Chapter 10

The fifth day of the rookie competition began under a veil of confusion.

There had been an unprecedented rule violation during Monolith Code the day before. First High, which had been rendered unable to continue the match due to injury, normally would have forfeited their remaining two matches, but the competition committee decided to allow the matches to be postponed to let First High enter a substitute team.

Monolith Code used an irregular round-robin system where each school would play four matches in the qualifiers, with the top four teams advancing to the finals tournament. If two teams tied, any victories by forfeit or default due to disqualification would be subtracted from the number of total wins and their results then compared. If there were none of those, whichever had a head-to-head victory would advance to the tournament. Failing that, whichever team had won a match the quickest would advance.

Currently, Third High had four victories, Eighth High had three, while First, Second, and Ninth had two a piece. Ninth High won out over Second High for having a shorter total match time in their two victories, whereas First High had one win by default, meaning their two victories wouldn’t get them into the tournament.

If First High won the special matches today against both Second and Eighth Highs, the ones to advance would be First, Third, Eighth, and Ninth. If they beat Second High and lost to Eighth, it would still be First, Third, Eighth, and Ninth Highs in the tournament. If they lost to Second High and won against Eighth, then First, Second, Third, and Ninth Highs would advance. If they lost to both Second and Eighth Highs, the tournament would contain Second, Third, Eighth, and Ninth Highs.

All in all, the score tally was a little bit strange. The important thing was that if First High beat Second High, then Second High wouldn’t make it out of the qualifiers even though they currently had a lead due to First High’s one default victory. It was only natural that Second High would be very unhappy with the exception being made. Plus, if they won the first match and then didn’t try on the second, Ninth High would probably make a lot of noise about match fixing.

“…So in order to settle everything in a friendly way, we can’t lose either of our two matches…”

“If we’re going out there, we’re going out there to win. No questions asked. If we lost, there would have been no point in having this exception made in the first place.”

“I guess I shouldn’t have been worried.”

That was a conversation between Tatsuya and Mayumi.

All three members of First High’s substitute team being non-registered players was a source of confusion as well. Instead of choosing substitutes from their players representing their top ten in abilities, they had picked one from the technical staff and two complete newcomers. Some speculated First High had Monolith Code specialists up their sleeve, but if they had, they would have just entered them in the one event. Thus, the other schools were having a hard time figuring out what they were planning.

And when the three of them appeared on the field, it only heightened the bewilderment.

“…We stick out like a sore thumb…” mumbled Mikihiko, not quite able to calm down.

Tatsuya understood but put a quick end to that thought. “Any player who comes on the field is bound to draw attention,” he said, feigning ignorance.

“No, not that…” replied Mikihiko, shaking his head and looking over to Leo. “It’s, well, that’s what stands out…”

Leo looked down at his waist, knowing exactly what Mikihiko’s glance meant.

The voices from the seats lent credence to Leo’s guess (though they couldn’t hear them, of course). Their protective suits and helmets were the same as the other schools’ teams.

“A sword? Aren’t direct strikes against the rules?”

However, the presence of the Mini-Communicator did encourage the crowd to start muttering. Less than 10 percent of those in the audience realized the “sword” hanging at his waist was an integrated armament CAD. Even among the players and technical staff, only a few people knew that they even existed. The crowd’s muttering was inevitable.

Plus, the normal way to use an integrated armament CAD was to elevate an actual weapon—the integrated armament—using magic. More slicing power for katanas, more stabbing power for spears, more pure force for blunt weapons, more defense for shields…

Examples of the magic used included High-Frequency Blade, Acceleration, Momentum Increase, Hardening, and Reflector, but each of those was meant to raise one of the weapon’s natural abilities—that’s what made it an integrated armament CAD.

It was a sword, so it should have had a spell to bolster its direct physical attack power, like its slicing or stabbing power. And those familiar with CADs knew that would be against the rules of Monolith Code.

However, Leo wasn’t the only one drawing stares.

“There he is…”

“Yeah. I didn’t think he’d be showing up as a player.”

“Double handgun–style, with a bracelet on his right arm on top of that… Can anyone use three devices to their full potential at the same time?”

“It’s him we’re talking about, though. I doubt it’s a show of force or a bluff. Those specialized types in his left and right leg holsters are long-barreled handguns…”

“So he won’t be using it as a trump card. He’s going to be using both specialized devices at once right from the start. If he just wanted to use magic of different families, he could have just gone with a multi-purpose type…”

“Why don’t you show us why you’re using multiple devices at once, Shiba?”

The eyes of all the schools’ players and staff, symbolizing this conversation between Masaki and Kichijouji, were locked upon Tatsuya—the super-engineer they hated so much for capturing all the top positions in every event he was assigned to. That was what the other school members thought of him; they didn’t know he was a Course 2 student. Tatsuya was drawing caution from the opposing school’s team, too, with his irregular style open for all to see. Nobody was able to laugh at him.

The only exception was none other than the few seats up in the grandstand reserved for First High.

The female freshman athletes were giving passionate cheers, while in contrast, the male freshman athletes stared at him coldly.

There were also cheers for the opposing team…

…and boundless curiosity that dominated all those things.

That was how the match between First High and Eighth High began.

“The forest stage? Against Eighth High?” muttered Mari, her eyes on the monitor display.

“We’d be at a disadvantage…normally, anyway,” answered Mayumi, also watching the screen.

Monolith Code took place on various outdoor stages following certain rules. The Nine School Competition used five stages: forest, crag, grasslands, canyon, and city.

Of all the nine magic high schools, Eighth High put the most effort into outdoor practice. The forest stage was like home turf to them. The stages were supposedly selected by a program that generated random numbers, but now, for this special match, the team that would have gotten away with a default victory had been given an advantageous stage. It was hard not to have doubts about it being deliberate.

…Still, Mayumi, Mari, and the other officers gathered in their tent weren’t very worried. The First High execs were all well aware that Tatsuya received private training from Yakumo Kokonoe the ninjutsu user. An environment with a lot of obstacles, like the forest stage, was essentially the best place to use ninjutsu. That was common sense for them.

Still, for the other schools that didn’t know the truth, it was a huge miscalculation. Between the two start positions, where the monoliths were set up, was a distance of half a mile. They would need to run that distance, weaving between trees and brush, with their protection suits, helmets, and CADs equipped. It would take five minutes at the very least. Not to mention that they’d probably advance while being cautious of the enemy. Even if there were no battles on the way, it could easily take twice as long.

…But on the contrary, a battle broke out near Eighth High’s monolith before five minutes had even passed.

Cameras to detect rule violations were always on all the players, and their video feeds were up on the big displays in front of the grandstand. With all the things getting in the way on this stage, the audience had to rely on them.

Right now, one big display hanging in the air showed Tatsuya from behind, having just leaped out in front of an Eighth High defender.

“So fast…!” muttered Kichijouji.

“Self-acceleration?” answered Masaki in the form of a question, his eyes fixed on the display.

The figure was only in the image for a moment; in the next, he was outside the frame.

Now in the picture was the defender on one knee.

The picture changed angles to show Tatsuya running around the right side of the defender and sprinting toward the monolith.

“No, it doesn’t look like he’s using magic to move… Wait!”

The defender pointed his CAD’s muzzle at Tatsuya. Tatsuya’s previous attack seemed to do no more than cause the enemy to break posture.

The handgun-shaped specialized CAD with a shortened barrel section expanded an activation program. A moment later, the screens doing the psion visualization processing showed the Eighth High player’s expanded activation program being blown away by a quickly expanding nonphysical shock wave—a psionic explosion.

A moment ago, Tatsuya had been holding a CAD in his left hand. From what people could see from behind him, his right hand had been empty. But now, in the image, he was running while pointing the CAD muzzle in his right hand at the defender.

“When did he…?!” asked Masaki, unable to manage the pull it out part of the sentence.

Kichijouji replied, though it didn’t answer the question. “Could that have been…Program Demolition?”

“Program Demolition?!”

With only a cursory glance to the defender, who was now standing in a daze after his activation program was destroyed, Tatsuya went in front of the monolith and pulled the trigger in his right hand.

After seeing the key Tatsuya fired activating, and the enemy’s monolith splitting in two, Honoka clapped and jumped up. “He did it! The monolith opened!”

But Shizuku, next to her, frowned in puzzlement. “…That’s strange.”

“What is, Shizuku?” asked Eimi from among the cluster of freshman girls there.

“The monolith is open, so why is he retreating?”

She was right. Tatsuya didn’t approach the monolith to read its code. Instead, he switched direction and ran into the shadows of the trees.

“You’re right,” replied Eimi. “Miyuki, what do you think?”

“Even my brother would have trouble entering five hundred twelve characters with the enemy pestering him.”

Victory in Monolith Code was achieved by either knocking out all the enemies or by transmitting the 512 characters hidden inside the monolith to the referee’s seat. The clamshell-shaped wearable keyboard on his left arm was a terminal for entering in that code and transmitting it. Tatsuya may have been a quick typist, but putting in 512 characters on a hard-to-use setup would still take some time.

“Oh… I guess this is the first time I’ve seen someone use the key before the defense was disabled.”

As Shizuku mumbled out what sounded like an excuse, the Eighth High defender ran after Tatsuya, into the brush.

“Wait… Was that…?”

Mari might have been the most shocked at the anti-magic Tatsuya used.

As she croaked out words as if out of breath, Mayumi, next to her, spoke in an oddly unemotional voice. “Program Demolition… I had a hunch, but I guess he can use it…”

“Mayumi, you know what he just did?!” demanded Mari, almost about to grab hold of her.

Mayumi glanced at her, then looked back at the screen. “Program Demolition rams a cluster of compressed psionic particles directly into a target without going through the Idea, and thereby explodes the particles. It blasts away any psion information bodies it attaches itself to that contain magical information, like activation programs or magic programs. It’s called Program Demolition because it does just that: it demolishes magical programs.

“I say magic, but it’s just a cannonball of psions that don’t have any event-altering effects like magic programs do, so Information Boost and Area Interference won’t affect it. Plus, the pressure applied by the cannonball itself repels the effects of Cast Jamming. It has no physical effect at all, so it just goes straight through any obstacles. And then it blows up any magic being triggered at the target coordinates. You can eventually nullify it by meeting it with a very strong psionic flow or by creating a defense with many layers of psionic walls.

“But other than its short range, it has no flaws. It’s a typeless spell, said to be the strongest anti-magic out of anything practical…but almost nobody can use it. I know I can’t. You’re not messing up the spell; you’re blasting it away. I can’t create that kind of pressure with my psionic retention capacity. It’s a superhuman feat.”

“…So it’s like a big muscle-head swinging around a hammer and wrecking buildings with it?”

Mayumi had to laugh at the roundabout analogy. “I see you’re still calm enough to say such mean things, Mari. But you’re basically right. After his bout with Hanzou, I decided that Tatsuya was one of those magicians who liked to stay very technical and delicate with his skills…but I guess he’s actually more like a really powerful warrior.”

“Then that accident we ran into on the way here…?”

“That’s probably it. I didn’t see it, but you did, right? Someone blew away at least ten overlapping magic programs while it was happening in one attack… How high is his psionic retention capacity, anyway?”

For their formation, Eighth High had gone with one defender and two attackers. The two attackers had split to the left and right to advance. One of them finally made it to First High’s main base.

“Oh, no, Tatsuya! You need to hurry!”

“You can do it, Leo!”

First High’s main base—where their monolith was set up—was placed in direct view of the cheering seats. As Erika and Mizuki watched, Leo, stationed in front of the monolith, pulled out the sword at his waist.

The attacker came out of the shadows of the trees. In his hand was the same specialized CAD as his teammates—he was clearly aiming to take down Leo, the defender, before going to open the monolith.

Then, two things happened at once:

The attacker pointed his CAD at Leo, and Leo swung his armament device, the Mini-Communicator, in a horizontal slash.

“He got him!”

“He’s good!”

Mizuki and Erika both cheered.

The metal sheet flying in a horizontal arc, straight through the cluster of trees, struck the Eighth High player with force and sent him toppling to the ground. Leo, who had been standing in the perfect position to attack past those trees, had found the attacker in the exact spot he wanted, then slammed him with the detached blade.

The blade came hurtling back, recombining with the sword and returning it to normal. Leo looked up at the sky, then fired the blade in his hands straight overhead and stopped it high in the air.

“Warriooooooor!”

With a shout, he swung the blade down. It traveled with appropriate angular velocity and delivered the finishing blow to the fallen Eighth High player.

“What was that?” asked Suzune. She hadn’t raised her voice, but it sounded like there was a nick in the blade of her usual coolness.

The one to answer was Azusa, who had been up last night helping him adjust it, and thus knew about it. “That’s the Mini-Communicator, an armament device and original spell that Shiba developed,” she explained. “An armament device and an original spell of the same name… How on earth does it work?”

Suzune nodded. “I see. That’s a novel idea. The system seems a bit slipshod for something Shiba made, though.”

“Slipshod?” repeated Azusa, seemingly confused.

Suzune answered as if carefully giving instructions. “Yes. This spell is extremely limited by the user’s physical characteristics and the environment it can be used in.”

The third Eighth High player was wandering through the woods. This was called the forest stage, but they obviously weren’t using the forests at Mount Fuji. It was an artificial hilly area constructed on part of the maneuvering grounds that they’d moved trees into—a training field, and nothing more. In the half century since transplanting them here, they’d become native to the area. Still, a half-mile-long forest wasn’t something one could get lost in.

But right now, he really had lost track of where he was.

“Damn it, where the hell am I?! Stop sneaking around! Show yourself!” he hollered, his irritation on clear display as he activated a spell that would erase ultrasonic waves. By themselves, they weren’t that powerful; at most, they would give you a minor ringing in your ears.

But this ringing was really bothering him for some reason. His helmet was general-purpose gear used in the army, but it mainly protected one’s head from impact and pressure. It didn’t keep gas or sound out at all. It left his face out in the open, too, with several small holes at each ear for him to hear out of.

If he came under sonic attack, he’d have to protect himself with his own magic power. He returned the CAD, which matched his teammates’, to his holster, then took a spare terminal-shaped, portable multipurpose CAD out of his pouch. His plan had been to fight the ultrasonic waves intermittently assailing him while making his way toward the enemy monolith.

But no matter how far he went, he never came across the enemy base.

There was something he hadn’t realized. A super-low frequency sound was mixed in with the super-high frequency sound. While he was preoccupied solely with the latter, the former was disturbing his semicircular canals. With limited vision, he had to keep turning left and right to see around him. And because the organs that allowed him to keep track of his direction were disturbed, he was in a state where he couldn’t get an accurate handle on what direction he was going.

If he’d known he had lost his sense of direction, he could have chosen to look at a compass. But he hadn’t realized how his senses had been thrown off—plus, he was in an artificial environment he couldn’t imagine getting lost in, making it hard for him to correct himself.

