Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei - Volume 03 - Nine Schools Competition (I)

by Sato Tsutomu

  Chapter 0

  There are currently nine national magic university attached highschools throughout the state.

  The first highschool is in Kanto (Tokyo). The second highschool is in Kinki (Hyougo). The third highschool is in Hokuriku (Ishikawa). The fourth highschool is in Tokai (Shizuoka). The fifth highschool is in Tohoku (Miyagi). The sixth highschool is in San'in (Shimane). The seventh highschool is in Shikoku (Kochi). The eighth highschool is in Hokkaido. The ninth highschool is in Kyushu (Kumamoto).

  These are the only magic highschools in the country. It does not refer to the fact that there are only nine highschools attached to the nine national magic universities, but rather that they are the sole nine highschools teaching magic as the main curriculum.

  To tell the truth, the government is more than keen to increase the number of magic highschools. They are unable to do so because they cannot secure enough mages who go on to become teachers.

  The first, second and third highschools accept 200 new students a year. The other six can take another 100 each.

  In total, that's 1200 entrants. This is the limit to the new number of mages that can be produced per year. It's approximately equal to the number of youth with eligible levels of magic that appears in the population.

  But at the same time it's thought that if more ample educational opportunities could be provided, the possibility that even more youth with late budding magical talent could be discovered is not inconsiderable.

  The reality however is that the running of just these nine magic highschools fully stretches the human resources of this country. Therefore the only way to address this deficit is to take these 1200 freshmen a year, train them as much as possible, and raise their level to the max. In doing so the number of mages will gradually increase, and in the future it is expected that this positive spiral will eventually fix the dearth of teachers.

  One of the measures taken for that are competitions at the school level between the nine magic highschools, to fuel the aspirations of the students. The largest of these is the summer Nine School Competition.

  It's a nationwide magic highschool magic tournament.

  Every year a selection of magic highschool students from across the country meet, putting their pride on the line, and unfold a story of frustration and glory.

  With a huge crowd including not only government officials and those interested in magic but businesses, overseas companies, researchers and scouts, this is the greatest stage for magic highschool students to shine.

  This year too, soon, the curtains of that momentous event will be raised again.

  Chapter 1

  The year 2095 AD, mid July.

  The week after the first semester's finals were over for the National Magic University affiliated First High, the students devoted all their energy towards preparing for the Nine Schools Competition during the summer. However, he — Tatsuya Shiba that is, was completely out of tune with such school spirit. This was partially due to the fact that his logical nature overrode his emotions. That being said, the primary reason for his being at school today was because the faculty had summoned him for a meeting in regards to his exam scores.

  "Tatsuya."

  "Leo...... Why is everyone here?"

  Having finally escaped from the Faculty Room, Tatsuya found his classmates Saijou Leonhart, Chiba Erika, and Shibata Mizuki waiting for him outside.

  Tatsuya's little sister Miyuki was part of the Student Council, which was currently in the middle of preparations for the Nine Schools Competition in the School Council Room, so she wasn't there.

  As if to replace Miyuki, Miyuki's classmates Mitsui Honoka and Kitayama Shizuku were there with worried expressions.

  The Faculty Room was located on the teacher's floor, which was separate from where the students usually attended classes.

  However, that did not mean students did not pass by.

  Regardless of whether the passersby were of the same grade or even upperclassmen, everyone snuck glances over at the five people surrounding Tatsuya.

  Which was only natural.

  They stood out. A lot.

  This was not a distinction reserved for today's situation, this was always the case.

  Tatsuya had been appointed to the Public Morals Committee even as a Course 2 student and, through his numerous accomplishments during recruitment week, had proved that his selection was no fluke, ultimately resulting in his fame spreading across campus. While his single-handed annihilation of the terrorist organization had not been publicized, his outstanding success during recruitment week was enough to garner quite a lot of attention from his classmates and even female upperclassmen.

  Erika was a publicly acknowledged beauty.

  Owing to her constant proximity to Miyuki and Erika, Mizuki's appearance seemed to pale slightly in comparison. That being said, her elegant and refined beauty was rated quite highly among male upperclassmen.

  Despite being constantly ridiculed by Erika (or maybe "constantly bickering" would be better), Leo's Germanic features and superb athletic abilities identified him as "someone worth noting" among the female population (the "pure Japanese style" that Leo refers to would be black-haired and black-eyed).

  As for Honoka and Shizuku, they were two superb students even among the 1st Year Course 1 students. Their appearance would easily qualify within the boundaries of cuteness (Strictly in terms of appearance, Tatsuya would be the most mundane).

  Whether they wanted to or not, a group that transcended the Course 1 and 2 boundary and socialized together naturally drew extra attention.

  Even so, possibly because this cohort's 1st Year Representative, Student Council member and far famed beauty Miyuki wasn't here, there were actually significantly fewer onlookers than usual.

  However, the people who paid these glances no heed whatsoever were unexpectedly close by.

  For example, this man right here.

