by Yuu Miyazaki
According to popular opinion, Saya and Kirin were likely winners for the upcoming quarterfinal as well. It might not be an easy victory, but Ayato agreed with that assessment.
The problem, however, would be the following match. Their likely opponents for the semifinal were…
“Well, well, you must have it in the bag, then,” Julis remarked. “I gather you’re all set to take down those mechs from Allekant?”
Saya’s expression hardened slightly.
Allekant’s autonomous Puppets, Ardy and Rimcy, had advanced through the tournament with even more overwhelming strength than Saya and Kirin. They were now the favorites to win the Phoenix. It was no wonder, given they had come this far without a single scratch, even though they always granted their opponents one full minute to attack freely—just as they had in Round One.
If both teams advanced, Kirin and Saya would face the Puppets in the semifinal.
“Bet you can’t wait to see,” Saya countered. “Personally, I’m more worried about you two.”
“You’re facing Jie Long’s Page One fighters next, aren’t you?” Kirin asked Julis gravely.
Saya and Kirin had been following the Jie Long twins, too—surely they were aware of how formidable the twins could be.
“We’ll manage one way or another,” Julis said. “In two days, Ayato will be able to fight at full strength, and we’ll have far more options than we did today. We’ll make it.”
While her words were optimistic, her expression was anything but.
Ayato realized she must be recalling what Song and Luo had told them earlier.
An awkward silence descended upon the room.
Flora was the one to break it. “Oh, look at the time! I’ll say goodbye for today. I’m going to root for you with all my heart during the next round—good luck!”
She stood and gave them a brisk bow.
“Hold on, Flora. Which hotel are you staying at? I’ll walk you there.” Julis got up to follow as Flora walked to the door.
“No, I’ll be fine on my own. Your Highness must be tired from the match.”
“You don’t need to be so considerate, you silly thing. —Oh, but Ayato, about tomorrow…”
Julis probably meant their strategy meeting to prepare for the quarterfinal. “I think we could start in the afternoon,” he said. “You and Flora must have a lot to talk about.”
“And now you’re being too considerate,” Julis sighed. “But I’ll gladly accept. I could use the rest. The afternoon would be better.”
After Julis and Ayato hammered out the details for their meeting, they all dispersed for the day.
“I’m back! …Oh. But Yabuki isn’t.”
Ayato flicked on the light switch in the pitch-black room, and only quiet solitude greeted him.
Eishirou’s desk, piled high with documents and handwritten notes, had not been touched. His bed was also immaculately made, as it had been since the last time he had changed the sheets. There was no sign he had come back to their dorm at all.
This was no surprise to Ayato. Things had been like this ever since the start of summer break. Still, he had to wonder where his roommate was and what he might be up to. He had asked once, but Eishirou had simply replied, “Gotta cover the stories!”
“Maybe he’s living it up in the red light district…or something.”
Ayato had only heard about that part of the redevelopment area the other day. Apparently, the students who had gotten a taste of the nightlife were well acquainted with it.
“Well, maybe it’s for the better that he’s not around,” Ayato murmured to himself. “Otherwise he’d just ask a bunch of questions.”
He took out his mobile and plopped down on the bed. Earlier, he had thought he might need to find somewhere else private, but with Eishirou out, there was no need.
“Well, for instance… What about your sister?” Julis’s voice echoed in his head.
He didn’t mean to seek out his sister against her will. But it was true that he wanted to know.
“Let’s see… Here we go.”
He called the recently added number, and almost immediately the air-window showed the person he wanted to talk to: Priscilla Urzaiz.
“Oh—hello, Mr. Amagiri!”
“Evening, Priscilla. Sorry to call out of the blue.”
Priscilla appeared to be cooking, wearing an apron just as she had the other night. From the furniture in the background, Ayato could see it was the apartment where she had hosted him and Julis.
“Oh, it’s no trouble! I kept thinking that I should thank you properly, but I didn’t want to bother you during the Festa… I really appreciate what you did for us!”
“No—I didn’t do anything that deserves thanks.”
