RATH 79
TL: Eevee
10. We came, we saw, we won (4)
#6 Their story: A certain student’s story.
“I have a bad feeling about this…”
A student of Mercaria muttered to himself as he navigated through a dark cave.
The event he was in was a cla.s.sic staple of the imperial festival, the Labyrinth.
The rules of the game were simple.
After being teleported into the Labyrinth, the first to escape the maze was the winner.
And since the map of the maze was shown to the contestants beforehand, as long as you recognised key features on the map, you could know where you were in the maze.
“I just have to avoid the other schools’ students…”
But the twist was that there were a whopping 400 students in the Labyrinth.
Even if it was a giant maze, it was not easy to avoid fighting when there were a hundred students per school inside.
“Let’s see…”
This was actually an event that the weak Mercaria had an advantage in.
The time one year that the students with monstrous memorization abilities outright remembered the entire map to win just like that, was still a legend in the history of the imperial festival.
Therefore this student was motivated to help his school get the win in this event.
“Let’s see… where was this statue on the map… Hhff!”
Clack…. Clack…
As the student pieced together his current location based off the important landmark that was the statue, he heard the sounds of shoes echoing from far away.
“d.a.m.n it, there’s nowhere to hide…”
The only place where he could hide was behind the statue.
But this statue, one of many that were slightly different from the others scattered around the Labyrinth, was important in determining your location in the maze.
Therefore, being near certain that this enemy would also come to this statue to confirm their location, the student was in a dilemma.
‘What do I do? Do I beg them to spare me? But this could be livestreaming on the magic broadcast tools…’
No matter how powerful of a nation the empire was, it couldn’t be recording so many people with magic video tools at the same time.
As there were countless other events going on right now in the imperial capital, the probability that one of them would be recording him was close to a miracle.
‘There were a number of famous people in the student council that entered this event, and there are other famous people from the other academies in this event as well, so the odds of me being filmed is low…’
But this student thought that it would be his rotten luck that he might be caught out by those atrocious odds.
No, he couldn’t discount the possibility that the enemy was someone famous, and a magic video tool might be following him or her.
‘Alright, even if I lose… I’m gonna lose with style.’
Hiding behind the giant statue, he pulled out a dagger.
Aiming for the moment the enemy would let their guard down to observe the statue, he would ambush them.
It wasn’t like he had to worry about dying.
Among the many events of the imperial festival, the Labyrinth was an event that was a favourite of a.s.sa.s.sins during succession wars, and it was a game where the no killing rule was frequently broken.
And because of that, this event was banned multiple times.
But after new magic devices were installed, ones that automatically teleported you once you took a set amount of damage or injuries, this event became a safe one with no risk of danger to one’s life.
And so, if you aimed for the body, and not the neck, you could take out a foe in a single strike without getting disqualified.
‘Please, don’t find me… please just keep on going…’
But the student knew himself that he was weak.
And that his ambush would be easily fended off.
Because even Marcis, the physically weakest school, were still physically stronger than Mercaria!
Clack… clack…
As the footsteps that were slower than he had antic.i.p.ated came ever closer to where he was hiding, he tightly closed his lips shut, and peeked out in the direction of the sound of the shoes.
“Hmhmhmmm~”
Going by the uniform, the student in front of him was a Yugrasia student, and she was humming as she leisurely made her way around.
“What?”
The Yugrasia student was strolling around daintily in a way that he thought was simply too abnormal for the Labyrinth.
And so, as he watched on despite knowing that he could get caught, the student managed to notice something out of place.
“The walls are moving!”
His soft whisper was filled with horror.
In the long history of the Labyrinth event, aside from Mercaria’s horrific tactic known as ‘memorise the map,’ there were other outlandish victories such as the time when one of Arucia’s swordsmen smashed through all the walls with sword ki, or one of Marcis’s magicians literally flew over the walls.
Because of that, the event with the most obstacles and rule amendements was the Labyrinth.
Even the ceiling that glowed faintly, the moment you damaged it, you would be treated as a casualty and eliminated.
