Evil Avalon - Volume 2 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Naoto Tachigi

Naoto Tachigi

I remembered the debacle in the fourth room of the Arena.

The Priest had healed Akagi back to health before the day was over, fixing the ribs he had broken from his brutal beating at Kariya’s hands. Now, he walked around like he hadn’t lain in the infirmary for nearly a full day—the very picture of health.

Physically, at least. Emotionally, Akagi and all of Class E still reeled from the day’s events, overcome with a gloom we couldn’t wrest free from, try as we might.

Our pride had already suffered at the club fair a few days prior, but most of my classmates had rallied after that experience. We hoped they would recognize our efforts through hard work. The duel had set that idea in its grave.

Yuuma was the strongest in our class, the most talented, the most charismatic...and he’d lost. If anyone in the class had thought to pick up his torch, the hateful jeers from the other classes had dissuaded them, crushing any remaining hope.

Those of us who’d helped Yuuma were no exception. Sakurako, Kaoru, even me... We were all depressed.

I didn’t resent Yuuma for losing, though. The Class D students had picked a fight with Yuuma after he stood up for Sakurako when they approached her with lust. They’d been the unfair ones to challenge him to a duel, knowing he’d never set foot inside the dungeon. Their underhanded methods made me sick.

The entire class had sung Akagi’s praises when he’d bravely accepted the challenge, but the cold light of day made it clear that the whole thing was a setup. An inspection of the list of reservations for the Arena had revealed the First Magic Club were the primary users of the fourth Arena room based on the anti-magic shield in place. The Second and Third Magic Clubs occupied all the remaining slots. Why had they relinquished a slot for some silly Class E duel?

Kariya didn’t make sense either. What was he still doing in Class D when he was stronger than his classmates? When I watched him fight against Akagi, I could tell he had a highly developed prowess and technique from years of training. Adventurers’ High sorted students into classes based on their grades. Kariya could have risen to Class C or even B instead of leading Class D with his skills and high level. Why would he remain in Class D, the lowliest class of those who transferred from Adventurers’ Middle School? Had they relegated him to Class D for missing an exam? Or perhaps...

There was something off about the faculty as well. The idiots in Class D had bullied us, and our homeroom teacher had turned a blind eye, which had encouraged them to escalate their abuse.

Our class wasn’t the only Class E victim of the higher classes. They frequently subjected the second- and third-year students to the same mistreatment. Some students even quit school to escape their tormentors.

It feels like the entire school is complicit, I thought.

The situation made it feel like the school had reinstated the Four Occupations, the old class system from the Edo period in Japan. That would place Class E at the lowest rank on the social ladder and encourage everyone to discriminate against us.

If I was right, then Class D wasn’t the main problem. They wouldn’t be able to act like they had without support of some kind. But who was supporting them?

Their supporter would have to be someone who could spur Kariya and Class D into action, rearrange bookings for the fourth room in the Arena, and keep our homeroom teacher from objecting. Class A? The student council? No, it had to be bigger than that.

What if the Eight Dragons are backing them? How could I possibly take them on?

Adventurers’ High was home to several factions, with eight substantially larger than the rest. These were the Eight Dragons. They were powerful factions composed of many students with ties to private businesses, adventurer clans, graduates of Adventurers’ University, and public officials. All these people exerted their influence at every school level—over teachers and the upper management.

Only five of the Eight Dragons had clear identities: the student council, the First Swordcraft Club, the First Magic Club, the First Archery Club, and the Class A Alliance. The other three were unknown.

What hopes would a mere high schooler have of taking them on? To oppose the Eight Dragons was to become an enemy of the school.

Despair made my vision blur and grow dark. I felt like my hopes of a bright future, of everything my family had wished for me, were falling apart and slipping from my grasp.

My head hung low; I couldn’t muster the energy to keep it raised.

I began listening to the conversation of some Class D students who stuck around in Class E’s classroom. I didn’t need my Super Hearing skill since the students made such a ruckus that I could hear every word.

“Oh, did I tell you my brother got an invite from one of Colors’s subsidiary clans?” one of them said.

“From Colors?! No way!”

“Your brother’s in Soleil, right, Manaka?”

“That’s so cool!”

Colors, eh?

They were heroes celebrated in Japan for their tremendous victory against the mighty undead lich king. Everyone in the country stayed glued to their TV screens and watched the raid, regardless of whether they were training to be adventurers. I was no exception. I’d stayed up all night for the broadcast, and I must have rewatched my recording of the raid a hundred times. That fight showed the best that adventurers offered.

Ever since the raid, you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Colors. One story run by news broadcasters a few days ago reported that tens of thousands of people were sending applications to join the clan, a monumental increase over the norm.

Colors was a massive organization, supporting five subsidiary clans directly. Each one supported its own subsidiaries, of which Soleil was one.

I aimed to attend Adventurers’ University, but watching the broadcast made me dream about becoming a top adventurer. And what a hopeless dream it was... I would never be a top adventurer, much less enter Adventurers’ University or Class A. Hell, even getting into Class B or Class C seemed impossible with how things were.

I thought about my parents on the day I’d left to come to Adventurers’ High.

***

I was the heir to a family of semi-nobles that served the noble Viscount Isshiki. But I had been a sickly child and had spent most days confined indoors to avoid falling ill. One day, I heard that the viscount’s heiress, Otoha Isshiki, got accepted into Adventurers’ High, where only the best could attend. The news shocked me so much that it kept me up all night. She was shorter and thinner than the other girls her age, as frail as me. How could she get into a school that summoned monstrously talented children from all over the country? Would she even be able to keep up once there?

Surely she wouldn’t, I thought. Surely she’d come back home soon.

