Chapter 5

It was the day after Tatsuya was hit with the surprise night shift.

The Nine School Competition kicked off as though nothing had happened.

Even counting just the direct spectators, there would be one hundred thousand total over the competition’s ten days. Despite being in such an inconvenient place to get to with public transportation, an average of ten thousand people came to watch the events each day. Those viewing the broadcast were a hundred times that in number, if not more.

It may not have been as popular as some professional sports, but despite how many people had their eyes on the event, almost nobody besides those directly involved knew about the secret first act last night. The competitors all possessed top-class magic power, but they were still high school students. Nothing had come of the attempt, and it was decided it would be best not to give the students cause for anxiety.

The opening ceremonies were more about order and discipline than beauty and color. There was no need for pomp—the magic events themselves were sure to be very flashy and impressive. Also absent were the usual extended guest addresses. They moved straight into the events after they finished playing the nine schools’ anthems in numerical order.

Today would be the start of a ten-day-long competition. Five days would be for the main event and five for the rookie competition, with boys and girls competing on the same days. The magic competition to host twenty events in total had finally begun.

On the first day was Speed Shooting, from the qualifiers all the way to the finals, and the qualifiers for Battle Board. The difference in schedules reflected the discrepancy between the time each event required.

“Tatsuya, the president’s heat is about to begin.”

“The star performer right off the bat, huh? Watanabe was in the third race, right?”

“Yes.”

Tatsuya and the others had gone to the Speed Shooting stadium wanting to watch Mayumi’s matches. Counting from the left, they were Shizuku, Honoka, Tatsuya, and Miyuki, not standing in the staff area in the stadium but in the general audience.

Speed Shooting involved just that: Clay pigeons would be fired into the air one hundred feet away, and the competitors would have to use magic to destroy them. Whoever destroyed more before time was up was the winner.

The event came in two varieties.

In the qualifiers, each competitor would try to get the highest score, meaning number of targets destroyed, in under five minutes. They would use all four shooting ranges simultaneously, with six heats on each of them—twenty-four people could enter in this event—and after the qualifiers, the top eight competitors would move into the quarterfinals. Twenty-four meant that if all nine schools entered three people each, there would be too many. Three of the schools, however, would only have two entrants, reflecting their weak performance from last year’s competition. All the events save for Monolith Code went by the same rule.

From the quarterfinals on, the competitors would play against one another. Red and white targets, one hundred of each, would be used this time, and the competitors would try to destroy more of their color than the opponent destroyed of their own.

“Which means that in the qualifiers, you can use immense destructive power to wipe out all the targets at once, but when you get to the tournament, precise aim is the name of the game.”

Shizuku nodded enthusiastically. She was the only one of their current group entered into the rookies’ Speed Shooting event. “It means that normally, the magic you use changes between the qualifiers and the finals tournament, but…”

“President Saegusa is famous for using the same strategy in both the qualifiers and the tournament.”

Tatsuya was about to say the same thing, but a girl sitting behind them interrupted.

“Erika?”

“Hi, Tatsuya!”

“Yo!”

“Morning.”

“Good morning, Tatsuya, Miyuki, Honoka, Shizuku.”

Lined up behind the group of four were Leo, Erika, Mizuki, and Mikihiko, from right to left. (Of course, they made their greetings in the order of Erika, Leo, Mikihiko, and Mizuki.) They’d been lucky enough to find four empty seats behind Tatsuya’s group because they were already on some of the farthest rows up.

“Aren’t there empty seats farther down?”

“Well, yeah, but then we saw all of you. And besides, you can’t really tell what’s going on in this event if you’re too close, right?”

“I suppose.”

The audience seats got higher up the farther away you were. The competitors would be shooting at targets flying very quickly through the air, so those sitting near the front rows would need the same level of visual perception the competitors had.

Despite that, the audience was jamming in as close as they could to the front…

“It’s all the idiot men down there,” said Erika in a disdainful, judging way, not quite seeming like she was joking.

“They don’t all look like guys our age,” responded Tatsuya wryly.

In any case, for those reasons, the front rows for this event were packed.

“You mean the girls shouting and calling her ‘big sister’? Yeah, it’s so sad.”

“Don’t be like that. It might be worth it to watch from so close up. I see her basically every day, but she looks like an entirely different person.”

“Yikes! What are you gonna do, Miyuki? He’s flirting with someone else!”

Erika’s sarcastic remark met only dry smiles from Tatsuya and Miyuki as they both wondered what she was talking about.

“They call her the Elfin Sniper, right? The name fits her to a T,” noted Honoka.

“I hear she hates being called that, so you probably shouldn’t say it in front of her,” warned Tatsuya, causing her to shrink down.

The boys and girls packed into the front rows were there to get a look at Mayumi, who was waiting in the first shooting range for the signal to begin.

Her long, voluminous, wavy hair sat under a headset designed to protect her ears, and her eyes were hidden behind transparent goggles. For her uniform, she wore trousers made of a stretchy fabric and a jacket that tightened at the waist and had a stand-up collar. One could mistake it for a minidress. Combined with the Speed Shooting–specific handgun-shaped device, giving her an image of a near-futuristic film heroine, you had a stunning mix of cute and elegant.

“I mean, there are people who make fan comics about our president, after all…” They were probably stimulated by her current outfit.

However, Mizuki’s off-hand remark had been so unexpected that even Erika struggled to immediately respond. “…That’s the first I’ve heard of that.”

