The Stairway to the Floating Castle
The sky had been swallowed whole by monstrous creatures.
Flying summons shaped like giant manta rays wheeled through the heavens, and riding atop each one was a Kizen student.
There were more than twenty of them.
"Let's go!"
The students leapt down from their mounts one after another, pouring out dark magic as they fell. The Lava Golems — the exam's boss monsters — began to burst apart under the sheer weight of firepower.
I had no idea they'd bring this many.
Simon allowed himself a small smile. The truth was, he had never planned to climb with only Chatel and Elisa from the start.
He'd been gathering intel from other students, hoping to recruit more of the Top 10 into the strike team — but the team had suddenly started pushing up the mountain ahead of schedule, forcing him to move fast. Instead, he'd asked a student with massive transport capacity to bring reinforcements.
I'll go ahead and clear the path. If you find any other Top 10 students, have them join the strike team immediately.
That very transport specialist — the pigtailed girl — vaulted down from her manta ray and landed at Simon's side.
"Honestly, hauling everyone here was easier than I expected."
Guinevere Benders, of the Summoning Department — same as Simon, and one of the very best students in it.
"Thanks to you all smoothing out the road, all I had to do was follow the base of the mountain straight up."
It was a staggering infusion of fighting power.
And especially—
Shaaaaak—!
The magic swordsman Jule who had come with them was overwhelming. The moment his hand so much as closed around the hilt of the blade at his waist, monsters were carved apart by sweeping arcs of sword light.
"You're late."
He turned to face Simon. With a sharp clang of the longsword sealing shut, the last surviving Lava Golem's head split cleanly in two and toppled.
Simon's eyes shone with gratitude.
"Jule!"
"The whole school knows what the strike team is attempting. The students who couldn't join us are moving where they're needed, too."
Hooo—
He exhaled a long breath and went on.
"I have at least enough sense for that. Plenty of my own friends were eliminated as well. Given the circumstances, I won't let petty personal feelings sway me."
"Thank you. Really."
"And I've brought the weapon that will end this exam."
With that, Jule looked over his shoulder.
Hanging from his back was a white sack — no, on closer look, a blanket. Something inside it was squirming.
A person.
"Merida?"
Kuuul—
Merida was fast asleep inside the blanket, utterly oblivious to the world.
"I found her sleeping on the high ground after she used Trance. I brought her because I judged her useful as a fighting force — but if you can't trust her, I'll drop her in the lava."
"No, no! Once she hears the situation, Merida will understand too."
Jule nodded — and even in that motion, Simon caught the flash of his free hand gripping the magic sword's hilt. A diagonal sweep of blade-light, and the heads of lava monsters flew off one after another.
"And what sort of face do you have, crawling back here?"
Behind them, Hector stalked over, his expression anything but welcoming.
"A mutt who got played by the losers' little gang and spent his days fetching for them."
"Hector."
Simon shot him a warning look, but Jule answered in a voice that couldn't have cared less.
"That matter never had anything to do with them to begin with. I wish to cross blades with Simon — and that holds true even now."
He turned his head toward Simon.
"The only reason I hold back is that fighting among ourselves would shame our department. Nothing more."
"……"
Hector clicked his tongue.
Whether Hector or Jule, both were department representatives. The stage for settling private grudges had passed the moment the Volcano Castle Lord appeared.
Now was the time to join forces.
Jule moved his free hand and undid the straps binding Merida to his back.
"Who will face the Castle Lord?"
"Looks like it'll be me and Hector."
"Then I leave her to you."
Jule tossed Merida into Simon's arms like a piece of cargo. Simon staggered back in shock — then was even more shocked by how light she was, light as a feather.
She slept on, breathing softly. A few strands of mint-colored hair had slipped out from under the blanket and swayed in the wind.
"Guard her until she wakes, and she'll be the force that turns this battle. Well then."
Jule began to advance. Every time his magic sword swung, dozens of lava monsters were bisected by its dusky blade-light.
"I'll carve the way forward!"
Jule and the reinforcements were fresh in both Jet-Black and stamina.
