Chapter 21
The dazed assistant instructor's voice rang out.
《······Examination over. The winner is Victor.》
The examination grounds fell silent in an instant.
The stage where the crackle of flames had died and even the intense heat had faded.
Only two shadows shimmered in the empty space.
The red-haired girl, collapsed limply.
The clown standing calmly before her.
“Heh heh.”
The mask laughed softly.
A sticky, oddly shaped sound, perhaps laced with ridicule.
As though it were breaking someone's once-lofty bridge of a nose.
“Ugh, urgh···.”
Shariel looked up at the clown.
Her hair was drenched in sweat, and her ruined twin tails added to her miserable appearance.
““······.””
The spectators were watching.
The culmination of bravado, scorched, broken, and driven to the very edge.
-Surely Shariel isn't going to lose, is she?
-Why are you sitting there stating the obvious?
Those who had tossed words around so lightly shut their mouths.
Thus, the entire stands lost their voices.
Yet amid that vast silence, only the boy's presence remained noisy.
Eyes gathered.
A simple truth.
The strong stood above.
The weak below.
“Urgh, haa···.”
Shariel's breathing trembled.
The situation itself felt like a nightmare to her.
Her sharp arrogance had been broken, leaving only a pitiful version of herself on display.
A deep-seated trauma writhed within her heart.
-What··· She really lost? The top student of Class C lost to some nobody from Class E?
-Is this for real? They're not just one class apart, but two!
-And Victor? Wasn't his overall stat rank E?
-This is ridiculous. How could she possibly lose this?
Sound.
The sound stabbed at Shariel's ears.
-Did he say Victor? Is that guy really from Class E? He seems pretty good···.
-No··· fuck, even so, does it make any sense for the top student of Class C to lose to Class E?
-So what? She got completely trounced.
-She couldn't even land a single attack, could she? She didn't leave a scratch on him.
-A balloon··· Pfft, she couldn't even pop one balloon with that supposedly impressive magic.
They laughed.
She became the object of their laughter and felt their stinging gazes.
Perhaps because of the clammy whispers, she kept finding it hard to breathe.
It felt as though she had been forced to kneel before an executioner's block.
“Haa, haa···.”
I··· lost?
Even Shariel herself found it hard to believe.
No, perhaps it was more accurate to say she did not want to believe it.
‘This can't be.’
Empty breaths leaked out.
Her complexion turned deathly pale.
‘This isn't happening.’
A prodigy of fire magic.
The top student of Class C at Grandia Academy.
The genius of House Ravriel, an earl's family.
‘This can't···.’
Everything she had held dear began to crack.
Her mental state crumbled like glass, and her wandering gaze had nowhere to settle as it roamed through empty air.
Amid all that, she heard footsteps.
“Lady Shariel?”
The smiling mask.
A grotesque smile looked down at her.
The clown. The boy who had neutralized her magic with a mere balloon.
Driven to her limit, Shariel could not withstand the pressure he exerted.
“Eek···.”
Thud-.
Her body flinched despite herself.
Perhaps she simply wanted to get away from the clown.
Her collapsed body scraped backward along the ground.
“P-please, don't come any closer···.”
“Oh my, what's wrong? You look as though you've gotten scared.”
The boy did not stop walking, his voice full of laughter.
He seemed to be enjoying Shariel's reaction.
“Don't come···. N-no, I don't want···.”
The girl was already crushed beneath her trauma, backed into a psychological corner.
She had no choice but to feel fear.
Fear of the ominous aura emanating from the clown.
Fear of the deprivation that felt as though it might crush her flat.
I
have
not
done
a
thing
to
you
yet.
The mask.
The mask smiled.
‘Ah.’
Huh.
Huh.
Huh.
Huh.
Huh.
Since
when
did
you
start
smiling?
“Lady
Rav
riel,”
young
lady.”
Craaack-.
The mask's mouth split all the way to the ceiling, and a pitch-black maw opened without end.
Darkness swallowed her vision.
A bottomless abyss devoid of light.
What spread within it was a sea piled with oozing fluid.
And thousands of pairs of tentacles writhing without torsos.
“······.”
The girl could not scream.
A height beyond reckoning, and a gaze looking down at her from far above.
An eye.
A huge eyeball wide open amid the tentacles twisted like mountains.
Its surface was large enough to cover several seas of oozing fluid and still remain.
“······.”
She even forgot to breathe.
It felt as though the entity would move if she made even the slightest sound.
Perhaps from lack of air, her lungs burned with pain.
Yet even that pain was insignificant beside the fear.
In the silence that alone continued to surge.
. -. -..
It spoke to her.
-.. --- -. .----. - . ...- . .-. -.-. --- -- . -... .- -.-. -.- .... . .-. .
An incomprehensible language.
Yet merely meeting its eye and gaze made it feel as though every circuit in her brain were burning away.
-.. --- -. .----. - - .-. ..- ... - - .... . -.-. .-.. --- .-- -.
Her vision went black as though she had suffered a shock.
Her consciousness drifted away.
The
girl
could
not
bring
herself
back
to
her senses.
‘Oh dear, was that too much?’
Victor thought as he looked down at Shariel sprawled across the floor.