“…Mizuki, how exactly did you come to learn that? Don’t tell me you’re into that kind of thing. I might have to rethink our friendship.” Miyuki seemed to have imagined the same thing as Erika. Her voice didn’t sound like it was joking; she was maybe 10 percent serious.

“Huh?! No, I’m not interested in all that!” Of course, the one most disturbed by all this was Mizuki herself.

“It’s starting.” Regardless of what Mizuki was imagining as she got flustered, Tatsuya quieted her with two words.

The audience fell deathly silent.

The headsets the competitors wore meant they wouldn’t be bothered by the audience making a little bit of noise, but the issue was more that it would be bad manners.

The first competitor hoisted her competition CAD, long and narrow and reminiscent of a single-shot rifle, looking sort of like a can from the right angle. Her focus and intensity created waves of tension among the silent onlookers.

The light came on, signaling her to begin. With a light gunshot, the first piece of clay soared into the air.

“It’s fast…!” remarked Shizuku unconsciously, either at the speed at which the target was flying…

…or at the speed with which Mayumi’s magic destroyed it.

Her device wasn’t a real gun; no bullets would come out. There was no need to aim it at the target—it didn’t have any sights or a scope on it in the first place.

However, she stood and held it more like one would a bow and arrow than a gun.

The clay pigeons were fired up for her one after another at irregular intervals. There would be one hundred of them shot in the span of five minutes. On average, that was one shot every three seconds. An abnormally high pace even for real target shooting. Occasionally, though, they would come out quickly and occasionally there would be ten seconds in between—and sometimes, five or six would be launched into the sky at once.

Mayumi shot down all the targets individually, without letting a single one go.

Her five-minute time trial was over in the blink of an eye.

“…A perfect score…” muttered Tatsuya in amazement as he watched Mayumi take off her goggles and headset and give a smile to the applauding onlookers.

“Subsonic dry ice bullets, right?” asked Miyuki as she clapped.

Tatsuya nodded with a smile. “That’s right. Very good.”

“…Come on, even I could tell that much…”

Erika’s dissatisfied remark made Tatsuya grin drily. “I suppose you’d realize what it was if you saw it used one hundred times.”

A few of their group looked down awkwardly (they probably hadn’t figured it out), but Tatsuya pretended not to notice.

Honoka, on the other hand, with her honest personality, was clearly surprised. “One hundred? She didn’t miss a single shot?!”

“Yeah. What’s really amazing isn’t how fast she repeated the magic process, but her precision. You could use all the perception-based magic you wanted, but your mind is what has to process all the information you’re giving to it. Either she’s had a lot of practice with Multisight, or she’s a natural… She is a direct descendant of the Ten Master Clans, after all.”

“Wait, the president was even using perception magic at the same time?” Mizuki was the one surprised, but this time, most of the others seemed to be as confused as she was.

“It was a long-range perception spell called Multiscope. Rather than allow you to see massless objects and information bodies, it lets you perceive physical objects from multiple angles, sort of like a visual radar giving you input from multiple sources. She makes pretty frequent use of it normally, you know?”

You didn’t notice it? he asked with his eyes.

Mizuki shook her head firmly. “During school assemblies and such, she keeps watch over every nook and cranny using the spell. It’s a rare skill, but… Marksmanship like that would be impossible with the naked eye, don’t you think?”

“It would be,” responded Shizuku immediately. She was probably watching Mayumi’s time trial while thinking about when she would be getting into the shooting range herself.

“But she decelerated the movement of the air particles to make dry ice, and accelerated them to subsonic speeds, and used perception magic at the same time! Her perception spell was long lasting, and she had to repeat the deceleration and acceleration magic a hundred times. She’s got some crazy magic power.” Leo wasn’t talking about the magic power used as a basis to measure one’s practical skill; he was using the colloquial definition of it, referring to the stamina she needed to keep casting those spells.

It was often misunderstood; magic wasn’t an activity that expended energy. Magic didn’t alter events by consuming physical energy; instead it affected event change by altering information. In order to alter information, you needed to inject a magic sequence made of psions. This meant there was a limit to the number of times you could use a magic sequence with a certain scope. When Leo used the term magic power, though, he was referring to something closer to her ability to maintain concentration.

“Her shooting magic is a variation of Dry Blizzard, which has very good efficiency. With the president’s skill at magic, she could do it a thousand times, not just a hundred.”

Tatsuya’s open praise of Mayumi made the other Course 1 students wear complicated expressions. The girls thought Mayumi’s magic power was amazing, too, but Tatsuya was normally scathing in his assessment of magic. For him to give unconditional praise like that—they couldn’t help but feel jealous.

Leo’s admiration, however, lay elsewhere. “What? But even creating dry ice in this summer humidity and accelerating it to subsonic speeds takes a huge amount of energy, doesn’t it? Magic is outside the law of conservation of energy, but if someone told me the burden of that kind of event changing is small, I wouldn’t believe them right away—even if it was you!”

As they stood up to go to the Battle Board stadium, Tatsuya gave a mysterious answer. “It may be outside that law, but it’s not unrelated to it.

“Magic isn’t limited by conservation of energy—it’s a technique to change events. But that doesn’t mean the objects being targeted for those changes are also freed from that law. For example, if you accelerate an object without putting together a spell to sustain its current state, the accelerated object freezes. If you heat up a moving object without putting together a spell to sustain its movement, the object will begin to decelerate. Magic sequences that are used by the general public always have a state-sustaining routine to prevent undesired changes from happening, so you don’t get much chance to experience it.

