A Wager on Victory
The Blood Cat Tribe.
Among the many demi-human races, they were the ones who manipulated blood — the only race that could stand comparison with the vampires.
And unlike Camibarez, who was only half-blooded through her Ursula lineage, Elysia Rosenfelt was known to be a pureblood of the Blood Cat Tribe.
Long rabbit ears drooped lazily out from between the folds of her robe. Blood-red eyes that sent a chill crawling up anyone who met them. Though her billowing dress covered her body, patches of white fur still showed here and there across her skin.
The Hemomancy Department Representative was, on the whole, a slightly unsettling presence. Since this was his first time properly introducing himself to her, Simon felt a faint tension coil in his chest.
“Yes, hello there.”
Her long ears perked up as she approached.
“I am Elysia Rosenfelt.”
“Simon Polentia.”
The two shook hands lightly. But when he tried to pull his hand back, hers didn't let go.
“The blood vessels in your hand are quite plump.”
“Huh?”
“It's nothing at all, I assure you.”
She released his hand and turned away.
The battles they'd fought to get this far had taken their toll — wounded students lay scattered everywhere. Even Malcolm, the strongest among them, looked badly hurt.
“We should begin treatment first.”
Elysia opened a subspace and drew something out.
It was a thoroughly mismatched object for such a brutal battlefield: IV treatment equipment of the kind usually seen in Kizen's infirmary, with 'packs' of blue blood dangling from long tubes.
Astonishingly, the equipment moved on its own, hopping from student to student and driving hollow needles into the wounded with precise little jabs. Before long, the students were closing their eyes or shifting into more comfortable positions, their expressions noticeably eased.
“What are you doing?”
“Assisting their regeneration. The blood of our kind has special properties, you see.”
As the Hemomancy Department Representative, she held a rare position among the Top 10 — not an attacker, but a support type.
Blood Cat blood — that is, Elysia's own blood — was infused with dark magic to grant it special effects, then injected into a target.
For Malcolm, who had suffered the worst injuries, she drew her own blood on the spot and administered it directly.
“Ugh. Thanks.”
“I do hope you recover swiftly.”
As their wounds healed, the Life Gauges that reflected each student's physical condition filled back up.
Simon watched the whole process with keen interest.
A necromancer who casts spells on her own blood to aid her allies.
In a world where recovery and support specialists were vanishingly rare among necromancers, Elysia's value went without saying.
On top of that, her personal combat ability was superb — even playing a support role, she had never once missed out on a top-tier squad in the duel evaluations.
“Oh, right. Simon Polentia.”
“?”
“I just remembered — I was asked to fight you.”
Her expression suddenly turned serious.
“I dislike fighting, you understand, but I cannot pretend not to hear a dear friend's earnest request.”
As she abruptly dropped into a combat stance, Simon stared at her, flustered.
“Whoa, hold on! We're supposed to fight over that? In a situation this important?”
“Oh. Is that so? Then I won't fight you.”
“???”
She spun on her heel and went back to checking Malcolm's condition.
Simon was dumbfounded.
What on earth is wrong with this girl?
Malcolm and the others, on the other hand, seemed perfectly accustomed to her whims.
“Elysia!”
Dick, who had been listening, suddenly stepped forward.
“About what you just said — who asked you to attack Simon?”
As if she would actually give a straight answer to that.
“Meridiana asked me to join forces and take down the Student Council President, but I can't tell you. She asked me to keep it a secret, you see.”
?
Her face was the very picture of innocence — it didn't seem like she was deliberately leaking the answer.
Something in her thought process might simply be a little broken. He'd heard rumors she was an odd one, but this exceeded all imagination.
“The Queen Bee, Meridiana, huh?”
Dick stroked his chin, satisfied.
“Now we finally know who the mastermind is.”
“Queen Bee or whoever — does that even matter at this point?”
Cindy Vivace pointed at the sky. Fragments of molten rock were raining down from above without pause.
“In a situation like this, nobody has the spare attention to worry about undercutting the rank one. Everyone's too busy trying to survive.”
“Fair point.”
“More importantly.”
Now Cindy turned to Elysia.
“Have you 'seen' anything about this exam?”
Elysia shook her head.
“Nothing useful yet, I'm afraid.”
Simon, lost, turned his head.
“What are you two talking about, Cindy?”
“You don't know about the Blood Cat Tribe's precognition?”
The reason the Blood Cat Tribe had become famous wasn't actually their healing abilities.
It was that they could see the future.
Of course, over the generations the tribe's foresight had weakened, and the modern Blood Cats could only glimpse short stretches of what was to come.
“Actually, just a moment ago, Elysia saw a future where I got surrounded by lava monsters.”
Malcolm, his treatment finished, joined the conversation.
“That's why she came to save me.”
