—Now then. Target destruction.
To explain the situation: our turn was the very last of the preliminaries. The closer.
The order ran third years first, then second years, the student council slotted in partway through as a sort of exhibition, and then us, the first years.
And being the closer didn’t mean anything was expected of us… quite the opposite.
If anything the gallery had gone cold, settling into a general you lot are hopeless anyway, so hurry up and finish.
Provisional fourth place at that point stood at one hundred twenty-four targets, so our minimum goal was to beat that.
“Hey, Ephthal, take a look at the student council lot.”
I looked. Over in their reserved tent, the student council were enjoying a leisurely little tea break.
Their treatment is obviously different from everyone else’s, though. There was a red carpet laid under the tent, and tables, outdoors.
And to top it off they had a valet, some butler sort of person attached to the council… ah, and it looked like he was the one preparing the coffee.
Anyway.
“All right, Maria, want to lead off?”
“Okay. I’ll knock the wind clean out of them.”
Maria thrust her right palm high toward the sky.
She closed her eyes, focused, and began building the formula as she worked her magic power up.
Still… I thought. When you think about where Maria came from, there’s a lot in this.
Born a guardian of the elves, her branch family slaughtered to the last, persecuted by everyone around her.
She’d been determined to prove them all wrong. Enough to study abroad at a demon magic academy, even. And all that time she’d been straining, bluffing, fighting alone.
I nodded to myself.
—Go on. Knock the wind out of the ones who mocked you, exactly like you said.
Because that’s what this is. The spell she fires next is her signal flare… her counterattack.
Fate’s been dragging her around this whole time. And now she’s about to start walking somewhere better on her own two feet, on nothing but the work she put in… and this is step one.
And just as Vice President Irene put her lips to her coffee—Maria’s magic caught fire.
“Now, I’ll show you! Level 4, the top tier of the fire attribute—Fire Dance!”
Good. The formula’s cleanly finished, and the flow of magic power is superb. A hundred arrows, near enough, and her control had sharpened markedly since before.
Elves practice archery to begin with, so it probably sits well with the image in her head.
This was Maria’s signature spell at present, and with this there was essentially no chance of a miss.
And the record so far was the student council’s two hundred eight targets, across four of them.
Which meant Maria alone would reach nearly half of that.
The hundred arrows soared high into the empty air, then reversed, angled, and flew for the distant targets.
Or rather—to be precise, each one was guided in, as though the targets were drinking them down.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! The fire arrows landed almost as one and detonated, and roughly a hundred targets burst into fragments. A perfect finish.
“Splendid.”
Honestly, that’s the sort of flawless, unwavering arrow control you’d see at a Self-Defense Force artillery exercise.
You could call it beautiful without any trouble at all… honestly. And when I looked over at the student council lot, in the middle of their tea break, the whole council—
—sprayed their coffee out in perfect unison.
“Hack! Hack… hack!”
“Wh-Wh-What was that!? What in the world was that!?”
“Impossible! A first year, using Level 4… and the top tier, no less…”
“Ridi… cu… lous.”
“Ah, am I dreaming…?”
Maria threw her chest out with a triumphant little ta-da, folded her arms, and nodded, over and over.
Then she came at me with her right palm raised high, so I raised mine and met it.
A crisp smack rang out, and a bright, cheerful flower of a smile bloomed on Maria’s face.
“See? I really am a genius.”
She grins, and the expression is genuinely adorable. But… I thought I’d made a point of nailing that down earlier—don’t get carried away.
Apparently I’d let a sour look onto my face, because Maria tilted her head with a puzzled “Huh?”
Hmm. Well, she’s been trodden on her whole life. Giving her no confidence at all is its own problem.
This kid has been working nonstop to make the people around her acknowledge her, so—yes. Let’s allow her this much strutting.
“Okay, next up, Anastasia—”
She fired before I finished the sentence.
“Wind system, Level 4… Thunder Storm!”
A roar went up, and violet lightning tore around us like a storm.
The spell Anastasia used burns everything around her to cinders with lightning, centered on herself.
Which meant every target within a ten-meter radius of her got wrapped in the discharge and charred black.
Target count… seventy or so, at a glance?
Either way, that was every close-range target wiped out.
And of course, centered on Anastasia meant… we were caught in it too.
Not that anyone got hurt—I panicked and threw a defensive circle over Maria immediately.
“Anastasia. Maria’s mind is worn thin right now, right after a delicate piece of casting. You should think about the people around you a little more.”
