The preparation meeting for the Nine Schools Competition held in the Club Management Headquarters was suffused with a nervous aura from the onset.
Students with outstanding performance in the events would receive extra credit for their classes. Just for being one of the official participants, students would receive no homework, extra days off and guaranteed straight A's.
Not only did this apply to participants, but to the students selected as engineers as well.
Thanks to the school putting such a high emphasis on the Nine Schools Competition, the students selected as the representatives for the Nine Schools Competition received such incredible rewards. Thus, it was unsurprising that the competition was particularly fierce for the last few slots on the official roster during this meeting.
—If Tatsuya had been merely a bystander, he would probably have viewed the mixed feelings of the surrounding students in a compassionate light. However, he was there as a candidate with a giant target on his back, so he could only depressingly keep himself from sighing aloud while praying for this circus to end quickly.
It was not that he was wholly uninterested in the Nine Schools Competition.
The desire to measure one's personal skills against other Magicians (saplings) of similar age was markedly different from the hunger he experienced while staying in his father's lab and the subsequent desire to bring about practical upgrades to CADs, but Tatsuya still had that much left in him.
Tatsuya was "constructed" to have less emotion than the average person, but he was still at that headstrong age, so no matter what value his peers assigned him, he wasn't shriveled enough to completely not care.
However, at the same time he had to deal with the pride, jealousy, vanity, disgust, and other related emotions in this meeting. That was what truly filled him with melancholy.
Separate from his thoughts — of course — the seats in the conference room were gradually filled. When the last seat was occupied, Mayumi stood before the chairman's podium.
"Then, let's start the selection meeting for the Nine Schools Competition roster."
The meeting for upperclassmen, club leaders for the various participating clubs, Student Council members (Miyuki remained on station in the Student Council Room) and the Club Management Group members who received the internal notification that they were possible candidates for participant or engineer slots officially began.
Tatsuya sat with the various candidates in the visitors section to the side,
Any organization that exceeded a certain size would naturally contain bigots that swiftly identified Tatsuya as an outsider.
As expected, not long after the meeting began, someone asked what a 1st Year Course 2 student was doing here.
That certainly did not imply that no one looked upon Tatsuya kindly.
There were actually a surprising number of favorable opinions.
The upperclassmen differed from the 1st Year students in that they knew Tatsuya was a special Course 2 student in addition to being a formidable asset to the Public Morals Committee.
Despite this, there were still more opposing than supporting, often in the form of negative emotions rather than objective logic, which caused the meeting to deadlock and waste more valuable time.
"In summation......"
Suddenly, a solemn voice dominated the conference room.
The voice was not particularly loud, yet all the squabbles quickly died away as everyone focused on the speaker.
Juumonji Katsuto, who had hitherto remained silent, cast his gaze across the room before starting to speak:
"In my opinion, the problem lies in that everyone is unfamiliar with what level of skill Shiba possesses. If so, the most efficient solution is to submit that to a live test."
The spacious room was dead silent.
This would bring about a simple and effective result that no one would bemoan, but because of the risk involved, no one had dared to propose this course of action.
"......That's not a bad suggestion, but how do we go about it in a practical manner?"
"Simply having him perform a maintenance right now would suffice."
Mari broke the silence with her question, to which Katsuto provided a simple answer.
"Allow me to be the guinea pig."
The CADs currently on the market had to be intricately synchronized with their respective user after maintenance.
If ten Magicians used the same model, there were ten different methods to adjust their CADs.
The Activation Sequences provided by the CAD would be directly absorbed into the Magician's subconscious domain.
In other words, a Magician's mental state was completely defenseless against their own CAD.
Recent CAD models were equipped with a function that improved Activation Sequence processing, but at the same time made it easier for them to affect the user's mental status.
If there was a problem during maintenance, not only would magic efficiency decrease, other side effects would include discomfort, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, or even major harm such as hallucinations or mental scarring. Thus, the higher the CAD's capability, the more skilled the maintenance needed to be.
For Magicians, voluntarily yielding their CAD to be maintained by an Artificer whose strength was unknown posed a substantial risk.
Even if it was Katsuto's own suggestion, his willingness to offer himself as a test subject showed considerable courage.
"No, I was the one who recommended him, so I should take that role."
Mayumi immediately requested to take responsibility likely out of a sense of duty, but from another perspective, this likely implied that she didn't wholly trust Tatsuya, which was something that Tatsuya easily read between the lines to his discomfort.
"Wait, please let me do it."
That being said, the fact that Kirihara was willing to pinch hit caused Tatsuya considerable shock — the mettle displayed by this man was certainly comforting.
The school's CAD maintenance facility open to faculty and students was located in the Technical Skills Building.
