Liar, Liar - Volume 6 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Rapture

“Wha…what d’you mean by that, huh?!”

We had just been insta-defeated in our first quest on the first day of Dropout Tamers, and now we were angrily confronting each other in a corner of the park. I was not terribly surprised it ended up like this—just a moment ago, before our very eyes, Sana Nitta had basically self-destructed. After debuffing her own familiar and buffing her opponent’s, she’d been defeated without dealing a single point of damage, losing her Mithril Golem without even putting up a fight. Nothing could have disrupted our team any worse than that.

“What kind of a battle was that?! And you’re the traitor? Did you just say you’re the traitor?!”

“…Who cares? Like, does it even matter?”

“…! I’ll be damned. We were tricked, after all. So it wasn’t Shinohara pulling our strings—it was you from the start!”

Yuikawa walked up to Nitta in a rage. Nitta, on the other hand, had fully regained her composure, that pensive look during the battle nowhere to be seen. But once again, a girl with sleepy eyes and blue hair stepped in between them.

“Stop… It’s not nice to terrify a little girl. I’m going to fine you five million yen…”

“What?! Quit talking nonsense! You’re every bit a victim here, too! Why are you defending her?!”

“Because Nitta’s cute, and you’re not… It’s the natural way of things. Whether Nitta is a traitor doesn’t matter. It’s not even a topic for debate…”

Minami shook her head, her hair bobbing slightly. Yuikawa was about to break into another tirade, but Minami, anticipating it, continued speaking calmly.

“Besides… If Nitta is the traitor, then it’s good for us that we discovered it so soon, right…?”

“Wh-what?”

Yuikawa’s voice rose in bewilderment for a moment, but then he reluctantly nodded.

“Well…yes, you could think of it that way. We know that every team has one traitor, so maybe sacrificing a C-class familiar to find them out wasn’t such a bad trade-off…”

“Exactly… So it’s actually a good thing. Nitta did something good, which makes her a good person. You should apologize to her right now… On your knees…”

“Oh yeah, sure. Sorry I hurt your feelings jumping to conclusions— No way, this is nuts! I didn’t do anything wrong! It’s all her fault!”

“…”

“Can’t you say something, at least?!”

Nitta stared coldly at Yuikawa as he played right into Minami’s games. Yuikawa still had a lot of problems with all this, but he finally just muttered, “Damn it!” and clammed up. I’m sure he didn’t have a change of heart, though. By this point, he was ready to all but execute Sana Nitta.

Well…clearly, what Nitta did was detrimental to the team. If she’s not the traitor, then I don’t understand why she’d do something like this.

I quietly thought this over. Really, if you gave it some contemplation, any player who obstructed their teammates like that had to be a traitor. But still, I couldn’t help but feel that it was too dangerous to conclude Nitta was our traitor based solely on that one piece of information.

I mean, what kind of traitor would declare it out loud like that? She’d do a lot more damage if she quietly sabotaged the team over an extended period of time, like Akizuki was planning to do. But here’s Nitta, turning traitor in the most obnoxious of ways and even confessing to the deed. Was there some meaning behind that act…?

Maybe I was being a little cynical, but it certainly seemed like the most natural way of looking at this. Dropout Tamers, after all, was a pretty complex Game. It might seem like a straightforward team battle at first glance, but since each team’s players all came from different schools, there was a good chance they’d act against the team’s best interests even if they were not a traitor. With all these intertwining motivations, it was just too early to name a traitor definitively.

“Hmm…”

I don’t know if Yuikawa reached the same conclusion, but in the end, he decided not to change his stance on Minami or Fujishiro, either. Basically, he couldn’t be too sure who the traitor was, but he wanted to keep them under observation for a little while longer. The problem was that leaving Nitta alone could lead to even more damage soon…but Yuikawa had a solution for that.

“I happen to have an Ability called Seal. It’s so cool and elegant that of course it’s a perfect match for the best from Ibara. It lets me temporarily remove a target player from interacting with a Game. This way, if I use it to target Nitta, she won’t be able to participate as the main player or in the command-selection phase.”

“…Oh? That’s a weirdly perfect Ability for this situation, Yuikawa. I guess you originally intended to use it on an opponent.”

“…Oof. Your mind works fast, Seven Star.”

Yuikawa nodded, not so smug anymore. Thanks to that Ability, though, Nitta wasn’t going to join us in quests or combat for a little while. Using Seal on a teammate is an unusual move, but it made sense if you thought about it as us keeping a traitor in check.

With Nitta’s potential rampage averted, we returned to Sigma and took on the same quest again. This time our main player was Keiya Fujishiro, the Final Weapon of Ohga, and he struck down Sigma’s Great Eagle with predictably perfect gameplay, ending the battle in just two turns.

“…I lose,” the quest guide said, smiling softly at us. “You are a strong team, indeed.”

“Hee-hee! Aw, you’ll make me blush…”

“Why are you acting all embarrassed, Minami? You didn’t even do anything!”

“Like I need you telling me that…,” she said, brushing off Yuikawa. “But listen, quest lady, I wanted to ask you something earlier… What’d you mean by the ‘second one’?”

Sigma raised an eyebrow at the vague question, but Minami kept going.

“You said earlier that the permanent effect of base commands is their ‘first advantage’… You wouldn’t have phrased it that way if there wasn’t at least one more advantage… So what is it?”

“…That’s very clever of you to notice,” Sigma responded with a nod.

She then told us about chain commands, one hidden feature of DOT. It was definitely something worth hearing about, so we discussed it for a while around the bench with Fujishiro and Yuikawa.

“…”

Meanwhile, Nitta, her hood over her face, looked down quietly biting her lip.

“Following the S-class quest, next we need to have a real battle,” Fujishiro said, projecting the screen of his device.

Now that Sigma’s quest was over, we were headed for the train station to move to a different area.

“To be exact, we have to engage another team in a fight and win against them. Another tutorial mission, I guess. It must be set up so you learn all the rules on the way to getting that S-class familiar.”

“Yeah, but even with the C-class familiars we got in that quest, considering the hour of time we lost, it’s still too early to attack other people. We should at least wait until we’re a little stronger.”

“That sounds pretty wimpy, coming from you…but you’re not wrong. Our team’s probably toward the bottom in terms of strength right now,” Fujishiro said, nodding quietly.

He might have a bad mouth, but he truly was the Ace Behind the Curtain for Ohga, calmly analyzing the current situation for us.

“Okay, so then next, we’ll try a slightly harder qu— Hmm?”

As we were strategizing on our way to the station, all our devices suddenly beeped a sharp warning sound, and an alert reading Another Team Approaching! appeared on Fujishiro’s projected screen. We couldn’t see them, but they must have been pretty close.

I touched my right ear—a signal that I was requesting information—and Himeji immediately replied.

“That would be Team XII… They started from the Second Ward. They belong to the following schools: Shinra, Seventh Ward; Kagurazuki, Ninth Ward; Ohmi, Tenth Ward; St. Rosalia, Fourteenth Ward; and Soken, Nineteenth Ward. You wouldn’t know any of them, Master, but their average rank is 4.8.”

That’s really high…!

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, but that meant nearly all the team members were Five Stars—another sign of just how high-level the fight was here in the semifinal.

“Tch… Okay, time to vote.”

Fujihiro’s attention was already away from his blaring device.

“No matter how you slice it, they’re comin’ for us. We don’t know what they want, but if they ask for a fight, the Game rules say we can’t turn ’em down. But the only way to send a request is if you’re within ten yards of the target. We still got plenty of time to make a run for it.”

“I don’t see that as an option. Running is the absolute least suitable plan of action for someone like me… But just so I’m clear, how would we escape them, exactly? If they want to fight us, simply running won’t be enough to lose them, I don’t think.”

“Are you really that stupid? I ain’t asking everyone to run a marathon. Look, as far as DOT’s concerned, a team needs to be at least two people. I’m sure there are exceptions to that rule… But regardless, that’s something we can take advantage of.”

“…? Uh, how?”

“Huh? Do I really have to spell it out—?”

“You’re saying we should split up five ways, right? If we’re all moving separately, they can’t send the request, since there’s no ‘team’ to send it to,” I said quietly, picking up Fujishiro’s explanation where he’d left off.

It did seem like the best move for us right now. We’d fan out, lose the team approaching us, then regroup. It seemed like a pretty foolproof way of avoiding combat in DOT.

However…

“I’m sorry, but that won’t work…”

Just when our plan was almost set in stone, Minami denied it out of hand. When I turned back to ask her why, I saw a strange sight.

““…””

The ever-silent Nitta was tightly holding on to Minami’s hand, and Minami was returning the favor, not looking all that unhappy about it. The sight caused my mind to freeze for a moment, but I soon understood. Nitta was probably trying to stop Minami from moving away from her…thus foiling our “fan out and regroup” strategy and preventing our escape from Team XII.

“Hee-hee… Nitta is all mine. Mutual love… Mutual affection…”

I doubted Minami was unaware of Nitta’s intentions, but she didn’t seem interested in breaking free of her grip. The sight made Yuikawa turn visibly paler.

“Wh-what kind of crap are you pulling now?! That’s a traitor move! If you two stick together, we won’t be able to avoid fighting them! I wanna get out of here!!”

“…? Running away is such a bother… All we have to do is win. Am I wrong?”

“…! No, but…!”

“Then be quiet… I’m busy getting my fill of Nitta here…”

I don’t know if that counted as refuting Yuikawa’s opinion, but it sure stunned him into silence. A moment later, Minami began intertwining her fingers with Nitta’s. As for Fujishiro, he’d probably given up on trying to escape the moment this conversation started. He let out a sigh, his fingertips pressed to his forehead.

And so—

“…Yo, are you guys Team VI?”

We encountered them less than a minute later.

The first to speak was a party-boy type with long dyed-brown hair. He must’ve been the leader, because the rest of the team was standing behind him, watching how things went down. I recognized the St. Rosalia uniform one of the girls was wearing, which elicited a little “Ah” from Minami, and the girl bowed in return. They must’ve recognized each other, at least. Perhaps they’d met up at a pre-Game strategy meeting, like what we’d staged at Eimei.

Regardless, the brown-haired guy kept going.

“Yeah, so I’m Toshimitsu Komaba, third-year Five Star from the Kagurazuki School. I’m in charge of Team XII here, and your leader’s…the Seven Star, right?”

“I’m not the leader, exactly, but I’ll talk with you. Stage Four started just a few hours ago, you know. What would you want from us now?”

“Well, we’re kinda in a hurry, you know? This is a great chance to crush someone like you, so…yeah, my heart’s about to jump outta my throat here, man. Plus, if I defeat you, I’ll become a ‘defender of justice’ like the Hexagram, maybe, huh?”

Komaba chuckled maliciously, an expression that said all I needed to know about his personality. He smirked and held up two fingers.

“So I’m gonna give you two options. The first is a trade. Provide the resources we want, and we’re all good. You give us all your familiars…and in exchange, we’ll give you a single C-class Slime. Not a bad deal, huh?”

“I dunno about that. If you’re serious about it, I think you need to get your head checked.”

“Ha-ha! Oh, I’m totally serious, man, trust me! Listen, Shinohara, we’ve beaten four quests and two other teams in battle. We got more familiars, and better ones than you. And don’t try to escape halfway through, either, okay? ’Cause I’ll take you for everything you got and doom your entire team! That’s your second choice, by the way.”

Komaba was defiantly, belligerently egging us on. I took it in stride, but inwardly, I wasn’t liking this much.

Ugh… If the terms were better, I’d totally agree to a trade…

In Dropout Tamers, it was perfectly fine to make an opponent give you familiars in exchange for letting them go without a fight. However, that only applied if both sides agreed to it. Expecting to take all our familiars and give up just one C-class familiar was asking way too much. Which made the first option not even worth considering.

“However, there is little doubting that they have an abundance of resources. Almost three times as many familiars as your team, in fact. Plus, Mr. Komaba probably has access to B-class familiars… So I’m afraid you cannot even serve as the main player against him, Master.”

…Yeah, good point!

I mentally held my head in my hands as I listened to Himeji’s voice. She was right. In this Game, if you initiate a battle, your team’s free to pick any familiar you want… But if you’re attacked, you can only choose a familiar of the same rarity or better. If you don’t have a suitable one, the attacking side apparently gets to choose which familiar of yours they’ll go up against.

With that in mind, me and my two C-class familiars couldn’t help in a fight against Komaba. In fact, only Yuikawa and Minami among our team had B-class familiars at all. It’d have to be one of them, but…

If Nitta isn’t the traitor, it’s highly likely it’s actually one of them…

I didn’t want to think about that possibility. It was the worst-case scenario, really. For the traitor, this battle was a great chance to (1) lose while making it look unavoidable, and (2) give away a rare familiar to keep us from winning. The traitor would be just as far away from winning, but it’d still be a pretty advantageous situation for them.

But well…if we were at this point now, I might as well take a chance.

“Minami.”

“Ah! …H-how do you know my name? Are you a stalker…?”

“Are you gonna do that every time, or what? Look, can you fight this battle for us?”

“Wha—?! Hold up, wait a minute, Shinohara. I’ve got a B-class familiar, too. You think that stumpy li’l girl is more trustworthy than me?”

“Calling me stumpy is going way too far… I look amazing when my clothes are off, you know. As you well know…”

“I don’t. Yuikawa, the B-class Hellhound you own is tied to our victory conditions, so we gotta avoid any possibility of it being taken, all right?”

“Well, if you say so…”

Finally persuaded, Yuikawa reluctantly backed down. Now we just needed Minami’s okay. The three of us looked in her direction. Her hand was still clutching Nitta’s. She was the Sleeping Lioness, a second-year at St. Rosalia Girls’ Institute in the Fourteenth Ward, pretending to be a plain, mild-mannered girl to hide all her natural talent…and now she was staring straight back at me. She shook her hair a bit, her expression blank.

“All right, then. This’ll probably be over fast…so forgive me if it’s not all that exciting.”

