Secret Plan

The team led by Prince Felix was overwhelming the entire surrounding area with crushing force despite having lost one member.

The one with the highest number of eliminations was Prince Felix himself, the top student of the year.

Just like in the preliminaries, he had recorded more than twenty eliminations in the finals as well, but that was not due purely to his own ability.

The one beside him, Roy Edwilde, was the one stripping away all chance of counterattack and creating the conditions for the prince to overwhelm his enemies.

That was precisely why the scene before Felix looked colorless to him.

There was no joy and no freedom.

He was only performing the role that those around him wanted, like a doll.

(It’s empty. Just utterly empty.)

But everyone said that was fine.

They said that was how it ought to be.

If so, then a heart was nothing but a hindrance.

He cast away his heart and separated the pain he felt from himself.

The pain was there.

But it belonged to another self, not to him.

So he did not feel it.

He felt nothing.

His nails dug into the flesh of his hand.

Blood flowed.

He did not feel it.

He felt nothing at all.

Guided by Roy, he annihilated his classmates.

It was an overwhelming victory with no hesitation and no mercy.

“So only two teams remain?”

At Roy’s words, Felix said,

“Mythia Lumiore is still here too.”

“Alone, she cannot possibly be our enemy. She is hiding well, but that is all she is doing—running around in flight. The two teams we should be wary of are the others.”

Both of those teams were classmates from S-Class.

One team seemed to be missing one member, but the other still had all three of its members alive.

The barrier that narrowed their range of movement had already shrunk to a radius of twenty meters.

They all knew each other’s positions, but it was a three-way standoff in which, if one side made a move, the third would reap the benefits.

“We’re making our move.”

“Understood.”

The first to move was Felix’s team.

Their target was the team that should be most feared—the one with all three members still surviving.

Roy leapt forward first and opened the battle line with lightning magic.

Even against three opponents, there was not the slightest hint of panic on his face.

Once he had worn down their magic barriers and cut off any chance of counterattack, the fire magic unleashed by Felix blew everything away.

The effect of the support magic Roy had activated out of sight of those around them had doubled that firepower.

The two of them trampled a numerically superior team without allowing them to do a single thing, but the final remaining team moved to strike at their backs.

In numbers it was two against two, but the side launching the surprise attack held a far greater advantage.

The two female students coordinated their timing and unleashed their attacks.

Caught off guard, Roy and Felix had their magic barriers destroyed and were pressed so hard they could not recover—

And then they brushed aside the two girls with an overwhelmingly violent difference in power.

The gap created by their exceptional personal ability and the power produced by the magic tools they had kept hidden lay beyond the realm where pure tactics could overcome it.

(So she isn’t making her move.)

Felix found that slightly surprising.

If Mythia Lumiore had any chance of victory, it would have been at that very moment.

Following up after the two girls who had launched the surprise attack, she could have struck from behind and attacked their backs unexpectedly.

That was exactly why Felix and Roy had read that far ahead and been conscious of positioning that made it hard for someone to get behind them.

“She missed her timing. Perhaps she was so desperate to stay hidden that she was not ready to leap out. In any case, the match has been decided.”

Roy said that.

“We hold the advantage in numbers as well. Let’s grind her down from the front with certainty.”

From the faint trace of magical presence mixed into the air, they could roughly grasp the positional relationship.

They gradually closed the distance toward Mythia, who was hiding deep in a winding side passage.

Aiming at the corner where she seemed likely to be hiding, Roy unleashed lightning.

The dim area was dyed white.

The labyrinth trembled faintly.

The sound of dust and fallen rubble dropping.

Mixed into that was a familiar smell, and Roy frowned.

“Labyrinth plant pollen?”

His face all but said that it was pointless.

They had already overcome the trap of pollen that paralyzed the entire body once before.

They were also taking care to stand in a well-ventilated position rather than in a narrow, sealed space, so there was no need whatsoever to fear it.

Roy and Felix cast their magic and targeted the depths of the side passage from a safe position.

The first to notice something wrong was Felix.

“Hasn’t the smell gotten stronger…?”

“That can’t be—”

Roy bit his lip before he could finish.

The amount of pollen had clearly increased.

“It looks like it would be better to finish her quickly.”

Mythia Lumiore was setting something up.

Roy narrowed his eyes, trying to see through Mythia’s trap.

In the next instant, Roy caught his breath at the sight that spread before him in the collapsed depths of the side passage.

“That is…”

What spread out there was an abnormal quantity of labyrinth plants growing densely without a single gap.

An outrageous amount of labyrinth plants, enough to seem utterly insane, filled the space without any gaps at all.

The pollen pouring out of them was like a cloud of dust.

It spread rapidly and swallowed even the open corner where Felix and Roy were standing.

It was a situation in which they should have withdrawn at once, but they could not.

Their range of movement was restricted by the barrier.

“Attack! We finish off Mythia Lumiore!”

The two of them hurled attack magic toward the depths.

They had to settle it before the numbness spread through their entire bodies.

“Still, with such an abnormal density… Mythia herself can’t possibly be safe either.”

As he cast magic, Felix said that in stunned disbelief.

