Flag Battle
Having stockpiled the greatest number of flags, Team Orknodi instantly became public enemy number one.
“First bastard to step up gets knocked flat on their back,” Hestia growled.
“Can I just shoot ’em?” Jigoku asked, fingers twitching on his triggers.
“I-I’m a martial artist too, don’t forget!” Lotto added nervously.
“Cross this line and you’re all dead meat!” I declared.
I dragged a piece of chalk across the stone floor, drawing a thick white line as a clear demarcation, and backed it up with my fiercest scowl. One of Princess Mesgaki’s sycophants immediately turned to rat me out.
“Headmaster! She said she’s gonna kill us!”
—Oh dear. Murder is strictly forbidden! the Dragon Principal’s rumbling voice echoed in our minds.
“Hmph. Really?” I pouted.
—You are only first-years, after all.
“Ah. Good point!”
The casual exchange between dragon and child sent ripples of sheer horror through the student body.
“Wait, so murder is allowed if you’re not a first-year?!”
“Starting from which grade?!”
“So that’s why Gift Academy has such an insane expulsion rate and barely anyone graduates!”
Their collective panic was brief.
A scion of the Empire’s Three Founding Noble Families and a boy burning with competitive pride, Horner Fried Chicken stepped forward, spear leveled.
“Look, I crossed it. What’re you gonna do about it?”
“He crossed the line! Teach him a lesson, Hestia!”
Hestia strode forward, her face a cold, unreadable mask. Twirling a colossal double-bladed battleaxe as if it were a hollow steel pipe, she radiated a staggering aura of intimidation.
Refusing to back down in this test of nerve, Horner twirled his spear shaft with a series of dramatic whooshes, puffing out his chest.
Without skipping a beat, Hestia unhooked a handaxe from her belt and hurled it straight at his head.
CLANG!
“H-Hey! That was dangerous!”
“I threw it because it was dangerous, idiot.”
So the spear-twirling hadn’t just been for show. While the surrounding students gasped in admiration at Horner deflecting the flying axe, my veteran gamer eyes caught what everyone else missed: the cold sweat beading on his forehead.
This punk only deflected that on pure dumb luck!
“Want to try blocking the next one?”
Hestia flared her coat, revealing three more handaxes strapped neatly across her waist. Horner’s face drained of all color, and he shrieked toward his squad.
“What are you standing around gawking for?! Charge!”
“He might be in our faction, but that’s seriously pathetic...”
“If he was gonna squeal like that, why did he even step up?”
“He’s a complete pushover, but he’s still our team captain. Guess we ought to keep him alive.”
His teammates reluctantly fell in behind him.
BANG!
A bullet drilled into the flagstones right between their boots.
“Beep-beep~! Road’s closed up ahead! I’ll ventilate the next one to step forward, got it?”
“You already shot, you lunatic!”
“A redhead in a tricorne hat... That pirate swindled our flags last time, didn’t he?”
“Today’s payback, Jigoku!”
“Swarm him first!”
“Wait, guys?! Where are you going?! Weren’t you coming to help me?!”
Team Fried Chicken’s members rushed straight past Horner toward Jigoku. Left entirely on his own, Horner desperately brought his spear up to parry Hestia’s double-bladed axe as it whistled through the air, cleaving a deadly arc aimed straight for his ribs.
“Aaargh! That hurts like hell!”
“There’s a hole through my thigh...!”
“Fools! Watch the muzzle and slip the firing line!”
The Upper Class was not named lightly; one clever student managed to read Jigoku’s aim, weaving through the gunfire to close the gap.
SMACK!
“Lotto! Where is your imperial noble pride?! Why are you shielding some frontier pirate scum?!”
“Shut up! You think I want to protect him?! If I don’t want penalty points, I don’t have a choice!”
“Gyahaha! Well done, fist-girl! When we board my pirate ship, I’ll make you first mate!”
“I don’t want your stupid pirate job!”