We were stationed in the traffic circle in front of the First Ward Central Train Station, and the battle between Komaba of Team XII and Minami of Team VI was already attracting a large crowd. This was one other unique trait of SFIA; being held during summer break and broadcast by Libra, you could easily travel to any battle you saw on the stream and watch it live if you wanted. Some players even had dedicated fans following them all over place, like pro golfers on an eighteen-hole course.

“…Peace!”

The amount of attention focused on Shizuku Minami, in particular, was staggering. St. Rosalia Girls’ Institute didn’t make island-wide news all that often, and now one of their students was in the semifinal. Between that and her rapid promotion to Five Star, Minami’s hidden talents were clearly bubbling up to the surface, making people across the Academy reevaluate their opinions of her. That lazy, sleepy attitude, combined with her natural beauty, was undoubtedly another attraction.

As Minami looked at the audience with a bored expression, her opponent Komaba shouted out to her.

“Hey! You’re Shizuku Minami from the Fourteenth Ward, right? …Guess you’re pretty popular, huh? Too bad you’re gonna lose miserably in front of so many people.”

“Mmm… Well, you don’t have to be so jealous. With this many people, at least some of them have to be your fans, too… About two percent, to be exact, I think. So good luck…”

“…Tch! You’re really annoying, you know that?”

Her provocation made Komaba frown a little.

“I’m gonna wipe that smug look off your face—we’re obviously gonna win anyway,” he declared, taking out his device. “Come, Leviathan! I wanna see her face bathed in pathetic tears!”

The next moment, with an intense, low rumble, a long, twisting water dragon burst out from the center of the traffic circle. It was Second Torrent, Leviathan, a B-class familiar under Komaba’s control. A huge amount of water swirled around its massive body.

“Mm…”

Even faced with this enemy familiar, Minami’s expression didn’t so much as twitch. She lazily waved her right hand to the side—then, a moment later, came the faint sound of footsteps. A woman with wings and a long tail appeared next to her in an extremely revealing outfit. It was Sixth Seduction, Succubus, another B-class, and her enticing, evocative body made the audience erupt in gasps and cheers.

“Hee-hee… By the way, this is what I look like naked. Just a little trivia for you…”

Minami was addressing us for some reason. We pretended not to hear her.

Regardless, now that both familiars were out, all five of us (Nitta excepted, thanks to the Seal) could choose commands. We had obtained new familiars in the previous quest, so we had more skill-based options now, but Minami asked us to choose certain commands for her, saying she wanted to “try a bunch of stuff.”

Probably what that quest guide told us earlier. And yeah, if we can catch our opponent out with that, we oughtta be able to win easy… Guess I’ll prepare for that.

I reached for the device in my pocket. Minami’s strategy was, to put it simply, an advanced application of the base commands, requiring no skill commands at all. This kept damage to a minimum should we be defeated… And if we did get beaten, we could issue another challenge that we should be able to win.

Soon, all the commands were set.

Team XII: Toshimitsu Komaba Familiar Used: Second Torrent: Leviathan (B)

Familiar Status: ATK 5, DEF 3, SPD 4, LP 4

Set Commands: Attack Up / Attack Up / Void Cannon / Constrict / Charge

Team VI: Shizuku Minami Familiar Used: Sixth Seduction, Succubus (B)

Familiar Status: ATK 3, DEF 4, SPD 5, LP 5

Set Commands: Speed Up / Life Up / Defense Up / Defense Up

“…Hmm. A lot I haven’t seen before,” Minami said quietly as she looked at the list of commands behind Komaba.

“Looks like it’s time for me to pitch in,” Yuikawa said smugly, brushing his hair back. “Activating the special Ability Basic Analysis… Mmm, yes, I see. Void Cannon is a skill command provided by the C-class familiar Lich. It’s a move that skips your normal attack and instead preemptively deals three damage to the opponent regardless of their defense. Construct is the Leviathan’s skill command. This skips your normal attack, too, but it sets a trap that deals one damage to your opponent every turn. Finally, Charge is a command from the C-class familiar Minotaur that doubles the attack of your familiar for one turn… Heh! How do you like my espionage skills, huh? You see how qualified I am to be leader?”

“His Abilities make him more suited for a support role than a leader… And really, I wish he would stop taking over my job like that.”

I heard a slightly annoyed voice in my ear speaking over Yuikawa, but I couldn’t really help Himeji. The Company is supposed to be top secret, after all, and if Yuikawa had the Ability to look up all that info, I didn’t have to bother Himeji for it.

Now that we knew the effects of all the commands, I sized up the battle once more. They were both B-class familiars, but Leviathan’s stats were probably better suited for combat. If you have a bunch of powerful skill commands, a high SPD would let you attack first, which was useful…but right now, having a high ATK and DEF meant a lot more. That, and our opponent’s skill commands were a major threat.

We could’ve picked Attack Up as well, so it’s not like we can’t hurt him…but we’re talking 1 damage at most per turn. It would take four turns to whittle down Leviathan’s LP…but there’s no way we’d last that long. Are we really gonna be okay…?

The more I looked at it, the more uneasy I felt comparing our respective hands.

But Minami hadn’t reacted much, and she quickly chose her command for the first turn. Seeing that agitated Yuikawa.

“D-don’t you need to think about it a little more? You can’t be so casual like that… It’s on you if we lose, okay?!”

“…? No matter who it’s on…I’m never losing to someone like this. It’s fine…”

“Wha…? Y-you think so? Well, I wouldn’t lose, either, but I’m just worried about how other people would handle this, okay? Don’t get the wrong idea!”

“…? Oh… Well, okay.”

Minami nodded slightly with a puzzled expression. Then she looked at me, smiled a little, and turned back to face Komaba. Our opponent was clearly irritated; he must have heard our conversation.

Then, at last, the battle began.

“First, I’ll use Defense Up to reduce damage… My Succubus’s defense gets plus one. Your normal attacks won’t hurt her now…”

“That trick means nothing to me! I’m using Constrict! That means I don’t get to attack normally this turn, but I’ll trap you in water that continuously deals one damage at the end of each turn!”

“Roaaaaaaarrrr…!!”

Answering Komaba’s call, the Leviathan in the sky writhed and flailed. A giant whirlpool appeared around the Succubus standing next to Minami, wrapping itself around her bewitching limbs.

“Ngh… Ah!”

“Whoa… What a perverted attack… Is this the sorta thing you’re into? Or are you just playing to the audience?”

“Sh-shut up! It’s your fault for picking a Succubus!”

Minami’s emotionless, raised-eyebrow act was making Komaba a tad impatient. But that was the end of turn one. In the ensuing Battle Phase, the Succubus’s SPD gave her the first strike, but her ATK stat was the same as Leviathan’s DEF, so no damage was done. The Leviathan’s regular attack was skipped thanks to the skill command’s effect, but instead, the water constricted around the Succubus, who took 1 point of damage.

In the second turn that followed, Komaba chose Attack Up, and Minami went with Defense Up again. With these effects applied, the Leviathan’s ATK went up to 6, but so did the Succubus’s DEF, so neither side landed damage with their normal attacks. Constrict was still active, though, and as the Succubus cried in agony within the raging current, her LP went down to 3.

“Ah-ha-ha!”

Komaba seemed to be enjoying every minute of this.

“I told you my team would dominate! Look at the difference in strength! You should’ve surrendered when I gave you the chance!”

“…? I don’t understand what you mean. The battle isn’t over yet…”

“What? Didn’t you notice? I have Void Cannon in my hand. That’s a skill command that deals 3 damage regardless of your defense! If your LP is 3 or less, say good-bye to your human rights!”

“Hmm…? But the Succubus is probably a demon, not a human… She doesn’t need human rights… I don’t think…?”

“I think I made my point, God damn it!!”

Minami’s cool, collected tone had finally made Komaba lose his temper. To the audience, he must’ve looked completely wrapped around Minami’s finger…but he wasn’t wrong, either. If things continued this way, Shizuku Minami would lose in the next turn.

“It’s all right…,” Minami quietly began to speak. I don’t know if she was talking to us, the audience, or just to herself, but I could hear it. “There’s no need to worry… I’m not going to lose on purpose again.”

“…”

The simple, dignified statement, delivered in her usual monotone, caused a visible stir among the audience, even if they didn’t know what it meant. This was someone Yuzu praised as being a “real talent,” a girl who, in the past, had put up a record on par with the Empress. Now, Shizuku Minami, the Icy Blade of St. Rosalia, silently bared her fangs, no longer pretending to be what she wasn’t.

“Tch… What are you blabbering on about? I don’t know what kind of alleged new talent you are, but you’re done for… Void Cannon!”

As promised, in that fateful third turn, Komaba chose Void Canon, a powerful skill that ignored the DEF stat and dealt 3 damage as a guaranteed first strike. If it worked, the Succubus’s LP would immediately hit 0.

“Mm… Okay, then I’ll do this.”

Meanwhile, Minami had chosen to use Life Up, a base command that only increased her target’s LP by 1. It made Komaba audibly laugh.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha! An LP boost is the best you can do? That’ll let you escape Void Cannon, but did you forget about Constrict?! Three plus one equals the afterlife for you. Get her, Leviathan!”

“Grorrrrrrrrrrrhh!”

The water dragon twisted in the air, confident of victory in Komaba’s hands. It soared into the sky, water spraying around it, as a bluish-white ball of energy formed in its mouth. It was a guaranteed first strike—faster than the SPD of the Succubus—as the Leviathan unleashed a merciless, DEF-ignoring blow.

At that moment, most people present were convinced that Minami had lost. But then—

“…Activate Ability: Transform,” came a gentle whisper.

In front of the frozen Komaba, the Strength Up command displayed behind Minami dissolved into static. An instant later, the static cleared, revealing another command: Attack Up.

“Transform is a special Ability reconfigured by myself… A convenient move that takes one thing and turns it into another with similar properties. Using this, I’ll turn Life Up into Attack Up.”

“…! W-well, so what?! All that does is deal 1 damage to me. It’d make more sense for you to boost your LP!”

“No, it wouldn’t…”

Minami looked behind her. Before we knew it, a change was taking place. The commands Minami had issued in turns one, two, and now three, were shining white and overlapping to form another command—something completely different.

“Base commands have two advantages,” she began as everyone watched in awe. “The quest guide lady told us earlier. One is that the effects are permanent… Most skill commands are one-off attacks, but base commands last forever…”

“…? Everyone knows that. But even so, skill commands are a lot more—”

“But that’s not all. The second advantage is the one that really matters. You can put them together in a chain. The word command means an order you give something—but in fighting games, a special move is activated by inputting a series of commands. It’s the same here… Likewise, base commands can be combined into sets of three or more to create chained commands. The chains and their effects are undisclosed to the public, so nobody knows about them yet, I don’t think… But I also have my Mind Reader Ability activated.”

Her tone made it sound so pedestrian, but by the time Minami was finished, the three glowing commands behind her had reconfigured themselves into a new “chain” command. And the chain that resulted from Defense-Defense-Attack was:

“Spiral of Hatred… It reflects the opponent’s attack.”

“What?!!”

It was timed almost perfectly with Komaba’s shout—a shield resembling a rune-carved magic circle appeared in front of the near-death Succubus, swallowing up the ball of energy directed her way. The next instant, it reflected the attack, almost like we were watching everything in reverse. It landed for 3 points of damage, with DEF ignored, and the Leviathan had no way of avoiding it. Its body, once calmly bobbing in the air, now whipped around violently.

Minami brushed her hair back as she looked on, showing no particular reaction.

“Now, victory is mine…”

“H-huhh?! What’re you talking about? My Leviathan hasn’t lost yet!”

“But you have one LP left and no way to boost your SPD… So the Succubus is guaranteed to go first next turn. And with the effect of Attack Up, she’ll strike for one damage. And that’s it. It all adds up. Change my mind…”

“…Ah…ah… Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Komaba collapsed to the ground, his eyes wide. As he declared his surrender, the audience around us erupted into cheers.

The Game proceeded much more smoothly for us after that, and before long, the first day of Dropout Tamers came to an end.

By the time five PM rolled around, we had two combat victories and six quests completed. With our defeat of Komaba and Team XII, we had won our first battle against another team, completing the second step of the S-class quest. The next step was to build a collection of at least twenty familiars teamwide, and by the time we completed a few more quests, we found ourselves well past that number.

Just to clarify something: although Dropout Tamers is technically a team battle, team members treat their familiars as their own personal property, since we’re all from different schools. This brought up the question of what happened if you beat a team with a powerful familiar—which member of your team would get to claim it? However, Himeji had already explained that to us at yesterday’s strategy meeting.

“To avoid conflicts like this, the Game has introduced a ‘contribution system.’ In DOT, which teammate chose which commands during battle is not revealed, since that could be used to identify the traitor. However, it is kept track of internally, and based on this, a contribution score is calculated to figure out how great a role each player had in the victory.

“Rewards for successful combat and quest completion are distributed in the order of players’ contribution scores. The player with the highest score gets to choose a reward first, followed by the second, and so on. The reward-selection screen only appears for you when you have the right to a reward, and it doesn’t tell you how other players ranked or what they picked.

“Naturally, if there are more team members than familiars seized, only players with the highest contribution scores can obtain the rewards. That’s why, even though you have a traitor on the team, they won’t necessarily be able to drag you down at every opportunity.”

Thanks to that system, the B-class familiar Leviathan was awarded to Minami after our Komaba battle. If you’re fighting properly, the main player in a battle is most likely to notch the highest contribution score, so I’d call this suitably fair.

As far as other notable resources go, there was the other Hellhound I got—the same as Yuikawa’s—which I earned by being the main player in our second battle. That, and the Ninth Thunderbolt, Anzu, we got for beating a tougher quest we tackled just before the end of the day. My Hellhound’s an extra, basically, but Anzu is one of the familiars we need to conquer this Game. All in all, it was some pretty good loot for the first day.

But that wasn’t the end of day one, of course. In fact, the next phase could almost be called the “main event” of Dropout Tamers.

“Well, I suppose it’s ‘nighttime’ now.”

It was five fifteen PM on the first day of SFIA’s semifinal, and we were all checking our inventories when Yuikawa finally brought up the subject like the leader he thought he was.