It’s odd for the loser of a match to thank the winner, Ayato thought.
But Priscilla shook her head slowly. “You brought my sister back to me, Amagiri. Words aren’t enough to thank you. Oh, I know! Could I invite you over for dinner again? I’ll make something better than last time…”
“Ugh, enough already! Gimme that!”
“Huh? Oh, Irene, j-just a second—!”
Irene entered the field of view, shoving Priscilla aside.
“Hey, Amagiri. Saw your match today. Looked like you had a pretty rough time.”
“Thanks to you.”
“Ha-ha, serves you right!” Irene smirked in the air-window.
Ayato responded with a pained smile.
Her eyes were just as sharp as before, but somehow less severe. This must be Irene as she really is, he thought.
“You wanted to talk to me and not Priscilla, right? Wait, no. The one you want isn’t me—it’s that jackass Dirk.”
“…How’d you know?”
Irene was completely right, and Ayato made no attempt to hide it. The corners of her mouth curled in a grin. “I’d like to say I had you pegged, but actually, it was all Dirk. He said you’d try to get in touch with him, and he told me to let him know when you did.”
The man wasn’t the “Devious King” for nothing. He had predicted Ayato’s every move. But that did nothing to change what he had to do.
“Okay—well, would you mind telling him? Let him know I have some questions about Haruka Amagiri, and that I’d like to meet with him.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s part of my job, after all,” Irene replied.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Just be careful. I’m not the only dog he’s got on a leash. People are sayin’ he has Erenshkigal, too.”
“The Witch of the Solitary Venom?”
If the Strega currently renowned as the strongest fighter in Asterisk was in the palm of Dirk’s hand—that really would be something else.
“And…he’s also got Grimalkin.”
“Grimalkin…?”
“Le Wolfe’s covert ops unit. They’re bad news, for real. They’ll do any kind of nasty job they’re given, no hesitation… Though Dirk doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of faith in them.”
So they were like Seidoukan’s Shadowstar. “Got it. I’ll be careful.”
“You better be. You can’t do anything if you’re dead.” Then Irene narrowed her eyes at Ayato. “By the way, Amagiri. How’d you get your hands on Priscilla’s number?”
“Huh? The other night, when you invited us over for dinner…”
Ayato had asked for it in case something happened and he needed to contact her. Had he done something wrong?
“Hrmm.” Irene glowered at Ayato through the video chat, then suddenly jabbed a finger at him. “I’m only gonna say this once. If you ever lay a finger on Priscilla, I will end you.”
“Now, hold on, Irene! Where did that come from?!” Suddenly, a panicked Priscilla pushed Irene out of the way. “I—I’m sorry, Amagiri! My sister can be so weird.”
“Oh, um, it’s fine… Well, tell her I said bye.”
“Wha—? Hey, Priscilla! I’m not done talking to him!” Irene shouted from off camera. The two siste
rs appeared to be as close as ever.
Feeling relieved, Ayato was about to hang up when Priscilla stopped him.
“Oh, Amagiri—could you wait just a moment?”
“Huh…?”
Priscilla also left the field of view, and Ayato heard the sisters whispering quietly.
Eventually, Irene reappeared with a vaguely guilty countenance. “Um—Amagiri.”
“Hmm? Something the matter?”
“No… Uh, I just thought I should…thank you, y’know. I mean, I owe you that much.”
“Thank me…?”
Irene focused on the wall offscreen and scratched her head, mumbling. “See, about the other day. About Gravisheath. I don’t like to admit this, and I hate that I’m making less money with that thing gone, but…I guess it’s true, I could have been in real trouble if I kept going like I was.”
“Oh, I see. That.” Come to think of it, Irene did have a strong sense of duty.
“You saved me. So…thanks,” Irene said with her face still turned away, and then the air-window abruptly went dark.
Smiling faintly, Ayato stared at the blank display for a while, then set down his mobile on the desk and sprawled out on the bed.