“Move the walls? Is it possible? A summon shaped like a wall? Or is she modifying the walls with an earth elemental?
The Yugrasia student came right up close to the statue where the student was hiding, but the Yugrasia student didn’t give the statue a glance and walked past it with the same leisurely movements she came in with.
“What is that?”
As the Yugrasia student walked past without even glancing at the statue, one of the most important aspects of this event, the student watched her go, he realised that there were some new walls in front of him that he hadn’t noticed previously.
Knock. Knock.
“What kind of wall is this?”
Although he didn’t notice from far away, when he looked at them up close, they were noticably different from the Labyrinth’s walls.
Damp even though they were the colour of dirt, and unlike the walls of the Labyrinth which had magic formulas engraved into them, these walls were made with just plain dirt.
The student thought that if his memory served him right, these walls definitely weren’t supposed to be here.
Knock… knock.
And the student that was lost in thought while looking at the wall.
“Buahk?”
Was eliminated about ten minutes later as something burst out of the dirt walls.
#7 Their story: Risen de Roa’s story.
“Alright, everyone move according to the plan!”
Professor Nicerwin, whom for some reason we hadn’t seen for the whole of yesterday, arrived at dawn today.
Although in all honesty Professor Nicerwin was the number one figure that the students didn’t want to see, (for the record, the silver devil wasn’t a person and therefore wasn’t included in the rankings.) but since we knew with our own bodies just what could happen if Professor Nicerwin’s evil hands reached out towards the other academies, he was our greatest ally here.
And as we expected, Professor Nicerwin indeed brought out an absolutely monstrous strategy, and we moved out to see it through.
For the plan out of the hundred students, a whopping ninety of them were elementalists.
And my role was to stop the other schools’ students from approaching them in order for us to carry out the plan.
“Kuuuhhgh?”
“Risen de Roa? Was this guy always this strong?”
“Kggh… avoid him, the enemy is the Trickster! We need to find everyone else and attack together while the rest of us buy time!”
And so as I used Loki’s shoes to quickly eliminate the enemies, I met up with some other students carrying out the plan to issue coordinates to where we would meet up later.
“Alright, that’s forty.”
“Kuuhk!”
In team events, it seemed that there were a lot of students involved that weren’t that strong individually, but I do think that I have gotten stronger.
Without a single effective counterattack inflicted on me, having disposed of forty students from other schools, I was on a roll to be the MVP of this event.
-So are you happy? That the effects of that thing called night study are showing up?
-No, I’d rather pa.s.s up on it and the night study.
But I lost so many things in the process of getting stronger.
Namely countless things involving time and freedom!
“Uwoooooooh!”
“Impossible, he’s getting even stronger!”
“Are there no limits to the Trickster!”
As I knocked down the Arucia students that fell shouting extremely cheesy lines, as I cleanly confirmed the kills as Professor Nicerwin taught me to, I left the area.
The great thing about this event was that if you knocked them down and kept hitting them until they were summoned as a casualty, you could confirm kills quite easily.
For the record, I was already a pro at getting hit, so I knew perfectly well how hard you had to hit a person in order to knock them out, so my kills were usually confirmed with just a single hit.
-So, are you happy?
-No!
I snapped at Loki who kept poking where it hurt just as I was about to forget about them, but Loki only snickered and enjoyed it.
d.a.m.n it, he wouldn’t be able to say these things if he got hit by the silver devil.
Look at Athena.
She keeps getting hit with Lady Aris, so they get along very well together.
And the other first year G.o.d-cla.s.s summoners also got very good at using the powers of their G.o.ds.
Since they all felt a strong sense of camaraderie with each other after going through countless pains together…
“Oh, vice-pres!”
And as I wondered how I would subject Loki to the devil’s tus.h.i.tushi, I heard a voice calling for me from further away.
“Ah, you were a second year, right? Have you encountered the other schools yet?”
“I met someone from Marcis, but he tried to use magic so I sent him off in one shot.”