“Now we have to do the elimination vote—a cruel system where the player who receives the most votes is kicked out of the Game. Normally, I think there’d be a lot of arguing and blame-slinging over this, but I think it’ll be a pretty easy vote today. The traitor’s already clear as day to us all.”

Yuikawa looked straight at Nitta as he maintained his authoritarian tone, while Nitta looked at the ground.

Yes, the elimination vote was the biggest, most vital aspect of Stage Four. When it’s night, the Vote command appears on our device. Each player must use this to choose who to remove from their team before midnight. You’re free to discuss votes and make deals with your teammates, but like I’ve been saying constantly, all of your DOT teammates are inherently the enemy. There was no easy way to trust them, so we all agreed to vote individually.

“Heh… Well, nice knowing you, Nitta. Have a good night, at least.”

With those parting words, Yuikawa gracefully left. I stood there quietly, arms folded, as I saw the back of Nitta’s head also disappear off into the distance.

Well… Yuikawa’s right. Any sensible person would conclude that Nitta’s our traitor. It’s not impossible to think that Yuikawa’s deliberately overreacting in order to frame Nitta, but that’s about the only alternative theory I can think of. Nothing Minami or Fujishiro did was fishy at all.

I kept quiet, my thoughts swimming in circles… To be honest, this was a pretty difficult choice. Nitta’s behavior seemed like an obvious trap to me, but on the other hand, if we lost Minami or Fujishiro to this vote, it’d be a huge blow to our chances, triggering major delays in our current resource gathering.

“…Hey, Minami, did you decide who you’ll vote for?”

So for some reason, I decided to ask Shizuku Minami, who was just standing there, scrolling on her device right next to me. She might try to lie or deceive me, of course, but even so, her answer would provide a good reference. Fujishiro, who was still with us, lifted his head as well, perhaps curious about what the Sleeping Lioness had to say.

“Mmm… Pretty much…”

With our focus on her, Minami’s hair softly swayed as she nodded.

“I’m going to vote for our worthless leader…because he picked on Nitta so much. Whether you believe that…is up to you.”

“I see.”

I nodded at her usual matter-of-fact tone. Minami was promising to vote for Kanade Yuikawa, and that sounded reasonably credible to me. If she’d said Nitta instead, it could lead to suspicion that she was lying in order to keep Nitta from being voted out, but there was little merit to her nominating Yuikawa and then voting for someone else.

That left Fujishiro’s vote in question.

“…Sorry to disappoint ya,” he said, hands in his pockets and leaning against a nearby wall, “but I ain’t gonna tell anyone. I respect the way Minami’s thinkin’ here, and it’s a strategy that might work, but I’m not gonna say anything. Whether you trust me or not, there’s no such thing as an out-and-out ally in this Game. The only thing I’ll believe in is my own answer.”

“…Yeah, fair. And that’s fine, of course. I don’t feel like telling you all, either.”

“What? …Why do I have to be the only one to say it?” Minami asked. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll cry and scream about being sexually harassed by you… First cheating, now harassment… You’re gonna love tomorrow’s LNN broadcast…”

“Wait a sec! I’m not telling because I haven’t decided who I’ll vote for yet. Let me repay you some other way.”

“Some other way… Okay, walk me home, then. I have no idea where I am right now… At this rate, I’ll have to sleep on some park bench. If I get sick, it’ll be all your fault…”

“…I’m sure as shit not wasting my time looking after her. You take her back, Shinohara.”

“…? You’re going home alone, this late? …Meeting your girlfriend?”

“…! Sh-shut up. We’re not even a couple yet,” Fujishiro responded with an inscrutable expression.

Minami gave a light round of applause at this unexpected answer. Judging by Fujishiro’s reaction, I guessed that things were going pretty well with Yuuka Mano, the girl who’d expressed her feelings for him through DearScript. Maybe that urban legend about Café du Chocolat was true, after all.

So after a long day, we all headed back home.

“Hmm? …Oh, Shinohara. You’re back?”

It was past seven in the evening by the time I returned to the Fourth Ward, after dropping off Minami at the Fourteenth. Himeji was waiting for me at the station, and we both headed straight over to the Eimei School.

Enomoto and the two other DOT participants (minus Minakami) had gathered in the student council office and were sitting in front of a few monitors analyzing something. Enomoto didn’t waste time with greetings, instead interrogating us about the state of our team and thrusting a thick set of reports outlining the events of today into our laps.

“Hmm…”

According to the data, day one of Dropout Tamers saw every team steadily build up their forces. A lot of C-class familiars with useful skill commands were being discovered, and most of the B-class ones needed for victory conditions had been obtained by one team or another. With the A-class familiars pretty well spread out, there was no chance of any team winning immediately, but depending on how tomorrow worked out, it was possible one team might satisfy the victory conditions by the end of the day. The “chain” system revealed to the public by Minami was also starting to be recognized as an important strategic element.

“Looking at all this, I’m sure it’s going to be a giant melee tomorrow.”

Enomoto, noticing that he had our attention, picked up his can of coffee and moved to the table where we were looking through his report.

“You’re making progress on the S-class quest, so I’m sure you know this already, but the next step calls for you to win seven or more battles against other teams. If you finish that, it’ll lead to a combat encounter with the Archangel, the Game’s one and only S-class familiar… So your chance of obtaining that directly correlates with how fast you rack up those wins. Every team’s going to be focused on battle, of course.”

“Yeah. I guess the number of resources we built up on day one will affect a lot of things, huh?”

“It seems so, yes. And with your team… Well, from what I’ve heard so far, I think you’re doing all right so long as you can do something about that One Star.”

“Yeah, that’s the vibe I’m getting, too. It’ll depend on how tonight’s vote works out, but if Nitta survives, she’ll still have that Seal on her, so we’re safe for now. As for the other teams…”

I slowly turned my gaze to the left, where I saw Akizuki. Normally, she’d be giving me a sly smile right now, but instead she had her arms splayed out across the table and was looking up at me with a scrunched-up face and tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Oooh, Hiroto… I’m a little tired. If I could get a hug, I’d feel a lot more energized.”

“Oh? Well, if you insist, Ms. Akizuki. Allow me to hug you as hard as I—”

“Ah! Not youuu! Honestly… Hee-hee! You’re so possessive, Shirayuki!  ”

“…I don’t know what you mean.”

This enigmatic battle of wits was taking place with me in the middle. It was par for the course by now, and I waited for it to settle down before I spoke to Akizuki.

“Anyway…you were the traitor, right, Akizuki? On a team with Saionji, and Kururugi, and a Hexagram official. Did it wear you down?”

“Mmm, maybe a little. Nobody’s gonna notice as long as I don’t do anything weird. And they’re all so good we didn’t have any trouble making progress, but…”

“But?”

“…But the Empress is just, like, sooo amazing. I wanted to use my position as traitor to mess things up, but then she used this Ability called Cooperation EX, and that took nearly every move of mine off the table. Like, she’d just be standing there smiling all cute, and it felt like she was seeing through me the whole time… So yeah, Kururugi and Akutsu are real good players, too, but in terms of who’s scariest, it’s probably the Empress by far.”

“Hmm… Yeah, I’ll bet. They don’t call her the Empress for nothing.”

“Totally. So all I could really do is ensnare this teammate of mine and make him do my bidding. That, and I purposely let a rival team seize this B-class familiar with a really strong command and pinned the blame on him.  ”

“…You’re pretty scary, too, Little Devil.”

“Hee-hee!   Aw, thanks for the praise, Hiroto!  ”

Akizuki gave me a broad smile, swinging her legs happily. After a little while, she spoke up again, as if she had just remembered what she’d been saying.

“Anyway, that’s how today went for my team, y’know? Then we did all the voting together, so I’m pretty sure nobody’s gonna get kicked out today… But it’s kind of going too smoothly, which isn’t great for a traitor like me. The Empress started with this familiar called Suzaku, and its intrinsic Ability’s super useful, so we’ve been gathering resources like mad. Plus, it’s one of the familiars our team needs to win, so if we can find another A-class, we’re, like, more than halfway there. I mean, I’ll try as much as I can to prevent that, though…  ”

“…Yeah, good luck with that,” I replied with a nod. The way Akizuki put it, I didn’t like her chances…but all that could be said was that she’d had awful luck.

“So how’d it go with you, Asamiya?”

“…Hweh? Uh, me?”

After hearing about Akizuki, I decided to ask Asamiya next. She was sitting next to Enomoto, the thick report spread out in front of her. She’d been too busy reading all the text to notice me at first, but then she looked up, her golden hair swaying.

“Well, it’s going pretty great, actually! The Phoenix—Kugasaki from the Eighth Ward—pretty much declared himself our leader. You know, he’s real charismatic…but he’s a lot more than that, too. I mean, the face, the cape, the laugh—it’s all pretty freaky, but he’s actually a nice guy. I think he really helped us bond as a team!”

“Hmm. It’s not like you to rely on someone else so much, Nanase,” commented Enomoto. “I’m sure the Phoenix must be sick of you by now.”

“A-as if! I mean, I was the most active team member today, no matter how you look at it!”

“Yes, thanks to the support I gave you. Don’t let it go to your head, Nanase.”

“Uh-uhhh! I could’ve held my own just fine, thank you very much! Also, you’re putting me in serious danger whenever you talk into my ear, so can you hold back on that a little, huh? It felt like steam was about to come out of my ears!”

“Steam out your ears…? I don’t know what you’re going on about, but what do you want me to do?”

“Well… I dunno, use a voice changer or something. Pfft! No, I can’t even…”

“Can you stop saying and imagining weird things around me?”

Enomoto frowned, his arms crossed. I had to admit, it’d be pretty funny to hear him speaking in a high-pitched or deep bass voice from my device.

Looks like she’s doing okay, though. As I thought, the Game’s really gonna kick off on day two…

I put my right hand to the corner of my lips as I thought things over. I had some internal squabbles to deal with today—mainly involving Nitta—but with the S-class quest, we couldn’t waste time on that tomorrow. From here on out, we needed to start seriously thinking about how we were going to win this thing.

…Oh. That reminds me…

“And also, Shinohara…”

The moment my thoughts shifted to the one girl who wasn’t here, Enomoto spoke up like he was reading my mind.

“Like I told you,” he softly said, his eye on the door, “I’m looking into the Hexagram alongside our Game analysis. We knew getting any information through official channels was a nonstarter, so I’ve been contacting all the ex-Academy students who left the island for one reason or another. That helped us gain a better grasp of things… But they really are up to no good. Even more so than I thought.”

“…Yeah? What do you mean? Aren’t they supposed to be ‘defenders of justice’?”

“I told you they weren’t. I already mentioned Eimei’s former ace… And yes, that’s just my own personal take on it, but there’s more. Apparently, the Hexagram has a system where your star rank goes up merely by being a member of their organization. Can you believe it?”

“…What? Why? Like, automatically, or what? How’s that even possible?”

“It’s not, usually. But Kaoru’s not your usual player. He’s got two Unique Stars, and one of them—the rust-colored one—lets him take stars from people in Games even if they’re ranked lower than him. Saeki can amass star after star and pass them out to other people, like company promotions. It’s limited, though, because there’s only so many Five Stars and up allowed at once.”

“Yeah, but like…”

“I know. We still don’t have the whole picture. In order to pass out stars, Kaoru Saeki would have to be defeated by a fellow Hexagram member, which means he should have lost his Unique Stars long ago. There’s probably still a lot we don’t know about this… But the circumstantial evidence is starting to pile up, isn’t it? And I also heard this—supposedly the Hexagram holds its own battle events from time to time, giving out huge rewards to the winners. Most of the players are low-ranking One Stars living in debt because they can’t pay back the Academy what they owe after losing a Game. The Hexagram frame it as providing relief to people like that, but… Well, for every winner, there’s a loser, too. And you should know what happens to the losers, Shinohara.”

I was silenced by Enomoto’s gaze. If the players didn’t receive “salvation,” they’d be burdened with even more debt, and nothing they could pay back too easily. Then what would they do? The answer was already clear.

“Their stars get taken by the Hexagram—by Saeki… Yeah, normally, a One Star player doesn’t give up their star if they lose, but with Kaoru’s Unique Star…”

“Exactly, Shinohara. Players who lose in these battles either get their stars taken on the spot, or they’re forced into indentured servitude by the Hexagram. The latter, in most cases. Having zero stars means immediate exile from the Academy, after all. If that’s the threat you face, you pretty much have no choice but to obey.”

“…That’s so harsh.”

“It sure is,” Enomoto said, nodding with a frown.

Just then, I heard a voice in my earpiece, adding to the gloom.

“Hey, Hiro, sorry I took so long! I know it’s late, but right now seemed like a good time to chime in. I think I’ve uncovered a bunch of stuff about Sana Nitta, the first-year from the Twentieth Ward’s Azuminodai School!”

I quietly focused on Kagaya’s voice. Something about her excitement, or impatience, told me this was important.

“It turns out she’s exactly that! One of the Hexagram’s slaves, like the president over there was just talking about! She lost a Game right after joining her school, then wound up getting deeper and deeper in debt, so she tried turning to the Hexagram for help…but sadly, it didn’t work out well for her there, either. That was probably a frame job, too, it looks like…

“…Or, really, it might all be an act put on by Hexagram. Like with all the stuff it was caught up in last year. They’re not just at all, y’know? They’re totally evil. And they’ve been reaching out to top students from lots of different wards since before SFIA began, so this runs deep.

“But hey, Hiro, you haven’t voted yet, have you? Whatever you do, don’t vote Nitta out! I’m sure she pulled that stunt on your team today because the Hexagram ordered her to do it! That’s how Eimei’s ace got creamed last year. If she drops out of this, it’s gonna be awful for us; I’m sure of it…!”

Kagaya’s new information left me more than a little shaken, but on the outside, I remained calm and gathered my thoughts… It made sense. If Sana Nitta was a slave forced to do the Hexagram’s bidding, her being in Dropout Tamers was a deliberate ploy by the Hexagram. If we kicked her out of the Game, we could be playing right into their hands.

