[379] Vol. 16 - Entering the Competitive System (3)
Iruki landed in the training ground. He gave a small smile and walked over to Binder.
"Kuh!"
Binder stumbled back, but Iruki didn't hurry. For him, it was already over.
"Your omniscience is clean. Felt like I was reading a textbook."
Cancellation analyzes changes within the opponent's Spirit Zone and reverses all vector quantities back in time.
Its effect of resetting Omnipotence was tremendous, and the humiliation it imposed on the opponent was no less devastating.
"Don't be ridiculous! My omniscience is perfect!"
Binder, unwilling to concede, cast another spell. But his Omnipotence was being reset before he could even get it off.
"I know. Perfect. Perfect, right."
Binder's upper lip curled like a gorilla's. Then, suddenly flustered, he looked down.
An explosive trigger had gone off below.
'Damn!'
"It's fine. Only a ten-kilobuster."
As Iruki turned his back, an explosion detonated.
Because the system's one-on-one combat rules didn't include a "knockback" judgment, Binder wasn't thrown away. His mental gauge, however, was knocked straight down to zero.
If he'd cast a defensive spell he might have held on, but against Cancellation there was nothing he could do.
Iruki descended from the training ground flashing a victory sign.
He'd once been jeered for lacking courtesy to losers, but among the graduating class there was no one left to mock him.
"Cancellation on the first day..."
Their faces grew serious. Iruki had just revealed the most powerful weapon in his arsenal.
'Is that confidence that he'll never lose? Or does he have another spell prepared?'
Having openly shown his trump card, their thoughts only tangled more.
"Hmm..."
Fermi watched the fight with his hands in his pockets. He cocked an eye and, grinning, asked his comrades.
"How many seconds was that?"
"Two minutes, eleven seconds."
"Took two minutes, eleven seconds to rewind a broken glass."
Even for a methodical type like Binder, analyzing a graduating-class-level Spirit Zone in under three minutes would be impossible without a servant-level brain.
'If the graduation exam includes one-on-one combat, that'll be a real headache.'
Fermi's mind quickly ran through the calculations.
* * *
The dorm door slammed.
Shirone came back after eleven at night and flopped onto his bed.
"Ugh, I'm beat. So tired."
The graduating-class schedule had already reached week four.
Most evaluations finished around noon unless something exceptional happened, but there was still no rest.
The graduating class was, in every sense, wilderness.
No one taught you anything. If you wanted something, you had to learn it yourself.
When his evaluations were done, Shirone and his friends trained at the practice field all day.
He was still doing well in one-on-one combat; cognition and judgment favored him.
Even in terrifying situations his mental endurance didn't waver, and his keen insight steered him precisely toward survival.
But the other students had professional-level strengths in specific fields.
Binder, aiming for ranged thunder, scored full marks in omniscience implementation; the mental-types like Arin and Dorothy drew attention for mental activity; those with unique majors like Pisho steadily accumulated points in specialty enhancement and kept their ranks.
So even after rotating through six events four times, the rankings barely budged.
"This is harder than I thought."
With a thirty-week schedule, it was still early in the race.
But the fatigue Shirone felt was beyond imagination.
Every day demanded high-stakes evaluations where a single slip could drop your rank. The tension seeped into afternoon personal training, and by the time he returned to the dorm he was utterly exhausted.
"I want to sleep. I want to sleep. Just one hour."
Despite muttering that, Shirone hauled himself out of bed.
Others could probably sleep now, but he had one more task.
To fulfill the condition Gaold had set.
They trained hard each day not only to climb the rankings but to avoid dying senselessly on the way to heaven.
He had to get stronger.
And innovate.
A spell powerful enough to destroy Heaven.
"Me?"
Was he—the one dragged down by the graduation-class evaluations—really the person to do it?
"Haha!"
Shirone let out a hollow laugh, sat at his desk, and opened his notebook.
Ideas he'd been turning over for a month were crammed across the pages.
But none had pierced to the core; so far they were just scribbles.
'Let's approach this conceptually. A magic that destroys Heaven—what would it be?'
First off, it had to be a ranged spell.
If he cast an area-destruction spell at close range, the backlash would kill the caster too.
'No, depending on the case maybe that's an option...'
He wrote at the page's edge: "Caster may die."
'If I can die, would that open more possibilities?'
He pressed his fingers into his head and thought.
"Ugh, I really don't know."
The key was using Ataraxia's amplification power.
That much was certain.
But with a photon cannon that carries mass, reaching the near-light-speed domain of light-type spells was extremely difficult.
It might someday surpass the speed of sound, but even then it wouldn't have the force to obliterate Heaven.
"I'm just running around in circles."
He wrote Ataraxia and added "trigger" beside it.
Ataraxia's main strength was enormous amplification, but it had other advantages.
Most importantly, it was especially threatening to beings of Heaven.
Humans with sensitive senses stagger at a halo, but maras—born from the concept of angels—feel not only shock but instinctive terror.
"Hmm, I could add a delay."
Shirone put parentheses around Ataraxia and noted "delay about 1–2 sec."
"The crucial point is it's a trigger."
Magic passed through Ataraxia stops being governed by the mage's Spirit Zone and falls under Ataraxia's control.
That was why Shirone defined Ataraxia as siege magic.
"Amplification. Delay. Trigger."
Those were the three core aspects of Ataraxia.
"So the spells I can use are..."
He listed them.
Offense: Photon Cannon, Homing Photon Cannon, and lasers.
Defense: Light Rampage and Dark Orb.
Control: Shining Impact, Shining Chain, and Slow.
