Hostage Rescue Training (2)
It was an event that hadn’t even existed in the original novel, but at the very least this was better than the entrance ceremony, or the time Blanca and Lapis were attacked by a pair of unknown villains.
Unlike back then, when I couldn’t even begin to understand why it had happened, this time I could at least make sense of it.
More importantly, unlike that time, there was something I stood to gain here, so I wasn’t frightened or confused.
Fate has been twisted.
Quest: Win the hostage rescue training!
Overcome the trial in style and earn a high score.
Reward: Blanca and Katyan Aluter’s affection increases.
It gave me a chance to build a connection with heroines I’d had no contact with until now.
I couldn’t quite figure out why Blanca’s affection would go up, even though it was Lapis on my team and Blanca would just be watching from afar...
But I decided not to overthink it.
If anything, she was the sort of person who’d happily hand over an Artifact, so maybe just seeing me win on a screen would raise her affection too.
Besides, I only needed a few more bond points with Blanca before our bond rank increased by one, so I had to win.
That was the only way I’d be able to view her locked information.
It wouldn’t tell me all that much, since it was only Rank 1 information, but...
It would still be enough to give me a rough outline of who she was. At least, that was what I was hoping.
While I loosened up my body, I slowly ran through the ways I could win.
The boy’s ability was something Lapis could fully suppress, as long as I helped her a little.
And Katyan... if she was willing to risk getting a little hurt, we should be able to break through her ability too.
Now I understood why Katyan and that boy were the ones assigned to defense.
Our ability combination was so heavily in our favor that they’d need a terrain advantage just to make it feel fair.
Even then, I didn’t think we’d lose.
I already had a plan.
As I explained the plan to Lapis—partly to calm her nerves, partly to naturally strike up a conversation—I glanced toward where she was standing.
“Nice to meet you! My name is L... Lapis! L-let’s do our best!”
But by the time I was about to say her name, she had already come up beside me and held out a hand, saying let’s do our best.
“Uh... yeah. Let’s win. First, though, let’s share what we can do.”
Hiding the faint awkwardness that showed for a moment, I smoothly exchanged abilities with Lapis.
“...Acceleration? How is that different from, um, speed-up?”
“It’s mostly similar, but a little different. You could even say mine’s a bit better.”
“I-I see. That’s nice...! D-do you maybe already have some sort of plan...?”
Lapis knew what the other side could do, but wasn’t sure how to deal with it, so she asked me for a plan.
And so I told her the one I’d come up with.
How they were likely to move, and how we’d break their abilities.
“W-wow...! You’re amazing! If we do that, I-I think it’ll definitely work...!”
After hearing the plan, she exclaimed that it truly seemed like it would work and called it perfect.
Yeah. This definitely wasn’t the Lapis I knew.
The original Lapis would’ve panicked just because someone spoke to her and tried to dig a hole in the ground to hide in...
...but this Lapis was still awkward, sure, yet she was making an effort to get closer to other people.
Looks like spending time with Blanca and Yeonhwa had had an effect.
She was a little twisted, but... still at a point where she could be set right.
Lapis still wanted friends, after all.
I figured there’d still be room for someone like me to squeeze in there somehow.
That thought loosened me up too.
The preparation time was over, and with Yustitia’s words that it was time to begin, we moved into the building.
“Lapis. Use your vibrations to sense where things are coming from, and where the hostages are.”
“O-okay.”
The inside of the building wasn’t very bright, so I moved quietly and relied on Lapis’s detection.
My ability might be good for direct combat, but as for anything like sensing enemies, I had absolutely nothing.
That was why Lapis’s vibration detection was desperately important.
Lapis closed her eyes, her horns glowing faintly with golden light, and seemed to pour all her focus into finding the enemies and hostages.
“...Inside the emergency staircase, there’s someone. Sturdy... and heavy.”
“That’d be Daruyzien. Do you feel any other vibrations nearby?”
“The other vibrations are... coming from the very last room on the second floor.”
“Just as expected. They’re moving exactly how I thought.”
Lapis, who was hyperfocused now that she’d apparently entered combat mode, no longer stuttered as she said the same thing.
Good. The rest was all exactly as I’d expected.
Katyan’s ability was powerful, but at this point in the story it still had a drawback.
One of them was that she couldn’t distinguish between targets.
Anyone who heard her voice would be forced to obey her command.
Of course, if you got far enough away, that could be avoided—but “far enough” was absurdly far.
That meant there was basically no such thing as a coordinated ambush for her.
In other words, the only tactic her team could really use was to act separately.
