Let's Stop Here

"Let's stop this, everyone."

For a moment, a heavy silence settled over Volcano Castle. A few students gulped dryly.

"S-stop what, exactly...?"

"This exam."

Merdiana smiled as she glanced down at the output device strapped to her wrist.

"About an hour left, and 155 survivors in total. Perfect timing, isn't it? If we simply stop everything right here, the 329th class will be remembered through these 155 people and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no one else. To put it a little more bluntly—"

Her lips curled open.

"This school falls into our hands."

"......"

"You've all felt it too, haven't you? How unfairly large our class is. Scholarships, club funding—every last trivial thing turns into a competition. Some of you couldn't get into the department you wanted because the seats were full. Some of you couldn't take the classes you wanted."

She clenched her fist.

"But if we end the exam right here, everything changes. Just imagine it! Every resource, every form of support, concentrated on us. Direct discipleship under the professors, club leadership, Top 10 seats—all the way up to the Student Council itself."

Her voice rose steadily as she swept her gaze across the students around her.

"Kizen has expelled so many students that they'll have no choice but to graduate every single survivor. The endless terror of expulsion—over, done, finished! It's perfect. We stop taking losses, and all we have to do is enjoy, whole and unbroken, everything we've clawed our way to."

Merdiana spread her arms wide.

"What's wrong with that?"

A dreadful silence fell.

Then one of the strike team members, a male student, spoke up.

"Your proposal doesn't hold together in the first place."

"?"

"Even if we all just stand here quietly, you honestly think the Castle Lord would leave us be?"

"She's leaving us alone just fine, though?"

Merdiana shrugged with a laugh.

"This is a Safe Zone."

She explained how they had come to be here.

With Merida's betrayal costing her any chance at the Top 10 melee, Merdiana—the fourth-ranked student overall—along with Asseraz had been forced to throw out their strategy and rebuild it from scratch.

Their new plan was simple: board the Volcano Castle before anyone else.

The two of them had reached the crater shortly before the twenty-four-hour mark, when the Castle Lord was due to appear. If the Volcano Castle did manifest, they reasoned, it could only rise from the central volcano—the highest point of the Rehlon Archipelago, reachable from every region.

Sure enough, their prediction held. From the magma at the bottom of the crater, the castle began to ascend.

After that, Merdiana used some manner of concealment dark magic to slip herself and Asseraz inside the castle without a soul noticing.

Now that they were within the walls, nothing attacked them. Even after shedding the dark magic they'd used to infiltrate, they remained untouched. The first and second floors held no garrison at all, and no lava poured in from outside.

A perfect Safe Zone.

"From the third floor up, though, there are soldiers guarding the place, so we couldn't go beyond that. And the Castle Lord herself is at the very top. You all know the Castle Lord is Jean Arskalt, right?"

At the weight of that name, several strike team students flinched.

"Think about it. How is a student supposed to beat an active Legion Commander? Even if, by some miracle, it somehow turned into an even fight, only two or three of the people in this room would survive it."

Merdiana's voice climbed higher.

"And if they lose? The exam ends just like this. So then—who does Kizen fall to?"

She pointed outside.

"To the ones who were too busy clutching at their own lives—the cowards holed up in some far corner of the archipelago, trembling in the dark."

Merdiana conjured an imaginary enemy beyond the walls.

"You'd hand this school over to trash like that? While the rest of us flunk out and return to being ordinary people, only they get to keep calling themselves Kizen and coast through life on what we built? Can you really just sit back and watch that happen?"

First, forge a bond among the people inside these walls. Then, stoke their hostility toward the enemy outside.

"The only ones who can take the Castle Lord down are us. Best case, we break even. Worst case, we lose everything. So why should we do anyone else's dirty work? If we stop here, it's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over—and everything we've fought for becomes ours alone to enjoy."

She spread her arms and smiled.

"The Kizen way."

Opposing her was Jean Arskalt.

Stir up their fear of the future. Whisper to humanity's most primal desire, and promise the safest, most peaceful ending of all.

Let's just stop here.

You've done well enough. It's already more than enough.

What human being alive could resist such a temptation without wavering, even a little?

"That said, we do have one condition of our own."

This time it was Asseraz who stepped forward, leveling a fingertip at Simon.

"Hand over Simon Polentia."

"......"

"Us Top 10s need at least one rank bumped up for this to be worth our while, don't you think? Hardly a difficult request."

The eyes of the strike team students rolled and rolled—then came to rest on Simon.

Simon's reaction was utterly flat.

The silence hung so heavy you could have heard a single drop of water fall. Nobody could bring themselves to speak.

"Pfff."

A laugh rang out.

"Ahaha."

Every head turned slowly.

One person, hand pressed over her forehead, mouth split in a grin, laughing.

"Thanks, Asseraz. Honestly? I was wavering a little back there."

It was Cindy Vivace.

She lowered her hand from her brow.

"You bringing up knocking Simon out of the exam snapped me right awake."

"?"

"What was it the Queen Bee said earlier? People too busy clutching at their own lives, holed up in some corner, trembling in the dark?"

Cindy raised her arm and gestured at her output device.

"Then what's this?"