Even while bickering, Lotto threw herself into close-quarters combat, repelling anyone attempting to corner Jigoku with crisp, brutal strikes. Their teamwork was surprisingly seamless—so much so that they had dismantled nearly an entire team without me having to lift a finger.
“Are you all just gonna stand there and watch?!” Horner wailed.
“Hmph. What a disgrace to the Three Founding Noble Families.”
“He was always the weakest link among us anyway.”
“I haven’t lost yet, dammit!”
Ignoring Horner’s indignant shrieks, Cheddar Potato Pizza—a boy whose hands were disproportionately massive—stepped forward alongside Leff, who was clad head-to-toe in heavy steel armor.
“Princess Yayoi,” Cheddar announced grandly. “As a proud scion of the Three Founding Noble Families, I, Cheddar Potato Pizza, shall lead this assault. With my Dough Flattening, I shall crush their weapons flat as pizza dough!”
“Frontier whelps! Taste the Iron-Plate Charge of Leff Iron-Plate Charcoal Galbi!”
At their feet lay the squirming, battered remnants of Grand Duke Heir Andersen’s team, who had been swept aside in seconds.
“Guh... Be careful, Orknodi,” Andersen groaned from the dirt. “Even I, who endured the grueling lecture on How to Cast Divine Arts Without Faith, could not best them...”
“...Couldn’t it be that you’re exhausted and useless because you enrolled in a stupid class like that?” I countered flatly.
If you don’t have faith in the gods, taking a lecture that forces you to physically brutalize yourself instead of casting miracles will obviously leave you crippled when it matters most!
“Damn it... I shouldn’t have copied the Grand Duke’s son’s timetable...”
“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have wrestled a rampaging bull to calm it down; I would’ve just freeloaded with divine miracles...”
“I took that Sleeping Well Anywhere class because of Andersen, and I tossed and turned on rocks all night. I don’t have an ounce of strength left...”
You guys took that one too?!
They had literally stepped on every single landmine course in the entire curriculum!
“I’ll make you regret turning down my offer to buy those flags!” Vanilla chimed in from the back. “I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget!”
“Lotto,” sneered one of Lotto’s former noble clique members. “To think you were exiled from our circle only to end up playing maid to a vulgar pirate. How pathetic. Allow my hands to grant an old comrade a merciful end to your disgrace.”
Between Vanilla, who had tried to buy our flags earlier, and Lotto’s old cronies, the enemy side was brimming with bravado. In stark contrast, their team leader, Third Imperial Princess Yayoi, remained planted firmly in front of their own basket, looking troubled.
“I’m terribly sorry, Lady Orknodi,” Yayoi called out timidly. “It appears our team has chosen you as our next target.”
“Our gentle Princess need only guard the basket and bear witness!” Cheddar roared. “Observe the true might of the heirs of the Empire’s Three Founding Families!”
With Cheddar’s spirited battle cry, Team Yayoi launched their assault—completely sans Yayoi.
As Hestia, Jigoku, and Lotto peeled off to lock down an opponent each, the delicious-sounding Cheddar Potato Pizza charged straight at me.
“Group Valedictorian Orknodi! I shall use this opportunity to display the absolute grandeur of my Dough Flattening!”
Cheddar’s Dough Flattening was an esoteric martial art that crushed any grasped enemy weapon as flat as raw pizza crust. Using a unique Mana Cultivation Technique, the Potato Pizza family’s secret art dismantled the material structure of solid objects and warped it instantly, reducing even peerless legendary blades into useless scraps of metal.
Engaging him in close-quarters combat was a pure losing trade.
Therefore, my tactical decision was simple.
“Are you running away?!”
Yep, running away.
Zero chance I fight you, buddy.
“Face me like an honorable warrior!”
“You’re jumping us four-on-nine and preaching about honor? Did you knead your conscience into pizza dough too?”
“A group valedictorian is supposed to overcome such odds!”
Since things had devolved into chaos anyway, I thought I might rendezvous with Giselle’s team to form a united front, but—good grief.
Giselle’s situation was a hundred times worse.
“...Princess Mesgaki was right,” Grand Duchess Irene declared coldly. “Since our team suffered losses over fake flags, there is no way we can allow you to clear this assignment without penalty points.”
