August 15, day eleven of the Nine School Competition. Tatsuya woke up at the same time he had for the past ten days, ate his breakfast in the First High tent the same, and went through the final checks of the competitors he was assigned to in the same way.

Today’s schedule consisted of the women’s Cross-Country Steeplechase starting at nine thirty AM and the men’s at two PM. Entries into the event had been cut off yesterday at five PM. Some had predicted the schools with lower rankings as of yesterday might not enter, but the result was that every junior and senior eligible to participate had entered, both male and female, and from every school.

Tatsuya was assigned to all the second-year girls as well as Mikihiko for a total of six people. Six may have sounded awful, but excluding the freshman engineers, they had six people to check twenty-four CADs. His assignments were simply concentrated in the morning, and if you averaged it, he didn’t have especially many to handle.

He had begun his work at seven thirty and finished tuning everything at nine, and not every minute of that was work. Still, anyone looking in from outside would have seen it as a very difficult workload. Hattori and Isori had asked him, “You okay?” several times, too. So after he’d finished his work and he said he would be taking a break in his room without watching the start of the event, nobody was suspicious of him.

They wouldn’t be able to watch anything that happened during the Steeplechase event. Each player was required to have a transmitting device that would check if they left the course, which also made it possible to know where they were all currently running. But even if they’d launched small cameras with flight magic, the trees would block the view, meaning any filming or photography from above was nearly impossible. They could only take pictures of players who got near cameras they’d preinstalled.

The circumstances being what they were, many had decided to watch the races on the local cable television broadcast from inside the venue. Insensitivity was in the minority when it came to the players and staff, of course, so in Tatsuya’s case, they’d seen him off with sympathy in their eyes.

Nine twenty AM. Player and visitor eyes alike had focused on the starting line. Twelve female runners per school, totaling 108, were all lined up there. The outdoor women’s gear they wore comprised loose vests, sturdy boots, gloves, hats that doubled as simple helmets, goggles to protect their eyes, pads to protect their joints, and all sorts of other unnecessary items, but underneath it all was a one-piece coverall that adhered closely to their bodies. With this many people, it had its own unique beauty.

Without anyone watching him, Tatsuya slipped out of the hotel and walked toward the parking lot. Not to the one released for Nine School Competition use but to the military area.

On the way, he met up with Pixie. She was wearing her usual dress. It had long, loose sleeves and a tight collar, and it wasn’t tight at the waist, either, as her skirt went down to her ankles in a style of zero exposure. But fortunately, such clothing was not unusual in midsummer in this day and age.

Tatsuya had summoned her because he’d need her for locating the Parasidolls. But one more person stood next to her—a girl he hadn’t called.

“Minami, what are you doing here?”

Bowing to Tatsuya’s voice, Minami answered, “Lady Miyuki ordered me.”

“She did?”

Minami had called her not Big Sister Miyuki but Lady Miyuki. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue—her remark clearly had intent behind it. In other words, she was acting not as his underclassman from First High, nor as his false younger cousin, but as a servant of the Yotsuba. Tatsuya understood Minami’s intent immediately.

“She said that she could not provide support during the event, but that I should help you in her place.”

Minami’s expression was sharper than usual. It wasn’t the slightly bewildered look she always had, the youthful one befitting a young girl, but the look of a mature magician. Whether or not that was what she desired, this was who she fundamentally was.

Tatsuya immediately discarded the idea of chasing her away. She hoped that her strength would be useful, and in fact, it would be. It would be more arrogant to bring her age of fifteen into the equation; after all, Tatsuya himself was still only a boy of seventeen.

“All right. Come with me.”

“Right away.”

It seemed as though he’d never even remotely considered sending her away.

After changing into the MOVAL suit in the vehicle Fujibayashi had brought with her—Minami had her back turned during the process—he asked Pixie where the Parasidolls were positioned.

“Here.”

At the same time as Pixie’s thoughts were conveyed to him, sixteen lit-up dots were projected before Tatsuya’s eyes along with a map. Pixie had forwarded the data through the work vehicle’s communicator and into the visor monitor fitted into the suit’s helmet. He’d already synced Pixie with the work vehicle last night.

The number of lights was the same as Tatsuya had spotted in Nara and Pixie had sensed the other day. That meant she had full understanding of where the Parasidolls were. And currently, they had taken up position in the middle of the course, starting slightly toward the goal line and extending to it. At minimum—or at worst—the front-runner, Miyuki (or so Tatsuya assumed) would contact them in about ten minutes.

Then I need to take down the Parasidolls in the front within eight minutes, then clean the rest up within twenty.

Calculating how much of a grace period he had, he turned back to Minami.

“Minami, you stay here and prepare yourself against attackers.”

“All right.”

At Tatsuya’s order, Minami nodded without complaint. Of course, her eyes told him she wasn’t happy with it. She’d probably felt that Tatsuya was trying to distance her from the violence. And that was a dangerous misunderstanding.

“Minami, Pixie has a crucial role—she needs to pinpoint the Parasidolls’ locations.”

“Yes,” came the straightforward reply, albeit slightly confused.

“But her searches aren’t one-way.”

Minami’s eyes widened.

“The Parasidolls can detect Pixie here as well. And just like how Pixie knows the dolls can perceive her, those using the dolls will know that I’ve pinpointed the dolls’ positions.”

Peering into Minami’s eyes, he urged caution, trying to engrave it directly into her mind.

“It’s highly likely this vehicle will come under attack.”

“I understand.” She nodded, her face nervous.

Nine twenty-nine AM. Descriptive features hidden in the MOVAL suit, Tatsuya left the work vehicle, sending out a signal that would identify him as a member of a—real—unit belonging to the Mount Fuji NCO school, then headed for the training woods where the event was taking place.

Nine thirty AM. At the starting line, atop one of the two-meter-tall scaffoldings erected every hundred meters, a .41 pistol fired a single shot, declaring the beginning of the first Cross-Country Steeplechase.

With most of the throng of runners taking care in their steps as they advanced, the Eighth High group charged straight into the trees. As students from a school that so emphasized outdoors training, they probably felt proud that forests were their home field.

Not wanting to lag behind, a senior from the Third High group jumped out. She was probably impatient to turn the tides against First. Visibly heated up, the female student took off—and fell for the trap.

Tatsuya, having cut off his identification signal, increased his suit’s stealth capabilities to their maximum and snuck into the outer area of the training woods, springing toward the Steeplechase course when the pistol sounded.

