CHAPTER 4

THE PRELIMINARIES

“It’s finally time for the first round of Block B! Seidoukan’s Team Enfield is entering the stage now from the east gate!”

Mico’s excited voice rang out, and then the roar of the crowd engulfed them as the gate swung open.

During the last Festa, the passage had been connected directly to the stage, but now that the moat of protective gel had been installed, the entrance gate, too, had needed to be altered. As such, a hatch opened beneath the protective gel, and a huge pillar-shaped entrance gate rose to almost the same height as the galleries. Once that was in place, a semitransparent path appeared in the middle of the pillar, through which the contestants were to enter the stage proper. It struck Ayato as an excessively elaborate system.

Julis let out a disgusted sigh. “I guess it’s too late to say anything now…but this is practically a circus show.”

“That’s how it is. We’ll just have to bear with it, I’m afraid.” Claudia let out a light laugh before stepping onto the path, waving to the cheering crowd as though such publicity were an everyday thing for her.

“Th-this is…a little embarrassing…” Kirin, her personality not at all suited to this kind of attention, stared down at the floor, her face scarlet.

“…Let’s just get it over with. I have to get back to my work,” Saya said under her breath.

It seemed that she hadn’t finished upgrading her Luxes in time for the match. She had said she wanted to have them all finished in time for the main tournament, but Ayato had a feeling that would be more difficult than she was letting on.

He glanced over his shoulder to see a number of huge air-windows surrounding the gate, displaying Seidoukan’s school crest and introducing them all with live, close-up video. Even he couldn’t help but feel embarrassed.

There was a staircase at the end of the path leading down to the stage. Their opponents would appear from the opposite entrance.

“And now, challenging Team Enfield, we have Team Black Venom from Le Wolfe Black Institute!”

“It will be a spectacular upset if Team Black Venom comes out on top here.”

At the other end of the stage, five almost stereotypical Le Wolfe students—each dressed in uniforms that looked modified to the point of not retaining a shred of their original material, and each sporting tattoos on seemingly every exposed patch of skin—turned toward them menacingly. Some looked as if they were trying to intimidate them; others seemed to be staring at them in scorn, but they were all clearly of bad character. They had already activated their Luxes, long-range weapons shaped like assault rifles.

“…You did call them thugs, but this isn’t what I was expecting,” Saya murmured.

Claudia had informed everyone during their last meeting that their opponents were all unlisted. As such, the data on them was extremely limited. While Le Wolfe’s ranked list was the most dynamic among the six academies, the fact that these people had never been ranked at all spoke to their abilities—or lack thereof. Bluntly speaking, they didn’t look particularly strong.

“There are a lot of people who get the wrong idea about the Gryps, at least compared to the other Festas,” Julis remarked with exasperation.

“Get the wrong idea?”

“The Gryps is a team tournament, so the barrier for entry is higher than for the others… But at the same time, it’s also the tournament with the most upsets. So basically, you get these people who think that, just by putting together a team, they can hope to snatch victory through some stroke of luck.”

“I see…”

“But if they’d actually watch the matches properly, they’d know that those teams that do manage to take down the favorites only do so with great difficulty,” Julis all but spat out. “They need to be able to take advantage of the perfect moment to overcome their differences in ability. But these people think all they need in order to win is luck. The Festa isn’t that simple!”

And just as she came to that—

“Heh-heh… Yo, Glühen Rose. Wasn’t expecting to bump into you here!”

—the other side’s Mohawk-sporting team leader called out to her.

“…Sorry?” Julis stared back at him for a moment with a puzzled expression, her head tilted to one side. “Who are you?”

“Wha—?! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?!” The young man’s face turned purple with rage.

Ayato, who had been watching the exchange in silence, was the first to recognize him.

“Ah! He looks like one of the guys from back then, when you took me around the city…”

When Ayato had first arrived at Asterisk, he had asked Julis to show him around the center of the city. Mohawk was, it seemed, one of the students from Le Wolfe whom Silas Norman had hired to attack them.

“…Ah, so he’s one of them, is he?” She seemed to have finally recognized him, but she still didn’t seem particularly interested.

The same couldn’t be said, however, for their opponent.