"And what's this?"

One by one, the other strike team students raised their arms and stared at their own output devices. Elimination messages were printing out, one after another without end.

"Chatel's holding the volcano down right now—so who are all these eliminated people, exactly? Don't tell me they're fighting each other again, too dense to read the room. Yeah, right."

Cindy's expression turned serious.

"It means the students outside are fighting tooth and nail at this very moment. For us. To raise the odds of us taking down the Castle Lord, even a little."

"......"

"This is the right path. The road we're walking right now is the true way. Everyone's combining their strength and heading toward victory—and the only things standing in the way, the only ones in all of Kizen, are—"

She raised her arm.

"—the two of you. Hiding up here in the Volcano Castle while everyone else bleeds, scheming about how to take down Simon Polentia. Just you two."

Merdiana's and Asseraz's expressions hardened.

"Oh, and—'our achievements,' you said? You're wrong there too. This isn't ours alone."

Another male student stepped forward and pointed downward.

"You wouldn't know, shut up here in the castle. There were people who deliberately sacrificed themselves to carry us this far. People who took arrows from the Castle Lord knowing it could mean their own expulsion. This was never just about us."

Guinevere, the ponytailed girl who had ferried students up the mountain, walked out from among them.

"'The Kizen way,' was it? Not a single professor has ever taught us that turning tail and running is the Kizen way."

She raised her Jet-Black.

"That's the Kizen way—to do whatever it takes to win."

The mood in the room ignited.

Every member of the strike team wore a flushed, resolute gleam in their eyes. Hector, watching from the back with his arms crossed, exhaled a quiet sigh.

"I was planning to burn the trash that fell for it first, anyway."

Jules and Elisa squared their stances, and even Simon, who had stood at the front through it all, drew his Jet-Black up around ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠him.

Tch. Not working, huh.

Thinking this, Merdiana took a step back.

"Asseraz. Let's fall back for now and—"

"It really doesn't—"

Asseraz bit down on her lip until it bled, her eyes flashing white with fury.

"—make ANY SENSE!"

FWOOOOOOOOOSH!

Asseraz unleashed every ounce of her Jet-Black. Behind her, the magic golems reacted instantly, spreading the magic circles embedded in their bodies.

"If we end it here, EVERYONE wins! The weak get cut—that's what competition IS! Victory? What even counts as victory? The biggest gain for us IS victory, isn't it? And you'd throw away an opportunity that just rolled into your laps? You'd gamble your lives for a future where the best you can hope for is breaking even? Are you all out of your MINDS?!"

She screamed like something cornered, thrashing against the tide.

"PLEASE! Please, just think and move RATIONALLY for once! Stop doing this idiotic, incomprehensible nonsense just because your feelings got swept up!"

Behind her, Cindy—spirit tail raised high—made a gesture of clenching her fist. Asseraz sucked in a breath as an unseen grip seized her by the throat.

"Well, at this point, honestly? She's just pitiful."

"Gkkhhh—!"

Choked, Asseraz's eyes bulged. The magic circles of the three golems flared open at once, and hundreds of dark spells, great and small, began to pour down in a torrent.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Elemental dark magic of every school, curses, deadly poisons, even blood-arts—a carnival of black sorcery as if cast by dozens of hands at once. Every eye in the room went wide.

"FALL BACK!"

Two Kizen students from the strike team darted forward and threw out their arms. A massive door rose from the ground, and a barrier magic circle unfurled, deflecting the storm of dark magic.

In the interruption, Cindy's spirit magic was canceled, and she withdrew her hand with a disappointed look.

"No time to waste on losers like that."

Hector lowered his stance. In an instant, scales sheathed his body, wings sprouted from his back, and his frame swelled into the form of a dragon.

[I'll hold this ground. Go.]

Simon glanced back at him, eyes round.

"You sure?"

[With that fourth-place brat on hand, I've got a more than adequate stand-in.]

Hector looked at Merida riding on his back. Even amid all the chaos, she was sleeping like a baby.

A moment later, the transformed dragon spread a magic circle before him and opened his jaws.

<Dragon Breath>

FWHOOOOOOOOM!

Warped black flames erupted in the shape of a hollow tunnel, sweeping away Asseraz's spells and shoving the golems back.

[GO!]

CRUNCH!

Hector launched himself viciously into the air, snatched one golem in his hind legs, and smashed it into the wall.

"Thank you!"

"Moving out!"

Simon and the students plunged swiftly through the corridor of flame Hector had carved.

"Not letting you through."

Merdiana slid aside, raising both arms to cast—but a sword slash whipped past her flank.

"!"

"Your opponent shall be me."

Jules was already walking toward her, hand on the hilt of his magic sword.

"My, my. So you did side with them. Over your sense of loss yet, swordsman?"

"Do not prattle."

His eyes flashed.

"I shall give you my everything. I have no intention of holding back."

Hector, having blasted one of the three golems apart, glared up through the air at Asseraz.

Asseraz was grinding her teeth to dust.

"Hector Moore! I honestly thought we were the same kind!"

[Disgusting noise.]

His jaws gaped open, Jet-Black swirling in his maw.

[You are nothing but a loser!]