The Parasidolls were scattered over the second half of the four-kilometer-long course. When he saw this distribution, he felt as though he was being lured in. As though someone were telling him to take down the dolls before the runners got to them—if he could. It seemed to him he was dancing in the palm of someone else’s hand.

Cheeky of them to play god like this, but it’ll actually make things easier for me.

Even if this guess was correct, he planned to go along with their expectations on purpose. It didn’t matter what the wire-puller had in mind. If he neutralized the Parasidolls and reduced the possibility of harm coming to Miyuki to zero, he would fulfill his objective.

Using flight magic at the same time, Tatsuya kept himself low as he dashed toward the nearest doll.

A moment after the race started, sudden laughter went up among the spectators watching on a giant display.

Broadly speaking, the Cross-Country Steeplechase had three rules. One, you couldn’t interfere with other players. You’d be disqualified if they spotted intentional interference, but because of the aforementioned poor view, chances they would catch you in the act were slim. If you got caught, you were just unlucky. Thus, this rule was less of a penal regulation and more of a gentleman’s agreement.

Two, you couldn’t leave the four-kilometer-square course. Each runner had a transmitter working in tandem with the Mount Fuji training grounds’ own positioning system; competition HQ could tell where each runner was at all times. Additionally, it was set up so that the runners could tell where they were in the course as well. Along with complying with the entrants’ requests and displaying a map and the runner’s current position on their goggles, their helmet was fitted to give the runner an alarm when they were about to exit the course.

And three—you couldn’t jump higher than the trees. It wouldn’t be an obstacle course if you flew above the canopy. It would be like answering the question What’s the fastest way to get through this maze? with Can’t you just go over the walls?

The positioning system worked in three dimensions, and the runners could see how far up they’d jumped. But the only way to know if a runner was above the surrounding trees was to check with a long-distance surveillance camera. And so they’d gone with something simpler.

More specifically, they’d strung nets overhead in certain places to serve as obstacles. Which meant that if you accidentally jumped too high, you’d get tangled in the net before breaking out of the trees—exactly what the screen had just shown.

The Third High runner had gotten caught in it. She was the student who’d placed third in Mirage Bat. It was extremely unfortunate for her, having been superimposed like that on the screen, but it was a hit with the crowd. She looked like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web, and part of the reason it was a hit was probably that the scene was somehow titillating.

The video wasn’t only on venue displays; it was being relayed through cable as well. National broadcast wouldn’t have met the JDF’s censorship policy, so the cable was local, limited to only the base—but on the other hand, you could get a signal from anywhere on the base, not just at the venue. The video was playing in a high-ranking officers’ conference room, too, in a building separate from HQ, on the other side of the training woods from the hotel.

“Unidentified magician infiltration confirmed.”

“Can you get it on-screen?”

“Not in real time, sir. We don’t have enough cameras.”

“A recording is fine. Show me.”

“Yes, sir.”

The soldiers’ attention, however, was not on the female high school student’s indecorous state but on someone else.

A different spot in the same training forest came up next to the cable relay broadcast.

It was a short video of a figure in deep blue cutting through the dim forest’s trees.

“Can’t you make it brighter?”

“Yes, sir, one moment.”

After changing the brightness on the video data, he replayed it from the start. Though the outline blurred, the brightened image of the figure was very similar to the flight combat uniforms they had but slightly different.

“That’s one of the new MOVAL suits Saeki’s been developing.”

“Then that intel was correct?”

The Kudou family had been the ones to bring the plan for robotic weapons that used magic.

And the testing of these magical weapons using the Nine School Competition’s current event was not a project officially permitted by the JDF but an unofficial, secretive experiment. Interrupting the experiment would never earn even a light official reprimand from General HQ.

It was all too plausible that General Saeki, who was at odds with the Kudou family—with Retsu Kudou in particular—would covertly bring in saboteurs to wreck the experiment; few in this group doubted that information. Still, given the actual sight of someone deciding to outwardly fight with others in the Japanese military and the sense of values therein, they couldn’t help but be surprised.

They had no selfish motives. If distinction had been their goal, every one of them could have played things more skillfully.

They were espousing hard-liner philosophies in the knowledge that it would hurt them—harm their chances at promotion—because they simply loved their country. They believed that winning a decisive victory over the GAA would bring about peace for Japan. For that purpose, they needed to persuade those who opposed opening hostilities. If they couldn’t persuade them, they were prepared to silence them.

But they needed to realize that process through purely peaceful means. The JDF was supposed to protect Japan’s national interests. JDF soldiers bringing war against one another was putting the cart before the horse, injuring national interests, and was ultimately an act of betrayal. No matter how ill-fated the times they lived through, they had decided never to resort to force. They were anti-GAA hard-liners—not hard-liners against their own compatriots. That was their source of pride.

From their point of view, General Saeki’s way of doing things, having easily decided to deploy the troop power known as magic in order to defeat this opposing faction, was unbelievable. Certainly, this came with danger. Even in their group, some had said they should avoid the women’s event and only run the tests during the men’s event.

But they considered the stance of trying to crush the test itself through brute force, even if no human casualties resulted from it, to be intolerable—and vice versa.

“Contact Kudou’s engineers. I don’t mind if we counterattack but do not kill the saboteur.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll give instructions not to fatally wound the saboteur.”

The hard-liners’ leader, Colonel Sakai, was concerned for the life of the magician being used as a pawn. And so even though they were in opposing positions, he ordered care, so they would not lose someone valuable to protecting their national interests.

The current Kudou family head, Makoto Kudou, scowled at the message from the testing site.

“Don’t kill the saboteur, he says…”

He had no objection to not killing the magician per se. But if it came to it, would they themselves not throw a magician into the jaws of death only because of what they were? That was why the researchers were developing the Parasidolls. And a magician was trying to stop them from doing that. Makoto couldn’t suppress the fury he felt.

“Change the dolls’ attack target to the infiltrator. Coordinate and restrain him. I will allow any attacks as long as they don’t kill him.”

Makoto sent his anger through to the head developer on the other end of his line and, ultimately, to the magician who was trying to get in their way.

“Lord Makoto seems quite upset.”

The main developer, after enduring a barrage of angry shouts, turned to his aide, looking like he couldn’t care less.

“But he’s right—it is an issue.”

The screen showed a magician clad in an ultramarine flight combat uniform weaving dangerously between the closely clustered trees, heading straight for a Parasidoll. He seemed to have a way of accurately locating them.

“Set their attack target to the infiltrator. Make capture its ultimate priority. Also—there was a specimen that found our dolls, right? Surely, that’s a collaborator of his. Get some people over there to secure it, too.”