He had been caught in a snare created by his own opinion.

The one who’d created the trap was Mikihiko.

The spirit magic: Echoing Labyrinth.

The target wouldn’t be able to locate the caster, even if they wanted to counterattack, because their sense of direction was screwed up. Actually, he probably couldn’t have found Mikihiko even if his sense of direction had been working fine.

Mikihiko was using spirits—information bodies separate from physical forms—as a medium to conduct this sonic attack. Even if the player figured out the magic’s source, he would find only spirits wandering there.

It was a stealth technique that kept the caster from being discovered. This was exactly what Tatsuya valued in spirit magic: the element of surprise.

As he tailed the Eighth High player, who was trying to advance but was actually retreating, he decided it was time to move to the next phase of the plan.

Now that he’d pulled the defender away from his monolith and lured him into the woods, Tatsuya considered which plan to take: take him out or coordinate with the others? Taking the defender out would get him out of the picture long enough for Tatsuya himself to input the code. But if he wanted to coordinate, he would continue stringing the defender along by running around, and then Mikihiko would input the code.

He thought for only a moment before deciding to eliminate him. He pulled out his left CAD, pointed it at the ground, and pulled the trigger. The motion activated a weight-decreasing spell, and he lightly jumped off the ground over the trees. Now that he’d used magic, his opponent should have figured out where he was. The usage of magic created an unavoidable reaction in the nearby eidos. Following the ripple of that effect allowed a magician to locate where the caster had been at the time they’d activated the spell. Experienced magicians could even tell what type of magic had been used, but would the Eighth High player be able to figure out he’d used a weak weight-decreasing spell? Even if he could figure out the type, could he predict that Tatsuya had used it to jump above the tree cover?

—That would actually be better for Tatsuya.

He was jumping from tree branch to tree branch without using magic. Furthermore, he was almost perfectly preventing the recoil from showing on the trees when his legs sprung off them, too.

Sure enough, the Eighth High defender stopped at the point Tatsuya had jumped from. He looked up.

His back now turned, Tatsuya pulled the trigger in his right hand.

The big displays doing the psion visualization processing showed a typeless magic psi-wave overtaking the Eighth High defender. He wobbled a bit, then crumpled to the ground.

“…I bet that was Resonance. The typeless one.”

“He resonated the psi-wave with his biological wave motion and took him down.”

Kichijouji nodded at Masaki’s words. “It looks like his right-hand device is for typeless magic, and his left-hand device is for weight magic.”

“George…doesn’t his typeless magic seem strangely like old magic?”

“You think so, too, Masaki? Shugendo…or maybe ninjutsu. Biological wave motion—I think old magic calls that ki. It looks like a magic system that specializes in controlling it.”

“I don’t think even people who do old magic call it ki anymore. That sounds too phony.”

“Huh? It’s not like you to berate people on taste, Masaki.”

The Eighth High defender hadn’t completely lost his ability to move, though. He was at least conscious. But right now, he didn’t have the leg strength to chase Tatsuya.

Tatsuya leaned down on a branch and used it like a spring to take a big leap. He faced down, pulled the trigger in his left hand, and then hit the ground running without even seeming to land first. In the blink of an eye, he made it to the monolith.

The screens in the tents displayed Tatsuya opening the clamshell cover and smoothly typing in the code.

Mayumi heard cries from afar, coming from Eighth High’s cheer squad, and for some reason glanced at Mari.

Mari was looking at her, too. “…They won.”

“…They did.”

This meant they’d be advancing to the finals tournament. For some reason, though, they didn’t feel like waving both hands in the air and celebrating.

After the code was sent, the match-ending siren went off. Before the First High flag got all the way in the air, those in the school’s cheer squad were going crazy.

“They won! They won!!”

“That was amazing! Totally amazing! It was flawless, a flawless victory!”

“Congratulations, Miyuki!”

“Your brother did it!”

The high-pitched, excited voices were all coming from the freshman girls.

They acted like they’d already won the championship.

In the general attendance seats there was a slightly more subdued mood of celebration.

“Phew… This is bad for my heart.”

“Why? Tatsuya and Leo and Yoshida are all unhurt.”

“Well, I was just worried about everyone but Tatsuya…”

“Huh? What were you worried about?”

“I mean… Well, a few things,” replied Erika, tripping over her words for some reason.

Mizuki cocked her head to the side. “You’re being weird, Erika.”

Erika had ten or twenty things to say to Mizuki calling her weird, but she didn’t make a point of making her friends distressed for no reason, so she decided to let Mizuki treat her like a weirdo for now.

The next match would be in thirty minutes and it would pit First High against Second. The interval felt short, but for Masaki and Kichijouji, who would be playing First High later today (or at least, were convinced of such), it was nothing to worry about. First High’s players getting worn out was actually something to be happy about, but such a thought was of the corrupting sort. Masaki consciously drove it from his mind.

They hadn’t announced yet what the next stage would be. Still in the stands after the previous match, Masaki spoke to Kichijouji sitting in the seat next to him. “What did you think of that match?”

“You’re not asking about the match in general, are you? You’re talking about him.”

“Yeah. How would you attack him, George?”

“I get the feeling he’s really used to fighting. The way he moves, the way he predicts what others will do, his positioning… I think we should be more worried about his combat technique than his magic abilities.”

“Well, what about his magic abilities, then?”

“I mean…Program Demolition did surprise me, but…he got a free shot with Resonance at the player’s back, but it still didn’t knock him unconscious. Maybe there’s something about that we can exploit.”

“Hmm…”

“Come to think of it,” Kichijouji continued, “at the beginning, I think he used a weight spell to ruin that other player’s sense of balance. He probably wanted to knock him down entirely, but then he only went down on one knee. Even the gravity-decreasing spell the First High guy used to jump into the trees wasn’t strong enough to actually push him to the top. Maybe he can’t actually use very strong magic? Maybe he’s used to using really advanced devices and can’t use his full power with low-spec ones.”

“That could be it. He has so much skill at arranging programs, he’s probably always used hardware tuned up to match. It’s very possible that he hasn’t gotten used to the low-spec devices in the competition, since his substitution was so sudden.”

“Well, we don’t know why, but do we need to? Just looking at his magical power, I don’t think we need to be afraid of anything but Program Demolition. What we really need to be on guard for is his tricks, like what he did to the Eighth High defender at the end.”

“…You mean there’s nothing to fear from a totally frontal fight?” Masaki asked.

“I don’t think so. The question is how we force him into a straight fight… If we can do that, you’ll win a hundred percent of the time. For example, if we get the grasslands stage, there’s every probability that we’ll win.”

Mikihiko, in the First High waiting room waiting for the next match, was fidgeting, standing up and sitting down restlessly.

“Mikihiko…why don’t you relax a little?” Leo asked, lightly swinging around the Mini-Communicator to get a better handle on its weight now that Tatsuya had adjusted it post-match.

“Leo…you’re so energetic. I mean…we don’t see the people in these classes regularly.”

Leo looked him over, wondering what he was on about. But Mikihiko’s desperate answer caused Miyuki to giggle charmingly.

“Yoshida, you’re more shy around strangers than I thought,” she said, as she stood behind Tatsuya. He was sitting in a chair, leaning over its back as she gave him a shoulder massage. She turned her amused, radiant smile on Mikihiko.

“I actually think his attitude is normal,” offered Tatsuya. “Boys our age are the shy sort, Miyuki.”

“Oh, Tatsuya. You’ve never once shown me any shyness.”

Tatsuya opened his closed eyes slightly, bent his head back, and looked up at her from below. She gave a high-pitched giggle, all the while gently massaging her brother’s shoulders with her long, pale, delicate fingers.

Sure, I may be a little shy around strangers!

But looking at the two of you is more embarrassing than that!

…Mikihiko couldn’t say that, though. He was worldly-wise enough not to.

It was then that the partition in the tent’s canvas (which wasn’t actually made from hemp but rather a twenty-first-century, high-tech cloth) folded over and Mayumi and Azusa entered. As soon as they saw the siblings, they froze, and Azusa’s face went beet red. Mayumi’s didn’t, but she looked at Tatsuya like he was a slightly dirty stray dog.

“…I feel like I’m being badly criticized right now. Or mocked,” said Tatsuya bluntly, sitting up straight.

“Just your imagination,” replied Mayumi, before looking away and clearing her throat. For his part, Tatsuya had already stood up by the time she looked back at him.

He…really seems like a soldier, she found herself thinking.

He had assumed a pose with his legs slightly apart, his back straight, and his hands clasped behind his back—and it seemed very natural. She felt there was nothing out of place about it on him: no nervousness, no stiffness, no attempt to act cool.

Thanks to that, her own behavior began to strike her as quite childish. “…Really, it’s nothing.” As a result, even that unnecessary assertion made her hate herself a little just for saying it. She needed to get to the point. “I just wanted to tell you that they decided what stage the next match will be on.”

“You came all this way to tell us? Thank you very much,” said Tatsuya, bowing a little in gratitude, while inquiring with his eyes.

“You’ll be in the city stage.”

The answer was so unexpected that it took Tatsuya a few seconds to reply. “…After what just happened yesterday?”

“The stages are randomly selected. It won’t take things like that into account.”

“I see…” It was actually impressive, how far they were going with this, given how obvious it was. Tatsuya didn’t mention it, however. “I’m finished adjusting our CADs, so we’ll go over there right away.”

“Good work,” said Mayumi, nodding.

Leo and Mikihiko had already finished getting ready. They had their protective suits back on—they’d only shirked the upper portion previously—and still had their helmets; it was all they needed. Meanwhile, Tatsuya slid his arms through his jacket sleeves and made sure the zipper and clasp were done up firmly.

Just as he finished buckling his holsters and placing the CADs in them, Azusa spoke up: “Umm, Shiba…?”

“What is it?”

“Saijou’s device… What will you do with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…with being inside rooms, and having staircases that stick out of buildings, won’t it be hard to use the Mini-Communicator? The spell just makes the blade float in the air—doesn’t its power depend on how strong the person swinging it is? The blade is stretched out, so he can swing it at the same speed as the base, which is good…but without the space to swing it, he can’t build up enough energy to take someone down, so…”

“Ichihara said that, didn’t she?” With the rest of her story brilliantly seen through, Azusa turned red again, this time for a different reason. “Just the sort of accurate analysis I’ve come to expect from her…but you don’t need to worry. Even inside rooms, there’s enough space to swing a long sword. He may not be able to use a thirty-foot sword, but he can use a three-foot one.”

Tatsuya glanced at Leo, who nodded confidently back.

First High versus Second High: In the face of the accident yesterday, each team’s monolith was positioned in a room on the third floor of a five-floor building. The sheer audacity of not taking responsibility for or admitting to past mistakes once again reminded Tatsuya that, from a business viewpoint, Magic University was a bureaucratic organization, too.

—Of course, certain parts of yesterday’s “accident” didn’t seem like a mistake or the responsibility of the tournament committee.

Besides, Tatsuya personally found it more convenient to have the monolith hidden away like this rather than it being placed way out in the open, so he certainly wasn’t about to complain.

Right now, he was hiding out on the top floor of the building that housed Second High’s monolith. He’d overtaken them with his technique, slipped past their detection, rounded the buildings, and then jumped from rooftop to rooftop without using magic. He’d gotten this close without the defender even realizing it.

Slipping from building shadow to building shadow while staying hidden meant that it had taken a decent amount of time to get here. Even though they’d advance to the finals tournament if they lost, the tournament would have first place in the qualifiers face fourth place, and second face third. Facing Third High in the semifinals versus facing them in the finals held completely different meanings. He’d left Mikihiko behind to give Leo backup this time, but Tatsuya decided he didn’t have much time left. “Mikihiko, can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Tatsuya.”

The usage of communication devices was not prohibited in Monolith Code matches, but not many schools used them. It was easy with today’s technology to figure out where the electric signals were coming from even if you couldn’t decode their contents.

And with only three members to a team, if they got so far apart that they needed to use a communicator, it would be mostly impossible to do any meaningful coordination. So normally, there was no need to use one.

However, there was a good reason Tatsuya was using one now. “I’m going. Figure out where the monolith is.”

“Can’t go much longer here. Hurry!”

“Got it.” That meant they were already in combat. Tatsuya tapped the bracelet on his right wrist and activated a summoning spell.

With a shout, Leo slashed his Mini-Communicator horizontally.

The small metal piece sixteen inches long and eight inches wide—the other part of the blade—flew in an arc toward the Second High player. Using physical strength to make up for the blade’s lack of weight, Leo swept out the attacker’s legs.

The player toppled to the ground. If this had been actual combat, Leo’s next move would be to run to him, step on him, and deliver the finishing blow, but Monolith Code rules prohibited hand-to-hand combat.

“Mikihiko!”

Leo, knowing his classmate couldn’t physically hear him, sent him a signal through the spirit Mikihiko had “watching” them somewhere in this room.

The reply came in the form of ball lightning materializing in the air. The electric attack struck the downed Second High player.

But Leo didn’t have the time to revel in having taken down a single person. He detected a movement spell being cast on his body by someone else, and quickly shouted, “Halt!”

Using the microphone affixed to his helmet, he triggered the voice recognition switch on his left-arm CAD. He was using two CADs at the same time—parallel casting—but the spells were of the same type, so there was no interference to prevent it from activating.

Fortunately—at least, in this case—his personal CAD was made with sturdiness and mechanical reliability in mind, and was a pre–second-generation device in terms of activation program expansion abilities. That meant it fell within the restrictions for the Nine School Competition. Tatsuya didn’t particularly like the ambiguity and lag time that came with a voice-recognition function, but given the situation, it was better he use something he was familiar with. Thus he’d simply (heavily) modified the activation programs already installed on it; Leo’s personal CAD still worked the same way as always.

And just as intended, despite his CAD being completely behind the times, Leo’s spell to block the enemy’s movement magic attack made it in time.

Using the place he was standing—the connection between the bottoms of his shoes and the floor—as a reference point, his spell stabilized the relative coordinates between his body and that point. You could call it an application of the spell Mari had used in Battle Board, but it was more like a downgrade. Unlike her spell, which was set up to allow freedom of movement while remaining relatively fixed to the board, the “stabilization” magic Leo had just used made the unmovable floor the reference point and stopped his entire body from moving. The spell lasted for only a moment.

But despite it being such a massive downgrade, he made it in time to cancel it out, and it held, even when the enemy’s spell was active.

This building had probably been designed to be a school.

Gazing into the hallway through broken interior windows, he could see the second enemy player going past.

Leo pulled his right hand back like he was going to thrust, but by the time he was ready, the enemy was already gone.

Carefully approaching the remaining attacker—the previously downed one, who was occasionally twitching—Leo removed his adversary’s helmet. According to the tournament rules, a player whose helmet was taken by an enemy was forbidden from continuing in the event.

Well, that’s one down, he thought to himself, knowing nobody would hear it. I’m counting on you, Tatsuya. I can’t hold out much longer here.

