12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (27)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (27)
Even after escaping the Shooting Range, the assaults on Ella from the other teams continued without pause.
With her position fed to them in real time from the stands, they dogged her every step. Contestants who had been eliminated earlier were resurrected and now circled behind her, lunging for an opening. By all appearances, they had truly abandoned any hope of opening the treasure chest and were devoting everything to catching her.
"There she is!"
"We don't need to hold her!"
"Right! Just shove her off the tiles!"
They hurled whatever they could grab right at her and didn't balk at throwing their own bodies into a tackle, even if it meant their own disqualification. Since they had already written off the exam, nothing else mattered so long as she went down with them.
"You're clinging to me like a damn disease!"
Ella spotted another group blocking her path and spun in the opposite direction. She knew exactly where they were without looking. All she had to do was follow the angry shouting that erupted wherever they gathered.
"Aren't you ashamed? Grown adults!"
"What do you think you're doing to a kid!"
"Filthy bastards!"
Alliances like these were nothing new. The difference in intensity between ten teams fighting over three trophies and eight teams scrapping for a single one was stark. By its very nature, Rekachev's exams inevitably devolved, in their later stages, into collusion and open brawling between circuses.
This month, however, the crowd's reaction had veered in an entirely different direction from previous exams. Back then, even during fights, the spectators had cheered both sides evenly.
Now, the overwhelming majority were unapologetically backing Ella alone.
The spirited, irrepressible energy she had shown today was more than enough to capture the audience. Her technical mastery—clearing obstacles that even adult acrobats struggled with—was astonishing. The sheer inventiveness she displayed in the process drew gasps of admiration.
On top of that, her showmanship was exceptional. Unlike the other acrobats, who focused grimly on the task in front of them, her stunts were accessible and entertaining even to people with no circus knowledge whatsoever. Even those who had entered the arena carrying petty prejudices against her had, to the last person, been converted into fans.
So watching her get harassed by losers who had already thrown in the towel was bound to enrage anyone. And frankly, nobody was going to applaud the sight of a pack of grown adults mobbing a lone girl.
"Ella, stay strong!"
"Don't you let those bastards win!"
Every cheer from the stands sharpened the smile tugging at Ella's lips. The electric high of standing on a real stage honed her focus to a razor's edge.
A cordon of over a dozen acrobats couldn't touch a single hair on her head as she slipped through.
"Is that thing even human?"
"Damn it. If we don't salvage something from this, our sponsor's going to rake us over the coals again."
The circus officials in the stands let out ragged sighs. Their faces were thick with chagrin.
They hadn't orchestrated this to get booed by the audience for fun. But as sponsored troupes, they were required to produce results on a regular basis. That was why they had banded together, agreeing to share Simon's strategy guide. Instead, they had done nothing but smear their sponsor's name in public.
"Block her somehow!"
"It's just one girl!"
No amount of shouting from above could change the fact that they couldn't touch Ella. If anything, more and more of them were being lured into traps and eliminated one after another. Teams whose coin reserves had run dry could no longer afford to resurrect their members. Their net grew weaker by the minute.
"Woah! She broke through!"
"Go! Go, Ella!"
Riding a wave of cheers and applause, she surged forward at lightning speed.
"The fifth Extinction Point is Arena 6—the Theater!"
"The sixth Extinction Point is Arena 1—the Front Yard!"
"The seventh Extinction Point is Arena 5—the Cafeteria!"
The cafeteria's tiles began their countdown. Only three venues remained: the Rear Garden, the Entrance Hall, and the Track.
The most probable location by far was the Entrance Hall.
It was the one place that had never spawned a treasure chest in any previous exam—and the place she had gone to first.
Despite the crowd that had swarmed the area, almost no real progress toward a solution had been made. Every other arena had yielded at least one chest and therefore had a known rudimentary strategy. The Entrance Hall had none of that.
