Chapter 8

It was the fourth day of competition.

The main event would now take a backseat for five days, while the rookie competition got under way. It was the freshmen’s turn to take the stage and battle it out.

The scoreboard saw First High in first place, with 320 points; Third High in second place, with 225 points; and all the other schools bunched together after them. With the 95-point margin between first and second place, First High had a wide lead—but not wide enough that the results of the rookie competition couldn’t cause an upset; Third High had a good chance at a turnabout if they won the rookie competition by a large enough margin. On the other hand, First High simply had to keep the point differential from getting too big to keep their lead overall; they didn’t need to win the rookie competition.

And overall victory was indeed the primary goal of every school here. The rookie competition would only grant half the points that the main one did, but those points would be added to the total score nonetheless. So for the competing freshmen, the real pride and honor of the Nine School Competition was their rookie events; things could get just as fired up as with the regular matches.

The events would play out in the same order as in the main competition: Today would feature the Speed Shooting qualifiers and finals and the Battle Board qualifiers. Unlike the main competition, however, Speed Shooting would host the girls in the morning and boys in the afternoon, with both divisions proceeding straight to the final tournaments. (The main competition’s Speed Shooting directly followed the opening ceremonies, so it hadn’t been possible to finish everything in one day.)

Like the other events, no CAD adjustments were permitted during matches. Still, the engineers would play a vital role between matches if the competitor wanted slight changes tailored to the situation. For that reason, while the competitors played their matches, the engineers generally stayed with them.

The tournament committee had structured the timetables so that, where possible, no two players from the same school would have a match at the same time. However, certain events, like Cloudball, would see many matches in a day, so most schools would have time-slot overlap at some point. Therefore, teams brought two engineers: a primary and a secondary. The overlapping could cross events as well, so naturally, a single engineer couldn’t handle the entire competition.

But in the end, each team needed both engineers even if their match times never overlapped.

“You’re in the last race, Honoka?”

“Yes! It’s in the afternoon, so it won’t overlap with girls’ Speed Shooting!”

Honoka Mitsui, smiling brightly, was piling on the pressure. Tatsuya found himself at a loss.

He was in charge of three events: girls’ Speed Shooting, girls’ Ice Pillars Break, and Mirage Bat. He wasn’t handling only girls’ events because he was a ladies’ man, of course. It was mainly because many of the male freshmen on the team were firmly opposed to him…though that wasn’t the only reason. A handful of certain freshmen girls had been very insistent he be assigned to them.

Miyuki, for example. And Honoka, and Miyuki, and Honoka, and Miyuki.

…Basically, it was all due to the vehement demands of these two.

Unfortunately, that created a problem. Of all the events, Miyuki’s magical prowess was most suited for Ice Pillars Break. The student council and her classmates knew she was particularly effective with vibration- and deceleration-type magic. At the very least, they knew she sometimes triggered cooling magic unconsciously. With Miyuki in both Ice Pillars Break and Mirage Bat, the star event every school put their best girls into, the issue became what events Honoka would take part in.

First High’s freshman final exam results from first semester featured Miyuki Shiba with the best scores, Shizuku Kitayama in second, Shun Morisaki in third, and Honoka Mitsui in fourth. That meant that, of the freshman girls, Honoka had the greatest practical magic ability after Miyuki and Shizuku. However, her abilities weren’t very well suited to sporting events. She could use every type of magic flawlessly, and didn’t have much trouble putting together intricate magic programs—but that meant she was more of a researcher than an athlete.

If there was one thing she excelled at above all others, it was illusion magic—a type of oscillation magic that manipulated light waves. Shizuku, however, specialized in both oscillation and acceleration magic. She could produce more power than Honoka in both categories, so she was more suited for Ice Pillars Break.

Tatsuya was going to be in charge of Miyuki for sure. That was a given. None of their upperclassmen were foolhardy enough to complain about that.

If Honoka had wanted Tatsuya to be assigned to her, however, then the easiest way would be to enter the same event as Miyuki. Strategically speaking, though, putting your three top players in the same event wasn’t a very good plan. In fact, it simply wouldn’t be permitted.

That left events that didn’t coincide with Ice Pillars Break, but in Speed Shooting, Shizuku would again be better off than Honoka. The event schedule was originally created to allow each player to compete in the events he or she excelled in, so from a certain point of view, this setup was inevitable.

With other strategic decisions also coming into play, Honoka ended up being put into Battle Board and Mirage Bat. (Their operation staff had initially suggested Battle Board and Cloudball, but Honoka insisted—with her friends’ support—that she be in one of the same events as Miyuki.)

…With all that, and Honoka fervently insisting their match times wouldn’t overlap, Tatsuya had a good guess at what she was really trying to say.

And it may have worked out when you looked at the timing. Unfortunately, swapping engineers like that would be bad for the team as a whole. And even if it worked out today, there was no proof that Ice Pillars Break and Battle Board wouldn’t coincide on the sixth day—the third day of the rookie competition.

He knew Honoka understood all that. It was simple…

But today, for whatever reason, Miyuki wasn’t giving him any help here. He sighed, both at Honoka and at his younger sister, and said what could be construed as the words of a two-timer. “…I would love to give your CAD a look, but I can’t. I’ll make sure to watch your races, though.”

“Really? Okay, it’s a promise!”

He heard someone stifle a giggle. He knew who it was, but his brain decided to pretend he didn’t.

And perhaps, from an onlooker’s point of view…he was the very image of a philanderer.

Though he couldn’t call the affair with Honoka minor, it was ultimately a side episode when it came to the main event. Now that the curtains were raised, he needed to focus on the matter at hand.

After finishing his final checks, Tatsuya handed the long, slender rifle for competitive Speed Shooting to Shizuku and instructed her to check how it felt. CADs absorbed psions from the magician, then sent them to activation programs, which were information bodies made up of even more psions. If there were any issues within this communication process, it wouldn’t matter how well adjusted the other parts were—the device would be useless. Any hardware miscommunication issues would mean they’d need to replace the CAD with a spare; any software bugs would mean he’d have to work double time to fix them.

“Mm… It’s perfect. Even better than mine.”

Neither Shizuku’s face nor voice were particularly expressive, so when he’d first been paired with her, there had been times when Tatsuya couldn’t tell if she was being serious or lying. But by now, he’d gotten used to it. As a rule, she didn’t lie. If something would be inconvenient for her to say, she’d just keep quiet.

“Again, Tatsuya, don’t you want to come work for us?”

But that he still couldn’t get used to, because the difference here was whether she was being serious or simply joking around.

“…If you can joke around, then I think you’ll do fine in your match.”

“I’m not joking.”

Tatsuya frowned.

She was essentially asking him if he would form an official CAD maintenance contract with her. And she’d already asked him at least ten times. He was pretty sure, given her personality, that she wouldn’t find the repetition of such a joke funny…but he also couldn’t bring himself to take her seriously.

“It doesn’t have to be exclusive…” she continued.

She had shown him her personal CAD earlier so he could come up with modifications to use in the competition, but it was so well tuned that there was nothing for him to do. It wasn’t surprising; a famous magical engineer, said to be one of the top five in the nation, did her CAD’s regular maintenance. And not just hers, either, but her entire family’s.

When he first heard that Shizuku came from an extremely wealthy family, he couldn’t help but be surprised. The Kitayama weren’t famous for their magicians like the Ten Master Clans or the Hundred Families were. From what he’d heard, her mother was a top-tier magician who fell madly in love with the heir to a multimillionaire’s fortune, and after a big fuss, got what she wanted in the end. Shizuku’s father’s line was bereft of magicians, and her much younger brother didn’t have the kind of magical talents that let him use magic on a practical level. Apparently her father was a bit overzealous with his interest in her abilities, which made Tatsuya wonder if that wasn’t the reason for the upgrades.

Shizuku’s obsession with Monolith Code, however, was definitely the result of her father: namely, in the form of the magical competition skybox-ticket tours her father would take her on.

“…No matter how many times you say it, I’d still have to wait until I got a license.”

The contract money and payment Shizuku had suggested the first time, when he’d been dumbfounded, was insane. It dwarfed even the vast sum paid to Taurus Silver. If he’d been just another student living off his parents’ money, he probably would have passed out from the enormity of it.

