Chapter 13

The Nine School Competition entered its final day. The only event would be Monolith Code. The first match of the finals tournament would be at nine, and the second at ten. The third-place match would be at one in the afternoon, with the final match being held at two.

After that, starting at 3:30, would be the awards ceremony and the closing ceremony, with the competition itself wrapping up at five.

Only the events in the stadiums would end, however. There would be a party at seven. And unlike the banquet from before the competition, the closing party would actually be a place for friendship among the schools—so much so that every year, more than a few long-distance couples were formed.

This was a chance for high school students to not only network but also to make acquaintances with influential people in magic society. Many of the seniors especially looked forward to the double-sided party.

But for the four high schools that had advanced to the tournament, the matches would come before all that. Yet none of the schools were busy any longer. Everything they needed to do, they’d done. Now, the players and staff all quietly awaited the final battle.

First High’s tent was no exception. Katsuto sat at the center, self-possessed, eyes closed, with some around him wearing nervous expressions and others wisely holding back their impatience, as athletes and staff alike waited for them to be called to the second match.

The team consisted of Katsuto Juumonji, Koutarou Tatsumi, and Gyoubu Hattori, along with the technical staff assigned to the final event. Isori was one of those present. A few steps away were the officers, surrounding the student council—Mayumi, Mari, Suzune, Kanon, and Azusa. Then came other junior and senior players, starting with Kanon. Those who couldn’t fit into the tent were waiting with bated breath in the cheering section for the players to appear.

But Tatsuya was nowhere to be found.

“Shouldn’t you go root them on?”

“…There’s still a little time before it gets rolling,” answered Tatsuya to Fujibayashi, after he took a sip of his drink. In accordance with last night’s orders, he’d visited Kazama’s room after breakfast.

However, the room’s owner had left for a confidential meeting with someone early in the morning, and now Tatsuya was eating a second breakfast with his fellow operative while they waited for Kazama to return. Tatsuya had the same appetite as every other high school boy, so he didn’t have any trouble adding a sandwich to his meal as dessert.

After making just enough conversation not to be rude, Tatsuya put away the last of the dishes. Kazama returned with Sanada and Yanagi in tow. Tatsuya and Fujibayashi rose and saluted; Kazama nonchalantly returned their salute, then waved for them to sit down.

Kazama took the seat across from Tatsuya, Yanagi was next to Fujibayashi, and Sanada was next to Tatsuya. (He’d already heard from Fujibayashi that Yamanaka had gone back to Kasumigaura Base, which had been elevated from a garrison years ago.

“Good work last night,” said Kazama finally, after some hasty greetings.

“No, sir, I apologize for causing all of you trouble over my private affairs.”

“It wasn’t a private affair. I was attacked, too.”

“And we got some valuable combat data last night, too. Four thousand feet, was it? We barely have any data on long-range magic that can successfully snipe a person from that distance. Your original style is super long-range precision attacks, and you can even do OTH, or over the horizon sniping, so it might not have been far enough to satisfy you. But the observation results were more than enough for me.”

After Tatsuya stood and bowed in apology, Yanagi and Sanada offered words of comfort and appreciation.

“That’s how it is,” concluded Kazama, accepting the bow. “The COIA and Public Safety were happier than we thought with last night’s little present, too. Even though some personal affairs happened to be involved, you accomplished your mission, so there’s nothing really to worry about.”

“…Was the intel on a mere crime syndicate really worth that much, sir?” Last night, personal revenge had been part of the reason he’d actually called up the enemy and tormented them for so long, but it had all unmistakably been ordered by Kazama.

“Well, that wasn’t just any crime syndicate.”

Tatsuya’s lips pursed.

Upon seeing the silent reply, Sanada spoke. “Tatsuya, how much do you know about Sorcery Boosters?”

“I’ve heard of them before, sir. A revolutionary magic amplification device making its way through crime organizations over the last few years. To be honest, sir, I thought it was a sham…”

“No, Sorcery Boosters do exist. And in a way, they really are revolutionary magic amplification devices, too.”

“Is magic amplification even possible in the first place, sir?” Tatsuya didn’t think Sanada would start lying or talking about unreliable gossip, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling of it being dubious.