“Quit screwing with me! I just decided to join this tournament as a bit of fun, but it looks like it’s finally given me my chance to settle things! We might not be able to win, but we’ll at least make you suffer, Glühen Rose! You’d better be ready!” At that, he turned his back on them and returned to his team’s starting position.

“…” Julis watched him go in cold silence before turning to Claudia, who nodded in understanding.

“The protective gel is being set up, meaning it’s almost time for the match to start! Who will come out on top?”

With the match about to begin, the protective gel was welling up over the moat until it surrounded the whole stage, hardening through ultraviolet radiation emitters installed throughout the arena. It was taller even than the walls enclosing the stage, completely separating them from their surroundings.

It also blocked sound from passing through, but speakers had been installed around its circumference so participants could still hear the live commentary and the crowd cheering, almost as if the towering walls were not there at all.

The gel itself, which had looked blue before hardening, was now completely transparent.

“Gryps Block B, Round 1, Match 1—begin!”

No sooner had the automated voice announced the beginning of the match than the members of Team Black Venom all turned their weapons directly to Julis, and—

With a terrible roar, they switched their target to Claudia, the team leader.

A barrage of bullets of light erupted from all five Luxes, descending upon Claudia like a storm while a thick cloud of dust rose to fill her surroundings.

“How’s this?” Mohawk laughed feverishly. “They say your Pan-Dora can see the future, but there’s no way that’ll help you against a saturation attack!”

He looked to be fairly confident of victory.

But like Julis had said, the Festa wasn’t that simple.

“Not a bad idea… But you were obviously bluffing,” Ayato pointed out.

“It wasn’t even particularly subtle,” Julis added.

“Wha—?!” Mohawk, upon seeing the two of them defending Claudia as the dust settled, stood frozen in shock.

Ayato had used the Ser Veresta as a shield, as had Julis with her Anthurium. Not a single projectile had reached Claudia.

“D-damn you!” Mohawk and his team members hurried to prepare for another attack, but it was too late.

“Here I come!” At that moment, Kirin leaped within striking distance, holding the Senbakiri.

The silver blade glimmered through the air, effortlessly slicing through the school crests of a large-bodied man with dreadlocks and a bald man with a snake-like tattoo on the back of his head.

“Y-you little brat!”

A meaty man in the rearguard tried to contain her with a hail of fire from a Lux resembling a heavy machine gun, but the silver-haired girl dodged the attack easily on her way to cutting through the crest of a man with spiked hair.

“Argh! J-just stay still…!”

The hefty man swung his Lux around, trying to catch her in his sights, but the volley went wide, and she didn’t even need to deflect it.

“H-hey! Forget about the girl, go for—”

“…Boom.”

A stream of light pouring from Saya’s type 39 Lux laser cannon, Wolfdora, grazed past Mohawk, who was crying out in panic as he tried to put some distance between himself and Kirin.

The overweight man was swallowed in a whirlpool of light, his screams echoing across the stage as he was flung into the far wall. There was a dull, heavy thud as he collided with it—the impact strong enough to send cracks running in every direction. He seemed to have lost consciousness.

“…And?” Claudia, aiming the Pan-Dora toward Mohawk’s exposed neck, asked the openmouthed, defeated team leader. “Go for…who exactly?”

Mohawk, sinking to the floor at the sight of her composed smile, announced his surrender.

“Look this way, please, look this way!”

“I’d like to ask Miss Toudou a question. When you launched your attack at the beginning of the match, how much distance did you have to narrow down between your targets before…”

Next to the passage leading to the prep room was a small area where the winners’ interview was being held. During the main tournament, such interviews would, of course, be conducted in dedicated press halls, but unless something exceptional was to happen, those following the preliminaries were usually held in these kinds of informal spaces.

If there had been only two of them, like in the Phoenix, they would probably have been able to get it over with relatively quickly, but now they were five. Moreover, given that Team Enfield was one of the tournament favorites, it seemed that they had attracted a large following of reporters.

“Mr. Amagiri, your team is, of course, one of the favorites this time around, but are there any teams you consider to be particularly strong—any rivals perhaps?”

“Ah, well… Gallardworth’s Team Lancelot and Team Tristan are pretty strong, I think.”

“Miss Sasamiya, you used a lot of original Luxes during the Phoenix. Are there any new ones that you’ll be using this time?”

“…That’s a secret.”