However, doing free tuning work as part of a school event and actually doing it as a job for compensation were completely different. It wasn’t technically illegal to operate without a license, but people would definitely see him as unqualified.

“Gotcha.”

She nodded agreeably, just the same as always.

But how much she really understood, he was forced to wonder.

It might not have been at all memorable for Shizuku, but their conversation almost entirely cut down the pregame tension Tatsuya was feeling almost entirely.

Well, as long as it doesn’t adversely affect the player, it’s probably all right.

They had many meetings’ worth of tactics behind them. Tatsuya had even given Shizuku’s matches some thought and then put together a secret plan for her CAD. (It would only come into play when the players started facing off against one another in the tournament, of course.)

“Looks like you’re on, Shizuku.”

“Yeah.”

There was only one thing left to say before her turn on the field:

“Good luck!”

“I’ll do my best!”

Such was their last, simple tactic.

“Is this seat open?”

“Oh, Miyuki! Yeah, you’re good. Take a load off!”

This question had actually been posed to the girls numerous times since they had sat down in the stands. Unlike this instance, though, they had all been random guys with ulterior motives—even in spite of the fact that Leo and Mikihiko were sitting at either end. Each time, though, Erika had turned the smooth talkers away with a bloodthirsty lie and saved those seats.

The seating order was: Mikihiko, Mizuki, Honoka, an empty seat, Erika, and Leo. They’d left Miyuki’s seat in the middle, because if they didn’t have walls on either side of her, then who knew how many reckless, fearless, cocky people would come along?

Erika hadn’t been pleased at first that she was sitting next to Leo, but Mizuki had persuaded her. Leo and Honoka were in different classes, so they weren’t very well acquainted; in light of that, Erika had reluctantly agreed. But despite all that, they didn’t seem to be glaring at each other today.

Everyone except Honoka seemed to have been checking the day’s competition schedule before Miyuki arrived; they all had spectator pamphlets in their hands. (Honoka didn’t need to look anything up at this point, since she was actually competing.)

Miyuki looked back up to return their greetings, when Mizuki, who had looked back at her pamphlet, suddenly spoke. “…Oh, Honoka. Are you all set for your match?”

“It’s all good! My race is in the afternoon,” she insisted, giving Mizuki a slightly stiff smile.

Miyuki spoke next, her tone one of playful annoyance. “Honoka…if you’re already nervous, you won’t even last until your match.”

“Argh…I know, but…”

“You’ll be fine, Honoka. And my brother agrees, doesn’t he?”

“Well, yes…”

“You came here to take your mind off the race, right? Let’s just cheer for Shizuku.”

“…Yeah, you’re right.” Honoka nodded firmly—a little too firmly. She clearly couldn’t get her mind entirely off her worries. Perhaps it was pointless to tell her not to be concerned; she was highly serious and tended to think about things too much.

“…Umm, did I say something I shouldn’t have?”

So when Mizuki, ignorant of what she was doing, delivered the final blow, Honoka grimaced a little.

As the freshmen’s little incident—innocent by some standards—played out, the two seniors of the student council plus the disciplinary committee chairwoman were sitting a little farther off.

“Mari, shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Nah, it’s not like I’m sick. I’ll be fine as long as I don’t push myself. And shouldn’t you be in the tent, Mayumi?”

“It’s not a problem; I’m not miles away or anything. If something happens, they’ll tell me.” Mayumi combed away the strands of hair on her cheek. The parting revealed a voice communication receiver worn on her ear.

“Maybe, but I feel like you and Ichihara both not being there is an issue…”

“It isn’t. They basically forced me to take the day off.”

“…Your jokes still don’t make much sense to me, Ichihara.”

Ichihara’s answer came without even a smirk. For a moment, Mari wondered if she was grumpy. After all, her staff position had essentially been usurped.

Of course, Mari knew that couldn’t be. Suzune oversaw the entire operation staff (which consisted of only four people, but still). Labor was divided among them so that they could work on individual strategies. The biggest separation was that the male staff members planned for the boys’ matches and female members for the girls’. In today’s events, Suzune was in charge of the girls’ Speed Shooting.

…However, there wasn’t much strategic planning that could be done for this event. It was mostly up to the players’ own abilities. Calling it a pure contest of brawn over brains wouldn’t be that far off the mark. If there was one role the officers had to play, it was selecting spells suited to each player and making broad settings to their CADs to match…but then that overlapped with the role of the technical staff.

And all the magic selection and CAD settings for the freshman girls’ Speed Shooting had been done by Tatsuya himself, all the way from the planning stages through to execution. Suzune had agreed to the plan beforehand, of course, but she wasn’t the type to get angry over something so petty.

“You know…now that I think about it, this is the first time he’ll get to show off his real skills as an engineer.”

Mari’s words betrayed her curiosity. Mayumi nodded, too, also quite interested. “Yes. When he was with me, he just gave me a little help. I can’t wait to see what the CADs he had complete control over turn out to be like!”

“The players all seem very favorable toward him. Especially Kitayama.”

Suzune’s words were no exaggeration. Excluding Miyuki, Honoka, and Shizuku, the freshman girls’ squad, with its all–Course 1 lineup, as well as most other Course 2 girls, had a kind of allergy to letting other people handle their CADs. But after so many practice sessions using Tatsuya-adjusted CADs, any such negative emotions had vanished entirely. The change was sudden and drastic—enough to be called radical.

“Some of the players brought their own CADs today, too,” Suzune remarked.

Mari sighed. “Wait a minute… That’s not going to get in the way of his actual job, is it?”

“He seems to be managing his time well. He only does them favors once their matches are over.”

By favors, she meant CAD adjustments. The players who used the competition CADs adjusted by Tatsuya had started to bring him their personal CADs, too. Not just one or two people, either—basically every single one of the female freshman athletes was doing it.

“Now that’s a good, honest way to increase his fan base.”

“He’s ‘good’ in some strange ways, don’t you think?”

Mayumi and Mari exchanged glances, then smirked.

If Tatsuya had heard Mayumi’s comment about him increasing his fan base, he would have groaned and denied it. In fact, up until the banquet, all the girls had been avoiding him (or at least, that’s how it’d felt).

But of course, it went without saying that he didn’t have extrasensory hearing powers. All his attention was on the shooting range where Shizuku stood.

He didn’t have the kind of eyes Mizuki had, either. Instead, he had the ability to read and understand information structures. If he did a full adjustment on a CAD, he knew every single piece of information regarding it. And with a bit of effort, he could perceive the results, even if he couldn’t perceive the processes that led to those results.

Beyond him, Shizuku readied herself.

The starting lights began to ignite, one by one.

Looks like it’ll be fine this time, somehow…

Unlike in Mari’s accident, there were no signs of Shizuku’s CAD having been tampered with, but he still wasn’t about to take his eyes off the action.

The final light came on, and a moment later, a piece of clay shot into the sky.

Immediately after entering the scoring area, it exploded.

The next shot smashed apart in the middle of the area.

Then, on each end of the field, two pieces blew up at the same time.

Most of the audience gave gasps of admiration. Miyuki and the others, watching closely from the stands, couldn’t help but sigh in relief at the smooth start.

Shizuku’s eyes were razor-sharp. So sharp that it seemed like she wasn’t even watching where the targets were coming from.

“Whoa. This is exciting,” Erika mumbled in wonder.

“…Did she set up a magic region over the entire scoring area?” asked Mizuki, doubtful of her own analysis as she turned to Miyuki and Honoka.

“She did! She’s using a spell that makes solid objects in the region vibrate, and that’s what’s breaking them. She mixes short waves with long waves, causing pieces of the objects to expand and contract, like she’s weathering them. It’s like how even the hardest boulders get weak and break when exposed to sudden heat and sudden cold.”

“More precisely, she has several hypocenters—like for earthquakes—set up all over the scoring area, and she’s creating virtual wave motion that causes the objects to oscillate. She’s not using the spell to directly vibrate the targets themselves; instead, she’s created a zone of event alteration that does the job for her. When a target comes into contact with the sphere of waves around one of the hypocenters, the virtual wave motion becomes actual wave motion inside the targets, causing them to break apart.”

Honoka and Miyuki kept their eyes on the shooting range as they went through their paired explanation. Mizuki just kept nodding along.

“…I see. So that’s how it works.”