“Physical laws are pretty strict. Even if an unreasonable power like magic interferes with them, there’s a recovery force that will try to make things work again. In other words, magic that takes care not to break the law of conservation of energy—a physical law—is a natural phenomenon, and from the magic point of view, you’ll have a spell that can execute with minimal interference.

“You understand now, right? Her spell creates dry ice and accelerates it. The spell takes the kinetic energy the particles lose during the process of creating the dry ice and transforms it into solid kinetic energy, thereby deceiving natural laws. It reverses entropy, which is never something you would see in nature, but by accelerating the dry ice, it makes more thermodynamic sense than just creating it.”

“…Makes me feel like we’re being tricked by an opportunist.”

“Remember this, Leo: The art of magic is about opportunistically tricking the world.”

“So we magicians are like swindlers trying to swindle the world, huh?”

“And the stronger the magician, the more wicked the swindler.”

It started off as a fairly serious conversation, but Tatsuya found himself only able to smile at Erika and Shizuku’s disruptions.

Battle Board was a competitive event in which you rode a spindle-shaped board six feet long and two feet wide down an artificial waterway. There was no propulsion on the boards, so the competitors used magic to reach the goal. It was against the rules to attack another player’s body or their board, but any magic used on the water’s surface was fine.

There was no standard to unify such waterways. The course had originally been created with naval magic training in mind, meaning magic usage was the big premise. It was nowhere near popular enough to warrant a standard.

The Battle Board event in the Nine School Competition had a course two miles long that the athletes circled three times. It contained straightaways, sharp turns, and differences in elevation at some points, like hills and steep drops.

There was one course each constructed for boys and girls, but there was no difference in difficulty.

The qualifiers would be six races, each with four people. The semifinals would be two races with three people each, the third place would be between four people, and the finals would be one-on-one.

On average, a race lasted fifteen minutes.

The maximum speed was over thirty knots—about thirty-five miles per hour. The competitors rode on just a single board, so there was nothing blocking the wind. Unlike sailing sports, where one built up speed from tailwinds, the competitors would have the wind in their face constantly. Just standing against the wind force would drain a good amount of stamina.

“It’s a difficult event for girls. Honoka, have you been keeping in good shape?”

“I have! I took your advice and made sure to keep doing my endurance training, and I’ve been making sure to get extra sleep ever since being chosen as an athlete.”

Unrelated to the Nine School Competition, not long after they met, he had had misgivings about her not having enough endurance, so he gave her advice to pursue aggressive physical training in addition to magic training. It was more of an off-handed remark in an everyday conversation, but surprisingly, she seemed to have taken it seriously.

“Honoka has a lot of muscle, too, you know.”

“Stop, stop it, Miyuki! I’m not trying to be some macho woman.”

Tatsuya couldn’t help but laugh at the conversation with him in the middle of it.

“See… You made Tatsuya laugh at me!”

“He only laughed because you said it in a funny way.”

“Not you, too, Shizuku! I guess I’m being left out again. Unlike the two of you, Tatsuya can’t come to see my matches.”

Honoka had suddenly started cowering; Tatsuya, at a quandary, stopped smiling. Why had she made it about him right then? “…I’m doing your adjustments for Mirage Bat, too, though.”

For now, he argued the only part he could imagine this being about. However…

“But you’re not doing them for Battle Board. Miyuki and Shizuku get to have you in charge for both of their events!”

…it wasn’t very effective.

“…Still, I did practice with you, and helped you come up with a strategy, so I don’t think I’m leaving you out at all…”

As he continued to make excuses, he grew increasingly aware that he was digging himself into a bigger hole, and finally he trailed off and stopped talking. Seeing his predicament and feeling sorry for him…

“Tatsuya, that isn’t what Honoka is trying to say.”

…starting with Mizuki’s suggestion, given in a slight tone of voice…

“Tatsuya… I think that’s a little too thickheaded, even for you.”

…Miyuki…

“Ooh, it’s Tatsuya’s secret weakness!”

…Erika…

“He’s a blockhead?”

…and Shizuku criticized him one after another.

With focus fire from the girls, Tatsuya was forced against his will to stay silent. He felt like it was kind of unfair, but obviously logic wouldn’t be a good argument in this case.

He received no support from the boys, either.

Tatsuya ended up having to maintain his silence until the race’s starting signal.

When they finished getting the course set up and called out the competitors, Tatsuya was finally released. He’d figured out what Miyuki and the others were trying to tell him a while ago. However, understanding what they meant and being able to deal with that were two completely different problems. He secretly decided to be more cautious from now on, lest he say anything else that was unnecessary, as he looked over to the four people bobbing up and down at the starting line.

It was an aquatic course, so there were no lines drawn on it—there was no way to. The waterway felt a little cramped for the four people in a row, and Mari had taken up her position in the middle.

The other athletes were on one or both knees to get ready, but she was standing straight up. For the most part, it reflected the difference in their senses of balance, but depending on the viewpoint, she was kind of standing there like she was an empress or a queen being waited on by the other competitors.

“Wow, high and mighty as usual…” muttered Erika.