“She should already be unable to move, paralyzed from head to toe. Even so, she is trying to seize victory by sacrificing herself.”

Roy said through gritted teeth.

“Her aim is to paralyze everyone here and render them unable to act, ending this team survival match with both teams declared winners. She never intended to defeat us herself from the beginning.”

It was a terrifying strategy just to imagine.

While inhaling a huge quantity of pollen closer than anyone else, she had chosen to render herself unable to move and end the battle by dragging the other team down with her.

It was a way of fighting like a self-destructive attack that sacrificed oneself.

And precisely because of that, it was frightening.

They could not enter the depths of the passage now filled completely with pollen, so all they could do was attack from a distance.

Even the magical presence they had been relying on had become utterly impossible to trace because of the magical energy emitted by the labyrinth plants and the remnants of the household magic cast upon them.

Even for two highly skilled fighters, finishing off Mythia, who had become unable to move somewhere in the winding terrain, was not something that could be done easily.

Sweat had broken out on the forehead of Roy, who was always calm like a machine.

(Amazing… From a situation that had been utterly hopeless, she’s cornering Roy all by herself.)

To think she could do something like this.

And she was doing it using nothing but household magic to grow plants, the kind of magic anyone could use.

The first to collapse to one knee was Roy.

Having panicked over the need to finish Mythia off, he had probably inhaled more pollen than Felix.

Even with numbness spreading through his whole body, he still forced out attack magic with sheer effort.

But there was no sign that it had connected.

(So this is my limit too…?)

Unable any longer to support his body, Felix collapsed.

Beside him, Roy somehow kept casting magic, but in the end he became unable even to activate a spell formula and toppled over.

Inside the now-quiet labyrinth,

“You finally fell.”

At the sound of that voice, something cold ran down Felix’s spine.

Twisting his unmoving body, he somehow turned his gaze behind him.

Mythia Lumiore was there.

She was leaning against the wall, slumped down weakly.

“Since when were you there…?”

“From the very beginning. I put up a thin wall with water magic and used the refraction of light to hide myself from sight. Household magic has simple spell formulas, so it helped that it was easy to handle even while paralyzed.”

“So you took advantage of our assumption that you could not be in a place where you could not hide.”

“That’s right.”

Mythia said that, moving only her mouth.

“I inhaled quite a lot of pollen myself while repeatedly casting the ‘spell to grow crops’ and growing the labyrinth plants, so I can’t move anymore either, though.”

“How could you go that far?”

“I had to win to protect my friends.”

She must have been utterly exhausted.

Even so, forcing out the last of her strength, she deployed the spell formula for household magic.

“I hate draws. I always go for victory. Let’s settle this. ‘Spell that creates ice to put in drinks.’”

It was a simple spell formula that could be used even while the whole body was paralyzed.

The worthless magic that anyone could use rained down on Roy’s unmoving body and rendered him unable to fight.

“You’re incredible.”

The words slipped out naturally.

“…Has the paralysis reached your brain too?”

Mythia sounded bewildered, and after giving a weak laugh, he continued.

“I mean it. You already know everything about me now. There’s no need for me to put on a front and use strong words anymore.”

“I see, so that’s why.”

“I was only first because of a setup built on cheating. The real me can never beat my brother, no matter what I do. I have nothing except being a prince.”

To Felix, who said that with a self-mocking tone, Mythia said,

“It’s not true that you have nothing. Your personality is the worst, and you hit even girls without caring, and despite that you put on a good face, so you’re the absolute worst piece of trash. Could you stop trying to erase that with self-pity?”

“…You’re right. I’m the worst.”

“But it’s not as if you have no good points. Your awful personality makes you easy to deal with because you aren’t two-faced, and I can tell that even the force with which you hit me is controlled to about the same level as mine. And your good outward face comes from being serious and having a sense of responsibility toward your position. In the end, you’re trying too hard even though you’re still just a child.”

Mythia said,

“Even if Roy Edwilde is setting the table for you, if you had no ability, everyone would have realized the truth long ago. More than anything, I can tell just by seeing your magic. You work harder than anyone else in your class. And you do it not for yourself, but for the people around you. That’s something far more valuable than results or grades.”

“But no matter how hard I try, I can’t beat my brother.”

“You won’t know how something like that ends until the day you die, right? You’re still a child. Besides, there’s no need to compare yourself to others. You just have to aim to become the best version of yourself. You have bad points, but you also have good ones properly.”

Mythia narrowed her eyes and said,

“So don’t say you have nothing. I like you fairly well.”

That was probably the very thing he had always wanted someone to say to him.

He had wanted someone to accept him as he was.

He had wanted to be accepted.

He had believed that such a thing was not allowed.

More than anything, he had felt that there was nowhere at all anyone would accept the self that was not a prince.

And because of that, in that moment everything seemed to fill with color like a miracle.

As small ice cubes crushed down on him, Felix realized something.

(What is this…?)

There was something inside him that he did not know.

(Fairly well… like… like…)

It felt happy, and yet embarrassing, a strange feeling with no clear shape.

What that thing was called, the thing that had sprouted in him for the first time in his life, Felix still did not know.