It felt as if they had already spent twenty minutes answering those kinds of question.

“…” Julis, clearly fed up with it all, was making no effort to hide her sullen mood.

“I’m terribly sorry, but can we wrap it up for now?” Claudia declared, no doubt reading the situation.

“C-can I ask one more question?” inquired a slim female reporter from the back of the crowd, her hand raised to catch their attention. She was wearing a press card around her neck emblazoned with ABC’s logo.

She looked somewhat tense. Perhaps, Ayato wondered, she was new to the job.

“Um, Miss Enfield, this is your first time participating in the Festa since the last Gryps three years ago. Is there any reason behind that?”

“Not at all. I’ve simply chosen the environment where I can best use my skills. That’s the easiest way for me to have my wish fulfilled, after all.”

“And what is your wish?”

At that question, the reporters all leaned forward eagerly.

It was customary in Asterisk for the press not to look too deeply into contestants’ rewards for winning the Festa—in other words, their wishes granted by the IEFs. After all, unless the relevant party had themselves divulged it, such questions risked upsetting the foundations themselves.

However—

“Heh-heh, let’s see…,” Claudia said with a small laugh. “This does seem like a good opportunity.” She paused there, her shoulders trembling, as if holding herself back to let the tension build for a moment. “I wonder whether you’ve all heard of Professor Ladislav Bartošik?” she finally asked.

“Professor Bartošik? Wasn’t he involved with Orga Lux research…?”

A wave of confusion spread among the reporters.

Ayato noticed, however, that there were several among them who seemed to become suddenly uneasy.

Perhaps, he wondered, they knew more than they were free to share. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that the IEFs exerted some kind of control over the media, after all.

“But hasn’t Professor Bartošik been missing for several years now…?” the reporter asked.

“No, he’s presently in custody due to his involvement with the Jade Twilight Incident,” Claudia answered without hesitation, clearly anticipating the question. “My wish is to meet with him and have a little talk.”

An uneasiness quite unlike that which had assailed them a moment ago took root among the reporters.

There wasn’t a person there who didn’t know that mentioning the Jade Twilight Incident was taboo in Asterisk. No one could have forgotten about the incident, of course, but people had to be especially careful when touching on the topic.

“Um, what do you mean, exactly…?”

“There’s a secret that only the professor knows the answer to. I want him to share it with me,” Claudia answered before giving a slight bow to the rattled reporters and turning to leave.

“W-wait, Claudia!”

Her four companions, whom she had left stupefied behind her, hurried to catch up with her.

“I don’t really know what’s going on…but was that wise?” Julis asked, visibly troubled.

Claudia’s wish would only make an enemy out of Galaxy. She herself had said that.

Seeing her come out with such a statement so publicly—and without any prior warning—it was only natural that Julis would be so taken aback.

“It was. Perfect timing, in fact, I would say,” Claudia answered, still marching down the hall without so much as a backward glance, her usual enigmatic smile rising to her lips.

“Heh-heh… Ha-ha-ha! Well, that was impressive. Yes, very surprising… Quite beyond my expectations. Young Enfield really is something.” Madiath’s uncontrolled laughter reverberated throughout his office as he offered her his unfeigned applause.

In front of him was an air-window showing the live broadcast from Team Enfield’s winner’s interview, but he promptly changed the channel to CM.

“It looks like getting rid of the broadcast delay was the right decision after all.”

In the past, live broadcasts of the Festa and related events had been subject to a delay to give the tournament administrators enough time to prevent unacceptable content from reaching the public. The fans, however, had been strongly opposed to this arrangement from the very beginning, and abolishing the practice had been one of Madiath’s first acts as Executive Committee chairman.

“…What’s the meaning of this, Madiath?” a disinterested voice asked from the corner of the room.

The figure of the young woman, all but dissolving into the wall like a shadow and sporting a mechanical necklace-like object wrapped around her throat, belonged to Varda.

“Why does she want to see Ladislav?”

“Oh? Are you worried about your dear father?”

“…He might have created me, but we don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“It was a joke. But as for why young Enfield wants to meet the professor, even I don’t… Hmm?”

At that moment, his mobile began to ring.

As he opened an air-window, the face of a fuming, redheaded young man appeared in front of him.

“What’s the meaning of this, Madiath?!”

