Think, If You Still Have a Head
With Chatel Maer joining the fight, and Simon and Hector holding the line, the strike force had gained real momentum. They were carving a path through hundreds—thousands—of lava monsters by sheer force, and the Volcano Castle and its crater drew steadily closer.
But the price was steep.
The elimination count climbed in real time. The strike force had set out at around fifty strong; before anyone realized it, they were down to thirty.
"It never ends. Seriously."
Dick panted, face twisted wide open. His super-poison potions and the equipment he'd prepared were nearly spent, and the classmates around him were just as drained of jet-black.
"Incoming! More rocks falling from above!"
Someone's shout rang out. Dick no longer had the strength to even lift his head. His rule now: if the voice came from far away, ignore it; if it came from close by, throw yourself down and hope.
KUUUUNG—!
This time he chose the latter. A wave of scorching heat swept across his face, gravel hammered against his skull, and a shrill ringing filled his ears. Lava meteors raining from the sky were more than even Chatel could block. Students all around threw themselves flat and rolled across the ground in utter chaos—and another elimination was logged in the fray.
When the volcanic bombardment finally ended, the lava monsters swarmed in as if they'd been waiting for exactly that moment. Seeing them come, Dick shouted.
"Chatel! Please!"
With an expression of complete indifference, Chatel stretched out his arm without so much as glancing at the monsters' direction.
A black avalanche erupted from the ground in a fan-shaped spray, and the entire horde was swallowed up in the surge of earth and swept off the mountainside.
This guy is genuinely insane.
Dick snorted a laugh. Whether that blank face was just how Chatel always looked or something he was actively holding back, the man showed not a flicker of fatigue. That same expression, from start to finish.
Thank God Simon brought him along, but the problem is...
"Dick! You okay?"
Scott from Class A came running over, and Dick turned to look back.
"Uh, yeah, I'm fine—!"
FWOOOOM—!
He saw it—a streak of crimson flying straight for Scott's forehead. Scott's body launched into the air and tumbled off the far edge of a distant cliff.
Dick let the arm he'd thrown out to catch him fall limply to his side, and turned his head away.
That's the problem. Right there.
An unidentified long-range attack launched from the Volcano Castle. Almost certainly an arrow—but it was far too fast to dodge or block. You couldn't even react to it in the first place, so the moment you were chosen as a target, it was over.
If an attack packed that much destructive power, surely its accuracy should suffer. Instead: a perfect hit rate, every single time. Each time that attack fired, one Kizen student went down.
Worse, the arrow's range was so long it seemed to reach nearly the entire archipelago. Seated comfortably in her castle, the Volcano Castle Lord could rain attacks down on every student in the exam at will.
The one mercy is that there's a delay between one arrow and the next. It's erratic—hard to pin down an exact interval—but the gap is shrinking as time goes on. And the targeting is probably random. Almost certainly not aimed deliberately. The fact that it's skipping the Top 10 of the strike force makes that all the clearer.
SHWAAAAAAA—!
As they kept pressing forward, another arrow streaked out from the Volcano Castle. This one seemed aimed not at the strike force, but at students on one of the other islands. A glance at the output device confirmed it: a message reading that a student had been eliminated.
But if that thing ever decides to target Simon or Chatel—
It was a chilling thought. Something had to be done about it.
The problem was that the attack could be neither blocked nor avoided. If the Volcano Castle Lord really was the legendary Jean Arskalt, as Simon claimed, then this was never an attack meant to be blocked in the first place.
Besides, a student stopping a serving Legion Commander's attack dead was absurd on its face.
"Dick?"
The sudden call made Dick's head turn. Simon had come up alongside him without him noticing, a hand resting on his shoulder.
"You all right? You look rough."
Dick forced a comical grin.
"Ah, it's nothing. Just that sandwich from this morning coming back up."
"Take a break."
Simon said it while moving his fingers, already assembling Bone Sphere to hurl at the approaching lava monsters.
THWACK!
Dick beat him to it. He slapped an Ice Enchant onto his crossbow and put a bolt straight through the monster's brow.
"Leave this stuff to us and get some rest, will you? Save your jet-black, Simon."
Dick lowered the crossbow, breathing hard.
"We've got to take down the Volcano Castle Lord."
"...Yeah. Okay. Got it."
