"Hey, Kirihara-kun, are you going to attend the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival this year too?"
"Tachibana, do not ask such boring questions. Of course Kirihara-kun will participate! Last year, he almost beca the Seven Stars Sword King."
"..."
Surrounded by civilian girls from an ordinary high school, Shizuya Kirihara inwardly looked down on them with deep arrogance.
Such "won" were nothing more than disposable toys to him.
Because these ordinary, non-magical people were utterly unworthy of a Blazer of his status.
Inside the bustling shopping mall, Kirihara suddenly spotted a certain figure from a distance.
A presence.
A fiery, dazzlingly radiant figure.
That was Stella Vermillion, soone he could currently hardly reach yet deeply longed to touch.
Though she was just a princess from a small country, a princess was still a princess.
Whether in figure, pedigree, or appearance, she was entirely beyond comparison with those ordinary civilian girls clinging to him.
Moreover, there was her imnse talent.
The only student in modern history to enroll in an academy as an A-Rank.
If it were a woman like her, he wouldn't mind marrying her.
Then, Kirihara saw the boy walking beside her.
"Noah."
To be precise, Kirihara set his hostile sights directly on him.
'Yes.'
'That man will be an obstacle.'
Although both were officially C-Rank Blazers, having watched the trending internet recordings of his destructive power, Kirihara quietly understood he was no match for that monster in a fair fight.
However, when it ca to manipulating people and understanding won, he didn't think he would lose to a foreign student.
That guy, who was currently getting along so well with that pathetic "Failed Knight," was probably an idiot too.
The ones secretly targeting that Failed Knight were the most influential and powerful political families in the country.
A re attendant by the foreign princess's side—if he angered those powerful dostic politicians by associating with Ikki, Kirihara wouldn't even need to think of a way to deal with him personally.
They would crush him.
Within Kirihara's stolen mories, Noah could seamlessly sense the older boy's thoughts and petty feelings, even completely recreating the physical sensations of the mont.
For example, right now, Noah could feel that Kirihara was placing his hand familiarly on a civilian girl's waist.
The tactile sensation.
The feeling and temperature of the crowded mall at that exact ti—Noah could vividly experience it all through the Soul Anchor.
Bringing a large group of civilian girls to the shopping mall for a highly visible date—such high-profile, arrogant behavior truly suited the Hunter.
Cowardly and sleazy in battle, flamboyant and arrogant in daily life—just like a standard job, so people had completely different, compartntalized personalities in their work and personal lives. Shizuya Kirihara was exactly that kind of hypocrite.
The vivid mory scene shifted violently.
The ard terrorists appeared in the cinema.
At first, Kirihara, possessing the inflated ego of a Mage-Knight, intended to deal with the suddenly appearing "lowlifes" before him to show off to the girls.
But when he cowardly realized there were actually dozens of them, ard with military rifles and that they didn't imdiately kill the won and children, he suddenly changed his mind to save his own skin.
After activating his Blazer Noble Art, his physical form and magical presence were completely concealed, becoming truly invisible to the world.
He simply stood back and watched as several innocent people were killed by the initial gunfire, observing it all with cold detachnt.
To prevent the terrified girls who were with him from loudly calling out to him for help and exposing his invisible position to the gunn, he even specifically summoned his Device, expanded it in its safe Illusion Form and knocked all of his own dates unconscious while they were distracted by the terrorists.
Blazers had a destined bright future.
For civilian girls from ordinary high schools, rely knowing a Blazer was already sothing to boast about, let alone becoming a famous Blazer's girlfriend.
Kirihara was one of the representative contestants from Hagun Academy, one of the prestigious Seven Stars Academies, at last year's Seven Stars Sword Art Festival.
He had also appeared publicly in national televised broadcasts, making him a figure with so minor celebrity recognition among student knights.
Coupled with looks that aligned with civilian girls' preferences, he went further and further down the path of an arrogant playboy.
