to dodge or trade a blow or two. The rest were finished before they could blink.
Minutes passed. Knight after knight fell. Not a single one managed to hold their ground against her.
Felt watched the Holy Gold Coins piling up in Reinhard's hands and fought to keep her composure, maintaining an expression of dignified calm while her heart raced.
Beatrice, meanwhile, wore the look of someone profoundly bored.
"Listen." Her voice carried across the entire arena, clear and cutting. "Why don't several of you come at once? At your level, you won't beat me in this lifetime."
Saying something like that in the Knight Fortress training grounds, to the faces of every knight present... only Beatrice would dare.
And not one of them could argue. The evidence was lying unconscious all over the arena floor.
"You heard her. No need to hold back." Gojo's grin widened. "This was never an equal fight to begin with. Can't help it if you're all so weak."
Even these disciplined, composed knights ground their teeth at that.
The fighting resumed, but the strategy shifted. No more one-on-one duels. They came in pairs, then trios, coordinating their attacks.
It didn't matter.
For Beatrice, it meant the matches lasted a few seconds longer. That was all. Her Yin-attribute magic swallowed everything they threw at her.
Gojo and Felt stood side by side, watching the spectacle with undisguised enjoyment. All they were missing was a pot of tea and a plate of pastries.
"Think Betty can handle all of them today?"
"Hard to say." Gojo considered it. "Her power scales off my Mana. It's been growing steadily, but it's not at the point where she can go wild without limits."
He tilted his head. "Cursed Energy's another story. Depends on how far along her research is. If she's gotten precise with it, she should have more than enough."
"Oh right, Cursed Energy. Then I'm not worried." Felt's eyes gleamed. "If she let any of them off the hook, that'd be coins out of our pocket."
"You're obsessed with money."
"You're only figuring that out now?"
While they chatted, Beatrice dispatched another batch. Reinhard looked at his battered colleagues being carried off the field and could do nothing but keep collecting fees. If he hadn't sworn his loyalty to Felt, he'd probably be standing in that line himself.
Yesterday's assembly had stripped the Royal Guard Knights of their dignity. The news that they'd come to reclaim it was already spreading through the Royal Capital. Anyone with halfway decent connections knew what was happening at the Knight Fortress.
And with that news traveled the details of what had occurred at the assembly itself.
Inside the arena, the pile of Holy Gold Coins in Reinhard's hands grew steadily.
So did Felt's excitement. She cheered and hollered for Beatrice with abandon, all pretense of poise forgotten. The only thing that mattered was winning.
"Reinhard, what's going on here?"
Midway through the carnage, several new figures arrived at the training grounds.
Julius surveyed the scene with a puzzled expression and turned to Reinhard. The assembly had concluded, and the competition between Royal Candidates was now officially underway. Like Reinhard, he'd skipped the Knight Fortress that morning and had no idea what he'd walked into.
He wasn't alone. Beside him stood the Royal Candidate he served: Anastasia Hoshin, head of the Hoshin Company.
The young woman watched the chaos unfolding in the arena with keen, amused interest.
Reinhard gave his friend a brief summary.
Anastasia's response was a soft, delighted laugh.
"I see. And here I thought something serious had happened." She glanced at her knight. "Julius, you're a member of the order too. Care to give it a try?"
Julius observed another wave of his colleagues being hauled off the field. A faint smile played at the corner of his mouth.
"I appreciate the thought. If you'll permit me."
"If you're going to challenge Satoru, there's a one Holy Gold Coin entry fee." Reinhard, ever dutiful, reminded his friend before he could step forward.
"Entry fee?"
"That sounds fun! Can Mimi play too?!"
A tiny figure in white robes, no taller than a dwarf and with features like a kitten's, shot her hand into the air. The Demi-human girl was practically vibrating with excitement.
Anastasia and Julius exchanged a look. Neither had expected a price of admission.
"What a business model. Not everyone could pull this off."
The merchant in Anastasia spoke with genuine admiration. Among all the candidates' factions, only Felt's had the raw strength to monetize something like this. Julius was formidable in his own right, and the two sides had never clashed directly, but taking on the entire knight order in a gauntlet, even with rotating opponents... she doubted he could manage it.
The others weren't even in the conversation.
"I hadn't expected the competition to start with me funding a rival." Anastasia smiled and produced a Holy Gold Coin, handing it to Reinhard. "While I'm at it, do any of the knights need currency exchanged? The Hoshin Company offers conversion services. Very reasonable fees."
"That might be something you'd need to ask them directly, Lady Anastasia."
Felt was greedy, with a scrappy kind of cunning to match. But Anastasia operated on another level, spotting the commercial opportunity the instant it presented itself. It was exactly this instinct that had carried her, at such a young age, through the cutthroat merchant world of Kararagi to become the head of an international trading house.
"Sounds like you're all having an interesting conversation, meow."
A head popped through the crowd. Felix, curiosity written across every feature.
Reinhard looked past him. Two more figures trailed behind.
One was Crusch Karsten.
The other was a powerfully built old man with silver hair, dressed in a black butler's uniform.
...
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