The smiling female student’s face was slick with sweat.
This entire strategy involved using everyone’s entire mana pool and yet she still defeated a Marcis student in that state.
“You beat the enemy, while using spirits?”
“Yes, since he was a man I kicked him in that place, and he immediately started foaming and was summoned out.”
Hm?
“That place?”
“Yes, that place. p.e.n.i.s.”
“Ah, re, really?”
Her saying p.e.n.i.s with such a cute face makes me think of a vegetable instead,(1) but she said it was attached to a man.
Ah, and she said she ended him in one shot, too.
“O Lady Sermir, may the enemy’s descendants be in a better place…”
“Vice-pres?”
As a fellow man, I prayed for them to be born in the next world.
“But still, if you kicked him there out of nowhere, that’s a bit dangerous…”
“But that’s what Professor Nicerwin told us to do…”
“D, did he?”
Professor Nicerwin is, as we thought, a devil.
To think he’d tell them to do that as a fellow man… wait, hold up!
“He didn’t only teach it to you, did he?”
“Huh? Ah, no, out of the people that partic.i.p.ated in this event, he told all the female students…”
“Go thaaat-a-way!”
I pointed her in the direction of our rendezvous point and hurriedly activated Loki’s shoes.
In this event, the number of male and female partic.i.p.ants from Yugrasia were similar to each other.
Although I didn’t bother counting accurately, if there were roughly 50 of them, and if even half of them were following Professor Nicerwin’s advice, then that meant that there were 25 of them.
Meaning, 25 female students of Yugrasia that were being controlled by the devil were…
“Kuaaaahhhhgh!”
“You, you girls are all evil!”
“There it is!”
At the desperate screams of a man from a direction far away, I immediately accelerated to my max speed and arrived to where I heard the sound coming from.
“Ghhh… I’m too late.”
There was a male student in Mercaria’s uniform, collapsed and foaming at his mouth.
And there was one of our academy’s female students, who was facing off against another Mercaria student who was looking back with horrified eyes, while clutching his p… I mean, cupping his groin and shivering in fear.
“Risen sunbae?”
“I’ll defeat them according to the plan, so head over that way.”
“Yes, sunbae!”
As the female student casually followed the wall and out of our sight, I bowed my head slightly to the Mercaria student.
“Sorry, I came too late…”
“Ggghhh… you… you’ve done something you should never have done no matter how badly you needed to win!”
To the student who looked at me with eyes full of resentment, I had nothing to say.
“So that no more casualties emerge… I’ll make it quick.”
And so having lost one man and brought another salvation, I ran my hardest so as to lose as few of the empire’s futures as possible.
To the last stage of the plan.
#8 Their story: A certain Marcis student’s story.
“Alright, the foundations for our win are set!”
“Keep your distance!”
“Even if one of us goes down, just heal them immediately!”
“Everything according to the plan!”
At my words, the seniors started to issue commands to their juniors.
No matter what anyone said, the strongest school in a group was Marcis.
Therefore, we prioritised our first steps in this event in gathering as many people together as possible.
And thus, with the a.s.sistance of numerous spells, 20 people had managed to gather in one place.
Although it seemed that it took longer to get together than I had antic.i.p.ated, 20 people getting together in this convoluted labyrinth was an alright result.
“Now, move out!”
With people skilled at barrier and defense magics at the rear, healers in the middle, as well as people capable of decent firepower.
And I was a future battlemage prospect myself, one that could even go toe to toe against Arucia students in close combat!
And with this, our victory was…
“Huh? Huh? Huh?!”
“H, hang on! What the heck is that?!”
All washed away by the giant tidal wave surging from the depths of the labyrinth.
#9 Their story: A certain organization’s story.
The Labyrinth was an event marked by countless a.s.sa.s.sinations in the history of the imperial festival!
Although it was near impossible now due to various safety measures, but we, the anti-empire army who were trained solely to a.s.sa.s.sinate the emperor!
“Buuaaaaghhghgk”
Were all washed away as a giant tidal wave swept in.