After ordering the Parasidolls to capture Tatsuya, he commanded the private Kudou soldiers he’d been entrusted with to steal Pixie.

Jumping out from behind the trees and in front of the Parasidoll, Tatsuya stabilized his footing and pointed his CAD at the machine. But an instant later, faster than he could fire his spell, his whole body was hit by an intense impact that sent him flying backward.

This thing is fast!

Careening and falling—a brief, unintended aerial swim. As his mind accelerated and time stretched out, Tatsuya analyzed the reason he’d been hit first.

In that exchange, the Parasidoll’s reaction speed was clearly higher than his. No human could follow the speed at which it had visually perceived its opponent and then went into action. It wasn’t just that its information processing was fast because it had an electronic brain—it was so fast he could only assume it was a specialized kind made for combat.

At a glance, it had a slender body that seemed a far cry from physically strong. But now he knew that body, clad in a women’s outdoor combat uniform in forest camo, contained hidden power and speed that betrayed the eyes.

It wasn’t wearing a helmet or a hat, either—because its short hair acted as airflow and water-flow sensors. The reason it wasn’t wearing any goggles or protective glasses, either, was because its eyes themselves acted as protective cases over its optical sensors. Its skin was bulletproof synthetic rubber. Its joints were driven directly by spherical servomotors. Having a mask of beautiful features, even more inorganic than Pixie, this gynoid…

It’s an F-type mechanical soldier. They are still developing these?

A humanoid robot designed as a combat machine to replace infantry. They were professed to be able to use the same equipment as infantry, and that research had advanced with the goal of having them serve security missions in highly dangerous regions and the like, but Tatsuya had heard they eventually concluded that dropping the sticking point of it being shaped like a person and deploying automatic, self-driving gun emplacements in a nonhumanoid form instead would be more cost-effective, and so development had stopped.

Information-processing capabilities specialized for combat, belonging to a gynoid created for military use. But that couldn’t have been the only reason he’d lagged behind how fast it had finished triggering its spell.

The sensation had been on his entire body, not having any specific point of application, and the pressure had been distributed equally, coming from in front of him. It was something he was quite familiar with, having taken acceleration-type spell attacks before. And this speed and the roughness of the information bodies’ composition—

A singular acceleration type—no, it’s PK!

Tatsuya recovered his stance in midair, preparing for the impact.

His back slammed into the trunk of a Mongolian oak. The impact was lighter than he’d thought, probably thanks to his suit’s shock absorption feature. A blunt hit like this wouldn’t require Self-Regenerate.

He slid down the tree trunk to the ground, immediately assuming a combat posture. Obeying his gut instinct, he kicked off the ground. There was no time to use magic, no time to flash cast, either—he simply boosted his physical body with psions and jumped to the side with the dash power it gave him.

His decision was rewarded with a successful evasion. A hollow depression had opened up where he’d just been, as though a massive hammer had hit it.

And that’s weighting magic. Primitive magic programs—it must be psychokinesis.

One of the parasites he’d fought in winter had had the same tendency. A specimen that used not magic but psychic powers. The powers magicians had abandoned for magic. Overwhelming speed at the cost of versatility, precision, and stability. And Tatsuya could feel that this enemy had taken that even further.

Are the parasite dolls using psychic powers as weapons?!

Perhaps that was a unique trait of this individual. But he couldn’t allow himself to be optimistic.

Manipulating his familiar Trident’s selector switch, he set it to a Program Dispersion loop cast. It was a dismantling spell that destroyed a magic program’s structure and restored it to homogenous psionic noise. Psionic information bodies, their characteristics different from normal activation sequences that assisted in casting, were read into Tatsuya’s specialized magic calculation region.

Psionic light fired from the Parasidoll. Tatsuya’s eyes didn’t perceive the light itself but the structure given form by the light—the magic program.

Information bodies, fired at his legs, having the meaning of “twisting and turning.”

Before that meaning could become a phenomenon, Tatsuya’s Program Dispersion dismantled the information bodies themselves.

He felt a sense of surprise from the things residing in the doll. Its reaction was strangely slow, as if the doll wasn’t the only thing disturbed but its controller as well. Not only did it not follow up on its attack, it didn’t even emit the defensive force field it had hit Tatsuya with at the beginning.

He realized this at the same time as he closed in on the mechanical doll. His body moving at the speed of thought, he rammed the heel of his palm into the Parasidoll’s chest.

Oscillatory waves of the psions themselves, infiltrating it from his palm. They temporarily loosened the psionic defenses wrapped around the Parasidoll’s body, exposing the spell linking the parasite with the gynoid.

Duplication complete.

Tatsuya cleverly used his regeneration spell to copy it.

After gathering itself, the Parasidoll punched at him with the arm strength of a combat robot surpassing normal humans, but having already fulfilled his goal of duplication, Tatsuya sidestepped away from it.

In terms of pure physical ability, the mechanical dolls had humans beat, but humans had hours and hours of skills training.

Surpassing the mechanical with martial arts, twisting down a demon’s power with the will of man…

He pulled his left hand next to his waist and clenched his fist, imagining the ultrasmall sphere inside it compressing down even more.

He opened his fist, without closing the distance, then flung his palm toward the Parasidoll from outside his arm’s reach, as if to ram the compressed sphere into it.

He fired the anti-parasite psionic bullet into the mechanical doll’s electronic brain.

Its psionic defenses torn away, the parasite’s pushion information bodies were exposed.

He’d blasted away the spell linking the parasite with the gynoid as well, and the parasite was about to be released.

In human bodies, the psions would never be concentrated in the heart area. And if one lost all their psions, life functions would cease, making it impossible for them to be a parasite host. But the gynoid was a mechanical doll. Its functions would remain unchanged even if it lost its psions, and if a new supply of psions could be had, it could still be a host body for the parasite.

Tatsuya used his regeneration spell.

A spell that duplicated past information bodies and used those copied information bodies to overwrite the present eidos.

It certainly wasn’t limited to information bodies in the sense of physical matter. The spell could copy and overwrite everything, as long as it was psions.

Tatsuya poured a tiny amount of psions into the gynoid; then, with the copied loyalty spell, he relinked the parasite with the gynoid. The magic program’s code had been copied wholesale, so the target of loyalty would have still been the Kudou family, but that wouldn’t change how the fused parasite wouldn’t be able to do anything until it received enough psions.

Tatsuya’s prediction turned out to be correct.