Simon and Hector, having hunted the boss monster known as the Lava Golem, had been conserving their strength and jet-black for what lay ahead. But filling the gap left by two Top 10 students stepping out of the front line was proving anything but easy.
"What do you all think you're doing!"
"Are the Battle Arts bastards all dead?! I told you not to let attacks reach me!"
Everyone was struggling, and the tide was visibly turning against them. The students who had spearheaded the charge were now cowering, slinking back, dodging.
—What happens if I get eliminated here?
—I absolutely cannot be expelled. Do you know what it took for me to get this far?!
The terror of elimination—and expulsion—was crashing over them.
Fear spreads like a plague. The moment the vanguard began shielding themselves, attacks flew at the mid and rear ranks who were supposed to be providing covering fire; when they flinched too, the vanguard grew even more exposed. A vicious cycle, tightening by the second.
Somehow—by any means necessary—they had to turn the mood around. Now.
"I'm going, Dick."
Simon clearly understood the situation too. He started walking toward the front.
"At this rate, we'll be wiped out before we ever reach the Volcano Castle Lord."
Dick had to stop him. He had to—but no words came that could shake Simon's resolve.
Damn it!
Dick ground his teeth and lifted his head—and froze.
...!
At the Volcano Castle, a red circle was shimmering into being.
That was it—the telltale sign of the arrow being fired. And he knew, with gut-deep certainty, the direction it would fly.
Goosebumps raced across his entire body; the hair on his arms stood on end.
Ha. Ha.
The deliberation didn't take long.
Judging by the red circle's size: forty percent charged. Dick grabbed Simon's arm and yanked him roughly backward.
Sixty percent. A startled Simon staggered, and in that instant Dick lunged out in front of him.
Eighty percent. He probably wouldn't live to see one hundred. Arms spread wide, Dick bounded out in front of Simon and roared at the classmates up ahead who were hunched and backing away.
"HEY, YOU BASTAAAARDS!"
The impact came immediately.
A pain like his ribs shattering to pieces, and his body being flung violently backward. Simon must have caught him from behind, because he wasn't sliding back all that fast. Soon, Chatel raised a wall of rock from the ground and braced Simon's back, stopping the slide altogether.
"...!"
Every student in the strike force froze for a moment at the sudden shout, turning toward Simon and Dick.
What they saw: Dick, arms thrown wide, having leapt in front of Simon to take the crimson arrow in his stead.
KKHEK—!
The pain was real. It hurt enough that he genuinely believed he had died. Even speaking was an effort, but he forced his trembling mouth open.
"If you've still got a head on your shoulders—then THINK!"
Dick's voice cracked with fury.
"You came this far—there's no running away! Every last one of us dies here, no matter what! That leaves exactly two choices! We all die and get expelled—or we die anyway, but we WIN this exam...!"
Survival—or victory.
Blood-flecked foam bubbled from Dick's coughing lips. His life gauge sat at zero percent, and the light of a summoning circle was already welling up from his body, pulling him back toward Camp Island.
"Please, you bastards! If it's talent you think you're lacking, then what? Curse yourselves to hell over it in class, but drag these bastards UP with you even if it kills you!"
Dick jabbed a finger at Simon, Hector, and Chatel as he bellowed.
"If you don't think you can solve it yourselves, then bet everything on these bastards solving it for you! Stop scheming to save your own skins! Use every dirty trick you've got!"
Even as the summoning light swelled brighter and brighter around him, Dick screamed on, clawing for every last word.
"We're supposed to WIN this thing, aren't we?!"
"...!!"
In the instant before the light swallowed him, Dick, blood streaming down his face, pointed at his own head.
"Think like Kizen. About nothing but winning!"
Silence fell.
Slowly fading away, Dick looked at Simon one last time and smiled.
"The rest is yours. I'm counting on you."
FWOOOOSH—
Dick's body vanished completely from the Rehlon Archipelago. Trembling, Simon dragged his eyes to the output device on his wrist.
He didn't want to believe it. But it was real.
He did it to save me.
His mouth went bone-dry and his stomach turned over. The other students were no different. In that raging battlefield of surging magma and falling volcanic meteors, a heartbeat of stillness pressed down over everything, heavy as a shroud.
Ha ha.
Ah-hahahaha.
Then, from somewhere, came laughter—laughter on the edge of snapping.