Having reached that conclusion, I silently looked up. Himeji looked worried next to me, so I relaxed my expression slightly to reassure her and spoke up.

“Well…anyway, even if the Hexagram’s evil after all, there’s not much we can do about it right now. We’ll stay on our guard, but it’s not like we’ve got—”

“…Wait a minute, Shinohara!”

At that moment, the door to the student council room opened with a quiet click, revealing a girl with a strong-willed expression and long black hair down to her thighs. It was Mari Minakami—and her pout revealed how obviously frustrated she was right now.

“What are you talking about? The Hexagram is evil? That’s completely impossible. You shouldn’t take out your irritation on other people just because they’re about to uncover all your misdeeds!”

“…You heard all that, Minakami? I wasn’t talking about you behind your back or anything. We were just speculating and talking about how we need to watch out for them.”

“Yeah, and I’m saying I don’t like it! You can say whatever you want to about me as a newcomer to this school, but I’m not going to put up with you belittling everything the older members of the Hexagram have achieved…!”

She stomped right up to me, bringing her scowling face close to mine.

“I demand an apology! I was saved by the Hexagram’s justice, remember. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here right now. Are you going to call that evil, too, Shinohara?!”

“Of course not. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But I have to say, right now, I’m not gonna apologize or take back anything else I said.”

“Wha—?”

“Also,” I said, cutting her off, “not to change the subject, but do you know Sana Nitta?”

Minakami sounded pretty annoyed about my attitude by now, but she was still honest enough to give me an answer.

“Of course. She’s part of your team, right? …What about her?”

I fell silent. Minakami didn’t sound like she knew where this question was going—and for all I knew, maybe she didn’t know Nitta beyond that. She was part of the Hexagram, but not at all related to the more “evil” parts Enomoto had been talking about. And if Minakami is that sincerely devoted to the Hexagram—if she’s hoping to bring about true justice, and if that’s causing her to be used right now—that was a bit too cruel.

“…?”

My thoughts raced as Minakami looked on quizzically.

“Right…”

Once we finished discussing all that, I headed home with Himeji. It was around ten PM by the time I was done eating dinner. It’d be another early morning tomorrow and I didn’t want to stay up too late, but I still had a couple of things left to do.

“Hey! Hey, Hiroto! Hey!”

Tsumugi Shiina was right next to me in the middle of the sofa, her eyes gleaming as she carried on. She was in her usual gothic-Lolita outfit, her oddly colored black and red eyes looking up at me. Her shiny black hair and the smell of her shampoo pressed up against me.

That’s right. Just as Kagaya was looking into Nitta for me, I was having Shiina analyze everything she could about this Game. And based on that, I was now making a few key adjustments to my strategy.

“Look at this! It’s a list of all the familiars in your team’s possession, plus their skill commands! See this one here? It’s exactly like one of the familiars I had down in the underworld!”

“Wow… Really? But how did you befriend someone this large?”

“Hee-hee! That’s easy! My demon eyes have the Charm effect, you know!”

“…Oh. Very convenient.”

I think it was a different skill the last time we had this conversation, but it wasn’t nice to nitpick.

So instead, I dove into the data Shiina had found for me—the familiars of my team members and the skill commands of each one. Sometimes, familiars were far more useful for their commands than their actual fighting ability, so I wanted to check over all of this sooner rather than later.

A few choice finds included:

Demon’s Pact: Possessed by the B-class Succubus. Allows you to drain your DEF, SPD, and LP as much as you want, double the points lost, then add them to your ATK.

Abyssal Pyre: Possessed by the B-class Hellhound. A group attack that strikes all familiars involved in combat for 2× your ATK. However, if it misses against any target, all damage is reflected back to your familiar instead.

Constrict: Possessed by the B-class Leviathan. Skips the regular attack for that turn and summons a trap that deals 1 damage at the end of every turn.

There were loads and loads of commands, some of which I was already familiar with.

“The B-class familiars have way more useful skills, huh? A lot of them come with drawbacks, but they’re flashy and superstrong, too.”

“Yeah! Oh, but there are some pretty powerful C-class familiars, too! The Lich and its Void Cannon are C-class, for example. And I like your Fairy a lot, too!”

“My Fairy? Why’s that?”

“Because it’s really, really fast!”

She sounded very happy about that. And yeah, Fairy—the familiar I started with—was all about speed. She’d always get the first strike against almost any foe; that’s how dominant she was there. Every other stat of hers was 1, which meant she hadn’t seen much use today, but under the right conditions, she might get her time to shine.

Anyway, now I had the info I needed about our current familiars.

“Next we need to work out what Abilities to fit into our strategy…”

I switched screens on my device to a list of Abilities I’d brought into Dropout Tamers.

My first was Inferior Copy, the Ability granted by my purple Unique Star that let me “copy” the data of my choice. I’d chosen that Ability first, hoping to use it on familiars and their commands. The problem, though—or I guess the thing I needed to think about, was this other Ability in my slots. Predict Behavior and **** were listed on the screen. **** was an Ability that had been conceived by Shiina and developed by Kagaya; it was a pretty bold rearrangement of Predict Behavior, the skill from my green star. It could read not only my opponents’ actions but also how the Game itself would play out, then reflect that information on another Ability. It required Predict Behavior to be installed as well, so it took up two slots, but I couldn’t ask for a more flexible tool, really.

While I had the chance, I really wanted to install something that’d pack more of a punch in battles for me, but…

“…Well, ideally, you’d want an Ability that works well with chain commands.”

Himeji quietly offered this suggestion as she brought us some tea. Once she placed everything carefully on the table, she took a look at Shiina, still sticking to my left side like glue, and opted to sit down on my right side instead. It felt like she was a little closer than usual as she flicked her hair aside.

“Chain commands are an element not discussed in the main rules. From what I could see in today’s gameplay, they seem far more powerful than any of the skill commands by themselves. To be exact, we saw Spiral of Hatred, a move that reflects damage, but there are a variety of other powerful effects, from high-end damage that ignores defense to guaranteed evasion of attacks. The Company is working on analyzing these, and I think we can provide you with a list of moves and how to activate them tomorrow.”

“Okay… Sounds great. That’d be really useful.”

I nodded at Himeji. If I could aim for the exact chain commands I wanted, making full use of them would become a standard strategy of any battle. Along those lines, it was becoming clearer which Abilities would be most effective. I would work out exactly how Predict Behavior and the blank slate that was **** function in due time, but they would truly begin to shine in tomorrow’s battles.

“By the way,” Himeji softly said, “it’s almost eleven PM. Have you decided who you’ll vote for?”

“…Oh, right.”

She was talking about the topic I’d discussed with my team before we split up today. The elimination vote was one of Dropout Tamers’ main features. I had until midnight to cast my vote, so I didn’t have much more time to agonize over it.

“Fwaaah…”

Shiina, leaning all over me, was starting to get drowsy. Himeji lowered her voice to a near whisper.

“As Kagaya said earlier, there is no way we can allow Ms. Nitta to be voted off. However, that leaves us with no other clear candidate to vote for, so I think your strategy will involve having nobody leave the team instead.”

“Yeah. If two or more people are tied in the vote, they both get to stay. So that means either everyone receives one vote, or two people receive two votes.”

“Exactly. But in order to aim for that, you need a perfect understanding of how everyone else will vote. We know for now that Mr. Yuikawa will vote for Sana Nitta and that Ms. Minami will vote for Kanade Yuikawa; however, as to the rest…”

“Mmm, well, we can narrow down Nitta’s vote, I bet. If the Hexagram’s forcing her to drop out now, she’s not going to vote for the obvious suspect and add to their number of votes. And looking at how the Game worked out today, I think Yuikawa’s the second most suspicious member after Nitta…which means Nitta wouldn’t have voted for him. Since you can’t vote for yourself, all we know for sure is that Nitta and Yuikawa are both gonna receive one vote.”

“…Right, that’s true.”

Himeji nodded, a white gloved hand on her lips.

I decided to think a little about Fujishiro, the last member to consider. He’d probably also realized that Nitta wasn’t all that she seemed and that keeping her on was a smart idea. If we were no longer sure who the traitor was, the ideal result for day one in his mind would be nobody getting voted out… And that means he and I can work together on this a little.

“It’ll be hard to engineer everyone receiving one vote if we don’t know who Nitta’s voting for. But it won’t be hard at all to have two people receive two votes. If Fujishiro and I vote for Nitta and Yuikawa, it’ll work out two-two-one no matter who Nitta votes for—and that’s the draw we want.”

“Certainly. The question is who Mr. Fujishiro will vote for…but I imagine it’ll be Mr. Yuikawa, in the end. For Mr. Fujishiro, losing Ms. Nitta will be much more of a blow. Mr. Yuikawa is more important in terms of firepower, of course, but now that you have a Hellhound as well, losing him won’t be as lethal a blow.”

“Right. So I know I’d be breaking my promise to Kagaya, but…”

I tapped the screen of my device. If Fujishiro was voting for Kanade Yuikawa, that meant I needed to pick Sana Nitta, after all. I needed to vote for the one girl I least wanted to lose in an effort to keep everybody on the board.

And so the long night of Werewolf came to a close.

“I never thought I’d be seeing your face again today…”

It was nine AM the next morning, and Yuikawa sighed as he watched Sana Nitta approach the meeting point. She was on time today, at least, for day two of Dropout Tamers.

The results of the votes were announced a few hours ago. Of the twenty teams in the SFIA semifinal, six were starting day two with their full lineup, nine teams had either misread the situation or been tricked into kicking out a member who wasn’t the traitor, four teams had successfully eliminated the traitor from their ranks…and there was also one very unusual case.

Our Team VI was one of the six that still had their complete member roster. The exact vote results weren’t released, but I’m pretty sure it had worked out as I’d predicted.

“…Well, whatever, I guess.”

Nitta, her hood pulled down over her head, coldly stared at the sarcastic Yuikawa…but she looked a lot paler than she had yesterday. Surviving another day probably wasn’t on her agenda. Her head was tilted down a little as she nervously clutched her left arm.

I couldn’t tell if he noticed her reaction. Yuikawa gave a disgruntled shrug.

“Hmph… Well, look, I’m not going to drag this on forever. Really, the problem doesn’t involve you at all. Why did some of you not vote for a player who openly admitted she was the traitor?”

“…Huh? Well, lemme ask you this, man. Why’re you thinking she’s the traitor based solely on what you know so far? You never considered for a moment that this might be a trap?”

“…?! A-a trap? Of course I thought about that. But nobody else is suspicious at all—”

“Well, if we’re talking suspicious, you’re not exactly un-suspicious, you know? And I’m not even talking about my stalker, and that delinquent…”

“Ugh… A-all right, I’ll drop it, okay? But just know you’ll be out of this game tomorrow morning!”

Perhaps he realized the wind was blowing against him, because Yuikawa turned his back on us in irritation.

“Okay then… Let’s recap our situation right now.”

Sensing it was time to move on, I took my device out of my pocket. Yuikawa sniffed at this as he combed back his hair, and Fujishiro silently turned toward me, all of them showing their agreement in their own unique way. (Minami, by the way, was right next to me, blithely staring at my screen.)

“The four A-class familiars have been spread among four different teams since we began yesterday. They’re in the possession of Saionji, Kirigaya, Saeki, and Yumeno. Everyone’s got to be gunning for them, but I haven’t seen anyone make a move yet.”

“Seems tough… But if we start seeing action around those familiars, we could see a team break through pretty soon, don’t you think? We might see the S-class familiar for ourselves before too much longer.”

“Yeah. So considering that, the first thing we need to shoot for is the A-class familiars we need to win. We’ll need the S-class one as well, but I don’t mind if we have to seize it from someone else in the end. What matters are those Class A ones…and there’s something else we need to think about.”

“Something else? …What to talk about during our victory speech, maybe?”

“You’re that sure we’re going to win…? Well, no, not that. Something more basic: how we should attack teams that’re more powerful than us.”

I brushed aside Minami’s joke and got down to business. She pouted for a bit, but it didn’t seem to bother her for too long.

“How to attack them…? Or, to make it sound cooler, a ‘strategy’… That sort of thing?”

“I don’t know if that makes it sound any cooler, but pretty much. It’ll take more than just blindly fighting other people to seize an A-class familiar and keep it safe from others, right? We didn’t flush out the traitor in last night’s voting, so if it isn’t Nitta, that means we might have at least two people not playing for the team, so to speak.”

“That’s a good point…but what do you mean by ‘at least’?”

“I mean exactly that. Taking into account the S-class quest, we’re gonna see some big moves in Dropout Tamers today. I’m sure at least one team’s gonna earn a trip to the final stage, and we might see traitors make a name for themselves, too. And the more slots get filled for the final, the more people will start putting loyalty to their schools ahead of that to their teams. Like, thinking that it doesn’t matter if they’re eliminated as long as they can help out their friends. So what I’m looking for is a strategy that lets us win without any big problems, even with those potential question marks.”

I brought the terminal in my right hand up to eye level. A certain Ability name popped up on everybody else’s screens.

“An Ability… Fragile Covenant?”

That’s right. This was the effect I’d worked out with the Company last night using the **** clean-slate Ability, which leveraged Predict Behavior to provide me ultimate freedom.

“So listen. This Ability takes the core tenet of DOT—that someone among us is a traitor—and turns that whole idea on its head. Put simply, it’s a pact that prevents members of Team VI from using skill commands. As long as we all stick to it, all the base commands will give buffs of plus two, rather than plus one.”

“…Too long. I can’t remember all that. Ten words or less, please…”

“Uh… I can’t compress it that much. Basically, we can only use base commands, but it boosts their effect a lot. If a skill command is chosen, it’ll be sealed, but if three or more people select a skill command at the same time, the Fragile Covenant is broken.”

“Oh… I see. And that way, I can preserve my Seal?”

“Yeah. A lot of skill commands have negative effects, so if the traitor among us starts to act out, it could end very quickly for us. But if we only have access to base commands, that can’t happen, right? We can simply apply the buffs to our own familiars and the debuffs to our opponents’.”