“Ah, I thought Master would protect Maria-san.”
I see… so that was factored into the casting.
She’s usually all soft and fluffy, but she turns sharply calculating at moments like this.
I actually rate that side of Anastasia rather highly… although that was a touch excessive just now.
Anyway. The target count was already up around one hundred seventy.
Provisional fourth place stood at one hundred twenty-four, so we’d already cleared the goal.
All that’s left is for me to lob something around Level 3 and call it a day.
And that was when I caught the voices from the student council.
“C-C-Calm down! We are the student council! What are we doing, panicking over that!”
“Yes—we are the superior chosen people who lead the entire student body!”
“Quite so! Their advancement is settled, but we shall show them the difference in strength in the main tournament!”
“Right. We’ll show them that target destruction and real combat are different things! And it’s only those two who are impressive. The black-haired man is just Merlin-sama’s favoritism! The rest have to be small fry!”
“Yes—first, let’s calm down. If we deal with this calmly… we cannot lose. We may suffer narrow defeats against those two on an individual level, but the rest are small fry… yes, the rest must be small fry… they must be… The fact that our overall strength is superior is immovable, after all.”
Right… change of plan. No more fudging it with a Level 3.
Because being called Merlin’s favorite forever is genuinely uncalled for.
At this rate it affects Merlin’s reputation, too.
“Time I taught you why, exactly, Merlin treats me as special.”
Within the bounds of common sense, mind. Nothing that throws the world into confusion.
The student council picked up their coffee cups again to settle their nerves.
And just as Vice President Irene put her lips to hers a second time—my magic, quite literally, caught fire.
“Level 5: Red Genocide!”
A heat ray shaped like a small dragon shot from my palm, and one of the targets evaporated with a hiss.
If it keeps going it’ll hit the gallery, which wouldn’t do, so I controlled it.
I closed my open palm into a fist. Thumb up—and the dragon climbed to match it.
Up it went, spiraling, spiraling, racing for the heavens.
“Right. There.”
I flicked my thumb over and pointed it at the ground.
And the dragon, obedient, plunged straight back down—jaws open, and bit into the earth.
The heat ray landed on the field, and—
—BOOM!
Pebbles and dust drifted down in the wash of the blast.
The result being that, along with a large explosion, a scorched crater on the ten-meter scale had formed in the ground.
As a way of saying ‘abnormal enough that Merlin treats him specially’—this much of a demonstration ought to do it, I think?
And thinking that, I looked over at the student council, who’d been drinking coffee to settle their nerves, and—
—they sprayed their coffee out in perfect unison. Again.
“Pffffff—!”
“Hack! Hack… hack!”
“L-L-L-Level 5!? That’s the sort of monstrous MVP the inter-academy tournament sees once in several years!?”
“Wh-Wh-What is happening!? What is happening to those first years!?”
“I can’t believe it… I can’t believe what’s in front of me. E-E-Everyone… let’s have some coffee to calm down…”
They really do love coffee… And as I was thinking that, Merlin took a step toward the student council lot.
Then she thrust her right palm above her head.
“What are you doing, Merlin? You aren’t supposed to do anything today.”
That was certainly the arrangement we’d made beforehand. But Merlin… why are you refining magic power?
And this is… Just as I got a bad feeling about it, Merlin spoke the name of exactly the spell I’d feared.
“Level 6: Degraded Thunder God Emperor, Lesser Ephthal!”
A flash of lightning. Whiteout and thunderclap, arriving a beat behind.
It was a spell of a power Anastasia’s lightning couldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as—
—CRASH-SMASH-KRAKAAAAAOOOOOM!
And what came last was a colossal explosion.
Which is to say: along with the lightning strike, every single target prepared for the trial was blown away.
At the same time, the student council sprayed coffee from their mouths in unison, again.
“Pffffff—!”
“Hack! Hack… hack! How much coffee would it take to calm this down!?”
“L-L-L-Level 6!? Solo!? Not even a ritual spell by a professional court mage!? S-S-Solo!?”
“What in the world!”
“Ah, I’ve finally realized. It’s a dream… this is a dream. Haha, well, in that case… right, let’s try pinching my cheek… wha—Ehhhhhh!? It’s real!? Level 6!?”
Mouths and clothes soaked with coffee, the student council fell out of their chairs in sheer shock.
And then, opening and closing their mouths—gape, gape, gape—arching backward, flopping like fish landed on a dock.