However, this time they weren't using the preset maintenance devices in the Practical Skills Building, but bringing the mobile maintenance devices used in the Nine Schools Competition to the conference room to conduct their test.
The CAD in question was also one that qualified under the regulations of the Nine Schools Competition.
Seeing as how the pre-competition preparations proceeded so smoothly both in materials and procedure, the continuously delayed selection process was a particularly glaring issue.
Tatsuya sat before the maintenance device with Kirihara on the other side — but the two of them couldn't see one another. The members of the Student Council and various clubs leaders crowded around Kirihara.
The first step involved activating the school device, a process during which many malicious gazes were focused on Tatsuya's hand movements, but Tatsuya was long accustomed to working with much more complex devices than the school device, so this was a procedure he could have completed flawlessly in his sleep. He adeptly completed the preparations and adopted a poker face to ward off the abhorring gazes.
"My task involves copying Kirihara-senpai's CAD schematics onto the competition-use CAD, making any necessary adjustments without changing the Activation Sequence, am I correct?"
Tatsuya once again verified the test's contents.
"Yes, sorry for bothering you."
Tatsuya on seeing Mayumi nodding shook his head slightly. Not nodding, shaking.
"......What is it?"
"I wouldn't advise directly copying the schematics onto a different model CAD...... But there's nothing for it, so let's put safety as the first priority."
"?"
Mayumi wasn't the only one dumbfounded. "Copying CAD schematics" was a simple task that occurred when users changed machines, so many other people were also wondering why Tatsuya viewed this as a problem.
However, the Technician Team centered around Azusa knew exactly why Tatsuya asked this question. The team members either nodded slightly in agreement or smirked as they prepared to enjoy Tatsuya's performance.
Tatsuya didn't say anything else and plunged into the maintenance.
First, he connected Kirihara's CAD to the maintenance device.
The schematics replication process was semi-automatic, so there was no way to gauge the difference in skill here.
However, Tatsuya didn't just dump the schematics replica directly into the calculation device of the competition-use CAD, but stored it into the processing area of the maintenance device, a move that caused quite a few people to raise their eyebrows.
Next he measured Kirihara's personal psion oscillation nature.
Following Tatsuya's instructions, Kirihara put the headset on his head, then placed both hands on the examination board.
This was also normal procedure. If this was an automatic maintenance device, the steps required would be to connect the CAD, then read the psion waves, and the process would automatically complete itself.
Generally, students that used the school devices for personal maintenance would adopt that precise procedure.
On the other hand, not relying on automatic maintenance and manually making minute adjustments to the CAD's OS showed an engineer's true strength.
"Thank you senpai, you can take it off now."
Tatsuya indicated that the measurements were concluded and Kirihara removed the headset.
Ordinarily, the next step involved connecting the CAD that needed to be modified, then making any adjustments beyond the automatic recommendations. This required a preset CAD to be prepared in advance, then copying all the data onto the destination CAD.
Just about everyone in the audience thought that Tatsuya messed up the procedure.
As if to prove this point, Tatsuya stared at the monitor without moving a muscle.
However, he didn't give off the air of someone who was hopelessly lost because of a misstep.
His gaze was focused to a terrifying degree without giving a hint of that unsteady feeling.
Unable to contain her curiosity, Azusa poked her head around Tatsuya's body to glance at the monitor.
"Uh?"
Her voice let out an awkward sound that was wholly incompatible with her youthful image.
Tatsuya was completely unaffected by this interruption.
Mayumi and Mari didn't dare to ask what was going on, so they both came to Azusa's side to look at the monitor — and were barely able to contain their gasps.
The monitor didn't display the expected measurement results and graphs, but was filled with character strings scrolling across at high velocity.
The two of them were only able to pick out a few numbers here and there; their eyes were wholly unable to keep up with the scrolling pace.
The numbers abruptly came to a stop.
Roughly a few dozen seconds had elapsed, which was less than 5 minutes since Tatsuya started staring at the screen.
After the character strings stopped scrolling, Tatsuya immediately plugged in the competition-use calculation device and swiftly started hitting the keyboard.
Many windows started opening and closing.
Only Azusa noticed that one of the opened windows was the original document with the recorded measurement results, while another window was the original document that contained the replicated CAD schematics on the maintenance device.
Very few people recognized how insanely advanced the procedure unfolding before their eyes truly was, since the majority of the audience was held spellbound at the unheard of speed at which Tatsuya was hitting the keyboard. Even so, Azusa believed that the truly astounding part was the technique Tatsuya displayed when he was directly reading the nature of the psion oscillations from the original document.
With that method, the engineer could perfectly allocate the resources within the parameters of the calculation device to best suit the measurement results reflected in the maintenance device. This was a completely manual process wholly independent of the automatic processes provided by the system.
