A Bet on Victory
The Blood Cat Tribe could peer into the near future through their gift of precognition.
Which meant Elysia—
Why else would she have handed him these items without even trying to dodge that attack?
"Simon!"
The shout calling his name snapped Simon back to his senses. The muffled sounds around him suddenly took on life and color, and a wave of searing heat stabbed into his lungs.
"What are you doing? Snap out of it!"
Cindy was yelling as she fired off necromancy spells in rapid succession. When Simon opened his eyes, his vision was upside down—Cindy's face stared back at him. Beside her, Dick was hurling something at the enemy with abandon, while Malcolm kept raising doppelgangers one after another.
And what they were fighting was a swarm of lava monsters, writhing in every direction.
The moment Simon's group crossed the stone bridge after Elysia was taken out by the attack from the Volcano Castle, more than a hundred lava monsters had come swarming at them. As if they'd been waiting for the group to cross the magma, they had encircled them in one coordinated motion and cut off every path of retreat.
Simon had charged at the head of the formation to punch through the encirclement—and taken some kind of massive impact. He remembered dirt and dust blotting out his vision, but apparently he'd blacked out for a split second.
"Hey, Simon! You okay?"
Dick extended a hand. Simon grabbed it and pulled himself up in one motion.
"What happened?"
"A lava meteor dropped out of the sky right next to you. Your luck is absolute garbage."
Simon followed Dick's pointing finger and saw an enormous crater gouged into the ground. He hadn't even dodged that—ever since watching Elysia fall right before his eyes, he must have lost his focus.
"If you're up, then help us already!"
Cindy screamed, strained to her limit. Just then, with a wail of Aaagh!, a student caught in the grip of the lava monsters was dragged away. Terrible screams followed, along with the sickening smell of something burning.
Giltra Anden has been eliminated.
Light flashed amid the lava monsters surrounding Giltra—the light of being summoned back to Camp Island.
The monsters, robbed of prey that had been all but caught, turned their enraged gazes toward the group.
"There are way too many of them."
Malcolm said, backing away.
"Someone is commanding the lava monsters. They're moving tactically, tightening the encirclement bit by bit."
"Commanding them? By who? You're imagining things!"
Cindy snapped, but Simon thought Malcolm had a point. The ambush had struck the instant they crossed the stone bridge, as though the enemy had been lying in wait. Some of the monsters had even looped around quickly to collapse the bridge and seal off their retreat.
Lava monsters that did nothing but mindlessly charge at any human they saw—could they really pull off movements like that?
"......"
Simon swept his gaze across the surroundings.
The lava monsters were even holding formation. Three clusters in front spread wide, screening Simon's group like a wall, and behind each cluster, two reserve groups trailed in close support.
This encirclement. This formation.
He had definitely seen it somewhere before.
No—it went beyond having merely seen it.
'This is, without a doubt, something I was taught—!'
"Hey! Over there!"
Cindy shouted, pointing ahead. Amid the monsters pressing in thick from all sides, a small gap had opened in the middle of the formation.
"A gap! There's a hole in the encirclement! Let's run for it!"
"No. It's a trap."
Simon answered with absolute conviction, stopping her.
"They're trying to draw us out and bait us in. Malcolm!"
"Yes!"
"Send every doppelganger you have toward that empty crack in the encirclement!"
As he gave the order, Simon tossed something to Malcolm. Catching it and checking what it was, Malcolm's eyes went wide.
"This is......!"
A syringe capsule filled with Elysia's blue blood.
"Her amplification serum! You had a spare!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Malcolm jammed it into his own shoulder. Dark energy soon came billowing off his body as he cast dark magic at full power.
More than thirty doppelgangers began charging toward the gap in the lava monsters' formation—and Simon led his classmates running in precisely the opposite direction.
"We're going this way!"
"? What are you doing! Malcolm just committed all that force, and you're splitting our strength!"
"Trust me!"
Simon shouted the words and was the first to plunge into the enemy lines.
'Gate open!'
Shaaaaaak!
Twin Overlord blades shot out and cleaved through the clumped mass of lava monsters in a single stroke. Simon opened his subspace, drawing out bones one after another to raise a fortress in front of himself.
Kukukukukukung!
A bastion of bone, built from an ogre's corpse, unfolded before them. The other students clambered atop it immediately, and Simon gave the order to advance.