“…Not bad. It’s not a bad idea, but after we worked so hard to earn those skill commands, aren’t we just penalizing ourselves if we shut away access to them? ’Cause there’s always a chance you’re the traitor, and if so, it’s nothin’ but a big risk. Like, is there even any guarantee that we can only win with base commands?”

“Oh, sure. Like you saw yesterday, this Game supports chain commands that only activate when you string three or more base commands together in a set order—and since they’re all made up of base commands, they can be powered up with Fragile Covenant, too. Now, Minami has the Mind Reader Ability, and I’m also using a research-type Ability, so we know how to activate any chain command we want. Plus, our stat buffs will all be doubled, so I don’t really see it as that much of a handicap, y’know? And even better, if we’re not using skill commands, we don’t stand to give up as much if we lose.”

Fujishiro closed his eyes and crossed his arms. His body language seemed to say, “I’m cool, so you guys talk it out.” With a Six Star like him giving his approval, Yuikawa and Minami agreed without much further hesitation. Nitta was silent but eventually nodded as well, and so the Covenant was passed by unanimous decision.

“Now that that’s done, we just need to decide which familiars to try to capture…”

I looked at the team info screen on my device. To recap, the familiars we needed to qualify for the final stage were the S-class Archangel, the A-class Byakko and Genbu, and the B-class Hellhound, Hanuman, and Anzu—six in total. We already had two of the B-class familiars, so our main goal today was to capture the A- and S-class ones.

Next, I looked into who was currently in possession of those A-class familiars. Genbu was owned by Toya Kirigaya, who wasn’t teamed with anyone from Eimei, so I didn’t know much about what he was up to Game-wise. If he had an A-class familiar, though, he was gonna be a tough opponent to fight.

Byakko, on the other hand, belonged to Misaki Yumeno, the first-year from the Seventeenth Ward’s Amanezaka School. She had scored the most wins in Stage Two and was the first to beat Stage Three, garnering her tons of attention—but she was going even crazier here in DOT.

Earlier this morning, when Himeji and I were looking over who’d dropped out of the Game so far…

“And finally, we have Team X, the one Misaki Yumeno belongs to. That’s the real outlier of the Game so far—all the members other than her have been eliminated… That’s right, all four of them. I believe that Ms. Yumeno is using some sort of Ability like Disperse that takes the target’s ‘state’ and infects others with it. If I had to guess, she correctly predicted who’d receive the most elimination votes, invoked Disperse on that person, and spread the ‘eliminated’ state to the rest of her team…while protecting herself with Cancel Interference. A true dark horse. What a terrifying first-year she is.”

I had to shake my head a bit.

Kirigaya and Yumeno are both real bad news…but we need their A-class familiars if we want to win this. They’re gonna be hard to overpower as it stands now, so the longer we wait, the tougher it’ll be to deal with them. We better strike early—especially at Yumeno.

She was already making a legend for herself… But on the other hand, two of her Ability slots were occupied by Disperse and Cancel Interference. We also vastly outnumbered her, so I still thought we had a decent fighting chance.

So we opted to start off the day setting our sights on Yumeno’s Byakko. But these things never go as planned, of course—and the moment we went on the move, we had a combat encounter with another team. We managed to fend them off, luckily, then loaded up IslandTube to figure out where Yumeno was, when—

“Well, well.”

I heard a voice from somewhere as I was looking down at my device. It was only two words, but the tone indicated just how defiant and composed she was. Even without turning around, I could easily picture her luxurious red hair dancing in the wind—the classic look for that fake heiress.

“Why are you trying to target other teams, Shinohara? I have an A-class familiar, too, you know… Hee-hee! Are you afraid of me, maybe? If so, that’s a surprise to see from you.”

Sarasa Saionji, the almost-undefeated former Seven Star Empress of Ohga, had a feckless smile on her face, as usual. Her crimson eyes were fixed upon me as she held her arms loosely over her chest.

“…”

Before I could respond to her provocation, I noticed the four teammates standing behind her. Two of them I knew well. Noa Akizuki was gleefully waving both hands at me, her twin ponytails shaking around in the air, while Senri Kururugi was in full Hell’s Priestess mode, her eyes sharp and a wooden sword at her waist.

Noticing my gaze, Kururugi smiled a little. “We meet again, young man. Perhaps this is the hand of fate at work.”

Can’t say I’m all too happy about it…

Everyone runs away from this girl in battle, so seeing her act so belligerently with me was far from welcome. I was barely managing to keep it together on the inside, so I focused my attention on the other two members.

Miyabi Akutsu, Six Star from the Second Ward and part of the Hexagram’s administration, was staring right at me, as if observing my behavior. She didn’t say anything in particular, though.

“Uh, hi… Ha-ha-ha.”

On the far end was a male student wearing the same Shinra High School uniform as Kirigaya. He looked like he didn’t want to be here very much, and compared to all the powerhouse girls on this team, he seemed kind of flaky and forgettable. I didn’t have much info on him, but the other four alone provided more firepower than they could have ever needed.

“Huh…?!”

Still, I shoved my right hand into my pocket, my shoes tapping on the ground as I advanced toward Saionji. Once we were close enough to easily reach out and touch one another—a good range for sneaking private messages in between our trash-talking for the public audience—I smiled a bit.

“Who’s afraid of who, huh? What do I have to be afraid of? I’ve never lost before. The fact is that we’re not after your Suzaku—we need Genbu and Byakko. Plus, my Eimei classmate Akizuki’s on your team. I’ve got no reason to be aggressive toward you.”

“Hee-hee! Genbu, huh? Then I think you do have a reason to fight me…and don’t forget, you have Fujishiro on your team. But I’m not going to hesitate. Because even if I take your familiars right now, I’m sure Fujishiro will find a way to win this stage in the end. Should I take your attitude to mean you don’t think the same about Akizuki?”

“Oh, great, more of your twisted logic? …Akizuki’s strong. Probably up at the top of all Six Stars. But Dropout Tamers isn’t a Game where good stats guarantee you a win, is it?”

“Aw, hee-hee-hee! Thanks for all the praise!   Much appreciated, Hiroto!  ”

“…Hmph. You hardly ever praise me… I’m putting my foot down. I’m done talking, and don’t you dare expect me to let you get away!”

Saionji sounded genuinely angry for some reason. The battle request from her team came immediately afterward, and since we had no way to avoid it, the fight was quickly underway.

…?! Whoa, she’s really gonna attack us?!

I’d been hoping to settle this peacefully with a trade or something, but while I kept calm on the outside, I was internally panicking. This was just a single in-Game battle, so there was no risk of our lies being exposed if one of us lost, but we still had to choose our actions carefully.

Saionji, however, didn’t seem to get that memo. She was standing tall before me, brushing her red hair back and giving me a menacing smile.

“Hee-hee! I’ll go ahead and reveal to you that I’m picking my A-class Suzaku for this fight. He’s got some lovely skills, and since you don’t have any A-class guys, I can even dictate what familiar you’re gonna use against him. And I pick your B-class Hellhound—that’s the final piece of our puzzle, and it’ll be our seventh victory. We’ll be just one task away from beating the S-class quest.”

“…Wait, what? So you already have your second A-class familiar?”

“Sure do! I told you you’ve got a good reason to fight me. I don’t have it personally, but we just acquired the A-class familiar Genbu in a trade with Kirigaya. It seems like that trade allowed him to complete his traitor checklist and win his way out, but… Oh! Actually, I have a message from him for you. He said, ‘It’s no fun beating you like this, so I better see you in the final stage once you’re done cleaning up the trash.’”

“…!”

I couldn’t find the words to respond to Saionji’s stunning news. Instead, I put a finger to my earpiece, and shortly after I received a whispered reply.

“Confirmed… Rina’s telling the truth. Just a short time ago, Mr. Kirigaya temporarily obtained the A-class familiar Suzaku, enabling him to meet all the victory conditions. He’s the first player to complete Dropout Tamers.”

Himeji confirmed that this wasn’t a lie or ruse…but now it was even trickier to read Saionji’s true intentions. It sounded like she seriously wanted to take my familiar away from me, but—

Wait… Is that what she’s thinking…?

My eyes instantly widened slightly as I realized that was the complete opposite of what I’d been thinking earlier.

One thing to remember is that it’s impossible for multiple teams to win at the same time in this Game. For example, between us and Saionji’s team, the familiars we both needed were apparently the S-class Archangel, the A-class Genbu, and the B-class Hellhound. There were multiples of each B-class type out there, but if Saionji and I both wanted to reach the final stage, one of us needed to win first and release our familiars back into the pot for quests. It didn’t matter which of us did it first, but it had to be one, then the other—not simultaneously.

…Now I get it. Well, cool. Whoever wins right now, no hard feelings, then.

Saionji put a graceful hand on her hip. Then, at last, the battle moved to the prep stage. Team III was using Suzaku, and its main player was Saionji, of course. Deploying an A-class familiar came with a big risk, but there wasn’t a trace of doubt on her face. My team, meanwhile, was stuck with the Hellhound she’d picked for us—but since both Yuikawa and I had one, we were allowed to choose who’d serve as our main player. Yuikawa, full of his pointless confidence, was all set to claim his spot, but…

“Let me do it.”

“Huh?”

“The battle… I want to fight the Empress. I can use the Transform Ability to turn my Leviathan into a Hellhound… Okay?”

Now, oddly enough, Minami was stepping up as a third candidate. For a moment, it looked like Yuikawa would protest, but he kept quiet and let Minami have her way. I guess he must’ve been picking up on the oddly charged atmosphere around her, that aura we’d detected before whenever she got serious. A glimpse of her intensely sharp talent was enough to make your entire body shiver.

She can transform familiars, too, not just commands? If it’s that useful an Ability, I wish she could have saved it for later, but we might as well let her have her fun.

So I gave the nod—not because her overpowering gaze defeated me or anything, though.

“…Thanks,” Minami replied, before walking in front of us.

Saionji wasn’t sure what to make of it. “…Hmm? I was expecting Shinohara…but it’s you, Shizuku?”

“Yes. You’re facing me… I’ve always wanted to battle you. You’re really my kind of girl, you know… And if I win, I want you to let me do all sorts of things to you.”

“Oh? I’m flattered that by how passionate you are… But I’m not going to lose, so I can’t make any promises like that.”

“You’re flattered? Oh… Well, if I lose, I’ll let you do all sorts of things to me instead. That way, we’re even…”

“…Hee-hee! You’re as twisted as ever, Shizuku. But all right. I’m ready for you.”

With a sly, elegant smile, Saionji brought her right hand up, activating the AR on her device and summoning the legendary divine beast Suzaku above her head. A vibrant, otherworldly glow shimmered across its body—probably a symbol of its A-class status. Between its dazzling color and dignified, imposing movements, it was the perfect familiar for Saionji.

“I’ll take you up on that offer, then… Let’s go.”

A breath later, Minami summoned her own familiar—the B-class Hellhound, emitting a loud howl at Suzaku up in the sky. Then all fell silent for a moment as the battle kicked into action.

“…!”

Minami seemed to have the advantage at first. Her strategy was quite simple—buff her familiar over and over to power it up. That was pretty much it. Having all her base commands doubled by Fragile Covenant worked greatly in her favor, and her own two Abilities meshed perfectly with that.

“Simple is best, as they say…”

Although Transform was a kind of ranged attack, she wasn’t using any other special Abilities—just the all-purpose Variable Control alongside Recycle, which let you invoke an Ability more times than usual. However, thanks to fine-tuning how these Abilities worked with each other, she had created a sort of perpetual motion machine. Variable Control boosted her base commands, Recycle recharged the number of Variable Control uses she had, and then the cycle began again. Looping these effects together led to tremendous results, and if she hadn’t tapped into this during the Komaba battle, I guess she hadn’t been quite fully serious about that fight, after all.

…Oh? But wait…

I felt like I’d picked up one other crazy fact about Minami’s strategy…but first, here’s the status of both familiars at the end of turn two:

Team III: Sarasa Saionji Familiar Used: Southern Guardian, Suzaku (A)

Familiar Stats: ATK 7, DEF 6, SPD 9, LP 8 (+1)

Unused Commands: Attack Up / Void Cannon / Self-Inflicted Trap

Team VI: Shizuku Minami Familiar Used: First Brimstone, Hellhound (B)

Familiar Stats: ATK 4 (+27), DEF 5, SPD 5, LP 5 (+22)

Unused Commands: Defense Down / Life Up / Speed Up

…I almost had to laugh at how powerful this setup was. A simple, normal attack dealt 25 points of damage to Suzaku in one hit. If Saionji hadn’t used the damage-canceling command Iron Wall on her second turn, this fight would’ve been over long ago. Plus, these base command buffs were permanent across the entire battle, and now that Iron Wall was a thing of the past, there was nothing in Saionji’s hand that could resist the Hellhound’s firepower. Plus—and I think this was Akizuki trying to pick something “traitorous”—that Self-Inflicted Trap command immediately reduced Saionji’s DEF to zero if she was forced to pick it.

“Hee-hee…”

But even so, Saionji stood strong across from Minami, smiling that same fearless, self-assured smile. There was no doubt about it: She was hiding something.

“Turn three…is going to end things. And I’ll be the winner…”

“Oh, what a coincidence, Shizuku. I completely agree with you.”

Minami declared her victory with her usual blank expression, and Saionji simply accepted it, her smile as defiant as ever.

So the Order Phase for turn three rolled around, with Minami looking every bit like she was right. Using her two Abilities, she enhanced her Speed Up and applied it to the Hellhound, easily surpassing Suzaku’s SPD stat. Plus, now that she had chosen three consecutive base commands, the corresponding chain effect also activated. Life-Attack-Speed resulted in the command Suicide Strike, which consumed half your LP but dealt massive damage proportional to your ATK, bypassing all defensive effects.

However—

“Activating the Ability Swap. I will forcibly swap the command I selected this turn with another one in my hand.”

Saionji brushed aside her glorious red hair… This was an Ability that let you peek on what your opponent would select, then let you reselect your own command. It worked in a very different way to our Fragile Covenant, but Swap could also give unparalleled strength in combat—and since you could switch your chosen command to whatever you wanted, it was easy to counter any potential traitor-driven sabotage.