“Ah, I see.”
While they talked, the wounded students all finished recovering and rose to their feet.
Elysia, ranked 9th overall. Malcolm, now a genuine top-tier power. Plus four more on top of that.
It was a team with formidable strength, so Simon wasted no time getting to the point.
“I'd like your cooperation in taking down the Volcano Castle Lord.”
Simon laid out the situation in detail. Malcolm nodded along, but the other students hesitated — joining meant accepting real risk.
In the end, they all looked to their leader: Elysia.
“What'll it be, Elysia?”
“Hmm.”
Elysia smiled.
“I hate volcanoes.”
“?”
“When a volcano erupts, the land gets buried in pyroclastic flow and volcanic ash, and the clover burns away. The sunlight is blocked, and the plants wither and die. The poor rabbits who eat the grass will starve to death. And when the rabbits die, the foxes who hunt them will die too. But fox blood is ever so useful, you know. I'd love to draw more of it and study it. So I'm going to sit right here and wait until the foxes die.”
Cindy, who had given up listening halfway through, pressed a hand to her forehead.
“So is that a yes or a no?”
“I object! I have to wait for the foxes to die!”
Dick scanned the output device strapped to his arm, then spoke up.
“Elysia? Your department's Miloda just got eliminated.”
“Oh! How dreadful.”
“At this rate, Miloda's getting expelled. The only real chance of saving her is taking down the Volcano Castle Lord. So — what'll it be?”
At Dick's words, strength surged into her eyes.
“Is that true? We can't just leave Miloda like that! Let's go!”
“Alright!”
Apparently, if they wanted to make use of this eccentric, they'd all have to learn to adapt to her way of thinking as quickly as Dick did.
With Elysia's group joining them, Simon's team finally had the strength to make a credible attempt at the Volcano Castle Lord.
Simon, ranked 1st overall, and Elysia, ranked 9th.
Two elite students in Malcolm and Cindy.
Dick, whose combat ability was lacking but whose tactical mind and quick thinking were first-rate — plus four solid mid-tier Kizen students. Not a bad lineup at all.
The group circled wide around the volcano, moving at a brisk pace. They had to dodge the falling lava and find a viable route up the slopes.
“I've spotted a pack of about twenty native kobolds ahead.”
Cindy, handling reconnaissance, twitched her ears alertly.
“Looks like they're fleeing the surging magma. They'll collide with us in about five minutes.”
“Leave them to me.”
Malcolm rolled his arms through a long stretch, then glanced back.
“Elysia, if you would.”
“Understood.”
Elysia took out a syringe, drew a little blood from her own thigh, and injected it straight into Malcolm. As the blue blood entered him, his whole aura shifted.
“Here I come!”
<Doppelgänger>
Far beyond his usual count, more than thirty doppelgangers surged forward at once, each tracing a magic circle onto its palm.
<Burst>
The circle-tracing doppelgangers slammed into the kobold pack and detonated in a chain of explosions.
The kobolds — tricky opponents thanks to their poison — vanished one after another amid the thunderous blasts.
Dick stared at Elysia, wide-eyed.
“What blood did you just inject into him?”
“A hemomancy spell that temporarily amplifies the target's power.”
She smiled.
“Just say the word if any of you need it. I don't feel dizzy yet, so I can keep injecting as much as you like.”
“That's incredible! Then let's keep mov—”
“One moment, please.”
Elysia's pupils dilated, and both her ears shot straight up toward the sky, cutting Dick off mid-sentence.
“Shh. Shh-shh.”
Every student fell silent and pressed a finger to their lips.
Simon had already heard it too — he knew what was happening.
She was looking into the future right now.
Her two antenna-like ears slowly drooped, and her pupils returned to normal.
“If we keep going straight, we'll be blocked by collapsed soil and have to detour. This way, please.”
“Precognition for the win!”
“She's saving us so much time.”
Everyone followed her with smiles on their faces.
Nice.
Simon felt reassured too. Her foresight surely wouldn't land this often, but with her at their side, the battles ahead would be easier in every possible way.
Walking beside Elysia, Simon asked,
“Do the futures you see ever change?”
“They do, sometimes.”
“Have you seen a future of how this exam ends?”
She smiled.
“No.”
With only those words, she bounded ahead in a hoppy, rabbit-like gait.
Simon's team pressed on briskly, clearing out monsters as they went. Even now, the number of survivors kept dwindling.
[Time Remaining — 14:08:24]
[Survivors: 238/370]
A great deal of time had drained away as well. Simon felt anxiety gnawing at him.
“It's over here!”
Dick, leading the way, pushed through the brush, eyes fixed straight ahead — then stopped walking.
“What's wrong, Dick?”
“Ah, no good.”
Kwaarrrrrrr—!
