Part 22: Final Exams (3)

Binkis noticed something was wrong only after Frondier brought down three more golems.

'... There’s no doubt.'

His last attack had confirmed it. Frondier knew where the golems’ cores were.

Binkis placed the internal core in a different location in each golem she made. Usually it was somewhere in the head or chest, but the core itself was small compared to the golem. Even if a golem’s core was in its head and an enemy struck its head, the core was so small that the attack would probably miss it.

Yet Frondier had dispatched most of the golems with a single blow. A few had taken several attacks, but every one of those attacks had clearly targeted the core.

Piercing the golems’ hard metal in one stroke was impressive enough, but knowing the cores’ exact locations was downright uncanny. It was as though he could see inside them.

["Frondier! You know where the cores are, don’t you?"]

Binkis spoke to buy time to reorganize her golems. Frondier would be able to rest in the meantime, so the pause benefited them equally.

"That’s not all I know."

But Frondier said something strange. Depending on how one took it, it was rather frightening, too.

["What else do you know, then?"]

At that question, Frondier looked at the golem. Watching through its eyes instead of a screen, Binkis felt as though his gaze was directed straight at her.

"I also know where you are, ma’am."

...?!

Binkis’s shoulders twitched.

Of course, Binkis was somewhere inside the field. She had to remain within a certain distance to control so many golems remotely.

But identifying her location just by looking at a golem was absurd. Even Constel’s teachers should have been incapable of that.

Was Frondier somehow capable of it...?

"I’m joking. How would I know that?"

["You little brat!"]

WHOOSH!

A golem swung its spear. Frondier dodged and put some distance between them.

'He really has improved.'

Binkis had gathered data from the golem Frondier had previously defeated and had a rough idea of how he had cut it down. The footage recorded through its eyes had shown her his level of skill.

Back then, he had clearly been no different from a novice who had only just begun fighting. He had cut down the golem through resourcefulness, quick thinking, and the power of his weapon—not combat skill.

But now, Frondier had unmistakably grown. In such a short time, too.

'His technique and his responses have improved. He must have had a good teacher helping him develop his skills. But more importantly... '

Composure.

The judgment possessed only by someone who had overcome stronger, formidable enemies and life-threatening situations.

Frondier already had all of it.

"But there is a way to find out," Frondier said.

["Huh? A way? What way?"]

"A way to find out where you are."

With that, Frondier raised one hand. Threads of mana wove together above it, and an arrow floated into the air.

Binkis had been watching this happen throughout their fight, but she still had no idea how it worked. She had never seen magic like it.

'An innate skill... or perhaps Divine Power.'

How had he kept something like that hidden all this time? In his place, she would have been itching to show it off.

But Frondier left the arrow pointing toward the sky.

"Ma’am. Have you heard of the ‘fireworks’?"

["... Uh, what?"]

An instant later, the arrow shot skyward. In midair, it split into dozens, then hundreds of arrows, spreading out like the Milky Way before plunging toward the ground like lightning.

They roared like a torrential downpour. Binkis definitely remembered seeing this before.

'The fireworks! It really was Frondier!'

The massive monster attack on Constel.

The miraculous technique that had wiped out the fleeing monsters after the attack was repelled had been recreated before her eyes.

Of course, there had already been suspicions that Frondier was behind it. He had been nowhere to be seen during the attack, and before that, there had been the incident where he broke the record in a private training room.

But no one had truly believed it.

Surely not that Frondier.

["... Wow. That’s impressive, sure. But how are you going to find me with it?"]

"You may already know this, but the fireworks track their targets with perfect accuracy."

His words reminded Binkis that every monster hit by the fireworks had been struck in the head, heart, or another invariably fatal weak point.

It defied common sense to think he had individually aimed hundreds of arrows at vital spots. Judging by the direction they had come from, he had also fired them from an immense distance.

In other words, every arrow in the fireworks was guided.

"Unfortunately, I don’t know how to make them miss ‘just enough.’ That’s simply how these arrows work."

Binkis’s face went cold.

Binkis was no ordinary person herself. Though her work leaned toward research, she was an accomplished mage and Summoner in her own right. She could handle most attacks without even needing a golem.

But she honestly could not immediately think of a way to block countless arrows attacking her vital spots all at once. Could a barrier even stop arrows that killed monsters regardless of their kind?

["A-are you threatening me? You’re a student, and I’m a teacher!"]

"What are you talking about? Right now, I’m a ‘prospective professional’ here to rescue a victim from a monster, and you’re ‘playing the monster.’"

It was what the teachers kept telling students during finals. Expect the teachers to go easy on you, and you would be swallowed whole.

Abandon your halfhearted attitude and take this seriously. Frondier was throwing those very words back at her.

Of course, they had said that because they assumed no student could possibly beat a teacher. They had even arranged the worst possible matchups to ensure it.

Except for Frondier.

Except for the boy everyone underestimated, about whom they had absolutely no data.

["Y-you! You won’t get away with it if you actually do that! Don’t you remember the midterms? A drone is filming you live! If you really injure or kill someone—"]

"Oh, about that. Would you take a look at this?"

["... Huh?"]

Binkis peered at the screen showing Frondier. He pointed somewhere.

A drone hovered there, still filming him.

What about it?

"Looks exactly the same, doesn’t it? I swapped it for a fake."

["...?!"]

"You see, I heard the whole story about how that man Renzo infiltrated the midterms. I thought it was a very good idea."

["?? ...?!"]

