Chapter 345: Monster and Break
———Wiina———
<12: 08 pm>
“You have another arena battle event and you still haven’t invited me and my monsters to the field, and here I thought we were friends!” Trina said with a great deal of annoyance.
“I think a strongly worded email or a phone call would’ve been fine. Why did you try to crash the party anyway?” Rico said while scratching the back of her head. “Besides, it’s not like I’m the only one with voting power around these parts.”
“You’re the one who should be giving me the news anyway! Besides, it’s not as if they could try many things to persuade me anyway.” She argued. “Also, I think I provide a lot of entertainment value for this kind of event anyway, so why not let me organize it.”
“Because they don’t want you to stream it.” Rico said in frustration. “Look, we already have a lot of things on schedule as is, there’s no way we can slot in whatever you’re planning.”
“And why not? It’s not like the students haven’t privately recorded the whole thing. I saw those videos online, you know?” Trina argued.
“Because they don’t have the reach you have. Do I really need to explain everything?” Rico said, clearly not in the mood to begin a lecture.
“Either way, where is my monster-centric event! I want my monsters to fight them. Most of them have been on the bench for way too long!” Trina continued to complain. Is there even a bench in the pocket space where they are stored?
“Can’t we talk about this later? We are in the middle of something here. You and that giant bird need to leave.” Rico calmly said. It’s rare to see her being the voice of reason, but then again she is usually not in the position of a negotiator. “Hey, Wiina. Show her the door, will you?”
“Are you insane?” I replied with that very simple question. I have no relations with her, I do not want to risk offending her, and Rico is the one with more persuasion power anyway since they’re buddies.
“...Never mind then. So, can you actually come back later? I really don’t have the energy for this.” Rico said despite the fact that all she did was being in the commentator booth.
“I already come all this way and you’re already shooing me away.” She said in annoyance. I mean, I’m pretty sure the trip is a few minutes max for her, not really much effort on her end.
“Look. You are already causing enough public disturbance as is. Just go do something else.” Rico still tries to get her to leave, clearly not liking how she has crashed onto the scene despite putting on a mask of casualness during the emergency earlier.
“...You’re no fun.” Trina remarked. “So, was today’s event seriously just to let her flex some more after what she did yesterday?”
“That is essentially the point of it. Obviously I’m not the only one with such an idea, but I do have this morbid curiosity of what would happen if more students are aware of their current status in the world. Even the weakest ones can cause a lot of chaos.” Rico ominously explained. “If they were able to internalize the fact that they can even so much as land a scratch on Emmie that they would be doing more than an entire army could, just what would happen?”
“Yeah yeah, you want to see the world burn, whatever.” Trina doesn’t seem all too bothered by her sinister intention. Walsuna and I obviously wouldn’t let any students go astray, at least within the scope of acting as a faculty member. Rico herself has some restraint on that front anyway, if she really wants to cause trouble then this entire town would’ve been evaporated long before the Eclipse. “So when the hell can I actually do something here?”
“Come on. Let’s not talk about that now. Also, do you not have anything better to do today?” Rico chose to steer the conversation elsewhere.
“Nope. Today is a free day for me. I have been streaming for a few days in a row by now, any more and there might be some fatigue.” She answered.
“Alright, all of you.” Walsuna said as she waltz into the room unannounced. She was off to do something else before Trina crashed the party with no words on what was keeping her occupied. “I have already received a few parents’ complaints from this. Want to explain why that even happened?”
“Ask her, not me.” Rico quickly deflected the question to Trina.
“Like I said, I thought I had volunteered to be part of a tournament like this. Why am I still left on read?” She said while walking up to Walsuna. It’s apparent that this argument is going to take a while longer to resolve…
———Lynda———
<12: 15 pm>
“Just what was that giant bird anyway? It appeared and suddenly disappeared.” I muttered while looking at the clear sky and leaning on the bench. That thing looks like it couldn’t even fit into the stadium. “Glery, you’re smarter than me on this front, give me some ideas, will you?”
“...Probably a summon of some kind? Maybe a tamed monster.” She speculated. Huh, I guess those two options are quite obvious. For some reason it never came up in my mind, perhaps due to how niche the idea of those two things are. People simply kill monsters, they don’t tame them. I still don’t really know how it’s done or what the purpose of it is.