The invisible Kirihara strolled leisurely through the bloody shopping mall, holding his student handbook terminal in hand, ticulously recording the entire violent incident as he cowardly snuck toward the exits.
Along the way, he also spotted Ikki Kurogane and the others hiding unnoticed from a patrol, but he showed little interest in helping them.
He was searching for the owner of a certain, fiery figure.
This was a perfect opportunity for him to safely play the hero and make a good lasting impression in front of that royal princess once the fighting was done.
"Spare ! Please!"
A twisted smile suddenly appeared before his eyes.
As a cowardly archer who relied on stealth, Kirihara had one major physical advantage: his eyesight was excellent.
He could see very far and with great, horrifying clarity.
The terrorist leader's voice and expression, filled with utter despair, echoed clearly in his mind from across the concourse.
And all of this bloody torture was because of "that guy."
In his sharp view, the man violently turning into a massive "monster" wasn't due to Rebellion's hidden bioweapons or a genetic trump card—it was "that guy's" doing.
The boy standing beside the Crimson Princess.
'It had to be him!'
Though Kirihara didn't know how the magic was done, that man had been physically turned into a horrifying monster!
Kirihara's physical abilities were only D-Rank, not much stronger than an average, athletic person.
In his sheer panic after witnessing the magic, he forgot to use his magic power to enhance his stamina, and after running only a short distance away, his breathing beca labored.
His cowardly mind was consud entirely by the desperate thought of getting as far away from "that guy" as physically possible.
...
Noah finally understood.
He understood why Kirihara had reacted that terrified way in the classroom, and why he was so deathly afraid of him when they locked eyes.
Kirihara was absolutely terrified of being turned into that disgusting, fleshy monster himself if he ever crossed the boy.
Noah coldly withdrew his consciousness from the vivid mory, looked at the long corridor of mory scrolls floating before him in the soulscape and tore them apart with a casual wave of his hand.
In an instant, Kirihara's recent mories of the mall, the monster and Noah's power were shredded into digital fragnts.
At the sa ti, the entire dark corridor of the soul flickered and vanished in an instant as Noah severed the Soul Anchor.
Noah awoke back in the physical reality of the dorm room and imdiately glanced down at Shizuya Kirihara, who lay convulsing at his feet with his eyes rolled back in his head and white foam dribbling from his open mouth.
Since this was his very first ti actually using this experintal "mory deletion technique" on a living human, his magical control wasn't perfect and he had deleted many unnecessary, adjacent parts of the boy's short-term mory.
He just didn't know what exact neurological consequences this ssy deletion would bring when the boy finally woke up.
Noah grabbed Kirihara by his uniform collar, effortlessly dragged his dead weight to the dorm's bathroom, casually tossed him onto the tile floor beside the toilet and then quietly left the older boy's dormitory, locking the door behind him.
...
In just that short amount of ti spent interrogating Kirihara, Stella's afternoon qualifier match had also ended.
According to the digital battle report on the school network, her opponent had decisively chosen to forfeit the exact mont they saw the towering flas of her Empress Dress, successfully sparing themselves from a world of physical pain and humiliation.
However, this rational decision also led to a massive chorus of loud boos from the packed stadium audience.
Though the students themselves would choose to cowardly forfeit in the exact sa situation against an A-Rank monster, the highly anticipated match ending in such an anti-climactic way left everyone in the stands deeply disappointed.
In the brutal selection battles for the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival, not all participants were actual combat masters.
Due to the open tournant format, so weaker students held onto the delusional idea that "if all my bracket opponents happen to be weak or injured, I could luckily beco a representative for the Seven Stars Sword Art Festival!"
Thus, there were many early matches that were painfully awkward to watch—or rather, there were quite a few of them that ended in pathetic, one-sided beatdowns.
Opportunities to witness true high-level battles were incredibly rare, which was exactly why there were highly anticipated "seeded players" that drew massive crowds.
And Stella Vermillion was undoubtedly the most dazzling star among them!
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