Worse still, the sheer mass of people had been counterproductive. Endless mutual checks and interference had relegated any attempt to solve the puzzles to a distant afterthought.
In fact, an hour ago, the handlers crowding the garden bed—the core obstacle of the Entrance Hall—had kept screaming conflicting attack commands at the snakes. The confused reptiles broke free of all control and began striking at the contestants indiscriminately. Everyone had been forced to abandon the area temporarily and scatter to other venues.
'The snakes seem to have calmed down by now. Shouldn't I start moving toward the Entrance Hall?'
'I should, but...'
Ella swept her gaze across her surroundings. She was standing in Arena 5—the Cafeteria. It had just been designated as an Extinction Point, and the countdown was already past 150.
The remaining contestants, however, made no move to exit. Every one of them had their eyes fixed solely on her.
She could read their thoughts as clear as day. No matter how quick she was, if she couldn't leave the arena, they would eventually get their hands on her. Having realized mindless pursuit wouldn't work, they had been conserving their energy for this final stage.
They were also undoubtedly planning to snatch the treasure chest from her the moment she dismantled the puzzle and pulled it out.
Heading straight to the Entrance Hall felt like a trap.
'Clara, I have a plan. Want to hear it?'
She stood rooted in place for about a minute.
The countdown had slipped into double digits now. Everyone was stealing sideways glances to see who would make the first move—and then Ella suddenly spun around and broke into a sprint.
"Oh! Contestant Ella has started running! But is that direction—the Rear Garden?"
Surprised murmuring rippled through the onlookers. They had just been loudly agreeing that the chest had to be in the Entrance Hall. Yet here she was, bolting toward the Rear Garden—the exact opposite end of the school.
Arena 4, the Rear Garden, was a training area for taming students. During the exam, traps and obstacles involving live animals were deployed there. Had Ella somehow found a clue about the treasure chest in that place?
"After her!"
"Stay on Ella's tail!"
The contestants scrambled after her into the Rear Garden. They watched as she approached the griffin's nest. The creature—eagle's upper body, lion's lower body—was an imperial guardian beast, and a single specimen was kept right here at Rekachev.
"Oh! Contestant Ella is making eye contact with the fierce griffin! Yes, yes, and now she's greeting it..."
This was the same griffin she had encountered during the New Student Selection Test. Ever since Taming Professor Phairen's disappearance, nobody had been able to handle him properly. He had been relegated to a corner of the Rear Garden and was looked after by the teaching assistants.
Though "looked after" was generous—it meant barely managing to feed him and clean his nest. He'd originally been assigned a proper role in the exam alongside the other beasts of prey, but with no one left who could command him, his part this year had been reduced to radiating menace from a corner.
"Skreeee."
Sensing someone's approach, the griffin flared his eyes, spread his wings wide, and raked the ground with his talons. An unmistakable threat display.
Ella walked toward him without flinching. Without a heartbeat's hesitation, she reached out and stroked his beak.
"Hehe, it's been a while. Good boy."
"Kruuu, kruuu."
As if a switch had been flipped, the griffin's aggression melted away, and he accepted her hand with docile submission. The fearsome predator that normally required several teaching assistants just to hold him still for a brushing was being handled as easily as a gentle foal.
"Unbelievable."
"I've never seen 'High Cloud' act that tame."
The taming assistants stared at her with expressions of pure incredulity. They had been shocked during the New Student Selection Test when she'd earned top marks handling him, but that had been a controlled environment for the test. He'd been fed a heavy dose of premium feed laced with sedatives the day before, which was the only reason he'd been that calm. Professor Phairen had also been nearby.
Yet here she was, managing him when he was practically half-wild.
Not even Charlie, hailed as the greatest talent in Rekachev's history, could have pulled this off.
"Waaaaah!"
"She tamed a griffin!"
"Incredible, Ella!"
Applause erupted from all sides. The people of Kiev might not know every beast, but they knew griffins. No one was unaware that becoming a griffin rider required close to a decade of grueling training.