“Now I’ll change my Self-Inflicted Trap command to something else… I think I’ll use Suzaku’s skill command Purifying Flame. This cancels all buff and debuff effects on the target familiar, returning the Hellhound’s stats to their initial values.”

“…! Oh no… I worked hard to grow it into a big, strong dog… Too bad…”

“Hee-hee! Well, I’m still not done yet. Did you notice, Shizuku? With all the buffs removed, the Hellhound’s LP is back to its original value of five. From there, I’ll use the chain command Suicide Strike to cut its Life Points in half, so it’ll have three left… And I still have Void Cannon in hand, which bypasses all defenses and deals a guaranteed 3 damage.”

“Ah…b-but…”

“No buts. And no way to come back from this, either. This is exactly what I’ve been aiming for from the start.”

“…!”

Minami’s overwhelming advantage had been turned around in just one turn, and she stared wide-eyed for a while. I’m sure it came as a shock to her… But then she bit her lip in frustration and turned her back on Saionji, not saying another word. I guess that was her way of admitting defeat. There certainly wasn’t anything she could do about it now.

“This…is so frustrating…”

And so the battle between the former best in her school and the undefeated Empress ended in a total win for Sarasa Saionji.

“Hmm…”

It had been an hour and a half since our skirmish against Team III, and Minami was still sulking about it… Well, not that the look on her face changed that much or anything, but the air around her was heavy. She had joined our battles against several other teams over the past ninety minutes, but she had acted like this the entire time. Having her own strategy turned against her must have been a painful experience.

“No,” she muttered. “It’s not just frustrating… It was a huge loss of resources, too…”

Yes, as stated in the rules, A- and S-class familiars have their own intrinsic Abilities in addition to their skill commands. Suzaku’s is called Requisition, which seizes all resources, benefits, and other things earned by the defeated opponent for a certain amount of time. It was a pretty cruel intrinsic Ability to have, really, and because of that, Minami didn’t receive any familiars from the other battles she took part in today.

“…”

At least we didn’t have to worry about Requisition any longer, though. Just five minutes ago, we received word that Saionji’s team had successfully obtained the S-class familiar and advanced to the final stage. After Kirigaya, a traitor, had been the first to beat Stage Four, Team III was the first team to advance in the traditional fashion. It also meant that Akizuki was eliminated from SFIA, but there wasn’t much helping that. If it wasn’t for her sabotage, Team III might’ve completed Stage Four on the first day.

Regardless, thanks to that, the familiars from Saionji’s team (including their two A-class ones) were available as quest rewards once more—as well as Archangel, the reward for beating the S-class quest. The only thing we’d really lost fighting Saionji was a single Hellhound, so you could say we still had a fighting chance.

“Hrmm… You’re not allowed to get ahead of me…”

From Minami’s point of view, though, Saionji beating Dropout Tamers ahead of her was repulsive. I’m sure she wanted a rematch with her immediately.

But just then…

“Excuse me, Master, it appears you have one DOT player approaching at high speed. The ID marks them as being…from the Seventeenth Ward?”

The Seventeenth Ward? …A-Amanezaka?!

My eyes opened wide at Himeji’s slightly nervous-sounding report. If an Amanezaka student was going around by herself, it could only be one person—Misaki Yumeno, the first-year with the A-class Byakko familiar, and the one who’d torpedoed all her teammates on the first day.

…! What now? Fighting for Byakko is exactly what we’re looking to do, but if she’s coming for us, she must have some motive for it…

“No, Master, it’s fine. There’s no need to worry. She’s already here.”

“Huh?”

Just as Himeji whispered that in my ear, I heard the footsteps of someone running at breakneck speed approach from far away. We had no time to prepare as she came to a hard stop in front of us, sliding a bit in her loafers. Her skirt kicked up into the air from the momentum. She had short, light-pink hair and a small build. She hid her face a bit with her right hand, as if striking a pose, and said:

“I have appeared!!”

“…”

“Now, here we go! The ultimate confrontation with the final boss, Hiroto Shinohara! He’s eyeing me up and down with that aggressive gaze of his, but I brush it off with my breezy smile and draw my weapon!”

“…Is that a weapon? It looks like a device to me.”

“My device is my greatest weapon of all! A single, perfectly honed blade! It is time to fight me, Shinohara! I’m pointing an accusatory finger at you!”

Her grandiose manner of speech threw me for a moment. I was overwhelmed by the sheer energy behind it, and it took me a moment to catch my breath.

“Ugh… Well, I don’t mind a fight, but how about you introduce yourself first? This is kind of sudden.”

“Ah! As the protagonist of my own story, I didn’t think there was any need to introduce myself! I regret this terribly. My name is Misaki Yumeno! A first-year at the Amanezaka School! My hobby is daydreaming, and my special skill is being able to dream about things I like!”

Misaki Yumeno, the pink-haired dark horse, was bursting with energy as she spoke. She clearly wasn’t your typical young girl, and it looked like I was her one and only target. With a face that was almost rage-inducingly cute, Yumeno continued to throw down the gauntlet.

“Shinohara, I want you to fight against me, please! Because the only one who can stand in the way of my glorious path, my wondrous story, is you, the final boss!”

“I don’t know what that ‘protagonist’ and ‘final boss’ stuff’s all about, but are you sure you understand what’s going on here? It’s one person against five, and in Dropout Tamers, each team member gets to choose a command. You realize that you’re at a huge disadvantage, right?”

“I predicted you’d say that many pages ago! But that’s not a problem, because my third Ability is Overboost—the less of an advantage I have in a given situation, the stronger I get! And now that all my teammates are gone, my situation couldn’t be much worse, so something like picking five commands all by myself is child’s play! And I also have an intrinsic skill, thanks to my A-class familiar. Byakko’s Roar is a support Ability that further enhances the effects of skill commands! So I’m doing totally fine right now, thanks!”

“…Oh? So you were planning to go it alone from the start?”

“Of course I was, Shinohara! Don’t tell me you don’t know the rules of Werewolf! If there’s a one-to-one ratio of werewolves and villagers, the werewolves win; if all the werewolves are killed, the villagers win. But as the protagonist and a villager, I can just defeat everybody else to win! And then I’ll be surrounded by a halo of light!”

Yumeno looked like she was ready for a fight…and I can’t say her thinking was completely faulty, either. Getting rid of your teammates means never having to worry about a traitor, which didn’t seem like a wholly illegitimate strategy. But coming up with that idea and actually implementing it are two very different things. You’d need to have a screw or two loose to try it for real. Then again, everybody in Dropout Tamers was capable enough to rank in the top hundred out of 250,000 students, so you aren’t going to find any “normal” players to start with.

“…All right. Sounds good, then.”

With a fearless smile, I quietly took out my device in front of Yumeno…

“Could you wait one moment, please?”

I was interrupted by a strangely familiar voice. It was calm and gentle, but it still set off loud alarms in my brain. I swallowed a bit as I quietly turned around.

Standing before me was a group of four people—or I guess, looking at the way they were clustered, it was more like one man and a group of three. The man was clearly the leader, and now he stepped forward and smiled at me. He’d been discussed countless times on the Libra feed for the past ten days, a completely pure saint whose very existence was associated with justice.

“Kaoru Saeki,” I said.

He seemed to hear me, but it just made his smile widen. Then, eyes still narrowed, he continued in his soft tone.

“…I invoke the Ability No Game. This skirmish between Team X and Team VI is hereby shut down. You will not be able to battle each other for the next hour.”

“Huh…? Why’d you do that?! I know that kind smile of yours is really convincing and all, but I am firmly opposed to this! Grr!”

“Sadly, opposing me will not change matters… I really can’t have you giving your Byakko away to him, you see. That alone would throw our plan completely off the rails.”

The man slowly shook his head as he spoke. Then he looked over to us—or at me, I suppose—and smiled broadly, his arms spread out in a theatrical gesture.

“I believe this is the first time we’ve met in person, Hiroto Shinohara. My name is Kaoru Saeki, a Six Star from the Suisei School…or perhaps I should introduce myself as a player from the Hexagram, the defenders of justice. I’m here to punish you for your wrongdoings.”

It was just a few seconds since Kaoru Saeki, best of the Second Ward’s Suisei School and leader of the Hexagram, had burst on the scene, but already the air around us was charged with tension.

Misaki Yumeno was the most clearly defiant among us all, her light-pink hair shaking as she leaned forward menacingly. She gave Saeki her most enraged look possible.

“Ngh…! Stop keeping this story going without me, the protagonist! And what do you mean using No Game, huh?! I have to defeat Shinohara! If outsiders like you try to rain on my parade, they’re gonna pay for it! Grrrrrr!”

“I apologize for taking the wind out of your sails, but it makes me terribly upset to be described as an outsider. I’m part of Dropout Tamers, just like you, I’ll have you know… And I’m worried that Shinohara, the greatest villain of our age, will receive Byakko from you. You’re very likely to lose to him, after all.”

“Wha…? You can’t just say that! Knock it off already!”

“That’s what I would advise you to do right now, Yumeno. If your actions assist Shinohara on his way to victory, that’s clearly an evil act, isn’t it? We in the Hexagram condemn all types of evil…so I will be taking that for the moment.”

Saeki made a small movement with his arm. At that moment, one of the men behind him stepped forward. This was the muscular Koto Tsuzuki, a Five Star from the Ohmi School and one of Saeki’s Hexagram cronies. He raised his own device, and out of nowhere, a smokelike effect rose up and enveloped Yumeno’s device. The moment it did, Byakko, the white sacred beast in her possession, appeared even though no battle was taking place—and it was sucked into Tsuzuki’s device, as if trapped in the smoke.

“…Capture complete. Thank you, Koto.”

Saeki smiled, having closely watched the whole thing play out.

“This is our second A-class familiar after Seiryu, isn’t it? And we already know where Genbu respawned, so obtaining the third should be simple enough. I’d like to collect them all…but Suzaku might pose more of a challenge.”

“You’re trying to get all the A-class familiars…? But that’s my exclusive right as the protagonist! And you can’t just go ‘capturing’ things like that! It’s no fair!”

“There’s no rule that says you can’t take someone’s familiar without a fight, is there? I wish you’d stop acting like I’m cheating or doing something untoward. If anything, Yumeno, I want to give you a chance here. You almost committed the crime of handing an A-class familiar over to Shinohara. As punishment, I have taken Byakko off your hands, so you have now atoned for your crime. I hope you will refrain from doing it again in your future Games. On the other hand, if you wish to continue complaining, I have my own ideas—”

“…Run, Yumeno.”

“Huh?! B-but…!”

“Just do it!”

Yumeno flinched for a moment at my gruff voice, but then she heeded my advice.

“Screw the Hexagram!” she yelled over her shoulder as she left. “What kinda legion of justice are you, huh?!”

…Anyway, that should take her out of the picture for now. I don’t know what Saeki had been planning to do to her, but I doubt it was anything pretty.

Saeki sighed as he watched her disappear from sight at high speed.

“Oh, she’s gone? I was hoping to hear her atone a bit more. Well, let’s wait a bit before we decide what to do with her. It was only an attempted crime, after all.”

He stopped speaking and turned his body toward us, his eyes narrowed as before. His smile was friendly, but there was a sort of mindless serenity to it that unnerved me.

“…!”

I could also sense Nitta, standing a little way away from me, silently screaming in response. She’d pulled her hood down too far to see her expression, but she was unconsciously edging away from Saeki with what seemed to be a combination of fear, awe, rejection, and submission.

“Well,” Saeki continued softly without acknowledging any of it, “now that things have finally calmed down… Are you making good progress in the Game, Shinohara?”

“I wonder about that myself. I just had someone butt in and take an A-class familiar from me, so…”

“Ha-ha! Well, I don’t think that’s the only reason for your misfortune. This time, you see, both us and everyone watching the Libra stream are personally monitoring you. Can you blame them for thinking you’re not doing well because you’ve lost access to your usual cheats? And in fact, five people have already beaten you to the punch and advanced to the final stage. Are you okay with that? Should a Seven Star still be here?”

“You think you’re gonna rile me up like that? Winning Stage Four early doesn’t give any high-ranking advantage. Whether you’re first to quality or sixteenth, it’s the same thing.”

“Heh-heh… Yes, of course. Assuming you actually manage to qualify, that is.”

Saeki smiled at Nitta, who shrank back again.

Kagaya was right, of course—Sana Nitta was an assassin of sorts, sent by the Hexagram to rub me out. If I’d let her be eliminated from the Game, it would’ve likely put us in a critical situation… And if that had prevented me from winning this stage, people would think it was because I’d been stripped of all my cheats. It was a nefarious move, nothing at all to do with justice… But on the outside, it probably did look like the good guys winning the day.

So the self-righteous leader of the Hexagram thinly smiled at me again.

“As you see, there is no need for us to get directly involved with you. Once this Game reaches its conclusion, it will be crystal clear who’s in the right.”

“Yeah? You’re a pretty hands-off defender of justice, huh?”

“I’d prefer to be described as efficient. And of course, I’m not just going to leave you alone. In fact, I have a proposal for you.”

Saeki took a device out of his breast pocket and peered at the screen for a moment. Then, with a shrug that seemed to say “I give up,” he looked back at me.

“Say, Shinohara, you have two B-class Hellhounds, right?”

“If you mean that as a question, there’s no guarantee I’ll tell the truth, and if you’re asking for a confirmation, you’re just wasting your time.”

“Ha-ha-ha! Not feeling cooperative, are you? The latter is the correct answer, by the way; I just wanted to enjoy speaking with you a little, is all. Regardless, those Hellhounds are B-class familiars, which means there are three of them in this Game. But you have two of them, and the other one is in the hands of Misaki Yumeno, that girl from earlier. If the Hellhound that Minami created via her Transform Ability earlier had been revived, we could have gone to fetch it, but unfortunately, it seems to have disappeared once Team III wrapped up DOT.”