By coincidence or inevitability, the same conversation was happening at the same time among the trio of seniors.

“As you know, the scoring area in Speed Shooting is a cube in the air, forty-nine feet long on each side. Shiba’s activation program sets up a cube of thirty-three feet inside it, then defines nine hypocenters: one at the middle, and eight around it.” Suzune was relegated to providing the explanation here, since she’d been privy to Tatsuya’s adjustment plans. “Each point is handled with a number, and by inputting one of those numbers as a variable into the expanded activation program, it creates a sphere of virtual waves spreading out from the hypocenter. The waves reach out to twenty feet. So, she only has to activate a spell once to create a destructive sphere thirty-nine feet across, around whichever hypocenter she wants.”

“…I feel like she’s overusing her strength. Is Kitayama bad at coordinate settings?”

“She does seem to like using brute force over precision…” To Mari’s question, Suzune maintained her poker face. It was basically her default expression, but in her eyes was a glimpse of a shadow of empathy mixed with wryness. “The purpose of the spell is not to compensate for precision but to gain speed at the expense of precision.”

“…So then she could do pinpoint attacks if she wanted to?” Mari asked. “I don’t get it.”

“This spell is unique in how the coordinates are handled by values,” Suzune explained, as she looked back to the freshman shooters in front of her. Perhaps the answers came so easily because she’d been asked them already. “In Speed Shooting, the distance from the player to the scoring area, the direction, and the size of the area are all constant. That means the hypocenters, which need to be part of the spell; the virtual cube they’re positioned in; and its distance and viewing angle to the player are all constant, too.

“Because of that, she doesn’t need to keep putting in the coordinate variables every time. Instead, there’s an option in the activation program that allows her to just use a number from one to nine when she triggers it to determine where it goes off. With such rough aiming, she could also let the CAD automatically pick which point is most suitable to trigger with its aiming control system.

“There’s also no need to change the power or duration of this spell. They’re actually handled as constant values in the activation program. The player just has to use the CAD’s assistance to pick the point, and then, without being conscious of many variables, pull the trigger and see her targets disappear.”

The heat was reaching its end. Shizuku hadn’t let a single target past yet.

“You don’t need to concentrate on controlling it, so she can just activate the spell to take full advantage of the calculated area. She can cast continuously or multicast as she wishes.”

The match timer hit zero.

A perfect score.

“The name for the spell is Active Air Mine. Apparently Shiba thought it up. I mean, with all the factors in there, it’s a fairly large activation sequence, and only effective because of Kitayama’s magical throughput.”

“…The exact opposite of how Mayumi’s magic works.”

“…He thought of something like this?” Mayumi didn’t sound so much impressed as irked.

“Still…it’s really interesting.” On the other hand, Mari sounded more interested than anything. “In actual combat, the relative position between you and your opponent is never the same, so from that standpoint, it isn’t practical…but if you didn’t set up a virtual cube in the air and instead made yourself the center, couldn’t you make an active shield in all directions by putting the hypocenter on the circumference?”

“The issue, then, would be duration. If it’s too short, it would be hard to time; too long and you could get caught in it yourself.”

The problems Mayumi cited didn’t serve to dampen Mari’s enthusiasm. “Well, that depends on how good the caster is. Like you said, if you can time it properly, you can make it not last as long… Okay, I’m gonna grab him tonight and get him to install this on my CAD.”

“…Just don’t get in the way of the matches.”

This time, Mayumi’s response was 100 percent irked.

“Good work,” congratulated Tatsuya, giving Shizuku a towel as she came back from the shooting range. Engineers weren’t managers, so handing out towels wasn’t in the job description, but he didn’t possess such petty pride.

“It was kind of anticlimactic.” She wasn’t being modest; she really thought that. She wiped a few beads of sweat from her brow, looking dissatisfied.

Shizuku also looked happy, though, and couldn’t hide it—nor did she likely want to. The cutoff point for making it out of the qualifiers, for the rookie competition at least, was around 80 percent every year. You couldn’t score better than perfect, though. Being so far over that cutoff would get her into the tournament for sure.

“I figured they wouldn’t do anything to surprise you. No evil shots that went in strange directions.”

The magic Shizuku had used hadn’t covered the entire scoring area. There were definitely blind spots, which the targets could have exploited by skirting around the edges.

However, based on the shooting machines’ specifications, Tatsuya had predicted that the committee wouldn’t set them up to fire along grazing paths like that. If a piece of clay didn’t pass through the scoring area, they’d need to restart the match to preserve fairness. The fault would lie with the tournament committee, so from a competition viewpoint it was an unneeded risk.

He’d thought it through far enough that he hadn’t been too worried, but it was still a relief to see the plan go off without a hitch.

“You worry too much, Tatsuya. We’re only rookies—nowhere near good enough for them to need to go for blind spots to thin the playing field.”

She had brought up a reasonable point. “Well, so far, everything’s gone as planned,” Tatsuya replied, switching gears—then urging his athlete to do the same. “But you’ll be up against human opponents in the quarterfinals. I made sure to adjust your CAD this morning, so could you check and see how it feels?”

“On it.”

The finals would be formatted differently than the qualifier. In the qualifiers, athletes competed in speed and accuracy, seeing how many of the hundred clay pigeons they could destroy in five minutes. The tournament, though, would have multiple players in one area, and the shooter who destroyed more pigeons would win the match. In addition to speed and accuracy, the game would now demand technique, such that one player’s magic didn’t get in the way of any others’.

Normally, athletes used different magic in accordance with different styles of play. When using specialized CADs for competition, people would generally switch to an entirely separate CAD when calling on a different type of magic.

Tatsuya would now get to work on the CAD for Shizuku’s upcoming opponent—though there was still one more match before that.

And so Shizuku, by herself, headed to the tent where her other tournament CAD was being held.

“All three made it through the qualifiers…”

Mayumi had returned to First High’s main tent to find the Speed Shooting qualifier results waiting for her. Now she was looking them over and talking to herself.

“You wouldn’t say the freshman girls this year are especially good or anything, would you?”

Eight of the twenty-four players in the qualifiers would advance to the tournament. One school having three of those players was pretty much unprecedented—both in the main and rookie competitions.

“Come on, drop the act, Mari,” Mayumi called to her.

Mari shrugged silently. It was her I guess you got me pose. “How is Battle Board going?”

Suzune purposely took the effort to get out her terminal and check. (She didn’t have to—she had it all memorized.) “Two boys’ races ended with neither passing qualifiers, and for the girls, one got through.”

“Only one of the boys is left, then…” Mayumi murmured. “I’m sure Mitsui will pull through the qualifiers for the girls… After all, we have Ah-chan over there doing her best.”

“We may need to put a little more work into fostering our engineers,” said Katsuto with a rather bitter look, viewing the same results on his own terminal.

The Speed Shooting quarterfinals would be held on four shooting ranges.

If all eight athletes had come from different schools, the matches would have all been simultaneous. When multiple people from the same school were involved, though, they would change the times so their matches wouldn’t overlap. (There would be no intraschool matches in the quarterfinals.)

Still, compared to the semifinals, which would be held on the same range one at a time, the time between each match was short. With three from First High’s girls’ squad advancing to the quarter-finals, the engineer would end up being very busy.

“…Are you all right, Tatsuya?”

Shizuku, who had been relegated to the final match, gave one look at Tatsuya when he ran into the waiting room (though not technically a “room,” since they were in a tent). Somehow, it looked to her like Tatsuya was a little out of breath.

“I’m fine,” he answered curtly, starting his final checks on her CAD.

As Shizuku looked on, or rather, stared at him, he quickly scrolled through the tuning device’s monitor to make sure there weren’t any abnormalities. Finally, he looked back at her.

“I know you know this already, but this one is completely different from the one you used in the qualifiers. We don’t have much time left, but if something feels even a little off, I’ll do what I can to fix it. So don’t hesitate to tell me.”

Shizuku took the CAD and positioned her shooting stance. After pressing her finger down on the trigger a few times, she lowered the rifle. “There’s nothing wrong. It’s so perfect it’s scary.”

“I see.” Tatsuya didn’t sigh outwardly, but the tension in his face definitely relaxed. Shizuku gave him a determined look.

“Both of them won.”

