Field Trip (11)
Evening of the third day of the Field Trip. In one corner of the forest, more than half of the Academy's first-year students had gathered.
Each of them had come here for their own reasons, but their purpose was one and the same. To bring down Lucy Aln.
"We shall make Lucy Aln—the one who turned this Field Trip into a bloodbath—pay for her crimes."
"Waaaah!"
As Arthur, standing at the center of the crowd, finished his speech, the students who had assembled there let out a thunderous roar.
What burned in their eyes was hatred, festering resentment, and conviction in equal measure.
Amid the cheers surrounding him, Arthur smiled bitterly to himself. Strictly speaking, Lucy Aln had done nothing wrong.
Pillaging during the Field Trip was, after all, something the Academy's professors had explicitly permitted. All Lucy had done was move within those rules, exactly as the professors had intended.
If anyone was to answer for the state of this ruined forest, the blame belonged to the professors who had dreamed up such rules in the first place.
If one absolutely had to find fault with Lucy Aln, it would only be that she had fired the opening salvo of the pillage war a little too spectacularly.
Arthur knew this full well, yet he said nothing. If she hadn't drawn the enmity of so many people, Arthur would never have been able to rally students like this in the first place.
Certainly, Lucy Aln boasted talent beyond all measure when it came to combat or knowledge. But in matters of politics like this, she was hopelessly clumsy.
It was obvious which students would end up hoarding the bulk of the loot, so if she had simply ambushed them right before the Field Trip ended, a coalition like this could never have formed.
If Lucy Aln had been even slightly more cunning, she wouldn't even be able to dream of this kind of revenge.
When the speech concluded, Arthur returned to the gathering of party leaders.
The faces assembled there were nothing short of remarkable. Not a single one among them wasn't considered a bright future for the kingdom.
Merely getting into the Academy was enough to be called an elite back home—these were the ones whose names rang out even among the accepted students. There was no incompetent soul in this place.
"So what, precisely, is the plan?"
The first to speak was Meryl of Count Veynes' house.
Though she received comparatively less attention, overshadowed as she was by Lucy Aln and Frey Kent, she was unquestionably among the strongest of the current first-years, and she fixed Arthur with eyes full of burning passion as she asked.
She did have bad blood with Lucy Aln, if he recalled. Presumably she intends to take her revenge with this opportunity. I only pray she doesn't let personal feelings drive her to act on her own.
"Meryl Veynes. You attended the Monster Hunting Studies lectures, did you not?"
"Yes, that's right."
Monster Hunting Studies was a course covering the many varieties of monsters that had existed throughout human history and the methods for hunting them down.
For children of martial houses destined to become commanders, it was practically a required subject.
"That course includes case studies of dozens of hunters coordinating to bring down a single monster, doesn't it?"
"You mean pincer warfare."
"Exactly. I intend to put what was taught in that course to use right here."
That course also taught methods for hunting monsters in human form.
And the textbook approach was this: multiple parties form an alliance, gradually whittling the target down until it falls.
Because humanoid monsters were small in stature, overwhelming them with sheer numbers the way one might against a giant or a dragon was difficult.
Hence the accepted wisdom: gather a small elite force and engage in a war of attrition, attacking in shifts.
Arthur, who held the second-best grades in Monster Hunting Studies after Lucy herself, had memorized that method perfectly.
"And what of the party members other than Lucy Aln?"
When Jackal Burrow—who had come running at the first mention of taking down Lucy—threw out the question, Arthur chuckled.
"As I said, we'll apply what Monster Hunting Studies taught us.
Look at how many people have gathered here. There's no need to throw every last one of them at subduing Lucy Aln, is there?
We will split our forces into four."
Why should four people bother facing a single four-member party all at once? That party was stronger together than apart.
"A grand ambush tears them apart, and then we pick them off one by one."
In terms of danger, the order of those four went: Lucy first, then Frey, then Joy and Phoebe behind them.
The first two possessed the strength to protect themselves even surrounded by dozens of opponents. The latter two did not.
So the rank-and-file would be assigned to stall Lucy and Frey, while the elite struck down Joy and Phoebe first.
After that, they would crush Frey as well, and finally, every remaining fighter would converge to hunt down Lucy Aln herself.
When Arthur finished laying out his plan, a murmur rippled through the assembled leaders.
Theory-wise, it was sound. Sound enough that one might think there was no better way to hunt down a singularly gifted individual. And yet, something crucial was missing from his plan.
"Can Academy students really move with that kind of coordination?"
One of those gathered raised a hand and posed the question. An eminently reasonable doubt.
Academy students were unquestionably gifted, but they were not trained soldiers.
Most of them hadn't even fully adapted to coordinating with the three other members of their own party. Could a hundred-odd people possibly execute fluid, organic maneuvers together?
The answer was painfully obvious.
