[45] Limitless (4)
Etella followed the murmurs to where Shirone stood. Light flashed from his hands in quick succession.
"Shirone, looks like you're ready."
"Yes. Actually, I just succeeded a moment ago."
"Heh. Really? So your sequence formula paid off."
"It seems so."
Shirone bent over his sequence formula again, correcting errors and focusing on photon output. Etella pressed her lips together and watched closely. She had expected active magic to be difficult for Shirone—his disposition leaned so heavily toward defense.
'Still, he managed to succeed…'
That meant he'd incorporated modularization. She'd planned to advise him in private tutoring, but since he'd discovered it himself, there was no opportunity. Instead she made one suggestion.
"Shirone, you've never tried target practice on the Image Zone before, right? Want to go up?"
"Yes, I'll try."
The students stopped and stared. How many points he could score was the competitors' main concern.
Shirone waited for the targets. It was only practice, but since this was his first Speed Gun drill, he felt the tension as if it were real.
Etella activated the Magic Barrier device just in case. Casting without a magical veil, like what happened with Iruki last time, could injure the apparatus—or the students.
At the signal, targets popped up from every direction. Shirone expanded his sequence formula and converted the omnidirectional pattern into an offensive mode. Countless thorns shot out in all directions. With one attempt he detected a good number of targets.
Without hesitation he cast photon output. The instant the light flashed, the targets turned to ash and vanished.
"Woooah—!"
The students cried out. Though active magic lacks physical force, its spectacle was overwhelming.
'Not bad.'
Shirone repeated photon output in rapid succession. As he cast, the targets disappeared instantly. The lack of a time lag from distance was a tremendous advantage.
'With this I can do it!'
Bolstered by confidence, Shirone sent photons in every direction. When his assumptions lined up with reality, he began to crave a record.
He'd cleared 172 targets so far. With twenty seconds left, breaking 200 points looked easily doable.
'So he really mastered modularization.'
Watching the demonstration, Etella felt certain. The insight gained on the impassable bridge translating into a sequence formula was a good sign.
Shirone's current sequence formula raised ten digits as a single unit at once. At that rate, he could hit zero-to-hundred in two seconds—the activation speed was that intense.
A minute passed and the device shut down. Shirone climbed down from the Image Zone, panting. The students' eyes fixed on the scoreboard. Final total: 342 points. He'd eliminated 342 targets in one minute.
"How did you never miss? Maybe I should take the test with photon output."
"Do you think that's easy? Shirone mastered teleportation, so of course he can handle photon output."
The students shared impressions. Nade and Iruki sat beside them and added their thoughts.
"Just like I thought—Shirone. He's specialized for defense, but his offensive side is insane too. This test could push him into the leading group."
"I don't know—342 points isn't that big a deal, is it?"
"Still, for a first time that's a solid score. He couldn't even do photon output yesterday."
"Whether it's his first time doesn't matter. What counts is the ability to grasp the core, right? That's the impressive part."
"Huh? What's gotten into you—praising Shirone?"
"You have to give credit where it's due. Anyway, this will be an interesting experiment. We'll see who comes out on top in the test."
"What are you going to do?"
Iruki brushed off his seat and walked into the Image Zone instead of answering.
"Etella-sensei, may I try?"
"Iruki, you?"
Etella asked, uneasy. Given what had happened last time, he was the sort to cause an accident if allowed to perform recklessly.
"I'll just practice and come right down. The Magic Barrier is active anyway."
Since this was a test preparation period, restricting a specific student would be unfair. She relented.
"All right. Go up. But don't cause trouble."
Iruki bowed once and entered the Image Zone. The students' attention tightened. Once ready, Iruki converted his omnidirectional pattern into an evasion-type. Whispers ran through the crowd. Nobody expected someone to use evasion-type even for a targeting test.
Shirone was equally astonished. Evasion-type shows the fastest movement among the patterns, but to catch multiple rapid targets and score, you'd think an offensive-type was necessary. Evasion forces you to abandon synesthesia and track targets only with your eyes. It's a perfect one-to-one response—moving a dot to catch another dot.
'What on earth is he planning?'
When the targets appeared, Iruki's Spirit Zone began to move. It had shrunk to roughly the size of a human face. Yet its speed increased.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
It was precise. The Spirit Zone snapped through angles like elastic, eliminating targets with each flick. The students' admiration was natural; even Etella couldn't hide her surprise.
'Clearing targets with evasion-type. That's a very unusual method.'
The count had already passed a hundred. Shirone realized how remarkable Iruki's skill was. He was seeing the targets and removing them. Considering the speed, his tracking vision was incredible.
'No, that's not the right way to put it.'
The wondrous computational ability of the Servant Syndrome. He was predicting the targets' trajectories and placing the Spirit Zone where they would be in advance.
'Don't get too surprised, Shirone.'
As Iruki's mouth curled into a smirk, the Spirit Zone moved at a speed on a different plane.
"Huh? Huh?"
The students were stunned. They couldn't follow the Spirit Zone's motion with their eyes. Every time some blurred form snapped across space, targets popped and burst from every side.
