Chapter 7: Who Doxxes Themselves During an Airship Battle?!

At Ms. Nakada’s signal, the world before our eyes warped. In the next instant, we were teleported into the sky above the island. The other guilds’ airships were also transported so that we were all in battle-ready positions.

I surveyed the area to see that a barrier had been erected around the island, marking this as the range of our battlefield.

Aboard the JS Peachy Thunder, we all waited in the wheelhouse. If we were anywhere else, we’d fall and die when Maeda inevitably activated the nitro. In that case, I would be really worried about our points.

As I recalled, defeating players yielded one point, while defeating hero candidates like Kokoru yielded five. If you or your NPC were defeated, you would lose the respective amount of points.

At the end of the time limit, the four guilds with the most points would proceed to the finals.

Since NPCs were the biggest source of points, they would be the first ones targeted. We wanted to conserve Kokoru’s power even when others gunned for him to make sure people didn't realize he was actually weak.

We also only had six monsters that he could summon with Golden Sweets. One of those was our trump card, the Deadly King. But each summon was a one-time merc contract, so we couldn’t use them flippantly.

This battle royale wouldn’t have any monsters for us to recruit, so we had no way to refill. In short, we needed to keep our six monsters all the way through to the end.

The final battle would probably rely more on NPC strength than this one, so in this round, we would protect Kokoru and carry him to the finals.

We also had to maneuver in a way that Akira’s sword dancer gear wouldn’t be seen by the guy who had come with her. Arima, was it? Akira herself would probably be careful enough, but she would have to keep Mimic Fan up at all times.

I felt a bit guilty for pushing sword dancer on her, but my best friend couldn’t just get pulled out of school for something this lame. We had to protect her!

“We can start now, right? Right?! I’m going to go ahead and pull the lever! That okay with you?!” Maeda’s eyes were now ablaze with excitement.

I kinda wanted to watch what the other guilds do first, but Maeda’s acting like a dog waiting for a treat. Guess all we can do is just go, then!

“Yeah. Go for it!”

“Excellent! Here goes!”

Clunk!

Maeda yanked a lever on the wheel, activating the nitro!

The JS Peachy Thunder began its wild charge through the sky, aiming for a nearby enemy ship.

All of us had expected her to activate the nitro at the very start, so we had already braced ourselves against the handrailings for impact. As a result, nobody fell.

“There’s a ship ahead! I’m not certain which guild it is, but they’re about to taste my drill!”

“We're already charging at people?! Isn’t that supposed to be a self-destructive, last-resort sort of tactic?!” Akabane was clearly shocked.

She had originally planned to be on a different team, so she didn’t know about the special equipment we’d gotten for the JS Peachy Thunder.

“The drill’s the only weapon we’ve got! All our other slots are nitro!”

“Huh? You don’t have any cannons or anything?!”

“We used our money on other stuff. This was all we could get!”

“Nothing to worry about! We’re optimized for speed and power! Mweheehee... Ahahaha!”

“Well, I’m worried! You really do change personalities when you’re behind the wheel!”

Akabane was rather perturbed, but Maeda clearly didn’t care one bit.

“I’m going to hit them! Brace for impact! Chaaarge!”

Craaaaash!

The JS Peachy Thunder slammed right into the belly of the enemy ship at high speed, literally running them through with the Golden Drill.

Naturally, our targets took a hunk of damage, but our nitro-infused drill attack also put us through some pain.

Dealt 250 damage to Ren!

Dealt 250 damage to Akira!

Dealt 250 damage to Kotomi!

Dealt 250 damage to Yuuna!

Dealt 250 damage to Nozomi!

Dealt 250 damage to Kokoru!

Rngh! So the impact deals damage to us, too.

Our HP was already in the 2000 range, though, so it wasn’t much more than a scratch.

“Bawk... Cheep, cheep. Cheep, bawk...”

Whoa! Kokoru’s cheep-cheeping!

Unlike the rest of us, Kokoru didn’t have much HP. If we kept this up, he’d be dead before long.

“Are you okay?!” Akira rushed over to heal him.

“Phew. Thanks, bawk! That really hurt!”

“If one blow doesn't kill him, we can just heal him over and over while I keep charging!”

“Cheeeep?! Bawk!”

“What the heck, Kotomi?! This isn’t Sparta!”

“I’m not doing anything more reckless than Takashiro would do.”

“Urk! I dunno how to defend myself!”

“Well, you kinda can’t. But it’s okay; I’ll make sure to heal him.”

“Yeah, yeah. I can heal him, too. We’re pretty overloaded with healing options in this party, anyway.”

Fair. Everyone besides Kokoru and I can heal.

“Nothing to concern myself with, then. Time for another charge!”

Maeda turned the wheel to prepare for a second nitro attack, but a single person emerged from the other ship’s wheelhouse.

From the deck of their ship, she yelled with incredible rage, “Heeeey! What the hell do you think you're doing?!”

Oh, crap! It’s Homura! We’ve really done it now.