Chapter 6

It was the second day of the Nine School Competition.

Tatsuya was in First High’s tent, which was set up in the event area, wearing the blouson of his technical staff uniform. He hadn’t worn the uniform since the inauguration ceremony; the only people at the opening ceremonies were the competitors.

He just couldn’t seem to shake the feeling of resistance he got when he had to wear this kind of clothing—whether it was the blazer during the party or this blouson. But it was required as part of the uniform, so he knew he’d just have to get used to it.

“What’s wrong? Are you mad about something?”

“No, not in particular. Why do you think that?”

He replied to Mayumi’s question in a calm voice, but he couldn’t quell the agitation inside him. He thought he’d kept a straight face, but apparently it was pretty easy to see.

“Hmm… A hunch?”

“Well, you can use such vague phrasing as a question, but…”

Tatsuya felt drained of strength, and not in the physical way. It seemed like he hadn’t shown anything on his face, nor had she gotten a particularly prickly impression of him. Of course, it was even scarier—or perhaps more threatening—that she had seen into his mind like that without any reason to.

“Anyway, did you have something you needed from me?”

He put it aside for the moment—there was no point in worrying, nor was there any countermeasure if he did—and asked Mayumi, who had come to him before her match.

“No, I just came to check up on you, but… Did you memorize all the data already?”

Tatsuya had been put on girls’ Cloudball duty without much warning last night, and in order to do the actual adjustments for their CADs, he had, in a big hurry, been trying to memorize the data on each competitor’s psionic characteristics.

“Yes, I suppose.”

“For everyone?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

Tatsuya gave the same short answer a second time, and Mayumi stared at him wide-eyed. “This may sound like it’s a little bit late, but… You really are amazing, Tatsuya. Isn’t that like instant memory or perfect recall or something?”

“I would have preferred to get some normal magic power instead of this.”

“As someone currently preparing for university exams, I find it hard to forgive such a luxurious complaint.”

She’d be able to get into university on recommendation alone without even taking entrance exams, but she said so anyway—and put her hands on her hips and puffed out her cheeks, too.

“……”

“Hm? What’s the matter?”

Tatsuya had put the index and middle finger of one hand to his temple and started massaging it. Mayumi looked at him askance.

“President, could it be that… You know what, never mind.”

“?”

He had been about to say, “Could you be serious? I thought you were pretending,” but he swallowed those words—and in any case, it was a wise decision. “…Isn’t your match about to start?”

“It is. Okay, let’s get out there.”

“What?”

“I said, let’s get out there!”

“…Yes, all right.”

They weren’t allowed to adjust CADs during a match, but there were some cases where readjustments had to be made right after the match ended. It was only natural he’d need to wait by the court with her instead of in the stands—well, actually, he didn’t need to go with her all the way to the court, but Tatsuya caught up with Mayumi, turning back around as she walked.

“Is Miyuki in the grandstands?”

Once he got there, that was the first thing she said. “She went to watch Ice Pillars Break.” The first thing Tatsuya thought about Mayumi’s question was not Why would she ask that but This again?

“Oh… So you really are apart sometimes.”

After Tatsuya had responded, making sure not to make such discomfort evident, Mayumi nodded very meaningfully as she walked. He started to feel a little pathetic.

“…Does it really look like we’re together all the time?”

His face must have looked really pathetic, because Mayumi waved her hands in a fluster and showed her denial. “Oh! No, I mean, I know that isn’t how it really is. She’s always with us on student council work, and I know you aren’t together in the classroom or during practice. I mean, well, it’s more like…my imagination, that’s it!”

“President… A magician’s imagination is reality, you know.”

Mayumi found herself forced to sweat a few beads at his glare, which had increased in humidity and pressure.

The awkwardness continued until they arrived at the courts. Tatsuya knew as much as the next guy that he couldn’t keep up his morale-hindering attitude right where the matches were going to be, and after yelling to himself on the inside, he set his jaw.

But it very nearly dropped again when Mayumi removed the knee-length cooler jacket (a heat-protected college jacket with cooling capabilities driven by thermoelectric effects) she was wearing.

“…Wait, are you going to play in that outfit?”

“Yes, why?” she said, nodding as though it were only natural.

Tatsuya felt a headache coming on. “Are you actually going to play the match in that tennis skirt?”

“Huh? Why not? Is it strange? …Does it not look good?”

“……It looks very good on you.”

“Really…? Hee-hee, thanks.”

As Mayumi, in a good mood, began doing her stretches, Tatsuya looked her over again—to make sure he was really seeing what he was seeing. But no matter how many times he looked, he hadn’t made a mistake.

She was in classic tennis wear: a polo shirt and a skort. Plus, they emphasized fashion over usability. She only had to bend a little bit for the hem of the skirt to pop up and expose her shorts underneath.

Cloudball involved a lot of intense movement. A shooter using compressed air would fire inelastic balls three inches in diameter, and the players would use a racket or magic to hit as many of them as they could into the opponent’s court before time ran out. With one set lasting three minutes, an additional ball would be added onto the court, completely enclosed in a transparent box, every twenty seconds. At the end of it, the players would be tirelessly chasing around nine separate balls.

Normally you wore a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. Some competitors wore knee and elbow guards as well so that if they fell down they wouldn’t get hurt.

If you were only going to use magic, you wouldn’t need to run around and thus wouldn’t need anything to dampen the impact of falling, but competitors who didn’t use a racket wore clothing that could take a hit from a ball and not let them get hurt.

It was certainly not the sort of event where you could go out in such a frilly outfit with exposed arms and legs.

Anything goes for this woman, I suppose. Once he got used to the sight and thought about it, he was convinced.

“Tatsuya… You weren’t thinking something rude just now, were you?”

“That would be absurd. Are you going without a racket?” He brushed the fairly sharp observation with a feigned look of earnestness and deflected the topic in a businesslike tone.

“Mmhmm. This is my usual style.”

For a moment he nearly mistook her as referring to her outfit, but she was obviously talking about her “magic-only” style. “What CAD are you using?”

“This one,” she said, taking a specialized CAD in the shape of a pistol out of her small bag and holding it out.

Some called it a short type, others a civilian type: Its analog for a live pistol barrel was short. (Tatsuya’s CAD was a long type, called by some a cavalry type, where the barrel was longer.) CADs that took the form of smaller guns and pistols all included auxiliary aiming equipment. The “barrel” was actually an active radar for measuring magical coordinates (relative coordinates within the Idea of targeted eidos). A long barrel on a CAD indicated that it placed more emphasis on that aiming assistance. But for magicians who didn’t need the aiming assistance and just wanted the activation speed of a specialized CAD, the short type was better all around; its lightness, portability, and ease of use made it convenient.