Madiath couldn’t help but grin at the words, exactly the same as Varda’s. “I’m afraid I’m just as shocked as you are. Why don’t you try asking her directly? I’d like to know myself.”

“Don’t play dumb with me! If you know something, spit it out!”

“Believe me, I have no idea what she’s trying to achieve,” he answered honestly. “All I know is that she’s been looking into the professor for some time now, which seems to have upset Galaxy quite a bit.”

Dirk glared back at him as if he found that difficult to believe. “…Fine. But that woman’s out of her mind. Picking a fight with a foundation—and the one backing her own school at that… Does she have a death wish or something?”

“I can’t deny that that does seem like the most probable outcome at this rate. But I do think this will make things slightly more complicated.”

“What?”

“What I mean is that dealing with this won’t be straightforward.” Madiath leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head as he curled his lips. “This is the perfect chance to bring Galaxy down. And given that there’s been a power balance among the six foundations for so long now, do you really think the others will let this opportunity pass by?”

“But the others shouldn’t even know about Varda. And Ladislav was only the ideological leader behind the Jade Twilight Incident, nothing more. Yes, it would be damaging for them if that was to get out, but…” Dirk paused there, crossing his arms, deep in thought. “To begin with, hasn’t Galaxy already come to some kind of agreement with the others about how to deal with him? They can’t break that now, can they?”

“That is indeed the case. This is an internal problem for Galaxy. They will, of course, try to extinguish this little conflagration, but if the others merely object to their methods, that won’t be enough to constitute a violation of the agreement, wouldn’t you say? Even from an ethical standpoint, the blame will fall squarely on Galaxy.”

Madiath’s sense of ethics had become somewhat extenuated for a period of time now, but while it was of little use in and of itself, he couldn’t say that it was completely devoid of value, given his public position.

Dirk snorted in irritation. “Hmph! I guess it will be difficult for them to do anything out in the open if the other five are breathing down their necks…”

“And this time, it will be five against one. Even Galaxy won’t want to do anything reckless. All it should take is for the others to give them a fair warning.”

“Do you really think it’ll get that far?”

“It will. I’ll make sure of that.”

“…So you’d side with that little vixen?” Dirk fumed, his voice positively seething with anger.

Madiath, however, merely smiled. “As chairman of the Executive Committee, isn’t it only natural for me to protect our participants?”

“…Tch! You’re more or less an executive at Galaxy yourself. Don’t come crying to me if it comes back to bite you.”

“Of course, it will need a deft hand. Besides, if they do get serious—that is, if they’re prepared to incur some losses—even I won’t be able to stop them,” Madiath answered with a faint smile.

At that moment, Dirk, his rage finally boiling over, cut the transmission.

“Good grief…,” muttered Varda, who until then had been listening to the exchange in silence. “You humans are beyond comprehension. Why are you trying to further complicate things for yourselves? How illogical.”

She probably wasn’t expecting an answer, but Madiath let out a small laugh anyway. “The way I see it, things are more interesting that way.”

The special conference room in Galaxy’s headquarters was completely devoid of ostentation.

It was filled only with a long table, surrounded by a neat row of chairs on either side. Anyone entering it for the first time would no doubt be struck by how utterly uninspiring it was.

That was what Nicholas Enfield had felt the first time he had come there.

Sitting at attention in the seat closest to the wall, he understood well enough the rationale behind the total lack of decoration.

In this room, anything that did not exist to benefit Galaxy was unnecessary.

That rule applied equally both to objects and people.

“Well then, if everyone’s arrived, let us begin,” a cold, calm voice announced.

Galaxy’s eighteen highest executives—of whom more than half were attending through video link—turned their gazes toward the woman who had spoken first.

She was Isabella Enfield, Nicholas’s wife and superior—and one of the highest executives present. Her graceful blond hair, tied up in a bun, and her well-tailored black suit both served to emphasize her rare beauty, and all of it completely belied her true age. She looked upon everyone there with a calm smile—the only expression that Nicholas had seen her give to anyone in over ten years.

Her eyes, however, emanated the same machinelike iciness as each of the other executives.

“This meeting concerns how to deal with Seidoukan Academy’s student council president, Claudia Enfield,” she said plainly and dispassionately. “Please give us all your unreserved opinions.” It was her own daughter whom she was talking about, but there wasn’t so much as a shred of emotion in her voice.