The parasite, given the bare minimum necessary psions, didn’t turn into a clump of psions and pushions and fly away; instead, it entered a sleep state inside the gynoid.

All the Kudou’s personal soldiers chosen to attack the work vehicle Minami and Pixie were inside were users of modern magic that could deliver blunt physical blows rivaling portable infantry missiles.

Old Lab Nine’s goal was to develop modern magic that integrated elements of ancient magic. But aside from the three families crowned with the number nine, no old Lab Nine–born magicians possessed within them the casting techniques said to be ancient magic’s unique feature. Just as the Traditionalists feared and hated, all those traditional factors had been melted down and absorbed into new spells.

Though they were related to old Lab Nine, they hadn’t been able to gain the number nine. Their abilities were no different from regular modern magicians. But neither were they inferior in any way. Their magic would have been more than enough to take over a single middle-sized vehicle and kidnap the passengers on board.

However, speaking from the result, none of them were able to even touch the work vehicle Pixie was in.

It happened a moment after they showed intent to attack. As though someone had read the signs of their heightened psionic activity that came before magic usage, a powerful magic barrier had covered the vehicle.

Actually, reading pre-magic-activation signs, too, was an advanced trick impossible for anyone but the most veteran. More surprising than that, however, was the strength and precision of the magical barrier deployed along the vehicle’s body.

Simply touching the wall didn’t cause any pain or shock or injury.

It would only repel any force against it.

They tried to apply event alteration to the vehicle, but the barrier spell’s influence bounced it back.

They tried to heat all of it, including the barrier, and shake it and put pressure on it—but none of that made it budge.

Even when they tried using hardening magic and self-acceleration magic on themselves before ramming it, the barrier didn’t even rock.

In the end, they tried using their guns, knowing it would draw the attention of security forces, but this had no effect, either.

As expected, even with suppressors, they couldn’t hide the fact that they’d used guns. The private soldiers got away in the nick of time from the security troops who immediately came running.

The magical barrier that had driven off the personal Kudou soldiers was, needless to say, Minami’s.

The Sakura series of boosted, engineered magicians focused on anti-physical barriers. As one of its second generation, she had inherited the first generation’s high performance and could now utilize it even more stably than they could.

Minami had gone through combat training at the Yotsuba main residence; for her, detecting the signs of attack-magic activation was a natural skill. After all, the baseline for magicians in service of the Yotsuba was that they naturally hid any signs of casting magic.

And Minami’s magical barrier capabilities rivaled or possibly even outclassed those of direct Ten Master Clans descent. She couldn’t master the advanced, technical barrier spells of the Juumonji family such as Phalanx, but when it came to singular barriers, she wouldn’t even be second to Katsuto’s.

This rampart wouldn’t break even under tank-gun impacts and missile heat—no small-arms fire from pistols or submachine guns would ever break it.

Tatsuya carefully directed his “eyes” at the fallen mechanical doll and confirmed that it was in complete sleep mode.

This trick was something he’d thought of last night. Listening in on the conversation among Yakumo, Kazama, and Fujibayashi gave him the idea of using Kudou’s spell.

His information body perception ability worked on voices as well. Words were engraved on the Idea as information bodies.

Yakumo may have meant for him to hear it all to begin with, but even if not—even if he had really been eavesdropping—Tatsuya didn’t care at all. His personality wasn’t cute enough to feel guilt over something that small.

The spell to create the puppet would include the technique to bind it.

In other words, didn’t that mean the technique to create it and the one to bind it were fundamentally the same?

He knew, through Pixie, where in the mechanical body the parasites resided. Whether it was for combat or housework, they needed the same basic structure of a female—or more broadly, a real human form.

Motors in the four limbs, waist, and neck; sensors in the head; fuel cells in each arm; and, if it was human, an electronic brain where the heart would be. The parasites resided in that electronic brain. Which meant the spell linking the parasite to the gynoid would exist there as well.

All of that was guesswork, and he had to try it for real to be sure. But it seemed he’d won his gamble.

“Pixie, where is the closest Parasidoll?”

“Two Parasidolls are inbound to your position from relative four and seven o’clock. Master, please be cautious.”

He almost chuckled at the last part. He wasn’t appalled—it had warmed him. Pixie had become quite humanlike herself, he felt…or rather, more like Honoka.

A parasite—an independent information body but also a person.

Perhaps they would prove to be the keys that unlocked the mysteries of the mind.

Five minutes after starting. The runners had split into school-separated groups.

The course was already vast, being four kilometers wide, and it was divided into small pieces by the thickly clustered trees. Even if 108 people were all running at equal intervals, they’d quickly lose sight of one another.

And this was a first-time event, a first-time field, and they hadn’t learned what sort of obstacles would be here. They’d decided that runners dropping out midway through was a matter of course, and in the beginning, they’d adopted the tactic of supporting the others in their school, which made sense.

The current placements were almost entirely split along school lines. Every school had advanced in a groping manner until now. But having gotten almost a quarter of the way through the four-kilometer course already was due to speed that could only come from magic.

And each school, having gotten used to the course, was about to shift into a higher gear.

“Kanon, you’re too far ahead!”

A complaint flew from Tomoko to Kanon, who had increased her pace. But Kanon didn’t slow down.

“I have a good sense of the course now! I think the other schools do, too!”

Without turning around, Kanon shouted behind her. Implied in her words was the argument that if they didn’t up the pace, they wouldn’t win.

“The rest of you don’t need to force it!”

Adding that, she pushed her speed even further. With a rapid succession of jumping spells, she avoided tree roots and landed in a spot mostly free of underbrush, then cast an incredibly small-scale Mine Origin. The ground in front of her sunk down, and a mass of sand poured down from the treetops toward the hole.

A pitfall and a torrent of sand. The trap would see any who fell in the hole buried alive. The edges of her lips tugging up proudly, she jumped past it.

When she landed, her right foot sank into mud.

“Gah! Why, you!”

Hastily, Kanon cast another jumping spell, one of which had just ended. Her left foot kicked off the air, and her right foot, buried in the mud, reappeared—with a white string wrapped around her ankle.

Her body completely left the ground.

White strings were drawn taut all over the place. They must have been fixed in place inside the mud.

The string pulled against her body, stopping her in midair. Because her jumping spell’s definition contents became inexecutable, it dissipated. As a result—

“Wagyah?!”

—she fell face-first into the pool of mud.

“Chiyoda?!”

Subaru, who had been leading the First High group that had just caught up because of the trap, let out a voice that was mildly amazed at what just happened rather than a shriek at the horrible tragedy.