Movement: Teleport, Spatial Shift, Mass Teleport, Scatter Movement, and Radiant Wings could also be classed as movement.
"That's a lot. I did work pretty hard."
A brief pride, then the expression sank.
No matter how many spells he had, none alone could blow Heaven away.
No—this was impossible from the start.
How could someone who wasn't even a licensed mage destroy Heaven?
"No! This won't work! That won't work! Nothing works!"
Shirone drew a big X in the notebook and buried his face on the desk.
After a month of research, all he had was a faint, prickling intuition.
Even if he learned a new spell, a single discipline would hit its limit within a year.
'Amplification. Delay. Trigger. Time-slicing. Force. Fusion. And the spells I already know.'
He had to combine all of these to create something entirely new.
He might be wrong, but a strange feeling flowing along the channel of insight told him this could be the answer.
'Find it. Find a method.'
Repeating that thought, Shirone fell asleep.
The Meaning of Survival (1)
For the graduating class, the holiday was priceless.
But Shirone woke rubbing his eyes at dawn.
Week four was over, and today was one of the six full-assessment days held each year.
Since this would let them experience the graduation exam's standard events firsthand, they had to do their best.
The winner would gain 20 points; the loser would lose 20.
With a potential 40-point swing, even those who'd been playing psychological games until now would be pushed to their limits.
In one-on-one combat terms, that equaled thirteen straight wins.
In specialty enhancement terms, it was like clearing master difficulty in four categories.
'From today the rankings could change a lot. No, they have to change.'
Today's full assessment was the survival event.
Because the rules guaranteed losers, dramatic rank rises were possible.
And survival was Shirone's strength—an exam-version of his cognition and judgment—so he couldn't miss it.
Students entered the huge Virtual Zone together.
They'd be tested on how long they could endure extreme situations—mental endurance as well as judgment were evaluated.
If Shirone failed to score here, he'd be at a disadvantage for the rest of the schedule.
He left the building with Nade and Iruki and headed to the training ground with the large Virtual Zone.
Many students had already gathered.
They were still competitors, but the initial awkwardness had faded.
They could roughly identify friend and foe.
It would be hard to get close to Screamer, Pony, or Luman, but Maya and Aider suited his temperament.
Dorothy, Suabi, and Pisho were neutral, and the Class One students didn't even glance at Class Three.
Once the graduating class assembled, Collie lined students up by class and checked each person with a look.
This event had a reputation for being the most dangerous and brutal of the full assessments, and his face showed it.
"Today's full assessment event is survival. I'll explain the rules before we start. First, we'll divide into teams. Based on the line over there: right side is the Red Team, left is the Blue Team."
A line was drawn across the wide field leading into the Virtual Zone.
"Once teams are set, everyone enters the Virtual Zone. The survival program consists of stages one through seven and runs for a total of fifty minutes. The moment the final survivor is determined, the team victory is decided regardless of any other results. In short, the team that has the final survivor takes the overall win; the losing team has 20 points deducted."
Boil raised his hand.
"What's the criterion for choosing teams?"
"You can go to whichever team you want."
Pandora asked, "Uh, isn't it supposed to be balanced at fifteen versus fifteen?"
"That doesn't matter. Even if thirty people join one team, it's allowed."
The atmosphere in Class Three went cold. Some looked left and right as if to say, what kind of rule is that?
'If thirty people are on one team, there's no competition. What kind of rule is this?'
Of course nobody would seriously propose a thirty-person "we all live or die together" team.
Everyone here was desperate for any edge.
But the rule's meaning had to be considered.
The graduating-class system wasn't just about scoring points and climbing ranks.
How you positioned yourself among competitors, and how accurately you assessed others' abilities, determined advantage.
Iruki said, "In a real party, the mage's role is absolute. Looks like the full assessment isn't an exception."
If the mage wavered, the party would collapse—a truth even third-rate travelers knew.
You couldn't pass the graduation exam simply by casting powerful spells and having a strong Spirit Zone.
How intelligently you anchored your role among competitors was an unseen evaluation.
"Now we'll decide teams. Ten minutes. Those who fail to decide in time will be considered to have forfeited. Choose the team you want."
At Collie's words the thirty students flinched as if stunned.
Someone must have reacted first, but no one could be singled out—everyone showed the same uneasy, delayed response.
You had to think carefully.
Only one survivor among your teammates guaranteed a 20-point victory.
So if you weren't confident in survival, who you ended up with mattered immensely.
In a way, this was the truest test of survival ability.
That was why those confident in their mental endurance needed to move first.
A few were already planning to take the lead.
They were also quietly weighing whether to pick Red or Blue.
'What's been the historical win ratio between Red and Blue?'
A kind of jinx.
"I'll go first, then."
Shirone moved before anyone else.
Since his goal was to be the final survivor, he didn't need to worry about others' choices.
When Shirone stepped to the Red side, the crowd finally stirred. Nade and Iruki followed as the next movers.
Shirone's group became the Red Team.
With that key information gathered, the remaining twenty-seven minds began spinning quickly.
"Hmm, then I'll go Blue."
At Fermi's voice everyone turned. Confidently striding forward, he was trailed by his entourage.
At the center of the Blue Team, Fermi shot a playful wink at Shirone.
Shirone didn't smile. He couldn't tell what lay behind those narrow eyes.
At last the moment everyone had been waiting for arrived.
Class Three's stubborn newcomers split off, and Fermi's group—who hadn't lost first place in previous final evaluations—took their positions.
Which side had the higher chance to win?
From now on, it was a matter of choice.