“Don’t you usually use multipurpose types?”

“Yes, normally. I’m only using one thing for this, though.”

She abbreviated a good portion of that, but Tatsuya correctly understood that she meant she was only going to use one type of magic during the match, which was why she chose a specialized type. “Is it movement magic? Or a reverse acceleration spell, perhaps?”

“Yep—I’m using Double Bound.” Mayumi continued her elaborate stretching routine and answered Tatsuya without putting any particular emphasis on it. “Tatsuya, could you lend me a hand for a moment?”

“Sure.”

Mayumi had sat down on the ground with her legs stretched out, and he lightly pushed on her back to get her more diagonal. It didn’t take much for her chest to touch her legs.

“Reversing motion vector speed… Isn’t it risky to go with just that? The balls aren’t bouncy, so if they lose kinetic energy from the walls or floor, it may not get all the way to the other player’s court.”

As he felt a slightly low body temperature from his palms, Tatsuya murmured a warning into her ear from over her shoulder.

“Mmmm… Well, there is another acceleration spell in there, too, but I didn’t use it last year.”

She said it like it meant nothing, but there would need to be an immense power gap for her to do that. He got the real feeling once again of how ridiculously over the top Mayumi’s level was.

“Okay, I’m good.”

After stretching to her right and left feet four times each, Mayumi spoke and Tatsuya removed his hands. He stood back up straight and stepped back, and then she put her legs together and stuck her hand out, looking up.

He didn’t immediately know what she was trying to do, but when he saw her slightly dissatisfied expression when he just stood there and watched without moving, Tatsuya finally understood her intent. He went around in front of her and took the hand she was holding up. It was small and soft. He pulled a little bit and she stood up nimbly, keeping both knees together.

“Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Tatsuya knew right away that was an ungraceful response even for him, but Mayumi seemed happy for some reason. “Hmm! That’s kind of new.”

“What?” He obviously had no context to work with on that remark as he replied out of reflex.

Mayumi returned a sparkling smile. “You know, I have big brothers and little sisters, but no little brother.”

“I see…”

He knew that already. Unlike the secretive Yotsuba, the Saegusa were a sociable family. They liked to invite a lot of people to their children’s birthday parties, making for huge celebrations every year. Upon looking into them a little bit, it wasn’t particularly difficult to learn their family makeup. If he recalled correctly, she had two older brothers and two twin younger sisters in their third year of middle school.

“Tatsuya, you don’t treat me differently than others, do you?”

“I’m not trying to be rudely familiar with you, if that’s what you mean…” said Tatsuya, tiptoeing around the obvious pitfall.

“That’s not what I mean. You don’t get all defensive or fidgety or uneasy around me, right?”

Defensive is one thing, but aren’t you the one that causes the other two things? he thought, obviously not able to bring himself to say that.

“You talk to me politely for the most part, but you don’t really have any restraint. One minute I’ll think you’re unfeeling, and then the next you’re listening to my self-indulgence. I just thought maybe this is what a little brother would be like.”

Tatsuya, in spite of himself, opened his eyes wide to look back at her. She was right—aside from the height difference, she had a good head on her shoulders, she was surprisingly good-looking, and showed consideration that could be a little hard to understand at times. If he’d heard someone call her a big sister, nothing would feel out of place.

But to be honest, if he had an older sister like this, he didn’t think he’d have any time to rest.

“…Who knows? I only have a little sister.”

“I guess you’re right.” She smiled at him in a way that made him wonder if she’d forgotten about the match.

Tatsuya was starting to feel uncomfortable now, so he tried to make an escape. “I’m sorry—I would like to go check on the other competitors as well, so…”

“No need for that.”

His escape plan, though, ended in tragic failure thanks to the intervention of a third party.

“Oh, hello, Izumin.”

“Saegusa… You just can’t get over calling me that, can you?”

The female student pretended to hold her head in pain. She wore the same blouson as Tatsuya—she was Rika Izumi, a senior on the technical staff.

“Do you want me to call you Ricky instead?”

“You’re doing this on purpose! Whatever, okay, Izumin is fine.”

“Izumi, what did you mean by there being no need?”

Tatsuya had already learned that getting into a word game with Mayumi would last an eternity, so he completely ignored their exchange and asked about the first thing Izumi had said.

“Huh? Oh… Shiba, you can watch Saegusa’s match. I’ve got the others.”

Izumi didn’t take very well to Tatsuya being part of the technical staff. It was less elitism in her case, though, and more that she had a lot of pride. She probably thought she could cover all of them even without having his help.

“I see. Thank you.” He really wanted to run away, but if that’s how things were going to be handled, then that was fine with him. He nodded without saying anything needless.

“Okay, I’ll leave it to you,” Izumi added, then left at a brisk pace.

“She’s not a bad person, really…” Mayumi said as she watched her go, looking like she was going to heave a sigh. But it was no more than a soft breeze to Tatsuya, even though she’d purposely let him hear that.

Whatever Izumi’s attitude was, and however Mayumi supported it, was no concern of his.

Cloudball was a ball sport similar to tennis and racquetball, but there was no serving system.

One set was three minutes, and three sets were played, with three minutes between each. (Boys played five sets in a match.)

The ball fired by compressed air at the same time as the signal for the match to begin would be added to every twenty seconds until a buzzer announced the end of the set. Until then, it would be a hectic storm of balls flying every which way.

…Normally, anyway.

The match that Tatsuya was watching happened to have a slightly different feel to it.

Mayumi’s opponent was using a magic-only style like she was. As might be expected from someone participating in this event, she seemed to excel in movement magic. She was quickly swinging her own short-type pistol CAD in both hands toward the balls; maybe it was enhancing her mental image with her body movements. Any ball caught in her movement magic would change its movement direction midair before it fell to the ground on her side of the court, arcing unnaturally toward Mayumi’s side—where it would bounce straight back at double the speed the moment it crossed over the net.

Every single one. Not one ball was exempt.

Mayumi held her CAD in front of her with both hands and stood in the middle of the court. She just stood there like a model for a painting. There wasn’t even any wind to flutter her short skort or her hair because of the transparent walls surrounding the court.

She just stood there and her opponent couldn’t get a single point.

By eye, it was maybe four inches.

That was how far from the net she ever let the opponent’s balls come.

