12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (26)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (26)
Ella had been scouting Theater—the sixth arena—when the bell tolled. She sprinted for the exit before the echo died. The siren chased her, and the announcer's voice followed.
"First Extinction Point: Arena 3, the Central Garden!"
The very spot with the bamboo grove where the first treasure chest had been uncovered. Just as in previous exams, the organizers were wiping arenas off the board in the order they had already been conquered.
Ella broke into a run toward the Shooting Range, exactly as planned. Her pace fell short of what she'd hoped for.
In this game, the red tiles she could step on multiplied only when players from other teams kept moving—each shift triggering color changes across the grid. She had darted all over the place herself, but the other competitors had barely stirred. The pool of red tiles had shriveled.
Her travel speed crawled compared to the opening minutes. She could slash the time by cutting straight through a different arena, but those tiles had to be saved for later—every unused red square was a lifeline she might still need.
Still, Ella wasn't worried. Once you knew the Shooting Range's trick, clearing it took mere moments. Plenty of time.
That confidence died the second she stepped inside. The announcer's roar, the crowd's roar, the gleeful laughter of the players—all of it hit her like a breaking wave.
"The competitors in the Shooting Range have cleared every obstacle! The stage floor is opening—something is rising! Could it be a treasure chest?"
Every heckler's panel along the ramp had thrown in the towel, white flags raised. While she had been circling other arenas, the challengers here had actually reached the puzzle's final stop.
They stood ringing the center of the stage, watching for whatever was about to emerge.
A treasure chest? Seriously—just like that?
Ella couldn't fathom why Clara hadn't sent her a single warning before things reached this point. Right then, the very contact she'd been waiting for broke in.
'Ella! I just got word from a courier on the Morning Star side! At the Shooting Range—'
'I'm standing in it right now! What on earth happened?'
'It's... Maya had already come out onto the track five minutes before Sudden Death kicked in! I told her to fall back because it's smarter to cut down on wild cards, but... I never imagined she'd solve the whole thing in the meantime...'
'You must've had signs they were nibbling through the puzzle before that, though. If you'd tipped me off, I would've gotten here and braced for it...'
The puzzle here couldn't be cracked with one flash of inspiration. You had to prod one target after another, probing which mechanisms responded, piecing the solution together step by painstaking step. Barrel through it all at once, skipping the intermediate stages—impossible.
'There were no signs, Ella! Maya swears almost nothing had been solved before she pulled out! Those people tore through the obstacles in under ten minutes like they'd suddenly stumbled onto the answer and stampeded straight to the finish!'
'How in the world...'
About to raise her voice, Ella stopped dead, her gaze catching on someone in the stands.
A mustachioed man in a suit saturated head-to-toe in gold stared back at her, his expression smug.
The instant she took in his face, the whole picture snapped together.
The way his smirk sharpened told her he knew she had figured it out.
"Did you imagine I'd just slink off after that kind of humiliation?"
A twisted smile hooked across Simon's mouth. Ella ground her teeth.
They had underestimated him. Badly. They had assumed any retaliation would wait until after the exam closed.
But the moment Reina was stolen out from under him and handed to Wonderstein, he had started preparing his counterblow. His chosen method: selling the puzzle solutions to another team.
A circus troupe that had already claimed a trophy was locked out of direct competition. But approaching employees of another troupe in the stands and spoon-feeding them an arena's strategy—that didn't break any rule.
He had access to the Golden Carnival staff's detailed analyses from their own arena sweeps. For someone of Lord Fantastic's caliber, reading those reports and taking a brief glance around the site was more than enough to reconstruct the full solution.
Ella relayed the sight in front of her to Clara.
'That—seriously, that insufferable mustache?'
'Yeah. Hell. I didn't think the man would stoop to playing this hand.'
In this industry—magician, acrobat, clown—no matter how loose someone's lips, you never blabbed the inner workings of your own craft to an outsider. The sleight behind a trick, the technique inside an acrobatic feat, the material that built a comedy routine. Those weren't mere moneymakers. They were the performer's identity, their very self.
Lord Fantastic had always sneered at the whole notion. He'd maintained openly that fools who couldn't deduce the method even while watching it performed didn't deserve to be taught.
And yet here he was, doling out lessons. Even if his goal was purely to torment them, the act itself was wildly out of character. Nothing they'd planned for.
"Oh, tough luck! The box does not contain a treasure chest! Instead... one 'Revival Ticket' item has appeared!"
The acrobats on stage eyed the reward with visible disappointment. Even so, they exchanged nods—some satisfaction, at least, in having clawed their way to a resolution on a puzzle that had kept them dangling for so long.
Simon shot them a sidelong glance and sneered inwardly.
'Tch. With rotten grit like that, you lot will never earn a star in this place.'
His mustache twitched once. He rose from his seat. To Ella, standing frozen, staring daggers, he spoke—his voice, shaped by ventriloquism rather than Wonderstein's brand of magic, reached her ears alone, inaudible to anyone nearby.
"A shame, really. Could've ended it all right here. But don't think this is over. There are still fifty-five minutes of play left. Heh heh. Let's see... if I hurry, I could hand out solutions for two or three more arenas."
He strode briskly out of the stands.
"Second Extinction Point: Arena 8, the Field!"
The place where Golden Carnival had unearthed a treasure chest. Sudden Death advanced in the order arenas were cleared—which meant this place would be erased next.
Ella shook herself alert and made to move toward the next arena. The moment her foot lifted, a white blur skimmed past her cheek.
Pop.
The object bounced off the wall—a ball. One of the throwing implements supplied inside the Shooting Range, hurled straight at her.
She spun around.
Four or five acrobats—the very ones who had just cleared the range—stood grinning at her, their smiles greasy with spite.