“Yeah.” She was referring to their teammates, who had played in previous matches. Both of them had gotten past the initial qualifiers like Shizuku had, and then had won their way through to the semifinals. “You’ll be fine.” Tatsuya used the same words, though for a slightly different reason this time. “Do it like you always do, and you’ll win.”

“Of course.” She, too, gave her usual short answer, but with an unusually firm nod of her head. “You’ve already set everything up for me to win, so now I just have to go do it.”

“That’s the spirit.” He saw her off with a grin, not bothering to correct her somewhat premature declaration of victory.

“It’s Shizuku’s turn now…”

“Come on! Why are you the one getting nervous, Mizuki?”

“Isn’t it exciting, Erika?” asked Mizuki, bouncy. “If Shizuku wins, all three of our students will be in the top four!”

“Try not to overheat from all the excitement, okay?” Honoka warned, then declared with full confidence: “Shizuku will win no matter what!”

“Just take a deep breath, Mizuki,” teased Miyuki, though the other girl obediently began to do so.

“…I guess this is just me as usual, huh?” Mizuki asked, sheepish.

“…Mizuki, you can be a real joker sometimes,” laughed Erika.

With effort, Mizuki finally regained her calm. It was less a result of her deep breathing and more realizing that Miyuki and Honoka weren’t worried at all.

“I wonder what kind of trick we’ll see this time,” whispered Mikihiko with just a hint of jubilation, prompting Erika to give him an interested look.

The one to actually answer him, though, was Leo. “Me, too. I can’t even imagine what’ll show up this time!”

“His brain is like a jack-in-the-box!”

“You got that right!”

It had been a long time since Erika had seen Mikihiko so clearly interested in magic. It didn’t seem to her that the change was just from him getting to watch other people’s matches, though. Maybe something happened between him and Tatsuya at some point, Erika thought.

“Huh? What’s that…?”

Her thinking was interrupted by a discordant tone from the person she’d been thinking about. “What’s wrong?” Erika asked.

“That CAD…”

Mikihiko had his eyes on the CAD Shizuku had slung under her arm, hanging from a strap on one of her kimono’s sleeve ties.

At first, the rifle-shaped CAD didn’t appear to be much different from the competition devices all the other players were using, save for the strap attached to it. However, the mechanism was quite a bit thicker than the others.

Mikihiko’s school didn’t see CADs as very important. They still mainly activated spells using amulets. But after the accident last year, he had stuck his nose in modern magic books and hadn’t taken it out yet.

He was trying to make up for what he had lost, and the results of his efforts were visible in his regular exam grades. He could now proudly state that he’d become more knowledgeable than most modern magicians regarding CADs.

And if his eyes were correct, then… “Is that…a multipurpose one?”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Huh? But that would be…”

“I’ve never heard of a multipurpose broom shaped like a rifle! Is it even possible to put a targeting system on one in the first place?”

Leo, Mizuki, and Erika all voiced their obvious doubts in turn.

But Mikihiko, confident in his assessment, shook his head. “The main part of the device, right above the trigger—that has to be the Centaur series, FLT’s multipurpose CAD that they put on vehicles. They don’t actually have an interface. They connect to an external input device, which is why there’s a grip and a targeting system connected to it.”

“You have a very sharp eye,” said Miyuki with a smirk, turning to him.

“Wait. Then it’s…”

“That’s right, Erika,” Miyuki stated proudly. “My brother made it himself, specifically so that Shizuku could use a targeting system with a multipurpose CAD.”

Erika was speechless for a moment. Her own unique-form CAD was made to order. She knew how much work went into something like that.

“I don’t even feel like being surprised anymore…” muttered Leo. “But why?”

“For this match, of course,” replied Honoka.

Her simple response wasn’t nearly enough to answer Leo’s question, nor those of the other three. But there was no time to elaborate. At that moment, they all turned back to watch with bated breath, as if they’d practiced the maneuver.

The starting lights began to tick on.

Red and white pieces of clay flew through the air.

Shizuku’s targets were the red ones.

Three of them arced through the air, gathered together at the center of the scoring area, and broke apart.

“Movement…? No, that’s not it. Convergence magic?”

The tents used by the schools as bases of operations were fitted with large multipartitioned monitors showing how each of the events was progressing. Mayumi and Suzune were using almost an entire screen to watch Shizuku’s match.

“That’s correct.”

This time, a red clay pigeon about to fly outside the scoring area found itself being sucked into the center, and then it shattered.

“And that was what she used in the qualifiers, right?”

“Yes. She’s continually activating convergence and oscillation magic.”

Meanwhile, pairs of the white clay pigeons were colliding with each other and breaking apart.

The strategy Shizuku’s opponent from Second High used was fairly orthodox: She cast movement magic on the clay targets themselves, essentially turning them into bullets to ram into other targets. It was orthodox because its effectiveness had been proven many times in the past.

But since the beginning of her opponent’s turn, the white targets frequently missed one another when they neared the center of the scoring area. The ones around the edges were mostly hitting, though, so it wasn’t a lack of technical experience on the side of the player, but…

“I think I get it. She has a broad view of all the clay pigeons flying through the scoring area. The convergence magic increases the density of the red targets, which makes the white targets bounce away from the center…”

The basic principle behind convergence magic was that it selectively gathered targets with predetermined properties (within an area defined by the magic program), then sent them to coordinates also defined by the magic program. When used on physical objects, it increased the targets’ physical density while lowering the physical density of all other objects in the area. This density change gave convergence magic its effect.

The dry-ice bullet spell Mayumi had used earlier contained a convergence formula as well. Hers would gather carbon dioxide at the beginning to acquire enough bullets. In her case, it wasn’t that once the carbon dioxide was collected in one area it would push away all other gases and create an area with a high density of CO₂; rather, it made the CO₂ flow toward specified coordinates while at the same time making the other gases flow out.

Shizuku’s magic was essentially the same, if the carbon dioxide particles happened to be red pieces of clay. Her convergence spell defined a region—in this case, the center of the scoring area—and overwrote the information inside that region with “a space where the red clay pigeons collect.” In more concrete terms, the spell altered the approximately sixty-six-foot-square space covering most of the scoring area and made it into a space where the closer to the middle the red clay pigeons got, the higher its density.

The area was a very large one, while the number of clay targets flying into it was low. That lightened the load for the caster, since the alteration target wasn’t the space itself but instead the distribution of the targets within that space. The red clay pigeons would be pulled toward the center via the information alteration brought about by the magic program, while the white clay pigeons would veer off course if it passed through the middle. The clay pigeons directly under the Second High player’s influence weren’t subject to this secondary interference, but the targets she was trying to ram them into weren’t under the direct control of her magic. Shizuku’s magic would change their flight paths, which was why the white shots were missing their marks.

The rules of the Speed Shooting tournament allowed interference like this, so long as it didn’t directly affect the opposing player. However, the intervals between the clay pigeons being fired were irregular and very quick. Normally, it was quite difficult to get in the opponent’s way while still shooting down your own targets. Many players ended up defeating themselves by not committing to either interference or shooting, but the convergence magic Shizuku was using was both an obstruction for her opponent and a means of destroying her own targets, making it a substantially effective tactic.

There were instances of such tactics in the past, albeit not many, and they’d been shown to be effective. It demanded strong event influence from the player, though, so not everyone could use it. There weren’t many opportunities to see it in person, but Mayumi had researched tactics like these thoroughly.

Her doubts, though, weren’t about the spell itself but about something else. “But why is the oscillation spell at the end triggering only some of the time?”

When multiple targets gathered, they would go on to collide in the middle and break apart. If there was only one red clay target flying through, Shizuku used an oscillation-type spell to crush it. If this was all included in a single spell, then that final process, where it would destroy the target with oscillation magic, should have been going off all the time, not only some of the time.

“Is it scheduling things so if there’s more than one target, it makes them collide before the oscillation spell goes off?” Not even she could believe her own reasoning, and her voice made that obvious. There was no advantage to setting up timings like that.

“President, I believe I said she was continuously activating convergence and oscillation magic,” Suzune corrected, with a slightly mean smile.

Immediately after those words were spoken, Mayumi understood. She reflexively cried out, “No way! Specialized CADs can only be loaded with activation sequences of one type!”

“I understand your doubts, but that isn’t a specialized type. It’s a multipurpose one.”