Binkis went deathly pale, opening and closing her mouth without managing a word. Instead, the microphone built into the golem transmitted her escaping breaths and hiccup-like gulps.

She looked at Frondier again.

On the screen, he was simply smiling, his teeth white. From that eerie, crescent-shaped smile came the same voice as before.

"So, where are you, ma’am?"

* * *

... Well.

As you might expect, most of that was a lie.

For starters, the fireworks didn’t work with the arrow alone. They required the bow Chryselakatos and the arrow Iocheira together, and I had just fired only the arrow.

In other words, I could imitate the appearance—splitting it into arrows that rained down—but those arrows had no tracking function that would send every one of them into an opponent’s vital spots.

Why hadn’t I used the bow? Because even with it, I couldn’t have tracked her.

The bow’s almost miraculous tracking ability required me to see the target with my own eyes. I couldn’t hit an enemy whose location I didn’t even know, like Binkis right now.

But I was the only one who knew that.

The bluff would work just fine.

Oh, and replacing the drone was a lie, too.

I really did think it was a good idea, of course. The method was also a perfect fit for my skill, Weaving.

But I had to prove my worth to Ampere during these finals. I wasn’t going to keep hiding everything the way I had before.

["Y-you, hey, are you really going to fire?"]

Hmm.

It seemed the bluff had worked perfectly.

"Do you need a moment to prepare yourself? Then I’ll count to three—"

["Hey! Hey!! HEY!!"]

Her cries were almost screams.

She seemed genuinely afraid of me. What a strange feeling. I wasn’t even trying to hit her for real.

It was fortunate Binkis didn’t know me very well. If I had been facing Jane, this bluff might not have worked.

But since things had come this far, I might as well push a little further.

I needed a proper reason to snipe her, beyond simply being a lunatic.

"Actually, I know."

["K-know what?"]

"This exam is deceiving the students."

["...!"]

Binkis fell silent.

Normally, she would have immediately denied it without a shred of shame. Had I shaken her that badly?

["W-what are you talking about?"]

Still denying it, though. Right.

"You intended to make the students experience defeat from the start, didn’t you? All that talk about first place going to whoever resolves the most incidents was a lie."

["N-no, it wasn’t! If you actually deal with the alarms one after another—"]

CRUNCH! CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

I drove spears into the golem in rapid succession.

By practicing Weaving until this exam, I had increased the number of simultaneous creations to four. With the experience I had earned from killing the Chimera earlier, it hadn’t taken long.

Binkis’s golems were certainly tough, but the Imperial Armory’s weapons were a level above them. Throwing a shitload of money at things really was the best solution.

Leaving the fallen golem behind, I walked toward another nearby.

["Hey! Do you have any idea how much these cost? You’ve already broken all their cores, so I can’t even repair them!"]

"If you don’t want to waste them, let’s have a more honest conversation."

The first-years were supposed to fail this practical final.

That was one of the things I knew in advance. And to be honest, personally, I didn’t have much of a problem with that approach.

Actually facing monsters from the Outside brought far greater despair. Experiencing a minor failure beforehand would lessen the confusion when the real situation arose and allow them to respond. Of course, they could also use that experience to pick themselves up and climb higher.

But that was a separate matter.

Knowing the truth beforehand did feel shitty. And nothing would make my behavior more convincing to Binkis than this.

"You might not realize this, but I’m quite angry."

That, of course, was a lie.

["A-angry?"]

"Not just for myself, but because all the students are giving everything they have to a practical they’re going to fail anyway. Knowing that in advance feels pretty shitty."

That was true to some extent.

Why else would upperclassmen agree to be recruited and vow to get revenge? They had already experienced that despair and were trying to rise above it.

Yet no one had ever won this ‘exam they were supposed to lose.’ For the upperclassmen who had already suffered that despair once, it couldn’t be a fair system.

You were supposed to lose. To me, that sounded just like the fundamental premise of the game Etius.

"This practical was supposed to be a ‘small-scale version of the professional exam,’ wasn’t it?"

And to me, this practical was also a small-scale version of Etius.

I was sick of failure and fed up with defeat.

"I’m going to beat this practical, even if I have to force my way through."

I raised the arrow again, poised to fire the glowing projectile at any moment.

"If you won’t tell me where you are, that’s fine. The result will be the same anyway."

["A-all right. I lose. I’ll tell you. Here’s where I am—"]

"It’s too late now."

["W-wait! Just waaait! I said I’d tell you! Do you really have to kill someone? I get that you’re angry about the exam, but did I design it? Hey!"]

She had a perfectly valid point. Binkis had contributed nothing to this system. If I had to find fault with her, it would only be for keeping it secret.

Keeping my expression stern, I spoke.

"You’re right. Your location doesn’t actually matter. I’m not really going to kill you. Tell me about the others."

["Th-the others?"]

"Yes. The other teachers. All their locations."

["... I don’t know, though?"]

"All right, I’ll count to three."

["Hey! I really don’t know! This time I genuinely don’t!"]

"Don’t lie. The alarms went off simultaneously. You checked the students’ team compositions and positioned the teachers accordingly. How could you do that without knowing each other’s locations?"

["Urk."]

"Three, two, one—"

["A-all right, all right! You’re awfully impatient for a student."]

"Rescuing someone in danger requires swift action."

["You really have an answer for everything!"]

And so, I successfully cleared the first alarm. I had gained some valuable information, too.

I felt a little like the bad guy, but a win was a win.