RATH 80
TL: Eevee

10. We came, we saw, we won (5)

#10 Their story: A certain healer tent’s story.

“This is bad…”
“This is awful…”
“Kids these days are really scary.”

One of the healer tents of the imperial festival.

As casualties came out from the special magic formation, the healing magicians and the healers from the temple all paled as they began their treatments.

“Guuuhhgk!”
“S, stay strong! Your descendants can still live!”
“Yeah! They’re not broken yet! They’re not broken!”

As they looked at the ten or so students who were clutching their crotches, as fellow men, the healers felt a sense of sympathy as they used their magic to heal the students’ descendants as effectively as possible.

“Ah, there’s more… huh?”
“Did someone go on a rampage? We’ve got students popping out left right and center?”
“No, they’re all unconscious… and they’re all soaked!”
“Some go grab some towels! That’s five… no, seven, ten? They just keep on coming? Grab all the towels we have!”

As the magic formation kept on shining and spitting out more and more people, the bewildered healers eventually brought over people from other healer tents too as they healed the casualties.

“Hm? Wait a second, there are people wearing black clothes as well as the students?”
“You’re right? And they’re looking really awful, too. Did the spell not work properly?”
“It doesn’t look like they’ve got the casualty teleport tool on them?”

And as the healers examined the black-clothed people.

“Hang on, these are anti-empire army marks?”
“Huh? Here, too!”
“This guy’s got it as well! All these people are all anti-empire army people!”
“Someone get a guard! Ah, and a knight if you can find one!”
“Yeah boi! 30 gold per anti-empire member! This’ll be an even bigger profit than what I bet on the imperial festival!”
“Hey, didn’t you say you quit gambling?”
“Ah, keep it a secret from the missus?”

They all picked up some nice fat bounties!

#11 Their story: A certain student’s story.

“Now just what could this be…”
“What do you mean what, it’s a wave!”

My junior beside me shouted at my mutterings.

A swiftly moving current.

The screams of students as they were carried along by the water.

I don’t know why there’s water all of a sudden in the maze, but I do know one thing.

“We’re screwed.”
“Don’t give up, and do something about this!”

He’s shouting nice and lively considering he’s getting swept away by this current as well.

“They say that a married couple’s fight is like cutting water with a sword.”
“What’s that supposed to be for all of a sudden, sunbae!”
“It means that a married couple’s fight is pointless. And that is expressed as trying to cut water with a sword.”
“Well I know… that!”

New kids these days are quite something.

He’s opening his mouth so widely despite all the water flowing into it.

He’s either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

“Meaning, whether it’s Marcis, Yugrasia or Mercadia, whoever pulled this on us, as a sword swinger I can do absolutely nothing!”
“Damn it, this sunbae’s screwed!”

Hahaha! I’m trying to teach this young’un the truth that it’s easy if you give up, but as you’d expect, my lively junior doesn’t seem to get it.

“For the sake of Arucia’s victory I will not give… uuuhhk?!”
“Ah, sorry!”

But that determined voice could no longer be heard after a girl in Yugrasia uniform appeared at high speed and ran him over with her shark mount.

“Junior? Junior? You dead?”

But my underclassman, sent flying far away, never resurfaced.

Well, since casualties were automatically teleported out he probably wasn’t dead.

“I want to hurry up and get summoned out as well…”

As time went on, the current and the water level did continue to drop, but it still didn’t seem like I could do anything about it.

“Ahhh~ I can see the pres going nuts already.”

As I saw a turtle swim by with another Yugrasia student on its’ back, it became clear to me just which school was the one to pull off this insanity.

That is, this event, was winner Yugrasia.

Who knows what sort of fit that the pres, who once had a crush on the vice-pres would throw at me if we lost to Yugrasia again…

But in the end, I heard nothing from the president.

Because that day, Yugrasia won every single event.

***

[What is going on?]
[They’ve brought out an incredible tactic!]

The wall shattered, and the water flowed out.

A massive amount of water produced by 90 students doing their best to wring out their mana to produce as much water as they could.

As the water that was compressed to its limits was released, a giant tidal wave swept through the labyrinth.

“Really… such an absolutely insane tactic… incredible, Professor Nicerwin.”
“Well, the students have a very good understanding of water thanks to Professor Muam, after all.”

You could say that this was all thanks to Professor Muam.

After fighting again and again against none other than the Spirit King of Water, the students even went as far as to learn how to use magic to swim in the prison of water the Spirit King conjured up.

The kids that could even swim in hell’s river, the River Styx,(1) they were our Yugrasia students!

We needed to use their advantages, but there were no water-based events in the imperial festival.

Damn it all, if you looked at normal light novels, there’s always a swimsuit scene to bait in male readers!

A god hand illustrator’s illustration!

In full colour! And a two-page double spread to boot!

But there’s nothing like that in real life! Of course there wouldn’t be any events that would have nobles stripping!

So let’s pull a Battle of Salsu(2) and wipe them all out with water! Was what I had in mind as I made it, and the results were more than satisfactory.

[Ahhh! Someone has already cleared the labyrinth! And of course first place is Yugrasia!]
[Second place is in, and it’s another Yugrasia student!]
[Hang on, are there any students alive in there aside from Yugrasia students?]
[According to the Labyrinth event administrators, they are all being treated in the healing tents.]