Nor did any of the other executives mention that fact. That was to be expected. No one who clung to selfish desires, such as concern for one’s family, would have been able to reach their kind of position within the integrated enterprise foundations.

“We have already received requests from EP, Solnage, and Frauenlob to come to a fair decision under the pretext of the Festa. W&W and Jie Long seem prepared to do the same.”

“What a nuisance.”

“That will make any open methods of dealing with her difficult.”

“But we cannot leave her be.”

“There is no guarantee that her team will win. Perhaps we should continue to monitor the situation?”

“Even so, we will have to make certain preparations.”

“Given that it relates to the Festa, we should use Madiath Mesa. If we were to give him a valid reason to disqualify her…”

“No, he can’t be trusted.”

“Moreover, there will be a backlash if we are seen to have had a hand in it.”

The executives raised their voices in turn. There was no interruption, and yet, no sooner had one person finished speaking than the next would begin, without pause. Each one had been stripped of personality to the extent that it was impossible to tell who had said what.

There was no need to distinguish among them here.

They never exchanged opinions, only logical evaluations of information and possibility.

One could even say that the huge corporate entity that was Galaxy was engaging in a dialogue with itself.

“What if we disposed of Bartošik?”

“That would violate the agreement with the Varda-Vaos.”

“Is there any need to honor it?”

“We will lose everything if its existence leaks out. It would be unwise to antagonize it.”

“What is its present status?”

“According to the report from Yabuki’s group, it seems to have been identified in Rikka at the beginning of spring…”

“It will be quicker to deal with Claudia Enfield directly than to try to do something with Bartošik.”

“What if we used Yabuki’s group?”

“No, that should be the last resort. More importantly…”

“Galaxy’s position must be…”

From Nicholas’s position, the room seemed to have lapsed into silence, but while their eerie voices had faded away, the wheels of their conversation were still turning.

“Well then, if everyone is agreed, let us proceed accordingly,” Isabella stated finally, before standing to announce the end of the meeting.

It was the fourth day of the Gryps at the Canopus Dome.

Hufeng Zhao stood motionless on the stage, at a complete loss for words.

His master, Xinglou Fan, had, as usual, given them all an impossible order.

He could understand her instructions for the first round: for Xiaohui Wu not to engage in combat, leaving the match to the team’s four other members. It made sense, in a certain way, to try to keep Xiaohui’s prowess a secret. And given the relative strength of the opposing team during that first round, that handicap hadn’t proved to be a problem.

Still, he found it impossible to understand her instructions for the second round.

In a complete reversal, this time, Xiaohui was to take down the opposing team all by himself. If they had been facing a team as weak as the last one, Hufeng might have been able to see some logic to it. There was no denying that Xiaohui would have been able to handle such a team. However, it was a mistake, Hufeng felt, to take their opponents so lightly this time around.

The opposing team’s leader was Seidoukan’s fourth-ranked fighter, the Mage of Icy Shards, Hrimthurs. The other members were all listed, too. Even if they weren’t at a level where they might be expected to take the championship, they were certainly strong enough to reach the main tournament.

The preliminaries were designed in such a way that the teams with the best prospects didn’t end up facing one another, but the situation was different for strong teams of average standing. After all, it would reflect poorly on the Festa’s administration if the tournament was entirely predictable.

One or two such teams were inevitably allocated to each block that contained a favorite team. And whenever there was an unexpected development in the Gryps, it was usually at the hands of one of them.

However—

“I-incredible! Who could have expected that the match that everyone expected to be the highlight of the second round would unfold so one-sidedly?” The announcer’s voice, echoing through the arena, was trembling. On the other side of the protective gel, the audience was as silent as the grave.

There was little wonder why.

Even Hufeng and his teammates had been left completely dumbfounded.

In the center of the stage, two young men—Hrimthurs and Xiaohui—stood facing off against each other. The other Seidoukan students lay defeated on the ground around them.

“Huff…huff…!” Hrimthurs, breathing heavily, his handsome face distorted in exertion, was gripping a sword of ice he had created with his abilities, bracing himself for combat.

Across from him, Xiaohui, his spear-like Lux held in one hand, looked down on him calmly.