And you’re openly hostile as usual, thought Tatsuya. He didn’t say it, though—he’d just resolved not to do that a moment ago. Leo and Mizuki, sitting on either side of Erika, seemed to have ignored it, too.

The giant display hung up on a blimp in the sky gave close-ups on each of the four competitors. Mari alone had a confident smile on her face. She definitely seems like the one to play the villain, thought Tatsuya.

The majority of high school girls seemed to have a different opinion, though. The moment the announcer doing the introductions called Mari’s name, a shrill applause shook the audience—mostly the rows in front.

Mari waved her hand in reply, causing the shrieks to grow in volume.

“…It looks like our seniors have oddly passionate fan followings.”

They were several levels more wildly enthusiastic than the boys who were fans of Mayumi.

“I can understand that. Watanabe is very cool,” remarked Miyuki as a complete bystander.

If she’d known that her own performance during the Nine School Competition would gain her even more zealous fans than Mayumi’s male fans and Mari’s female fans, she might have sympathized with the fact that Mari was using her smile to hide as she stared down her overenthusiastic fans. Right now, though, she acted like a complete third party.

Though Battle Board was a summertime aquatic sport, the competitors weren’t wearing swimsuits. Instead, they wore wetsuits that clung tightly to their bodies, with each school’s logo plastered on it, colorful and huge. Mari, with her bandana and straight, short, bob hairdo, looked like the spitting image of a knight in shining armor from little kids’ picture books. Erika would have heard Miyuki, too, but she didn’t object to the point.

“On your marks!” the voice came over the speakers.

Then there was the sound of a blank being fired, and they were off to the races.

“Was that a suicide bombing tactic?” murmured Erika, astonished.

Tatsuya was too astonished to actually say anything.

Right at the beginning, Fourth High’s competitor had abruptly made an explosion in the water behind her. She was probably trying to use the big wave to propel her forward, like in surfing, and to throw the other competitors off at the same time, but…

“Oh, she’s back up!”

After having made the stormy waves strong enough to throw herself off balance, what was she to do? Mari had decided to charge ahead at full speed at the start of the race, so she escaped the chaos created by Fourth High’s athlete and quickly took a big lead over the others.

Her board skated along the surface of the water.

She wasn’t moving the board with movement magic; she was probably moving herself and the board as a single unit. Or else she was applying the movement magic to two targets: her own physical body and the board she was on. Whichever the case, it wouldn’t have been possible without clearly defining the spells’ targets.

Her board gripped the water as she took a ninety-degree turn beautifully. She seemed stable, like the soles of her feet were glued to her board.

“Applying both hardening magic and multicasting movement magic…” That wasn’t his analysis of magic sequences talking. Tatsuya could tell what she was doing by the way she moved over the water and how she balanced herself on the board.

“Hardening magic?” Leo asked, his sharp ears picking up the term. It was his field of expertise, so he had to be interested in it. “What’s she hardening?”

“She’s fixing the relative positions of her body and the board so she doesn’t fall off.”

Tatsuya’s words didn’t seem to make sense to him, and Leo gave him a confused look. Of course, Tatsuya wasn’t trying to tell him he was supposed to understand from just that.

“Hardening magic isn’t for increasing the hardness of objects—it’s for stabilizing the relative positions of several parts in a system. You understand that, right?”

“Well, yeah, since I use it a lot.”

“Watanabe is considering her body and the board to be two parts comprising a single object, and executing magic to stabilize their relative positions. And then, with herself and the board as one ‘thing,’ she’s using movement magic. Not permanently, either. She’s defining how long to sustain both the hardening and movement magic based on changes in the course, and she’s arranging it well enough so that the new spells don’t clash with the old ones.”

Leo understood well how high-level her technique was due to his specialization in the field. “Huh…” he murmured in honest admiration.

On the other hand…

“But that’s an interesting way of using it… Yes, with hardening magic, you don’t have to target single structures, do you? With this, you could…” As was the habit of the genius engineer, Tatsuya began to engross himself in mad thoughts.

“Tatsuya?” Miyuki’s voice pulled him out of it.

During the few moments he’d taken her eyes off her, Mari had gone behind the grandstands and out of view.

“It’s nothing,” answered Tatsuya evasively, looking up to the giant display. It showed Mari climbing up the ascent in the waterway, against the flow of the water.

“Acceleration magic.” Judging by how she moved, she was using a spell to reverse the acceleration vector from the outside source, the water.

“And vibration magic at the same time…” Simultaneously, she used magic to create waves in the other direction, weakening the resistance the water was offering.

Words of praise naturally found their way out of Tatsuya’s mouth. “That’s amazing. She’s multicasting three to four different types of magic at once.”

It wasn’t that each individual spell was all that powerful. Instead, she was combining them for fantastic effect.

Mayumi had overwhelmed the audience with her high-speed, high-precision magic bordering on the realm of pure artistry, while Mari was charming the crowds with a veritable rainbow of all sorts of different spells, always changing and adapting to what she needed in any given moment.

Neither of them was anywhere near high school level.

She reached the peak of the ascent, then jumped down the rapids. The surface of the water undulated wildly with her landing. Her magic created a big wave that pushed her own board forward, but nearly made the girl in second place do a nosedive as she came off the jump.

“She’s quite a tactician…”

“No, she’s just evil.”

Erika insulted her upon hearing Tatsuya. Half of him agreed, so he didn’t bother to argue the point. Anyway, calling a tactician “evil” was actually praise.