"What's the meaning of this?"
One of them answered with a snigger.
"What's it look like? We're knocking you out."
"And what exactly does that gain you?"
"Gain? Plenty. The gentleman who taught us how to clear this place made a promise. He said he'd give whichever team took you down a full technical manual covering every arena in this facility."
Fury bubbled up inside her, hot and thick.
That mustache! The same man who constantly preened about how a first-rate magician never sold even the smallest trick or scrap of knowledge!
"The exam isn't over yet!"
"We'll just aim for the next one. Honestly, this round's already out of reach for us."
"Tch. Pathetic! Even if you get that manual, what's it worth? The solutions will be remixed next exam anyway."
"The fundamental framework stays. At worst, you still salvage the underlying approach, don't you? Be real—this whole Shooting Range, we banged our heads against it for almost two hours and couldn't figure it out. He saw through it in one look. It'll definitely help."
"Enough talk! Attack!"
A dozen-odd balls flew at Ella simultaneously. Seeing the barrage, she understood—they hadn't trained in throwing for nothing. Multiple projectiles launched at once, a proper shooting acrobats' technique.
She threw herself into motion the instant she read the incoming trajectories. Some balls ricocheted off walls to cut across her escape path; others were aimed at her intended landing spots, forcing her to second-guess every leap.
'Reina... was this how it felt?'
The memory of her own assault on the girl flickered through Ella's mind as she twisted midair, flipped onto her hands, wheeled through a somersault—anything to slip the bombardment.
The acrobats let a flash of genuine admiration cross their faces before screwing their expressions back into sneers.
"Impressive. Really impressive."
"We're pelting her with everything, and she still hasn't spilled onto another tile?"
"She knows that the more tiles she burns through, the less ground she'll have left to stand on."
"But how long do you think you can dodge everything in place!"
The volley lashed at her again. She fought to stay on her existing tiles, but the relentless storm of balls gave her no choice—she was forced step by step onto other squares. Each new red tile she touched blinked out behind her, and the shrinking safe zone gradually herded her toward a corner.
"Third Extinction Point: Arena 7, the Shooting Range!"
The announcer's declaration lit digits across the floor tiles. The countdown began at 300 and bled away by the second. Ella couldn't muster the breathing room to flee. Merely dodging their assault already pushed her to her limit.
The numbers trickled into double digits. When they hit zero, every tile in this arena would drown in black.
'Am I really about to get eliminated here too?'
She bit down hard on her lip. It wouldn't be the absolute end—thirty coins could buy her an instant revival.
But unlike the Pool, this arena had no separate elimination zone. The moment the call was made, she'd be locked to whatever color she stood on, and even after reviving, she'd restart exactly where she'd fallen. If she got eliminated now, reviving would only hand those bastards a stationary target.
The only viable move was to let the elimination happen, wait until the entire arena flooded black, then revive. That way, she could sprint straight out to the entrance and trigger the resurrection there.
'Ella, just get eliminated now. You'll be reviving in a few minutes anyway—no point burning stamina running around in the meantime.'
That was the strategy Clara relayed. Ella knew it was the correct call. Only a handful of red tiles lingered near her now. Escaping this arena alive was already off the table.
Watching more time bleed through her fingers made her want to scream, but there was no other play. She stilled her feet, ready to step onto a different color and let the elimination take her—
And then a gust of wind slammed through the arena.
"Whoa!"
"What the—?"
"What are these guys?!"
A pack of figures materialized out of nowhere and swarmed the throwers harrying Ella. They hurled themselves heedlessly across the tiles with zero concern for their own eliminations, bodies blocking paths, cutting off pursuit.
Ella registered their uniforms: grey gym clothes, every one.
That color belonged unmistakably to the Silver Screen Circus.
One of them, battered under the pelting of balls, yelled toward her.
"Troupe Leader's orders—we're backing you up!"
"Get out of here, now!"
A smile tugged at Ella's mouth.
'So the boss pulled something after all!'
She'd been honest with herself every time she'd observed the Silver Screen members before—pale, weedy bookworm types who looked like they'd never sweated a day in their lives. But right now, no one in the world could have looked more reassuring.
"Thank you, mages!"
Ella flung herself toward the exit. The Silver Screen members' feet hitting fresh tiles had spawned a scatter of new red squares; she threaded through them and burst out of the arena without a hitch.
Moments after she cleared the boundary, the countdown expired.
"Three, two, one, zero! The Shooting Range has been completely flooded black! Ten competitors eliminated! What kind of deal just played out? The three-troupe coalition that was harassing competitor Ella has been shut down by interference from the Silver Screen Circus!"
Watching the red piece slip out of the map zone labeled Arena 7, the middle-aged mage of the Silver Screen Circus let out a long breath of relief. He turned to the troupe leader beside him.
"It's worked out exactly as you intended, Troupe Leader."
His mind drifted back to the order she had given fifteen minutes earlier.
'Since they're still inside the arena, there's an injury risk—I ought to tell them to pull out now.'
'Understood. In that case...'
'But... there's something to do first. Pass along word to everyone. Help the Monster Circus.'
Rumi had hesitated when Wonderstein handed her the strategy compilation a week before the main event. If her troupe was going to be eliminated regardless, she'd thought, maybe they could at least offer their assistance.
But volunteering to play nice unprompted had felt oddly uncomfortable, and she'd never managed to voice the proposal.
Now she knew holding back had been the right call. At the moment of their greatest peril, she'd appeared with her people to bail them out—and from far across the venue, Wonderstein had dipped his head to her in a respectful bow of thanks.
"H-hmph. I'm collecting separate payment for this later anyway."
She tried hard to crease her brow into a scowl, but the smile refused to leave her lips.