"What did you just say?! Ridiculous! Completely ridiculous! How could a rule like that possibly exist?!"
"What kind of garbage did the founder of the Advanced Nurturing High School project have stuffed in his head to create a rule that could turn around and threaten himself?!"
"I knew it, I knew it! Compared to my White Room project, the Advanced Nurturing High School project is trash! The most worthless failure of a talent cultivation project there is!"
Atsuomi's furious roar rang through the entire chairman's office.
He cursed the rule, then cursed the founder of the school itself, as though everything about Advanced Nurturing High School was beneath contempt in his eyes.
And honestly, it was understandable.
Atsuomi had arrived brimming with confidence, ready to cleanly and decisively take away the White Room's greatest masterpiece. Yet the moment he stepped inside Advanced Nurturing High School, he was told he was no longer the chairman. Who wouldn't lose it?
Just to secure even that one-week window, he had already spent an enormous amount of political capital and favors.
And now? He had nothing left. His authority, his position, every last bit of it had been snatched away by a mere student named Yukio, leaving him with absolutely nothing. The rage made Atsuomi shake, his fleshy face twisting so badly his features were almost collapsing into one another.
Really, if he had been able to calm down and think straight, the fact that Tsukishiro was standing while Yukio sat, and the fact that the security staff were taking orders from Yukio, should have told him this was real.
But the problem was that after paying such a huge price to get here, there was no way Atsuomi could calm down that easily. He had always had a vicious temper to begin with.
Being capable did not mean being gentle.
Yukio watched Atsuomi's distorted, raging face without backing down an inch.
"A loser's wailing really is ugly. Hard to listen to, too."
"A loser? You're calling me a loser?!"
Atsuomi's eyes flew wide as he glared at Yukio, then at the surrounding security guards, clearly already considering solving this by force and seizing back the authority that had been stolen from him.
Tsukishiro understood his former boss far too well, so he had no choice but to step forward.
"Ayanokoji-sama, please leave."
At that, Atsuomi's fury only intensified when he saw Tsukishiro so obviously standing on Yukio's side.
"Traitor! Tsukishiro, you traitorous bastard!"
He pointed at Tsukishiro and unleashed a vicious stream of abuse.
"Damn you! You deserve to die! Have you forgotten who dragged a poor little nobody like you all the way up to where you are now?! Huh?!"
"You knew about this rule, and you'd still rather let this student become chairman than continue serving me?!"
"How laughable! Laughable! Do you really think that just because of some Advanced Nurturing High School rule, he'll be able to sit securely in that chairman's seat forever? Fool! You fool!"
Atsuomi had clearly misunderstood something. He took the ultra-secret information Yukio had gotten from Manabu Horikita and assumed it was Tsukishiro's own discovery from working inside the school, proof of Tsukishiro's ambition. At his core, he was still underestimating Yukio because he was just a student.
Standing there under the verbal assault, Tsukishiro wore a look of guilt. But the moment he recalled his daughter Ichika's adorable face, her bright smile, and that desperate, tearful scream telling him to run, his resolve hardened once more. He bowed slightly toward Atsuomi and said nothing at all.
But his attitude said more than enough.
No one knew just how shaken Tsukishiro had been back in the stairwell at noon when Yukio declared, "The one I've been waiting for is the chairman."
Tsukishiro had thought Yukio had been hoarding all those points simply to live comfortably at this school.
But after learning that a sky-high amount of points could replace the chairman, he finally understood.
That class poll exam Yukio had designed all the way back then had already planted the seeds for Atsuomi's defeat today.
That realization also convinced Tsukishiro once and for all that leaving his daughter Ichika in Yukio's hands would never go wrong. That was why he now stood firmly at Yukio's side without hesitation.
Of course, another major reason he had chosen to betray Atsuomi was what he had seen in the stairwell at noon: the way his daughter Ichika had collapsed unconscious after her emotions swung so violently from shock to relief.
Some people would kill a demon king for their daughter.
Tsukishiro had reached the same conclusion. For his daughter's sake, he would do whatever it took to bring down Atsuomi, his former boss.
Atsuomi's outstretched finger trembled violently. He was so furious he could barely speak anymore.
More importantly, his plan to break the situation with brute force died right then and there.
He was not stupid. When he first considered forcing his way through this, his target had been the security staff.
In Atsuomi's mind, they were nothing special. If he moved fast enough and caught them off guard, he could deal with them in an instant.
But now Tsukishiro stood firmly against him, watching him every second. With Tsukishiro there, any attempt at violence became much harder.
Just as Tsukishiro understood Atsuomi, Atsuomi also understood Tsukishiro. At the very least, he knew Tsukishiro's fighting skill was roughly on his own level.
The two of them had sparred many times in the White Room, and neither had ever been able to put the other away. Every single match had ended more or less evenly.
Under those circumstances, charging ahead with brute force would have almost no chance of success. If he wanted to turn this around, there was only one option left.
He would have to leave, retrieve his gun by force, come back, kill this student and the traitor Tsukishiro, and deal with the rest later. The fallout might get messy, but then he'd just let those people buy into the White Room. That would suppress the situation and win him even more allies and influence.
That was the thought taking shape inside Atsuomi's darkened mind.
And so, pretending to have come to his senses, he gave a cold snort and shoved aside the guards blocking him.
"I'll leave on my own."
After spitting that out, he turned and headed for the door without looking back.
Watching him go, Tsukishiro turned back around.
"You're really just letting him walk out like that? Is that safe? Based on what I know of Ayanokoji-sama, he absolutely won't let this go."
"He's a tyrannical sort of genius. When he runs into trouble, his first instinct is always to break it by force. This could get ugly."
"It's fine."
Yukio rose from the chairman's chair and stretched lazily.
His face, after that stretch, was full of relaxed ease.
"I already made arrangements. Since Atsuomi dared to come to Advanced Nurturing High School in person, there's no way he's leaving this campus."
"?"
Arrangements? What arrangements?
Tsukishiro had no idea what he meant.
Yukio pointed out the window.
"After all, some things are better handled personally by the people involved."
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.