Suzune’s answer only caused more confusion. “But that’s impossible!” Mayumi replied. “They’re completely different, from their OS right down to their architecture. And targeting-aid subsystems are made to fit the architecture of specialized CADs. Isn’t it technically impossible to attach one to the frame of a multipurpose CAD?”

Mayumi’s tone steadily calmed throughout her talking, but the flush in her cheeks betrayed the fact that her agitation hadn’t completely gone away.

Suzune’s smile changed as well—into a gentle, mature one, made to calm others down. “That’s what I thought as well. But it turns out it is possible. This isn’t something Shiba came up with; I believe they announced it last year in Germany.”

“…Last year? But that would make it brand-new technology!”

“I think you should contain your surprise, President. This isn’t much. He told me to keep quiet about this, but Tatsuya has some even more amazing brand-new technology that you’ll see later.”

“I… Well, if it’s a secret, then I’ll leave it at that. I guess I’m just a little shocked he’d tell you, Rin, and not me.”

“You’re one of the players, President. I’m sure he didn’t want to cause you any undue stress.”

“I suppose you’re right… If Tatsuya had told me beforehand that he had a spell like this, it definitely would have stressed me out.”

Mayumi sighed and looked back to the corner of the monitor, which showed the remaining time and the players’ scores. There wasn’t much time left, and victory was all but assured.

Thirty seconds left.

During the past two weeks, thanks to endless practice, Shizuku had taught herself to accurately measure the five-minute match time internally.

The moment a red clay pigeon flew into the blue sphere shown in her goggles, she pulled the CAD’s trigger.

The target swiftly crumbled.

Using the safety goggles as an aiming device was allowed by the tournament rules. In fact, it was rarer to see a player not using a gimmick like that. (Leaving aside cases like Mayumi, who had her own means of targeting.)

But Shizuku was probably the only one using an HMD, or head-mounted display, to mark off the space in front of her rather than aim at her targets. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Tatsuya was the only one.

Tatsuya always came up with plans for everything that were completely removed from orthodox know-how. At first, it had bewildered her; but in the end, maybe it was a good thing that she had no prior sports experience, because it hadn’t taken her long to get used to it. And once she had, it felt so right to her that she couldn’t imagine using any other equipment or spell.

In any case, it was nice and easy. She felt almost none of the stress that came with magic usage.

Shizuku was aware that her lack of precise control was her weakness. Because of that, she had always requested that CAD engineers give her assistance functions so those precise settings could be done smoothly. She wanted a CAD that would let her aim properly and control her power properly, even at the expense of speed. She was confident enough that her own magical processing power would make up for her speed.

But the spell Tatsuya put together had made those precise settings completely unnecessary. It wasn’t trying to make up for a weakness; it was simply emphasizing her strengths to the extreme. It maximized her magical throughput, which allowed high-speed continuous casting; and what’s more, it maximized her magical capacity, which allowed her to build huge magic programs.

And the CAD in her hands…

She was surprised that he’d connected a targeting-assistance system to a multipurpose CAD, but she was even more surprised with the speed at which it processed activation programs. Multipurpose CADs lost out to specialized ones in terms of processing speed. That was just common sense: It was a structural necessity. The two types differed in hardware, software, and architecture; their differences could be likened to dedicated processors versus normal ones, or supercomputers and generalized ones.

Given equivalent units in their cores, multipurpose CADs would never outperform specialized ones in terms of processing speed. The margin was always big enough for humans to tell.

And yet…this CAD was putting out the kind of speed a specialized one would.

Five more seconds.

—A target flew in.

—She pulled the trigger.

—The magic activated.

—The target shattered.

Her processing speed was almost exactly the same as with the specialized type she’d used in the qualifiers. Tatsuya had said it was because he had restricted this CAD to only two types of activation magic—and also that it was only possible for this exact event.

It was a trick nobody could use in everyday life.

Shizuku didn’t understand the detailed logic behind it, but she figured she didn’t have to. Magic was a tool. CADs were tools. You just had to know how to use them. Everything else could be left up to the experts.

She didn’t use the Active Air Mine for the final two shots; instead, she loop-cast the convergence spell to destroy them.

“Perfect,” she said, confirming her score with a victorious smile.

As the clock struck noon, First High’s tent was filled with a giddy air.

“This is remarkable, Tatsuya! Amazing!”

Tatsuya winced a little as a hand slapped his back. As her petite appearance might suggest, Mayumi didn’t have the arm strength to hurt him very much. She was persistent, though, which made it annoying.

“…President, please calm down.”

After making eye contact with Suzune to signal for help, the young woman quickly remonstrated with Mayumi on his behalf. Ever the helpful upperclassman…but at the same time, she had left him out to dry until he asked. Tatsuya was starting to feel like the two were birds of a feather.

“Oh, sorry!” Mayumi immediately stopped hitting him. She was calm enough, at least, to realize she was being overexcited about it. However, she didn’t appear to want to let him go just yet. “But it really was amazing! We clinched first, second, and third place!”

“I didn’t win the finals and semifinals. It was the players…” Tatsuya insisted weakly.

“Well, yes! Kitayama, Akechi, and Takigawa were amazing, too! You all did so well!”

Rewarded with a broad smile from their student council president, the freshman girls’ Speed Shooting team—which was hanging around, too—all thanked her at once, looking nervous but happy.

Though not as excited as Mayumi, Mari threw her own praise into the ring, her own expression cheerful. “Still, you have to admit you did something great, Tatsuya. It really was remarkable.”

“Right… Well, thank you.”

“Don’t seem so discouraged!” she insisted. “Everyone here has the same opinion: Our players have all the top spots now, and that speaks volumes for your skill as an engineer.”

Shizuku and the others gave firm nods.

“I still can’t believe it myself!”

“It’s like I suddenly got really good at magic.”

Those comments came not from Shizuku but the other two. Shizuku simply nodded along as though this whole thing had been inevitable.

“We’re even getting poked by the university. They’re saying they might officially record the spell Kitayama used in the Index.”

But at this follow-up explanation from Suzune, Mayumi’s eyes widened, Mari seemed dumbstruck, and Shizuku froze.

The Index was the short form of National Magic University’s Encyclopedia of Magic and Spell Index. As its name implied, it was an encyclopedia compiled by the National Magic University, wherein was listed the name of every spell. If they were going to record the spell itself, then that meant the magical establishment recognized it as a new type of spell that could stand on its own, rather than a variation of another spell. That was a major goal and honor to magic development researchers everywhere.

However…

“I see. If anyone asks who developed it, give them Kitayama’s name, please.”

“What?! You can’t do that!” Shizuku hastily drew near at Tatsuya’s uninterested reply. “You came up with that on your own, Tatsuya!”

“…But they use the first user’s name as the developer of new spells all the time, you know,” he pleaded tiredly, taking a step away from Shizuku and gesturing with his hands for her to calm down.

“Mm… Being too modest can annoy people, you know,” chided Mari, eloquently defusing the tension.

But Tatsuya only shook his head, his reluctance evident. “I’m not being modest.”

“Then what are you being?” she protested.

“I’d just rather not shame myself by putting my own name as the developer. I can’t actually use it.”

It was true. If people knew he was the spell’s developer, a lot of people would come asking for a demonstration. If he had to say he couldn’t use it, and turn them away, people would start to suspect he stole someone else’s idea. Tatsuya’s evasion wasn’t without reason, but…

“…If you can’t use it, then how did you make sure it worked?” Mari asked.

It was way outside the realm of logic to build a spell using only theory. If it were possible, though, that would make him a mad scientist ignoring the risks of other people operating it. That would be considered immoral.

“It’s not that I can’t use it at all. It just takes too much time for me to activate it, so it’s more of a practical thing.”

Mayumi saw Tatsuya’s answers starting to come apart and intervened. “All right, Mari, Tatsuya. This isn’t something to be arguing about right now. We just got off to a great start here. Keep at it for the next events, Tatsuya!”

Tatsuya watched as Mayumi smiled and patted his shoulder. He bowed humbly to her.

The news of the success of First High’s Speed Shooting team was rippling through the other schools, too.

Third High, in particular, had come into the competition this year hoping to wrest victory from the reigning champions. Now, after the unexpected accident in the girls’ Battle Board, they were excited. Though the accident was unfortunate, it had given them a chance to get their foot in the door. The results were affecting them more than anyone else.