Mari’s victory was all but assured before half a lap was even finished.

The only Battle Board going on today would be the qualifiers. The fourth, fifth, and sixth qualifier races were after lunch, so instead, he decided to watch the semifinals and finals of Speed Shooting that afternoon. First, though, he split up with the others for a bit.

He was headed back to the hotel and for the high-ranking officers’ room—he had a promise to keep with Kazama.

Kazama was ranked major, but because of his military service and peculiarity of the team he led, he was treated as higher than his station. Originally, this big guest room would have been used by colonels and above. As he walked in, though, Kazama was taking a room service– and tea set–enhanced break with the other executives in his battalion.

“Oh, you’re here. Go on, have a seat,” prompted Kazama in a frank tone to Tatsuya, who had been led here by a soldier on security detail (not one of the soldiers from this base, but Kazama’s subordinate). Tatsuya visibly hesitated to place himself among the executive ranks, though.

The specialist rank Tatsuya was given referred to him being an informal soldier with the rights afforded to a real soldier by international law (there was no “special duty” officer system in the country’s military at this time). He was protected as a combatant without being completely tied down to the military rank system, and would only follow the chain of command in times the entire Independent Magic Battalion was engaged in operations. Still, even without the systematic enforcement, they were his superior officers—in addition to his seniors in age. When told to sit down, he couldn’t exactly say, “Okay, sure,” and sit just like that.

“Tatsuya, we didn’t call you here today as Specialist Tactical Magician Ryuuya Ooguro but as our friend Tatsuya Shiba. Being too reserved about it is going to put us in a bind.”

“And it’s too hard to talk with you standing. Could you sit down?”

Then, two of the officers at the same table again prompted him to take a seat.

“Captain Sanada, Captain Yanagi… All right, then. Please excuse me.”

Their friendship transcended age. Tatsuya gave a bow and, without braving further foolishness by refusing again, took a seat across from Kazama.

The tabletop was circular. The Independent Magic Battalion believed that the purpose of round tables was to have tea on them—it was practically their motto. The table itself wasn’t originally part of this room; Kazama had carried it in himself.

Tatsuya’s seat was closest to the door, but the adults welcomed him into their company as a friend. “It has certainly been a long time, hasn’t it? These teacups aren’t too good-looking, but let’s have a toast.”

“Thank you very much, Second Lieutenant Fujibayashi.”

The female officer working as an aide for Kazama (though her job was more like a secretary) offered him a cup, and Tatsuya accepted it on its saucer with a nod. She wasn’t in military uniform today, but in a suit, so it made her “young female secretary at a big enterprise” impression abundantly more clear. The others weren’t in military uniform, either; all were wearing civilian clothes, like suits and dress shirts.

“I just saw you yesterday, but I’ll let Fujibayashi have her time to shine.”

“Oh, you need not force yourself for my sake, Dr. Yamanaka.”

“No, I wouldn’t interrupt a toast to your reunion. I’m not a barbarian.”

“…You just want an excuse to have your cup topped off with brandy, don’t you?”

“Every auspicious occasion warrants fine drink, I say.”

“Lord… For a physician, sometimes it feels like you really don’t take care of yourself!”

Medical Major Yamanaka had been the doctor and first-class healing magician to answer with composure and a bit of feigned innocence to the misgivings Captain Yanagi had suggested.

All five of the others, including Kazama, shook their heads regretfully—these were the executives of the Independent Magic Battalion receiving Tatsuya.

“It has been a while, Captain Yanagi, Second Lieutenant Fujibayashi. Captain Sanada, thank you for yesterday.” Tatsuya greeted the two he hadn’t seen in some time first, then thanked Captain Sanada, with whom he had worked last month at the base.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you. With the Third Eye long-distance super-precise targeting system, I would have been up a river without you there.”

“The CAD was originally made for me, after all… Dr. Yamanaka, now that I think of it, I still haven’t gotten the examination results from yesterday.”

“…I feel like you’re treating me a little differently than everyone else, Tatsuya.”

“Doctor… I’m not sure a physician who would demand someone be a human experiment to their face would engender much goodwill.”

The witty retort to Yamanaka’s complaint came from the lady Fujibayashi. Yamanaka theatrically turned his face away, uncooperative, causing the round table to burst into laughter.

It had been quite some time since he’d last seen them, but it hadn’t been years or anything. Yanagi was the one he hadn’t seen for the longest time at a little over half a year; Sanada and Yamanaka he’d just seen less than a month ago on his last job.

They naturally began to talk about the current situation, and the conversation moved to the Nine School Competition and the secret machinations of the criminal organization with respect to it.

The intruders last night turned out to belong to No-Head Dragon, which Tatsuya had learned on the first report he’d gotten over the phone. They hadn’t yet elucidated what their goal was, however, despite questioning the men. The five here, especially Yamanaka, would easily be able to get them to spill it if they were in charge, but those actually in charge didn’t seem to be willing to get aggressively involved at this stage.

“Still, you did some good work last night. Were you on guard already?”

“You think too much of me, Lieutenant. I was out for a walk and happened to notice them there.”

“So late at night?”

“I was coming back from doing adjustments on the CADs for the competition.”

Given their closeness of age, the group member that talked to Tatsuya the most naturally ended up being Second Lieutenant Fujibayashi. She’d been thoroughly trained by military service, and had vivid eyes and toxic proportions. Her looks and clothing were modest, though, and her personality equally unadorned, meaning Tatsuya found it easy to converse with her as well.