Tatsuya’s summoning spell energized the spirit that was already attached to him. He couldn’t use spirit magic; he could only sense the energized independent information bodies, not control them. Modern magic used false information created by a magician to overwrite the information bodies accompanying events; it wasn’t meant to control the information bodies themselves. He could, however, activate a summoning spell, the foundation of spirit magic.

His artificially created, virtual magic calculation region had been constructed in the conscious regions of his brain. Because of that, if he had a magic program described by an activation program, it didn’t matter what kind of magic it was—he could consciously decipher the activation program that was the blueprint for that magic program. That was why he was able to do it: All he was doing was building a magic program with that information and projecting it.

It wasn’t on the same level as actually using magic. He was simply imitating the magical activation process and nothing more. But if the necessary information was recorded in it, it didn’t matter whether it was an imitation; the effects would manifest throughout the recorded scope.

The unenergized spirit Mikihiko had attached to Tatsuya had now been reenergized by Tatsuya’s spell. This immediately created a link between it and its “master,” Mikihiko. Tatsuya couldn’t control spirits, but in this case, he didn’t need to. Because, in a sense, his job had been to bring this spirit linked to Mikihiko into the enemy’s base.

The spell had probably tipped off the defender to his presence. Tatsuya wanted him to leave the monolith and come running up to this floor.

He moved, stepping quietly.

Mikihiko knew that Tatsuya had successfully performed the summoning after having been called by the spirit “contracted” to him. Seriously, why are you a Course 2 student, Tatsuya…? he thought, in the back of his mind, while focusing on the distant spirit.

In actuality, physical distance didn’t mean very much for magic. The Idea, the giant magic platform, didn’t contain a concept of physical distance at all. Normally, the only thing that would be influenced by distance was typeless magic, the sort that fired psions directly, without going through the Idea first.

Humans, however, are restricted by their five senses and by their experience. When something is physically far away, a human will think of it as far away. That consciousness of the distance was what magical “distance” really was. The more distant the caster was aware of something being, the more difficult it was to successfully cast a spell there. So the secret to casting spell at a distance was to feel that the target was close by.

In that respect, spirit magic could use communication with spirits—a transmission of intent—to make one’s spirit feel as though it were near something the caster was not. Spirit magic could be called magic that easily overcame physical distance.

—As it was doing now.

I see it.

Vision Synchronization.

Instead of drawing spirits near to read the information recorded within them, he used a link through the Idea from a spirit already under his influence to garner real-time information; that was known as spirit magic’s Sense Synchronization. By restricting that information to only the visual sort, he could get a clearer image: That would be Vision Synchronization.

By manipulating independent information bodies of current atmospheric phenomena—spirits from the wind family—Mikihiko easily discovered the position of the enemy monolith.

But now was where things really started. As he maintained two links, one to the enemy base and one he attached to Leo, he said to Tatsuya, “I found it.”

That was fast… He found it already? As Tatsuya leisurely reflected on how convenient spirit magic was, he kept his muscles as tense as he possibly could.

After all, he was currently hanging from a ceiling.

This building imitated a structure being either taken down or put up, because the air-conditioning pipes were wide-open across the ceilings. Tatsuya had grabbed hold of one of them and looked down at the Second High defender passing by, treading carefully as he checked left and right.

He’d probably heard Mikihiko’s voice over the radio, but it didn’t seem to make him think he should look up.

No, thought Tatsuya. As far as he could tell, the defender was suffering from tension-induced tunnel vision right now. His breathing was a little ragged, too, like he’d dashed up the staircase.

He didn’t seem like he was very fit to be on defense, but any positional mistakes by the enemy were a good thing for Tatsuya and his team. Empathizing would be hypocrisy here.

Tatsuya considered letting him pass, but instead, he let go of his support with both hands, and pulled out the CAD on his right hip in midair. As he touched down, he pulled the trigger.

His opponent didn’t even get the chance to look behind him.

The spell he’d just used was a simple psionic shock wave. It would induce the illusion of a concussion for just a few seconds, rendering the player unable to fight for that time. Those few seconds would be a decisive advantage in actual combat, but this was a sporting event in which direct attacks were against the rules. Confirming out of the corner of his eye that the enemy player had fallen over, he began to run to directly above the point Mikihiko had given him.

It was only two rooms away; it didn’t even take him ten seconds. He felt the defender finally beginning to move as he pointed his CAD straight down. Each floor in this building was about ten feet from floor to ceiling. From the fifth floor to the third floor was within thirty-three feet.

He pulled the trigger.

Tatsuya felt the slight recoil from the eidos alteration. Just to be sure, he went down the opposite staircase from where he’d come.

His senses attuned to the spirits, Mikihiko looked at the code written inside the monolith. He moved his viewpoint. Leo still hadn’t engaged the enemy yet.

Praying for just a little bit of luck, in accordance with the visual information being sent to him by the spirit, Mikihiko began typing in the code to his wearable keyboard.

As the match-ending siren wailed, Tatsuya continued to run from the defender’s Windcut spell while Leo was about to launch an all-or-nothing assault with the monolith at his back.

“Phew,” sighed Mayumi in satisfaction. “That was a positively thrilling match.”

“This guy…” replied Mari disagreeably. “He was just fooling around at the end, wasn’t he?”

“Huh? He was?”

“He could have dodged that attack easily,” Mari rebuked, scowling. “Why didn’t he just go take the guy down?”

“I don’t think he could have even if he wanted to,” Mayumi replied calmly.

“Why not? He used Resonance in the last match. It even took Hattori down.”

“That’s because the competition CAD’s hardware isn’t good enough to process that spell. Even in the last match, it didn’t completely take the player out of the running, remember? We pushed this role on Tatsuya yesterday. He only had one night to prepare for this, and in that one night, he adjusted Saijou’s CAD, he adjusted Yoshida’s CAD, and thought of a plan to bring out the best in both of them. I know it’s irritating because you have a high opinion of him, but don’t you think you’re being a little irresponsible by having such high hopes for him without giving him the proper time to prepare?”

“I…I guess so,” said Mari apologetically, shaking her head firmly. But suddenly she stopped. “By the way, Mayumi…”

“Hmm? What is it?” Mayumi steeled herself, sensing a potentially spiteful retaliation coming her way.

But that probably played right into Mari’s hands. “You know, you sure do make a point of defending him.”

“Huh? N-no, I…”

“And now you’re blushing, too. Well…even you’re gonna have a tough uphill battle ahead of you with that sister complex…”

“That isn’t it at all!”

Mari’s doubts were left unsettled thanks to that quintessential teenage-girl derailment (though calling it that might be misleading), but elsewhere in the stands, another person was expressing the same kind of dissatisfaction, though with different grounds for the complaint.

“In the end, the only spells he used were Program Demolition, Resonance, Phantom Blow, and weighting magic… I understand why he didn’t use Dismantle, but no flash casting or Elemental Sight? Seems like cutting corners to me…”

“He has reasons he needs to keep secret. You know that, Doctor.”

“Still, Fujibayashi… I suppose flash casting is one thing, but random nearby magicians wouldn’t be able to tell what he’d done if he used Elemental Sight.”

Medical Major Yamanaka and Second Lieutenant Fujibayashi of the Independent Magic Battalion were currently having a fairly meddling conversation. If anyone had known who they were, they would have jumped in surprise to hear it, because the two were wearing inconspicuous summer clothing to blend in. At first glance they seemed like a couple—or perhaps, a doctor and his nurse (they’d accepted whatever misunderstandings her calling him “doctor” might create)—and any fragmentary, unfamiliar terms anyone nearby heard were assumed to be psychology terminology and promptly ignored.

“Even still, if his movements gave away that he could see things he shouldn’t be able to, it would raise suspicion with anyone attentive. Elemental Sight is less a perception-type spell and more a strange ability. Depending on how he used it, it might garner even more attention than Dismantle would.”

The Elemental Sight they were discussing was an ability Tatsuya had to perceive the Idea “background.”

Modern magic, with its four families and eight types, projected a magic sequence on to various information bodies via the Idea, the dimension information bodies lived in.

This meant that a magician who used modern magic had the ability to access the dimension via code, so, at the end of the day, Tatsuya’s ability to consciously sense that dimension’s very existence could be seen as a simple expansion of the regular ability.

However…the effects brought about by that “expansion” were massive.

Because as long as something existed with a physical form, it would create an information body footprint in our dimension.

Information brought by support systems like the five senses or clairvoyance—which itself was no more than an expansion of one’s perception of the physical—didn’t designate coordinates for the excited information bodies that made magic. But with this ability, one could be conscious of an information body group and aim directly.

The only things that could escape Elemental Sight’s aim were things that didn’t exist.

In passing, the Japanese name assigned for the spell was actually a mistranslation. It stuck, though, and led to the name becoming expert terminology whose original meaning had been lost.

Elemental Sight originally referred to the power to see the elements—in this case, the four symbolic elements represented by classical theory.

However, the scholar who originally translated this term mistook the meaning of the word elemental for that of an elemental spirit. Because of that, the Japanese name for Elemental Sight ended up being spirit sight. Of course, there were many people who noticed the mistake, but it ended up being left alone because it sounded more magical in nuance than its correct alternative.

This sort of mistranslation was just another obstacle that served to further separate experts from everyone else…but the fact that nobody wanted to correct it was worrying at best and reprehensible at worst.

But getting back to the main subject…

Yamanaka already understood what Fujibayashi was telling him. Elemental Sight was another of the sort of skill that you’d expect to be confidential, like Mist Dispersion was.

Still, it would take more than that to convince him. “I suppose we may be just as guilty for telling him not to display his skill, but…”

They hadn’t simply—or rather, purely—come to cheer for Tatsuya. The boy was more than strong enough mentally not to reveal techniques that should never be seen, even under duress. Yamanaka, Fujibayashi, Kazama, Sanada, and Yanagi were all confident about that. Still, there was always a chance. A one-in-a-thousand accident—a confidential spell being used in a public environment—would demand immediate action. That was why they were watching Tatsuya’s match.

So Yamanaka was right—they weren’t in a position to criticize the Yotsuba, who were secretive to begin with. Even if he would have liked to see Tatsuya get serious and show off even a little bit of his true skill.

“But I do think he’ll end up having to use flash casting. He may be strong, but he’ll need more than just a low-spec CAD to go up against the likes of the Prince and the Cardinal,” concluded Fujibayashi, as if to soothe the doctor’s mental discord.

But not everyone watching had their eyes solely on Tatsuya. In fact, most of the audience was watching Leo, who had shown off a never-before-seen armament, and in a flashy battle to boot.

And though they were few, some in the crowd were paying attention to Mikihiko as well, as he accurately used Clairvoyance to see the 512-character code from a distance. Not all of them were ignorant of the mechanism behind Clairvoyance; one of them, in fact, was a childhood friend who knew all about it.

“Come on, Miki… You’re doing it just like you used to!”

“Huh? What’s he doing ‘just like he used to’?” Mizuki asked Erika. She’d been muttering something to herself intently.

Erika gave her a vague answer as her mind sunk deeper into her own world. She understood what Mikihiko had just done. Her relationship with him was deeper than she let on, and frankly, deeper than she told herself it was.

Sense Synchronization was by no means a simple technique, but back before the accident, the “boy genius” Mikihiko could do it as easily as breathing. But ever since the accident, he’d never been able to use magic this smoothly.

Huh… His scars have already healed. Sometimes she would hear sentimental lines like “Physical wounds heal, but mental ones never do,” but in real life there were physical wounds that would heal and ones that wouldn’t. So in the same way, there should be some mental scars that didn’t heal and some that did.

Miki…do you see it? You’re using magic today the same way you used to.

Erika didn’t have the ability to distinguish spirits. Her eyes couldn’t see them. So she couldn’t be completely sure if spirit magic worked or not, but she was a daughter of the Chiba, so she had very well-polished personal combat skills instead.

To a certain extent, she could tell just from a person’s tiny gestures, eye movements, and changes in expression when a person used magic, what they used it on, and whether it succeeded or failed.

Her eyes as a daughter of the Chiba, the “eyes of the swordsman,” perceived that Mikihiko’s magic had gone off the way he’d wanted it to.

Seriously, this is getting on my nerves… Why don’t you see it? You’re already back on your feet.

Right now, Mikihiko’s strength had returned, but his confidence hadn’t. His casual expression was something she understood, and she understood it because of all the experiences they had shared since they were children, when they were forced together and followed each other around.

Now, all he had to do was get his confidence back. He just had to believe in himself…

“…Erika? What’s wrong? Erika!”

“Huh? What?”

“Don’t ‘huh, what’ me. What’s wrong? You suddenly got lost in thought. Are you worried about something?”

“Huh? Oh, well, yeah, I guess I am a little. That match was really close just now, you know? I was wondering if they’ll be okay in the next one,” she said, giving a spur-of-the-moment excuse.

Mizuki meekly let herself be fooled, saying things like “now that you mention it” and “I’m sure they’ll be fine” and “We just have to cheer them on.” Erika wasn’t really listening, though, as she sunk back into her thoughts.

The finals tournament matches were announced.

The first match of the semifinals would be Third High versus Eighth High. The second match would be First versus Ninth. The qualifier results were Third High in first, First High in second, Eighth High in third, and Ninth High in fourth. Normally, the competition rules would pit Third High against Ninth and First against Eighth, but First and Eighth had just finished playing a match against each other, so yet another special exception was applied.

The tournament would start at noon. Tatsuya’s team would be in the second match, but they couldn’t miss Third High’s game. It would be a slightly early lunch, but Tatsuya, with lunch box in hand, took Miyuki back to the hotel.

The state of the tent right now was not conducive to a relaxing meal.

Leo and Mikihiko had evacuated to their own rooms a few moments ago. Honoka looked like she wanted to come with them, but that would incite all her classmates to follow her, which would make leaving the tent pointless. Shizuku had been the one to whisper that in her ear and stop her.

The siblings, after shaking off all sorts of gazes in their direction—mostly impassioned looks toward Miyuki—quickly left the event area. But when they arrived at the hotel lobby, they were greeted with an unfamiliar sight.

“Hmm?”

“Oh my…”

In a corner of the lobby stood Mari, a hint of embarrassment coloring her face. In front of her was a slightly older man, but still young. He couldn’t be mistaken for a teenager. He was probably around twenty. Both of them had heard she had an older boyfriend; could this be him?

He was relatively tall—he stood a little higher than Tatsuya. The siblings had been around enough specialists in the field to know at a glance that his lean, firm body didn’t belong to an athlete but to someone well trained in combat and martial arts. Most people would probably describe his features as handsome. Mari’s looks were slightly androgynous but brought no shame to the description of “pretty.” The two were a good fit for each other.

Suddenly, Tatsuya slowed his pace.

“Tatsuya?” said Miyuki from a step ahead of him, turning back and tilting her head.