I was wrong. After just a year at the school, she’d made such a name for herself that magic magazines devoted special editions to the thirteen-year-old wonder child. The picture in the magazine of her slaying an orc with magic sent chills down my spine. It showed me how much people could change, from a timid little girl to a powerful mage.

Later, I quietly applied to Adventurers’ Middle School without my parents’ knowledge. They rejected me, of course. I told myself that would be too much for me—I wasn’t talented. I was just a frail little kid, so scrawny that my ribs showed on my chest. That excuse made the rejection easier to swallow.

One day, I told my parents. They responded by revealing Lady Otoha’s secret: she’d worked tirelessly to get where she had, all of it out of sight. She’d changed her diet, started a training regimen, and studied every night. My parents told me that hoping for change to happen would get me nowhere. If I wanted to change, I’d have to put in the effort to change myself.

Did I really want to attend Adventurers’ School? My frailty had prevented me from joining Adventurers’ Middle School, but had I tried to overcome the problem?

I looked back at the picture of her in the magazine, where she crossed her arms and held her head high, smiling while her gorgeous red hair fluttered in the wind. The sight made me wonder how strong her desire to change must have been, and I felt like it showed me the path I needed to take.

From that day on, I trained like my life depended on it and did everything to strengthen my body. I asked for my mother’s help preparing meals to make me tough, ran every day, and studied problem sets from elite schools. I even asked my father for help when I couldn’t work out the answers. My parents helped me every step of the way, and I would not let them down! Nothing would stop me from getting into the school Lady Otoha had joined.

***

And where am I now?! What am I doing?! I screamed in my mind. These ideas weren’t me moaning about the pessimistic outlook for Class E. No, I directed that rage at myself, anger at my own weakness for almost throwing in the towel after such a minor setback.

I’d spent years working hard to get in, and I was almost ready to give up before I had a chance to try to make something of myself after a mere month... How pathetic. I was sure Lady Otoha would have a good laugh at my expense if she could see me now.

Remember how you got here, I told myself. And remember why.

And I remembered the tears of joy in my mother’s eyes when I’d received the acceptance letter from Adventurers’ High, the pat my father had given me on the back. I’d come here to make them both proud and to follow Lady Otoha, and I wasn’t going to give up!

It’s not over yet, Naoto Tachigi! I thought. Maybe it won’t work out but don’t settle for that until you’ve tried! Class D, the Eight Dragons, whoever the enemy might be—don’t give up without a fight! Gather whatever information you can, however insignificant, create a strategy to beat them, and raise your chance of success one percent at a time!

***

At some point, I’d closed my eyes and had them firmly shut. When I opened them, it seemed less dark than before. The classroom hadn’t changed, but having told myself not to give up made everything look a bit brighter.

The Class D students were still chatting in our classroom. Meanwhile, the E students paid attention; talk of Colors and its subsidiary clans was popular here. They listened because they shared the same dreams and aspirations as me. But their hopes would crumble if nothing changed, and we’d all find ourselves at the mercy of the upper classes and the major factions. To stop that, I needed to show them that there was still hope and open their eyes to the fact we could still fight and catch up to the other classes.

Our academic performance wasn’t going to hold us back. Any student who had passed this school’s exam had good grades, so the other classes wouldn’t develop an academic lead on us as long as we studied every day and helped each other.

The big problem was our inexperience in the dungeon, which had only opened to us after we’d joined the school a little over a month ago. It was natural that the other classes would be better than us inside the dungeon, and we shouldn’t beat ourselves over it. So, the enemy must have chosen that moment to crush our spirits. Why hadn’t I suspected they had carefully planned the timing to deal the greatest damage? Why had it taken me so long to realize somebody was behind it all?

With the right plan, Class E could overcome its inexperience and improve its performance in the dungeon over the next year or two. I desperately wanted to prove to our enemies we could make it to Class A, to shove it in their faces.

The higher classes and upper-year students would likely ramp up their interference. They’d use every trick in the book to corner us into subservience. Although it wouldn’t be easy to persevere through their abuse, I could not reach Class A by myself.

I’d need help from friends brave enough to face whatever the other classes might throw at us and carry on... Yet I could tell that Kaoru and Sakurako were on the verge of giving up. Their bright, optimistic attitudes and the glimmer in their eyes had disappeared. Still, they were talented and had stoically striven to become stronger. Overcoming our current challenge would take them to new heights, if it didn’t break them. They were the ones whose help I should seek first.

Of course, I’d need Yuuma too. His defeat was still fresh in his mind, which put him in low spirits. But I needed his charisma to rally the rest of the class. Unfortunately, most of the other classes would channel their abuse at him. That meant I’d have to be supportive to cheer him up instead of him being there for me.

The school would hold the Battle of the Classes in June, where each class had to accomplish certain objectives inside the dungeon over a week. Each class received a single grade at the end of the event, measuring the class’s ability to cooperate. Those of us at the top of the class still had to try our best, but the most important thing was to help any student who might hold us back.

My preferred course of action would be to hold a study session for all the classmates struggling to level up. Everyone would have an easier time increasing their level if we shared tips and tricks about the dungeon.

I had in mind several students who appeared most likely to be lagging, and the foremost was the overweight kid who’d joined the school with the lowest grades. For him, the best choice would be to train him one-on-one all day if only I had the time. Another option was to invite him to our party and give him a taste of raiding the dungeon. I’d have to speak to Kaoru to decide the best approach to help the other Class E students.

Kaoru and Yuuma could teach them swordcraft while Sakurako and I taught them magic. We could invite interested students to a study session.

First things first, I had to instill hope in Sakurako and Kaoru. Once that ended, we could think long and hard about how best to ensure the success of Class E.

Nothing was going to stop me. Not until I caught up to her.