“Oh, so you are working on the technical staff. Do your teammates know about Silver?”

“No—for now, at least, that’s a secret,” answered Tatsuya to Yamanaka’s question, shaking his head.

“You being the CAD engineer for a high school competition seems almost unfair. You’re in two completely different leagues, aren’t you?”

“Captain Sanada, Tatsuya is still a bona fide high school student, though, you know.”

Sanada grinned and offered doubts that were, in a way, reasonable, and Fujibayashi, also smiling, chided him and looked back at Tatsuya.

“You won’t be taking the stage yourself? You’d be fairly competitive with your Flash Cast skill, I would think. And if you needed to, you have Material Burst and Mist Dispersion.”

“No—they’re highly classified in the first place, and against the regulations for how deadly they are. And I can’t use Material Burst without Third Eye anyway.”

“But you brought Trident with you, right?”

“Yes, but that’s against the rules as well because its specs are too high. Plus, Flash Cast is supposed to be a secret Yotsuba technology in the first place.” Tatsuya grinned drily, denying Fujibayashi’s words.

After that, Yanagi continued with a sigh. “Fujibayashi… I wonder about you sometimes. How did you manage to connect a high school competition with Material Burst? It’s a tactical spell. Based on the ultimate magic, Dismantle.”

“I don’t think he’ll have a chance to use Material Burst in the Nine School Competition, either. But in last year’s competition, the heir to the Juumonji used Phalanx, and the daughter of the Saegusa used Magic Bullet Shooter, so I don’t think it would be too strange for him to use Mist Dispersion.”

“Fujibayashi, the Juumonji’s Phalanx is classified as a defensive spell, so it’s outside the lethality ranking system. The Saegusa’s Magic Bullet Shooter’s sales point is its flexible power setting, so its lethality is determined after the fact. Mist Dispersion, on the other hand, dismantles objects at a molecular level, so it’s rank A on the lethality scale. You can’t put them in the same group.”

“Captain Sanada, I see you don’t know that the lethality regulation at the Nine School Competition is only for events where you can affect other people. It doesn’t apply to Speed Shooting and Ice Pillars Break. The pamphlet emphasized its safety quite a bit, but didn’t touch on that point.”

The Nine School Competition had first been held in its current form with its current rules ten years ago. The only one of their group who had actually battled in it was Fujibayashi, a championship holder from Second High.

Just before they descended into an open battle using their extensive knowledge of their individual fields of expertise, Kazama put a stop to it. “Whatever the case, he can’t use magic that the military has mandated highly classified in front of such a large number of people at a competition. There’s no point in arguing, is there?”

His tone was sour and slightly annoyed as he forced his way into his subordinates’ argument. And then, changing completely, he spoke to Tatsuya in a voice like steel, his face the definition of expressionless. “Anyway, Tatsuya, if you do end up participating as a competitor at some point…”

“I understand, Major. If I’m driven to the point where I need to use Mist Dispersion, I’ll give up and resign to my defeat.”

One could tell the difference between a bamboo sword and a real blade even if it was sheathed. At the very least, Tatsuya hadn’t misread the true meaning behind Kazama’s words—that there was a merciless sword hidden deep in his calm and composed demeanor.

Kazama and Tatsuya were fellow apprentices, and there was enough between them to call them friends. But to Kazama, bonds between his fellow students and friendship didn’t take precedence. If push came to shove, he would readily cast Tatsuya away. And Tatsuya thought the same about him.

“…Still, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which I’d need to compete.”

“Always be ready. As long as you understand.”

As they smiled slightly scornfully at each other, Kazama and Tatsuya traded disillusioned glances and brought the conversation to a finish.

No one ever knew what the future held, but both of them knew that, logically speaking, Tatsuya’s remark had been correct.

But deep down, neither Kazama nor Tatsuya had enough confidence in his own speculation.

“Tatsuya, over here!”

He had returned to where the girls’ Speed Shooting championship tournament would be held. The stands were already full by the time he got back from having tea with Kazama and the others. Upon looking around for the one he’d arranged to meet, Erika found him first and shouted to him.

“There are a lot of people here already for the semifinals.” He pushed his way through the waves of people and sat down in the seat next to Erika.

“That’s because the president is competing. The other match wasn’t this crowded.”

Tatsuya’s words had been a nonchalant impression closer to him talking to himself, but Miyuki, who was opposite him and saving his seat, answered him faithfully.

This time, Miyuki was on the other side of Leo, while Mizuki sat behind Erika, Honoka behind Tatsuya, and Shizuku behind Miyuki.

“Honoka, can you still see?”

Tatsuya had been growing taller at an average pace since his matriculation, and he was close to six feet now. Her seat was higher up, but he still had to worry about whether or not she could see over him.

But when he turned around to ask, Honoka shook her head with a smile.

“Oh… Where’s Mikihiko, by the way?”

“He said he wasn’t feeling well. He went to lay down in his room.” After answering Tatsuya’s question, Erika used her expression to add, What a bum.

“It seemed like the heat was getting to him. I might have had some trouble myself if I wasn’t wearing my glasses.” Mizuki covered for Mikihiko.

I suppose having such sharp senses isn’t always advantageous, thought Tatsuya. He was quite interested in their states of mind, too, but he decided not to think about that right now.