No, Tatsuya wasn’t plotting anything rude, like making fun of them or peeping on them. He knew the young man’s face from somewhere, and taking a moment to search his memories had caused him to pause in his tracks. “…That’s the Nine School Competition for you. You run into celebrities all over the place.” The desire to talk to the man crossed his mind, but he was well aware that he should be more discreet, given the situation.

“Do you know him?”

“He’s world famous in certain circles.” He stepped up to Miyuki and urged her on; he would explain himself as they were walking. However, just as he abandoned the idea of butting into the little rendezvous, someone else ventured to do just that. Her high-pitched voice caused both Tatsuya and Miyuki to stop.

“Brother Tsugu! Whatever might you be doing in a place like this?” demanded a familiar voice using much more formal language than they were used to.

As Erika strode closer to the young man, Miyuki checked back at Tatsuya. “‘Brother’? Is he Erika’s…?”

“If my memories serve, he’s her second older brother. Naotsugu Chiba, the child prodigy of the Chiba. He still goes to a National Defense university, but some count him a genius at close-quarters magical combat—among the top ten in the world.”

“I had no idea he was so amazing…but wouldn’t Erika be proud of an older brother like that? Her standoffishness seems strange.”

“I feel the same way. I hear the Chiba view Mr. Naotsugu as a heretic…though I don’t think Erika would care much about orthodox concepts like that.”

“I don’t think so, either…”

As the siblings conversed, Erika flared up at her older brother—without even giving a glance to Mari, who was standing right next to them. “I had thought you were on an official trip to Thailand for sword instruction! What might you be doing here?!”

Erika seemed to have blown her top. She always gave the impression of looking at others and the world around her with a certain cynicism, so this passion and care was highly unusual.

“Erika…calm down a little?”

Though the young man—Naotsugu Chiba—tried to soothe her, Erika’s excitement didn’t wane at all. “How do you suggest I calm down?! Brother Kazu is one thing, but there was once a time when I couldn’t even imagine you abandoning your duties!”

“Okay, but just calm down… I didn’t abandon my job or anything…”

Naotsugu Chiba seemed to have a gentle, mild attitude in contrast to his military fame. With his younger sister showing no signs of “calming down” in the presence of others, he couldn’t rebuke her. He could only explain himself.

“Oh, is that so? Then you’re suggesting that I’m mistaken in your cooperation with the Thai royal family magicians for sword instruction?”

“Well, no, you’re right about that…but I didn’t come back home without permission—I got approval, so…”

“I see. If you needed to suspend an important job relating to Japan-Thailand diplomatic relations, it must have been for something very important. Oh, so important. An emergency. So why might my older brother be present at a high school competition?”

Her tone had calmed down, but Tatsuya could tell that her mood was growing all the more foul for it.

Naotsugu could probably see it, too—he was starting to grimace very slightly. “Diplomatic relations? No, it’s nothing like that… It’s really just part of my university club activities, a friendly exchange of military cadets before they’re appointed…”

“Brother!”

“Yes?!”

“It might be goodwill between students or club activities, but this was a mission you were officially appointed to! It is certainly not the sort of thing you should be neglecting!”

“Yes! Yes, you’re right!”

At the unexpected sight of one of the top ten warriors in the world, Tatsuya couldn’t help but be surprised. “I’ve heard the term henpecked husband before, but I don’t think I ever remember hearing of a henpecked brother…”

It was getting hard to watch, so he averted his eyes, only to find Mizuki fidgeting a short distance away. He gestured her over. She looked relieved and trotted to them.

“Tatsuya…what’s going on with Erika?”

“I really don’t know, either…” She could ask, but all he could do was cock his head in puzzlement.

Next to them, Miyuki piped up, clearly suppressing a giggle. “Tatsuya, I believe Erika is venting her anger,” she said.

Tatsuya didn’t know what she meant by that. “Venting? About what?”

“I think you’ll find out soon.”

As Tatsuya and Mizuki looked on, now even more confused, the “siblings’ quarrel” entered a new phase.

“Brother, do not tell me you abandoned your duty to see this woman?”

“Like I said, I didn’t abandon—”

“That wasn’t what I asked!” Erika snapped, flat-out refusing the explanation. She slung a look to Mari, whom she had ignored until now (likely on purpose), before turning her stare back to Naotsugu. “How disgraceful… The child prodigy of the Chiba, my own brother, shirking his duties for a woman like this…”

“…Erika,” interrupted Mari at last, finally unable to maintain—or rather, endure—her silence. “You know, I am still your upperclassman at school. I don’t remember telling you it was okay to refer to me like that.”

Erika, however, completely ignored her. “You’ve been corrupted ever since you started dating this woman. Imagine that, someone with full mastery over the Thousand Blade style of swordsmanship so infatuated with cheap magic that he forgets to improve his own skills…”

“Erika!” That was probably off limits for Naotsugu. His timid attitude vanished as though it never existed, and his spirited rebuke made Erika’s shoulders jump in surprise. “Improving your skills demands that you always incorporate new techniques. That’s what I think, and that’s what I did. Mari doesn’t have anything to do with it. I heard she’d been injured, and I couldn’t just stay put over there. She told me I didn’t have to come. And even if she hadn’t, you are the one disgracing the family name with all your discourteous behavior.”

Erika bit her lip and fell silent but didn’t take her glower off him.

“Now apologize to Mari, Erika.”

“…I refuse.”

“Erika!”

“I refuse! You abandoned an official mission to be here! That’s the undeniable truth! And it’s also true that it’s this woman’s fault!” But once again, the situation seemed to turn around. “My opinion will not change! Brother Tsugu, going out with this woman has corrupted you!”

She spun around and very quickly walked away from her brother.

“Erika! Erika, wait!”

As Erika left the lobby and went to the elevator bank—where the lobby was completely out of sight—she heard Mizuki’s voice and finally turned around.

She opened her mouth a little, clearly surprised. “…Tatsuya. And Miyuki…did you overhear that?” Her tone and expression had returned to that of the typical Erika.

But to Tatsuya, it looked like she was holding back tears. “Sorry…we didn’t intend to eavesdrop.”

“Tatsuya, next time we eat, it’s your treat.”

“Hey! Oh, fine. Nothing too expensive, please.”

“Negotiations successful!” said Erika with her usual whimsical, carefree expression. She was back to her normal attitude, so Tatsuya didn’t want to make a fuss about it and then have her worry about him.

“Erika, have you eaten lunch yet?” asked Miyuki.

“Huh? It’s still a little early… Oh. No, well, I’m not going to eat yet, but maybe I’ll come with you anyway,” she responded, half refusing and half accepting.

“Tatsuya?”

“Well, we were going to eat in our room. If you don’t mind us eating, do you want to come?”

“Yeah, sure! Mizuki’s coming, too, right?”

“Yes! Umm, if I’m not intruding.”

“There’s nothing for you to intrude on…” said Tatsuya.

“Huh? No, that’s not what I meant!”

“Geez…Tatsuya, you’re so mean. Stop teasing me.”

After being used to change the mood, Mizuki, even after taking a seat on the bed, was still fuming. Even so, she knew she wasn’t really being attacked or anything, so Tatsuya gave a dry smile and bit into his sandwich. For their part, Mizuki and Tatsuya both planned to ignore what had just happened.

But then the person herself, Erika, brought up the earlier scene. “All right, then… Don’t you all have something you want to ask me?”

Miyuki was the only one to take her up on the topic with a composed face. “I didn’t know the one dating Watanabe was your older brother.”

“Oh. He’s so dumb. He lets that woman seduce him. It’s pathetic, and aggravating…”

“He’s a world-class kenjutsu expert, right? You shouldn’t be calling him dumb,” Tatsuya said.

“Huh? …Oh, I get it. I should have figured you’d know who Naotsugu was.”

“Erika,” said Miyuki, pronouncing each of the syllables slowly. “You don’t need to call him something different just because we’re here. Brother Naotsugu, right?”

“Ahh, just forget you heard that! It’s just a thing I have to do!” Erika suddenly grabbed her head and dove into the bed. Such “well-bred” word usage must have been embarrassing for her.

…Tatsuya was a little confused, though. He’d rather her be embarrassed for falling face-first onto a man’s pillow and then pressing her face into it.

“Now, now. It’s easy to tell that you love Naotsugu,” Miyuki stated plainly.

“…”

Erika was not the only one who locked up. Miyuki had just dropped a bomb of pure cold, and it froze Tatsuya and Mizuki for a moment, too.

“…That’s not it!” shouted Erika, shooting back up. Half of that had been spoken into the pillow, so all they heard was “not it,” but it still felt like an appropriate reaction in this case.

Her attitude was like a cornered monster roaring—in other words, transparent. Miyuki let herself giggle, and then dropped another bombshell: “I didn’t know you had a brother complex, Erika.”

“I…” Erika was speechless.

And then the critical point passed and the explosion came.

“You’re one to talk, you stupid brother-obsessed idiot!”

—Neither Tatsuya nor Mizuki would ever tell anyone what happened after that.

“…Hey, Tatsuya, you don’t look so good. Are you okay?”

“You look really tired…”

Tatsuya had joined Leo and Mikihiko in the general audience seats, but they both came straight at him with the comments. “I’m a little fatigued, that’s all. More emotionally than mentally. I’ll be fine once this match gets my spirit up.”

On the other side of Tatsuya, who was waving his hand dismissively, were Miyuki and Erika, sitting down as though nothing had happened. Behind them was Mizuki, who was behaving just a little suspiciously. Leo and Mikihiko didn’t notice; their attention seemed to be on the match that was starting.

“…Sorry. I feel like we let you bear the full brunt of everything.”

Mikihiko seemed to have misunderstood, albeit in a favorable (and slightly convenient) way. “No, that’s not true. I’m fine. Don’t worry.” When Tatsuya said “that’s not true,” he really meant it, but his purposely-vague way of saying it showed good character.

“Well, if you say so,” said Leo. “You’ve been doing a ton already, so don’t force yourself to do any more.”

“Thanks. I know.” He really is an excellent friend, and so wasted on me, thought Tatsuya. “I’m fine in that regard, too.” He certainly didn’t want to make such a rare friend worry, so he did his best to give him a firm nod of his head.

But then, as soon as the match started, Tatsuya’s not looking so good was too trivial to care about. Their interest—including his, of course—was drawn to the match between Third High and Eighth High, currently unfolding on the crag stage.

It had developed into something much more one-sided than they’d thought it would. It might be more appropriate to say that one person had the stage all to himself.

The crag stage was modeled after a karst topography and was the stage with the second-fewest obstacles after the grasslands. Large boulders protruded from the ground in several places to provide cover, but there wasn’t much height difference between them, and no groves of trees to block vision.

Between those crags came one player out of Third High’s camp, walking calmly. Masaki Ichijou had confidently exposed himself and was now on the march.

Eighth High wouldn’t let that go. They fired off spell after spell at him. Even the attacker who had used the crag shadows to move toward Third High’s base was contributing to the concentrated fire.

However…

Masaki didn’t stop walking.

The stones and boulder fragments flung with movement magic were all shot down by an even more powerful movement magic. The weighting and oscillation spells being directly applied to him were being nullified by Area Interference, which stretched three feet from his body. As if to scorn the futile effort, Masaki didn’t even bother walking any faster.

As Leo and Mikihiko stared agape at the overwhelming skill, Tatsuya openly praised the ability. “Interference Armor…and here I thought movement-type area interference was the Juumonji’s forte,” he remarked. “He’s not out of breath after using the spell for so long, which means it’s more than his capacity for calculation that’s big. He must be very good at breathing. The only thing I can say about it is that he has good magical sense.”

In this case, when spells of the same type were used one after another, “breathing” referred to the exchange of spells: one ending and the other being triggered. The smaller the overlap time between the first and second spells, the less burden it carried for the magician. People described magicians who had a small overlap time as “good at breathing.”

Miyuki was extremely good at breathing as well, but from what Tatsuya could tell, Masaki’s senses rivaled hers.

The unending, powerful defense forced the Eighth High attacker to stop his assault. He started to run for Third High’s camp, hurriedly trying to hide himself. He’d given up on taking Masaki down and noticed he could keep his team in the running if he attacked the opponents’ monolith first.

But unfortunately, his act was careless. It might have been spurred by panic. He’d turned his back on defense and his thoughts ahead—literally. Masaki wasn’t going to let him get away with it. A close-range explosion blast sent the Eighth High attacker flying face-first into the ground.

“The convergence spell Deviation Release? He could have just used Compression Release… He likes doing things big.”

“Deviation Release?” Miyuki asked from beside him. “I don’t know that spell…”

Tatsuya answered without taking his eyes off the field. “That’s because it’s a little obscure, and not effective given the amount of work it takes.

“You could think of it as stuffing air into a cylinder, closing it up, and then turning the other end at a target and taking off that lid. Highly compressed air fires out of the open end. Its advantages are that it normally generates more power than Compression Release, and that you can change the explosion’s direction. But if you just want more power, you could increase the amount of air you compress. And if you wanted it to go in a certain direction, then you can just ram a Compression Release into them.

“…Or maybe he’s trying to lower its lethality rank by using a spell in a gray area. In cases like these, it’s a pain to be too powerful,” he noted, smiling cynically.

Miyuki looked at him as though she wanted to say he was the same way, but he pretended not to notice. While Tatsuya was drawing upon his vast stores of knowledge, Masaki was steadily approaching Eighth High’s base.

Seeing that the situation was getting worse and worse, the two Eighth High players left on defense rushed Masaki at once. A boulder broke apart, and its fragment sailed toward Masaki. Tiny sparks began scattering on the ground at Masaki’s feet as well—probably a forced release of electricity from the minerals within, thanks to an emission spell from one of the Eighth High players. Both spells had to be called advanced level: the first for its scope, and the second for its alteration difficulty.

The only reason Tatsuya’s team seemed to easily win against Eighth High had been because they couldn’t use their full power. In a face-to-face matchup, they would have had a harder time.

But the two-pronged frontal attack was easily nullified by Masaki. The stones being fired at him were bounced away by a movement-vector-reversing force field deployed around Masaki in a sphere, and the electrical discharge was held back without going off.

A hammer made of air slammed into the Eighth High players. As soon as it made contact, the compressed air easily removed any combat strength the two of them had.

A siren blared, signaling the end of the match.

Neither Kichijouji nor the other player had taken one step out of Third High’s base from start to finish, and in the end, had done precisely nothing.

“The Ichijou’s ‘prince’ is more than we expected…” said Mayumi to Katsuto, looking away from the screen.

Her usual buddy Mari was absent. Right now, she was busy with something that would invite any who intruded on her to be kicked by a horse. She was still severely wounded and needed bed rest, but Mayumi and the other officers hadn’t been hard on her.

“It kind of seems similar to your style, Juumonji.”