Mayumi’s magic wasn’t attaching any sort of precise control to the balls. She didn’t try to go for blind spots; she was just hitting them back. A layman’s eyes would have seen her opponent twisting and turning the balls’ vectors, aiming for all sorts of different spots on the other court, and thought it was more difficult and therefore made her more skilled.

But in reality, Mayumi was the one racking up all the points.

Unilaterally—without missing a single one.

By the time the buzzer sounded to mark the end of the first set, her opponent was down on both knees, struggling to catch her breath. It was like she was crumbling to the ground, and it spoke to the despair she must have felt inside.

She never broke her pace, never disturbed her concentration, and she looked like she was using magic in a detached manner, but inside, she wasn’t feeling that calm.

At least, to the extent that she unconsciously let out a long breath upon hearing the signal for the end of the set.

There was no sense that this match had been anything but one-sided. From an objective viewpoint devoid of pride, she knew her magic power was overwhelmingly superior to her opponent’s. She would decide the match for certain at this rate in the next set.

Her real issue was the pair of eyes staring at her from outside the court.

She was used to being watched. People had been paying attention to her for as long as she could remember. Some of those eyes were purely admiring, some hid spiteful envy or carnal desires, but she was as used to them as she was to air.

But the eyes she’d felt for the past three minutes were nothing she’d ever experienced.

It wasn’t on the level of someone simply watching her naked. (Though that would be a major problem, too). The gaze she felt from him—from Tatsuya—wasn’t something so ordinary.

His gaze brought about an unidentifiable unease within her, like she was completely exposed, like he was seeing not only her naked skin, but everything else underneath it that made up who Mayumi Saegusa was: the physical parts of her like her flesh, her bones, and her blood; plus her thoughts, emotions, values, tendencies, habits, preferences; the past that made her who she was today; and the talent and hard work that supported her. Everything.

This was the first time Tatsuya had watched Mayumi compete from up close. But he would have been watching all the other freshmen he was in charge of during their practice matches, and of all the ones he’d seen, none of them had complained about any anxiety.

She didn’t think the younger girls would even be able to handle this sort of feeling. Which meant that either it was really all in her mind, or…that only she could have sensed it.

The three-minute break had just started. Normally, she would wipe her sweat and replenish her body moisture.

But she’d given the bag with her towel and drink in it to Tatsuya.

If she left the court, she’d have to go to where he was waiting—lying in wait for her.

Mayumi had to admit she was a little scared of leaving the court.

But it would look too strange to just stay on the court like this forever. Maybe she wasn’t going to take a step, but then sitting down would obviously be the better option, and she needed to drink something anyway. And she would need to switch courts, too.

It would be fine if the competition officials were the only ones thinking it was strange, but with her position, she couldn’t grant her fellow seniors and underclassmen who had come to cheer her on any cause for worry.

She took a deep breath and exhaled, expelling her anxiety. Come on! Girls need guts! She commanded her feet to go forward.

“Good work.” With her towel held out for her by an underclassman, she felt a little let down. The unidentifiable choking feeling was gone, like it had never existed in the first place.

There was no doubt his pretend-earnest expression had one or two peculiarities hidden behind it; not even she could figure out what he was thinking when he had that straight face on. The younger boy made her feel both uneasy that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking and oddly relieved knowing he’d never betray her.

When she’d said Tatsuya was like a little brother, she wasn’t joking because she wanted to tease Tatsuya on a whim. It had certainly been a joke, but it had still partly been how she really felt.

She began to feel silly for being so scared of him and adopted a needlessly confident attitude.

“Good work? The match still isn’t over. No going easy just yet!”

Tatsuya was a member of the team, but not a competitor. His role had ended before the match and would start again after it was over. During the match, he was just a spectator, so forbidding him from getting careless was a strange thing to do. He didn’t bother to point it out, though, even though he noticed it.

“No, I believe it’s over already.”

Instead, he pointed out something more substantial.

“Huh?”

“Your opponent doesn’t have the strength left to continue the match. Even if you started another set, it’s clear she would run out of energy midway through. Their staff should know that, too. They’ll forfeit the match soon.”

Mayumi turned back toward the court and, sure enough, saw the other team’s operations staff talking to the referees about something. Her opponent was sitting down on a bench with her arm wrapped in a medical checking device.

“She’s exhausted her psions from using magic over and over. She must have made a mistake when trying to pace herself. She was a little out of her depth as your opponent, President.”

“…You can tell all that just by looking?”

“If you really look, you could, too.”

They probably hadn’t heard what Tatsuya said, but right after that, the referees announced that her opponent had forfeited. Mayumi stood there dumbly, inviting a rare childish smile, but Tatsuya didn’t follow suit and instead prompted her to leave. “Let’s go to the tent. You should check your CAD for the next match.”

“Yes, you’re right. Thank you.”

Tatsuya was completely in control now, but Mayumi knew refusing wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she followed after him as he picked up her things and began to walk.

Cloudball had the most matches in a single day out of all the events in the Nine School Competition.

In terms of the maximum number of matches a single competitor would play, Monolith Code had the most with six, and Cloudball and Ice Pillars Break with five apiece. Monolith Code and Ice Pillars Break were held over the course of two separate days, though, so the five Cloudball matches would have to be fought through in the span of half a day.

Although the matches didn’t last long, the event fundamentally required you to continuously cast magic throughout each of the three-minute sets. The burden for even one match couldn’t be called light.

Therefore, in order to win through this event, it was said that the important part was how well you could hold back the exhaustion of your magic power.

With the obvious ideal being to win two sets in a row.

You wouldn’t rush headlong into each and every ball during the set, either. It was set up so that you had to pace yourself well and allow for a certain number of lost points.

Competitors who could keep using magic at the same pace from start to finish like Mayumi were outside the norm, and practically breaking the rules.

Still, Mayumi wasn’t just letting pride in her strength run away with her.

She had a strategy, too.

Winning two sets in a row was a must—and saying, “That’s just trying to brute force it,” was strictly not allowed.

She used a single type of magic that simply bounced the balls back, and it couldn’t really be called suitable for this event. However, it helped stave off the exhaustion that would come from using multiple spells—and saying, “Something like that can’t actually help stave off magical exhaustion,” was also rejected.

In any case, for those reasons, she was in a position to go full throttle from start to finish.

However, as the second match started, strangely, she was perplexed.

She still felt on top of her game, though.

Thirty seconds passed in the first set, once again not granting her opponent a single point.

In fact, the opposite happened.

Why…?

The first match had ended with the opponent forfeiting, so she had gotten a longer break than usual in between matches.