She had fainted, foam bubbling at her lips.
It seemed that in trying to scare her a little, he had misjudged the force.
While he stood scratching his head, the assistant instructors rushed over to check Shariel's condition.
‘Well, she should only be unconscious···.’
Victor casually turned his eyes aside.
At the end of his gaze were the students in the waiting seats.
The cadets from Classes C and E were looking this way.
Blank, stunned expressions.
The reactions of people who had plainly been shocked.
““······.””
The glorious bearing of a victor.
The clown raised two fingers in a V toward them.
“So.”
An act no gamer could possibly resist.
“Anyone else dissatisfied with my shuttles?”
Taunting the enemy team he had just crushed.
It was the perfect teabag.
Afterward.
The freshman welcome examination for Class E ended just like that.
***
The day after the freshman welcome examination.
I was walking through the morning sunlight.
A refreshing breeze brushed past me.
‘Sometimes, this isn't so bad.’
Walking to school on foot.
I had been riding a rickshaw these past few days.
I crossed the grounds as though out for a stroll, keeping the Status Window open before my eyes.
[Reward Details]
-Acquired title ‘The Collector of Misconceptions’
-Unlocked Status Window function ‘Misconception Collector’
The freshman welcome examination.
A message that appeared at the same time the duel ended.
It said that a reward had been granted for fulfilling the conditions.
“Hmm···.”
I had already given the reward a cursory look.
I closed the message, then opened the Status Window once more.
Ding-!
――――
[Status Window]
Name: Victor
Title: The Collector of Misconceptions
Equipped Items: Mask of the Evil God, Robe of the Evil God
Active Set Effect: The World Seen by ■■■.
.
.
[Misconception Collector]
1.Step Skip(Step Skip)
2.Slowdown(Slowdown)
3.Parrying(Parrying)
->Using one misconception 30 times or more registers it in the collector.
->Misconceptions registered in the collector greatly reduce the burden on the user.
――――
Misconception.
It probably meant a bug.
I read through the contents organized in the Status Window.
‘Reduce the burden···.’
This gave me an idea.
The nausea and headaches that felt as though they were rummaging through my brain whenever I used a bug.
Because of that, there had been limits on using bugs recklessly.
In fact, after the examination ended yesterday, I spent quite a while vomiting in the bathroom.
‘If it reduces that, then it really is the best possible reward for me.’
I tried using Slowdown a few times as a test, and sure enough, the queasiness was less than before.
An unexpected harvest.
‘The registration condition is thirty times or more···.’
I certainly had used bugs like a madman yesterday.
Perhaps their overlapping use had reached the point where it unlocked this function.
‘I thought I might have overdone it yesterday, but it looks like I ended up benefiting from it instead.’
Thanks to that, even my walk to school today felt light.
As I stepped forward, the front pocket of my uniform wriggled.
A bat with a dazed look, perhaps still drunk on sleep.
[Victor···.]
“Yes, Your Highness.”
[Are you walking to school today?]
“I told the children to rest today, at least. They must all be tired after suffering yesterday's humiliation.”
[What a shame. It was so nice being able to travel while lying in bed···.]
“It can't be helped. Think of it as protecting the players. They say marathon runners also rest for several days after running a race.”
[Marathon···? What is that supposed to be?]
“Something roughly similar to malatang.”
[I see···.]
I wasn't sure what she meant by “I see,” but Her Highness stretched anyway.
The bat blinked, then soon tapped its chest lightly.
[That aside··· you were rather harsh yesterday.]
“If you mean yesterday, you're referring to Lady Ravriel.”
[Yes, was her name Shariel···?]
“I merely repaid exactly what I received. If you intend to laugh at others, you should be prepared to be laughed at yourself.”
[An overly cruel monarch wins nothing but fear···.]
“That should be enough, so it's fine. It's not as though I particularly want to be respected by those around me. If anything, it's more comfortable for me to operate quietly, just the two of us, Your Highness.”
[If that is what Victor thinks, it cannot be helped.]
Her Highness nodded, then leaned back against my body again.
I walked carefully so as not to make her uncomfortable.
Before long, we arrived at the E Main Building.
‘They must all be depressed.’
After being trampled so thoroughly yesterday, I imagined the atmosphere would be like a house in mourning.
Expecting a gloomy mood, I opened the classroom door.
Creak-.
“······?”
The next moment, what met my eyes was a line of children standing in perfect formation.
When our eyes met, the Shuttles standing at the very front greeted me.
Their ramrod-straight backs bent to ninety degrees.
““Welcome, big bro!!””
The right-angle bow I had only heard about in words.
A greeting even more booming than usual.
Rather than being cowed, everyone's eyes shone brightly.
I could not help being flustered by the unexpected reaction.
“Hmm···?”
The entire Class E had sparkling eyes.
Every one of those gazes was fixed on me.
“We've been waiting for you, big bro!”
“Big bro! Come sit over here!”
“We laid out a cushion for you in advance!”
“Y-you guys···?”
What is this? What is going on?
Why are you all acting like this?
Why are you all acting like this?
Why are you all acting like this?
Why are you all acting like this?
Why are you all acting like this?