Magic did include a process that output a “signal” magic program from the magician to the target eidos, so the concept of amplification wasn’t completely far-fetched. But the process that output a magic program was a movement of information within the Idea. The magic program signal wasn’t physically moving between the magician and the target as something in and of itself.

What part of the magic program constructed by the magician could be amplified…? That was the first question he had.

“It’s not amplification in the normal sense. Let’s see… It’s more like a CAD with a function to support the magic program construction process, using the program’s blueprint as a base, rather than directly supplying a stronger magical program, I suppose. It makes it possible for a magician to create magic programs that exceed their innate magical capacity.”

“That…sounds more like additional memory than a Booster, sir.”

“Well, yeah,” said Sanada, laughing for a few moments at the way Tatsuya put it. “…It’s not unusual for nicknames not to properly express what something is. Anyway, No-Head Dragon is a supplier of Sorcery Boosters. There’s an issue with the materials used to create these tools, though. No respectable company could make such a thing. Even nations would be at too high a risk if it were revealed. So in reality, No-Head Dragon has a monopoly on supplying them.”

“Then…did we need information on their leader so that we could buy these Sorcery Boosters, sir?”

“Nope. We needed intel on the target so we could stop the manufacturing and supply of the Boosters. They aren’t something that should be allowed to exist. I would never want to use one, and I wouldn’t want to make anyone in my unit use them, either… Tatsuya, you know how the central unit of a CAD, a Reaction Stone, is created, right?”

A Reaction Stone converted psionic waves into electrical signals and vice versa. Feeling a little confused at the sudden change in topic, Tatsuya nodded and spoke. “Reaction Stones are chemically synthesized at the molecular level, and created by crystallized neurons grown in a network structure. The networks’ construction determines the rate of conversion, so some say the issue isn’t the neurons’ physical characteristics but the pattern of network structure. But right now, there are no reported successes of creating a Reaction Stone from anything but artificial neurons.”

Sanada nodded, satisfied with Tatsuya’s answer. “That’s right. But the central unit of a Booster is a Reaction Stone, one made from something other than artificial neurons.”

“What could that be, sir…?”

“Human brains.”

Tatsuya was speechless.

“To be more specific, magician cerebrums.”

“…But if they used animal brain cells, the reaction with the user shouldn’t happen because of the residual psions inside the brain,” he argued. “The same should go for using human brain cells, shouldn’t it, sir?”

The obvious inhumanity wasn’t the main reason he was dumbstruck. He knew of both animal experiments and human experiments conducted at the dawn of CAD development. The trial-and-error experiments ignored all ethics, conscience, and faith, not caring what it looked like. As a result, they established the manufacturing know-how behind Reaction Stones by chemically synthesizing them from neurons.

But now Sanada was saying that No-Head Dragon had defied the conventional wisdom of magic engineering. That was what surprised Tatsuya.

“This isn’t to say their Reaction Stones function exactly like normal ones. One Booster can only be used for one specific spell. And that spell depends on the individual Booster. Still, it can be predicted to an extent. Residual thoughts in the brain during creation can be guessed in order to change the type of magic one can use. That means, if they give strong emotions of a certain variety during the creation process, they can create the same type of Booster every time.”

“…For example, delivering great pain or fear right before removing the brain, sir?”

“Most likely.”

“…It’s like the theory behind poisoning.”

“I agree. Boosters probably developed from the fundamentals of poisoning techniques. Our experimental unit’s goal is to make magic a weapon and include magicians in military systems, but we don’t make the magicians into actual objects. I’m a magician, too. And so are the major, Captain Yanagi, Lieutenant Fujibayashi, and almost all the members of the unit, including the noncommissioned officers and rank-and-file soldiers. I might be convinced to accept Generators, but I absolutely will not acknowledge the creation or usage of Boosters.”

“Even leaving sentimentality aside, Boosters that expand a magician’s capacity are a military threat as well. The NAIA feels the same way, and they’ve apparently requested the COIA’s help. Mibu is very thankful to you, Tatsuya,” added Kazama, ending the explanation here.

