How To Survive A Cute Ghost Yandere

News spread incredibly fast. It was, after all, just a match between two students at the Awakened rank. But for some reason, not a single student wanted to miss watching that particular fight.

So the edges of the arena turned into a spot packed with first-year students who’d come to watch. There were even a few second-years who’d gotten curious.

Why wouldn’t they be?

The student said to have contributed the most during that attack was about to fight—against the crown prince himself, no less, someone widely believed to be one of the strongest students among the first-years.

Some probably wanted to check whether his strength really lived up to the exaggerated stories from students who’d seen it firsthand, but most of the crowd that showed up came purely out of admiration for Eiros.

And then, this happened.

"Wow, insane, that sword of his is seriously something else, huh?"

"Who do you guys think’s gonna win?"

"No idea, maybe Eiros? I mean, the prince has been fighting for a pretty long stretch now. Don’t you think he’d be kind of worn out after all those matches?"

"Yeah, yeah, I’d guess Eiros has the edge. But who knows? We all know Prince Rein just keeps getting stronger the longer he stays in the arena."

Watching the two of them face off, the crowd’s anticipation swelled.

"...You’re pretty popular, huh?"

Eiros’s lips twitched with amusement hearing the crown prince say that, and he nearly laughed as he glanced around at the crowd.

He knew he was popular. But this popular?

Drawing his sword, Eiros turned his focus back to the crown prince. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he could win this—there was no way he could get seriously hurt, or fatally hurt anyone else, here.

That would limit the very thing that made his ability work: growing stronger the closer he got to death. On top of that, the crown prince was fighting him after already going through match after match against other students.

’...Well, let’s just do this.’

Eiros watched the crown prince draw his own sword, leaving behind a trailing streak of golden light.

The match began, with both Eiros and the crown prince rushing forward.

Craaack!!

With red lightning trailing every arc of his blade, Eiros raised his sword into the air, then brought it down straight toward the crown prince.

The massive shield, roughly the size of the prince’s own body, blocked the path of Eiros’s attack.

Clang!!

The sound of clashing metal rang out sharply. Eiros bit down slightly on his lip, pushing more weight behind his blade, only to realize it was hopeless to shove that shield out of the way.

Right then, Eiros noticed the crown prince’s sword rising up from behind the shield. The shield he’d been holding stayed planted in the arena floor, and from behind it, the prince slipped in with his blade from the side.

His body, wrapped in golden armor, showed no sign of being slowed down by it. The prince swung his sword, aiming it straight at Eiros.

Stab!!

Craaack!!

It was close, but Eiros managed to block it with the flat of his own blade. A faint spark of electricity burst out from the clash of their swords, followed by red lightning and golden light bursting in small flares around them.

The wind howled fiercely, and the prince reached over with his other hand to grip his shield, raising it up.

"...!"

Eiros had no other choice—he backed out of the blade-lock and stepped back to put some distance between them. The shield dropped right after.

Boom!!

’...Insane, his shield just tore up the arena floor.’

That made Eiros smile awkwardly, since the arena floor was already riddled with long, identical gouges. Clearly the work of the crown prince from his earlier matches.

Well, even though Eiros didn’t have much fighting experience, at least from here on out he’d be learning a lot.

His earlier attacks had been way too reckless.

This time, he needed to do something different.

Whoosh!!

Eiros shot forward, sword drawn at his side. The crown prince raised his shield, bracing to block.

Slash!!

Eiros swung in a curving arc to the side, only to be blocked by the shield again. But unlike before, he didn’t try to force the shield aside with sheer weight this time.

Instead, he glanced sideways, and with a movement he’d already planned out, he pivoted and drove his sword forward again. But what he found waiting behind that shield made him flinch.

Because the crown prince had already dropped his sword right into that exact spot, as if he’d already predicted what Eiros was about to do.

’Damn it.’

He clicked his tongue, pulling back out of position and retreating once more. Of course, this was never going to be easy.

Watching that sword slam into the arena floor, tearing a deep, dusty gash into it, made Eiros realize just how vast the gap in fighting experience between them really was.

Still, as expected, even though the crown prince grew stronger the longer he fought, he was starting to wear down as his soul essence drained away.

That much was obvious from his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. Eiros took advantage of the prince’s stillness to think things through.

In this fight, the crown prince had clearly been reading exactly what Eiros was about to do. In other words, the prince’s fighting style wasn’t fixed—his movements depended on what he’d done before, and on how his opponent moved.