Or rather, this is… this has genuinely turned into something outrageous!?
Merlin… I used a Level 5 while pushing right up against the real limit, you know?
And yet the one who wasn’t supposed to do anything goes and uses a Level 6. Why…?
If Merlin noticed how stunned I was, she didn’t show it. She just fixed the student council with a hard glare.
“You there, Student Council President! There is something I must say to you!”
“T-T-T… to me? Something you must say?”
And Merlin fell silent.
Then she drew in a great, great breath, and said this.
“The taste of this mask is not poor! It is decidedly not poor—you fool!”
Ehhhhhh!?
There!? That’s the part, Merlin!? That’s what you lost your temper over and did that for!?
And so I brought a fist down on Merlin’s head without a moment’s pause.
“Merlin?”
“What is it, Ephthal?”
“I’m actually going to get angry. Don’t tell me you did that in a fit of temper? You understand this is going to become a problem, don’t you?”
Merlin shook her head side to side at that.
“…I merely taught those little brats their place a little. I have thought that part through, Ephthal. Please be at ease.”
The snap of Merlin’s fingers.
And a formula began building, right after. Hm… this is Level 8: Repair Matter, and Level 4: Illusion.
The result was that, first, glittering particles of illusory light appeared. Then a swarm of lights like fireflies drifted up into the sky. Follow the particles with your eyes, look up—and there was a rainbow.
And this is a distraction, by Illusion. The staging drew the eye, and every single person, gallery included, was riveted.
And while everyone was looking up at the sky, the targets were quietly restoring themselves under the effect of Repair Matter. But what on earth is Merlin planning to do with this…?
And the instant that only the targets Merlin had destroyed with her Level 6 lightning were back to normal—
Merlin drew a deep breath and called out to everyone at the top of her voice.
“That Level 6 just now… was not a true Level 6! As you can see, it was a Level 4 illusion!”
Ah, incidentally, Merlin’s altered her vocal cords with an application of disguise magic.
So her voice won’t give her away. That part’s fine. And at Merlin’s words, voices went up from the gallery, one after another.
“W-Well, yeah, obviously. A Level 6 is impossible.”
“R-Right. A Level 5 alone is earth-shattering… a Level 6 would be a bit much, wouldn’t it?”
“Still, that first-year class really is high level… no, too high. Isn’t this the first time since the age of the first Four Emperors?”
“For that matter… that class is strange from the moment Headmaster Merlin became its homeroom teacher. There’s absolutely… something going on with that class.”
“Still, that black-haired first year wasn’t favoritism after all. All sorts of nasty rumors were flying around, but the truth is probably that he’s Headmaster Merlin’s treasured protégé.”
Good, good. Our reputation seems to be settling nicely, right up at the line and inside the bounds of common sense.
The rumors about Merlin’s thing for young boys were flying thick and fast too, so it looks like we can clear that misunderstanding up.
And in contrast to the buzzing gallery, the student council’s tent had gone silent, and the president simply muttered to himself with a blank, stunned expression.
“And yet… I cannot think that was a mere Level 4 illusion. That level of completion… and to show a hallucination to this many people at once… Anonymous Hope… what in the world are they…?”
If you’re asking what she is… she’s the headmaster.
And with that, we’d somehow scraped through the preliminaries. And just as we were about to head back to the players’ tent, the lot from our class came rushing over all at once.
“That was incredible, Ephthal-kun! I always knew you were no ordinary guy!”
“Maria and Anastasia too! Unbelievable!”
“You were recruiting representatives, right!? Can’t I join as a class rep too!?”
“No, let me compete! Let me ride the winner’s coattails! Win the thing and get a medal and it looks good on you! Monsters like you lot are a lock for placing at the inter-academy tournament!”
“Just being one of the members would be a huge deal! Put me in!”
What an… admirably transparent bunch. Apparently Maria thought so too.
The proof being that she was staring at this magnificent about-face with her mouth hanging open, jaw ready to come unhinged.
But, well, that’s a bit too convenient. Maria and I seemed to agree there too, because she smiled at once, mean and delighted.
“Class representatives are—closed♪”
And with that Maria waved a hand behind her and started back toward the players’ tent… then stopped for just a moment and, without turning around, threw these words over her shoulder at the lot behind her.
“Well, if the last person I’ve got in mind turns me down… I might use one of you.”
And so we headed back to our seats with a convenient cry of “Let me ride the coattaaails!” at our backs.