As Tatsuya looked around restlessly for an open seat in the cheering section, a pebble made of ice flew at him from up ahead. Flustered, he caught it, lowered his hand, then met eyes with his sister. He gave up on the pretense of not having noticed her group and meekly went to a seat close to the front.

“…That was a violent greeting.”

“My brother was the one pretending that he didn’t see us.”

Tatsuya had nothing to say to that.

Well, he had a proper reason for it (or at least, he thought so): He didn’t want to stand out in the cheering section right before the match started. It was clear, however, that it wasn’t nearly enough to convince his sister.

Their classmates sitting in nearby seats certainly didn’t seem to think Miyuki was in the right here—but nevertheless, he was not the least bit thankful for their detached looks of sympathy.

“Oh, here they come.”

“You got here just in time, Tatsuya!”

Tatsuya’s murmuring had been answered not by Miyuki, but by Honoka, who was sitting on the other side of her. Miyuki, busy trying to repulse her halfhearted gaze with a demure smile and thus, unable to answer, sat herself a little closer to Tatsuya instead.

The first match of the finals tournament would be First High versus Ninth High. Uncannily, it was the same pairing as in the rookie competition.

Ninth High must have had payback in their minds, because all three of their players looked raring to go.

In contrast, the three from First High all had their usual distinct mannerisms about them. Katsuto stood calm and composed, Tatsumi looked somehow innocent, and Hattori was returning the enemy team’s challenging stares with a super-serious scowl of determination. They were no different from how they always were, which exuded a sense of reliability.

“A sense of security… Well, that’s something we had none of.”

“That isn’t true! I never felt anxious about your victory, Tatsuya.”

“Your team was great, too! It was really impressive!”

Tatsuya had really only made a casual comment, but what immediately returned—hard to tell if it was consolation or encouragement—made him feel a bit taken aback.

It was right before the match, and the two had kept their voices down in respect, so nobody had started staring at them this time. But there was no guarantee it would go so well every time. An old saying went that words bore evil, so he braced himself, rid his mind of worldly thoughts, and decided to focus on cheering.

…Partly because the unamused look Shizuku was giving him hurt.

But then, without any relation to their little skit, the match began.

The field was the crag stage, modeled after a karst topography.

The starting buzzer went off, and Hattori immediately burst out of First High’s base.

He plunged toward the enemy with speed one couldn’t achieve with leg power alone: He was mixing in jumping magic here and there.

Ninth High’s reaction came late. They had more readily apparent fighting spirit, but First High had been the ones to actually take the initiative. With how fired up they were, Ninth High had probably been planning to be the ones to make the preemptive strike. But now, forestalled by the resolute charge that exceeded all expectations, they seemed confused about how to respond.

Should they focus all their attacks on the approaching member and establish numerical superiority? Or should they leave intercepting him to their defender and raid the enemy’s base as planned? Perhaps that very stagnation was First High’s goal.

Midway across the field, Hattori stopped and fired a spell at the three Ninth High players lagging in their base, causing an updraft of white fog to appear over their heads. The fog immediately grew denser, and then, as though it couldn’t hold up its own weight anymore, it fell to the ground.

A hail of dry ice rained down on them.

Dry Blizzard: a compound spell using convergence, divergence, and movement-type magic.

It was the origin of the spell Mayumi had used in Speed Shooting.

The spell pushed the cooling carbon dioxide to its freezing point and then transformed both the active and latent heat loss into kinetic energy, propelling the dry ice bullets the moment the CO₂ froze. Naturally, the more heat there was to lose, the faster the bullet would go. And here, they rained down from outside magical defenses and from above them, so the players couldn’t hide behind a boulder to shield themselves. Admittedly, they were wearing helmets, and the pebbles were only pea size, so the combatants wouldn’t be seriously hurt. But it could result in a light concussion after enough time.

That would be a direct line to losing the match by team knockout, so one of the Ninth High players expanded a mana shield—a virtual wall that reduced falling speed to zero—above their heads as cover.

All the shield did was temporarily change the speed to zero. After stopping for a moment in midair, the bullets were pulled down by gravity. The dry ice made by Hattori cooled the air around it, causing precipitation, and it fell to the ground along with a drizzle of water—onto their heads and onto the marble under them. Then, the precipitation absorbed the emitted carbon dioxide, turning it into a fog of dissolved carbon dioxide gas.