But it was still a tight schedule, with five matches in half a day.

Her condition feeling like it was changing for the better even though it would have been actually decreasing due to tiredness was something you wouldn’t normally think possible.

That could only mean that there was an abnormal cause for it.

The train of thought brought her to just one thing.

As the whistle indicated the end of the set…

…she decided to interrogate her lying underclassman.

“Tatsuya, you messed with the programming, didn’t you?”

Completely contrary to the first match, as soon as the first set ended, she stormed straight out of the court to Tatsuya.

He couldn’t hide his surprise at Mayumi’s menacing look, but he sounded calm when he responded. “I didn’t touch the programming. There shouldn’t have been any trouble operating it; was there something in particular you were worried about?”

“You’re lying!” she retorted, almost audibly sticking a finger out at Tatsuya’s face before continuing, “It was clearly constructing spells more efficiently. You didn’t have any time to improve the hardware, so you must have done something with the software!”

“…It was more efficient, right? Not less,” he replied, confused.

Mayumi deflated like a balloon. “Well…yes.”

If it had been less efficient, that would be one thing. But she finally seemed to realize how unreasonable her attitude was for complaining about it being the opposite.

“Anyway, why don’t you sit down?”

Still confused, he held out a towel to Mayumi. With a slightly embarrassed and slightly sulky face, she sat down on the bench.

“It was probably more efficient because I cleaned it out.”

Tatsuya sat down next to her, leaving a half-body gap between them, and purposely spoke in a pacifying tone without looking at her.

“Don’t lie to me. I was right next to you. You obviously didn’t disassemble it to clean it, and you didn’t use a cleaner, either.”

Mayumi had become somewhat obstinate as she spoke back to him. Tatsuya replied patiently. “No, not physical cleaning. I was cleaning out the garbage in the software.”

A CAD’s capabilities could be influenced by the user’s mental state, among other things. Distrust toward the engineer would remarkably lower them. Tatsuya figured he should explain everything properly, despite not getting what he could rightly call informed consent before the fact.

“There were leftover preupdate system files cluttering up your CAD’s system space, so I got rid of them. CAD operating systems are made so that sort of garbage accumulation doesn’t happen often, but it isn’t perfect. By eliminating such unneeded data, your CAD’s efficiency will go up a bit. Of course, it isn’t usually something you can tell normally, so I didn’t explain before. I didn’t realize your senses were that sharp. I apologize for my thoughtlessness.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine, if that’s all it was,” said Mayumi, waving her hands, confused at his exaggerated bow. “That just means you did your job, right? I’m sorry for doubting you like that.”

Tatsuya brought his face back up to see Mayumi bowing her own in apology. Quick to change gears, he thought. “Let’s leave it at that, then.” I guess she really can apologize honestly, he thought as well.

“You’re right.”

Maybe it was because she was older than him and more flexible.

“Hey, Tatsuya?”

Still, she didn’t have the flexibility to look at him from higher up.

“After this, could you teach me how to do that maintenance? The, er…garbage collection?”

It didn’t make him feel bad.

“Sure. Please focus on your matches for now, though.”

“Of course. Just leave it to Big Sister!”

She took a deliberately “older” attitude, and it was actually rather charming.

Mayumi went on to beat all her opponents in one-sided matches, winning every single one without losing a single point, and winning the girls’ Cloudball championship.

Ice Pillars Break was held on an outdoor field forty feet across and eighty feet long. It was split into halves, with twelve pillars made of ice standing at six and a half feet tall and three feet long and wide. Whoever toppled all of their opponent’s pillars first was the winner.

Because of how it worked, Ice Pillars Break required an extremely intense setup phase.

Erecting hundreds of giant ice pillars in the middle of summer wasn’t easy, and they couldn’t have very many fields for it even despite the military’s full cooperation.

Even at the Nine School Competition, they could barely create a pair of fields each for the boys and girls for a total of four, mainly due to them hitting ice-making limits. Each of these arenas would have twelve matches played in the first round and six in the second round for a total of eighteen. They were stretching the very limit of the day’s schedule.

“Of course, the event consumes a ton of magic power. If they made all the matches on the same day, the competitors who had to play all five matches wouldn’t last. The finals league on day two doesn’t leave much room between matches, either. The fact that people say the end of Ice Pillars Break is all about guts does have some merit to it.”

As Tatsuya explained as though it were a lesson, Shizuku nodded along enthusiastically.

Miyuki was here, too, but he didn’t need to tell her all this anyway.

The three of them weren’t in the grandstands, but in the staff seats instead.

Basically, they wanted to see Kanon’s match, which was up next, from up close to really get a feel for what it was like.

Isori was the last to meet with Kanon, and they couldn’t exactly be interrupted.

The other members had gone to watch the boys’ Cloudball matches.

Erika went along with Sayaka, who had come to cheer for Kirihara, and Erika pulled along Mizuki, her Mikihiko, and him Leo.

When he heard about this from Miyuki, he thought, How shy, but as to who he was referring to—well, silence was golden, as the saying went.

Finally, Kanon climbed onto the stage.

Thirteen-foot-tall scaffolds were set up on either end of the field.

The competitors defend their own ice pillars and topple the enemies from there, using only magic.

It was said to be the most extreme of the magic events, as the safety restriction on magic was absent for spells affecting just the field.

“Shiba!”

Isori, who had shown Kanon onto the stage, waved Tatsuya over.

“Let’s go up, too!” said Isori, inviting Tatsuya, and Miyuki and Shizuku, whom he’d brought with him.

A monitoring room for staff was located behind each of the scaffolds the competitors stood atop.

There were instruments for monitoring the competitors’ condition as well as a large window that gave a direct view of the field.

“How is Chiyoda doing?”

He felt like staying silent would be rude, so he broached a harmless topic.

“She really seems into it. She’s so excited we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t make things worse for herself tomorrow by overdoing it.”

Isori answered Tatsuya’s standard question with a smile.

There was no shadow of unease to be found on his face.

“I hear she won her first match in record time.”

“Well, you know how she is. It would be more reassuring for those watching if she’d be a little more cautious, of course.”

He answered with a pained grin, which caught Tatsuya’s interest.

This morning, he’d been with Mayumi the entire time, so he hadn’t seen Chiyoda’s first match.

He only knew that Kanon had won it in record time.

And come to think of it, despite how short the match went, apparently a lot of her own pillars had been knocked over, too…

“It’s starting!”

At Shizuku’s murmur, Tatsuya looked to the field.

