[Congrats] I’m Slated to Win the Tournament for People Who Can’t Use Magic

Beyond the door lay the Early Morning Forest. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, making the dew-slicked grass sparkle.

It was a place I’d never seen before. I took a look around, trying to get my bearings.

“We’re inside a memory,” Violet-san said.

“Your memory?”

“It looks familiar.”

She started walking, and I trailed along behind her so I wouldn't get left in the lurch.

After trekking through the quiet woods for a while, the view suddenly opened up. In a plaza drenched in the morning sun, a small girl sat on the ground, hugging her knees.

She had black hair.

“Looks like she’s crying,” I noted.

“I suppose she is.”

The two of us approached the girl. I leaned down to get a look at her face; tears were streaming from her purple eyes.

“She’s the spitting image of you.”

“Just a resemblance,” she countered.

“I wonder why she’s crying.”

“Maybe she wet the bed or something,” Violet-san said, dodging the question.

The girl was sobbing silently. I noticed several prominent blue bruises on her body.

“So, what’s the play here?” I asked.

“If you want to move forward, we just have to end this memory.”

“Meaning…?”

Violet-san reached down and tilted the crying girl’s face up.

“Nothing changes just because you cry,” she said.

Slap!

She struck the girl across the cheek.

“Harsh.”

“It’s fine. It’s me, after all.”

“So you do admit it.”

Then, the world cracked. Like a mirror shattering, the morning forest broke into a million shards and vanished into the depths of a profound darkness.

Soon, there was nothing left but a void. Violet-san’s figure faintly shimmered within the blackness.

“Let us proceed.”

“Got it.”

We walked through the empty dark, heading in the direction where my magic power was being sucked away.

I couldn’t feel anything else. Even the sensation of the ground against the soles of my feet was vague, and I completely lost my sense of up and down. Just as a test, I decided to walk upside down. Like a handstand, but with my feet in the air and my head toward the "floor."

It worked. I could walk just fine.

Violet-san watched my inverted self with half-lidded eyes.

“Don’t peek up my skirt.”

“Relax, I can’t see a thing.”

After a bit more of that, we were suddenly enveloped in a madder-red light.

“Oof—!”

I nearly face-planted, but I managed to stick the landing with a reflexive roll.

“That’s what you get for playing around,” Violet-san said. She looked down at me sprawled on the ground and extended a hand.

“Much obliged.”

I took her cold hand and pulled myself up.

We were standing in a battlefield dyed by the setting sun. A sun as red as blood hung just above the horizon.

“Everyone’s dead.”

The earth was buried under fallen soldiers, and the ground was soaked with dark, stagnant blood. The carnage stretched all the way to the horizon.

“Let’s go.”

Violet-san moved forward as if she knew exactly where she was going.

Heaps of corpses.

We trekked across the Twilight Battlefield, stepping over the bodies of the fallen. I’d love to go on a rampage in a massive war zone like this someday, I thought.

A little further in, we found a blood-stained girl crying in the center of the battlefield. We came to a halt in front of her. She was curled up on a pile of corpses, weeping. Even without seeing her face, I knew it was Violet-san.

“She’s crying again.”

“I was a crybaby back then. Lend me your sword.”

“Be my guest.”

I handed my blade to her.

Violet-san took a stance in front of the girl. Her face was expressionless; it looked as if she’d locked her emotions away somewhere far, far away. She raised the sword to swing it down.

In that instant, I moved.

I grabbed her by the waist and leapt backward.

“The corpses—?!”

She noticed it too. The dead soldiers had started to move, lashing out at her. If I hadn’t moved right then, she would’ve been sliced open.

“The Sanctuary is rejecting us… How troublesome.”

“Is it like Anti-virus Software reacting to a virus?” I asked, kicking a zombie away as I spoke.

“That’s an analogy I don't quite follow.”

“Sorry, I’m not an expert on it either. By the way, what happens if you die here?”

“I’ll likely end up back in the Starting Room, restrained again.”

“Well, that’s a hassle. Can you even use a sword?”

“It’s not that I can’t…”

“It’ll be faster if I do it.”

I took the sword back from Violet-san and slashed at a nearby soldier. I cleaved him in two with a single strike, but more soldiers were rising every second, surrounding us. I gave up on total annihilation and decided to just carve a path straight ahead.

Meanwhile, Violet-san was stomping on a zombie's head with her high heels.

“This is a bit tricky without magic power,” I remarked.

“I told you, didn't I? I’m but a fragile maiden. Though you seem to move just fine without magic.”

“Like I said, it’s not a problem for me.”

I mowed down a path, cutting through the surging zombies.

“I’ve been able to manipulate magic power since I was a little kid, so I basically remodeled my body as I grew up. My muscles, my nerves, my skeleton—I optimized everything for combat by using magic to guide my growth.”

I cut through three of them with one swing and sent another flying with a side-kick. Their movements were sluggish. There were a lot of them, sure, but honestly, this was basically a musou game for me.

“Overwhelming,” she commented. “Like an adult kicking around children.”

“Could you pick a slightly cooler analogy, please?”

“Fine. If there were ever a Tournament for People Who Can't Use Magic, you'd be the undisputed champion.”

“That’s a bit more like it.”

That said, I couldn't fight forever; my stamina would hit its limit eventually. You can't clear out a swarm of zombies that stretches to the horizon without magic power. Man, I really wanted to try some flashy moves with magic.

I forced my way through the crowd and stabbed the girl who wouldn't stop crying.

“Sorry.”

Blood spilled from the girl’s mouth, the zombie horde swallowed us whole, and the world shattered once again.

The environment broke into pieces, and we found ourselves back in the void.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks to you,” Violet-san replied as I sheathed my sword.

We walked through the darkness until, finally, we were enveloped in light.

At last, we had reached the Center of the Sanctuary.