Katsuto found it difficult to respond to that. Sure enough, before he could reply, Suzune came into the conversation. “He probably knows it. Ichijou’s combat style was always mid-range, preemptive, saturated bombardment. In the qualifiers, in fact, he did render the defenders helpless from a distance. I don’t have any proof…but I think this might be Ichijou provoking us.”

“Provoking us?” repeated Mayumi, tilting her head.

“I don’t know if he knows my style or not, but he’s probably provoking Shiba, telling him to face him in a straight match of blows,” answered Katsuto.

“Oh… Well, I guess I understand, but…” Mayumi’s expression said more than enough—she thought that was childish. Tatsuya’s weapons were his mobility and perception, and the unpredictability guided by those things. From the previous two matches, it was clear that he excelled more in combat skills than magic power. Tatsuya would never be lured in by something so obvious, she thought.

But Katsuto didn’t agree with her silent message. “It will provoke Shiba.”

“Huh? But it’s Tatsuya…”

“There’s a wide gap between them already. He has very few chances of winning. This happens to be one of those chances.”

“They have me there…”

Tatsuya, in the general audience, was obviously too far away from their main tent to hear Katsuto’s remark. But he completely understood what it was Katsuto meant. And he knew that Third High’s true objective—probably Shinkurou Kichijouji’s goal—was to drag him out into a frontal fight by purposely showing an opportunity. Even more ironically, taking them up on it would give First High the highest chance at victory, too. Though Cardinal George isn’t one to be underestimated…

“Seriously! That’s a hell of a defense he put up.”

“And we didn’t get to see anyone but Ichijou do anything, either. We can’t think of a plan like this.”

Fortunately, Leo and Mikihiko seemed to have misunderstood Tatsuya’s grumble for something else. They’d been taken in by Masaki’s strength, but it didn’t do as much mental damage as knowing they were ants drawn into an inescapable ant lion’s pit.

“We can make some assumptions about Kichijouji. I don’t know about the other player, though.”

“Wait, you can?”

Tatsuya opted to control the conversation by letting it run in the other direction. “The Cardinal Code that Shinkurou Kichijouji discovered was the weighting plus code. He entered Speed Shooting, too. So his specialty is probably Invisible Bullet, which directly adds weight to what it affects.”

“Cardinal Code?”

“You mean you can apply weight to a part of something instead of altering its information bodies?”

“Right… This will take a little while. Are you listening?”

Leo hesitated at Tatsuya’s reminder, but Mikihiko unflinchingly nodded.

“There’s a concept in magic program research called the Cardinal Code hypothesis. It’s pretty widely supported. Basically, it says that for each of the eight types of magic—acceleration, weighting, movement, oscillation, convergence, divergence, absorption, and emission—there exists one fundamental magic code each for increasing or decreasing their power level, also called plus and minus. So, sixteen formulas in all. But then, the theory goes that if you put all sixteen of them together, you can construct spells of all families at once.

“These fundamental magic programs are called Cardinal Codes. As for the conclusion it states… Well, the hypothesis is wrong about being able to construct spells of all families through a master formula, but the Cardinal Codes do exist.”

“…It’s wrong, but they still exist?”

“…I’m sorry. I’m confused already.”

Mikihiko and Leo voiced their objections, and Tatsuya put his hand up to calm them down. “Relax, I’ll explain.

“There are spells among the four families of magic that you can’t construct only using the Cardinal Codes. So the Cardinal Code hypothesis is incorrect. However, there are magic programs with features that can be called fundamental. In modern magic, you create various effects by defining the state of alteration to be created by the spell. The things that actually cause the alteration to occur are also defined within the spell—the magic program, the code. But without defining the spell’s ideal end result, it won’t come to pass. It won’t stick, so to speak.

“Meanwhile, Cardinal Codes can directly cause an end result. In other words, they’re magic formulas that define the eight types of magic themselves. With that, a caster can use a spell to apply energy directly to a single point on an object instead of affecting all the object’s eidos.

“Currently, the weighting plus code is the only one discovered. And the one who discovered it is Third High’s Shinkurou Kichijouji, or Cardinal George.”

Mikihiko faltered at hearing those final words. “Shinkurou Kichijouji…? I knew I’d heard that name before… So he’s Cardinal George?”

Tatsuya looked at his expression and thought for a moment that he’d bungled things. He couldn’t take back what he already said, though. “That’s right. So Masaki isn’t the only one we need to be cautious of. Outstanding scientists don’t necessarily make outstanding performers, but the Cardinal Codes are annoying enough in their own right.”

Spells using Cardinal Codes defined their effects directly, so they didn’t need to define the results of its event alteration. Normal spells, however, did. Battering Ram, the spell that had directly caused Tatsuya to be placed in the Monolith Code event, and Invisible Bullet had similar effects: Both brought about a situation in which pressure was applied to one point on a surface. Battering Ram, though, needed to alter the entire surface to which pressure would be applied into a state where all that pressure would be applied to a single point. In contrast, Invisible Bullet didn’t need to overwrite the state of the surface to which pressure would be applied. And the surface could be a wall, a floor, the surface of a human body—anything. Invisible Bullet overwrote the pressure itself.

Therefore, the magic program, which described the information needed to overwrite all its targets’ information, became much, much smaller. It wouldn’t alter the information of the target itself, which also made it necessarily unable to be blocked by Information Boost, which prevented event-information alteration on a target.

The smaller magic programs and the ability to use spells that weren’t affected by the event-alteration target’s information intensity gave the caster a very large advantage.

“Thankfully, Invisible Bullet has one fault: The person needs to be able to see the point of action. Which is rather ironic. It’s precisely because the Cardinal Code allows the spell to work directly on the target rather than the eidos. Physical obstacles can block an Invisible Bullet attack. You can guard against it with Area Interference as well, but Information Boost won’t do anything, so be careful.”

“All right,” said Mikihiko, nodding. “I’ll be careful.”

Leo nodded after him, until he reservedly said, “Hey…I’ve got a question.”

“What is it, Leo?”

“This might not have anything to do with the match…but you said there were spells you can’t construct with only the sixteen Cardinal Codes, right? Wouldn’t that mean you knew all sixteen of them?”

Attitudes, words, and actions could sometimes fool Leo, but he was certainly no fool. His breadth of knowledge aside, he actually had pretty high intelligence. Tatsuya thought he knew that, but the perceptive question surprised him. “…Shinkurou Kichijouji is the only one who has ever discovered a Cardinal Code. I just know about spells in the four families you theoretically wouldn’t be able to create based on the Cardinal Code hypothesis.”

Just as Leo opened his mouth, about to ask another question, Miyuki interrupted them. “Tatsuya, shouldn’t we get going soon?”

“You’re right. They’ll decide the next stage soon. Let’s go to our tent.”

Tatsuya stood up and turned away, summarily rejecting any further questioning.

Their match with Ninth High would be fought on the canyon stage.

The canyon stage was an artificial ravine with a bend in the middle. Because flowing water would give various advantages and disadvantages based on whether you were upstream or downstream, it was less of a canyon and more of a long, bent lake surrounded by cliffs. And even then, the water wasn’t deep (about twenty inches at its deepest point), so it was more like a long, bent puddle.

Mikihiko would be unchallenged here.

He summoned a white fog to cover the long, narrow field that was bounded on either side by cliffs. The audience, who now had no way of seeing the match, began to boo. Soon, though, they quieted down—they’d all come to see a magic competition. The audience understood just how difficult it was to maintain a cover over such a large volume of space with magic, and knew it equated to a skill-level difference. Plus, the fog was thinner around the First High competitors and clung more thickly to the Ninth High players.

With the fog in their way, the Ninth High team couldn’t get close to First High’s monolith. They attempted several times to clear the fog, but virtually every time they dispersed it, the veil of whiteness would immediately return, stealing away their vision and mocking their efforts. Blowing the fog away by creating wind was pointless, since the air that replaced it was full of fog, too. Raising the temperature and dragging up the saturation point also only served to spur the water in the lake to evaporate faster, thus uselessly increasing the discomfort index in the area.

This old-style spell was a bounded field that created fog. It froze the air’s water vapor regardless of the saturation point, which meant that raising the temperature would just end up increasing the amount of water vapor the spell supplied and thus thicken the fog. Also, bounded field magic included the concept of closing things in, so causing air currents would do nothing but circulate the fog-filled air.

By its nature, modern magic did a poor job at continuously applying effects to a vague target. In order for similarly modern magic to wipe out this fog spell, a caster would need to be aware of the bounded field—the area Mikihiko was magically affecting—or else they wouldn’t be able to take any effective countermeasures. Unfortunately for them, the Ninth High rookies didn’t seem to know much about old-style magic.

Though, aside from the fact that the fog was not artificially uniform, it had no special effects. It had no glamour effects, didn’t cause weakness, and didn’t prevent anyone from leaving. But just the fact that you couldn’t see through it was enough to limit a person’s actions.

Keeping an eye on the Ninth High attacker trepidatiously edging along the cliff face, Tatsuya blended into the fog and easily reached Ninth High’s base. The fog was purposely thinner around him, and gave him at least enough vision to trot over there. Even if he had zero vision, though, it wouldn’t have hindered him. Because in a situation like this, when he was sure the audience wasn’t looking, he could freely use his natural-born eyesight.

He looped behind the Ninth High defenders without them noticing and fired the key. The roaring caused by the cover falling off the monolith and revealing the code made the defenders hastily turn around, but Tatsuya had already left. This time, he wouldn’t need to summon any spirits. Spirits under Mikihiko’s control were the ones maintaining the field of fog, and Mikihiko had eyes in every last speck of it.

The match between First High and Ninth High ended in victory for First High, without a single skirmish.

The final match would take place after the match to determine third place. No matter how long a Monolith Code match needed, it didn’t take more than thirty minutes. Still, they allowed for a break before the finals began—it would be two hours from now, at 3:30 PM.

Tatsuya, who was also assigned to CAD adjustments, spent the free two hours in the competition area, but Mikihiko and Leo decided to leave and relax for the time being—though it wasn’t certain if they did so because they just couldn’t stand watching another display of affection between the siblings.

In the end, the boys decided to meet up again one hour before the match started, and in the meantime, each would go wherever they liked. Leo said he was going to grab a light meal in the cafeteria, then take a rest in his room. Mikihiko, not the glutton Leo was, went up to the observation floor at the top of the hotel.

The hotel had been constructed on maneuvering grounds at the foot of Mount Fuji, and the observation room let people get a close-up view of the mountain. The Yoshida’s deity magic was old magic of the Shinto family and, if categorized even further, would fall under earthly deity Shinto-type (the kind of Shinto that worshipped the gods of the land).

Mount Fuji held special meaning for a user of old Shinto magic. The deity enshrined at Mount Fuji was one of those “gods of the land,” who had married one of the heavenly deities (or the descendants thereof). The Fuji faith wasn’t restricted to either earthly or heavenly deities.

And even without such dogmatic connotations, the so-called sacred Mount Fuji was a site of many major magic-related powers. If you went out onto the balcony of the observation room, you could feel the breath of the sacred mountain on your skin—such were Mikihiko’s thoughts as, after ascending to the top floor, he met someone he hadn’t expected to see there.

Wearing a straw hat to block the sunlight was Erika, leaning with her elbows on the balcony railing and staring out at Mount Fuji. She turned her head to look at him. “Huh…? What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”

“I came to see Mount Fuji… What are you doing here by yourself?”

As he said, nobody else was in the observation room—or the entire top floor, including the balcony—except Erika. Though, now that he was here, it was just the two of them. Obviously, it was no exaggeration to say everyone present was watching the Nine School Competition. They both had free time, but the third-place match would be starting shortly. Coming all the way back to the hotel and going up to the observation room, from which you could see nothing but Mount Fuji, was something only real weirdoes or those with a special goal in mind, like Mikihiko, did.

“I, well, I guess I wanted to be alone,” said Erika, looking back at the scenery, her expression seeming somehow lonely.

Mikihiko felt a little dismayed. Still, he couldn’t just walk out and leave, and standing in the doorway would be strange. Without a choice—at least, that’s what he told himself—he took up a position next to Erika.

“Mikihiko…” Erika began, her eyes still fixed on Japan’s highest mountain.

“Huh? What?” Something felt out of place here.

“Can you feel it?”

“Huh?”

“You came to feel the breath, right? Can you?” Her choice of words was natural, but the tone of her voice was different. She expressed herself in the same way as always, yet differently at the same time. As she straightened up, off the railing, her expression was one of sincerity he’d not seen for these last four months, perhaps longer. The last time he’d seen it had been before she cut her hair, after she’d started growing it out that spring. It was two years ago, when he never saw her without a katana in her hands…

“…Mikihiko?”

“Er, sorry. Yes, that’s right,” he responded, flustered, finally realizing what was out of place.

Erika was calling him “Mikihiko”…

“I came to feel the breath,” he replied.

“Not that.”

“Huh?”

“That’s not what I’m asking… Can you feel the mountain’s breath?” she asked, turning an unexpectedly serious stare on him.

A bit daunted by that stare, Mikihiko stood up straighter and took a breath. He exhaled everything, then breathed in. It was important to maintain rhythm, but more important was the mental image. With his exhalation he created a vessel, and with his inhalation he took that vessel in.

He wasn’t inhaling and exhaling—he was exhaling and inhaling.

After a few of these breaths, vitality began to fill his body. It wasn’t particles like psions or pushions but waves closer to energy itself, a power sometimes called prana. Mikihiko was taking in the breath from the sacred mountain. When Erika’s eyes saw that, her face turned into an uncharacteristically reserved smile.

—One that looked a little lonely.

“Erika…?”

“What? See, you can do it.”

“…Sorry, but what are you talking about?” Her self-centric abridgments were always thick in her speech, but this time, Mikihiko felt like he was the one at fault for not understanding her.

“Have you noticed, Mikihiko? You’ve been using magic like you used to—like before the accident. Back when people called you the wonder child of the Yoshida.”

“Huh?”

“No, wait. Not like before—maybe even better. The sharpness of your senses, the way you created the fog barrier, the way you took in the breath… It’s all coming as naturally to you as breathing.”

He didn’t respond with a “no it doesn’t.” He didn’t say “What gave you that impression?” There was no way he wouldn’t know what her eyes were saying at this point. She was the swordswoman of the Chiba.

“That’s great!” Suddenly, she gave him a clap on the back, sending Mikihiko stumbling half a step forward. “Miki, at this rate, you’ve got nothing to fear from Third High! You’d better do your best in the finals!” Suddenly her usual self again, she left without waiting for a response.

“My name is Mikihiko!” he retorted to Erika’s back. But at the same time, he breathed a sigh of relief.

He wasn’t sure what he was relieved about, though, or why…

Tatsuya, who should have been having another moment with his little sister (or so their teammates had taken to expect), had been called to the venue gate right after his two teammates left.

“Excellent work, Ms. Ono.”