There was a rumble in the ground as the signal to begin the match came.

“Mine Spring?”

Not the bouncy sort of spring, but an “origin.”

Tatsuya reflexively whispered the nickname at the sight before him.

Modern magic’s selling point was in its speed and versatility, but it was used by people, so each magician had his or her own strong and weak points. As magical ability was transmitted genetically, direct blood relations would quite often, perhaps naturally, share the same strong and weak points. Yotsuba was an exception to the rule; everyone in the clan had their own special traits.

The powerful families used their shared special qualities, and were granted—or one-sidedly assigned—a nickname as a whole, apart from the nicknames individuals sometimes got.

The famous ones include Juumonji, the “Rampart.” The Ichijou were called “Explosion.” The Saegusa, based on the fact that they didn’t lack in any family of magic, were paradoxically called “Almighty” or things of that nature. The Chiba were the “Sword Magicians.” This was less about their genetic qualities than their technical skills, but still, it was applied to the family as a whole, putting it in the same category.

And the Chiyoda family was the “Mine Spring.”

Its magicians excelled in vibration and long-range physical vibration magic, specifically in ground vibration spells. It didn’t matter what the material was: It could be earth, stone, sand, or concrete. Whatever the ground happened to be, they could deliver powerful vibrations to that physical object. That was the effect of their special spell, Mine Origin, and they were given the nickname “Mine Spring” from the idea that they could create land mines.

After delivering an explosive vertical vibration similar to a near-field earthquake, two of the opponent’s ice pillars groaned and collapsed at the same time. The opponent attempted a defense using a movement-type spell called Compulsory Stillness, which reduced movement speed to zero, but she couldn’t keep up with the Mine Origin spell, which was changing targets and ripping through one pillar after another. After five of the opponent’s twelve pillars had been destroyed in sequence, she switched her tactics from defensive to offensive.

“Huh?”

“What?”

“?”

Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Shizuku all made surprised expressions, but Isori just gave a wry grin. He sighed as he watched Chiyoda’s own ice pillars go down easily, and shook his head. “I don’t know whether to call it impressive or lazy, but Kanon thinks she should just go all out and topple her opponents’ before hers are knocked down.”

“Well, I mean… Tactically speaking, she’s not wrong.”

By switching to attack, her opponent’s defensive ability fell as well.

With six pillars left on Chiyoda’s side, she finished knocking over all her opponent’s pillars.

“Victory!”

Kanon, who had climbed down from the scaffolding, gave an elated smile and made a V sign.

As for who she was smiling at—it was obviously Isori.

Isori was smiling as well, though with more of a What am I going to do with you? feel to it.

“How can I say this…”

“They’re a good couple?”

Miyuki stammered, finding it difficult to say, and Shizuku curtly expressed what she meant.

“Let’s just say they understand each other.”

For Tatsuya’s part, he found himself forced to grin drily for a different reason than the two who had come with him. He did agree that they were a good couple, but seriously, they were perfect. The competitor and the supporter: Even if only one of them was up on stage, they’d won this battle through a combination of their strengths.

Still… he thought. With such a perfect combination, can Isori really do his job when he’s paired with other competitors?

There were forty competitors, but only eight engineers. The simple average meant a single engineer would be in charge of five people. Tatsuya himself may have only had freshmen girls, but he was in charge of six. And with the unexpected situation that morning, it was seven.

Could he put his best foot forward with the other competitors the same as he had with this one he was so emotionally attached to?

And that went for Tatsuya himself, too. Could he really do his best work with Shizuku and Honoka as he could do with Miyuki?

“…Shiba, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

He couldn’t, of course, turn to Isori and ask, “Could you be just as enthusiastic for the other competitors?” He instead responded with the safe, set phrase that meant nothing and did nothing, evading Isori’s question.

Triumphant at the fact that she’d won the third round, Kanon and Isori—and Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Shizuku, their companions—went back into the tent, then frowned at the unexpectedly gloomy mood inside.

“…What happened?” asked Isori to Suzune, who had, relatively speaking, maintained her ordinary calm.

When Suzune turned back to look, her face seemed more impassive than usual. “The boys’ Cloudball results were disappointing, so we’re recalculating the points forecast.”

The Nine School Competition rankings were determined by the total number of points gained from each event. First place won fifty points, second place thirty, and third place twenty. Speed Shooting, Battle Board, and Mirage Bat awarded ten points to fourth place. Cloudball and Ice Pillars Break didn’t determine fourth through sixth place, so the three teams who lost in the third round of those events would each receive five points. Monolith Code gave one hundred points to the first place team, sixty points to second place, and forty to third, making it the most heavily weighted event in the competition. The rookie events would be calculated with half those values and added on to the total.

That was the competition’s point system. If a school didn’t get anyone into at least fourth place or sixth place, depending on the event, it wouldn’t receive any points. But even if they couldn’t win, holding second through fourth place gave a chance to get more points than the winner. Under this system, getting as many people through to the finals league or tournament in as many events as possible was the first condition for victory.

“When you say disappointing…”

“First round—loss. Second round—loss. Third round—loss.”

The voice that answered Isori’s timid question sounded almost indifferent.

“We’ve guaranteed our entries for next year, but we hadn’t calculated this.”

It may have sounded apathetic because those listening to it were in a state of shock.

They all knew that, compared to other events, the boys’ Cloudball lineup was a little lacking.

But all that meant was that they didn’t have the same easy, doubtless victory that the girls’ Speed Shooting and Cloudball, as well as the boys’ Ice Pillars Break and girls’ Battle Board to come later, all had. Everyone thought they were at a high enough level to realistically aim for first place.

“It will be difficult to predict point distributions in the rookie competition, but considering our current lead, we should have a safety zone as long as we win girls’ Battle Board, boys’ Ice Pillars Break, Mirage Bat, and Monolith Code.”

A junior on the operation staff reported the results of their calculations.

Tatsuya, listening in a detached manner, thought, That’s a bit of a high hurdle, though, isn’t it?

He was saying they had to win four of the six remaining events in the main competition, boys and girls combined.

They might have been anticipating Katsuto and Mari to win their events for sure, but those sorts of predictions ran the risk of psychological downfall should an accident happen by any chance.

Still—that was no concern of Tatsuya’s. Harboring concerns about those things would have placed him above his station. Besides, there was something that was personally worrying him.

Kirihara had competed in boys’ Cloudball.

He was reckless in some ways, but he had a strong sense of responsibility.

Wouldn’t he be in shock right now…?

