The Seryu Military Company Company Retreat
I returned to the emcee's seat after hearing the secret history of our school from Fujigasaki Rinka. It seemed to be a short break between matches, as everyone was sitting on the benches beside the field, sweating and catching their breath.
“Where did you go, junior?”
“Ah, Master said she was bored and dragged me off for a sparring match.”
Mimata Chieri must have worked pretty hard too. She approached me while wiping sweat with a towel and asked. Alrick followed behind her, staring at me.
“Oh, so you had a spar. Did you win?”
“Ryuta, you didn’t watch Alrick’s match…?”
Hearing that I’d been sparring, Alrick looked up at me with slightly teary eyes. Don’t look at me like that, Alrick. It makes me weak.
“Of course I lost. Alrick, I’ll watch properly in the second half without getting distracted, so don’t be too disappointed.”
“Okay…”
“It’s because Alrick performed amazingly this time. She’s incredibly skilled at using her body.”
Hmm. It seemed she was disappointed that I’d left my seat while she was shining. Still, everyone except Jeong Da-rim was a veteran well-versed in physical combat, yet Alrick had stood out. As expected of the mid-boss difficulty of being the youngest daughter of the MegaCorp family—Alexandra really lived up to it.
I already knew that Alrick, an electricity user, had considerable physical ability thanks to her power to manipulate her body’s electrical signals. But I hadn’t expected her to be able to use it so well already. It looked like she had developed her abilities quite a lot. I should wear the relic glasses sometime and properly check Alrick’s stats.
Mimata Chieri and Alrick returned to the volleyball court. When I asked the futsal players what the score was, they told me it was tied at two-two. The even score suggested the teams had been split fairly evenly.
Both games were scheduled for thirty minutes per half with a ten-minute break in between, so the second half started right away. Since this wasn’t a national team soccer match, there was no need to watch a bunch of men sweating buckets. I turned my attention to the women’s volleyball game instead.
The teams were Alrick, Mimata Chieri, Konoe Akina, Jeong Da-rim, and Lianna Holden’s side versus everyone else. Except for Lianna Holden, none of the first team belonged to Seryu-tai, so the rest of the friend team became the Seryu-tai team.
Because everyone had powers, the rallies kept going on and on. Thanks to the colorful array of abilities, the volleyball match was quite entertaining. Alrick, who could accelerate her nerves, Sawayanagi Seari, who could control the atmosphere, Sawayanagi Azuma, who could read the future, and Mimata Chieri, whose every movement was agile, stood out the most.
The members who struggled were plant-obsessed Jeong Da-rim, Lianna Holden—an operator who rarely used her body—and Kiyona Mari, whose flame ability was completely useless in volleyball. The rest were doing their fair share. Surprisingly, the sheltered noble lady Konoe Akina was also pulling her weight. I’d thought she was a one-trick pony with her Evil Eye, but it seemed she possessed physical abilities on par with a regular Seryu-tai agent.
Since the friend team had more weak links, they gradually began to lose ground to the Seryu-tai team. It was like Jeong Da-rim and Lianna Holden kept messing up while Mimata Chieri and Alrick desperately cleaned up after them. On the other side, they only needed to cover for Kiyona Mari’s mistakes, so naturally the Seryu-tai team took the lead.
No matter how hard Alrick and Mimata Chieri fought, Sawayanagi Azuma’s precognition and Sawayanagi Seari’s wind manipulation were simply too overpowered for volleyball. Come to think of it, even if the women and men played six-on-six futsal, the women’s team would probably win…
Before long, the thirty minutes were up and the match ended. The Seryu-tai team won volleyball, while futsal ended five-to-four. The winning teams were all excited, and even the losing teams weren’t too upset—except for the few who had been aiming for the prize. Those guys were the problem.
“Ugh… meeting… meeting…”
On the men’s side, Choi Jin-ha, who had been on the losing team, was lying on the ground muttering the word “meeting” over and over. Kim Young-chan and Lee Du-young, who had been on the winning team, were teasing him from the side.
On the women’s side, Alrick was just staring vacantly at the sky. The prize was just a cosmetics set, so why was she looking so heartbroken? Could it be because of the one-day date ticket with me that Fujigasaki Rinka had mentioned?
The MVP for the one-day date ticket was to be decided by vote among the winning team, so no matter how well Alrick had performed, there was no way she could become MVP. Mimata Chieri walked over to the dazed Alrick and whispered something in her ear. Alrick snapped back to her senses and clapped for the winning team.
“The futsal winning team can choose between the meeting or 100,000 yen as promised and let me know. And the volleyball winning team, please take this cosmetics set. I’ll check the votes now and announce the MVP.”