Before Azusa's gaze, the settings temporarily stored in the work area were steadily being rewritten in a flash.
The original document still remained on the main screen, but Azusa was barely able to detect the modified settings.
This definitely fell within the boundaries of safety. He was really adhering to the "safety is the first priority" condition.
This way, it would lower the user's risk from relying on automatic maintenance, and provide Activation Sequences that exceeded automatic maintenance in efficiency.
There was absolutely no need for a practical test.
This 1st Year student's skill far surpassed that of anyone in the Technician Team.
Azusa made up her mind right there that she was going to drag Tatsuya onto the team no matter what, objections be damned.
Under the condition "without changing the Activation Sequence" the maintenance quickly came to an end.
He was so fast that the audience wasn't thoroughly entertained.
The next part was the actual live test.
Unnoticed by others, Kirihara's expression was slightly nervous and tense, but fell within the expected boundaries.
In reality, there was no incident, nor was there anything that could even be remotely called an accident.
The CAD Tatsuya modified was "completely the same" as Kirihara's beloved CAD.
"Kirihara, how do you feel?"
"No problem at all. It's just like I'm using my own CAD, there's no incompatible feeling at all."
Kirihara immediately answered Katsuto's question.
Everyone was perfectly clear that this was not an inflated evaluation based on friendship. Given Kirihara and Tatsuya's past history — Kirihara was forcibly subdued by Tatsuya during the kenjutsu club's performance during recruitment week in April — people who knew the particulars were aware that there's no way Kirihara would protect Tatsuya. However, even excluding this "misunderstanding", everyone who saw the way the magic invocated knew that the CAD was functioning perfectly smoothly.
That being said, "able to smoothly invoke magic" was a fairly low criterion and it was hard to see any further results.
"......Looks like he has the fundamentals down, but this isn't enough to qualify him to be one of the school representatives."
"Time spent was pretty average, nothing special."
"He didn't follow proper procedure, but there may be some reason behind that......"
Unsurprisingly, the 2nd Year participants were the first to react negatively to this seemingly normal result.
The backlash wasn't solely from Tatsuya's unprecedented nomination, but also since he was specifically picked by the President, everyone subconsciously expected him to floor them all with some outstanding technique, so naturally higher expectations led to greater disappointment.
"I fully support bringing Shiba-kun onto the team!"
Abandoning her usual cowed expression, Azusa furiously countered.
"What he just displayed before our eyes was a technique that far surpasses our wildest dreams as high school students. Just the very fact that he doesn't need to use automatic maintenance and is able to do this entirely manually is already a feat that I cannot accomplish."
"......Even if his technique was amazing, what's the point if it's such a mundane result......?"
"It only looks mundane, but the contents are completely different! To be able to completely abide within the safety parameters at no loss of efficiency is an incredible accomplishment!"
"Nakajou, relax a little bit...... Rather than staying confined within the safety parameters, wouldn't it be better to take a few chances to raise the efficiency rate?"
"That's...... because they suddenly want to test......"
Debate wasn't one of her strong suits, so her vigor quickly diminished.
Just as Azusa was floundering, a male student raised his hand to be recognized, which swiftly brought everyone's attention onto him.
"Kirihara's personal model boasts superior performance to the competition-use models, but even with this difference, the user was still unable to detect any difference, so I believe this technique deserves high praise."
"Eh? ......Hattori-kun?"
Out of the blue, the one who came to the rescue was Hattori.
"President, I also support Shiba joining the Technician Team."
"Hanzou-kun?"
Mayumi was entirely unable to mask her startled expression.
Even faced with the somewhat negative reaction on part of his beloved (?) President, excluding his personal thoughts, Hattori continued fearlessly (on the outside) and graciously extolled his opinion.
"The Nine Schools Competition is an event that affects the very reputation of our school, so we should send the best and strongest candidates, without placing too much emphasis on who they are. The engineer's job is to support the participants so that they can focus exclusively on the events themselves. Just as Nakajou said, for Kirihara to say 'there's no incompatible feeling', I must admit that is a job done admirably well. With our current desperate lack of engineers, this isn't the time to bemoan that 'he's a 1st Year student' or 'this is unprecedented'."
Hattori's words were saturated with verbal barbs, but he strenuously defended his heart-felt position.
However, the very fact that Hattori threw in on Tatsuya's side was a large enough blow to rock the meeting.
"I also think that Hattori's opinion bears merit.
The talent Shiba put on display is more than enough to qualify him as one of the school representatives.
I also support Shiba joining the Technician Team."
With the opposition stunned into silence and Katsuto's public declaration of support, Tatsuya's nomination was certain.
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