“You frosty coward! Stop freezing my feet to the floor and fight me hand-to-hand like a real warrior!” Son Ocheon bellowed, his massive ape-beastman legs frozen solid into blocks of ice.
“Throw salt on it! Melt the ice!”
“Where the hell are we going to find precious salt in a place like this?!”
“Ah, Isabelle has tons of salt! I lent it to her for breakfast cooking!”
“You think we’ll let you sprinkle salt?! Get them, girls!”
“Don’t let that monkey break loose!”
Second Princess Mesgaki and her mob of imperial fangirls swarmed Isabelle and Giselle as they scrambled to thaw Son Ocheon, beating them like rugs.
“Dorothy! Take the basket and ru—urgh!”
“I feel bad targeting Nodi directly, but her friends are fair game,” an opponent sneered. “Resent the fact that you teamed up with a crooked merchant peddling fake flags!”
“Meow-meow punch, nya!”
“Taste the divine lightning fist of the Lightning Holy Heavenly Sect!”
Surrounded on all sides by named elite prodigies of the Upper Class, Giselle’s team couldn’t escape, couldn’t defend, and were getting ruthlessly pulverized.
“Hey. When are you gonna let go of the basket? I’m gonna keep poking you till you drop it.”
“Ow! Okay, okay! I’ll let go, I’ll let go!”
Zhuang poked the pommel of her dagger repeatedly into Dorothy’s ribs as the apprentice forest keeper clutched the basket desperately. Finally wrestling the basket away, Zhuang tipped it over, dumping out an avalanche of counterfeit flags.
“Huh? Orknodi?!”
That was the exact moment Zhuang and I locked eyes.
Zhuang in front of me, Cheddar Potato Pizza right behind me.
Caught between a rock and a hard place in a classic pincer crisis.
Then, Zhuang began quietly shuffling backward.
“What in the world are you doing?!” Cheddar roared. “Can an outskirt bumpkin not even block an escape route properly?!”
Even under Cheddar’s furious taunts, Zhuang backed away even further.
No matter how I looked at it...
She’s letting me go out of classmate loyalty because we took courses together!
“Thanks, Zhuang!” I cheered.
“Thanks?! Don’t tell me... You two are in league with each other?!”
Having zero trust in anyone to begin with, Cheddar threw an open-palmed swat toward Zhuang.
Sliding like silk across the floor, Zhuang effortlessly slipped the blow. Her amber eyes under the fox mask chilled to sub-zero.
“Don’t regret this. You started it.”
“A frontier hick barking at an imperial scion—gasp?!”
A throwing dagger flashed forward without the slightest sound.
Cheddar tried to shuffle his footing to dodge, but his boots caught on the floor, snagged by a sticky dark adhesive Zhuang had dispersed.
Twisting his torso frantically to evade the flying steel, he was instantly besieged. Zhuang danced in rapid revolutions around him, flicking folds of black cloth and hurling throwing knives in rhythmic succession—robbing his field of view and exploiting every blind spot in a dizzying assassination combo.
“Haaaah~? Why are you scrubs fighting each other during a pincer raid? Such complete lack of focus♡ You don’t even remember what you came here to do, do you~?♡”
“He picked a fight with me first!” Zhuang hissed back.
“Settle your stupid lovers’ quarrel later and just tell me where Orknodi ran off to!♡”
Brought back to her senses by Princess Mesgaki’s biting mockery, Zhuang pointed toward the direction I had fled.
“Probably... that way...”
“Nobody’s there♡”
“Huh? No? Was it this way?”
“Empty over here too♡”
“Uh? Wait? Huh?”
Zhuang fell into utter confusion.
Though, even if she searched for a hundred days, I doubted she would ever locate me.
You have hidden beneath the massive snout of the Dragon Principal for 1 minute.
[Stealth EXP +3]
[Guts EXP +10]
Everyone wet their pants just making eye contact with the Dragon Principal. Who on earth would ever think to check right beneath his chin!