They punched clean paths straight through the teeming swarms of lava monsters. Watching them, Simon felt like he could finally breathe.
Running along the road they carved for him, Simon at last laid eyes on the Volcano Castle.
There it is!
The destination he had longed for and longed for was finally within arm's reach. This exam would end after all.
"I've waited long enough."
Hector, his patience long since spent, was already grafting scales onto his body. Simon understood exactly how he felt.
So many students had sacrificed themselves for this victory. He had held back only because this was no longer about his own life alone — but he wanted to fight, right now, this instant.
"Everyone, look over there!"
Elisa, ranked 7th overall, pointed at the Volcano Castle.
"Something's coming out of the castle!"
Beep!
At the same instant, a new message flickered to life on every student's output device.
Thud. Thud.
Boots rang out, booming across the crater, and from the castle's first floor the Volcano Castle Lord — clad in crimson armor, a mantle sweeping behind her — revealed herself at last in full.
"So the foolish gatecrashers have crawled all the way here at last."
Figures.
Simon knew from her voice alone who she was — Jean Arskalt.
"Your faces already wear the look of victory. But the true stage begins only now."
At her gesture, the ground began to quake violently. Students scattered across the slope toppled over or landed hard on their backsides.
There's more? Seriously?
Sensing something deeply wrong, Simon fixed his gaze on the Castle Lord — and saw her lower an arm toward the crater.
BOOOOOOOM!
The volcano erupted on a scale beyond any comparison to everything that had come before.
This was firepower existing entirely outside the realm of reason.
"Run for iiiit!"
Students scattered in blind panic. Erupting magma poured down from the sky like a deluge of death.
While Jule hurriedly slashed apart the falling lava meteors and Chatel twisted the course of the flooding magma to dam it—
"Ah!"
The Volcano Castle was rising into the sky. The Castle Lord stood with her eyes closed and both arms raised, and it looked as though she was lifting the entire castle by her own power.
"We're — we're done for!"
"How high is it going?!"
The castle now hung at an altitude far beyond where it had stood. The Volcano Castle Lord gazed down at the students from the heavens and spoke.
"Despair."
From within the floating castle, monsters came swarming out like hornets from a disturbed nest.
They looked nothing like the lava monsters they had fought until now. They wore armor eerily similar to the Castle Lord's own, bore spears in their hands, and insect wings sprouted from their backs.
The Castle Lord's elite guard.
"And meet your deaths."
KWAAAAAAAAM!
The volcano erupted from the crater yet again. Lava surged up as if to pierce the heavens, then fell back as burning rain, flooding down the slopes and swallowing students whole.
Eliminations mounted among the strike team. Gazing up at the castle hanging impossibly high, at the elite guards wheeling through the sky, the students felt their resolve snap clean in two.
"……We made it all the way here, and for what?!"
"Climb again?! You've got to be kidding!"
Elisa tore at her own hair in frustration.
"Ugh, if I had even one Ghost Ship left!"
Even as she said it, she shot a seething glare at Hector. Hector, utterly indifferent, finished a stretch — then crouched down.
"I'm more than enough on my own."
In an instant, scales and wings of a fire dragon fused onto his body, and Hector — transformed into the shape of a dragon — rocketed skyward.
But the crater erupted yet again, violent and indiscriminate, and he could do nothing but circle in place.
"Infuriating pests!"
Lava pouring without end.
The castle risen beyond reach.
And the elite guard holding it.
It was a veritable cascade of despair — and then.
"I'll handle it."
Chatel stepped forward.
The students around him tried to stop him.
"Ch-Chatel! Even for you, a Jet-Black grand-scale earth spell is—!"
Kneeling on the dirt, Chatel slammed his palms together with a resounding crack!
"It's possible."
In that instant, Chatel's body petrified of its own accord, turning to stone. It took the form of a colossal stone statue, smiling.
Then Chatel's true power revealed itself. The entire volcano was washed in an ink-black light, as though a sumi-e painting had bled into reality.
Grass sketched in brushstrokes of ink sprouted here and there; pines rose from the earth. The ground itself shifted into otherworldly hues, as though submerged in black ink.
