On My First Day Undercover, the Organization Collapsed - Chapter 390

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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First Day of Infiltration, The Organization Was Destroyed · Episode 390
Blood Battle in the Labyrinth (2)
Kelvin seemed to have found work suited to his temperament.
“V-very fun.”
It was easy.
All he had to do was wander the labyrinth with its map in hand, and whenever he spotted a student or spectator entering or leaving, he would chase them away as menacingly as possible.
“Oh, don’t come closer!”
Clang!
Occasionally he’d throw stones.
“Die! Dark Knight!”
Thud!
Some students charged at him eagerly, but the overwhelming difference in strength neutralized them with ease.
“Ah, darkness!”
“Aaaaaaah!”
And all it took was that one shout to send them fleeing pale-faced.
It was fun.
A hollow, numbing sensation would visit him from time to time, but still—it was something to enjoy.
Then a thought occurred to him.
Gilbert.
‘While I’m playing Dark Knight, that bastard is…’
Preparing for the masked ball.
Not that he envied him, of course.
Even while preparing for the masked ball.
Even while eating.
Even while drawing breath!
Gilbert would be growing accustomed to Master-grade power with each passing moment.
Kelvin, unable to believe it, had sparred with him not long ago.
And he’d been defeated in a single exchange.
He’d asked Gilbert not to hold back, but the gap in ability was far starker than he’d imagined!
A single revelation.
And then a life-or-death duel!
That Master-grade threshold, which awaited beyond that point, seemed both distant and arduous to Kelvin.
‘Someday I will…’
Throughout the Empire and across the lands of this world, mercenaries had always existed in the countless nations that once held dominion here.
Those who accepted coin to handle tasks that knights and other warriors could not—that was what they were.
Some scorned them, others looked down upon them, but among all mercenaries, there was one legendary figure.
The Mercenary King, Crake.
In that long history of mercenaries, he was nearly the only Master-grade to ever exist!
Kelvin admired Crake’s legend.
Of course, he’d stumbled into the mercenary trade almost by accident, and he could leave whenever he wished.
In any case.
Kelvin wanted to reach Master-grade.
With that reputation as foundation, he’d take a knight’s title, and if he could, a marriage as well.
He wanted to have children.
It would be perfect if those children entered Edelwein Academy and received instruction from their master.
Kelvin’s dreams were grand yet humble.
‘Someone’s coming again.’
He began to sense a presence.
Time for the Dark Knight to make his appearance.
Shwing.
He drew the ceremonial longsword he’d brought to conceal his identity.
He’d left his greatsword behind.
Had to hide who he was.
He donned his helmet again and stepped forward.
But something felt off.
‘Not a student?’
The clothing was different from what he’d come to recognize.
And that back view seemed…
Familiar somehow…
“Found you, Dark Knight.”
“Pardon?”
Shring.
The moment she saw him, she drew her sword.
Now that he looked closer, he recognized her face.
‘Professor Isabella?’
They had barely crossed paths before.
They’d never even spoken.
He’d only ever glimpsed her when following his Master to faculty meetings or passing her on campus now and then.
In other words, she was someone he’d never really paid attention to.
“Dark Knight, I will strike you down.”
They were fighting all of a sudden.
Clang!
‘She’s strong.’
He understood it from a single crossing of blades.
But she felt it too.
‘An assistant lecturer at this level?’
Isabella knew little of Kelvin either—merely that he was someone Ziel had brought along.
Some people whispered of a mercenary king in the Western Region, but Isabella was not the sort to move in circles where such rumors held sway.
She’d never imagined he could be this formidable.
Both of them realized it at the same moment.
‘This person could….’
‘This one could…!’
Lead me to Master-level strength.
The atmosphere shifted.
Clang, ring!
The speed of his sword strokes, the force behind them, the temperature of the roiling mana—
Everything changed.
An untimely heat rose up within the Labyrinth.
“W-what? That sound—the fighting…agh!”
“W-we should stay back, or we might get caught in it.”
Their movement paths had inadvertently overlapped, and the students who crossed them found themselves hastily retreating.
‘His strength is overwhelming. Impossible.’
Isabella struggled to conceal her bewilderment.
Kelvin’s power was extraordinary.
Each downward strike, each body-check collision—sheer, raw physical strength flowing through every blow.
Layer that with mana, and her wrists went numb with each exchange of steel.
Crash!
That was the moment her sword shattered.
But she had no time to falter.
Kelvin smoothly offered her one of his own—a ceremonial longsword hung at his waist.
“M-Master-level!”
With just those words, she revealed her own goal.
Realizing they shared the same ambition, Isabella accepted the blade in silence and drew it.
Shring.
They began anew.
Clang, ring!
Isabella steeled herself and drew every scrap of mana she could muster into her blade.
Sword met sword; mana met mana.
The collision of their powers became starkly visible, cracks spiderwebbing across the Labyrinth’s walls with audible snaps.
Tremendous waves of magical force shook everything around them without pause.
Yet they never rested, each searching relentlessly for gaps in the other’s defense—thrusting, slashing, striking upward.
“Hraah!”
This was the Labyrinth.
Walls on all sides save the ceiling above.
No audience now, no one to interfere, nothing to worry about but each other.
‘This is insane. How long has it been since a fight like this…?’
Kelvin fared somewhat better, having endured countless trials under Ziel’s brutal instruction. Isabella had not.
A battle where life hung in the balance.
The sensation of walking through hell itself.
It had been far too long since she’d felt anything like this.
To be precise, ever since becoming a professor at the Academy, she’d never experienced a fight like this.
Clang!
That was when Kelvin’s sword came down vertically, crashing onto Isabella’s blade.
Screech……
A crack began to spider across the steel.