Pitter-pitter-pitter-pow!
Because the power of the Atomic Bomb was minimized, the detonation reaction time was nearly zero. If Shirone's photon output could rapidly dominate the range, Iruki instead relied on moving the Spirit Zone to strike directly.
The counter passed 200. It was even faster than Shirone, who used modularization. Given the visible result, Shirone had to admit it. But how Iruki had enhanced his Zone remained a mystery.
"Could it be the method I used?"
"No. It'll be different from yours."
Nade had come to stand beside him before he noticed.
"Iruki thinks of you as a rival. If he doesn't win by his Servant Syndrome, it's meaningless to him. Ultimately it's an insanely fast computational ability. The numbers Iruki is counting now aren't in the thousands."
"Not in the thousands? Then—"
"A million."
Shirone's eyes widened. Could someone count a million in a minute? Feeling one ten‑thousandth of a second is one thing; modularizing numbers is within intuition, so that's possible. But repeating a routine a million times leaves no room for imagination.
Iruki used the full minute and came down. Final score: 548 points. He had far outstripped Shirone.
The students buzzed. They'd never seen Iruki this serious in class before.
"Amazing. Evasion-type, 548 points. That's not human."
"He used his Servant ability to compute the targets' equations of motion completely. Isn't that unfair?"
Etella also regarded Iruki differently. Capturing targets with evasion-type could be explained mathematically. But the Spirit Zone's movement speed couldn't be explained that way.
'No way… that kid…'
Iruki climbed down from the Image Zone and walked straight to Shirone. He gave a little twitch of his mismatched eyes and said with a smirk,
"How was it? Pretty decent, right?"
Shirone had to admit it.
"That was an incredible demonstration. Servant Syndrome—I didn't know you could calculate target trajectories mathematically."
"Hmph, only that? I'm disappointed."
"What?"
Shirone replied sulkily. He bristled at the look that wouldn't even accept praise, and it stung. Iruki ignored it and continued.
"I grouped numbers into modules to speed up the sequence formula. Definitely something only you could do."
Shirone was surprised Iruki already knew. And uneasy—he couldn't even guess how Iruki had done it.
"Want me to teach you my method?"
Shirone's pride flared.
"You just toss that out casually? Sounds like you're really watching me."
"Doesn't matter. It's not like I can say I fully understand it."
Iruki always rubbed people the wrong way.
"Actually, it's nothing. I just used logarithms to reduce the units."
"Logarithms…? Oh, I see."
There really was such a method. And as Iruki said, knowing about it doesn't mean you can reproduce it.
"Take the logarithm of the numbers and you can express astronomical figures simply. This was just practice. The real match is the practical evaluation anyway."
Applying a logarithm lets you express any size of number simply—one hundred million, one billion, ten billion—all the same.
But logarithms were originally devised to simplify complex calculations. Attaching them to simple operations like a sequence formula can make mental math impossible even for mathematicians.
Yet Iruki managed it. With Servant Syndrome, he transformed integers into fractions and computed them.
'Applying a logarithm to a sequence formula? Can a human really do that?'
For the first time Shirone felt he'd thought it all too easily. Carmis Amy. The Ozente household. He'd met many geniuses, but never someone as overwhelmingly skewed in talent as Iruki.
"So? Can you beat me now?"
"I don't study to beat someone. If you do your best, it doesn't matter who wins."
"A textbook answer. Fine. I'll just assume you're always like that. But watch your mouth next time. Listening to ideals from someone with no skill is really unpleasant."
Shirone ground his teeth. What had been so offensive about his words? He'd only wanted to say life was precious. If that's idealism, he'd have to prove it.
"All right, fine! Let's compete. I'll beat you in this test."
"Ha! I welcome the challenge."
Shirone opened his mouth to retort, but classmates who'd just seen Iruki's skill swarmed in and he shut up.
"Iruki, that was incredible. How did you do it? Teach me?"
"If you have that skill, why hide it? Want to join our research club? With you we could finish the project in a month."
Praise poured in. Shirone took it as natural—the Image Zone demonstration had been shocking.
"Shirone, the insight you showed on the impassable bridge was brilliant. But…"
Iruki turned with a meaningful smile.
"My calculations are faster than insight."
Shirone swallowed. Since entering the Academy he'd faced countless rivals, but never one this formidable.
Nade patted Shirone on the back.
"Cheer up. It may sound irresponsible, but as a spectator this is exciting. I don't care who wins—they're both my friends."
"I don't like competitions like this. Iruki just hates me."
"Haha! What can you do? He's always been that way. But since he pushed himself, you're pretty amazing too. The only people who might break Class Five's record are probably you two."
"Huh? There's a top score? What is it?"
"As far as I know, it was 987."
Shirone's eyes widened.
"987 points?"
Putting his own score aside, even Iruki—using logarithms—had only surpassed 500. He couldn't imagine how fast you'd have to be to score 987 in a minute.
"Amazing. Who is it? They must have graduated already?"
"Huh? What are you talking about? You don't know that? It's Amy-senpai."