“Guess I’ll have to see what Tyrant’s next move is…”
From what Irene had told him, everything was developing just as Dirk had predicted. Ayato had no idea what the man had in mind, but for his own part, there was nothing more he could do.
Claudia had promised to look into things, but gathering intelligence on another school was far from simple—especially when the target was Le Wolfe’s student council president.
“…Sis.” Ayato closed his eyes and pictured Haruka. His mental image of her was five years out of date.
Five years was a long time—more than enough time to change a person.
That was true for him, too.
He had been standing still for far too long, and now he had finally taken a step forward.
And yet—
“I’m home! Man, it’s been a while!”
The door suddenly opened and Eishirou burst in, weighed down by a significant amount of luggage.
“Whoa—Yabuki?”
“Aw, sorry, Amagiri. Were you sleeping?”
“No, it’s fine, I was just lying down. It really has been a while, though.” Ayato sat up and turned toward Eishirou, who had plopped down on the floor.
“I had a bunch of work piled up. I did manage to get through a lot, but there’s still a ton left,” Eishirou said, sighing.
“By work, you mean for the newspaper club?”
“Bingo. The Festa is when we make the big bucks. There are stories everywhere, and if we don’t put in the work now—oh, by the way, I watched the match today. Congrats, you made it to the quarterfinals!” Eishirou gave him a thumbs-up.
“Just barely. We didn’t win by much.”
“Come on, a win is a win. Be happy.” Laughing, Eishirou reached into the mini-fridge for an iced tea and guzzled it down. “Ahhhh. So are you up against the Jie Long twins next? Those two are trouble. Just a nasty pair through and through.”
“Do you know a lot about them, Yabuki?”
“On paper, yeah. If you look at just their raw power, Irene Urzaiz and the Gravisheath would rank higher, for sure. And if you look on Odhroerir or Hexa Pantheon, neither of the twins are rated that high.”
“Look on what, now?” Ayato didn’t recognize those terms.
Eishirou responded with surprise. “They’re famous fansites about Asterisk—about the Festa. You don’t know them?”
Ayato shook his head.
Guess I have to explain, Eishirou’s look said as he took out his mobile and opened the two sites. “Each school in Asterisk sets the ranks, so obviously they only apply within that school. Right? So the only way to see if the first-ranked fighter in our school—well, you, I guess—is stronger than the number one at Gallardworth, is if they actually fight. But the world wants to compare everything and speculate, so there’re a ton of people on the net who make up their own rankings for students across all the schools and post them up.”
“Like an unofficial ranking of all the students in Asterisk?”
“Pretty much. And Odhroerir and Hexa Pantheon are the two biggest ones.”
Ayato thought that sounded logical enough. Without a comprehensive ranking system, there would be no point of reference in competitions like the Festa where students from different schools fought each other.
“Odhroerir is run by individuals,” Eishirou went on, “It’s been around since the early days of Asterisk. The rankings have a reputation for being pretty accurate, and a lot of gambling businesses use it to set the odds. Hexa Pantheon is relatively new, but it uses an evaluation system that anyone can participate in. That makes it more of a popularity contest.”
“Whoa. Interesting.”
“Still, because they’re unofficial, a lot of people don’t trust either one. I think Her Highness was among the nonbelievers. And our student council president said in an interview once that she didn’t care for ’em, either.”
“Yeah, Julis would be skeptical,” Ayato mused.
She didn’t seem to put a lot of weight on the school rankings, so it was only natural that she would trust the unofficial ones even less.
Claudia, on the other hand… It was a mystery why she took that stance.
“Well, as long as you know it’s unofficial, I don’t think it hurts to check it out,” Eishirou said. “Incidentally, the top-ranked fighter for both sites is Erenshkigal.”
“Not surprising.” You don’t win two Lindvolus tournaments by luck, Ayato thought.
“Hexa Pantheon has rankings that include past fighters, and that’s pretty fun to look at. The leader of Stjarnagarm has held the top spot there forever.”
“She was the first one to win back-to-back Lindvolus tournaments, right?” Ayato asked. “Does that mean people place the most weight on how fighters do at the Lindvolus?”