Every head turned.
"Yeah. You're right. You're right."
Cindy Vivace was laughing.
She pulled the ties from her hair. Long locks whipped free in the hot wind, and her eyes twisted into something razor-sharp. From the magic circle she'd unfurled in the air, spirits streamed out and poured ceaselessly into her body.
"If we're betting on victory—then the time to bet is now."
Behind her, ten long tails woven of spirit energy unfurled into view. Then, hovering off the ground, she cast her dark magic—and the swarming lava monsters were bound all at once by collars of spirit light, thrashing and rolling across the ground.
"Ah, that bastard."
Another male student grinned and activated the magic circle fixed to his body. Black jet-black coiled around his frame.
"All that posturing, when you're nothing special."
BOOOM!
He launched himself forward.
One by one, the other students began weaving their own magic circles and spellwork too.
The students pulled out their trump cards—techniques that poured out their jet-black to the very last drop—and set their stances.
"GO!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOH!
The strike force's morale detonated. Students with bloodshot eyes tore forward with a feral howl.
Kill them! Kill them!
Break through!
GET OUT OF THE WAY!
A maddened charge. The encirclement the lava monsters had formed in dense ranks began collapsing as if it had all been an illusion. The momentum was unbelievable—the same students who'd been cornered moments ago now moved like a different species entirely.
The thunder of dark magic erupting on all sides drowned out even the volcano's roar. As the students began ripping through enemy lines at speed, Chatel widened the reach of his domain mastery even further.
Simon simply followed in silence. His blood was boiling just the same—but he held it in. He had to.
Then—
KEEEEEING—!
At the Volcano Castle, the red circle warped once more.
Another sign that the Castle Lord's arrow was about to fly.
This time the target was Hector. The arrow streaked toward him, and Hector, leading the charge, slammed to a desperate halt.
FWOOOOM!
But then a male student threw himself in front of Hector of his own will.
KA-KA-KA-KRASH!
Taking the arrow in Hector's place, the boy went tumbling violently across the stony ground.
"You—!"
Hector bit his lip. It was one of the faction students who had joined the strike force under him.
"It's nothing. I ran out of jet-black ages ago."
He pressed a hand to his forehead and dipped into a salute of loyalty.
"Just make sure I'm spared the expulsion."
FWOOOOSH—
His body was summoned away and vanished. Staring down at the empty ground where he'd stood, Hector's eyes threaded red with burst vessels, veins bulging across his fists and legs.
"Hector."
At Simon's call, Hector turned his head. Simon's eyes were gleaming, his fist clenched tight. He, too, was clearly holding himself back. Then Hector mastered the emotion surging through him and let out a sharp breath—HAH!
"Making me carry useless baggage."
KOOM! KOOM!
Hector charged forward again, unshakable.
"I'll collect what that baggage is worth—from the school itself."
Seeing that Hector had steadied himself, Simon quietly relaxed inside. The two had paused only briefly, but the lead students had moved so fast that it took them a long stretch of running just to catch back up to the vanguard.
"Ahahahaha! Sure, I lost my ghost ship—but I can still fight like this!"
Elisa readied cannons hauled along by her spirits.
"Firepower is MY responsibility! Keep moving!"
BOOM!
BOOOOOM!
Dozens of shells packed with spirit energy tore across the slope, blasting the lava monsters apart in chain detonations. Thanks to her covering fire, the students advanced faster than ever.
As the students' advance accelerated, three boss monsters erupted from the ground at once—clearly an attempt to stop them. Three of the very boss that Simon and Hector had only managed to take down together.
But there was no mood for retreat.
"Run them over!"
"Anything that blocks us—kill it!"
The students were about to hurl themselves at the boss monsters with what looked like suicidal abandon when—
SHWAAAAAAA—!
Out of nowhere, a black sword slash carved through the air. A massive gash split open across the Lava Golem's chest, and it toppled, spraying molten rock like blood.
The students flinched and whipped their heads around.
"That technique—!"
They turned to look behind them. From the rear, students with unfamiliar faces were flying in astride floating familiars.
And at their head was a boy gripping a demonic sword.
"R-Reinforcements! It's reinforcements!"
Simon turned and looked back as well. A faint smile touched his lips.
They came.
And among those students, Simon spotted a shock of mint-green hair sticking out above them all.