Haruka had been the one to call him there. “Hey! You’re not supposed to tell your superiors ‘excellent work’… You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Tatsuya gave her a wry smile, and her shoulders drooped. “…I guess this is all I have anymore… Now that my secret’s out, I’m just a minor character. I’m fated to be buried under an ever-expanding list titled ‘The Rest of the Cast’…”

“You’re getting a little too meta for me, ma’am. I don’t even understand what you’re saying.”

“That’s all right. Every woman needs an air of mystery, after all.”

“…Would you mind giving me the thing I kept with you? I don’t have very much time, and I know you don’t, either, ma’am.” Tatsuya held out his hand, prompting an ostentatious sigh from Haruka.

Slinging him an expression that said she thought he was a killjoy, but simultaneously knowing he was right, she obediently handed over the electric bag (a suitcase with an electrically assisted caster attached) she’d brought for him.

“Sheesh… A little more appreciation would be nice. I’m your counselor, not your errand girl.”

“I wasn’t the one who asked you to bring this, ma’am. It was Master. Still…you’re right. If you’re unhappy with odd jobs, can I interest you in an actual one?”

“I didn’t mean you needed to find something for me to do.”

“Incidental income you won’t need to report on your taxes… Does that pique your interest?”

A visible shock registered in Haruka’s eyes. Tatsuya watched her with an unconcerned expression. How did someone with such an agreeable disposition (not personality) work as an intelligence operative?

He didn’t have to wait very long. “…I suppose you have me there,” she said. “It is my job to help students with their anxieties. This is no time to be saying it isn’t my job or that I’m not being paid overtime.”

I see, thought Tatsuya. So that’s the pretext she’ll use to agree with me. But… “Unfortunately, it isn’t your job that I’m referring to, ma’am—it’s something else.”

That immediately sent Haruka’s guard up. “…What are you going to make me do?”

This time he actually started to worry. She was so easy to read. How did she get by? Though, he figured he wouldn’t mind one bit if someone caught her in a blunder and twisted her arm… “The Hong Kong–based international crime syndicate No-Head Dragon. I’d like you to figure out where their hideout is, ma’am.”

Haruka looked left and right, panicked, and then quickly stepped close enough to embrace him. “Why do you know about the No-Head Dragon?!”

Her tone was one of agitation, but at least she still remembered to lower her voice. Unfortunately, even if she asked, it was a question he couldn’t answer. His connection to Kazama and the Independent Magic Battalion needed to stay a secret. That was a direct order from his aunt, the current leader of the Yotsuba. Even if he were to say something vague like “I happened to hear about it,” there was no telling where it could lead.

Instead, Tatsuya responded abstractly, in a way that could be interpreted various ways. “I would think it natural to investigate an enemy attempting to cause us harm, ma’am.”

Still, Haruka realized he was referring to the sabotage taking place at the Nine School Competition. “…What are you planning? Public Safety and the COIA are already on the move. You don’t need to get involved,” Haruka whispered, in a way that could get them in trouble if someone saw them. Miyuki was one thing, but he also hoped Honoka and Shizuku and the rest of them didn’t see.

“I don’t plan on doing anything at the moment, ma’am. I’m just uneasy about not knowing where they are when the time comes to counterattack.” Tatsuya paused. “By the way, people will misunderstand us if you do that.”

Haruka forcefully pulled away from him. Her pride as his senior worked hard to hide her embarrassment in a smile. Tatsuya was really beginning to consider recommending that she wash her hands of the whole intelligence business… Nevertheless, he was sure she’d accept his request.

“…Insurance, is it?” she asked with a searching stare.

“You may take it that way if you wish, ma’am,” he said, immediately nodding.

“…All right. Give me one day.”

“One day? That would be fantastic.”

That was unrestrained, no-strings-attached praise.

Haruka, looking somewhat unsatisfied, gave an embarrassed grin.

After lugging the electric bag back to the tent, he ignored the intrigued stares coming from all the remaining staff members and took the bag’s contents out.

With a remarkably unreserved attitude, Mayumi came wandering over to get a peek at what he had, then asked, “…A coat?”

“No, it’s a mantle.” Tatsuya held up the black cloth and spread it out. It was a long, Western-style mantle. Even with his height it looked like it would drag on the ground.

“That too?”

“This one is a robe.” He placed the black mantle on a desk and spread out the gray cloth for her to see this time. It was a hooded robe, and it, too, was long enough for its hem to drag.

“What on earth are you…using them for?” Mayumi asked.

As question marks flew splendidly about the tent, Miyuki alone had to stifle a know-it-all smile.

“We’ll be using them for the finals. Boy, am I glad they got here in time.”

“Tatsuya, won’t those be against the rules?” asked Miyuki with a slightly serious face, leaving aside Mayumi, who couldn’t keep up with the conversation.

“I think they’ll be fine, but I’ll submit them to the device check before the match. It doesn’t say anywhere in the rule book that you can’t wear clothing with magic circles woven in.”

Upon hearing his answer to Miyuki, a few more question marks popped up over Mayumi’s head. She asked, “Magic circles woven in?”

“Yes. Magic circles are a medium for old-style techniques, and operate under the same principles as seal magic. This mantle and robe bestow on their wearers an effect that makes magic easier to use.”

“So it’s for support… I suppose it’s not a problem as long as specific techniques aren’t used for it…”

Mayumi looked over at Suzune, and she nodded. “There won’t be any problem with the rules. It seems to me, though, that they simply hadn’t envisioned a case like this.”

Mayumi frowned a little and turned back to Tatsuya. “Hey, Tatsuya?” Her voice was less anxious and more worried. “We’re refraining from celebrating at the moment, since there are still matches going on, but as soon as we got to the finals, we clinched the rookie competition championship. You don’t need to force yourself too hard on this.”

“I understand.”

She didn’t need to mention that—Tatsuya had already half given up on this match.

…At least, at this point.

After asking Isori to do a check on the mantle and robe (the Isori family was known as an authority on seal magic, and Isori himself hadn’t bothered to hide his own interest), Tatsuya stretched and left the tent.

Mayumi had given him a mission by appointing him as a substitute: to lead First High to a rookie championship. As soon as they reached the Monolith Code finals—in other words, now—he considered that mission complete.

His careful stretching was so to avoid injury later. Scratches and bruises were one thing, but if he broke a bone or severed an artery, an ability of his that he needed to keep secret would automatically activate. He could consciously stop it, but he wasn’t sure he could stop it quickly enough. His self-restoration ability would heal his physical body in an instant, even before he realized that the damage had been severe enough to set it off. The Nine School Competition was being recorded on video. Even if it was a momentary thing that human minds couldn’t perceive, they could always analyze the tapes afterward.

As he reminded himself of all that, he continued his stretching, which was really more like a yoga routine. Meanwhile, he noticed Miyuki coming out of the tent, but she didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. He kept on with his pre-match warm-up exercises until he finished.

“Here is a towel, Tatsuya.” Right after he straightened himself, Miyuki held out a well-cooled wet towel. Miyuki had spent more than a little time under the midsummer heat, but the towel felt as cold as if she’d just taken it out of a refrigerator…which wasn’t unusual considering the type of magic she specialized in. With all the things she did so casually like this, he was reminded that she really was too good a little sister for him.

If the times hadn’t changed, she would probably have a whole flock of men willing to give up their lives for her. No, even in this world, his sister might be able to say one word to have a man risk his life. Putting himself aside, he who would risk his life in a heartbeat, he was stricken by a chill and a shudder at what her future held.

“Tatsuya, is there something on my face?” She probably didn’t actually think anything was on her face, but the difficult-to-read expression on her brother’s face left her with no other way to ask.

Tatsuya didn’t have much of a way to answer, either, so he gave an evasive reply.

“Tatsuya…” Miyuki’s response was to…not pursue the fact that he’d dodge the question. “The final match is coming up. I believe your next opponents are quite strong…”

“…Me too.” There was no point trying to act tough. If this were a real battlefield and not a match, if they were to come to blows without any limitations, then if those two came at him together—no, even if it was just Masaki Ichijou—he didn’t currently have the confidence to assert that he could win.

“With your strength and skill restricted like this… And it may be misplaced for someone belonging to those who restricted them to be saying this, and it might be unpleasant, but…”

Her head down a little, she paused for a moment there. But her face soon came back up. Embarrassed, she declared: “…I still believe that you wouldn’t lose to anyone, Tatsuya.”

Without giving him the time to reply, she turned away, light and quick as a swallow, and went back into the tent. Tatsuya watched her leave, standing stock-still for a moment.

I really can’t win…

Like Miyuki said, she fulfilled an important role in the system restricting his strength. There was no doubt that one of the reasons he couldn’t use his true abilities was Miyuki herself.

But Tatsuya…he didn’t consider his sister to be selfish. She believed he wouldn’t lose to anyone. That was basically a wish, her desire for him. Mentally speaking, Tatsuya wasn’t mature enough to completely understand those sorts of subtleties.

On an intuitive level, however, he understood it. Perhaps he understood precisely because Miyuki was the one to express that wish.

And Tatsuya couldn’t ignore his little sister’s wishes.

This wasn’t something someone had ordered or otherwise arranged for him to do. That was just a predisposition—the way he was put together. That was what he meant by not being able to win.

Apparently, he wasn’t going to be able to lose the next match. But that was easier said than done. He sighed. No matter how he crunched the numbers, his prospects for victory were slim.

After the third-place match ended, they announced that the finals would be played on the grasslands stage. The two schools had completely opposite reactions upon hearing that. Some in Third High’s tent were even cheering.

“It’s just like you said it would be, George!”

“We got lucky, Masaki.”

Although they had the self-control not to raise their voices in joy, the two of them couldn’t hide smiles.

“Now we just need to see if he’ll take the bait…”

“He’ll definitely take it. With no obstacles on the grasslands stage, answering our straight one-on-one fight is the only way he has a chance of winning.”

“I suppose he needs to try to survive that way, because he has Program Demolition.”

“That’s right, Masaki. His tactics seem to be deliberately strange, but they’re actually the results of extremely precise calculations. If he had no countermeasures, he might tend toward clever schemes, knowing the odds weren’t in his favor. But since he has Program Demolition, he should choose a straight fight, since it has the highest chance of winning.”

“And then you just have to suppress their defender and supporter.”

“I don’t think the defender will be a problem. I think he’s pretty skilled at hardening magic, but he doesn’t seem to have many strong points besides that. As for their supporter…he seems to specialize in old magic. Given his name, he’s probably from the Yoshida family. It’s scary to go in without knowing what he’ll do, but modern magic has a speed advantage over old magic. The lack of obstacles on the grasslands stage works in our favor in that regard, too.”

“And in your case, you have the advantage of being able to use the Cardinal Code.”

“Unfortunately, the rookie championship got taken away from us… We have to at least win Monolith Code.”

“Yeah.” Masaki nodded forcefully. “We can do it.”

“The grasslands stage, a stage without obstacles… This will be a hard battle, Tatsuya.” Miyuki’s words represented the opinion of everyone who came to encourage him.

“No, this is better than the canyon stage or the city stage. But we can’t ask for everything.”

Those words caused not only Miyuki but also his teammates, Leo and Mikihiko, to cock their heads in confusion.

Tatsuya elucidated. “The Ichijou family’s Burst spell converts liquids into gases and uses the expansion as destructive power. Anyone in the family is probably great at attacking with water vapor explosions. The canyon stage basically has tons of gunpowder all over the field. In the city stage, there are water pipes that have water in them. Compared to those, there’s no ‘liquid gunpowder’ on the grasslands stage. Even the Prince probably can’t scoop water out of the ground and use that as blasting powder. Of course, the forest stage or the crag stage would have been easier…but we’ll have to be happy with it not being the canyon stage, since that was the worst option.”

The freshmen all seemed to be convinced by that, but the upperclassmen’s faces remained clouded.

“…But that doesn’t mean your disadvantages go away,” remarked Mayumi. “Without obstacles on the field, you have to fight magicians specializing in long-range combat.”

“Do you have a plan, Shiba?” followed up Hattori. It was extremely rare for him to address Tatsuya directly.

Tatsuya was honestly surprised, and he couldn’t hide it. It took a moment to respond. “In a normal fight, I honestly wouldn’t have any options…but Ichijou seems to be paying too much attention to me. If I can bring him into close range, I might be able to do something.”

“But hand-to-hand combat is forbidden,” said Kirihara.

Tatsuya gave a slightly unsure smile. “It’s okay if you don’t understand right now. I do have a plan, though.”

The final Monolith Code rookie match.

It would have been nice to be able to say the audience roared at the players’ appearance. Unfortunately, far more in the stands were murmuring in confusion.

Exposed to the curious, rubbernecking eyes, Mikihiko pulled his hood farther over his head. On the other hand, Leo, who had nothing to cover his head with, tucked his face into his mantle’s high collar, trying to hide as much of it as he could. “Hey…I told you these clothes would be weird…”

“But I already explained how to use them,” replied Tatsuya, not so subtly advising Leo to drop the subject.

“…Why just us?” grumbled Mikihiko in complaint; Tatsuya was the only one not wearing a costume.

“Why would I wear something that made it that hard to run? I’m our vanguard,” Tatsuya replied, slapping down Mikihiko’s objection in the name of strategy.

“Shit…I bet she’s laughing at us…”

Leo left out who he was talking about, but the other two didn’t need him to specify.

“Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha… That’s…that’s hilarious! What are those?! Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”

In line with their prediction, Erika was laughing uproariously in the stands.

“Erika, you shouldn’t…” Mizuki, embarrassed, tried many times to reprove her. Eventually, Mizuki got her down to the level of snickering.

“Ahh, that was a good laugh!” Erika cried with glee. “That’s why you can’t blink when Tatsuya’s doing something!”

“…But now even more people are looking at you!” hissed Mizuki, curling herself up a little.

“Sorry, sorry! It was just so funny to me for some reason. I’ll stop being so loud, so cheer up, Mizuki!”

“Geez… For goodness’ sake!”

Feeling the stares on them turn back to the field (she wasn’t brave enough to look directly), Mizuki finally brought her face up.

“But what could they be?”

There were no obstacles on the grasslands stage, so the audience had a clear view of the entire field. Still, they were too far away to make out tiny details, so the big screens were showing the faces of the players, like they did for the other stages.

Erika’s gaze fixed on Mikihiko and Leo, displayed on the screen depicting First High’s base.

After staring at them for a few moments, she shook her head in resignation. “I got nothing. I don’t know why they’re wearing that. And Tatsuya wouldn’t be bluffing.”

“…Look at all the spirits around Yoshida’s robe…” muttered Mizuki to herself.

“Huh?” responded Erika, surprised, turning to look. Mizuki had taken off her glasses, and her eyes were tinged with a strange hue. Erika sucked in her breath.

Much of the crowd was in a fuss over Leo’s and Mikihiko’s clothing, which was somehow anachronistic, out of place. Not many could be seen scoffing or laughing at it, though. The minds of the audience were curious about what the robe and mantle would be used for.

