[389] Battle Readiness (2)
'What is this feeling?'
Even after the song ended, Shirone couldn't calm his pounding heart and remained where he was.
"Oh? Shirone!"
Maya, who had noticed him late, greeted him with a bright smile.
"Come in. What are you doing here?"
"Just thought I'd wash up. I heard music and came to check it out."
Shirone lifted his toothbrush to dispel any suspicion that he'd been peeking.
Whether he had or not, Maya slid off the piano bench and offered the seat.
"Sit here. There aren't any other chairs. Oh, unless you're busy…."
He imagined that a student who had been fighting the seniors in the graduating class wouldn't have idle time to spare.
"No, I'm fine. I didn't really have anywhere to go anyway."
The piano bench was small and Maya had a little softness to her. When their arms brushed, an unfamiliar sensation passed through his skin. Her skin was soft and slightly cool.
Awkward, Shirone spoke first.
"Ahaha, you sing so well—why didn't you tell anyone? I don't know much about music, but you sound way better than a pro."
Sadness flickered across Maya's eyes and Shirone realized his mistake. With such incredible talent, if she wasn't a professional there had to be a reason.
"Ah, sorry. If that sounded hurtful…"
Maya smiled and shook her head. Shirone's earnestness was disarming; he couldn't handle it. That made him all the more unsettled.
'I noticed from the start.'
On the day the Supernatural Psychical Science Research Club gave its presentation, Shirone had first seen Maya speaking on the rooftop.
To prove the invisible.
The way she persuaded the entire student body had shocked him. She was the brightest star in the school.
"Do you want me to sing?"
"Yeah. I'd like to hear it."
Maya put her hands on the keys and began to sing, and Shirone slipped immediately into her music.
At first he thought it was just sound. But her voice had the power to move a person's heart.
'Ah… I see now.'
For the sake of making the listener happy, she sang and forgot about graduating from the magic academy, about her tribe's situation, about her family's poverty.
In that moment she wasn't a mage.
Maya was an artist.
When the heavenly voice ended and the postlude flowed, Shirone didn't even exhale until the final note had faded into silence.
A groan slipped from his trembling lips.
"Haaaaa."
A diva. A goddess stood before him.
He couldn't resist the hot gaze Maya fixed on him. Heat spread through his chest. He felt like he could accept anything she offered.
"...."
Outside the window, the sun was setting.
* * *
Week eight: the Major Specialty Enhancement session had arrived.
It assessed twenty items related to each student's major, and because point allocation was discretionary, fierce mind games broke out over rankings.
Before evaluation, students reported which challenge tasks they would attempt. For example, if you declared three items up to level seven and failed to reach them, you wouldn't earn any points that week.
So if you needed even a single point, you picked a reasonable difficulty; conversely, if you needed a big score, you raised the difficulty and took the risk.
Shirone sat with his friends, watching other students' specialty evaluations.
His analytical gaze was sharper than usual because after tomorrow they'd face the Screamer in the high-ground capture contest.
Shirone's team was already set, but the Screamer team's members were still unknown. It was best to analyze as many students' majors as possible today.
What set this evaluation apart from others was that they cast real magic, not simulations.
Each zone had various devices installed; the shock-power test in particular resembled the maze beads Shirone had seen in the Kergo ruins.
Seven students had finished, and it was Pisho's turn. The evaluator checked the sheet and looked up.
"Pisho, what's your challenge?"
"I'll attempt three items: differentiation, gigantism, and mutation. Difficulty levels set to five, six, and five."
Pisho, twenty-five, the oldest in the graduating class.
He wasn't flashy in evaluations, but his insect magic always excited Shirone whenever he saw it.
"Pisho raised each by one level from last week. It's only week eight and he's already entering intermediate?"
"He's twenty-five. You have to assume he's honed his major at least five years longer than the others. He'll probably pass easily again."
"Nade, you need to know this about Pisho."
Nade spoke with a serious look.
"Pisho's the head of the Ant Language Research Club."
"An Ant Language Research Club? There's such a thing?"
"It operates in the shadows like us. They're analyzing ants' pheromone language to meet a queen ant. I think they're aiming for a diplomatic accord."
Shirone, thinking for a moment, asked, "Why do I need to know that?"
"Are you an idiot? If those guys make a pact with a queen ant, they'll strike at the Supernatural Psychical Science Research Club. It's not about recruiting a few ants. All the ants under that queen become our enemies!"
Shirone opened his mouth as if to say something, but instead turned his head without a word.
Iruki continued, "Insect magic is one of the more maniacal majors. We should watch what we can, while we can."
"Is it like summoning magic?"
"No. A summoner perfectly mimics a specific target in reality; though insects can be mimicked, you can't realize the hundreds of insect species that way."
"Then how does Pisho do it?"
Iruki referred to an explanation he'd heard from his father.
"The core unit in the insect branch is the egg. It's a concentrated structure of undifferentiated functions that can evolve into various forms. They call it the 'ecosystem-in-the-head' theory to induce spontaneous emergence. It's supposed to be insanely difficult—because you have to calculate emergence, evolution, and mutation."