Because the fog was enclosed by the boulders in the terrain, it couldn’t be easily dispersed from the Ninth High base. It wasn’t really dense enough to prevent them from seeing, but the chilly moisture was unpleasant once noticed. A different player than the one who had made the shield tried to create an air current to blow away the side effects of the Dry Blizzard.

But Hattori’s next spell activated before it could.

The technique altered both the weak static electricity created from the minutely vibrating grains of sand and the electrical properties of that sand at the same time, increasing its volume and releasing it into the surface of the ground.

It was the same type of spell the Eighth High rookie had used on the same crag stage where he forced an electron release, but the power and polish on it were an order of magnitude higher.

A crescent-shaped section of the ground, sixteen feet wide and wrapping around Ninth High’s magical defenses, began to shine. Countless small, flickering cracks of lightning wound together, looking just like a swarm of small snakes wriggling toward them.

The sand-mixed ground, the sparse patches of grass, and the randomly scattered boulders got soaking wet from the fog, whose conductivity had increased because of the carbon dioxide thawing. The squirming snakes of electricity on the outside of their defensive line traveled through the ground, independent of magic, and attacked the Ninth High players.

It was the combination spell Slithering Thunder.

A combination spell was not a single technique with multiple magic processes involved. Instead, it was when a caster linked together each phenomena created by multiple spells to create a bigger effect than the sum of each individual spell.

In exchange for not having ridiculously strong magic specialization, enough processing speed that nobody could catch up to him, nor multi-casting in a way nobody else could, Hattori’s distinctive characteristic and forte was being able to retain stability as he cast a great variety of different spells one after the other, no matter the situation.

Myriad situation-dependent magic that linked together and grew more powerful through synergistic effects—this could be called Hattori showing his true worth as a magician.

One of the three Ninth High players jumped into the air to avoid the electrical current. But the player who made the shield and the one who had just compiled a spell to blow away the fog were a moment late as they tried to switch to a jumping spell. The lightning coiled around his feet. The boots that came with the protection suits were insulated, but the insulation on the suits themselves was simple. (After all, with too much insulation, they’d lose breathability.) And already, the fog with the carbon dioxide gas in it clung to their bodies and dripped.

The player preparing the gust spell immediately changed the variables to create a downburst of wind; blowing away the fog droplets weakened the electricity. The player holding up the shield, though, took the full brunt of Slithering Thunder.

As he fell face-first onto the ground, the one next to him fell to his knees. That one gave up on his legs—they weren’t going to be moving—and his fingers flew across his CAD as he knelt.

Then he heard a cry of pain from the air.

The player who had jumped to avoid the electrical attack had been rocked by an invisible flying hammer and fell to the ground in a jumbled mess.

It was an acceleration spell cast by Koutarou Tatsumi, who prided himself on his excellent output (strength of influence) when using techniques of a single family. He had instantly applied more gravity in the downward direction and knocked the enemy player to the ground.

But in spite of that, the Ninth High player’s convergence magic went off. He hadn’t been distracted by his teammate’s fall—perhaps that just went to show the caliber of player who could advance to the finals tournament here. Instead, he fired a compressed-air bullet at Hattori. Excluding special environments like underwater or outer space, air existed everywhere, so it had always been popular as a medium for combat magic. In addition, the rules restricting methods of attack and lethality meant that compressed-air bullets and cutting winds tended to be seen quite often in Monolith Code.

The highly pressurized mass of air created outside Hattori’s zone of magical defense, however, slammed into an invisible wall before reaching him, and dispersed.

Hattori hadn’t been the one to make that shield.

The spell that had blocked the compressed-air bullet had been Reflector, which Katsuto had set up from a quarter mile behind Hattori.

Whether solid, liquid, or gas, the area-of-effect spell created a field that reversed movement vectors. In general, area-of-effect magic was said to be more difficult than anti-magic. It was all about how difficult it was to specify the spell’s target.

The difficulty of altering an event was not in altering an object’s properties or altering its spatial properties. The issue was how to mark off the area you wanted to overwrite the properties of.