He met up with Kirihara only after the day’s events had ended, in the lounge just before sunset.

At first glance, he seemed the same as always.

Sayaka was sitting down next to him.

She was doing her best to act cheerfully, but her smile was plainly forced.

“Good job today, Kirihara.”

“Oh, that you, Shiba?”

Tatsuya had had the option to say nothing and go past, but he had not.

“Lost after that second round. I got crushed.”

That was clearly his bravado speaking, but he still seemed to be quicker to get himself back up than Tatsuya had thought. He figured athletes who went through many victories and defeats had a high resistance to losing, too, because it gave them a mental resilience. Tatsuya always lost during practice, but didn’t have much experience at all in actual matches, so he couldn’t understand anything more than the logic behind the process.

He stood there, unable to decide whether words of consolation were proper for the situation, and decided to just state the facts. “The luck of the draw didn’t favor you. You ended up against Third High’s ace in the second round; he’s the favorite. Plus, you only lost three sets to two, with only eight points total between you. You were exhausted from the match with the one everyone thinks will take the whole thing, and that’s why you lost in straight sets in the third round. It was essentially a forfeit due to injury.”

“…You sure like getting to the point.”

Tatsuya had offered a calm analysis that certainly hadn’t seemed comforting, without trying to skirt the issue of his losses; Kirihara hadn’t gotten mad.

“Ever think I might be, like, depressed about it?”

In fact, his tone and expression suggested he was amused.

“I considered it, but offering consolation is one thing I don’t know how to do.”

A few seconds passed in silence.

And then Kirihara suddenly burst out laughing on the sofa and bent over.

Sayaka’s smile, next to him, started to look a little shaken up.

Tatsuya kept looking down at him with an expressionless face.

“Shiba… Anyone ever tell you you’re funny? Anyone normal would have just made this real awkward face and pretended they didn’t see me. You’re the only one I could think of who’d just come up and talk to me like that!”

He had mulled over the option—pretending not to see him—but he felt sort of like passing by without a word would have been unfriendly; that had been Tatsuya’s logic. But apparently it had been unwarranted anyway. I guess I shouldn’t be thinking about things that aren’t like me, like how to be friendly. Still…

“But now I feel a lot better. If you called it a forfeit because of injury, then that’s probably how it really was. Guess that means I’m not a hopeless case, you know?”

…unexpectedly, that thinking had gotten him somewhere.

Leaving aside whether Kirihara really felt that way on the inside…

…and leaving aside whether this was the result Tatsuya had actually been going for.

There may have been some unexpected hardships in the competition, but that didn’t mean anything was different for those down on the lowest rungs. That may not have applied to those on miscellaneous affairs, but Tatsuya was still engaged as an engineer. Nobody among the First High leadership was foolish enough to risk creating any kind of obstacles to his actual work by pushing needless errands on to him.

After checking on the condition of the athletes he was in charge of in preparation for the rookie competition that would start the day after tomorrow and verifying that nothing had gone wrong with their CAD settings, his work for the day ended.

He went to the hotel’s front lobby to pick up a long, narrow package addressed to him and returned to his assigned room.

It was still before dinnertime. He had a lot of free time today, so he decided to run a test on the delivery. He looked at the clock to see how much time was left before he had to be in the dining hall. It would be a little while yet before Miyuki came to pick him up, so he decided to unwrap the package and look inside.

It was the thing he’d requested a trial manufacture of from FLT’s third R & D section early this morning. All of its parts were commonplace ones, and it was of simple design. Despite having been automatically manufactured purely based on the blueprints, it had been molded and assembled in half a day. He found himself in admiration at what little time it took to get here.

I just hope Ushiyama wasn’t putting other things off for this… Or perhaps someone forced him to do it. Tatsuya had put the words this is mostly for fun in his request e-mail an annoying number of times, but… Anyway, he couldn’t truly turn back time, so it wouldn’t do him any good to worry about it now.

He removed the shipping cover made from recycled materials to reveal a thin, long, and narrow hard case with a combination lock on it. The type of case was typically used for delivering shotgun-size CADs. The dial came unlocked with the usual code.

Inside the case was a sword—one of middling length with a knuckle guard. He took it out. It was a one-handed sword, more than two feet long, with the blade itself one and a half feet long—at least, on the surface.

It didn’t have a blade on it.

It hadn’t been made as a switchblade; it wasn’t a “sword” in the real sense of the word in the first place. It was more of a metallic reproduction of a medium-length sword rather than an actual one. Or else it was a flat bludgeon with a sword handle on it.

But of course, this was no mere club.

When he flicked the switch on the inside of the handle and let a few psions into it, a familiar sensation came back to his hand. Like Erika’s baton, this was a weapon with a CAD embedded inside.

It was even narrower in usage than normal specialized CADs, and could only supply a single type of activation program. While Erika’s CAD had its program-switching function intact as normal specialized types did, this was the prototype of a completely single-purpose specialized CAD, which were called integrated armament CADs.

He glanced at his distance to the wall to measure it, and then, just as he was about to begin the test, there was a knock at the door. Giving a pained grin at the “perfect” timing, he placed the prototype on his desk. She was a little earlier than she said she’d be, but he knew from the completely apparent presences outside the door that all his friends were about to intrude on him as well.

He briefly thought about putting the prototype away, but reconsidered; he didn’t need to keep it a secret. Besides, this prototype was for one of those friends anyway. Thinking that it would be more interesting to have that friend do the test than him, he opened the door.

“Tatsuya, is it all right for us to come in?”

The first to open her mouth was his little sister in the front. He held the outward-opening door open as Miyuki passed, followed by Erika, who brushed closer to him than was necessary, practically touching him. After that came Honoka, Shizuku, and Mizuki, and then Leo and Mikihiko bringing up the rear.

This was less of a “ladies first” setup than a simple reflection of the power balance. But despite the twin single room’s nominal extra space he used for his equipment, it was cramped with this many people in there at once. The chairs and bed weren’t enough, so one of his friends sat on his desk, too—though she actually looked cool rather than untidy doing it, so he didn’t say anything about it.

The one who sat on his desk, Erika, obviously noticed the sword on the desk, and was interested in it. “Tatsuya… Is this a practice sword? Like, a western kind, and not a katana?”

“No.”

“Then is it a metal cane?”

“No… I don’t think there are any martial artists who prefer metal canes in this country anyway.”

“Martial artists these days… Then what is it?” Erika took it in her hands and looked at both sides, then noticed the trigger on the upper end of the grip and said, “…Oh! Is it a broom?”