Then a shout rang out from somewhere in the strike team.
"Danger! The volcano's going to blow again!"
At that, Chatel cast another dark spell. The mountainside turned to dough beneath his will — and then simply plugged the crater shut.
"……!!"
A phantom phenomenon: he was reshaping the terrain itself as casually as a child playing in a sandbox.
The tremor under their feet told them the volcano had erupted deep inside the mountain. Lava began seeping out in rivulets from seams across the slope, like boiling water escaping between the lid and rim of a pot — but that was all it did.
"Prepare. Yourself."
The petrified Chatel closed his eyes.
"Make ready. To climb the sky."
The ground under Chatel's dominion surged upward all at once. It hung suspended in midair, broken into fragments like a floating island.
"Whoa……!"
Like the stepping-stone bridge they had used to cross the lava, the terrain formed a scattered, circular stairway — a spiral of floating platforms.
These fragments curved round and round in an ascending ring, forging a road that led straight to the Volcano Castle.
Everyone stood speechless before the astonishing sight.
"Thank you, Chatel! Everyone, let's go!"
Simon was the first to shake off his stupor, leaping high onto one of the floating platforms.
The moment Rank 1 moved, the other students snapped out of it and followed.
"Come on, let's move!"
"OOOOOOOH!"
The students scrambled over one another to raise their Jet-Black, stamping up the floating ground one platform at a time.
Thanks to Chatel sealing the crater, the terror of lava raining from above was gone for good.
"Futile struggling, all of it."
The Volcano Castle Lord gave the order to attack.
The winged elite guards stationed throughout the castle swooped down as one, beginning their air raid. The students, sprinting for their lives, hurled back dark magic and curses in a frantic counterattack.
"Hah!"
Simon, Merida on his back, focused everything on simply running.
This is incredible.
Earth rose up to form the floating ground; black grass and pines grew upon it. Even pebbles and boulders hung in midair, so that running across it felt like bounding from stepping stone to stepping stone.
And all of this ground pointed toward one place — the very top of the sky.
The Volcano Castle.
Vuuuuuum—!
And from that castle came the most terrifying sight of the entire exam.
A crimson circle began to ripple into being on one side of the Volcano Castle.
The Castle Lord's arrow!
A death sentence no one could block and no one could dodge — a guarantee that at least one student would fall.
"Watch out!"
"One's coming!"
Simon's heart lurched. The crimson circle was drifting, very slowly, along the direction of his own run. The targeting reticle had locked onto him.
No — it's not me.
Simon looked back. There lay Merida, sleeping soundly on his back.
"Get down!"
"We can't afford to lose two more here!"
In that instant, Cindy and Jule darted in front of the two of them, blocking the way. Simon was just opening his mouth to shout something—
Fuuuuuush—!
The crimson circle suddenly went dark, like a lightbulb flicking off to save power.
"Huh?"
Cindy and Jule, who had braced themselves for the worst, exchanged bewildered looks.
In the distance, the Volcano Castle Lord could be seen scowling fiercely as she lowered her bow. Simon knew it in his gut.
Something's wrong with the Castle Lord!
His eyes snapped straight to his output device.
Challengers have captured additional Sealing Stones.
The Volcano Castle Lord is weakening.
That's it!
Simon clenched his fist, swept up in a surge of joy like a breaking wave.
"They must still be fighting down below! Keep moving!"
"What happened?! Why did she stop mid-shot?! Somebody explain!"
Frost was settling over the Rehln Archipelago.
Across the searing fields of lava, glaciers spouting brilliant white cold were rising one after another.
"Haaah."
A girl breathed a plume of white mist, arms crossed tight around her own shoulders.
"Ugh, seriously."
Meilin Villenne, ranked 8th overall.
Her nose was flushed red, and she sniffled.
"I wonder when I'll ever get used to the cold."
All around her, lava monsters entombed in the glaciers had frozen mid-motion, locked solid in place.
And right in their midst—
A Sealing Stone, its form revealed, stood towering into the air.