As soon as Mayumi appeared in the shooting range, a storm of applause went through the stands. The screens positioned here and there in the stands all displayed QUIET, PLEASE on them, and the cheering receded like a wave into the ocean. The voices disappeared, but in their place came an air that seemed even more enthusiastic.

Tatsuya started to feel a little bad for the other competitor. No matter what kind of event it was, the audience being behind the other team always came with its own pressure, but…

She was being considerate toward the girl. Mayumi released the trigger lock on her rifle CAD with a smoothness suggesting her crowd support didn’t even exist, and she got ready, waiting for the sign to begin.

The beginning of the match would be displayed by a signal. The game: red and white targets, one hundred of each, would be launched in sequence into the air, and the players would compete to see how many of their own color they could destroy. For all intents and purposes, it wouldn’t start until the firing machine began firing the targets. Still, there were five lights lined up horizontally from the competitors’ perspective—they were the horn to announce the start.

The first light went on. Each one illuminated in turn, and when the final light activated, the bisque disks began flying into the air.

The white disks in the air danced madly.

Mayumi was to shoot down the clay pigeons painted red.

And said clay pigeons were being shot down at nearly the exact moment they jumped into the active area.

“Wow…”

Tatsuya nodded to himself at the voice of wonder he heard from behind him.

It was amazing.

It wasn’t a very clever way to go about it, tactically speaking; if you shot all your own targets down first, the opponent wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally shooting yours. She’d be able to attack indiscriminately. It was clever logic—but there was such overwhelming skill that it just didn’t matter.

“Huh?” Honoka said in surprise, probably not meaning to. And though Shizuku didn’t make a sound, he could tell she was just as surprised.

“Magic Bullet Shooter… It’s faster than last year.”

Tatsuya answered Miyuki’s words only by nodding, not peeling his eyes from the clay swirling through the air.

Bullets of dry ice, shooting into the red clay pigeon that was flying behind the white clay pigeon from underneath. They weren’t guided bullets. Magic like that would be too inefficient, and she wasn’t prone to such whimsy. This long-range magic created the bullets of dry ice at a point where the white clay pigeon wouldn’t get in the way, then sniped the red clay pigeon from there.

She wasn’t creating magic bullets, but emplacements to fire them—their shooters, hence its name, Magic Bullet Shooter.

The magic acting on distant objects itself was extremely ordinary. Competitors like Mayumi, who used the tactic of creating bullets with magic to shoot the targets in Speed Shooting, were actually in the minority. Instead, the mainstream tactic was to apply vibration magic directly to the clay, or to apply movement magic to the clay pigeons and have them ram into other targets to destroy them both. Magic wasn’t influenced by physical obstacles, so nobody really needed to use specialized skills to destroy blind targets like this.

So, then, what objectives and merits did this long-range-bullet creation and firing spell called Magic Bullet Shooter have? The key lay in the fact that it could attack from a blind spot outside the range of another person’s magic.

For example, think of what would happen if both competitors used vibration magic to shoot the targets. When the red and white targets of the magic approached each other, the spells would interfere and give way to unexpectedly odd things—like the spells not going off, or making ultrasonic shock waves.

In order to manipulate objects at a distance with magic while contending with another magician, one needed to tightly restrict their target coordinates and have enough concentration to manifest stronger influence upon them.

The nature of Speed Shooting was that of an event requiring a concentration of magic power along with swift casting speed, but by sniping the targets from outside the region affected by her opponent’s magic, Mayumi created a situation where she was doing the same thing as if she’d been alone.

And, of course, that went for the opponent as well. With such tactics, the match came down to pure speed and accuracy.

And when it came to speed and accuracy, Mayumi’s magic power was at a very high standard even when compared to the entire world of magic.

There was no way someone on a high school student’s level could compete with her.

On the first day of the competition, Speed Shooting, as nearly everyone had predicted, ended with an overwhelming victory for Mayumi on the girls’ side and a victory for the First High boys as well.

“Congratulations, President!”

Mayumi answered Azusa’s congratulations with a smile and a nod.

“Thanks. Mari, it looks like you got to the semifinals, too.” She looked to the side.

“Yep, all as planned so far.” Mari, to whom she was looking, responded with a nod.

Night had already fallen, dinnertime and bathing time was over, and now all that was left was to sleep and restore their energy. The female student council members (plus the disciplinary committee chairwoman) had gathered in Mayumi’s room.

Only the first day had ended, and Mayumi would be participating tomorrow, too. They wanted to leave the real celebration until after they won the whole thing, so they were just having some juice to celebrate now.

It was girls-only because of the time of day, but it wasn’t a pajama party or anything, so boys being there wouldn’t have been any issue. And yet, for some reason, it was only girls.

“It was a bit of a scare, but Hattori pulled through, too, right?” Mari said with a sigh; the boys’ results hadn’t been quite as attractive as they’d thought. Despite how well Speed Shooting went with both victories, the Battle Board qualifiers had been unexpectedly difficult.

“He said his CAD wasn’t adjusted properly. He’s been with Kinoshita ever since the match ended, redoing it,” explained Azusa.

“They’re not done yet,” confirmed Suzune, looking at the work reports for both staff teams on a terminal.

“Kinoshita certainly isn’t unskilled, but…”

“Still, he isn’t exactly an expert.”

Mayumi was the one to show tentative support for Kinoshita, but Mari’s blunt analysis met with no argument from her; she gave a pained grin. Azusa, though, seemed to think the grade they’d given was a little too harsh.