I grabbed the microphone and told them to collect their rewards while reading through the votes written on the slips one by one. Most were split between Sawayanagi Azuma and Sawayanagi Seari, but Sawayanagi Seari won by a single vote.
Bath Volleyball MVP: Sawayanagi Seari
“The volleyball MVP is Sawayanagi Seari~!”
“E-eh…? Me?”
Sawayanagi Seari approached me with a slightly flustered expression. She had a cute appearance like Alrick, but their auras were different. If Alrick felt like a silent cat that kept rubbing its head against its owner’s leg, Sawayanagi Seari gave off a brighter, more cheerful vibe. Like a curious but slightly shy puppy? She was older than me, though…
“The prize is a date with me, so if you want to do it, just match our schedules, Seari.”
“Y-yes! I’ll match it!”
Since there was no physical trophy for the impromptu MVP prize Fujigasaki Rinka had created, I simply shook hands with Sawayanagi Seari.
“Alright. Now that we’ve all warmed up properly through exercise, you’re free to wash up in the hot springs until dinner time.”
After announcing free time, I lowered the microphone. Should I head to the hot springs too? Even though the sparring match had been short, I’d worked hard trying to land a hit on Fujigasaki Rinka and had broken a bit of a sweat.
I went to my room, grabbed a change of clothes, and headed for the hot springs. I entered through the entrance labeled “Men’s Bath,” took off my clothes, put them in a basket, and stepped into the spring.
A few people were already in the water. When I checked their faces, I saw Sawayanagi Tobe, Lee Du-young, and Kim Young-chan.
“Hyung Yong-tae~! Whoa, it’s seriously huge…”
“Isn’t that big enough to belong to a black guy?”
“Hmm. Ryuta-kun… impressive.”
Each of them made a comment after seeing my Johnson. I gave a small smile and took a shower before entering the spring.
“What about Young-chan?”
“Because of his clairvoyance, he says he washes when no one else is using the hot springs. He’s in his room.”
Ah, right. The women would also be washing off their sweat in the springs, so having a clairvoyant like Kim Young-chan around would have been awkward. Smart of him to avoid earning everyone’s hatred, though it was still kind of pitiful. If I had clairvoyance, I definitely wouldn’t have told anyone I possessed it.
Lee Du-young, who shared the same regeneration ability as me, asked me all sorts of questions once I sat beside him. Most of them were about training. Ever since his nutrition had improved and his regeneration ability had reached its full potential, he’d become a total fitness maniac. He seemed to have a lot of questions about workout methods.
“It’s obviously different for regeneration users compared to normal people. You need to increase intensity, shorten rest periods, and eat a lot more food.”
I shared my own tips with Lee Du-young. Regeneration users could raise their strength stat up to 10 without investing any points, which let them save their stat points. From 10 onward, it became so difficult to raise stats through exercise that it was practically impossible, but with extreme training, it was possible to gain 1 point at a time.
In my case, my strength stat had skyrocketed thanks to elixirs and traits, so I hadn’t seen much effect from regular exercise. But I didn’t regret it. Raising stats through training took far too long. If your progress slowed, your leveling slowed too, and a whole chain of problems would follow like falling dominoes. That’s why I’d simply chosen the faster route.
“Ugh… I’ll head out first.”
“You’re leaving already, Hyung Yong-tae?”
“I didn’t sweat much. I’d rather lie down in my room than rest here.”
“Ah, got it. See you at dinner, Hyung.”
“Farewell, Ryuta-kun.”
“Take care.”
After receiving everyone’s goodbyes, I rinsed my body with cold water, dried off with a towel, changed into comfortable clothes, and headed back to my room. Since it was free time, I planned to just lie on the bed. I’d been studying nonstop, and I’d woken up early this morning to pick up Fujigasaki Rinka, so I was a little tired.
“Hmm, is there anything new…?”
I picked up my phone and scrolled through MeTube. Then I saw a familiar face. Kazuhiro’s face was on a thumbnail, so I tapped it. The video was about how Kazuhiro had been selected for the American national team.
Kazuhiro was giving an interview saying he would comfort the Americans suffering from the LA disaster through his performance. Since the next match between America and Japan was a friendly, it had become even more of a hot topic.
“Come on, you should’ve told me first instead of letting me find out through MeTube news…”
I was typing a string of curses into Kazuhiro’s Line chat when I heard someone knock on my door.
“Who is it?”
“Hey Pumpkin, it’s me. Lianna.”
It was the first time since I’d slept with Lianna Holden last time. She probably had a reason for coming to my room. And that reason was obviously my body.
I told Lianna Holden to come in.