Kanon slowly got up out of the mud. But she was still buried up to her chest.

She pulled her hands out of the mud. Her right hand was along her left wrist.

The bog exploded.

The mud sprayed several times more magnificently than when she’d fallen in it, emanating from Kanon’s body.

Miyuki, sensing magic activation, immediately cast an anti-matter barrier spell. Because of the transparent shield she created, the ten girls avoided being splattered with the mud.

The explosion had come from an acceleration-type spell aptly named Explosion. The user was, needless to say, the one at ground zero—Kanon.

The ground—originally the mud pool—was bored out into the shape of a mortar, and there in the center of it, looking down, was Kanon, squeaky-clean. None of the mud or even the dirt had hit her. The surface of her body and clothes were probably the origin for Explosion, blowing away all the mud and earth and dirt stuck to her. The string wrapped around her ankle was nowhere to be found, either.

It was a dangerous way to use the spell—she could have torn off her body hair and given herself some pretty awful pain, or she could have tragically blown off what she was wearing. But like always, her control was skillful.

Pushing her cleaned goggles up with a hand, Kanon rubbed her eyes. Their goggles were all perfectly sealed, so there shouldn’t have been any mud or dirt in her eyes. Still…any teenage girl would have been close to crying if they’d been forced to dive into the mud.

From behind, they could tell that she’d taken a deep breath.

And then.

“This is bullshit! How is this military training?!” she screamed hysterically, shooting out of the crater.

“…We should get going, too,” said Subaru to Miyuki, who was standing next to her.

“…Yes.”

The two of them, standing at the head of their rear group, resumed their race.

“That’s not possible! Is this man even human?!” yelled the head Parasidoll developer in their mobile lab.

Another piece of his confidence put to sleep.

They’d hit him from either side with an oscillatory wave so fast even Ten Master Clans magicians couldn’t have kept up. He’d given these two the demon-power of sound. They could both scatter someone’s equilibrium with low-frequency waves or destroy their hearing with high-frequency waves. In fact, they had enough demon-power to replicate Phonon Maser, just by firing at full power without regard for operational duration, without an exclusive magic program, just by raising the wavelength.

His adorable dolls’ attacks certainly had an effect. They had gone through the shock-absorption defenses of the brand-new combat uniform the military developed and dealt damage to the magician. Staggering and dropping to one knee couldn’t possibly have been an act. And yet, this magician had counterattacked instantly after taking the damage.

His first attack was an untyped spell that ancient magic called a farstrike. The developer didn’t know the logic behind why that by itself would have damaged the Parasidoll, but he could make a token guess as to what happened. But the next direct attack he made after closing the distance—

“What in blazes did he just do?! What on earth is going on?!”

A simple palm strike. He didn’t understand what system could neutralize a Parasidoll with only that. The magician hadn’t released the parasite, hadn’t destroyed the body—just stopped it from working.

While the skill was uncanny, so too was the physical flesh that had continued to engage in combat as though it had never been hit by the Parasidolls’ demon-power attacks.

“Is this guy an immortal…? Are you telling me he’s an actual vampire?!”

The surprise in the mobile lab was shared by those in the high-ranking officers’ conference room in a separate building from General HQ.

“This magician… What the hell is his body made of? This goes way beyond toughness or tolerance levels.”

The surveillance camera’s image had switched to one-on-four. Dents in the MOVAL suit were visible even through the wires, in its arms, legs, and back. The attack of a doll that freely launched iron balls directly hit the magician’s body, and the ranged attack of a doll that fired out mercury pellets from eighteen spots total bored holes in the MOVAL suit armor.

But a moment later, this magician attacked the Parasidolls as though nothing had happened.

“Maheśvara…” murmured one of their group.

“What?” demanded Colonel Sakai.

“Do you know of the combat magician called Maheśvara by the enemy forces during the Defense of Okinawa four years ago and the Yokohama Incident last year?”

“…Yes, now that you mention it, I have. Someone who wiped out mobile weapons in one strike and would revive an instant after any attack as though nothing had happened… Wait, is it him?!”

“Looking at the situation, it’s probable this Maheśvara is a magician with ties to Major Kazama.”

“Major Harunobu Kazama, of the 101^st Brigade’s Independent Magic Battalion?”

A magician clad in a MOVAL suit developed by the 101^st Brigade displaying such durability he seemed immortal. The signs all matched up.

“What is a monster like that doing at a high school competition, of all things…?!”

The Nine School Competition may have been an important event for magicians, but for the JDF, it was nothing more than a high school festival. Even if the experiment had casualties, it would only be four or five high schoolers getting injured. It didn’t seem plausible for Saeki or Kazama to be worried about actual deaths.

He didn’t understand General Saeki’s true intentions, but Colonel Sakai had an uncanny premonition about this.

Minami was now in a predicament inside the vehicle with Pixie.

The assault, by the Kudou family’s personal soldiers (which was something Minami didn’t know), had been driven off by the appearance of security troops from the base. But this time, those troops had been trying to get in.

From security’s standpoint, the demand was natural. Just like last year, another unidentified group had broken into the JDF base and even discharged firearms. The ones they needed to capture and apprehend were the group that had engaged in violence, but it was a perfectly reasonable response to want to hear what the people getting fired at had to say.

But Minami couldn’t accept their demands. Actually, maybe it didn’t matter, but she felt like it would be bad if unrelated soldiers were to see them in this vehicle.

“Like I said, we were the victims. I don’t believe we have any reason to respond to questioning.”

“This is a military base—we have police authority! If you’ve nothing to hide, then you’ll be fine! Undo this barrier and open the door at once!”

They’d been repeating this exchange for some time (incidentally, her voice was being changed as it went through the speaker). At this rate, she could maintain the barrier for about another hour, and she had the completely thought-controlled CAD Tatsuya had given her, so she could instantly change the barrier’s properties if they came under sudden magical attack.

But Minami personally didn’t want to do anything so dramatic.

Lord Tatsuya, please return soon!

Minami was at a loss, unable to even imagine asking Tatsuya for orders—and getting in the way of his battle.

Fifteen minutes after starting. The runners were no longer sticking with other athletes from their schools to traverse the course; they’d adopted a style of forming first, second, and third groups to go for the goal.

First High’s leading group was Kanon, Subaru, and Miyuki. Kanon was in the track-and-field club and ran the three-thousand-meter hurdles. Her magical strengths and weaknesses were secondary—she was used to running while overcoming obstacles. Subaru specialized in jumping magic. Miyuki was avoiding the obstacles by skillfully using flight magic to skim right above the ground.