He showed me his device. So that’s what he was checking on? I guess his team was looking for a Hellhound, and the only people in the Game in possession of them right now were us and Yumeno. We had a monopoly on them, basically.

“So we’d like you to give us one of those familiars. We won’t ask you to give it up for free, of course. We have a few B-class duplicates of our own, and you’re free to pick whichever one you like. If you agree to this, we’ll let you off the hook. For now anyway. Your other crimes can never be forgiven, unlike with Yumeno. Does that sound like such a bad deal to you?”

“…”

I glared silently at Saeki’s gentle smile. He thought he was superior to me, and that’s why he was offering this deal… Then, suddenly, I felt a hand grab my shoulder from behind.

“Wh-what’re we gonna do, Shinohara?! Because count me out of ever trying to antagonize the Hexagram! If they’re willing to let us go for just one B-class familiar, don’t you think we should say yes to that?”

“Absolutely not… Are you kidding me? What are you, stupid?”

“Stu—”

“…I wouldn’t go so far as to call him stupid, Minami, but you’re right. Think about it, Yuikawa. They’re powerful enough to have two A-class familiars and more B-class dupes than they can count, yet they’ve gone to the effort of approaching us? I don’t know what their exact plan is, but whatever it is, they need a Hellhound for it. If they don’t get one from us, they can’t continue with that plan.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Ain’t no way we’re givin’ them a Hellhound, Yuikawa. If you got a problem with that, then you’re beyond a traitor.”

“Wha…? N-no, it’s not me! I mean, it’d be great if we didn’t have to give up anything at all here, but…”

“Then it’s settled,” Fujishiro said bluntly.

Nitta’s lowered gaze didn’t reveal whether she agreed… Or really, I think she would’ve collapsed from fright by now if she wasn’t clinging to Minami. But even if she had raised an objection, we had a majority now. Team VI had just decided to fight.

“Okay… You hear that, Saeki? I’m not looking for a fight, but if you want it, you got it.”

“…All right, then. We’ll settle this in combat. But I will not serve as the main player here. Instead, I’ll give that spot to a promising first-year from my team…and a fellow Hexagram member.”

“A fellow…?”

It was only then that I realized she was missing. Saeki’s narrowed eyes seemed to confirm my suspicion. With a pretentious whirl of his arm, he snapped his fingers—and then I heard firm footsteps behind me.

I turned around, my premonition feeling like a certainty.

“Well, Shinohara, here I am…as promised.”

There stood Mari Minakami, her long black hair swaying in the air.

It was the middle of the second day of SFIA’s semifinal, and I was facing off against Mari Minakami, a first-year from my school.

“Well, Mari, he’s all yours. I truly wish you good luck in this engagement. Please do your best…and make sure not to disgrace the good name of the Hexagram.”

“Never, Kaoru! I’ll try my best to live up to your expectations!”

Minakami seemed genuinely happy to hear that and bowed deeply toward Saeki. He rewarded her with a dignified, elegant smile, satisfied by what he saw. Then, taking one more glance at me, Saeki slowly left, probably going to capture that A-class familiar he didn’t have yet. Two teammates, a boy and girl, followed after him.

So we were facing off against Minakami and another male student—Koto Tsuzuki, a macho, athletic-looking guy who’d been standing behind Saeki in that first video of his. He was one of the Hexagram’s higher-ups, but right now, he was acting as more of an observer than anything. He just stood there a short distance away, his arms folded, not bothering to say anything to us. The only resistance we were facing here was Mari Minakami, the Eimei first-year.

Which meant…

They’re trying to take Minakami and me out at the same time? Oof. Saeki was aiming for this all along, wasn’t he?

It was only now dawning on me, but it was too late to do anything about it. I shook my head to mentally reset.

“Hey, Minakami. I know you and I don’t really get along, but I didn’t think we’d end up fighting each other. You know it’s not a great idea to fight players from the same school, right?”

“Of course I know that. But I have a mission—I’m trying to help rehabilitate my fellow upperclassman. Kaoru entrusted me with that incredibly important mission, and even if it presents certain issues, it’s nothing I can’t overcome!”

“Even if it damages Eimei down the line? It’d be one thing if I was the only guy left, but Asamiya’s still in this Game, too. You realize that fighting me is basically the same as dragging her down, too, right? Because we kind of saw you as allied with Eimei, you know.”

“…! I—I am! But I still believe in my own justice!”

Bringing up Asamiya’s name made Minakami flinch for a moment, but with a shake of her long, flowing black hair, she banished any regret from her mind. She must really think I’m “evil,” or else someone had made her believe it. There was no shaking her of that conviction, and she didn’t have the slightest intention of compromising.

“Okay, we’ll fight, then. But what’s your plan, exactly? You’ve got one other teammate here, but everybody else is gone. Are you gonna use an Ability to make up for being outnumbered, like Yumeno earlier?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m here because I want to settle matters with you, and you alone. Thus, I propose a special rule set for this battle. We’ll make it a one-on-one match, with each player selecting one familiar and one command. The battle will last just one turn, and whoever deals more damage to their enemy familiar in that turn is the winner. As for the reward… How does taking the familiar of your choice from the opponent’s deck sound?”

“…Interesting.”

I brought my hand to my lips as I thought over the proposal. Dropout Tamers has pretty well-defined rules for how battles work, but we had some wiggle room to modify them if both sides agreed. What Minakami suggested was a kind of bare-bones version, you could say. The players, familiars, and commands were stripped down to the absolute minimum, and the battle turned into a contest over who could deal more damage in one shot. A one-turn lightning round, if you will.

“…That doesn’t seem like a problem to me, Master,” whispered the voice in my earpiece. “Setting it to one turn might be Ms. Minakami’s way to prevent you from invoking chain commands, but if no other players are involved, then no one will notice if the Company plants a cheat into this. I think that no matter what Ms. Minakami picks, we can replace it with another command.”

Oh… Right, yeah. But…

I glanced at Minakami as I listened to Himeji’s guidance. This was a girl who’d worked herself up into a frenzy trying to expose my cheating. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had an Ability that would penalize me if I tried to lie or cheat in this match. If she was on the lookout for something like that, I’d have to win this battle without any underhanded tricks.

So I decided to check my device again. I had more familiars now, but Hellhound was the only B-class one. As Himeji advised, we couldn’t string base commands together for a chain move, and if I used a skill command, I’d have to break Fragile Covenant during this fight. That Ability was a pretty big mismatch with our current needs.

This is a one-on-one fight, so losing Fragile Covenant won’t matter, since the traitor can’t interfere anyway. But I’d really like to keep it going for after this… Oh, wait a minute.

Then my wandering gaze stopped on the name of a certain familiar… I did have this one, didn’t I? It was a C-class mentioned in passing at yesterday’s strategy meeting. Its highly asymmetrical stats had kept it from being a serious candidate for battle up to now, but under these alternative rules, it might be just the thing for me. In fact, I might be able to dominate Minakami with it.

“You’re looking more confident now, Shinohara. Do you have your cheats in place?”

“Hmm? …Oh yeah. Well, whether I’m cheating or not, I’m ready to beat you, Minakami. Let’s get this started,” I said, just as I finished making my choices.

The next moment, our familiars materialized next to us in AR space. The graphics were as impressive as always, and I heard a few people oohing and aahing in the audience…but it didn’t take long before the wonder was replaced by doubt and concern. Both of us, after all, made some very unusual selections.

Team IX: Mari Minakami Familiar Used: Western Guardian, Byakko (A)

Familiar Stats: ATK 6, DEF 8, SPD 7, LP 7

Team VI: Hiroto Shinohara Familiar Used: Fairy (C)

Familiar Stats: ATK 1, DEF 1, SPD 15, LP 1

“…?! Wait, wait, wait…!”

Next to Minakami was a ferocious white tiger, while by my side was a small, insect-like creature flitting around in the air. Yuikawa was pointing at our familiars, looking about ready to lose it.

“Byakko? Byakko?! That makes no sense! This was supposed to be a one-on-one fight between the two of you! So why do you have access to a familiar captured by that guy over there?!”

“It’s a part of our strategy. We’re using an Ability, and that’s all I’m going to tell you!”

“Nngh… Well, fine, then! But what’s up with you, Shinohara?! It’s a short battle with no chain commands, and you choose that weakling?!”

“Weakling, huh? Well, if that’s how it looks, just keep quiet and watch, Yuikawa. Things are gonna get real interesting, real quick.”

I kept facing Minakami as I spoke. The commands we selected were floating in the air, face down. This was a lightning round, so there was no need for further psychological warfare. The winner would be decided the moment the cards were revealed.

“Looking pretty relaxed there, Shinohara,” Minakami said quietly, her long black hair swaying in the wind. “Should you be? You won’t be able to win unless you start cheating pretty soon… And if you lose, I’m gonna make you confess to every lie you’ve told us.”

“Sure, fine. I’m not lying about anything, and I’m not gonna lose, either. Or…really, if you’re talking like that, you invoked an anti-cheat Ability of some sort, didn’t you? So now you’re panicking because it’s not activating, and I’m looking super-relaxed.”

“…! No, I’m not panicking. After all, you’re a liar. A bad guy who made it to where you are because of all your lies. There’s no way our justice would lose to someone like you!”

With those caustic words, the commands flashed into view.

First to reveal itself was the skill command Minakami had chosen: Deal with the Devil. Belonging to the B-class familiar Succubus, it reduced the LP, DEF, and SPD of your familiar as much as you wanted, then the total amount was tripled and added to your ATK. This effect was more powerful than it looked in our initial research, perhaps because of Byakko’s own intrinsic Abilities. The LP reduction isn’t treated as damage, either, so under our current rules, it was pretty much her ideal move.

Meanwhile, on my side of the field…

“…Speed Up?”

That’s right—I’d opted to use the Speed Up base command on my familiar. Thanks to the Fragile Covenant, that added +2 to my SPD stat…but it still looked like a pretty wimpy move compared to Deal with the Devil. I mean, I still had virtually no ATK.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Minakami asked, confused as she compared our two commands. “Buffing your speed at this point? And why a base command when chains aren’t even possible in this fight? This isn’t like you at all, Shinohara!”

“Not like me? What kind of image do you have of me anyway? It’s a pretty straightforward choice, isn’t it?”

“Mmph… Well, I’ll tell you right now—I’ve invoked the Ability Iron Justice, which immediately removes a player from a Game if they do something that goes against the rules. If you’re trying to trick me somehow, don’t bother, all right?”

“You keep on accusing me of that stuff, but unfortunately, I’ve never done anything like that, all right? Or really, if such an alleged cheater is riding high as a Seven Star, doesn’t that bring the whole star-hunting system into question? Like, how fragile is it, even?”

“Th-that’s why we, the Academy-sanctioned Hexagram, are here to keep a close eye on it—but hey! Don’t change the subject, Shinohara!”

Her black hair shook briskly as she challenged me with her gaze.

“…Well, I’ll just win then, okay? With Deal with the Devil, I’ll sacrifice 6 Life Points and 6 Speed from Byakko, then add three times that to my Attack. That gives me an Attack of 42, which means I hit your familiar for 41 damage.”

“Yes, that’s how it would be calculated. But before that…”

I smiled a bit as I silently pointed above my head, where all the stats of my Fairy familiar were projected. It had been up there the whole time, but now one of the stats was slowly blinking.

“You see the Speed up there? One of a familiar’s core stats? It doesn’t get talked about much unless it’s a close battle where who goes first makes a difference, but it’s surprisingly important. You see, in addition to turn order, speed is also involved in whether an attack hits. In this Game, the system figures out if your attack hits by dividing your speed by your opponent’s. The higher this percentage is for you, in other words, the more likely it is to hit… And the lower it is, the more likely it is to miss.”

“I know that, but… Huh?”

“You see now? I’m sure you knew that fact, but probably not how it’s applied. You usually don’t see fights between familiars with big speed differences, so few people have actually seen an attack miss before. That, and a lot of skill commands, like Void Cannon and Constrict, don’t factor speed at all into whether they succeed. So there’s really no need to go crazy with your speed—and in a fight where you’re competing to see who can land the bigger blow, nobody’s gonna be selecting skill commands like that. Now…take a look up there. My Fairy’s definitely C-class, but her speed is off the charts. Apply Speed Up to it, and it goes to 17—way higher than any A-class familiar. You just drained Byakko’s speed down to 1 thanks to your Deal with the Devil. Now, what’s the chance of Byakko hitting with its attack?”

“One divided by seventeen… Around six… Six percent?!”

Minakami’s stunned eyes shot wide open as she reached that answer. She was right. Thanks to that yawning difference in speed, Byakko had a less than one-in-ten chance of striking my Fairy. It’d certainly insta-kill her if it hit, but if not, it would be meaningless.

“…B-but!”

Despite her obvious frustration, Minakami still held her head high. She pointed a finger at my Fairy’s stat box.

“Okay, maybe you’ll avoid the attack, but your Fairy’s attack is still lower than Byakko’s defense! You can’t land any damage on me!”

“Yeah, fair. So what happens then? Does this end in a draw?”

“A draw…? Wait, is that what you were aiming for? Well, sorry, Shinohara, but it’ll go into sudden-death overtime. The command you selected will be continually applied each turn, and our familiars will keep fighting until a winner’s crowned. So it’s pretty much over, isn’t it? Because I’m bound to get lucky and hit you sooner or later, but you can never damage me!”

“…Oh, I don’t know about that.”

Minakami was ready to declare victory, but I just flashed a breezy smile at her.

“We’re playing a bare-bones version where you can only select one command. But in sudden death, we’ll see a second…and a third turn. And that means chain commands suddenly become possible again.”

“…! S-so you picked the Fairy…so you’d have more turns to work with?!”

“You got it. And Speed-Speed-Speed results in Lightning Speed, which lets you move faster than the wind to dodge attacks and pierce through your foe, bypassing its defense. Of course, if Byakko can hit before then, you win, but since I’m adding another Speed Up every turn, your chance of landing a hit will go down after every turn… So well, good luck, I guess.”