In instances where there were clear, visible dividers, like walls, ceilings, and fences, it was simple. But if you were in a free outdoor space with no natural boundaries, it was quite difficult to “cut away” a specific region to define your spell within.

If it were an attack spell, you could lower the definition by just describing the size of the target area in your activation program. But with defensive magic, which required you to determine a target area within an opponent’s attack, when you didn’t know how far away or how big that attack would be, there weren’t many instances where you could write in the surface area, volume, or shape in the activation program beforehand.

For example, a shield to protect yourself or a wall to cover your entire team: In those cases, you could configure it to be very close to your own position using relative coordinates. Normally, that was as much as you could do.

But Katsuto had just created a perfect Reflector with only Hattori’s body as the target of protection—on an open field without anything to use as a reference, without using any support devices to supplement his mental image, and from a quarter mile away. It was an incredible ability to judge spaces.

Magicians in the Juumonji family refined their already-innate spatial awareness to freely use all kinds of defensive area-of-effect spells. That’s where their nickname “Rampart” came from.

Hattori activated his next spell. He hadn’t taken any defensive measures at all against the Ninth High player’s attack. He’d constructed his magic programs fully expecting Katsuto to block all attacks for him.

Sand whipped up off the ground. Wind took the sand away. The dust cloud Hattori created about thirty feet in front of him grew in size and speed as it advanced, hurtling toward the enemy player as a storm of mud and dirt.

It was the compound spell Linear Sandstorm, which used acceleration and convergence magic. A wide-area attack spell built to use the first pieces of sand as a core and grown in density using a movement process.

The dust storm converged further before plowing through the Ninth High player.

“That was pretty high level…” said Tatsuya in quiet awe, as the music sounded to end the match.

The match itself had developed into a pretty one-sided contest. When he said “high level,” he meant the spells that had been used and the way they’d been used.

The way Hattori in particular had used his magic was so advanced that it made him want to make sure his sister learned from it. (Tatsuya decided that he wouldn’t be able to emulate it himself.) That said, he had never rated Hattori lowly. Tatsuya may have won a duel against him, but he was objectively aware that it had been because of a surprise attack and that they had only just met. He’d predicted that Hattori was more skilled at using magic than just having a lot of magic power, after seeing him use spells at a variety of different rhythms, but the true skill he’d just shown had honestly exceeded Tatsuya’s expectations. I still don’t have good enough eyes…

“The finals are finally here,” sighed Honoka, without a care in the world for Tatsuya’s thoughts as he sat there slightly shocked. For her, it was only natural that her upperclassman, who was the student council president, had high magical abilities. However, that innocence—seeming to be “only natural” to her—was like a gentle, cool breeze to his mind.

It’s only natural I don’t have an eye for others; I’m still in high school.

It was at that moment that Tatsuya Shiba’s mind finally switched from its prolonged stay as last night’s specialist in the Independent Magic Battalion to that of a high school student.

“The final match is at one, but it’s still a little early for lunch…”

“Would you like to get something a bit colder, Tatsuya?” suggested Miyuki.

“Agreed. I want ice cream,” Shizuku responded immediately.

He didn’t have a single thing to do today as part of the staff. And he didn’t need to be worrying about any crime syndicates right now, either. Tatsuya decided he should let himself spend his time in an easygoing manner. He was a high school student, after all.

“There was a truck out there before. Do you want to eat there?”

“Yes, that would be good!”

The one boy and three pretty girls—oblivious to how they might look to others—headed for the ice cream truck with Tatsuya in the lead.

The final Monolith Code match was set to go on the canyon stage.

Mayumi paid a visit to the players’ waiting room to convey the decision from the administration committee. One might have also thought relaying messages wasn’t exactly the duty of a student council president. But the fact was, Mayumi wouldn’t have come all the way here just to tell him of the decision.

“Juumonji, are you in here?”

Not a second after speaking into the intercom at the entrance, she heard his reply: “I’ll be right there.”

A few moments later, Katsuto parted the sheets of canvas acting as a door, wearing the bottom half of his protective suit and a tank top.

“Sorry I’m not presentable.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like you’re naked or anything.”