Their current positions were slightly farther than two kilometers from the starting line; they’d just entered the second half of the course. As Subaru was jumping from tree to tree, kicking off trunks, she suddenly stopped moving and landed on the base of a certain Mongolian oak.

“Subaru, what’s wrong?” asked Miyuki, who caught up to Subaru and stopped like she did. The race was still going, but they never knew what sort of obstacles lay in their path in this event. If she’d spotted something concerning, it would be a bad idea to ignore it. That was why they’d split into teams of two or three, never one.

“Look at that.”

Looking in the direction Subaru pointed, Miyuki and Kanon frowned. Something in the shape of a human female was on the ground.

“…A combat gynoid.”

Kanon announced its identity. She may not have looked like someone good with technology, but she was a daughter of the Chiyoda family, whose field of expertise was combat, even as one of the Hundred. She’d probably seen something similar in the past.

“But it looks like it’s not functional.”

Miyuki immediately realized it was a Parasidoll and one Tatsuya had taken down. But she didn’t let any of that out, instead voicing the result of what she’d seen.

“Looks that way to me, too.”

“Perhaps they forgot to retrieve it during previous training?”

That remark was Subaru’s. It was a seemingly logical but impossible guess, but Kanon didn’t know that.

“…Anyway, if it’s not moving, we don’t need to bother with it. Could be trying to get us to jump at shadows and slow down.”

That was Kanon’s decision. If she wanted to think that way, Miyuki didn’t need to go out of her way to object.

“Then…?”

“We’ll keep moving before we lose any more time.”

Answering Miyuki’s short question, Kanon began running. Subaru and Miyuki followed suit.

They’re tougher than I thought… This is taking more time than I planned. Only about ten minutes left before Miyuki catches up in first place, thought Tatsuya to himself, surrounded by a group of Parasidolls.

Right now, he was quite a bit closer to the goal line than the spot where he’d encountered the first one. He’d silenced all the Parasidolls closer to the starting line. If he caused all sixteen to shut down, this incident would be for him resolved.

Psychic powers flew at him from every direction—the Kudou family called them “demon-powers.” He advanced, covering only his vital spots—head and heart—then made contact with one of the dolls.

The high-speed type sliced his arm down almost to the bone, but Tatsuya used his other arm to slam the heel of his fist into the doll in front of him.

He went through the parasite sleep process in the blink of an eye.

Getting help from his fully thought-controlled CAD to call up his Program Dispersion assistance activation sequence from his Trident tucked in its holster, he disabled the spell going for his neck. He jumped over the fallen Parasidoll, momentarily escaping their encirclement, then used Regenerate to restore his arm. The spell would make any enemy cry out that he was cheating, but he wasn’t all-powerful or invincible by any means.

Regenerate came with pain.

It prevented mental focus and led to an obstruction of magic casting. He was used to the pain, but he couldn’t avoid losing a moment to it.

He’d never feel the pain if he was using a full backup for it, but in that case, his entire magic calculation region would be temporarily taken up by the spell, causing more than a moment’s attack delay.

That was why he was protecting the organs related to life and death. As long as he still had psions, he wouldn’t die, even from a fatal wound, but if he took a fatal wound, his survival instincts would automatically start using Regenerate with a full backup, and his magical abilities would cease. Against magicians at the very top of the skill ladder and unable to get any allied backup, things would gradually get worse. The Parasidolls were no less than first-class magicians when it came to combat power. Their psychic powers’ activation speed outclassed modern magic.

However—the fact that he could consciously complain was actually proof that he had some leeway.

Now that he had a way to defeat them without releasing the parasites, the Parasidolls were no match for him.

The reason parasites possessing humans had been such difficult opponents was because if he killed the host, it would release the parasite, and Tatsuya didn’t have a way to destroy its main body.

But the Parasidolls’ hosts were gynoids storing accumulated psions. They could break but never die. And if he made sure a tiny amount of psions was still left in the machine, the parasite’s main body would go into a sleep state to prevent exhausting itself.

Even while peppered with wounds from the concentrated psychic cross fire, he overcame his own blood loss and agony and forced the twelfth Parasidoll into a sleep state.

Four to go… There!

“Four Parasidolls remaining!”

The report came up from his subordinate like a cry, and the main researcher on the Parasidoll testing team bit his lip so hard it might bleed. He didn’t know Tatsuya’s—no, Maheśvara’s—worth. If a single magician took down all sixteen Parasidolls, he knew this test and the entire Parasidoll development project itself would be stamped as a failure.

“But these last four… You won’t be able to handle the Prime Four like the rest…!” muttered the lead developer to himself while gazing at the Parasidoll monitoring screen.

It sounded like an empty threat or perhaps like frustration at having lost, and the subordinate sitting next to him peered into his face with a look of concern.

As soon as Tatsuya sensed the presence of the four Parasidolls, a fist-sized cannonball came flying at him before he could fire a spell. It flew faster than the eye could see; Tatsuya only “saw” it with his ability to perceive information bodies. Diameter of twelve centimeters, mass of five kilograms, velocity of four hundred kilometers per hour. It was far from a bullet’s speed, but its mass was orders of magnitude higher.

Tatsuya thrust out his right hand and stopped the cannonball. When it touched his hand, the sphere, made of packed earth, shattered. It hadn’t merely broken—small particles had radially sprayed out. It was a result of dismantling the cannonball’s movement vector, on the level of the earth composing it.

He’d defeated the preemptive attack with his signature move, but he didn’t have a chance to breathe. A subtle, threadlike force field came into existence, about to shoot out at him. The repulsive force acting in both vertical directions relative to the direction of motion had the same principle as the weighting-type spell Pressure Cut. The force field was accurately divided, without a blade or wire to act as the reference line, perhaps because of mechanical, digital precision.

Once again, Tatsuya had no choice but to prioritize defense. With a Program Dispersion, he nullified the Parasidoll’s Pressure Cut. In that time, another individual had closed into punching and kicking range.

It held weapons in both hands—large knives with blades about thirty centimeters long. Those weren’t any threat to Tatsuya by themselves. The issue was the speed at which the Parasidoll swung them.

It’s fast—

In terms of pure speed, it rivaled Erika’s self-acceleration spell.

—however!

It didn’t have the technique that she did. Its movements were precise and without waste, but that was all. In fact, the more precise it was, the easier it was to predict. Tatsuya dodged the two slashes from left and right, then triggered Program Dispersion. The accelerated spell lost its effect, and the doll’s movements decreased to human speed.