The lava monsters were shoved aside by the Heavy Armor's kicks, their balance broken.
"Huh? That was easier to break through than I thought!"
"We're out!"
They had smashed through only a single layer of monsters, yet in the blink of an eye they were outside the encirclement. Simon released the Heavy Armor and seized control of the large bones.
Kwoong! Kung!
Bones hurtling through the air slammed down like pillars, raising a fence of bone around them.
While the lava monsters scrambled frantically to climb over the barrier, Simon's group managed to put a safe distance between themselves and the swarm.
"Nice!"
"We made it!"
As everyone cheered, Cindy looked back over her shoulder. The doppelgangers that had run for the earlier gap were being picked off one and all by the lava monsters, which had closed in the instant the decoys arrived—as if they'd been waiting for exactly that.
"You knew that was going to happen, didn't you?"
She shot Simon a suspicious look.
"What are you, some kind of precog like Elysia?"
"It's not precognition."
It was simply one of the formations commonly used in the Carlos Northern Territory.
And then there was that arrow—the one that had killed Elysia.
With a meaningful smile playing on his lips, Simon turned his gaze toward the Volcano Castle.
'So that's where you've been.'
[......]
The Volcano Castle Lord had been controlling the lava monsters through Endolas Vaudeville's system. It was one of the authorities granted to the Castle Lord's role.
An enormous map lay spread out before her, charting the movements of every monster and volcano spawn in real time.
Ordinarily, even with such authority, the sheer scale would have made command a struggle—but for a woman who had once led a vast undead legion, this much was trivial.
And yet.
'They broke through my encirclement.'
The one who had defended the Carlos Northern Territory without a single gap for over a decade was a master of tactics and formations. And yet a band of students she had thought caught in her formation, doomed to be surrounded and annihilated, had toyed with her monsters and slipped away. They had sent a decoy to lure the monsters, then sprinted for the weak point on the opposite side. It was a judgment impossible for anyone who hadn't pierced the exact weakness of her tactical formation—and these weren't even professionals, just students.
'......So you were there, were you.'
The Castle Lord, lost in thought for a moment, let a smile cross her face.
'Impudent brat.'
"The Volcano Castle Lord is Professor Jean Arskalt?"
"The Grand Duke of the North?"
When Simon finished explaining, the whole group stared at him in shock. He nodded, his face full of conviction.
"That's right. I'm certain."
The way the monsters had operated that formation—and above all, the way Elysia had been sniped with an arrow from the Volcano Castle. For a woman who wielded the Gale Bow, hitting Elysia from that distance was far from impossible.
"And there's one more thing this whole mess tells us."
"What?"
"Right after Elysia finished her precognition, she crossed over to where I was and said this."
'I'm going to bet my victory on you.'
Rustling, Simon drew the syringe capsule of blue blood out onto his palm.
"Think about it. If elimination in this exam really meant unconditional expulsion, would Elysia have accepted her own elimination and handed this over to me?"
"Wait—that means!"
Cindy shot up.
"Elysia glimpsed a future where she survives!"
"So elimination isn't the end."
Dick cut in abruptly.
"Survival or victory. If we take down the Volcano Castle Lord, every eliminated student is spared from expulsion."
"Exactly."
Everyone let out a long breath of relief. Here and there, smiles began to spread.
None of these students had sat through just one or two of Kizen's exams. They had all suspected from experience that a student victory was the only thing that could stop expulsions—that it was the escape hatch Kizen deliberately left open. But this incident turned that suspicion into certainty, and the difference in mindset was enormous.
"Still, if what you're saying is true, that's just cruel, Simon. Lady Nephthys, honestly."
Cindy shook her head.
"How are we supposed to catch an active Legion Commander? We obviously can't win."
"Restrictions."
Dick said suddenly.
"There have to be restrictions. Finding and exploiting them is our job."
Simon thought so too. The attack that had struck Elysia hadn't come from the Gale Bow. And the lava monsters she commanded weren't the 2nd Legion either.
She would act only within the role and authority of the Volcano Castle Lord.
"Of course, knowing the Grand Duke's temperament, she won't go easy on us. Not even a little."
Simon said it as he looked around at his companions. Ever since Elysia's fall, he had naturally become the leader.
"Then we fight like our lives depend on it. Let's move."