The faint smell of alcohol wafted from his body. It wasn’t because he’d been drinking. It was the subtle hint of the alcohol in his deodorant. In the few moments before he’d come out, he’d probably been worried about smelling like sweat when meeting her. He wasn’t overly chivalrous toward girls, but he was a gentleman through and through. And Mayumi thought the fact that he didn’t try to appeal to such consideration in the slightest was his own way of showing courtesy.

“What is it?”

Mayumi snapped out of her incoherent thoughts and retrieved the important matter back from the mental shelf upon which she’d deposited it. “They decided what stage the finals will be on. Do you have a minute?”

That would have been all she needed to say if she’d only come to tell him about the finals stage. But Katsuto didn’t ask what or why; he silently followed after Mayumi.

She brought him to the room she’d used to ask Tatsuya’s advice three days ago.

And like three days ago, she put up a soundproofing wall and brought her lips close to Katsuto’s ear after he sat at the table. “I got an encrypted message from my father. He said he has a notification from the Master Clans Council.”

“Really?”

“I guess you haven’t gotten it, then.”

“No.”

Katsuto’s response was surprise, but it took a lot to work the cryptanalysis on Master Clans Council messages, so he would have to be alone for no short period of time in order to decipher and read it. Even here, they were talking only on break time, and Mayumi interpreted this as Juumonji not wanting to invite any doubts by leaving his position as leader for too long.

Mayumi and Katsuto were in different positions than the other members of the team. Not in terms of student council president or team leader—but their social standings. Mayumi was a direct descendant of the current Ten Master Clans.

And Katsuto’s position was even more different: He was also a direct descendant of the current clans, but unlike Mayumi, he was designated as the next head of the Juumonji family. In terms of all the high school students competing at this year’s Nine School Competition, only Masaki stood in the same position as him.

“Remember when Tatsuya beat Ichijou the day before yesterday?”

“…Yes, what about it?”

Katsuto’s response hadn’t been “now that you mention it…”—he’d cut straight to the point.

Well, actually, the response itself had been a formal one.

“The Ten Master Clans stand at the pinnacle of this nation’s magicians. Those who bear the name of one of the clans must be the strongest of all the magicians in Japan.”

Mayumi’s voice sounded a little cynical. She was speaking not of her own opinions but of her father’s, and of the council’s doctrines. Her own thoughts on the manner were likely different. But right now, what he needed to hear wasn’t her own philosophy but the council’s doctrines.

“This may be high school students playing around, but they say they can’t allow any results that leave any doubts as to the Ten Master Clans’ future strength.”

“I don’t believe that match was ‘playing around,’ but I see.” His words were a rebuttal, but his tone was unconcerned. “What you mean is the council wants the matches to display the clans’ strength right now, right?”

“Yes… It’s absurd, though, and I would rather not burden you with it.”

“No…this is actually something I need to deal with myself as the next head of the Juumonji. Sorry for making you worry.”

“Look, it’s not a big deal or anything…” For once, Mayumi was seriously making meaningless complaints—maybe her emotions had nowhere else to go. “It’s all so stupid… If Tatsuya were related at all to the clans, even by a branch family, we wouldn’t have gotten stuck in this poorly written comedy…”

Katsuto made no comment to Mayumi’s grumbling. “Leave it to me” was all he said, his face emotionless.

The final Monolith Code match of the day was to be First High versus Third High. It was a grudge match for many reasons and, put another way, was perhaps a fated showdown. But the match itself ended up even more one-sided than the semifinal had. Perhaps it was karma. They did the same thing to Third High that Masaki had done to Eighth High in the rookie competition.

The canyon stage had been chosen as their battlefield. All manner of attacks, from flying ice pebbles to boulders dislodging from cliffs to boiling water, had been continuously fired toward Katsuto for a while now.

But all of them bounced off the magical wall Katsuto had up. It reversed the movement vector of objects with mass. It reflected electromagnetic waves (including light) and sound waves. It aligned particle frequency to set values. It stopped psions from breaching. Every single type of attack was being blocked by a multi-layered wall, each for one of those purposes.

There was nothing to prevent Katsuto’s stride.

The multilayered movement barrier spell, Phalanx.