"Huh, sounds really tough."
"That's why many scholars study insects. But once you're a mage, the rewards are huge. Even if Pisho stays in the graduating class until he's twenty-five, graduating now wouldn't be a loss."
When Pisho signaled he was ready, the evaluator announced the challenge.
"First, differentiation. Level five is three hundred individuals."
Pisho calibrated the eggs using the ecosystem-in-the-head theory. Setting the food chain and predators, the eggs began to differentiate into the numbers most suitable for survival.
"Grasshopper."
Three hundred grasshoppers rose at Pisho's feet and swarmed like a dark cloud through the air.
The teacher wrote three hundred twelve on the sheet. Counting insect numbers via synesthesia wasn't difficult.
"Level five passed. One point awarded. Next, gigantism."
Pisho closed his eyes and concentrated again.
It took about five minutes to raise oxygen saturation and adjust the surrounding environment for differentiation.
A giant ant as large as a person was born, waving its antennae to check its surroundings.
Both girls and boys grimaced in disgust. That was why Pisho was a loner.
"Surface area two point zero two square meters. Gigantism passed. One point awarded. Next, mutation."
This time it took a full twenty minutes to construct the cell. The result was shocking.
A centipede with ladybug-like coloration crawled across the floor. Its sickle-shaped jaws opened and spat out a potent venom.
"One morphological change, one functional change. Pass."
"Thank you."
It had been an astonishing demonstration and a horrific sight; the students simply hoped never to see it again.
Pisho's specialty enhancement ended, and Maya walked out for her turn.
Nade made pom-pom hands and shouted, "Maya, fighting!"
Maya offered a small smile and scratched her cheek, showing no other reaction as she entered the evaluation area.
"Huh? What's up with her? Is something wrong?"
Nade's face fell.
Now that he looked, Shirone's expression didn't look particularly good either.
"What—what happened between you two?"
Shirone had no idea.
After the music-room incident, Maya had deliberately kept her distance. She wasn't cold, but she wasn't as warm as before.
Iruki said, "Maybe we were too rude."
"What do you mean? What did we do to Maya?"
"We should've let her choose, even if the Screamer insulted her. Some people don't want to fight."
Nade suddenly recalled the situation. When he dragged Maya over and shouted for a fight, he'd felt vindicated, but on second thought they'd probably crossed a line.
"Ugh, so what do we do now? We blustered—shouldn't we apologize and pretend nothing happened?"
"Maya doesn't get angry over things like that. And that's not why she's upset."
Shirone answered curtly.
If Iruki was right, Shirone would have sensed something when they met in the music room. But she had been kinder than anyone and had sung from the heart.
'Then why is she avoiding me? Why on earth?'
Maya's evaluation finished quickly. Her vocal strength, vibrational control, and acoustics all stayed at level two, and none of them passed.
"Her acoustic magic doesn't even reach average in any single category. At this rate, graduation this year is out of the question."
At Iruki's words, Nade looked crestfallen.
"Isn't graduation the least of our worries? Shouldn't we be worried about the upcoming overall evaluation? You said taking Maya on the team would boost our score. Did you have some strategy?"
"No, I just blurted it out. I couldn't tell the Screamer he did well, could I?"
"What? So you—!"
"Don't make a fuss. I didn't think it through, not that there's no solution. We can start thinking now. Anyway, Maya might be acting like this because of her grades. Even I think acoustics don't suit her."
"Maybe it's the opposite."
Iruki turned to Shirone.
"You two have been whispering since earlier. Seriously, what happened?"
Shirone told them about the music room: Maya's astonishing singing and the chill that ran down his spine.
"Hmm, popular-song style. Definitely a different domain. Acoustic magic borrows from opera to maximize the voice's function."
Iruki's mind spun quickly. He thought this might be a major variable in tomorrow's high-ground capture.
Maya's next opponent was Fermi. As he headed to the training ground he glanced at Shirone and sneered.
Fermi's major was in the air branch and his specialty enhancement score was a perfect 100 points. He'd cleared every item at level five.
His speed was similar to Class One's average, and there seemed no risk of him dropping to Class Two.
The evaluator changed sheets and asked, "Fermi, what's your challenge?"
Fermi flashed a wink and said, "I'll master everything."
The evaluator paused writing and looked up. The students began to murmur.
It wasn't unprecedented—he'd also mastered the specialty last year—but the timing was extremely early.
Normally they'd accelerate after week twelve; Fermi was a full four weeks ahead.
'Shirone's presence is affecting things.'
He had beaten Fermi in the survival test and even issued a declaration; this was a chance to put him back in his place.
"All right. Start measuring from the first press item."
Fermi extended his index and middle fingers and aimed at the shock-measuring device.
Air compressed at his fingertips and, with a pop, the air gun fired.
The students' gazes shifted to the scoreboard beyond the glass sphere.
1,123 presses.
Well above the master threshold of 1,000 presses.