The team they were playing, though, needed a little more than curiosity.

“Couldn’t it just be a bluff?”

Masaki and Kichijouji shook their heads in unison at their teammate’s guess. “He knew who George was…” said Masaki. “Is it to deal with Invisible Bullet?”

“The spell might not have any penetration…but it would take more than a single piece of cloth to stop it. He seems too smart to come up with a plan as naive as that.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to get us to think that way?”

“That’s certainly possible, but…” Masaki struggled to find words.

“…I just don’t know,” said Kichijouji. “I didn’t think he’d still have something up his sleeve…” He bit his lip. For someone who prided himself on his ingenuity, this was especially frustrating.

“We can’t go in completely unguarded, but we can’t stand here thinking about things we don’t understand,” said Masaki, a little more firmly than necessary, in an attempt to clear Kichijouji’s doubts. “The brute-force approach is bound to have some risks anyway.” Nevertheless, even he found himself a little lost.

The point of curiosity for the audience was a point of caution for the opposing team.

There was no way the players, nor those cheering for them in the stands, could have known the second reason the crowds were in a fuss, though. The stands near the main office were murmuring about something else.

An unexpected guest had arrived nearby.

“Mr. Kudou! Whatever might you be doing in a place like this?!”

Usually, the old Kudou would spectate the events from his screen in the tournament headquarters VIP room. But now, all of a sudden, here he was in the visitors’ seats.

“I just thought I’d watch from here for once.”

Retsu Kudou nodded placidly at the tournament committee members standing at attention in greeting, then took a seat in a leather chair hurriedly prepared for him.

“Well, you certainly do honor us with your presence, but…”

Why all of a sudden? was the implication, to which Kudou answered casually, “What? I happened to spot an interesting young man is all.”

The time right before a match was probably the moment the players’ minds were full of the most doubt. However much confidence they had, however sure their victory may have been, they wouldn’t really know the outcome until they actually went out and fought for it. This wasn’t a seasonal league, where they played the same opponent several times. In this event, they would only ever play each team once. That meant there was much more uncertainty about how strong the enemy was.

But those doubts only lasted until the starting whistle.

Once the flames of battle were lit, none could be allowed such doubt.

With the signal to start the match, each base began firing at the other.

Magic-based artillery attacks.

They were met with great joy from the audience, while those in First High’s cheering section were struck dumb with surprise.

There were about three hundred thirty yards between the two bases. A short distance compared to the forest or canyon stages, but if this were a live firing range, assault rifles would have a tough time of it; this would call for sniper rifles.

As each team fired, their CADs thrust out before them looking like automatic pistols, they walked toward one another.

Tatsuya sported his double handgun–style like he did in the qualifiers and semifinal. He shot down the enemy’s attacks with the CAD in his right hand while he fired his own attacks with his left. On the other side, Masaki had consciously abandoned any defense and was now devoting himself to attack.

As a result…the already-wide margin in attack power was getting bigger and bigger.

Each one of Masaki’s ranged attacks had enough impact to finish the job, while Tatsuya’s ranged attacks were no more than a screen. His shots were reaching the enemy, but that was about it. The oscillation spells were too weak for Masaki to need to focus on defense; the Information Boosting wall that magicians unconsciously emitted was enough to block them. Tatsuya was also firing far less.

He had plenty of dirty tricks up his sleeve, but his magical abilities were undeniably inferior. In the normal sense, anyway. Just the fact that his attacks were hitting at all from this range, while his own body was exposed and it was hard to actually see, was surprising.

“Now that’s what I call grit…” groaned a male senior.

“Is he actually in Course 2?” said one female player to her teammate.

Rather than the strength of the magic itself, the mental capacity required to use magic the right way under the pressure of all those attacks had the upperclassmen raising their voices in surprise.

But Mayumi, Katsuto, Suzune, Azusa, Hattori… None of their faces looked well. This was just an exchange of greetings. It was clear to them that Tatsuya was being forced to play more defensively with every step closer they got—and attack less because of it.

At Third High’s base, Kichijouji was surprised—but for a different reason than the First High cadre.

The spells Tatsuya was using right now were of the oscillation family. But in the three matches before this, he had only been using typeless magic and weighting spells. Did he reorganize his activation programs in less than two hours…?

Kichijouji shook his head to rid himself of such idle thoughts. However amazing his method of CAD adjustment, they wouldn’t affect this match. Only the results of those adjustments would influence the outcome. This wasn’t the time to be impressed by Tatsuya’s adjustment speed. That was just another doubt—one that could lead to an upset…

“Just as planned. I’ll get going, too.”

“Sure, you take care of the rest!”

Without realizing that, at some point, he had started to look down at his opponents as lower than himself and his team, Kichijouji began to run in a roundabout path, avoiding Masaki, toward First High’s base.

When Kichijouji left their base, the match entered a new phase. Most of the spectators’ eyes, however, were glued to the battle between Tatsuya and Masaki.

Some were breathing sighs of admiration toward Masaki, who continued to fire powerful magic without end, never missing. Yet even more were sitting in admiration of Tatsuya’s Program Demolition, which was shooting down all of Masaki’s spells.

Not many of the spectators knew about Program Demolition, advanced-level anti-magic that it was. It required an abnormal amount of retained psions, so even researchers in the field wouldn’t have had many opportunities to see it before now.

But even without that knowledge, the big screens equipped with psion visualization processing capabilities were showing fiercely radiant psionic bullets materializing in midair, shooting through the compressed air spells of Masaki’s and blowing them to a million pieces.

It was a marvelous, fantastic spectacle, worthy of excitement. The magicians in the audience—and those with the makings of such—who could visually perceive psions were looking straight at the field rather than the screens, overawed by the madly dancing storm of psions in the air. The mind-boggling, emotionally moving, completely absurd sight had captivated them.

Right now, Tatsuya was focusing his mind on shooting down Masaki’s attacks. He did still see Kichijouji jumping out of Third High’s base, though.

As if that were his cue—actually, it was exactly his cue—Tatsuya switched from his current careful stride to an all-out run.

Masaki didn’t panic at the sudden dash. He took careful aim and fired compressed-air bullet spells at Tatsuya again and again.

One option would have been to run in a zigzag to avoid those shots, but Tatsuya didn’t take that course. Masaki wasn’t aiming manually, so such trivial evasive maneuvers would mean nothing. Instead, as he ran he strained his senses to spot the event alterations appearing in the air, ramming psionic bullets—his Program Demolition—into them, crushing Masaki’s attacks before they even manifested. All the while, he tried to sprint through the three hundred thirty yards between them.

But the closer they got to each other, the easier it was for Masaki to aim. Physical distance might not have directly affected anything, but cognitively, the real proximity made it easier to feel the distance as if it were close.

The closer the target, the easier it was to aim. Especially when you were aiming at something you couldn’t see, like the air. In this case, Tatsuya was the target of attack. Once he got within one hundred sixty feet, he was unable to keep parrying Masaki’s attacks.

A stray compressed-air bullet flew straight at him. He used all his senses to detect it and all his martial arts abilities to avoid it, then continued toward his target. Tatsuya couldn’t go straight for him anymore. The last several dozen feet were like a huge wall towering over him.

“Looks like he finally can’t dodge the issue anymore,” said Yamanaka in the stands, apparently amused at seeing Tatsuya being driven back.

“Don’t be indiscreet, Doctor. Perceiving both the signs of the spell’s activation and the bullets themselves with just his regular senses would be impossible even for Tatsuya. And in this situation, even without Elemental Sight, it can be chalked up to a sixth sense.”

Fujibayashi’s defense put a mean grin on Yamanaka’s face. “Is that right? I suppose he could deceive the eyes of the masses…but I don’t think he would fool our esteemed guest’s eyes.”

Yamanaka looked toward the main visitor’s seats, his eyes pointing out the Kudou patriarch, who was watching the match with great interest. Fujibayashi shot only a brief glance in that direction before looking back at Tatsuya.

On his way around the field, toward the side of First High’s monolith, Kichijouji found himself blocked off about a hundred yards away by Leo. Though confused at their defender advancing this far up, Kichijouji fired an Invisible Bullet at him.

Or at least, he tried to.

“What?”

A black wall stood before his eyes now. Leo had taken off his mantle and, after fluttering in the wind, it had stiffened into place, turning into a wall in front of him.

Then, from the side, a piece of metal slashed through the air toward Kichijouji. He dodged the armament’s projectile by instantly activating a movement spell, one that sent him flying backward.

Then a sudden gust of wind was upon him. He used a weighting spell to reduce his inertia, then mitigated the damage from the wind attack by allowing himself to be blown away.

What a pain! Kichijouji cursed to himself, now aiming an Invisible Bullet at Mikihiko, who had appeared about thirty feet behind Leo. Kichijouji had decided to crush the nuisance on support fire first.

But as soon as he focused on the gray robe, he suddenly couldn’t tell near from far. The shimmering of air blurred Mikihiko into a gray shadow, like he was looking at an out-of-focus analog photograph.

An illusion technique?!

As soon as he realized they’d taken advantage of the fact that he needed to visually aim the Invisible Bullet spell, he noticed the Mini-Communicator’s blade coming down at him from overhead. It would be impossible to dodge at this point. He shut his eyes.

“Gah!”

But the one grunting the air out of his lungs was actually Leo.

Not even a second before his descending blade hit Kichijouji, it had veered off course and slammed into the ground. An explosion of air had then hit Leo’s body from the side, knocking him to the ground.

“Masaki!” cried Kichijouji to his savior, omitting the thanks.

Kichijouji had fallen right into the enemy’s trap, but Masaki had saved him with support fire even as he continued to attack Tatsuya.

Kichijouji’s fingers danced across his CAD console and he activated a spell of the weighting family. The direction of gravity suddenly changed, and Mikihiko “fell” sideways without any idea of what happened. After he went down, Kichijouji, who had abandoned his hang-up on his own magic of choice, sent a weighting-increase spell at him.

He heard a grunt squeezed out of Mikihiko’s mouth as he was pressed to the ground.

Tatsuya, though, hadn’t been silently watching that happen, either. In the moment Masaki had diverted his attention toward Kichijouji, Tatsuya had closed to within sixteen feet of him. With his martial arts abilities, Masaki was now within striking range.

Closing the distance required only a single leap.

A look of unmistakable discomposure crossed Masaki’s face. It was much like panic—perhaps his instincts warned him of the threat, given the experienced soldier that he was. Then he let loose a barrage of sixteen compressed-air bullets—and each one of them went over the regulation for magic strength.

The anti-magic spell Program Demolition was a technique that blew apart a magic program with a bullet of compressed psions. Because it did so by force, it was extremely inefficient.

Though it wasn’t widely known, magic programs did have a strength to them. Magic programs with powerful influence would, in turn, have strong psionic information bodies composing them. In order to use force to blow away a magic program from a caster of Masaki’s level instead of technically analyzing it, even Tatsuya needed to compress a huge amount of psions—more than a normal magician would be able to wring out in an entire day.

And there were sixteen of them now, in this one moment.

Immediately, he knew Program Demolition wouldn’t make it in time. But he didn’t choose to use Dismantle. Stubbornly, he refused to use the confidential spell. He would keep his Program Dispersion spell, which dismantled the bodies composing information, hidden. Instead, he intercepted the shots with Program Demolition.

As a result, and perhaps inevitably…

…his interception only got to fourteen shots, and the last two slammed into him.

As he saw Tatsuya sink to the ground at his feet, Masaki suddenly very much regretted doing that. He had allowed himself to succumb to his sense of self-preservation and had fired a spell with much more power than the rules allowed. He knew as much immediately after triggering the magic.

It had been a momentary thing. Maybe the judges hadn’t noticed. There was no red flag out…but he still knew he had committed a violation that would have constituted a forfeit.

He had to spend time considering all that.

And that created a blank moment he wouldn’t be able to take back.

—It happened faster that Tatsuya could think and was rectified just as quickly. The unconscious region of his mind’s information processing speed far surpassed that of his conscious region’s. By the time he was aware that he’d fallen, his body had already finished repairing itself.

There were feet in front of him, standing still, within arm’s reach. Tatsuya didn’t know why Masaki had frozen in place like that, leaving himself wide-open. Right now he didn’t need to know. He didn’t need to think about it, so instead he leaped up.

His right foot hit the ground, and with Masaki’s tense face of surprise in front of him, stuck his right arm out. His right hand flew by Masaki’s reflexively bent head, though at a farther distance. The thrust had not been aimed to strike him in the head. The moment it flew past Masaki’s ear…

…a ripping sound rivaling that of a flash bang came from Tatsuya’s right hand.

The roar made the stands completely quiet. Even Kichijouji, who was in the middle of combat, turned around and stopped.

Tatsuya’s right thumb was pressed to the end of his right index finger, with his middle finger across his thumb. The players, the judges, the audience, those in the cheering section—everyone present looked on as Masaki crumpled to the ground and Tatsuya fell limp to his knees.

“What? What on earth was that?” asked Mayumi, looking left and right, her voice and face both completely confused.

But no answer came. Neither Suzune nor Azusa could give her one.

Instead, the answer came from the other side of Suzune, where Katsuto was sitting. “…I think he snapped his fingers to amplify the sound.”

“…You’re right,” continued Suzune. “A simple amplification of sound waves. The loud noise ruptured his eardrum and damaged his semicircular canal, incapacitating Ichijou. It wasn’t against the rules.

“His technique, despite it increasing the volume so much, is simple in construction. It requires only a single spell in the oscillation family. That’s why Tatsuya could activate it in an instant even though he has trouble casting magic quickly.”

Mayumi’s reaction to the explanation, though, was an outburst bordering on hysterical. “I knew that to begin with! That was obvious just from looking at his right hand! How did he stand back up after being knocked down by Ichijou’s attack?! Didn’t that take him down?! He tried to intercept it with Program Demolition, and he didn’t make it! He should have taken at least two of those shots! Tatsuya should be badly hurt by that attack! It was against the rules! How did he get back up and keep fighting?!”

“Saegusa, calm down,” soothed Katsuto in a heavy, calm voice. Mayumi’s face was white with the shock of Tatsuya having been badly hurt. “That’s how it looked like to me, too. But the reality is that he got back up and took down the enemy with movements that would be impossible if he was that injured. Right now it just seems like he took damage from his own sonic attack. He’s not hurt any worse.”

“But…”

“I hear Shiba is skilled in old-style martial arts. I also hear that the old styles have skills to make their physical bodies stronger and to ward off impacts within their bodies. It was probably one of those.”

“…” Mayumi didn’t seem convinced by Katsuto’s words, but for now, she managed to regain her calm.

“We don’t know everything there is to know in this world. Magic alone is no miracle. And the match isn’t over yet, either.”

“…You’re right. I’m sorry, Juumonji. And Rin.”

