Chapter 144: The Decisive Opponent!
Inside the student council office, steam still curled from the black tea in Shiro's hand while Touka continued lecturing the two students in the distance.
The scene strongly resembled a mother scolding her children for making a mess of their room every day.
Sometimes, a room was only dirty because your mother thought it was dirty.
Unfortunately, this was not the imaginary kind of mess.
There was genuinely nowhere left to place one's feet.
Besides her figure, Touka did not possess the aura of a married woman either.
Otherwise, she would be a heroic Valkyrie during battle, yet an obedient and adorably clumsy wife in daily life who only showed her selfish side to one person.
Who could possibly withstand that contrast?
'Wait. What am I thinking?'
Shiro hurriedly expelled the strange thoughts from his mind.
He raised the tea on the table, took a sip, and continued casually chatting with Kanata, who also held a cup of black tea.
Meanwhile, Touka supported herself against the desk with both hands and shouted at the two students, her face turning blue.
"It's always like this! What am I supposed to tell the director if she suddenly comes here one day?!"
"Ahaha... How about saying the student council was invaded?"
"I think your brain was invaded! Clean this place immediately!"
Touka stepped over the rubbish on the floor and snatched the controller from Misogi Utakata's hands.
Avoiding the scattered books and dumbbells, she moved behind the television.
"Uwaa...! I'll clean it right now! Don't unplug it! I haven't saved yet! My lost Metal Slime!!"
"Shiro, please wait outside. We'll finish cleaning immediately."
Touka forced a smile.
Ignoring the wail of, "Wait, President! Are you cleaning up the rubbish or cleaning me up?" behind her, she pushed Shiro outside before he could even put down his cup.
After a burst of clattering noises and several unexplained screams, the student council door opened again.
A panting Touka poked her small head through the doorway.
She looked like a cat checking whether its owner had returned after causing trouble, while the stray lock of hair atop her head swayed adorably.
When she saw Shiro still waiting outside, her expression immediately changed to delight.
Her thighs, outlined by white stockings, rubbed lightly together.
"Thank you for waiting. Please come in."
The student council office was completely different from its earlier chaotic state.
The documents scattered across the floor were now stacked neatly on the desks.
Manga and game consoles had returned to their original places, while the floor had been polished until it could serve as a mirror.
Being able to clean such a disastrous room within minutes proved that the student council members were no ordinary people.
Shiro tried his best to ignore the wardrobe bulging as though it might explode at any moment.
He also ignored Saijou Ikazuchi, who stood before it with an unusually serious expression.
"Ahaha. Hello, it's nice to meet you. I'm Misogi Utakata, the student council vice president~"
Utakata enthusiastically greeted him with a darkened face and hair standing up like it had been electrocuted.
"It would've been nice if you were this welcoming when I first arrived..."
Shiro complained weakly.
However, Misogi Utakata...
He seemed to remember hearing that name while hiding in the tree and watching the children play at the orphanage.
No wonder this slacker, who played games inside the student council office, had become vice president.
So Touka had also learned how to appoint people through personal connections.
Noticing the strange gaze Shiro suddenly directed toward her, Touka, who understood his thought process, blushed and silently turned her head aside.
"It couldn't be helped. I had just reached the climax of the story."
"Making me suddenly stop and greet a guest would've been far too cruel."
Utakata answered as though it were perfectly reasonable.
Then he felt Touka's needle-like stare and shrank his neck, laughing awkwardly.
Shiro did not care about his attitude.
He was not a walking pile of money whom everyone had to like.
More importantly, there was something he had been curious to ask.
"It's fine. But there's something I'm curious about."
"Misogi-san, you were scheduled to fight Ikki during the selections, weren't you? Why did you suddenly withdraw?"
"Of course, you don't have to answer if there's some private reason."
Ikki's match schedule was practically public knowledge within the academy.
As the center of recent attention, Kagami naturally would not miss such an opportunity.
The moment Ikki's opponent was announced, she would immediately post it on Hagun's news board.
When Kagami learned that his opponent was a student council member, she became extremely excited and promoted the match extensively.
But shortly afterward, news came that Utakata had withdrawn, instantly turning her excitement into disappointment.
Shiro did not believe Utakata was weak.
Even if Touka had used personal connections to make him vice president, he would still need enough strength to exchange blows with a C-Rank knight.
Although Shiro was surrounded by A-Ranks and B-Ranks, with Ikki being the only F-Rank, C-Ranks were actually the League's primary fighting force.
Utakata would be considered a mid-to-high-level talent among them.
Furthermore, surrendering without fighting would not only make others look down upon him, but also cause people to question the student council's strength.
"Because my ability made it impossible for me to defeat him."
Utakata showed no anger at Shiro's question and instead smiled cheerfully.
"My Noble Art, [Fifty-Fifty], allows me to manipulate the outcome of an event."
"But it has a fatal weakness. I can only manipulate outcomes that already exist."
"In other words, if I originally have no possible way of dealing with something, then no matter how I use my ability, I can't guide the result toward success."
"I see."
Shiro nodded, understanding why Utakata had surrendered immediately.
His ability guaranteed victory over any opponent he had some chance of defeating.
However, when facing an opponent he could never defeat, there was no reason to even try.
It was a Noble Art that was invincible among those on the same level, but incapable of challenging someone beyond its limits.
After meeting Ikki, Utakata judged that he could never win and withdrew to preserve what little dignity remained for the student council.
At least the audience would not see a student council member helplessly beaten by an F-Rank knight.
Even so, Utakata's ability could not be underestimated.
The realm of [Desperado] existed in this world.
If Utakata someday reached it, his ability would become terrifying.
A Desperado could distort the causality of the entire planet through sheer will.