The true value in this spell—and in the casters of the Juumonji—wasn’t the simple fact that they kept the magic wall up continuously. It was their durability in updating many types of defense without pause.

This spell in particular mirrored a close formation of heavily armored soldiers, who, by forming into several lines clustered into one pack to advance, inverted their attack power into a heightened group defense.

If a soldier in the front line fell, a soldier behind him would replace him—it was an ancient tactic that maintained a constantly tight defense, and one from which the spell drew its name. Its defensive power and the pressure it exerted did that name no shame.

Katsuto advanced through the narrow field step-by-step, slowly but surely. The Third High players could neither ignore it nor avoid it. If they let up on their attacks at all, wouldn’t a decisive blow come a moment later?

The pressure mounted with each step he took, with the unreasonable, yet compulsive, idea of steadily taking their attacks. Their ineffective efforts would be wearing the enemy down, sure, but it should have been exhausting to the defender. But in contrast to the three from Third High, who were breathing heavily now, Katsuto didn’t look the slightest bit tired.

And once they were thirty feet away from one another, Katsuto suddenly stopped walking.

He stopped inching forward step-by-step…

…and then dashed off the ground with force.

His rocklike body leaped through the air.

He aimed for the enemy players with a self-acceleration and movement spell, going in shoulder first for a tackle—with his physical object–blocking wall still up to prevent anything from getting inside.

One Third High player bounced off his wall and went flying as Katsuto charged toward him. Katsuto’s huge body changed direction instantly and soared at the next enemy without pausing. The remaining pair’s magical defenses and momentum alterations had no effect against the even stronger field of influence being projected by their opponent.

The third player was sent flying, without any means to combat Katsuto, and the final Monolith Code match came to an end.

First High had achieved a perfect victory, putting the icing on the cake of their overall championship win.

As Tatsuya applauded Katsuto alongside the rest of the crowd, he was speechless. Katsuto, for his part, was waving magnanimously to the crowd.

The word overwhelming didn’t even begin to cover it. It was nothing but tremendous.

His tactic itself had been simple: It was essentially simple brute force. But that spell—that wasn’t simple brute force. It was an amazingly advanced brute force, one that kept on creating the walls of each of the eight types while switching their orders in an irregular fashion.

“That was amazing… Was that the Juumonji’s Phalanx?” Miyuki couldn’t manage anything but ordinary impressions, either. It went to show how much she’d been taken aback by the match. He understood how she felt.

But he couldn’t agree with what she’d said. “It wasn’t… I don’t think that was the original Phalanx.”

The multilayered barrier spell Phalanx was sometimes used to refer to the Juumonji family itself. But people had surprisingly few chances to see it with their own eyes. Normally, they didn’t need to deploy barriers of every type of magic at one time. And that was only natural: If multiple magicians were attacking one target simultaneously, then the more attackers and the more types of attack spells there were, the easier it was for magic interference to occur. Tatsuya had never actually seen this spell before, either.

The multilayered barrier spell Katsuto had just used certainly did include every type of magic. That meant it was definitely Phalanx.

But Tatsuya couldn’t accept such reasoning. “That last attack… It didn’t seem like what Phalanx was meant to be used for.”

It was less of a conjecture based on logic than it was a gut feeling. But he couldn’t help feeling like the real Phalanx was an even more terrifying spell.

“If you say so, Tatsuya, then it must be true. Then I will rephrase… Juumonji has amazing talent.”

Tatsuya felt the exact same way. As they continued to applaud, still impressed, he suddenly got the feeling that Katsuto had looked at him. The young man stuck his fist into the air to celebrate his victory. His eyes met Tatsuya’s for a moment—and then Tatsuya thought he saw him smile for just an instant.

He felt like Katsuto’s eyes were saying this: I’m stronger than you.

Some said it was the benefit of a ruler for people to follow him without him having to rely on physical strength. But when you got right to the point, that was nothing more than political sophistry. What a ruler truly needed was this kind of absolute deterrence, to make the enemy know that he couldn’t resist and to make the enemy abandon the effort of rising against the regent entirely.

As Katsuto responded to the cheers, he had the appearance of such a ruler—one who knew the value of his strength and had purposefully demonstrated it.