“Heh… This must be a bad dream, Hagun Seikun.”

“…”

Hrimthurs glared at his opponent, his cold eyes brimming with fury.

Mana stirred around them, and a chill wind that could be felt even across the stage dozens of yards away began to pick up strength.

“At least let me deal one blow!”

With that, the ground within a diameter of close to ten yards around Hrimthurs suddenly froze solid.

No, Hufeng corrected himself, it wasn’t only the ground. Xiaohui’s feet, all the way up to his calves, were encased in ice, too, restricting his movements.

“Haaaaaaaaah!” At that moment, Hrimthurs summoned six long spears of ice, launching them at Xiaohui with a shrill cry.

It was a long-range attack from multiple angles against an immobile opponent. Not at all a bad move.

“…”

Xiaohui, however, casually struck at the ice that encased his feet with the butt of his spear, shattering it instantly.

In the midst of the ice fragments dancing around him like diamond dust, he swung his left hand toward the approaching spears of ice—a slip of paper materializing between his fingers.

The spell imbued in the charm took form with a sudden burst, and a wall of flame erupted in front of him. The ice spears flew straight into it, sublimating into steam in the blink of an eye.

“Now’s my chance!” Hrimthurs cried out, leaping through the rising steam and unleashing a slash attack.

He was fast. On top of that, he had somehow managed to freeze the ground and hold Xiaohui in place once again.

He might have only been able to hold Xiaohui back for a moment, but it was clear that he was a Dante of incredible skill and technique.

But even so, Xiaohui was still able to deflect the desperate attack without so much as batting an eyelid.

Hrimthurs was clearly the faster of the two. Moreover, at that distance, his sword of ice should have been much more effective than a long, two-handed weapon like Xiaohui’s spear. And yet, with a graceful, almost imperceptible movement, Xiaohui parried the strike.

Hrimthurs took his blade in both hands, trying to push back his opponent. Yet Xiaohui, far from wavering under the force of Hrimthurs’s attack, was holding his spear with only one hand, shaking off his opponent and shattering his sword of ice into countless air-borne particles.

“What—?!”

There was a world of difference between their physical abilities.

Even so, Hrimthurs didn’t falter, summoning a new, larger sword of ice and launching one strike after another before raising an ear-splitting cry and lunging out with all his strength.

And yet, he still couldn’t reach his opponent. He couldn’t even get close.

“…”

Throughout it all, Xiaohui’s expression remained completely unreadable.

The first thing to break was, of course, the ice sword.

With each stroke, cracks spread along its pale-blue surface—small chips flying off in every direction—until finally it shattered with a clear, crystalline burst of sound.

“—!”

Despair engulfed Hrimthurs’s face.

At that instant, Xiaohui stepped forward—that was all it took for the ice surrounding him to shatter into mist—and casually placed his palm on Hrimthurs’s stomach.

It was a slow, graceful blow, so gentle that it looked almost like a massage.

A tremendous shock shot through Hrimthurs’s body, strong enough to echo across the stage and create a deep crater around the two fighters.

Hrimthurs lost consciousness, crumbling onto the floor like a doll whose wires had been cut.

“End of battle! Winners: Team Yellow Dragon!”

As the automated voice rang throughout the arena, Hufeng finally felt as if he understood why his master had told him not to worry about Xiaohui.

“That boy will have no problems, no matter what.”

Her confidence in him hadn’t been misplaced.

Xinglou attached great importance to individual strength, and so it was rare for her disciples to fight together in teams. She would do nothing to stop them from studying such fighting techniques independently, and she might even assist them if asked, but for her, fighting alongside others was an extension of one’s ability to fight for one’s self.

“Well, that’s Elder Brother for you. I can’t say I was expecting that,” Cecily muttered beside him.

“I thought we knew just how strong he was—”

“—but that was just like watching our master fight.”

Judging by the tone of their voices, even the twins were taken aback.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time they had all seen Xiaohui fight, and they had even trained with him themselves in the past.

However, they could see now that what they had witnessed then was only a fraction of his power.

“…Let’s go back,” Xiaohui said as he strode toward the gate.

His four teammates all dropped to one knee, placing their right fists in their left palms as a gesture of respect.

“That was amazing, Elder Brother!”