That was one, he thought, about to ram his right fist into it. However.

“What?!”

A repulsive wall emerged in front of the knife-wielding Parasidoll. It didn’t belong to the one who had used Pressure Cut. The fourth Parasidoll had deployed this magical barrier.

As it repelled Tatsuya backward, the knife-wielding one retreated as well. Now together, the four Parasidolls assumed a diamond formation. In front was the high-speed close combat type, on the right was the one that fired cannonballs made of packed earth, on the left was the ranged Pressure Cut user, and in the back was the one that created the repulsive barrier.

A cannonball flew at Tatsuya as he collected himself. Tatsuya jumped to the side out of its way with help from flight magic, but the cleaving blade followed him, closing in. After he dismantled the magic blade, two knives were there to greet Tatsuya. And an invisible wall to act as a shield.

These things have good coordination!

As though one brain was controlling four bodies, their combination was sharply distinct from the twelve he’d already put to sleep. And this trick was so good it didn’t give Tatsuya a chance to attack.

“Yes, that’s it, Prime Four. That’s the way, my pretties!”

In the Kudou mobile lab, the main Parasidoll development researcher was now in a heat haze as he watched the screen.

“Right there! Cut him in half!”

A subordinate spoke in a reserved manner to his excited chief. “Chief, weren’t we ordered not to kill him?”

“What?! Are we watching the same thing here? That magician has advanced self-regeneration abilities. Severing a limb or two won’t kill him,” answered the man, as though the idea wasn’t even worth talking about, his eyes still fixed to the screen—and filled with lunacy.

“Master, to the right!”

Obeying the active telepathy ringing in his head, Tatsuya immediately tilted himself to the left. The earthen cannonball grazed his right shoulder and flew behind him.

“Fifty seconds until reload. Slash from the left—please dodge one meter to the right.”

He dodged as he was told, and sure enough, the flying Pressure Cut blade passed by thirty centimeters to his left.

“Pixie, you know how they’ll attack?” asked Tatsuya into his comm unit, using the armor built into his glove to handle the high-mobility type’s knives.

“Cannonball incoming. Aiming for the head! …Yes, Master. I can hear what these girls are saying.”

“Saying? They aren’t acting independently?”

With a deft duck, he dodged the cannonball, then nullified the self-acceleration spell at the same time. He tried to ram his right hand, fitted with the series of function-stopping spells, but a barrier blocked him at the last moment.

“Those four are constantly exchanging thoughts as they act.”

The response came back from Pixie as the barrier’s repulsion forced Tatsuya to take distance. He found himself deeply convinced by that answer; it wasn’t as though one brain was controlling four bodies—they were being controlled by one mind, physically separated in four.

And Pixie could intercept the Parasidolls’ conversation. Which meant countering them would be easy.

“Pixie, relay their conversation to me.”

“Right away.”

“Oh no! What’s happening now?!” shouted the chief researcher. This time, his subordinates could sympathize.

The first four Parasidolls they’d created at old Lab Nine, the Prime Four—suddenly their attacks had stopped working.

He used his palm to block the clumps of earthen cannonballs and even dodged the G-Daggers—G for gravity—which was what they called the flying Pressure Cut blades. He handled the high-mobility type’s attacks as though he’d been waiting for them; when the repulsion shield came up, the enemy was the one to retreat. Their side had no damage, but the other guy was clearly predicting the Prime Four’s movements.

The MOVAL suit–wearing magician took the initiative for the first time. Altering the pattern thus far, they first aimed for his legs with two consecutive G-Daggers. But they dissipated before firing.

Neither the chief nor his subordinates could tell what was going on. But though they may have stopped thinking, the Parasidolls wouldn’t. Once ordered, the automatic weapons would continue carrying out their mission unless their instructions changed or they were commanded to stop.

On the screen, the high-mobility type engaged the enemy. Behind that one, the artillery type readied itself, its hands wrapped around a cannonball. The knife type was bait—the cannonball was the main attack. But the MOVAL suit magician slipped right past the knife user as if he already knew that.

Repulsion shield information bodies formed—and then vanished into the sea of information.

The MOVAL suit magician appeared before the artillery type and touched the cannonball with his right hand. It went to dust and fell from the Parasidoll’s hands.

The artillery type stood there, seeming dumbfounded…like a human would be.

The magician struck its chest with his left hand.

“Impossible…?!”

The researchers cried out. They couldn’t believe it—or rather, they didn’t want to believe it. Nonetheless, the instrument monitoring the Prime Four’s artillery-type specimen signaled that its functions had stopped.

A perfectly coordinated attack by four Parasidolls. But their combination was so perfect that missing one weakened the move overall.

“Slashes to right hand, right leg, left leg.”

Tatsuya was aware of those attacks without having to wait for Pixie’s advice. The artillery type’s role was to harass him with ranged physical attacks. Now that it was gone, that meant he could focus on dealing with the magic.

Tatsuya dismantled the Pressure Cuts with Program Dispersion. Then he charged for the Parasidoll readying its knives. After disabling the barrier that formed in front of him, he reached for a knife. For the Parasidoll, this was unexpected—a movement pattern that hadn’t been input into its electronic brain. Had the machine delayed or had the demon?

Tatsuya’s hand grabbed the knife.

The neo-Damascus steel knives—a synthetic carbon nanotube–based steel—turned into tiny particles and crumbled down. This didn’t only affect the blade he’d grabbed, but hit the other knife he hadn’t touched as well.

He’d crushed them with magic, so he hadn’t needed to physically touch them to begin with, but the sight of it was strange and mysterious.

Of course, it wouldn’t confuse Tatsuya, the one who caused the phenomenon. He stepped toward the defensive Parasidoll waiting in the back rather than the weaponless one. Without any assistance from the MOVAL suit, he closed the five-meter gap in one step.

A repulsion-field barrier deployed. It was faster than Tatsuya, but the speed of psychic powers didn’t care about versatility.

But Tatsuya had the skills to nullify not only in-construction spells but completed ones as well, so the ability to merely create a barrier didn’t mean much. Without the offensive ability to go along, it couldn’t threaten him.

The defender went to sleep.

The close combat, high-mobility type and the long-ranged noncontact combat type remained. And these girls were already nothing more than Tatsuya’s prey.

“Master, congratulations!”

Minami almost dropped her magical barrier upon hearing Pixie’s sudden telepathic shout. The release of passionate emotion, which didn’t make sense coming from a nonhuman, made Minami mutter “Another one…” without realizing it.