In other words, he could transform an event with zero probability into one with a one-percent chance, then use his ability to raise that chance to one hundred percent.
That alone would make him nearly unbeatable.
Even if causality-related abilities did not work directly on another Desperado, he could manipulate only his own causality and force the probability of evading every attack to one hundred percent.
Unless someone possessed a specialized countermeasure, no one in the world would be capable of hitting him.
"Eh? Why are you suddenly staring at me like that? Is there something on my face?"
"No, it's nothing."
Shiro shook his head.
At the same time, he silently found it unfortunate.
Unless something drastic happened in this world, Utakata's attitude toward life meant he would probably never reach that realm.
"By the way, Shiro-san, you've already won nineteen consecutive selection matches, correct?"
After the student council members finished introducing themselves, Kanata suddenly asked him a question.
"Mm. I only need one more victory to represent Hagun at the Seven Star Sword Art Festival."
"You really are strong, Shiro-san. No wonder Touka constantly talked about you before you even enrolled here."
"?"
After Kanata said this, the other student council members nodded in agreement.
As members of the student council, they knew that Shiro had achieved those nineteen victories without ever summoning his Device.
He had earned every victory with his fists alone.
By the time he graduated, this accomplishment would probably become one of Hagun Academy's campus legends.
"You didn't know, Shiro-san? Touka uses a photograph of the two of you as the wallpaper on her student handbook~"
Seeing Shiro's surprised expression, Kanata revealed a devilish smile.
While Touka was distracted, she pulled the student handbook from her pocket and tried to show its screen to Shiro.
"Eh? Wait! Kanata, give that back!"
Touka froze for a moment before immediately trying to retrieve it.
However, as Touka rushed over, Kanata turned aside and lightly hooked her left foot around Touka's ankle.
Touka lost her balance and fell toward the unprepared Shiro.
To prevent her from being injured, Shiro used his body as a cushion and caught her.
The two immediately rolled across the floor together.
Thud—
When they finally stopped, their position was extremely inappropriate.
Touka's light and soft body pressed down upon Shiro.
Because their bodies were so tightly pressed together, her chest, far fuller than others her age, was flattened against him.
One ivory leg wrapped in a white stocking was firmly pressed between Shiro's thighs.
Ding-dong~ ×2
Before the student council members could react, two student handbooks rang simultaneously.
Kanata instinctively glanced at the screen of the handbook in her hand.
That single glance caused her expression to change drastically.
"How could this...?"
...
Bang—!
"Hey, Kuro-chan! What is the meaning of this?!"
Nene angrily slammed open the director's office door and struck her teacher's handbook heavily against Kurono's desk.
The screen emitted a faint glow, displaying the contestants for the next selection match.
[Torajirou Shiro vs. Toudou Touka]
"Has being the director finally destroyed your brain? Why would you arrange for Shiro and Touka to face each other?"
Nene stood before the desk and mocked Kurono, who remained seated in her chair.
Both Shiro and Touka were seeded contestants for the Seven Star Sword Art Festival.
Compatibility existed between Blazers.
If A defeated B and B defeated C, that did not necessarily mean A could defeat C.
Touka had reached the semifinals during the previous Seven Star Sword Art Festival.
She had not lost because she was weak, but because her compatibility with her opponent was terrible.
Touka's [Raikiri] required her to enter close range.
Her opponent, the previous Seven Stars Sword King, Moroboshi Yuudai, had relied upon the superior reach of his Device to prevent Touka from approaching and secure victory.
For the sake of achieving strong results at the Festival, the academy should send as many of its strongest students as possible.
Yet now, one of Hagun Academy's greatest championship candidates would be eliminated during the selections.
Perhaps Nene would not have cared as much if it were anyone else.
But both contestants were her junior disciples from the same school.
The moment she saw the list, she rushed over to confront Kurono and demand justice for them.
Looking at the furious Nene, Kurono expertly pulled a cigarette from her suit pocket and lit it with the lighter she carried.
She placed it between her lips, inhaled deeply, and slowly exhaled a ring of smoke.
"I didn't want them to meet this early either, but the system selected the matchup randomly."
"Changing it without justification might cause dissatisfaction among the students."
"Eh...? Wait. You mean this really was randomly selected? Nobody deliberately arranged it...?"
"That's right. Is something wrong?"
"No... How should I put it...?"
"I suddenly feel that instead of being Hagun's director, Kuro-chan might be better suited to continue working as a knight with me..."
After hearing Kurono's explanation, Nene froze.
Then she stared at her with a strange expression.
If she were not afraid of making Kurono angry, she would have reached out and checked whether a fever had damaged her brain.
Nene had assumed Kurono created this selection system to promote Blazers like Ikki, who appeared ordinary but were secretly powerful.
But she never expected Kurono to honestly let a machine determine the matchups without manipulating anything.
'Seriously? Honest people like this still exist nowadays?'
Any other leader would know to place the strongest seeded contestants in different groups.
What if all the seeded contestants were placed in one group, and the sole survivor was then countered by another academy's representative?
There would not even be anywhere left to cry.
'Is this what foreigner mean when they say pregnancy makes someone foolish for three years?'
'Whoever recommended her for the director's position must have been blind.'
'But that doesn't make sense. Kuro-chan gave birth years ago.'
'If she's still this foolish after having one child, what would happen if she became pregnant again?!!'
No.
No matter what happened, Nene could not allow Kuro-chan to become even more foolish.
Otherwise, whether she won or lost their next fight, people would accuse her of bullying an idiot.
Without realizing it, Nene's gaze toward Kurono gained a trace of pity.
Under Kurono's bewildered stare, Nene walked around the desk and gently messed up her hair.
"Kuro-chan, promise me that one child is enough. Please don't have any more children."
"Hey. The way you're looking at me right now is seriously irritating."
…
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