“Masaki, you’re saying First High didn’t win because of the players’ individual skills?”

Masaki Ichijou, standing in a ring of twenty people—all of Third High’s rookie competitors—nodded in response, all eyes on him. “Kitayama, who won the tournament, had amazing magical power. I can understand her winning it all. But the other two didn’t seem like they were that amazing. If this were just about magic power, they wouldn’t have been able to take second and third.”

“Plus, we have the upper hand in Battle Board for now. I don’t think the level of their freshmen this year is especially high.”

Third High had entered two boys and two girls into Battle Board; both boys passed the qualifiers, as did one of the girls. As for First High, only one of their three boys made it out, with their only girl doing the same.

“George is right. Our players are no worse than theirs. That means there must be a different reason.”

“Ichijou, Kichijouji…what do you think it is?” asked the girl who had lost in the Speed Shooting semifinals to First High students. Masaki and Kichijouji exchanged glances. They were thinking the same thing.

The answer came from Kichijouji. “Their engineer,” he stated. “I think the engineer assigned to the girls’ Speed Shooting is really good at their job.”

“I agree, George. The winner’s device… Did you notice it?”

“Yeah…it was a multipurpose type.”

Kichijouji’s answer sent a shockwave rippling through all the freshmen present.

“But that’s… It had a targeting system on it!”

“That’s right! I’ve never heard of a multipurpose device shaped like a rifle!”

“Neither have I,” Kichijouji agreed. “I’ve gone through every manufacturer’s catalog I could think of and can’t find anything like it.”

The simultaneous protests caused Masaki’s face to cloud over even more. “…It’s not something that’s for sale…but people have combined a targeting system with a multipurpose device before.”

A dumbfounded voice came from the circle: “Are you serious…?!”

The boy who said it didn’t actually doubt Masaki was serious, but Kichijouji knew how to deal with this. “We’re serious. It’s some new tech they unveiled in Düsseldorf last summer.”

“Last summer?! That would make it brand-new!”

“Yeah. I didn’t know about it either until I looked it up.”

“If you didn’t know about it, then there’s no way we could have…”

An awkward silence ensued among the circle of freshmen. Shock, unease, doubt…and shards of fear were all present.

“…I’m surprised George knew about it. There’s a reason he’s the brains of our operation!”

The girl’s statement was meant to soften the serious mood…but Kichijouji couldn’t go along with it. “Yeah…but the prototype they showed off in Düsseldorf didn’t hold up to practical use. It was slow and imprecise. It was really just a proof of concept, to show that you could technically put the two things together.”

Kichijouji was still frowning, his face dark. Masaki answered in a bitter tone: “But the device Kitayama from First High used had all the speed and precision of a specialized one, and also the strong point of multipurpose ones: having activation programs from different families. If all this is supposed to show us how good their engineer is…then that engineer is way above high school level. They’d be a monster.”

“To hear Masaki say that, it must be really serious…”

“It’s not physically possible for one engineer to be on all the events, but…”

“We’ll be in for the ride of our lives in any event that person’s in charge of. We should go in thinking we have a two- or three-generation handicap with our devices.”

Kichijouji’s suggestion, followed by Masaki’s ominous prediction, invited a gloomy silence among the teammates.

Tatsuya, being regarded as something other than human by the main players of a rival school (though not, of course, having any inkling of such mutterings), arrived at the girls’ Battle Board course after finishing a slightly late lunch. The fourth through sixth races were scheduled for the afternoon. Honoka would be in the sixth race, so he didn’t need to get there this early just to keep his promise.

“Oh, Shiba! Is something wrong?”

Upon seeing Tatsuya with Miyuki and Shizuku in tow, Azusa quirked her head to the side. The motion made him think of a squirrel with a berry in its hands, and in spite of his melancholic attitude, caused his face to soften. He pulled back as he felt his lips about to turn into a smile, and he tried to keep a straight face, but his tension was gone. His lips had already gone too far.

“…Were you just making fun of me in your head?” she asked.

“No, of course not. I was just admiring your concern for others.”

“…You were making fun of me, weren’t you?”

Her squinting glare also looked exactly like a little kid pouting, and Tatsuya had to turn his eyes away to keep himself from laughing.

“…Fine, I don’t care,” said Azusa after glaring at him for a while and finally sighing—and sort of telling herself that, rather than Tatsuya. She probably had to deal with reactions like his on a daily basis. Her posture gave off a weird, semi defeated air.

It was the kind of posture that made him feel guilty about leaving her be. “I really wasn’t thinking poorly of you.”

“…Really?”

“Really.”

“Really, really?”

“Yes, really.”

She looked up at him suspiciously. Because of their height difference, even with her head raised, her eyes were upturned. Tatsuya nodded firmly.

Finally, his uselessly brazen attitude convinced (or perhaps deceived) Azusa, and she smiled again. “All right. I trust you, Shiba.”

As soon as she said that and grinned at him, he felt a disturbance next to him. He didn’t need to look over to know what it was. In his mind’s eye, he could clearly see Miyuki’s eyebrow twitching.

Sheesh, he sighed to himself. Now he’d have to cheer her up again tonight. But it wasn’t like he particularly hated doing that. Maybe he did have a slight mental problem.

But leaving all that aside…

“Anyway, is something wrong? There’s still over two hours until Mitsui’s race.”

“I was getting uncomfortable, so I got them to let me leave.”

Azusa, who had again cocked her head to the side, noticed Miyuki giving her a wry smile from next to Tatsuya.

She sent a questioning glance to the girl. “…My brother pays too much attention,” Miyuki stated, implying there was nothing to be done about it.

On his other side, Shizuku offered consolation: “But now they’re fired up, so I’m sure it’ll be fine…”

“O-oh, I see how it is…”

Azusa was honestly pretty sharp, having figured it out just from that.

Shizuku and the others occupying the top positions had been the target of congratulations during lunch. People were coming around to sing their praises, and not just the staff members. Some of the upperclassmen who were off today and watched it came, too. On the other hand, not many of them mentioned Tatsuya’s achievement, and when they did, it was generally only in passing.

And it had put an unusually bright flame of antagonism into the hearts of the boys’ Speed Shooting team.

That in and of itself was actually desirable, like Shizuku had said. As long as they directed that newfound tenacity and desire for victory in the right direction, it would be a good thing for everyone. But some of them gave him these looks like he’d just killed their parents or something. Tatsuya wanted to tell them to give it a rest already. Of course, if he actually said that, a fight would break out. That was why he’d come to the stadium early: to avoid any pointless trouble.

The Nine School Competition’s grounds were built on the southeast area of the National Defense Force’s Mount Fuji maneuvering grounds. Though it was only on one area, the Fuji maneuvering grounds were vast, and walking between stadiums was a bit of a hike. But without such a big space, they couldn’t set up the Battle Board course or the Monolith Code field.

The Battle Board racecourse was a twisting, two-mile-long, man-made water circuit. There was one course for the boys and one for the girls. Bleachers for the audience had to be constructed there as well, so just putting the course together needed a ton of space.

Out of convenience for those moving around the grounds, the courses were at the edge of the land set aside for the competition (so you could get to where you needed to be without having to go around the giant courses). Because of that, people almost never ran into players from other events nearby, such as the kids playing in Speed Shooting at the moment.

“I could have gone back to our lodging for a bit, but I decided my time would be better used here if there was something to do…”

“Really?!”

Azusa wasn’t the one who cried out. All of a sudden, Honoka had burst out from the space set aside for the athletes. She must have overheard them.

“Then, please, can you take a look at my CAD, too?!” she asked.

Recently, Honoka had begun favoring the term CAD over assistance because of Tatsuya. That aside, the enthusiasm with which Honoka appeared made him want to smile. He fought against the impulse, though, and schooled his face, then gave her a light rebuke.

“Come on, Honoka. You’re being rude to Azusa.” It would have been natural to take Honoka’s attention as showing dissatisfaction with Azusa’s skill.

“Oh! Um, I’m sorry!” Honoka apologized hastily.

“Don’t worry. I know you didn’t mean it that way,” said Azusa with a dry grin, shaking her head. Her tone of voice made her sound like an older sister. This time, Tatsuya found it a lot harder to suppress a grin.