They were probably sending Daruyzien into the stairwell to squeeze out as much potential as they could, but...
There was no way his ability could handle the two of us.
Even if he could transform his body into something hard enough to cut stone.
“Then let’s go with the plan, Lapis.”
“Mm. Let’s end this in one breath.”
Lapis placed her hand on the floor and poured a flood of golden mana into it.
At the same time, I drew up my own mana, boosted my speed, and shot toward the emergency stairs like an arrow.
Running at nearly the same speed as Lapis’s mana, I kicked open the emergency stairwell door and, without slowing down, slammed my foot into Daruyzien’s head as hard as I could while he lay on the floor.
Daruyzien reacted a beat too late and hardened his head, but after taking the kick with a dull thud, he rolled his eyes back and collapsed.
I didn’t think he’d been badly hurt.
My own leg hurt so much I felt like it might snap right then and there.
There was no way I’d broken his head, not when it felt like I’d just kicked into solid metal.
That was the first step of the plan.
No matter how hard you could make your body, your brain didn’t turn to steel too, so the trick was to drop him instantly and knock him out.
Specifically, Lapis would rip up a stone hand from the floor, shake the ground to pin him down, and then I’d kick his head with full force while he was flat on his back.
Only, I hadn’t expected him to be this hard.
Was my foot cracked?
As I clutched the top of my foot and hopped around, Lapis quickly came running up from behind.
“Did you take him down?! Ah, n-no. More importantly, are you okay?!”
“...I’ll be able to w-walk...”
I forced myself to stand on one leg and gave her a thumbs-up.
It felt like someone was smashing my foot with a hammer every time I took a step, but I couldn’t stop now.
The faster we rescued the hostage, the better our score would be.
I gathered my mana, dragged my aching foot along, and forced myself to move faster.
As long as I could keep my consciousness intact, I could make my body do what I wanted.
Lapis tried to support me, looking worried, but she was smaller than me, so I told her I appreciated the thought and continued moving by practically sliding across the floor.
“It’s over there. The hostage and the villain are inside that room.”
Lapis had gone back into combat mode, her usual stammer gone as she regained her composure and relayed the information to me.
“The hostage?”
“They’re clinging to each other pretty tightly. Looks like we’ll have to give up on Plan Two and Plan Three. Still... maybe we can push through with Plan One.”
“They’re stuck together, right? Then we go with Plan One.”
Lapis said she’d leave the rest to me from here, then quietly drew in the floor and walls to make a small bunker before hiding inside it.
If we used Lapis to attack Katyan, we’d almost certainly end up hitting the hostage too.
I had to separate Katyan from the hostage first.
Only then could Lapis rescue the hostage or subdue Katyan.
I opened the door boldly and stepped into the room where Katyan was waiting.
And at that very moment, Katyan took off the mask she always wore and said, “Don’t move.”
The instant I heard it, my body stopped responding entirely.
It felt just like being pinned beneath Yustitia’s gaze.
But... her command was very different from Gazer’s.
Gazer could freeze even a falling building simply by looking at it, while Katyan’s verbal command only worked if you could hear her.
And most importantly, it didn’t seal off my ability.
I forced my frozen body to move with Acceleration and lunged at Katyan.
Katyan’s eyes widened in panic as I flew toward her in that stiff, locked-up posture, and she cried out again.
“Don’t come any clo—!”
At her words, I froze in midair. But I pushed my speed even higher and broke through that too.
“Get out of h— Eek!”
She tried to fling me away in shock, but at that exact moment I slammed into her, and we rolled across the floor together.
“Now!!”
She couldn’t possibly hear me, but I banged hard on the floor three times as promised, signaling that the plan had worked.
Then the floor surged upward to restrain Katyan, while the hostage slipped smoothly along the ground and out of the room.
A complete victory.
* * * * *
As expected of the protagonist, I suppose, watching him grab an easy first win was pretty impressive.
What was even more impressive was how it all happened in the blink of an eye, like a speedrun.
You could call it the power of future knowledge from the original work, sure, but actually putting it into practice was a different matter entirely.
And because his coordination with Lapis was perfect, there was no doubt he’d get a high score.
I hoped this would bring Lapis a little closer to him.
As I watched the screen with that thought in mind, Ageha, who was sitting beside me, timidly poked my arm and called out to me in a small voice.
“U-um... Blanca? Shouldn’t we be going over our plan too...?”
Aw, come on. It was still the good part.
Still... yeah. She was right.
Im Changwon was going to be a tough opponent.
So I told her what I’d already been thinking.
“I’ll handle everything, so you just support me from behind.”
“...Huh?!”