CHAPTER 100: FIRST PHASE PART 3

Several hours had passed, they had delivered food and entertainment books, a few minutes later while I was in the bathroom they had brought me clothes.

Although it was not necessary since I already had clothes that I took from my shadow, it’s not like my shadow is an inventory, I just teleport what I need through it.

So I’m taking things from my castle in the Veritus mansion or from my room.

The competitions will soon resume, these will be the last ones before the second phase begins, I don’t know who our enemy is, but they will have serious problems, I’m still irritated because of the pervert who did that to me.

"..."

"Guys, i-isn’t it better to just let Pandora destroy the enemy crystal and we protect ours?" Amiya says.

"...Maybe" Hana is torn between this, the problem is obvious in this, if I’m not close to the crystal I can’t help, which means they necessarily have to defend it with all their might.

"Okay, then I’ll go, but you should still take care of the area and the monsters, so Hana and Amiya should focus on the crystal and Tsubasa should focus on the monsters" I don’t see any problems with me having to go attack.

’Wait...’

"Hey Hana, according to the rules, can’t we move the crystal from its place?"

"...Yes, rule number 7 - The crystal must remain in the castle at all times, those who remove the crystal from the pedestal or from the castle will be automatically eliminated"

’I think I found a way to circumvent this’

"Let’s do this, the 4 of us will attack the enemy castle"

"!!!" Everyone is surprised.

"W-What? If we do that, who will protect our crystal?" Amiya says incredulously.

"No one, the crystal won’t need it" The reason I really need them to help is because the more the team helps, the more credits we earn, and I really need the credits.

So if they help, I’ll come out on top.

"...Okay...but if we lose it’ll be your fault" Amiya says grumpily, she probably also needs credits, those who don’t have enough credits get punished and have to study during school breaks.

And if they can’t recover, they are sent to a special class to try to earn more credits, and if they still fail, they are expelled from the academy.

"Yes, I know it’ll be my fault, but trust me, I have a plan"

"Alright..." Hana and Tsubasa agree with me, unlike Amiya, they must have already figured out that I have a good plan regarding this, and yes, I have an unconventional plan.

I’m studying a lot of magic, so I know well how to move the crystal without breaking the rules.

"..."

And so we wait, after our meals and a little nap in the adjacent rooms that had beds, the announcement comes that it’s now our turn.

Everyone gets ready for what’s to come, soon we are teleported to our castle, the first thing I do is look at the scenery, which fortunately this time favors us.

Our castle is on top of a small mountain, which is very useful for my idea.

"Get out of the castle and you can start going down" It’s not very high, it shouldn’t be high because it’s just to replicate the structure of the mountain, I think in 10 minutes everything can be done.

Soon Amiya, Hana and Tsubasa get out, I start engraving magic circles on the castle, many of them in different points, this is one of the magic circles I saw in the academy’s books.

It’s basic gravity magic, but even the most basic magic can become strong if you amplify it with other magic circles.

"I think that’s good enough" I get out of the castle to take it off the ground.

The magic circles also have illusion magic, so the flying castle will be hidden while an illusion of the castle will remain in its place, I soon use earth magic to disconnect the ground and activate the magic circles.

An illusion of the castle remains exactly where the original castle is, while the original castle becomes invisible and starts floating, I spent enough mana for this castle to float for the next 4 hours.

I soon descend the mountain and meet my team, Amiya has a shocked look, although this is not even that difficult, any student can do it, although the duration will be based on how much mana was put into the circle.

Amiya’s look of disbelief is wonderful, I guess she forgot that this is a fantasy world, something like this is nothing special, if the enemy uses magic they will quickly discover the mistake.

However, whether they will be able to find the real castle and reach it is another story.

"Brilliant plan, Pandora, though I think it’ll be hard to keep that thing in the air" Tsubasa praises me as we run down the mountain, I could fly but I’ll guide them because it will be bad if they get worn out by monsters.

"Thank you" I thank him normally as we descend, the enemy castle seems to be in a maze, it’s quite large from here, and I already notice that there is a barrier at the top, so everyone has to enter and use the maze normally.

I bet the sides also have some trick for the smartasses who try to avoid the maze.

’If I...pushed Hana and Tsubasa off here...no, I can’t do anything stupid too early to kill them and there are too many spectator eyes’ Intrusive thoughts arise at this kind of moment.

But I ignore my murderous tendencies and monster instincts that urge me to kill them and focus on the mission.

We run hurriedly through the mountains, some monsters attack but I eliminate them all, we have an advantage because the other team has to go through the maze to come out and get to us.

While we only have to go in a straight line until we get to the maze entrance, so we run for a good few minutes until we reach the maze entrance.

When we get to the entrance, we stop for a moment to plan.

’No one seems to have come out yet’

"Okay, Amiya should stand guard at the entrance" In case someone comes out, at least Amiya will be there to buy some time.

"And the three of us should go in there and destroy the crystal, understood?" Everyone agrees, soon Hana and Tsubasa enter the maze and go through different paths, I enter and to help Amiya I make a magic circle on the ground.

This circle is an illusion, and to anyone who sees the entrance it will look like just a wall, so they’ll have to pay close attention.

I soon start walking, looking at the tall walls of this maze, they seem to have a lot of magic to protect the walls or to prevent smartasses from trying to bypass the maze.

"..." I walk, looking at all this magic, it’s impressive, the walls seem to be made of concrete with moss, but they are 100% made of magic, I had taken the right path at the beginning and now I decide to go through the left bifurcation.

This place seems to have magic to disorient people, a truly problematic little place, even if I use mana I can’t locate other people or the exit, because the whole area is full of mana.

At least with this I now know that you can hide by covering the entire area with mana, so if I’m running away I can just spread a lot of mana around the place and no one will be able to detect my position by spreading their own mana.

’In fact, I think I can be more subtle...’ this way of locating things works by spreading your mana, and the mana bounces off solid things and sends a signal, like the echolocation of a bat.

But I think if I cover my body with a certain layer of mana, I can bypass and disperse this way of locating things.

I hear a noise and soon see a monster wandering, it didn’t see me and went away.

’It seems the maze has several wandering monsters, but they don’t seem very strong, I wonder if the others are having more success’

I’m getting lost easily here, in every direction everything looks the same, I’ve already run into several dead ends.

’It’s harder than I thought, there must be some secret to getting through the maze’ If I just keep wandering aimlessly, I’ll never get out of here, all the walls are identical so it’s impossible to identify where I’ve already been.

Also, I can’t damage the walls, they’re very resistant, and wasting a lot of mana on that would be stupid, another important point is these wandering monsters, they’re weak but if I waste time fighting them I’ll just unnecessarily drain my mana.

I try to pay attention to something simpler, instead of looking at the scenery I try to find a pattern in everything I’ve seen in the last few minutes.

’Maybe...the monsters?’ The monsters have very mechanical and patterned movements, they’re always in the same place and don’t stray, although they are monsters made of the director’s mana, they should still wander aimlessly.

So maybe they are the key to getting out of here.

I try to find more monsters and see what they all have in common, soon I find one that seems to be some kind of blue orc, I watch its movements, it repeats a pattern going and coming back through 3 corridors, I hide and follow the path it took, soon I see another monster.

It also has a pattern of coming and going.

’Bingo’ The direction they’re going is guiding me to the castle and the exit, in my case I just have to follow the path they’re taking without killing them or being seen, they’ll lead me straight to the castle entrance.