On average, Battle Board races took fifteen minutes. The preparations, however, took over twice that. They had to get out the boards, inspect the raceway, and repair anything magically damaged. With some extra time worked into the schedule on top of that, each race was planned for a one-hour time slot.

The final race would begin at 3:30 PM exactly, and its racers were already at the starting line.

It was hard to settle your nerves with so much waiting time, and it was possible a racer would finish without having displayed their true ability. (In fact, every year, several of the boys and girls in both the main and rookie competitions ended up that way.) But amusing herself in idle conversation with Miyuki and Shizuku seemed to have benefited Honoka. Her concentration seemed to be at a peak as she stood on her board now.

What had really happened was that Miyuki, growing increasingly concerned with how Honoka seemed to cling to her brother, pulled the girl into a pointless conversation to get her away from him. Still, it looked like it had allowed Honoka to get into the right mind-set.

The wet suit that covered every inch of her, from wrist to ankle, along with thick swim shoes, was to protect her body from falls, friction, and impact. But it was also tight fitting on the body, so it made her curves appear more striking than they really were.

On her thigh sat the big outlined letters of an ICHIKO logo. With provocative proportions that one wouldn’t think belonged to a high school freshman brought to the forefront by her colorful wet suit, Honoka waited at the starting line, one knee down on the board.

Her CAD covered her forearm. It was wide and thin, the increased surface area allowing for larger control buttons. Tatsuya hadn’t done anything to it; he’d turned her request down right off the bat. He did, however, take a nominal look at its systems to make sure nothing was broken, but there was nothing amiss. Azusa and Honoka had eventually pressed him for advice, and in the end, he’d given her one thing:

The heavily tinted goggles Honoka wore were something Tatsuya had brought her. The midsummer sun just beginning to set was bright in the west, and enough to be an obstacle when facing it directly. However, most racers preferred not to wear goggles or sunglasses, since they didn’t like it when water droplets stuck to the surface and blocked their view.

Azusa felt it could only be disadvantageous to narrow one’s view, but Honoka didn’t hesitate to put the goggles on.

“…Come to think of it, why did Honoka set up so many light-based activation programs?”

It was rare for an engineer to say anything about activation program types. Tatsuya, who determined everything including the activation program lineup, was an exception. Most engineers just installed the programs the player wanted onto their CAD. Azusa knew from the players’ profiles that Honoka excelled in illusion magic that used oscillating light waves, but her frank opinion was that illusion magic had no place in this event.

“The Battle Board rules state no player is to magically interfere with another. They do not, however, prohibit hindering an opponent as a result of interfering with the surface of the water.”

“What does that have to do with it…?”

Azusa’s question brought a menacing grin to Tatsuya’s face—and nothing more.

The sixth qualifier race of the girls’ rookie Battle Board competition commenced.

And not a moment later…

Almost the whole audience had to reflexively look away from the course. The surface of the water had sparkled brilliantly, like a camera flash had just gone off.

One of the racers fell into the water. Another one lost her balance and stopped accelerating, while the final one dashed straight out in front.

As though she had predicted the situation—and, in fact, she had been the one to create it in the first place—the racer with the heavily tinted goggles, Honoka, leaped ahead.

Down below, Tatsuya cheered an “all right!” and Azusa looked up at him with a mildly astonished expression.

“…Was this your plan?” asked Miyuki as she took off her sunglasses. Her voice, too, was mildly astonished. (Incidentally, Tatsuya had given the three of them sunglasses before the race started. Miyuki and the others just put them on like he told them to.)

“Well, it’s not technically against the rules…” Shizuku’s voice was somewhat reproachful as well. She probably thought others would say this wasn’t in the spirit of fair play.

But if it had been considerably unfair, they would have given the yellow flag. There was no race-suspending flag waving right now, though. And no red flag, of course, which would have suggested disqualification for the rule-breaking player. That meant the tournament committee had accepted Honoka’s spell and Tatsuya’s tactic as legal.

“…Using an optics spell on the water’s surface? I never would have guessed,” said Azusa with admiration—she was evidently honest about everything.

“When most people think about interfering with the water’s surface, they tend to only think about how to make the water behave differently, like by making waves or whirlpools. But the rules specifically state that you can interfere with other racers by magically interfering with the water’s surface. It would probably be too dangerous to boil it or freeze the entire thing, but I think it’s very strange that nobody else has tried to use flashing.”

Being blinded like that when completely unprepared meant the other racers wouldn’t be able to see again right away. The racers, with their scrambled vision, wouldn’t be able to go full speed down the meandering course, in spite of its mostly gentle curves…and Honoka had already gained a decisive lead on them.

“…And there we have it.”

“…I want to know whose plan that was.”

Mayumi and the others watching via monitor didn’t suffer the same blinding flash thanks to the screen’s light adjustment, but it was still enough for them to calmly acknowledge the ingenuity of it, as well as their own surprise. (Though saying they were “calmly surprised” may have been a strange way of putting it.)

The one to answer Mari’s mumble and Mayumi’s demand was Suzune. “It was Shiba’s, why?”

“What?” Mayumi tilted her head to the side, a little confused. “But Tatsuya’s not even assigned to this event.”

Suzune’s reply may have been a little too polite: “Mitsui was the one who suggested the plan. However, Shiba informed me that he was the one who put it together, including the activation program lineup.”

The fact that she went out of her way to say “including the activation program lineup” indicated that even Suzune herself thought it was exceptional.

“…It’s one thing after another with that kid,” Mari huffed, almost reproachful.

“What’s wrong? You don’t seem to be in a good mood.”

Mari didn’t answer. Her silence, though, spoke volumes about what she was thinking.

“…Tricks like that are important,” remarked Mayumi. “The Old Master said so.” From what Mayumi could see, Mari was mad she hadn’t thought of such a strategy herself. She prided herself on having a rainbow of techniques at her disposal, so this wasn’t funny to her.

“This is a tactic nobody for the past nine years has thought up, so I believe you should simply be impressed.”

“…I am impressed. Doesn’t that get to you, though?”

Suzune’s swift comment had forced Mari to reluctantly admit her jealousy. Though, of course, Suzune had only said what she had because Mari was a tolerant enough person to admit her own faults.

“But isn’t this a one-time-only thing? What will they do for the tournament?” asked Mayumi, even though it wasn’t an answer to Mari’s question.

However—

“I don’t think you have to worry about that. The man isn’t thinking that far ahead.”

“You’re right. This is just an opening move for the next match.”

—Her concerns appeared to be unwarranted.

“Hmm… Maybe this wasn’t a good thing for Honoka…” Tatsuya muttered to Tatsuya himself as he watched the girl cross the finish line, having maintained her lead from the start. Next to him, Miyuki’s features darkened as she looked up at him.

“…What’s wrong?” asked Azusa in hushed tones, hesitant to be overheard given how the two of them were acting.

“Oh, no, I mean…” What she got back were short, stammered words of apology, though Tatsuya didn’t simply ignore the question. “It seems like she could have won this race by pure speed, so…I was just thinking maybe she didn’t need the light flash.”

“Oh… Well, the blinding spell let her take the lead at the start, so wouldn’t that make your plan a success?” Azusa didn’t know what the two of them were getting at, and cocked her head to the side again.

“Standing out like that is going to make the other players wary of her…” Tatsuya said.

“The semifinals have three people in one race,” added Miyuki, “so the next one might end up being two-on-one for her.”

Azusa finally understood what they were worried about. “What, is that all?” she asked with an indifferent laugh.

“‘Is that all’…? I think it’s a pretty significant disadvantage.” But Miyuki’s reservations were met with a cheerful shake of Azusa’s head.

“She didn’t need to do that. All the other schools are already wary of us.”

“I see…”

For a moment, Tatsuya mistook her bright declaration for boasting.

—Only for a moment, however.

He wasn’t so dull that he didn’t realize she meant it as praise for him.

“I won! I won, Tatsuya!”

No sooner had she gotten off the course than Honoka ran straight to Tatsuya in her wet suit and announced her victory. She was practically jumping up and down in glee.

“Uh, yeah. I saw. Congratulations.”

He felt the eyes of not only his teammates but also the staff members from other schools on him. While giving his congratulations, he put his hands up in a calming gesture.

It had the opposite effect.