  "It should be us asking what you're up to, right? Why did you get called to the Faculty Room?"

  Hearing Leo's question, Tatsuya immediately understood.

  It appeared that his friend was concerned on his behalf. For a moment, Tatsuya contemplated fabricating a reason to divert them, but he changed his mind upon reflecting that they deserved his honesty.

  "The teachers interrogated me about the technical skills portion of the exam."

  Hearing this, Leo squinted his eyes in displeasure.

  "......Interrogate sounds a tad suspicious. So what did they ask about?"

  "Long story short, they wanted to know if I was tanking the test."

  Erika was the first to express her outrage at Tatsuya's answer.

  "What the heck? Tatsuya-kun doesn't benefit in the slightest for doing that. Only a moron would ask that."

  Erika's observation was not wrong, so Tatsuya could only smile back wryly. It was another story altogether if someone cheated to get a higher score, but there was no point in intentionally getting a lower score. This suspicion was just as ridiculous as Erika surmised.

  "However, I can understand why the teachers think this way."

  "Why?"

  Shizuku's soft words bewildered Mizuki.

  "Tatsuya-kun's scores are just that astounding."

  Tatsuya did not preen at Honoka's answer, but being overly humble might elicit a negative reaction as well. Unable to decide between the two, Tatsuya could only smile wryly again.

  For First High — the final exams for magic high schools included magic theory examinations based on recall and technical skills examinations.

  On the o
ther hand, language arts, math, science, sociology and other mundane topics were graded based on daily homework. This was an institution that focused on high quality training for Magicians, so from the school's perspective, having the students focus too much on subjects outside of magic was redundant (Tatsuya and company make the distinction between Magicians and Magic Artificers only because their training naturally branches out in two directions. Normally, society will lump Magic Artificers into the same category as Magicians, but will not use "Magic Artificers" to refer to Magic Researchers who cannot use magic).

  In terms of magic theory, the mandatory classes covered the foundations of magic learning and magic theory on the test; two additional topics were picked from the electives magic geometry, magic languages, magic botany, and magic architecture; as well as one selected from either magic history and magic systems theory, for a total of five topics.

  Magic technical skills were measured through application ability (the speed of magic design), magic tolerance (the scale of the Magic Sequence), interference ability (strength of rewriting Eidos) as well as the combined Magic Power given from the culmination of all three, thus resulting in four scores.

  Students with superlative scores would have their names and ranking publicly announced on the campus website.

  The 1st Year students' results had already been announced.

  Those who had earned the highest combined scores between magic theory and technical skills were completely as expected.

  First Place: Shiba Miyuki.

  Second Place: Mitsui Honoka.

  Third Place: Kitayama Shizuku only a few points behind.

  The first three were all names from Class A, and it wasn't until Fourth place that a male student named "Tomitsuka" from Class B appeared. Beyond that, familiar names included Morisaki at Ninth Place. The first twenty spots were all Course 1 students.

  A glance at the Technical Skills portion would yield the same result. While the placements swapped around a little, the first twenty places were still occupied by Course 1 students.

  Strictly speaking, First Place was Miyuki, Second Place was Shizuku, Third Place was Morisaki, Fourth was Honoka. Combined score notwithstanding, Class A dominated the Technical Skills portion to the extent that it caused their teachers considerable headache (Class distribution was supposed to be split evenly through A to D, so this sort of academic showing obviously revealed that Class A grasped the materials for the first semester much better than the other three).

  However, if based solely on the Magic Theory portion, an entirely different and astounding picture revealed itself.

  First Place: Class E Shiba Tatsuya.

  Second Place: Class A Shiba Miyuki.

  Third Place: Class E Yoshida Mikihiko.

  Honoka was fourth, Shizuku at tenth, Mizuki at seventeenth, Erika in twentieth, while Leo and Morisaki fell out of the rankings.

  When separating Course 1 and 2 students, the difference in technical skills played a heavy role. However, the general consensus was that students that scored poorly on technical skills would also have a hard time grasping the theory as well. Because of all the complex concepts, it was very hard to understand the theory without perceiving it firsthand.

  Even so, two of the top three were Course 2 students.

  That alone was an unprecedented situation, yet Tatsuya's accomplishment was even more amazing. His average from the theory portion — not the total — was easily a dozen points higher than the second place score, leaving him in sole and undisputed possession of First Place.

  "Even if theory and technical skills are two different things, there should be a limit."

  "But I don't believe Tatsuya-kun would tank his score."

  After Shizuku objectively expressed her opinion, Mizuki countered back in a displeased tone.

  "Of course Shizuku knows that."

  "But the teachers aren't like us, since we know what kind of person Tatsuya-kun is."

  Honoka and Erika both started to smooth things over.

  "Yeah, they only know us from the other side of the terminal screen......"

  Just as Leo said, this was a major deficiency in modern education. Even if modern teachers personally came to the lecture hall like teachers from the previous century, it still wouldn't guarantee that they could fully understand their students.