A vast, sprawling river of magma flowed across their path. Less a river than a swamp — knee-deep, perhaps, but the problem was the sheer breadth of it.
The far shore, where the magma didn't reach, was a long way off. Dick clicked his tongue.
“If it's blocked up like this, we're out of options.”
“How can that be?”
Cindy looked at Elysia.
“We came the detour way, just like you said — and it's a dead end.”
“I couldn't see past this point, I'm afraid.”
Elysia giggled brightly.
“If we'd gone the original way, we'd have been blocked twice and wasted far more time.”
“Ugh.”
Dick turned to his companions.
“Can anyone fly? We'd need to carry all nine of us across to the other side.”
Silence settled over the group.
Simon raised his hand with a somewhat awkward expression.
“It'd be possible with an advanced Imperial Guard technique, but...”
“Nope, nope. If our ace burns out all his strength on something like this, who's going to fight the Volcano Castle Lord?”
Saying that, Dick stepped forward.
“Come to think of it, an idea just came to me!”
“What is it?”
“Bricks!”
Everyone's expressions went vague. Cindy snorted.
“Building another fortress just to have it snatched away by someone else?”
“Just take one look, people.”
Dick purchased a single brick with his remaining points on the output device.
A brick popped out beneath a magic circle, and Dick grabbed it and dropped it into the swamp of lava.
“Oh...?”
“Well?”
The brick sat unharmed even in the molten rock. Dick shrugged, smug.
“I don't know if they mixed some heat-resistant compound into these things or what, but the exam designers aren't idiots — of course they built in a use for them. There's a reason you can buy them with points.”
Dick looked around at the students.
“The lava's shallow. So let's build a stepping-stone bridge out of these bricks and cross.”
And so the plan began.
Everyone bought bundles of bricks with their points, bonding them firm with the adhesive potion Dick had mixed. Stacking them to about knee height didn't take all that many.
Before long, Dick enchanted the bridge to anchor it to the ground below, while a Jet-Black Mechanics student, buffed by Elysia, hurled the brick bundles into place one by one with pinpoint projection magic.
In no time at all, a stone bridge stretched out across the lava.
“The lava's shallow — cross now, before it comes gushing out again!”
Dick went first, demonstrating. Riding on Jet-Black, he leapt with all his might, landed on the first stone, then jumped again to the next.
For a second-year at Kizen, this much was basic martial technique. Everyone hopped across cautiously, one careful step at a time.
Occasionally a brick wasn't fully set, or the lava nudged it drifting downstream, but in those cases they simply laid down a fresh brick bundle or leapt straight past to the next stone.
Everyone crossed in deep concentration. The lava was shallow, yes — but one misjudged step, one slip, and their Life Gauge would evaporate on the spot.
“Careful, Elysia.”
Simon was crossing last, with Elysia just ahead of him.
“Understood,” she replied with a smile.
Just as she crouched to leap to the next stone, she froze mid-motion.
“What is it?”
Simon asked — and at some point, her rabbit ears had shot straight up into the air.
Of all times and places...!
Simon readied his dark magic to catch her if she fell, but luckily she kept her balance even in the middle of her vision.
This one's taking a while.
Was she looking into the far future? Simon waited patiently.
Before long, her ears drooped and the vision ended. She blinked rapidly.
Boing!
Right after looking into the future.
Elysia didn't go forward — instead, she hopped back like a rabbit and bounced right up to Simon.
“E-Elysia?”
“Simon Polentia.”
Those blood-curdling scarlet eyes stared straight into his.
Then she pulled every single syringe capsule of blue liquid from her bag and pressed them all into his arms, unbidden.
“I'm wagering my victory on you.”
“What are you talking ab—”
In an instant, the world drained to gray, and time slowed to a crawl.
SHRAAAAAAAA—!
A rushing red line suddenly cleaved the world in two, and Simon's hair whipped wildly in the violent wind.
Every fine hair on his body stood on end.
Simon saw Elysia's smiling face before him — saw it being flung away by something with terrible force. Her enormous ear brushed against his cheek, then was snatched away by the wind.
—!
She was gone.
Simon whipped his head around in desperation — and saw Elysia's body slam down into the lava.
“ELYSIA!!”
The other students cried out in shock, screaming her name.
A colossal fountain of magma erupted from the spot where she had fallen.
Elysia Rosenfelt has been eliminated.
Simon, face frozen in shock, stared blankly into the lava — then hastily spun toward the other side.
Whooooooosh!
At the Volcano Castle.
A circular ripple — as though the very atmosphere had been pierced — flared into being there, then dissolved on the wind.
...That attack. No way.
Gazing up at the Volcano Castle, Simon stood motionless for a long while, still clutching the capsule syringes of blue blood she had left in his arms.