Riding on the giant flash flood that 90 students created, a minority of the students with summons that could move quickly in water, followed the water flow out towards the exit.

A very simple yet highly effective way to claim first place!

“And with this, the winners of all five events today have been decided.”
“Yes, although they were all from our school.”

They say that it’s not over til it’s over, and if we won every single event on Day 1 they could afford to be happy, but the teachers’ reactions were muted.

No, some teachers were actually disappointed!

“It seems the kids are taking their opponents too lightly.”
“Although in reality the majority of them are easy pickings, but to think they’d fight that poorly…”
“How disappointing.”

There were limits to how many events a single student could participate in in a day.

And because of that, sending your aces out when you had to claim victory was obvious.

Even if it was just the first day, with few points on the line, in order to push for the initiative in morale, each academy sent out their strongest students, and thus a few of our weaker students lost to other schools.

But that didn’t mean that our academy’s students did poorly.

Just that the enemies were stronger.

“This isn’t good… Hey Muamy, you reckon we should tell the kids that if they’re gonna perform this badly then we’re keeping the night study even if they win the imperial festival?”
“So do you want to make good on that threat, and have the students make good on your life, Professor Harian?”

I’d just made them do night study for half a year, I have no idea what she expects of them.

-Whaddaya mean you dunno? This is all th’ academy environment that owner set up! Since the surroundings are all insane, of course the teachers’re gonna all go nuts, ya?
-Hm? I have no clue what you’re talking about.

Just where else would you find a teacher that cared for his students as much as I did, is this thing just insulting me.

-Insulting? This is fact! The kids that lost today are probs getting yelled at rite now? Owner know how hardcore the kids got cuz a’ you!
-Naahh, surely not…

There was a kid that made an unbelievable comeback, and another that clamped onto his opponent that was way stronger than he was, and drained him out of all his stamina.

It was obvious that they all did their very best in this event, would they actually yell at them just for losing?

And just as I exited the teachers’ marquee and headed over to the students’ one.

“You all wanna die?”

“””””””””We’re sorry!”””””””””

-Ya see?

As I opened the entrance flap, I saw tens of students with their heads bowed into the ground and a weight on each of their backs.

“Ah, Professor Nicerwin.”

And with a face as if nothing was wrong despite a scene of school violence being caught red-handed by a teacher, the one that greeted me was Karen, one of the vice-presidents.

“What, is this, Miss Karen?”
“We were just disciplining the losing trash… I mean, the students a bit.”

It doesn’t seem at all like discipline to me… not even the army does it this way nowadays?

“And so… please let it end on our end. There are events tomorrow as well, it would be too much for them if Professor Nicerwin punished them as well.”

Eh, no, I just came to praise you for doing a good job, why do they think I’m here to punish them?

-Well ‘course that’s cuz a’ owner’s normal antics!
-What the heck did I do!
-Lookit where all those poor students’re lookin’ at with their heads in the ground! They’re all staring at ya, owner!
-It, it can’t be!

But those nervous gazes as if the kids were thinking exactly what Karen had said brought an extreme sense of nervousness to me.

What, wuzzis? What should I do?

-Th, these kids aren’t looking at me, they’re looking at you! Y, yes, that it! There’s no way that they’d be that scared of me!
-Yeah, right. If I’m the devil, owner’s practically the evil god’s avatar, yanno? No matter how ya spin it, owner’s a higher tier villain than I am!
-I’m not going to deny that I’m a villain, but this was all the result of me doing my best as a teacher!
-And th’ end result a’ dat was that the kids studied in a hellgate! This goddess Arcadia can guarantee! Owner’s scarier to the kids than the evil god!

To think that I would hear those words from this thing!

“You can stop now.”
“No, we are all loser trash! We need to be punished more!”

It seemed that they were looking at me as if they feared something, now just why are they doing this to me.

Weren’t they exactly like my old disciples back in the evil organization when I told them training was over for the day?

What on earth would make them so nervous and scared?

“That’s what they’re saying, so I will punish them with due diligence.”

Mmm. Even though Karen said so, it’s still not a good look even if she is the vice-president.

No, on the contrary it’s worse because she is the vice-president.

If the teachers were the ones to punish them, it could be seen as the whip of love to make them work harder, but being punished by student peers inside the academy can appear as an irrationality inside the inner workings of the school.

This is the middle of the capital where a parent could come charging in without notice.

Even though they’re the ones that want to be punished, there’s no way in hell the parents would believe it.

No, if they did believe it, then that would mean that their children were full of the M attribute, so they wouldn’t want to believe it.

This leaves me with no choice. For only the future of the academy, I need to revert these perverts that seek punishment on their own.

-Go, batmon!
-It’s Aru time~(3)

“Weawwy? Dat’s a good mindset to have. Den can I punish ya?”
“Now that we think of it, we think we fought quite well.”
“Yes, we did! Yes!”

The bat waved her hand at the students as they immediately lifted their heads and filed out in quick time.

“If ya lose tomorrow as well then imma really punish ya kids? Ya know I’ve got weally good memory, rite? I memorised all ya faces!”
“Wuoooooooooohh!”
“Train, train!”
“No matter whether we live or die tomorrow, we will win! We must win!”

Today’s losers left emanating a killing aura.

And the next day.

They brought back a truly overwhelming victory for Yugrasia.