Somehow, she had misinterpreted it. She tightly grabbed his proffered hands and gave him a look with moist eyes that looked about to cry. “Thank you so much!”

Miyuki never came to him with such a straight display of emotion. And so he stood there dumbly, his decisive lack of experience in this arena biting him in the rear, as Honoka actually started crying.

“I always choke up at the worst time… I’ve almost never won any kind of event like this in an athletic festival or meet or anything!”

That was the first he’d heard of this. If that was true, then they had potentially made a huge miscalculation in their initial assumptions for the rookie team.

But as Tatsuya’s eyes wandered about, wondering what to do, he suddenly saw Shizuku behind Honoka, waving her hands, palms out, at him. She looked like she was trying to tell him that wasn’t true.

With Honoka still holding his hands, Tatsuya looked over to Shizuku, who began moving her lips silently. When she was in elementary school, they read.

Oh, so she’s talking about elementary school… Tatsuya sighed.

“It’s all thanks to you I got through the qualifiers!”

It wasn’t as though she was trying to lie to him, but…this was a bit much for a mental hang-up, in his opinion. He decided not to bring up the fact that Miyuki was staring icicles at him (though the projectiles she was flinging were much sharper than most icicles).

It took a little while before he could get Honoka calmed down again.

Whether in physical competitions or board games, victory is uncertain without drive.

Magic competitions were the same. Watching a teammate perform and getting hyped up to go out there and do your best is a basic psychological system. Victory is a silver bullet for raising morale. However, sometimes drive gives way to excitement, and excitement is directly linked to a loss of direction. An example of this now lay before the girls’ eyes.

“Morisaki finished in second…” Mayumi said, her disappointment implicit.

“…but the other two didn’t make it out of qualifiers,” Mari finished, her disappointment explicit.

The first day of the rookie competition had ended, and the senior officers of First High were gathered in the meeting room. Everyone gave a collective sigh at the boys’ Speed Shooting rankings.

“The boys’ and girls’ results basically canceled each other out…”

“That isn’t quite true,” said Suzune, nullifying Mayumi’s timid remark. She gave her calm analysis. “Third High got first place and fourth place, so the girls still built up a lead for us. And I don’t think negativity is appropriate.” Still, her explanation wasn’t enough to wipe away the air of stagnation from the room.

“…You’re right. We can’t let ourselves be pessimistic. The girls did better than we expected them to. For today, let’s just be content with taking the lead.”

Mari sounded like she was trying to convince herself, but Katsuto disagreed, his face grim. “Shooting wasn’t the only thing the boys did poorly in. Two of our girls made it out of the surfing qualifiers, and only one of the boys.”

“If their slump drags on, we may have trouble next year even if we’re all right this year.”

“You mean they’ll make a habit of losing?”

“It’s possible.”

Katsuto’s remark made both Mari and Mayumi fall silent, their faces hard.

The First High officers, aware their institution topped the magic high schools, were tasked with winning every time. They couldn’t content themselves with idleness, with just making sure this year went well.

“We may need to give the boys some extra support,” remarked Katsuto gravely.

“But what can we even do at this point, Juumonji?” objected Mari.

As she said, it was a little too late. The rookie competition had already started. They couldn’t change out any players or staff members.

Though she urged him for an answer with her eyes, he gave no objection in return. However, when she looked at him, it didn’t seem like he was out of answers. It seemed more like he had his own plans and was opting to keep silent for now.

At long last, tomorrow—actually, at this point, today—would be Miyuki’s debut.

Since the incident with Mari, there had been no instances of sabotage related to the criminal organization Kazama had warned him about, but Tatsuya couldn’t let his guard down. If his guess was correct, the “enemy” would plant their trap directly before the events. He considered the possibility of nighttime sabotage to be low, but there was no harm in staying on his toes. He was up against highly skilled people with plans unknown to him.

He put a tight lock on the systems of the CAD he’d just finished performing final adjustments on. After putting it back into the vault and setting three more locks, he finally left the work truck behind him.

There was nobody around. He couldn’t feel anyone, human or not.

The enemy probably wouldn’t expect this much caution from him. Kazama and his subordinates, the very best of the Independent Magic Battalion, were working with him in the background. Even if the enemy had schemes in mind, he suspected he himself wouldn’t be the target of a direct attack.

Tatsuya didn’t wander around idly, however; he went straight back to the hotel’s side entrance (after a biometrics scan, of course) and to his own room.

Though, as he stood before his door, he noticed something: His only roommates were lifeless machines. So as he stood there in the hallway, this late at night, the long hand on the clock having made more than a full circuit after the previous day’s change, he shouldn’t have felt anything from inside—but he did. And yet, he didn’t hesitate to unlock his door and enter anyway.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Unlike one might expect, the first harsh scolding came from Tatsuya.

Unlike usual, the thing inside his room couldn’t be laughed off.

And even more unusual still, the one on the receiving end of the tongue-lashing felt the same way.

Her shoulders jerked as she quickly rose from her sitting position on the bed. Slowly, timidly, she looked up at his face.

“If you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t be able to concentrate tomorrow. An unexpected mistake could still make you lose,” he reprimanded.

“I’m very sorry!”

Tatsuya’s face indicated his seriousness, and Miyuki burst out with an apology and a bow, sounding ready to cry. Hearing and seeing her this way, it was impossible for Tatsuya to keep up his disciplinarian streak.

“…It’s fine as long as you understand. Come on, I’ll bring you back to your room, all right?”

Perhaps emboldened by his change of tone, Miyuki looked up, resistance in her eyes.

“Miyuki?”

“Tatsuya, just… Do you just have a little time to spare?”

“…Just a little.”

Being stubborn with her would be a waste of time. Tatsuya knew this from experience, so he prompted her to continue with a halfhearted affirmation.

“I heard from Shizuku. You refused the honor of having your name in the Index.”

“Well, not officially.”

“But if they officially asked you, you’d still turn them down.”

“Yeah,” agreed Tatsuya curtly. Miyuki gritted her teeth. She stood there for a few moments, contemplating something.

“…Is it in consideration for our aunt?”

“Yeah.”

A terse and immediate response. Miyuki looked down, trying to stifle tears.

“The National Magic University is extremely effective in its investigations. Mass media runs gossip sites under the guise of news sites, but the university is entirely different. Their investigative levels rival the military’s secret service. Developers of new magic use the university’s data, and they receive special privileges for it. That’s why they all get thoroughly investigated. They want to eliminate the possibility that they’re spies from enemy nations or terrorist groups. It’s nothing like the examination for entering high school. Silver is one thing the Yotsuba are meticulously blocking information on, but it’s pretty likely me using the name Tatsuya Shiba would reveal my connection to the family.”

His voice was a little too cold to serve as consolation for his almost-crying sister, but he explained his reasoning nonetheless. He couldn’t compromise on this, even if it meant making her cry. At the same time, though, he needed to say it to convince himself.

Miyuki kept her head down and remained silent.

Tatsuya felt a mite of relief at not hearing any sobs. “And, I mean, just being in the Nine School Competition carries the risk of them finding out about me, but being named in the Encyclopedia of Magic and taking part in a high school event are completely different. The Yotsubas’ guardian must remain in the shadows. Do you think our aunt would approve of a social outcast being in the limelight?”

Miyuki didn’t say anything. She couldn’t give him any peace of mind, either. That was her answer to his question.

“I don’t have enough strength yet. Someday, one-on-one, defeating Maya Yotsuba, the Queen of the Night, is likely possible. My ‘dismantling’ has a good affinity with her ‘night,’ after all. But even if I managed to defeat our aunt now, I couldn’t overturn the entire Yotsuba family. Military force and violence aren’t enough. Even if we drive our aunt out, someone else with worse plans of manipulation will show up. We have no choice but to obey her for now.”

His words were less to convince his sister and more to convince himself. And after he finished persuading himself of that fact…

Miyuki embraced him.

She buried her near-crying face in his chest; cling would have been the word to use for the situation.

“…I’m on your side.”

“Miyuki…”

“I’ll always be on your side, Tatsuya. The time will come one day. I know it will. Until then, and even after that, I’ll always be on your side.”

“…”

Judging by the hands on the clock, they had spent much more than “just a little” time.

But he decided, wrapping his hands around Miyuki’s back…to let her do as she wanted for just a little bit longer.