“In the end, the Lindvolus is the most exciting of the Festas,” Eishirou replied. “To give you an idea, you’re ranked nineteenth in Odhroerir, and thirtieth in Hexa Pantheon. You were a bit higher before you fought Irene Urzaiz.”
In other words, his rankings had fallen with the news about his seal getting out.
“Well, I think you’re still one of the more promising rookies to come up this year,” Eishirou added.
“So I should be happy about that…I guess?”
His curiosity aroused, Ayato browsed both sites. Claudia was the highest-ranked Seidoukan fighter on Odhroerir. But Hexa Pantheon had Kirin ranked higher, so Ayato could tell why these sites could only be used as rough references.
“Anyway, to get back on topic,” Eishirou interrupted. “What I wanted to say is, individually, the twins aren’t regarded that highly as fighters. Not that they’re weak, by any means, since they’re on Jie Long’s Page One. I’m just talking about how people think of them in comparison to the top fighters at the other schools.”
Then Eishirou closed the air-windows with a crooked smile.
“But we all know that rankings alone don’t decide matches. I mean, if Irene Urzaiz was set to fight those twins, I don’t know who would win. I think they’re that good.”
“I’ve seen the data,” Ayato said, “and they seem to be really good at taking advantage of their opponents’ weaknesses.”
The twins’ basic strategy was to spot the enemy’s weak point and attack it mercilessly. The approach made perfect sense, but what made them stand out was their unusual creativity in the execution.
“They’re ridiculously good at exploiting the advantage of Seisenjutsu,” Eishirou said. “It must be hell for anyone who faces them.”
“What advantage?”
“Versatility, of course. Attack, defense, support—they can do whatever… Oh, right. This’ll be your first time going up against daoshi fighters, won’t it?”
“Yeah, we’ve faced a few Jie Long teams
, but they’ve always used regular martial arts.”
Ayato knew that daoshi was the name for practitioners of Seisenjutsu, but he lacked a concrete grasp of what exactly Seisenjutsu was.
“Oh, well. I guess I can give you another lesson, as a token of our friendship.” Eishirou once again opened an air-window to display the Jie Long Seventh Institute. “Simply put, Seisenjutsu is what you get when you take the powers of Stregas and Dantes, then codify and generalize them. Usually, those powers are highly specialized, but Seisenjutsu turns them into a technique and breaks it down so anyone can use them. I guess that’ll do for a working definition.”
“Anyone can…? Is that even possible?”
“Well, not really anyone, strictly speaking. They say Stregas and Dantes make up just a few percent of Genestella, right? In reality, though, lots of people have a natural ability to link with mana but can’t express it as special powers—either because they’re too weak or they can’t visualize what they want to do. According to some, more Genestella have that basic ability than not.”
“Wow…”
“In theory, if you can link with mana, it should be possible to manifest special powers. What Seisenjutsu does is develop that natural talent into all sorts of abilities by teaching them as standardized techniques. They incorporate things like gestures, incantations, and spell charms.”
“That definitely sounds amazing. But…” Ayato had to ask the obvious question. “Why is something so great only taught at Jie Long?”
“So, that’s the thing,” Eishirou replied excitedly. “It turns out there are plenty of Seisenjutsu users, but only a handful of teachers who can pass it on. For someone to learn Seisenjutsu, the flow of prana in their body has to be adjusted in some special way. And only the teachers can make that adjustment.”
“So they basically have a monopoly, huh.”
“They say there are twelve teachers who were trained by the first Ban’yuu Tenra herself, and seven trained by the second. There are only about twenty teachers in all, including the current Ban’yuu Tenra. I’ve heard people have tried to recruit them in all sorts of ways. But seeing as no one’s succeeded, their training must include instilling loyalty, too.” Then Eishirou gave Ayato a more serious look. “There are hundreds of powers that have been turned into Seisenjutsu techniques. Stregas and Dantes tend to use more distinctive powers, but that means they’re not as balanced and easier to plan against. Daoshi don’t have that weakness. So be careful.”