Even if this was a griffin that had been tamed before, controlling him so flawlessly left a deep impression on the empire's citizens. Some were even blinking back tears.
Then Ella did something that staggered them all. She grabbed his neck, swung herself up, and vaulted onto his back.
The stands froze solid.
A griffin was so proud a creature that it would never allow a person on its back without reins soaked in dragon's blood and a proper saddle. And here she was, mounting him bareback.
This was going to be a catastrophe.
People braced themselves for the griffin to thrash and buck violently. Some screamed, terrified she would be badly hurt.
None of those fears came to pass. The griffin accepted her presence on his back as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Spin-Bird, turn!"
The shock of the moment was so great that it took a long while for anyone to register that the name she had shouted was directed at the griffin she was riding.
That name had clearly been invented on the spot.
Wouldn't the griffin be insulted by such a shabby name?
But no one had the luxury of dwelling on it.
Because the griffin she had named spread his wings and launched himself skyward.
Wings beating, the griffin soared upward. The sight itself wasn't novel—people in the empire often saw griffins flying overhead. What stunned them into silence was only the rapport wielded by a single girl, a rapport so fluent it shattered every piece of common knowledge they held.
Maybe it was professional instinct.
Before the announcer's composure had even returned, his mouth started moving on its own.
"Uh, ah, C-Con, Contestant Ella is—is flying on a griffin! As, as for the rules... w-well, there is no issue! Utilizing a creature placed as an obstacle is..."
Down on the ground, the taming-major assistants and students were blowing their whistles like mad. Anyone could see their frantic distress at the thought that Ella might soar off into the distance and never come back.
The griffin paid them no mind whatsoever. He moved solely in obedience to Ella's voice.
Just like that, she flew freely above the school buildings, headed straight for the Entrance Hall.
The competitors who had been watching her, dazed, finally realized they had been played for fools. They raced back toward the Cafeteria, but the tiles there had already entered single-digit countdown territory.
Waaaaah.
A short while later, the siren wailed again and the announcer declared the next Extinction Point.
"The eighth Extinction Point is Arena 4—the Rear Garden! And with this, Sudden Death has concluded!"
With only two venues remaining—the Track and the Entrance Hall—Sudden Death ended. Since the Track tiles always shifted to white, accessible to all, once Sudden Death began, the end of the phase here could only mean one thing: the treasure chest was in the Entrance Hall.
"Damn it."
"She played us."
The contestants finally grasped that Ella had intentionally lured them into the Rear Garden. The garden was the deepest point in the school, one of only two areas—alongside the Central Garden—that had no direct connection to the Track.
In other words, a dead end with no way out. They had followed her without suspicion precisely because she had run in here...
Wearing hollow expressions, they stared at the griffin's hindquarters as they vanished over the rooftops.
Once clear of the Rear Garden, Ella asked the griffin to set her down. She could have ridden him all the way to the Entrance Hall, but she didn't want to put him through that. The admirable creature had let no sign of it show on the outside, but an inner conflict had been gnawing at him—over ignoring the whistles and signals he had been trained to obey for a friend's sake.
"Alright, you'd better head back now. We can't make things hard for the people who look after you."
"Kru-ruruk."
"Thank you for keeping your promise to carry me and fly whenever I asked. Though I didn't expect it to be this time."
"Kreeiiik."
As if to say it was nothing, the griffin brushed his beak against her cheek. Ella stroked his feathers, then handed him over to the teaching assistants who had come running up behind her.
"Only one arena remains now! And one treasure chest! Can you see it? The sole competitor still standing in the Acrobatic Rush is a single person! Her name is Monster Circus Deputy Leader, Ella!"
Just wait a little longer, boss.
I'll bring you a Star.
The me of right now will bring it to you.
With twenty minutes left on the clock,
Ella sprinted toward the final obstacle.