‘No, not now!’
If the sword shattered here, the downward force would cleave straight through Isabella’s upper body.
But before that fear came something sharper—regret that without a weapon, she couldn’t continue fighting at all.
Hunger!
Yearning!
Greed!
Every one of those emotions gripped Isabella now.
Kelvin felt it too.
‘This can’t break!’
If it broke, he couldn’t fight anymore.
Should he channel more mana into it, push harder?
Or pull back and find another way somehow……
Metallic clang!
“Swords are plentiful.”
Right then, a sack containing a dozen more blades tumbled down beside them both.
“M-Master?”
“Teacher Ziel?”
Ziel was standing atop the Labyrinth wall—no one had seen him arrive.
“Thought you’d need more swords.”
With that, Ziel added one more thing.
“Keep fighting until all of them break, Kelvin.”
“Master……!”
“Professor Isabella Altidor, if you do that, you won’t need to buy food for the rest of the Festa.”
Strange.
Though she’d sworn she didn’t care about the expense, Isabella’s eyes suddenly blazed.
Her salary had to be preserved.
And so the two locked blades again.
Whenever one fighter’s sword shattered, as if by covenant, they’d wait while the other drew a fresh blade.
Clang, ring!
Isabella was growing accustomed to Kelvin’s swordsmanship—similar to the Kundel family’s Heavy Sword Technique, yet with a different grain.
‘Powerful. Direct but skillful too. What is this? This feeling of fighting for survival?’
Kelvin’s swordsmanship had no fixed patterns.
He took whatever stance the moment demanded.
He had preferred methods, but no prescribed form—the mark of a mercenary’s training.
Isabella, by contrast, was a typical noble knight, wielding standardized technique.
Not that she was weak.
Experience.
While she lacked the crucible of life-and-death combat, she’d acquired vast knowledge of swordsmanship through countless sparring matches.
‘If only I had my own blade!’
Their stalemate stemmed entirely from Kelvin’s inability to wield his true sword!
With his own weapon, this close match would never have materialized.
Yet combat never begins with everything prepared.
Kelvin was slowly awakening those memories from his mercenary days.
When he’d faced dozens without a weapon in his hands.
When he’d been hunted with grave wounds, forced to fight despite the pain.
When his silence had bred misunderstanding, and he’d been drawn into unwanted conflict!
Clang!
“Ugh!”
Isabella was growing accustomed to Kelvin’s style, yet simultaneously shocked by the mounting force behind his strikes.
Kelvin too was growing comfortable.
With his own body.
‘There’s no choice.’
Ziel’s words echoed in his mind.
A life-or-death duel.
That was precisely what Kelvin needed now.
She’d received permission to use secret techniques as well, so there was no restriction.
Then—
“Now!”
That was the moment.
Kelvin grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground and flung it.
“Ugh!”
Just as an accusation of cowardice was about to leave her lips, a tremendous force came crashing down on Isabella vertically.
Crash!
It was Kelvin’s sword, brimming with mana.
‘It’s going to break.’
Isabella had wrapped her sword in mana as well, but it was clear that within mere seconds, the blade would shatter.
So without hesitation, Isabella released her secret technique.
It was her first time using it.
In such close quarters!
‘Please work.’
Her control over it wasn’t perfect yet, but she had no choice but to use it.
If she didn’t, this “Dark Knight’s” blade would slice off her shoulder!
Screech-screech-screech!
And in that instant.
Crunch-crack-crunch!
Starting from where Kelvin’s sword blade met Isabella’s, the space warped and twisted—
“Let go of the sword!”
It engulfed the entire blade in an instant, crumpling it completely.
Kelvin reflexively released his grip and staggered backward in shock.
“Insane.”
Kelvin wasn’t one to talk much ordinarily.
But even if he were, this situation wouldn’t have allowed him to say anything else.
“Hah, hah.”
Isabella threw down the broken blade, shaken by the backlash.
Then she closed her eyes.
That sensation just now.
‘Remember this, Isabella Altidor.’
Ziel watched Isabella with her eyes closed and nodded approvingly.
“She’s taking another step forward.”
When he turned his gaze toward Kelvin, it was the same.
“The mana within him is in turmoil.”
It wasn’t merely from experiencing what had just transpired.
Kelvin, too, seemed to have glimpsed something about mana through Isabella’s secret technique—a fleeting but profound awakening.
‘That feeling of mana my master spoke of!’
Long ago, Ziel had said it.
One must understand mana to reach the master level.
Kelvin had naturally asked.
‘How, how difficult, Master.’
‘You discover it in extreme circumstances, Kelvin.’
That extremity had just arrived.
Kelvin felt the terror of death as he watched his sword crumple, and through the mana transmitted down the blade into his arm, he gained the exhilaration of new understanding.
In truth, Kelvin’s body had already been trained even more thoroughly than Gilbert’s, and he had experienced far more life-or-death struggles.
He had simply lacked systematic instruction!
That instruction Ziel had provided, and through rolling about desperately over all this time……
“It’s arrived.”
Kelvin, too, had now grasped that faint glimmer of the master level he’d so desperately sought.
Ziel hadn’t anticipated it either.
How could such an opportunity have presented itself?
‘Once Professor Isabella Altidor reaches the master level, she’ll become an excellent sparring partner for Gilbert.’
Efficient training that moves forward on its own without direct intervention!
The emergence of someone stronger or equal to him would heighten Gilbert’s vigilance all the more.
And there was also Kelvin’s presence.
As Ziel contemplated how Gilbert’s recently diminished tension would double, he suddenly realized he was enjoying himself.
‘How I’d love it if someone capable enough to match me would rise to that level.’
Yes.
Ziel, too, wanted to experience a fight on equal footing just once.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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