After that fierce battle, the whole group was moving with careful, measured steps when Cindy's ears, on scouting duty, suddenly pricked up.
"Guys. I think we found what we were looking for."
"Why?"
"There's a huge group of students gathered nearby. Thirty? No, I think it's more than forty."
Simon's group broke into a run, brightening at the news. It was true. Students began coming into view one by one, and soon a whole crowd of them appeared gathered at the foot of a mountain—a force of over forty strong.
"It's the strike force!"
Dick shouted, jubilant.
"A group this size, it has to be! They've gathered to take down the Volcano Castle Lord!"
Malcolm scanned the students' faces and spoke up.
"But who pulled all these people together? Someone must be holding them at the center."
"Let's go find out."
Simon's group merged naturally into the strike force. There was none of the hostility that had marked the early exam. Far from being wary of the newcomers, the others seemed delighted that their fighting strength had grown—some students even grinned ear to ear at the sight of Simon, the top-ranked student among them.
"Hey, everyone! I got the scoop!"
Dick, who had grabbed a nearby acquaintance and pumped them for information, came back and reported.
"It's the Volcano Castle strike force! They're gathering here to all go up together. The route looks clean, too."
Just as he said—the volcano was erupting constantly, but along the ascent route from this side, the magma rarely, if ever, touched the path. The strike force seemed to be gathering as many people as possible down here before assaulting the castle all at once.
"Oh, and the one leading the strike force is—"
Before Dick could even finish, the students around them parted left and right, and a huge-built man came walking through.
"Simon Polentia."
The leader of the strike force was Hector Moore, ranked third overall. He had been assembling a force to capture the Volcano Castle Lord and end the exam in one stroke.
Simon greeted him pleasantly.
"Hey, Hector."
"......So you've come to take the Castle Lord too."
"You can see for yourself."
Hector crossed his arms.
"Fine. I'd settle things with you right now if I could, but not this time. As part of the force, you'll follow my command."
"I'm not sure I can trust that."
Cindy, his classmate from Class A, cut in bluntly.
"You're really leading this out of pure intentions, right? You're not going to watch for an opening and drop your rivals, or anything like that?"
Hector's voice dropped low and cold.
"Pierre was taken."
"......"
"This is the only way to save him."
Pierre Buckler was a Class A graduate who had entered the same Summoning Department, and Hector's closest friend. By now, he was more than a faction member to Hector—he was something far more personal.
Dick let out a low whistle of surprise.
"Man, you really treasure your own people, huh."
While Hector was an object of terror to other students, the rumor that he treated his own well was fairly well known.
Hector scowled and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"Trash. Go over there and grind through whatever petty calculations they need."
A few of the model students were huddled in the back, heads together, working out strategy. Dick gave a lazy "yeah, yeah" and wandered over to join the strategy team.
"And you, Simon Polentia. You'll hold your strength in reserve and fight alongside me in the final battle against the Castle Lord."
"......"
"Though I'll be the one taking it down, of course."
Simon glanced around once, then spoke quietly.
"We're still short on force."
"?"
A student from Hector's faction, standing at his side, stepped forward.
"We've got over forty people, what more do we need? If you don't want to join, skip the excuses and just say—"
"The Volcano Castle Lord is Professor Jean."
A murmur rippled through the students.
"Is that true?"
"What evidence do you even—"
"Probably."
Hector stretched out an arm to hold them back and said flatly,
"He's right."
The moment Hector declared it with such certainty, his excited faction members fell silent.
Simon then told them about the incident with Elysia as well. Her precognitive gift was famous, and since it gave everyone one more reason to fight for a student victory, the whole strike force erupted in cheers.
Finally, Simon checked the time on his output device.
"We still have plenty of time. If we rush and lose people from a force this size, there's no hope left."
Simon lifted his head.
"Let's gather every fighter we can and go up in one wave. Especially the power of the Top 10—we need them most of all."
"The Top 10? After they've beaten you down once, you've got a lot of nerve."
Hector's face darkened.
"Every last one of them is willful and unreasonable. How do you plan to bring them in? They're all hostile to you, if anything."
Simon quietly looked up at the sky.
Quite some distance away, a ship could be seen bobbing in the air. Simon allowed himself a faint smile.
"If words won't move them, then I'll just have to persuade them with force."