“Correct. More precisely, it’s an integrated armament CAD. Some people call them weapon devices. It’s the combination of a CAD specialized completely in a single spell and a close-combat weapon for using the spell.”

“Cool…” Erika didn’t say that because integrated armament CADs were unusual, but because the “sword” was unlike any she’d ever seen before.

Erika, looking at it closely in her hands, wasn’t the only one interested—Honoka and Shizuku were gazing at it in fascination as well. Miyuki, though, probably remembered their conversation last night. Her face lit up with recognition. Mizuki and Mikihiko didn’t seem very interested. Maybe they were more drawn to types they were used to than new things. Tatsuya glanced at the profile of the last person, then gave a mean grin and took the prototype from Erika’s hands.

“Leo!”

And he tossed it at Leo, who had looked away, uncooperative.

“Whoa! Hey, watch where you’re throwing it!”

He was actually just itching to get his hands on the thing, but he had felt strangely antagonistic at the moment toward his fated enemy (?) and acted like he wasn’t interested. But as he pretended to be confused, he gripped the handle like he’d been waiting for it.

Tatsuya ignored his superficial argument entirely and smiled provocatively. “Want to try it out?”

“What? Me?” For just a moment, he grinned.

Beside him, Erika made a face like she wanted to say how transparent he was, but that was something Tatsuya only caught out of the corner of his eye before he looked back at Leo. “That weapon device is a bludgeoning weapon that applies the hardening magic Watanabe used in her Battle Board races. If you replaced the blade part, it could be a slashing weapon, too. I thought it was suited to you.”

“Wait, you made this?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Mikihiko into their conversation. He hadn’t seemed very interested at first, but he had been listening carefully. “Watanabe’s races were just yesterday. You made that in a day? It doesn’t look to me like a hodgepodge of extra parts.”

“Well, the device itself is a hodgepodge. The exterior is made of a common alloy; there’s no special materials in here at all.”

“But you couldn’t have done it by hand. You didn’t have time for that!”

“Well, of course not. I just drew up the blueprints and got it made automatically at a friend’s workshop.”

Miyuki nearly started to laugh at a friend’s workshop, since she knew what had happened, but she always had several extra layers of skin ready to use, so she didn’t actually make the blunder of letting a suspicious look to her brother get through.

“Anyway, Leo… Do you want to test it?”

Tatsuya’s voice was like the whisper of Mephistopheles. He obviously had an ulterior motive, but not even knowing that made the charm irresistible.

“…All right, sure. I’ll be your lab rat for this one.”

“That was easy,” murmured Shizuku, giving a simple voice to the impression all their friends had.

The next thing Tatsuya got out was a mirror shade–type HMD (head-mounted display) with a speaker in it.

“It’s the manual.” Leo, upon being offered the HMD, didn’t quite understand what that meant, and a question mark appeared above his head. “The manual for the weapon devices is recorded in there, so take a look.”

“Huh? Oh, right…”

After finally realizing it had images and voices recorded as a manual for the integrated armament CAD he’d been handed (or, more accurately, thrown), his face changed to one of understanding and he took the HMD from Tatsuya’s hands.

“Isn’t that a kind of virtual terminal?”

Honoka, who asked the question, wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Virtual information terminals were harmful to inexperienced magicians. It was common sense, and even First High forbade students from using them.

Tatsuya, who stubbornly stuck with screen-type terminals himself, had told a friend to use the playback function in a virtual terminal, and while the HMD would restrict his eyesight and hearing, the others had their doubts.

“It’s nothing so crazy, but I suppose it is similar.”

“…Will it be all right?”

“Huh? Oh… You mean information terminals being harmful?”

“Y-yes.”

“There’s nothing to worry about in that sense. The harmfulness with virtual terminals lies in the risk of instilling falsely successful experiences. Virtually experiencing something you can actually do makes them useful tools.”

“I don’t exactly understand what that means…”

Honoka had always spoken politely to Tatsuya, but now it was like Miyuki’s way of talking had infected her.

“Magic is a system that temporarily creates or alters reality using fictitious mental images. The experience-related functions in a virtual terminal are a technology to place you under the illusion that false mental images are real.”

Tatsuya’s explanation was thorough and detailed, perhaps as a reactive response to that.

“They’re similar in that they both result in the perception of nonreal events as being real. On the other hand, the experiences virtual terminals can grant don’t require any effort on the part of the user to alter reality. Those alterations would never fail, and that’s where the risk comes in.”

Tatsuya paused for a moment—even he felt like he was being long-winded about this. But among the faces of the friends before him, half understood and the other half didn’t. He reconsidered. He must not have said enough, so he decided to continue explaining.

“There is a possibility that virtual terminal experiences can give a magician the illusion that they were able to alter reality without any effort. For those who can’t use magic anyway, it wouldn’t be an illusion in the first place, and experienced magicians can easily distinguish between things they can and can’t do. With inexperienced magicians, though, there’s the possibility that the fiction in the virtual terminal experience could mix with the reality of events they’ve altered through magic, leading them to mistake their own level of strength.

“Inexperienced magicians who have grown used to that virtual world in which they can alter reality without effort or risk of failure will stop thinking about why their magic—why their real event alterations fail. They’ll lose both the ability and the desire to think about it. That’s why they say virtual terminals are harmful to inexperienced students learning magic.”

He paused again to look at his friends’ faces. It looked like he’d explained enough, but just to be sure, he decided to wrap it all up.

“In other words, the problem is with being under the illusion that you can do things you can’t. There’s no issue with the virtual experience being something you can actually do. Virtual experiences like that actually have positive effects that bolster the mental image–forming process required for constructing magic sequences. The reality is that it’s just difficult to pick out only the beneficial content, so from that point of view, completely banning virtual terminals is a logical choice…”

“I see… Thank you, I learned a lot!”

The way Honoka nodded seemed overly enthusiastic. Tatsuya thought that maybe he overdid it a little. What he really felt about it was that even if she felt a reliance on him, he wouldn’t be able to respond to it…

They decided to have the prototype device test after dinner and to borrow the indoor hand-to-hand combat training grounds outside the Nine School Competition facilities. Tatsuya didn’t set it up; it was Erika’s connections. Ever since coming here, she’d been making full use of her family’s influential power like her life depended on it. What had happened that forced such a change in her mental state? He remembered hearing something about that at the party. Of course, he could worry all he wanted, but there was nothing he could do. Besides, he knew it wasn’t something he needed to seriously worry about anyway—his own emotions were superficial to start with. Which meant it would be quite a bit more sincere to get serious and prioritize his own curiosity as an engineer instead.