  To address this problem, the school had created opinion boxes to replace last century's office hours system.

  "......How about asking Haruka-chan?"

  Counselors handled the situations where students were unsatisfied with the school or other on-campus incidents. Discounting whether the label "Haruka-chan" was appropriate, the suggestion itself bore merit, but Tatsuya sharply shook his head.

  "I talked with Ono-sensei yesterday. In truth, she informed me about all the major questions they would ask today."

  "Such an unreliable teacher."

  "Don't be that way. New counselors don't possess much in terms of authority anyways."

  It was Tatsuya's turn to smile gently and comfort the irritated Erika.

  "......Tatsuya-kun must've been even harsher than me, right?"

  As Erika guessed, Tatsuya's words were considerably more confrontational.

  "Whoa?"

  Erika's precise retort caused Leo to elicit a strange noise.

  "......What is it?"

  Erika squinted as she asked.

  "This woman is actually capable of saying something serious."

  Leo widened his eyes as he softly muttered to himself.

  "Silence!"

  Erika smacked him with a rolled up notepad.

  As a matter of fact, even in an age where digital information was so common, notepads were still prevalent. Especially for magic-based schools, during the teaching of magic languages, the very motion of "writing" was in itself an important act. Since teachers primarily used pictures and diagrams in magic geometry, using a notepad to record the drawings was vastly easier compared to using a terminal, so magic high school students were more likely to carry notepads than students from normal schools. That being said, the exact reason why Erika carried around a notepad despite not being in class remained a mystery.

  "Ow......"

  Leo was unable to dodge the incoming blow from the notepad and crouched down, holding his head in pain. It wasn't like he was just sitting there taking the hits without trying to resist, but currently, Erika's smiting speed was much greater than Leo's evasion speed, so (?) in this situation, whenever he unilaterally decided to butt in, he would be unilaterally smote.

  "......You violence addict, my head isn't a drum!"

  Leo lodged a serious protest, which was casually ignored by Erika.

  Probably due to the fact that this scene had endlessly repeated itself over the last three months, Mizuki only let out a helpless smile and left them to it, rather than panicking like she had in the beginning. Also, she used this to redirect the tangent back to the original topic, avoiding any possible escalation of the conflict.

  "Tatsuya-kun, did you solve the teachers' misunderstanding?"

  "Well, yes, on some level."

  "On some level?"

  At Mizuki's concise question, Tatsuya supplied further details with an unwilling expression on his face.

  "The teachers understand that I wasn't intentionally getting them wrong, but they still advised me to transfer."

  "Transfer?"

  "Why? Why would they do that?"

  Mizuki and Honoka both shouted out with their faces completely pale, while the other three wore similar expressions.

  "Among the Nine Schools, Fourth High is renowned for their specialty in Magic Research, so the teachers suggested I transfer there. I declined, of course."

  Two people let out sighs of relief, while two others looked furious.

  The former two were Mizuki and Honoka, the latter Leo and Erika.

  The last member of this conversation wore an unreadable poker face.

  "......So if someone doesn't excel in te
chnical skills, then they should join a school that doesn't emphasize technical skills at all, isn't that completely self-contradictory for a school? I can understand if someone's grades were bad and they couldn't keep up in class, but that's obviously not the case with Tatsuya."

  "Probably because he's an eyesore. Maybe Tatsuya-kun knows more about magic than the teachers themselves."

  "Relax, you two."

  If left alone, Leo and Erika would only feed off each other's fury, so Tatsuya stepped in to extinguish them.

  "It's just as Leo said, barely passing is still passing, so there's nothing that would necessitate a transfer. It's possible that the teachers only had my best interests at heart. Regardless, even if that was the case, these best interests possess no empathy, and are solely in place to protect themselves."

  Tatsuya's soft tone did nothing to cover his acidic assessment, causing the originally furious pair to shrink away. This was precisely the cooling effect that Tatsuya aimed for, and while the method may be called vile, but alas, the result was not the most ideal.

  "At the end of the day, I think that teachers shouldn't be mistaken in the first place."

  Just as everyone was hesitant towards what to say next, Shizuku spoke up in a singular manner that was neither supportive nor critical. From the way her comment relaxed the tension caused by Tatsuya's mocking words, the overall effect would probably be categorized as supportive.

  "Fourth High doesn't scoff at technical skills, but when compared to the combat-centric magic that would be expressed in the Nine Schools Competition, they are more interested in further intricate techniques, the more complex and procedures the better."

  "Is that so? Shizuku-chan, you know quite a lot about this."

  "That's because my cousin studies at Fourth High."

  Hearing Shizuku's answer to Mizuki, Honoka and the other four people said "So that's how it is" as they nodded. Given that this came from a student attending Fourth High, this should be a reliable source of information.

  As everyone professed agreement to these words, they also sprouted considerable mistrust towards the teacher that summoned Tatsuya.

  However, this group of individuals wouldn't focus their attentions on a stranger (the teacher) who wasn't with them at the time.