It was the sixth day of the Gryps at the Sirius Dome.

Normally, those who were too strong weren’t welcome at the Festa.

The spectators tended to have little interest in contestants who ended their matches too quickly, so the real job of the Festa’s administration was to ensure that the level of excitement remained steady throughout the tournament. If they failed to do that, the television programs would lose viewers, and the gambling houses would decline in popularity.

The exceptions to the rule were those contestants who had something to offer other than raw ability.

Helga Lindwall, for example, was known for her beauty just as much as her overwhelming skills, and Orphelia Landlufen had a sinister character that struck fear in the hearts of all those who watched.

And Team Lancelot, two-time champions of the Gryps, were known for their great nobility. Or at least, that was what Laetitia Blanchard thought.

No matter who they were facing, the Silverwinged Knights never underestimated their opponents, never jumped at petty illusions, and always reached the path of victory through strength and strength alone.

“Haaaah!”

Ernest Fairclough, the very symbol of those ideals, was at that very moment engaged in battle in the center of the stage.

He swung the Lei-Glems in a wide arc, the silver blade leaving a long, pale afterglow in its wake.

His opponent tried to defend himself with his own sword-type Lux, and though he twisted his body around as quickly as he could, he was still too slow.

The Lei-Glems passed straight through him as if carving through thin air.

His school crest, however, split in half.

“It’s only been a few seconds, but the Runesword has already claimed its first victim! But shouldn’t Fairclough’s opponent have known about this ability, Shizuna?”

“Even knowing about it, in the thick of combat, your body will react according to instinct. Moreover, Fairclough is Asterisk’s strongest swordsman. There would be very few people with the ability to defend themselves against that in their first match against him.”

“Well now! The Lei-Glems really is impressive—being able to cut through only what its user desires! And that user, Pendragon, is beyond extraordinary!”

Laetitia, only half listening to the live commentary that echoed throughout the arena, focused her prana.

Mana gathered behind her, and two pairs of brilliant white wings burst from her back, easily more than twenty yards in width.

They were the Ailes d’Ange, the namesake of the Witch of Shining Wings.

The huge, diamond-shaped wings carved through the air, straight into the center of the stage, shielding Ernest from an oncoming barrage of bullets fired by the opposing team’s rearguard.

Lionel Karsch, alias Rhongomiant, took advantage of that opportunity to launch a surprise attack from the opposing team’s left flank, breaking straight into their formation. With his towering pole-arm-shaped Lux, more than twice his own height in length, he took down both members of their rearguard in one fell swoop.

The purpose of the attack wasn’t to bring the team down so much as it was to throw it into confusion.

“Agh…?!”

As soon as their barrage ceased, Ernest leaped out, cleanly slicing through the school crests of both members of the other team’s vanguard in a single strike. He was so fast that the term lightning speed was for once no mere exaggeration.

And then—

“A halo of mercy and atonement I give to thee!” Percival called out solemnly, one hand raised to the sky, as Kevin Holst, alias Gareth, shielded Ernest from attack.

A huge chalice-shaped Orga Lux was floating on a slight angle above her. Something that looked like a thorn rose above it, its tip emanating a golden light. It grew brighter with every passing moment, with light filling the chalice, until finally it became a torrent, spilling out with tremendous force.

“Ah—!”

The golden light swallowed both members of the opposing team’s rearguard, striking them like the wrath of an angry deity.

When finally the golden glow dissipated, they both lay flat on the ground unmoving, though they appeared to be physically unharmed.

Percival’s Amalthean Goat, the Horn of Atonement, was, like the Lei-Glems, a school-owned Orga Lux. Its ability was known as soul removal. The light emitted by it was capable of rendering an opponent completely unconscious while leaving no physical injury.

“End of battle! Winners: Team Lancelot!”

With the opposing team leader down, the automated voice announced the end of the match.

It probably hadn’t lasted even three minutes.

“Th-that’s it! But what strength! What strength Team Lancelot has! Those are our defending champions for you, folks!”

No matter their opponent, Team Lancelot would always face them with respect. They never hid their cards. Their opponents could research them as much as they liked, could try to devise whatever countermeasures they saw fit. None of that mattered. Team Lancelot would rise to meet them.

It was that, more than anything, that made them the reigning champions of the Gryps.