That was exactly the problem. A thinking being was nothing like a monster. They kept learning from past mistakes, which meant Eiros couldn’t rely on any fixed pattern for what to do next.

This wasn’t like fighting a monster in some game, where the movements were all pre-programmed and the player just had to memorize them.

So what was he supposed to do...?

Right...

Don’t be predictable.

Whoosh!!

Craaack!!

Eiros poured a good amount of soul essence into his legs, accelerating his movement. His sword trailed beside him, drawn and ready.

The crown prince stepped back a few paces, raising his golden shield, then dropping it. Right after, Eiros saw the prince’s blade come stabbing straight toward him.

’There it is—his movement changed because mine did too.’

That was something he should’ve predicted from the start. Eiros smiled faintly, ducking his head as a powerful gust of wind tore past him, whipping his hair wildly.

Then he raised his arm, and with a completely unnatural motion, he slashed upward. A strike like that would normally carry almost no power behind it, but with soul essence backing it up, Eiros managed to give it exactly the force he needed.

Crash!!

Clank!!

The swords collided, and the crown prince’s blade was knocked upward, nearly flying clean out of his grip. Eiros didn’t waste a single second—he shot forward, closing the distance.

The shield stood in his way, but well, who said you had to smash through a shield before going after your enemy?

Eiros grabbed the top edge of the shield, forcing it downward with a burst of soul essence. It probably wasn’t enough on its own, but he used it as a springboard to launch himself up into the air.

Craaack!! Craaack!!

His trail left behind streaks of red lightning, and below him, the crown prince stared up at him from behind his helmet.

Eiros raised his sword overhead, then, with one devastating straight strike, brought it down on the crown prince.

"Kugh...!"

The crown prince reacted fast, catching the blow with the flat of his blade. It was close, forcing his movements to go slightly clumsy, dropping him to one knee.

Well, that hadn’t been enough to finish him off either, so Eiros didn’t linger.

’This momentum—I need to seize it.’

The crown prince was exhausted now, which meant he couldn’t afford to keep charging in recklessly. Because of that, Eiros pushed to stay on top, keeping the pressure on and exploiting that exhaustion.

Still, he couldn’t drag this out too long either. At this point, Eiros had no idea just how much stronger the prince’s ability could still make him.

Eiros added a bit more weight behind his blade to bear down on the prince, but that was really just another means to launch himself back up into the air, using the full force of the prince’s own powerful push against him.

Then, from a position high above, Eiros took aim at the crown prince with his sword.

"....!"

Craaack!!

Whoosh!! Waaah!!

Without a moment’s hesitation, Eiros hurled his sword like he was throwing a spear. The crown prince looked stunned at the sudden shift, raising his shield to block the attack.

Clank!!

It hit hard, but not hard enough to so much as shake the prince. And the moment he peeked out from behind his shield—Eiros wasn’t there anymore.

Instead, a sharp gust of wind swept past beside him, fast and certain, trailing the crackling sound of red lightning sparking through the air.

Slash!!

The crown prince glanced to the side—he knew, he reacted too—but there was no way to dodge it completely, forcing him to spin his body as a gash was left across his arm.

Eiros didn’t know when exactly he’d gotten this bold in a fight, but since this was exactly what he needed, he kept it up.

That feeling of dominating his opponent and pressing them down—that was exactly what he needed while fighting.

The crown prince stepped back several paces. Watching Eiros immediately dash forward again with his sword, no one in that crowd could have guessed what would come next...

"W-wait...! I give up!"

The crown prince threw both hands up in surrender, and at that exact moment, his golden armor shattered into pieces, dissolving into shimmering golden fragments of light—along with his sword and shield.

Eiros came to a stop, his face looking like someone who’d tripped mid-stride and somehow caught himself, before very nearly actually tripping.

"E-eh?"

The confused sound rang out clearly, and even the cheering crowd looked baffled.

The crown prince’s face had gone pale, sweat soaking his entire body, his messy gray hair looking a shade darker than usual as he smiled awkwardly.

"That’s, well... my soul essence ran out. I can’t fight anymore."

Eiros had won the match in the strangest way possible. Right around then, a few students started thinking that maybe Eiros’s actual combat ability was a little weaker than they’d expected.

Yeah, maybe Eiros had just gotten lucky during that attack.

A few students started thinking exactly that.

***

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