"Of course not."
If such a thing were possible, why would any territory bother gathering and drilling soldiers and knights? They could just round up farmers whenever something happened and improvise.
"But that is not a problem. For most of them, stalling for time is role enough."
If this gathering had been a war council against some deadly monster, Arthur's words just now would have ignited a firestorm of controversy.
It would have amounted to an order to hurl their lives away buying seconds.
But this gathering was nothing so perilous. It was simply part of the Field Trip.
"Coordination is only required from the elite we've gathered for the individual takedowns. They are more than enough."
With that single declaration, Arthur seized the room and began hammering the plan into concrete detail.
"Lady Aln... will everything really be all right?"
Watching the sun sink toward the horizon, Joy murmured anxiously, clearly uneasy about the ambush to come.
'It'll be fine.'
"Airhead Lady. What is there to worry about? There's no way those loser scrubs could take me down, obviously?"
"Still... they say nearly a hundred people are coming..."
The previous evening, after the Face-Connoisseur Fox warned us about the danger of an ambush, I had been preparing for an Academy-wide raid centered on Arthur.
I'd resolved to play the villain and squeezed every visible person in the forest dry, so I'd expected something like this to happen. I just never imagined the numbers would approach a hundred.
If the Face-Connoisseur Fox hadn't given us a heads-up, I would have shrieked at the sight of the crowd gathering before me. Just how many degenerates does this Academy have?
'Even so, it'll be fine.'
"You think I'm the same as you, Airhead Lady, who botches something every single day? I've thought it all through. Don't worry."
"...Okay."
Far more people had gathered than I'd anticipated, but even so, my plan didn't change.
If anything, more bodies worked in my favor. The more people involved, the harder it becomes to control the chaos once it's set in motion.
'By the way, Joy...'
"Airhead Lady. Instead of babbling about nothing, shouldn't you double-check your spellwork? Did you actually prepare it properly?"
"Don't worry about that. Do you really think I've only cast that spell once or twice?"
'Still...'
"I don't believe you one bit. You're absolutely sure you didn't mess anything up? Really, truly?"
"Yes, really! I didn't make any mista—... huh?"
Knowing full well how many blunders Joy committed at critical moments, I pressed her to run the check one more time.
Yielding to my badgering, she insisted she'd prepared everything properly and turned her gaze over the spell she'd crafted—then her eyes went wide, and she slowly looked away.
Even a complete magical illiterate like me could read what that meant.
'You messed up, didn't you?'
"Airhead Lady. How bad is the airhead blunder this time?"
"It's nothing, really. Just... a small mix-up with the volume adjustment."
Haah. What would I have done if I hadn't made her double-check?
Airhead Lady to the end. Of course she fumbles at the worst possible moment.
When I let out an ostentatious sigh, Joy—still watching me—protested that it was an easy fix, so it was fine.
Joy. That's not the problem. The problem is that you messed up again.
As my chilly stare slowly turned her face red, Frey came sprinting from far off in the distance.
"They're coming."
Showtime, then.
'Joy...'
"Airhead Lady. Fix it, and fast. And don't pull another scrub-tier airhead blunder."
"I said I've got it, so just wait a minute!"
"Your Highness. We've located Lucy Aln."
"Where?"
"She's waiting in the middle of a clearing."
"...I beg your pardon?"
A clearing? What nonsense is this? In a forest so tangled one could easily lose their way, where exactly was a clearing supposed to be?
Though Arthur frowned at the report brought by another student, he soon saw the truth of it with his own eyes.
Lucy Aln was, in fact, standing dead center in a clearing.
Judging by the fresh-cut stumps, the clearing appeared to be a site Lucy Aln had carved out herself.
Had she anticipated the ambush and prepared something?
So she doesn't intend to take this lying down after all.
Arthur clicked his tongue, but the fact that his target had caught wind of the ambush didn't surprise him.
She was who she was, after all. For a girl with intellect enough to leap clean over his head, predicting Arthur's maneuver was hardly strange.
So then, Lucy Aln. What trap have you dug in so short a time?
Clever as you may be, that talent lies elsewhere. She is no sorceress of the century.
There was no way she could have prepared the means to overturn a situation like this one.
Then why could Lucy Aln stand there so defiantly?
Bluff, clearly. A bluff to buy time. She means to hold out until the very moment the Field Trip ends, nothing more.
Hah. But I won't be taking that bait! After brief deliberation, Arthur convinced himself that Lucy's defiance was nothing but a bluff, and moved to give his students their orders.
But in that very moment—
"He-llo♡"
Lucy's voice rolled out across the entire clearing.
That would be... Volume Amplification Magic? Why on earth would she prepare a spell meant for public speeches?
"Why, hello there♡ All you perverts♡ degenerates♡ and utter scrubs♡ who've gathered just to gang up on one poor little girl?"