After telling himself that, he admonished himself for being about to poke his nose in someone else’s business.

“Leo, did you understand how to use it?”

He’d turn his focus to the test they were about to start. The thing had been created off-hand and was just a simple arrangement on an existing spell, but he was still doing a test of a new spell and a new device. If he let his mind wander, accidents would happen not to him, but to Leo.

“Yeah, pretty much… But is it really even possible?”

It referred to the predicted operation of the prototype Leo had been shown by the HMD. Probably, anyway—what else could it mean?

“That’s why we’re testing it—to find out.”

“Right, I guess so.”

The grounds were about thirty minutes’ walking distance from the hotel. However, it was night right now, not daytime. And this was an army maneuvering ground in the mountains, not a city. Miyuki and Erika had both opposed the idea tenaciously, but after managing to talk them down, they’d left them in the hotel. The whole situation was still uneasy, so they asked Honoka to keep an eye on Miyuki, and Mizuki on Erika. Right now, only Tatsuya and Leo were here.

“Okay, let’s get started.”

“Roger that!”

For the first test, there wouldn’t be any dummies set up for practice strokes (or hits, as it were). Before doing anything, they checked to make sure the integrated armament CAD’s weapon portion was functional.

“Here I go!”

Leo flicked the switch on the end of the handle. There was a click as the switch depressed in his hand. Then he pushed in the trigger on the upper end of the grip with his index finger and sent psions into it.

Despite the outward impression Leo gave off, he didn’t have explosive power; instead, he had excellent tenacity and stamina in terms of the psions he could supply. Of course, having that sort of endurance with his tough look was probably expected.

The CAD hadn’t been adjusted for his individual use, so its spell construction assistance functions didn’t do much, and the compilation process of creating the magic sequence from the activation program took more time as a result. It was about 0.6 seconds—still quite a bit faster than his grades in practice. It might have been due to this being the type of magic he excelled in, or perhaps it was thanks to the performance of the CAD and the activation program. Whichever it was—and it could have been both—it didn’t matter. They weren’t timing him; they were here now to observe the spell itself.

“Whoa!”

Leo’s grunt was less about the spell that had activated and more because the inertia coming through his hand was more than he’d expected.

“Ha-ha, it’s really floating. Cool!”

He grinned a childlike grin and swung around the “sword”—which now had less than half its blade. In tandem with his movements, the other part of the blade, which was floating in midair, arced along in front of it.

“Three, two, one…”

“Whoops!”

Leo stopped moving when he heard Tatsuya’s countdown.

“…zero.”

Once his countdown got to zero, the blade in the air jerked back down in front of him and returned to the piece of the sword still connected to the guard, locking in and forming a full “sword” once more.

“It worked perfectly, Tatsuya!”

Leo couldn’t help giving him a thumbs-up in his enjoyment, and Tatsuya responded with the same pose.

“But how did you even come up with this? Using hardening magic to stabilize the relative positions of the separated pieces of the sword and making the blade float? I could barely believe it, and I was the one doing it! I guess hardening magic works even if they’re not physically touching.”

“The definition of hardening magic is to stabilize relative coordinates, after all. Once you get rid of your fixed ideas, there’s no need for objects to be touching. And with the way this device works, it’s more stretching the blade than making it float. It’s just that there’s a hole in the middle; the blade can only move as an extension.”

“Well, that means you don’t have to think about it too much. It’s great—it feels the same as just swinging a real long sword.”

As Leo said, this weapon device didn’t have the aspect of wearing away the user’s force of will to be controlled, which long-range remote weapons usually had. It would just swing around, maintaining its distance, for as long as the spell was effective and you kept moving your hand.

“By the way, how are they connected? There’s no spell involved…”

“Oh, that’s simple. It’s electrically reactive shape memory alloy; in the moments it attaches and detaches, it runs an electrical current through it to bind and release.”

Leo nodded in understanding. It was a relatively popular way of making clasps and fasteners these days.

“But that means if it’s hit with a strong impact while the spell isn’t active, it’ll probably just pop off.”

“Hey, no problem. You could just put it in a sheath while you’re not using it, right?”

“I suppose. All right, want to test using it on a dummy for real? Or try changing the detachment distance?”

“Hey, Tatsuya, would there be a way to change the distance while it’s on?”

“It…wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be difficult. It’s set up now so that you adjust the constant number of activation programs related to attaching and detaching with the switch on the butt of the handle, but you could certainly change the variables in the magic sequence, of course. But if you’re trying to change the distance midway through, you’d need to overwrite the currently activated magic.”

“Oh. Well, if you just make it quicker to go back to normal, you wouldn’t need to change the distance in the middle, huh? I mean, you can’t change the length of a real sword while you’re cutting into things, anyway.”

“I feel like someone like Erika could do it, though. Anyway, what do you want to do?”

“Maybe… Let’s go with the dummy.”

“Right.”

Tatsuya used the big notebook remote control, and three human-sized straw figures came out of the ground.

“…What is this, the bronze age?”

“…Whose hobby was this?”

They exchanged tired glances at the anachronism in their world where biological materials that could be regenerated were commonplace.

“Well… Functionally speaking, as a striking dummy, it should be fine.”

“Straw figures don’t have functions! But yeah, I guess there’s nothing to complain about.”

Leo ran his empty left hand down his cheek and fired himself back up, then took a stance against the dummies.

He hit the switch.

One part of the blade flew into the air.

Leo swung with vigor.

The flying blade, having been given speed in response to the movement radius of his hand, struck the straw figure target.

“That really comes back to you.”

It didn’t seem like it had numbed him, but Leo expressed his impression while shaking his hand, holding the weapon device after it had reverted to its original medium-length (toy) sword state.

“The flying part doesn’t have much mass. It compensates for the speed, but you need more physical strength because there’s less momentum.”

“I get it. Meaning it would be better if it was a little heavier if it was used in actual combat.”

Leo nodded in understanding at the explanation, then went for another target. As Leo brought the device around again, Tatsuya thought to himself, He’s right. Even if it had a blade on it, being a little heavier would give it more effectiveness in real combat. Though this much might be perfect for using in games…

Tatsuya had thought of Monolith Code’s rules, which prohibited direct attacks. This weapon device wouldn’t be breaking the rules, since the blade was floating in the air.

…Doesn’t have anything to do with this, though.

He smiled drily to himself for thinking about viable ways to use it while also stating it was a toy.