Even while Mayumi and Suzune were reconciling, the battle had entered a new phase.

“His self-repair never fails to amaze me!” cheered Yamanaka—though in a low-enough voice so that others wouldn’t hear him.

Fujibayashi turned an incredulous stare on him. “…Was that really the self-repair technique? I didn’t even see the psions for when it activated.”

“I couldn’t see them, either. I bet not even Old Master Kudou could see them. His self-repair speed exceeds the speed of human consciousness, after all.” Yamanaka finally noticed the grim look on Fujibayashi’s face as she stared at him. “Oh, well…I definitely didn’t see it. I never saw Tatsuya Shiba using a self-repair technique he shouldn’t be able to use, I promise. Boy, he must be way stronger than most humans. Yes, truly interesting…” said Yamanaka, forced to suppress a manic laugh.

Fujibayashi gave him a stunned warning. “Even so, you don’t want him becoming a test subject, do you? Our country has only two of them, and the world has only fifty. They would be extremely valuable for war.”

“Well, I don’t think he’s weak enough to break from a few little experiments.”

“That doesn’t make it all right!”

The flat-out berating made Yamanaka flinch. “Well, you’re right…and he did use it, like you said.”

“Yes. It looks like the regulation low-spec CADs were too little for him to go up against Ichijou. I don’t think he had much choice but to use flash casting, don’t you?”

“A single flash-cast oscillation spell… Well, at least our secrets are safe.”

The Yotsuba were the ones who wanted to keep flash casting a secret, not the Independent Magic Battalion. There were too many humane issues with the technology, so the regular military couldn’t use it.

What the Independent Magic Battalion needed to keep secret was the original magic Tatsuya possessed. Despite the overwhelming disadvantage he’d faced, he hadn’t used Dismantle. And he used his self-repair technique so quickly that nobody would have been able to see it. This would probably only result in a bit more regular attention heaped onto Tatsuya. If it had gone differently, the military might have been forced to secure Tatsuya so that he didn’t fall into enemy hands—he was valuable as both a specimen and as combat potential.

That would, at the same time, equate to stealing even more of his freedom. If that had happened, it wouldn’t be unthinkable to have to confront him—or even fight against him. Despite the things Yamanaka said, the doctor was very much relieved at this outcome.

“Having his left-hand CAD installed with oscillation spells was probably to camouflage it. He was thoroughly prepared as usual.”

“If you’re telling me that’s a high school kid, then the world’s gone wrong. Still, flash casting… Enemies would find that speed a serious threat.”

Fujibayashi nodded slowly. “Yes…applying brainwashing technology to imprint an activation program on his memory region as image memory… Not reading activation programs from a CAD but rather from his memory region, thus shortening the time he needs to expand and read in the programs…

“The technology was developed even further with the singularity of his calculation region being in his conscious mind, so it shortens even the time he needs to construct magic programs by storing them in his memory region as image memory… That all completely makes up for any lack of speed his calculation region might have.”

“Makes up for it with some to spare, I’d say. Is there anyone in our unit who can activate magic faster than him? Yanagi uses techniques in the same family as him, and even he would barely be able to rival him, I’d think.”

“…You’re right. I can’t think of anyone else.”

The two of them weren’t watching the match anymore.

They just watched, worried, over Tatsuya as he remained on his knees.

Kichijouji was about to fall into complete panic. He couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him.

Masaki was lying on the ground. His opponent, Tatsuya, was on his knees, but there was still light in his eyes. Which meant…

Masaki…lost…?

What he was seeing was impossible. This should never have happened. Maybe they could have lost as a team, but Masaki should have had zero chance of being defeated.

“Kichijouji, get out of the way!”

Upon hearing the voice of their defender, whom he’d thought he left at the base, Kichijouji snapped out of it and reflexively used the Lightning Rod spell.

The short grass on the ground, now with improved electrical resistance, drew in the loosed lightning attack and the bolt dispersed into the ground.

Kichijouji finally realized that the enemy player he’d held down with a weighting spell before had unsteadily risen to his feet with ragged breath and his fluttering gray robe, and was now staring at him.

Mikihiko heard the roar but didn’t understand what had happened. He didn’t have the time to look around to check, either. All he knew was that the pressure holding him to the ground had disappeared. So he had hurried to roll over, distance himself, and stand up. It was a reflexive evasive motion.

And then he finally understood. Leo had gone down. Tatsuya was on his knees. He wasn’t out of the fight, but he didn’t look very fit to keep going.

And in front of him, Masaki Ichijou had gone down.

You did it, Tatsuya!

He knew Tatsuya would be able to do something, but he still had reservations—it seemed like too much even for Tatsuya. But now he felt cheered by the reality before him.

Mikihiko’s own condition couldn’t be called favorable. In fact, it could be said that he was in really bad shape. His chest wheezed every time he took a breath. His bones might not have been fractured, but there definitely could have been a few cracks. He was slightly oxygen deprived from being held down for so long, and his back hurt; he had hit it hard when he fell. Quietly, he cursed his fate to himself—for all the grass on the ground, it certainly wasn’t soft at all.

But he couldn’t call it quits now—

Even if he was in terrible shape, and even if it was two-on-one.

Not even if—he was in that exact situation. But he still couldn’t lose.

Tatsuya had defeated the Crimson Prince in a fair fight. Then Mikihiko would at least take down Cardinal George. That desire was the only thing holding up his trembling legs.

He used his CAD to fire a lightning attack. At the same time, he passed mana—signal psions—through his gray robe. The spirits of shadow inside his robe should have blurred his appearance.

Shadows weren’t the same thing as darkness. You could see the outline of objects thanks to their shadows. The spirits of shadow were independent information bodies (isolates) based on the concept of shadows. By confusing the outline between light and dark, it would interfere with his opponent’s sense of vision and make him unable to aim accurately.

This technique was originally the Yoshida family’s, but Tatsuya had been the one to think up this scheme of activating the vision sense interference spell with this technique-enhancing robe and a CAD with thoroughly optimized software.

His senses had gotten close to how they’d been before—or even more so, according to Erika—in how well he could use magic. If so, that was thanks to Tatsuya. The reason they’d gotten to the final match was thanks to Tatsuya as well, without a doubt. And that meant that everything until now had all been thanks to him. The thought made Mikihiko bite his lip to encourage his body to stay upright.

With the triumvirate of pride, arrogance, and haughtiness, Mikihiko spoke to himself.

Tatsuya had said something, taught something, to him: Mikihiko’s faults weren’t coming from his strength. They were coming from his technique. If that was true…

Tatsuya, I’ll prove what you said is right!

He ignored the magic brushing past him. Thanks to the shadow magic, he would appear blurred to his enemy’s eyes. Believing in the strength of his own spell, Mikihiko reached into his robe and typed a long command into his large, two-handed, portable terminal-shaped CAD.

And after his right hand left the device, he slammed it into the ground beneath him!

Normal multipurpose CADs used two number keys and one selection key; using those three keys would expand an activation program. Some high-end equipment, especially high-end portable terminal devices, were equipped with shortcut keys that allowed the caster to use a frequent spell with a single motion.

Mikihiko had just hit fifteen keys. That was five times the length of the magic-activating process of normal multipurpose CADs. And yet the time required for that process was far less than if he was to cast it as old magic.

Because the device stored the same number of activation programs, Mikihiko would never have to hit any extra keys. Instead of compiling one spell from five smaller ones, he had specified five separate spells to be triggered in sequence.

The technique was based on the same idea as sequential expansion. Rather than putting together one magic program that included five spells, he constructed each magic program as the previous was firing. The usual process in spirit magic was to verify the effects of each individual spell while completing the technique with a voice interface. With one chain of sequential actions, he didn’t have to check each spell on its own; he processed them all at once.

That was the solution Tatsuya had given to Mikihiko.

The ground trembled under his hand.

Not because the old-fashioned robed caster had slammed his hand to it—Kichijouji knew as well as Mikihiko did that it was the effect of a spell, one that oscillated the surface of the ground. And yet his appearance, action, and effect were so very magician-like that it gave off the illusion that the ground was swaying because Mikihiko had hit it with his palm.

As Kichijouji lost his balance, a fissure appeared, beginning at his opponent’s hand and traveling toward his own feet. The earth was not splitting open; it was being pushed apart by pressure. Kichijouji understood this logically as well, but for some reason, his logical mind had lost all sense of reality. Quickly, he cast a compound spell of both weight reduction and movement in an attempt to flee into the sky.

But his feet never left the ground. The grass had entwined around his ankles.

He didn’t know of any magic that could control plants as if they were living creatures. The unknown spell shook his very soul. Logically, Mikihiko had probably made the grass coil by adjusting the air currents near to the ground. But modern magic was all Kichijouji knew. Such an ambiguous manipulation of air currents—not changing the wind direction to a certain angle but creating the vague effect of it getting tangled up—didn’t seem possible to him.

The fissure reached his feet…

…and Kichijouji felt as though the grass dragged his legs into it.

Everything was an illusion. But to get away from it, Kichijouji poured every ounce of magical energy he had into his jumping spell—despite there having been absolutely no need to do so.

He tore off the grass coiling around him and flew much higher than he needed to. He was filled with relief at having escaped the unnatural green jaws—and he temporarily forgot about Mikihiko. He had, at that moment, lost his focus on the enemy he was fighting.

And that created a final opening. Mikihiko had activated five spells in succession. Rumbling, Fissure, Disheveled Hair, Ant Lion Pit—those were the four techniques that had already been activated.

And the final one, the lightning strikes from Thunder Child, shot Kichijouji out of the air.

“Damn you!” As Mikihiko watched the outcome, his hand still on the ground, the final remaining Third High player attacked him with magic.

It was the movement spell Earth Tsunami, which rent the ground, sending a mass of earth and sand at the enemy. Compared to how the spell was originally envisioned, this wave of land was actually quite small. Maybe he was weak with this type of magic, or maybe he had reduced its power to be in compliance with the rules.

Whichever the case, Mikihiko had already taken plenty of damage from Kichijouji. The attack had more than enough punch behind it to take him down. He thought about ordering the spirits under his influence to repel the earth—and immediately discarded the idea. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that much power left.

In spirit magic, the spirits themselves didn’t actually possess any strength. They were purely information bodies—no more than mediums through which to pass one’s power of influence to alter the world.

I guess I lost in the end… he thought, watching the approaching wave of earth without even blinking—when suddenly, his vision was blocked off by blackness. There was a heavy, dull sound, like the earth had bounced off an iron wall, and it returned to the unmoving ground from whence it came.

Mikihiko looked toward where the black wall had come from.

There he saw his teammate, roaring and swinging his arm. His armament device flew in a wide arc, dealt a horizontal blow to the last Third High player, and knocked him down.

“…They…won?” muttered Mayumi under her breath.

“…They did,” answered Suzune, also under her breath.

That was the signal.

Someone gave a cheer.

Two cheers responded to that single voice, and then four, and then eight, spreading outward in a chain.

Then the cheering exploded.

The unruly screaming from the First High students, joined together, made the ground rumble and the stands shake. It was an innocent, exceedingly pure display of emotion. It was at once giving praise to the victors and the sound of a hammer of judgment upon the defeated.

But for some reason, the ruthless uproar quieted quickly.

Because in the front row of First High’s cheering section—

There was one girl there, looking at the field, hands over her mouth, tears of joy falling from her eyes. She stood up unsteadily, unable to find her voice, simply watching her brother wave his hand to her.

And as though to encourage her, applause began near her and steadily spread. Eventually the applause exceeded First High’s cheering stands, transforming into congratulations from friend and foe alike, praising all the players who had just finished their fierce battle.

The entire grandstand was showering the players with a warm applause.

Tatsuya’s team couldn’t help but feel awkward at the unexpected wave of applause. Tatsuya took off his helmet and walked over to Leo and Mikihiko. All three purposely chose to avoid looking at the grandstand.

“…You really did steal the best part,” said Mikihiko to Leo. “Was that your plan all along?” The snide comment, asked as soon as their eyes met, was to hide Mikihiko’s embarrassment; that was clearly evident to both parties.

“Nah, course not. I really couldn’t move for a while. I haven’t been rocked that hard since that big motorcycle hit me two years ago.”

“What? You got hit by a motorcycle?” Mikihiko gave him a you must be joking expression, but Leo nodded seriously.

“Yeah, it really hit me hard. There was some little kid behind me, and he couldn’t get out of the way. So I prepared myself, and bam!…I got hurt, of course. Cracked three of my ribs. Well, it was better than that was, at least. Didn’t hurt as much.”

“Er…Leo? I just want to make sure. You were blocking those compressed-air bullets before with hardening magic, right…?”

“Aha, actually, I was too preoccupied with attacking… You guessed it. I couldn’t put up a defense in time. That’s a blow to my pride.”

Mikihiko’s face filled with question marks. To put it bluntly, the expression looked idiotic. Thankfully for him, nobody here was going to laugh at it, and the screens had switched over to a bird’s-eye view of the field, so nobody could make out their exact expressions. “Then you…you were repelling Ichijou’s attack magic with nothing but your body?”

“I didn’t repel them! That’s why it took so long for me to stand up. Huh? Mikihiko, your lip is bleeding. You okay?”

“Uhh…yeah, I’m, uh…fine.” The conversation wasn’t making any sense, and Leo’s confession was even harder to believe. Mikihiko’s eyes were wide with surprise, but Leo was in such a good mood that he didn’t notice his friend’s bewilderment. “By the way, Tatsuya, are you all right?”

“Hmm? Sorry, could you say that again?”

“I said, Tatsuya, are you all right?”

“Yeah… One of my eardrums ruptured. I can’t hear that well right now. Anyway, Mikihiko, what’s wrong? You look like you saw some kind of UMA [unconfirmed mysterious animal].”

Mikihiko indeed felt just like that—well, almost—but he was also arguing with himself. Maybe he was the one lacking common sense. But no, that was impossible. “Wait, so you didn’t…hear any of what we were just talking about?”

“Sorry. I’m just now figuring it out from reading your lips. I did see that Leo got hit by a big motorcycle once, though.”

“…You didn’t doubt that at all?” asked Mikihiko slowly, trying to settle his internal argument and defend what he believed to be common sense.

“Doubt? Doubt what?”

Tatsuya’s answer filled Mikihiko with despair. He looked up to the sky.

“Mikihiko, what the heck’s wrong with you? You look depressed all of a sudden. In case you didn’t notice, we won. The championship!”

“You’re right…” Mikihiko suddenly turned an exhausted look to Leo.

Leo seemed to decide that he was really tired, and Tatsuya followed suit. Mikihiko watched them, lamenting. In the end, it wasn’t magic power or technique that had the last say—it was this guy’s hard head.

The applause showed no signs of stopping. Leo and Tatsuya, appearing to finally accept it, put their arms around each other’s shoulders and waved awkwardly back at the cheering.

Mikihiko watched them, seriously starting to consider a new training regimen.