The next thing she had to say was this:

“Pixie, has Lord Tatsuya destroyed all the Parasidolls?”

The request for confirmation had too little worry in it to imply she was concerned for his safety.

“Yes. Master has caused all of them to enter a state of hibernation,” answered Pixie with her voice after that big whoop.

“I hope he comes back soon…” Minami murmured.

But that was when she realized that if he came back now, the situation could get even worse.

The security forces were still surrounding the vehicle. If someone of unknown affiliation, identity hidden by a combat uniform, ran right into those soldiers, wouldn’t that lead to an extremely unpeaceful ending…?

And then her portable terminal informed her of an incoming voice message.

Wondering who it was, she looked at the sender. She wasn’t hopeful, assuming it wouldn’t be displayed, but contrary to her expectations, it showed the name Fumiya Kuroba.

“Yes?”

Confused as to why he knew her call number, she picked up, while still maintaining her magical barrier.

“This is Fumiya Kuroba. Am I speaking to Miss Minami Sakurai?”

“Yes, but…?”

“I’m glad I got through. I apologize for looking up your number without asking. Anyway, I wanted to check something.”

“No, I don’t mind you knowing my number, Lord Fumiya—but what is it you wanted to check?”

“Miss Sakurai, you’re the one currently holding up the barrier in the car surrounded by security guards, right?”

“Please call me Minami… As for your question, my answer is yes.”

A slightly perplexed feeling came through the terminal, but the conversation resumed a moment later.

“…Miss Minami, you weren’t trying to be a decoy by doing this or anything, were you? In other words, you don’t need to keep the security troops there for some reason, right?”

“No, and in fact it’s quite a lot of trouble… Also, Lord Fumiya, please call me Minami and not Miss Minami, if you please.”

“…We can discuss that at a later date. More importantly, I’m about to knock all the security troops unconscious. Please maintain the barrier until then.”

“Understood. I’ll leave it up to you… And also, please try your best to call me Minami, as I am but a maid and you are a candidate for next head of the family.”

“…Okay, I’ll get started. Probably won’t even take five minutes.”

At the end, Fumiya’s tone had gotten much more casual.

It was not clear whether Minami thought I won…! at this time.

Looking toward familiar psionic wave motion, he’d seen a fairly powerful magic barrier. Fumiya had a hunch and confirmed that the caster was indeed one of the Sakura series connected to the Yotsuba—Minami, who was staying with Tatsuya.

Fumiya had a feeling he knew what was going on. His beloved “big brother” Tatsuya was out wrecking the Parasidoll experiment, so he’d probably needed the vehicle for something. Which meant he couldn’t allow the security guards to see inside it. And he certainly couldn’t leave more unnecessary work on Tatsuya’s plate.

You were just unlucky.

Fumiya took out his well-used knuckle duster–shaped CAD. He was in a normal male high school uniform right now, but he couldn’t let them spot him. Still, he decided the situation didn’t call for disguising himself.

Twenty meters between him and the vehicle. Direct Pain would actually reach perfectly fine at this range. Getting as close as he could was an adjustment so that he wouldn’t deal too much damage to them.

You really were unlucky, he said to himself, an excuse to the soldiers, before slamming a mercilessly powerful Direct Pain into the security troops swarming the vehicle.

By the time Tatsuya got back to the vehicle, he was naturally surprised by the security forces lying around the parking lot. It took a moment before the black-suited men and women under Fumiya’s command ran to the scene after he’d contacted them about it.

Checking to make sure nobody was watching, he went inside the vehicle. As directed, he returned the MOVAL suit to the “coffin,” pressed the self-destruct button, and fled the scene with Minami and Pixie.

Just like Fujibayashi said, none of the security guards lying around the vehicle seemed unduly harmed.

Tatsuya didn’t stick around to make sure.

The biggest difference between the Cross-Country Steeplechase and normal track-and-field events was that nobody knew how the other runners were doing. Even in normal cross-country races, where participants also didn’t have a good view of their rivals, the running courses were preset, and it was possible to get a feel for everyone’s current positions by overtaking or being overtaken by others. But the Steeplechase essentially had no course, and vision was obscured by the trees, so all the runners wouldn’t be able to tell how anyone else was doing, aside from the group they were in.

However, they could gain information on whether any runners had completed the track and how many from the information terminal in the glasses-shaped goggles.

The number of people who had finished, shown in the corner of the map displayed on the goggles, was zero.

Two hundred meters until the goal line.

Miyuki was now sure they were in the lead.

Kanon, running next to her, was too.

Suddenly, Kanon increased her pitch. Subaru, too, gave a burst of speed so she wouldn’t fall behind.

Miyuki wavered. She wasn’t exactly going easy on them with her current pace. This was as fast as she could go while still being careful of traps. If she accelerated any more, she could overlook one. Should she keep her careful eye out or risk it and go for the gold?

“Kyaa!” “Whoa?!”

Just as she thought that, two cries went up in sequence.

A volley of paint pellets, fired from several automatic gun emplacements, had hit Kanon, sending her careening to the side. The pellets couldn’t penetrate anything, but in exchange, the kinetic energy was all converted into impact. A string of them hitting her from waist to leg had knocked her sideways; she couldn’t dig in, and it was all she could do to adopt a defensive posture so she wouldn’t get hurt when she hit the ground.

Subaru got caught in a net-bullet and fell to the ground, entangled. The magic she’d used was jump, not flight, so her spell reduced her falling inertia. Therefore, though the direct impact was lighter compared to Kanon, struggling while tangled up in a net like that might have been even more embarrassing for a young girl.

“Ugh… They didn’t need to go all military on us now…”

Kanon groaned bitterly, but whether it was a complaint or a witty remark, it seemed fairly relaxed. Deciding they’d be okay, Miyuki said, “Please excuse me. I’ll be going on ahead.”

She got no answer from the other two. Though she did get the full brunt of their mental cries of You’re heartless!

Still, the Steeplechase was an individual competitor event. They might have been from the same school, but on the track, they were enemies. It was simply a convenient tactic to form teams, that was all. Sticking to her cold, unfeeling decision—though it wasn’t that dramatic—she faced the goal line again and resumed the race.

She glanced at her navigation map to check.

The number of runners who had finished was still zero.

Miyuki continued through the goal line in the lead. Kanon rallied and got back into the race, taking a beautiful second place, while Subaru took time to get free of the net and came in eighth. The other two First High runners, Honoka and Shizuku, came in at a friendly fifth and sixth.