“Umm, I don’t think it’s completely Kinoshita’s fault. Ever since we got here, Hattori has kind of seemed a little insecure.”

But even that, Mari cut down completely. “It may sound harsh, but an engineer’s skill includes being able to adjust for all that.”

“Well… You’re right, but…”

Mari was correct. That was part of the engineer’s job. However, wasn’t the competitor partly at fault for not managing his own condition? That’s what Azusa was thinking, but she couldn’t say it out loud.

“Come on, Mari. Don’t bully Ah-chan.”

Mari and Azusa both had logic behind their words; the former from the competitor’s point of view, and the latter from the engineer’s. Each had its strengths and weaknesses, and both evenly applied on an emotional level. Times like this called for the leader’s judgment.

“Thankfully, Hanzou is off tomorrow, so we’ll just have to let him adjust it until he’s satisfied… But then we’ll need to put someone in for Kinoshita tomorrow.”

“Kinoshita is the assistant for the girls’ Cloudball. He’s a sub, so I don’t think it’ll be a big deal if we take him out.”

“You’re right… We have Izumin, so it should be fine…”

“Wouldn’t it also be risky to leave it to Izumi by herself? There are six Cloudball courts. There will be two matches going on at once, and if all three people win, the second round will have all three matches at the same time. You may be able to do your own adjustments, Mayumi, but someone else will need to do them for the other two at the same time. Even if there’s a long interval between each round, it’s easy to imagine her not having enough time. That’s why we have subs, right?”

Suzune supported Mayumi’s decision, but Mari displayed disapproval. That, too, was an objection based on how well she understood how important the adjustments actually were; she wasn’t trying to play devil’s advocate. They had to manage with a limited number of people, and that was a difficult problem in the first place.

“Why not have Ishida double as a sub for the boys?”

The girls’ matches would be in the morning, and the boys’ in the afternoon. Suzune’s suggestion was possible in terms of scheduling, but Mayumi’s reaction was negative.

“That would overwork him to be on both the morning and afternoon matches. Cloudball has the most of them in a single day, after all.”

“Then why don’t we put in Shiba? He’s off both tomorrow and the day after.”

At Suzune’s substitution suggestion, Mayumi thought for a moment, then nodded. “…That would be the best option. Miyuki, can I get you to tell Tatsuya for us?”

“I will.” Miyuki smiled and nodded at Mayumi’s request.

She was more than happy that her brother was getting a bigger chance to shine.

“…So that’s why you came by so late.” Siblings though they may have been, this wasn’t generally the time of night young girls should be visiting rooms belonging to males. Tatsuya gestured for Miyuki to sit on the bed and sighed.

“…Am I bothering you?” Miyuki asked, her eyes wavering with unease.

“No, I’m glad you came to tell me, it’s just…” There was no precedent of Tatsuya being firm after Miyuki looked at him like that. “We may be inside a hotel, but girls shouldn’t be up and walking outside their room this late at night, you know? There are some unsettling things going on; someone suspicious might have gotten into the hallways.”

Still, this was a military base. The security was stricter than even the best civilian hotels. Miyuki thought he might have been thinking a little too much about it, but she was happy he was worried about her.

“Yes, I apologize, Tatsuya.”

“Don’t apologize with such a smile on your face…” he complained, but his face was smiling as well. None of this turned out to be a reprimand or scolding. He was too soft on her in the first place to rebuke her very harshly. “In any case, thanks for telling me. I’ll walk you back to your room.”

When Tatsuya got up off his chair, Miyuki hastily stood as well and waved her arms frantically. “No, I’ll be fine by myself. You were in the middle of work, weren’t you? I’ve already intruded on your work time, so I can’t make you go through any more for me…”

“I was, but this is basically for fun anyway, so you don’t need to worry.” Tatsuya closed up the notebook terminal to get it out of his sister’s sight.

“But that was CAD programming, wasn’t it?”

Miyuki wasn’t well versed in hardware, but she had a degree of skill on the software end thanks to Tatsuya’s influence. She’d only gotten a cursory glance and didn’t understand what it was, but from the type of editor he had open and the coding format, she could tell that it was a program for an activation program.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the competition, so it doesn’t matter one bit if I take a break. The program itself is pretty much a toy.”

“A toy?”

“I thought up a little idea for a new close-range weapon, but it’s almost completely impractical. It would probably only work for the surprise factor. Even if I finished it, it couldn’t be made into a product.”

“But it is a new spell—does that not mean something? I don’t think anything you made would ever be meaningless.”

“Well, I guess it’s worth a few jokes, at least. Anyway, that’s how it is—I wasn’t rushing to do it or anything. Right now, you take precedence over it.”

“Oh, you… Saying I’m more precious to you…”

Hmm? His sister put her hands to her cheeks and looked down. Tatsuya felt something was definitely out of place. It seemed like she’d altered what he’d said and took it in a strange direction. Well, it technically means the same thing, but the nuance there is what matters…

He’d need more than a few moments to suppress his wonderment, but he was the first to come back to reality. “…Shall we go?”

“Yes, Tatsuya. Umm… I want you to know that I feel the same way.”

“I’m sorry…?”

“You’re more precious than anything to me.”

“……”

Unfortunately, his sister hadn’t yet returned to reality with him—at least, that’s what he wanted to think at the time.