With a bold grin, I confirmed that Speed Up was selected for my second turn. Minakami, meanwhile, had Deal with the Devil activated again, and so we entered the Battle Phase. My Fairy moved first with her unbeatable SPD, but her 1 ATK didn’t damage Byakko at all. Byakko’s attack, meanwhile, worked out just as expected, slicing through thin air. The extra Speed Up was only worsening its chances.

Then, on turn three, my three Speed Up commands chained together to form Lightning Speed, just as expected. There was a much different-looking aura around my Fairy now as she plunged hard into Byakko’s side, landing a single, bladelike slash on it. Byakko attacked…and missed.

“…!”

As she witnessed this, Minakami on the opposite side fell to her knees, as if she’d been knocked over. Her long black hair flew up into the air, telling the whole story about the shock she was facing… I suppose Kaoru Saeki had convinced her to believe deep down that I was a nefarious villain who’d risen to the top through constant, malicious cheating. That’s why she was so unable to accept the reality that she lost, even though Iron Justice didn’t trigger at all. It was an impossible situation, and it shook her to the core.

Seeing the state Minakami was in, I was about to call out to her when—

“Good work, Mari.”

“…! K-Kaoru…?!”

Suddenly, a screen projected itself between Minakami and me. It showed Kaoru Saeki, smiling gently. I imagine Tsuzuki, the Hexagram official still watching us from afar, arms crossed, chose this moment to link us up. Minakami quickly rose to her feet and bowed as low as she could at the screen.

“I’m sorry…! I… I’m afraid I lost to Shinohara…”

“Yes, Koto told me. He was always going to be a tricky foe.”

“I have no excuse… But I swear I won’t lose next time! I could challenge him again this afternoon—”

“Again? Oh… No, you don’t have to do that.”

“…What?”

“There’s no need for a rematch. After all, your role in this is over.”

Saeki quietly held up his device. The screen displayed not his stats, but his team information screen. For some reason, there was a B-class Hellhound on it.

Minakami watched on, mouth open in confusion.

“The Capture is complete. You see, while you and Shinohara were fighting, Koto was secretly working. His target wasn’t Shinohara, but Yuikawa. We knew he possessed a Hellhound, so we took the opportunity to seize it from him.”

“Wha—?! Wh-when did that happen…?!”

I heard Yuikawa’s panicked voice behind me. I guess it wasn’t a bluff, then—they really had stolen it. That super-important B-class familiar, the missing piece from their “plan” or whatever, had fallen into their hands all too easily.

But…

“W-wait, Kaoru.”

Minakami had taken a few staggering steps forward. With a frightened (or maybe pleading) expression, she addressed the on-screen Saeki.

“Um… I took on this battle because I thought I could expose Shinohara’s lies by defeating him. I wanted to win for the sake of the Hexagram’s justice. But was my ‘role’ not that? Was I just a decoy to buy time?”

“…? What a strange question, Mari.”

With every fiber of her being, Minakami was wishing for him to deny it. Saeki gently smiled at the question, his narrow eyes focused on Minakami. And with that peaceful face—a face that would make anyone want to do his bidding—he continued in his usual tone.

“Well, of course you were. Neither I, nor Koto, nor the other members expected you to win that battle. Your role was to keep your fellow Eimei School student pinned down for long enough for us to Capture the Hellhound, and you fulfilled that role very well. Now you’ve done your job. You are of no further value to us.”

“…Value?”

“Ha-ha! What, you still haven’t noticed? When you asked to join the Hexagram, we approved because you’re Mayu Minakami’s sister. You offered us a certain value as a go-between with the hidden genius of Eimei as we attempted to recruit her. But Mayu Minakami was more set in her ways than we thought, so we decided to give up on her. After that, you had only a small amount of value as Hiroto Shinohara’s classmate, and you demonstrated that value well, helping us obtain the Hellhound. Truly wonderful work… Oh, but if you’re afraid Shinohara’s going to take Byakko from you, there’s no need to. Your ‘key’ has been temporarily disabled, so you won’t be able to access any of our resources for the next few hours. Sorry about that.”

“…!!”

Minakami had no response to Saeki. How could she? This was about the worst possible news imaginable to her, and it made her collapse in a daze. Her emotional capacity had already reached its limit, preventing her from arguing back, crying, or screaming in despair.

“…How awful.”

I heard a terribly cold voice through my earpiece. Himeji sounded like she was seething with anger, more than I’d ever heard from her before, and I couldn’t help balling my hands into fists… Really, this was just too much. I wasn’t pretending to be a superhero. Minakami and I were pretty much on opposite sides, but that didn’t make this punishment any more acceptable to me. To her, Kaoru Saeki was a symbol of justice, someone worthy of respect after he rescued her. If that savior was being this cruel to her now, you could imagine what’d come next. It’d break anyone’s heart.

No… He knew all that, and he did this anyway. So he could cut off Minakami and prevent her from ever recovering… That bastard…!

I felt sick to my stomach at that thought, and I decided to take a step forward. I wasn’t overtly trying to protect Minakami, but it still caught Saeki’s attention. Then, trying to keep my emotions as subdued as possible, I lowered my voice.

“Hey, Saeki. It’s just as I thought, huh? That dirty sneer’s the real you, isn’t it?”

“Oh, come on. All I’m saying is that in order to destroy evil like you, we need to make some sacrifices. I’m sure someone like her, who’s truly just, understands.”

“Yeah? Because it looks to me like you just betrayed someone who really trusted you and plunged her into despair.”

“Ha-ha! You’re far too kindhearted, Shinohara. If things weren’t like this, I would love to have a cup of tea with you sometime, but—oh, don’t give me that look. I’m just joking.”

I glared at Saeki for trying to evade my accusation. He shook his head and broke into a smile.

“Well, then,” he muttered, changing the topic, “I suppose we’re set now. Since we’ve gone through all this trouble, why don’t we let everyone else in on the action, too? Koto, can you connect this video chat to the IslandTube feed?”

“Sure.”

The large man nodded and started working the device in his hand. I didn’t see any change around us, but I suppose Saeki’s video was now being broadcast across the island.

“Hello, everyone,” he began after a quick check of his device. “This is Kaoru Saeki of the Hexagram. I apologize for interrupting SFIA and Dropout Tamers, but please give me a moment of your time.

“I would like to announce that we have brought a certain special Ability into this Game. Called Limited Sharing, it’s been created using the Unique Stars in my possession. Its effect is somewhat complicated to explain… But to sum it up, it creates a sort of storage warehouse in virtual space that only certain people have access rights to. Cloud storage, if you will. Players who have one of the keys created for this storehouse can access it, depositing or withdrawing familiars as they please. If someone gains a powerful familiar and puts it in there, anyone with the key can use it… And of course, it’ll count as part of your team’s victory conditions if needed, too.

“Currently, we are in possession of three A-class and ten B-class familiars, all stored using Limited Sharing. We have yet to locate Suzaku, unfortunately, but that is not a critical concern. Once we place the final piece of the puzzle—the S-class Archangel—into the virtual storage space, everyone who has a key and doesn’t have Suzaku as part of their victory conditions will be granted a spot in the final stage. We’re calling this process the Rapture.

“Beating the stage this way is a bit different from the usual team structure, of course. We’d be winning as part of a fictional team whose members all share the same key. Even if a traitor wins as well, that won’t affect us at all, so please don’t worry about that.”

He still had that gentle smile, but what Saeki told us was outrageous. Maybe his treatment of Minakami prevented me from thinking clearly, but honestly, it all sounded like a bunch of crazy talk. Limited Sharing would let you create a fictional team of people with keys, sharing in a single virtual storehouse of resources. That was why Minakami had access to Byakko—and how they were so efficient at collecting familiars. There were probably other Hexagram members scattered across the other teams, not just Saeki and his two officials—and through the Rapture process he described, they could all advance to the final stage.

I was growing more impatient by the moment, but Saeki continued in his graceful tone.

“However, our goal in the Hexagram is not merely to win this event, but to also expose Shinohara’s wrongdoing. Allow me to discuss that for a minute as well.

“After we complete Stage Four, the Limited Sharing storehouse will be transformed into a sort of ‘prison,’ and all the familiars trapped inside will no longer be able to be withdrawn—they won’t go back to being quest rewards once we’re finished with the Game. There are multiple B-class familiars, yes, but by doing this, all the A-class familiars, with the exception of Suzaku and the lone S-class Archangel, will no longer be possible to obtain.

“This is just a little trick, of course, something a real Seven Star could circumvent without a problem… So perhaps Shinohara could see it as us giving him a challenge.”

Saeki narrowed his eyes. Then he reached for his camera, adjusting the angle a little—and now the screen showed a beautiful angel bound to a large cross, yet still retaining her mystical, divine air.

“Now for the final touch. Can you see this? This is the S-class familiar Archangel. I’m sure many of you know that after seeing the epic battle with the Empress earlier, but let me give you a recap.

“In actual fact, we have already completed the final step of the S-class quest—namely, defeating the Archangel itself. However, since we lacked all the other pieces we needed, we had to wait until now to reveal this. Without those, I didn’t think our final push would have the public impact we’d hoped for. Ha-ha!

“Now then, it is time for the angel to bring about the Rapture. All players who come into possession of a key are hereby invited to the final stage unconditionally. As for everyone else… Well, I suppose you could cling to the faint hope that Shinohara truly is a Seven Star and cheer for him like your life depends on it.”

Saeki held up the device in his hand, raising it toward the Archangel. A pale blue light spread out, enveloping her entire body, and a few seconds later, she was sucked into his device. This marked the completion of the S-class quest…and the final piece of the puzzle for Saeki’s Limited Sharing.

“Now…have fun struggling against me, Shinohara.”

With that final diss, the screen went blank—and at the same time, I could hear a flurry of noise from my earpiece. My team was probably checking to see who’d won the Game through the Rapture, but there was no way all the slots for the final stage could be filled up that fast…

“…Oh? Ohh…?”

But then, Yuikawa—staring at his device in a daze—let out a strange cry. He kept staring for a while… But then a joyous smile began to appear on his face.

“…What is it, Yuikawa?”

“Heh…heh-heh… Ah-ha-ha! Wow, you didn’t get one, huh, Shinohara? I guess I’m one of the chosen ones, after all!”

“The chosen ones? You mean…?”

“Yeah! The key Saeki was talking about is showing up on my list of familiars! S-class, A-class, B-class… Wow, I really do have everything except Suzaku in here! All the victory conditions!”

“…You’re gonna fall for that? I thought you turned down the Hexagram when they recruited you.”

“Well, yeah, but if this is what they’re offering, how can I say no? If they want my help, they got it!”

I’d stopped paying attention to Yuikawa halfway through his verbal victory lap. It was just as I thought. They were couching it in all these fancy terms like Rapture, but basically, this was the Hexagram letting their allies (or anyone with their backing) win the stage, and shutting out everyone else. I didn’t have any way to know how loyal Yuikawa was to them, but either way, how could he turn it down?

…Right after that, I heard Himeji’s voice in my ear, a bit more rigid than usual, like she was suppressing her emotions.

“I’m sorry this took so long, Master. After the Rapture that just took place, the number of players who meet the victory conditions—that is, those who hold a key to Kaoru Saeki’s Limited Sharing and don’t need Suzaku in order to win—and have cleared the game is four in total. These are Kaoru Saeki himself, Kanade Yuikawa, Ako Ishizaki, and Soma Yanagi. The four of them all belong to different teams, and they all have connections to the Hexagram. The two teammates who joined Mr. Saeki earlier did not have a Hexagram emblem on their chest, so I doubt they were told about the keys or the Rapture… It’s certainly a good thing Suzaku hasn’t been caught yet. If all the familiars were in their hands, Dropout Tamers likely would have ended right then and there.

“Also…among the players who meet the conditions described earlier, two are still in the Game. They have a key and likely don’t need Suzaku to win… But for some reason, they haven’t left Stage Four yet. One of them is Mr. Koto Tsuzuki, the Five Star Hexagram executive from the Tenth Ward’s Ohmi School. If he was the traitor for his team, his victory conditions might differ from Kaoru Saeki’s, but either way, he remains in DOT.

“The second one…is Ms. Mari Minakami.”

“…!”

Reading between the lines of what Himeji was saying, I fell silent, biting my lip… If Minakami satisfied all the conditions, she should’ve cleared the Game already. But then Saeki’s words came back to me. Something about “temporarily disabling” her key, right? Now it made sense.

So Minakami’s been…

It seemed now that she had been completely discarded by the Hexagram.

“…”

I stared at her, slumped to the ground in defeat, and squeezed my right fist tight.

SFIA Stage 4: Dropout Tamers—Progress Report

Advanced to final stage:

  Toya Kirigaya

  Sarasa Saionji

  Senri Kururugi

  Miyabi Akutsu

  Mitsuru Fuwa

  Kaoru Saeki

  Kanade Yuikawa

  Ako Ishizaki

  Soma Yanagi

Remaining slots: 7

STOC Timeline / IslandTube Comments Reactions to the Game So Far

11:37 Whoa! We finally have a winner! The first one out!

11:37 Kirigaya was the first out, huh? He’s so awesome

11:38 He was the traitor, just like we figured

14:22 Saionji won!

14:22 Wow, you can actually beat the Archangel? She looked so strong

14:22 Can you even imagine a lineup like Team III losing at all? It’s like a cheat code

14:22 Nah, the team doesn’t have anything to do with it. My goddess could never lose a challenge like this

14:22 Hi, Kugasaki

14:23 Kururugi sure put up a fight, too. And that Akutsu (?) girl. Suisei’s got the juice

14:23 I feel really bad for Noa, though

15:11 Whoa, what’s going on? Is this Saeki?

15:14 Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??? What the hell is this?!!!!!

15:14 Damn! The Hexagram’s serious?!

15:14 They’re like a car with no brakes, just flyin down the street

15:14 Those Suisei guys are crazy… This is who they got coming out of the woodwork now? Way too powerful

15:14 So is this it? Round 4’s over?

15:15 The whole rapture thing’s so shocking, I’ll only be able to sleep at night from now on

15:15 It’s hilarious that Yuikawa somehow managed to win. But Shinohara’s totally dead now…