“...Is there even a monster of that size around here? Or anywhere for that matter? I think we all would’ve heard of it by now.” I pointed out. “So… it’s a summon then?”
“Who’s to say? From my understanding a summon will give out a different sense than a monster, and summoners are significantly rarer than monster wranglers.” She gave out an additional context. Considering where we are and all kinds of people who came to this place does it really seem that far-fetched to have a summoner come here? Obviously I have zero idea on what a summoner is like, there is at least one famous monster tamer online, but I don’t know much about her outside of that Karra collab and the other incident involving her. I’m surprised she was bold enough to broadcast that one, it’s not like harming other people is suddenly not considered violating terms of service. It seems that being a pretty popular streamer lets her skirt even that rule, as crazy as that sounds. Is that just the corporation behind the platform being that rotten or external factor being involved… that’s not something I can really look into anyway, and I have no interest in it.
“Regardless of the source of that monster, at least it didn’t actually penetrate through the barrier. Imagine how bad everyone would panic if that happened.” Since we can’t really figure out what is going on with that, let’s just talk about other stuff. “...How strong is the barrier again? Nothing was seen shattering it, not even what seems to be the full force of that giant monster ramming down on it.”
“I’d imagine that it was made with strengths of the likes of Rico and Wiina in mind, so probably overkill.” Glery speculated. “Even Emmie with her full strength couldn’t possibly hope to damage it, assuming no surprises.”
“And she is always full of surprises…” I pointed out. As anyone who has interacted with her only a few times will understand that her whole deal is being a wildcard. “Hmm… We still don’t know how strong those guys are, right? Even you don’t know.”
“I’d imagine that whatever absurd numbers we came up with will ultimately be wrong. While I doubt they lack the level of unpredictability that Emmie possesses, they are still clearly in a league of their own.” Glery can only give out weak guesses. We have been in their vicinity a few times and she still can’t get an inkling on them. “It might take a long time before we understand the scope they are working under. I’d imagine the fact that this entire area was created in less than a day needs to be scrutinized more in order to understand their capabilities.”
“I’m surprised no one is bored enough to calculate that yet.” I remarked. Obviously no one knows the exact amount of time or what condition they worked under, and how many people are involved, but can’t you just calculate all the hypotheticals?
“That would simply be a fool’s errand. There is simply no way to calculate it without having enough information about the structure of the campus and the materials and the technology and I could go on forever. Too many factors that we simply do not know enough about, and even if we do we don’t have a baseline unit of measurement for convenience sake either.” She is rather adamant about not even being able to make loose calculations.
“...Never mind then.” That’s all I could muster for a reply. If it’s that unfeasible then we shouldn’t talk about it further. Here I thought people made all kinds of absurd calculations all the time. “By the way, were you planning on going down there at all?”
“Absolutely not, I don’t really care for the rewards in the first place, let alone have the drive to fight someone that strong.” She quickly answered. Still averse to fighting despite all that talent. At least she’s not actively avoiding all of it, I think that’s more than enough for now, even if it is a bit frustrating. I know that is like… a plot point in many stories or whatever, but you don’t get the plot convenience to help make up for lost potential.
———Kenni———
<12: 22 pm>
“Huh. When did you gain access to this place?” I asked upon noticing the wolfgirl popping up.
“Over a month. I should be the one asking you that.” Coach Homari answered.
“In my case, it’s only been a week or so since I gained access.” I still have no idea what the exact criteria for getting it is, but I still got it. I don’t need Emmie to smuggle me into this place any more. “Really, one has to wonder why this kind of place needs higher level access.”
“It’s a kind of place that would cause paranoia if it were allowed for everyone to have access to it. That should’ve been simple to deduce.” She explained. I wasn’t even really expecting an answer to that half-hearted question. I’m just saying shit to get a conversation going.
“...Anyway, are you here to look for the same thing as me? I was about to check the tracking history.” I asked to see if we are on the same page.
“That is what I’m here for.” She answered. Good, that means we’re not just gonna wrestle control over the map room.
“...A bit of a problem there. I checked the pathings of everything it tracks in a wide area and it seems like that giant monster appeared out of nowhere before making its way here. I think it was summoned or something, so we’re not seeing the full picture.” I said before showing the replay, highlighting its movement on the map as a dot that appeared out of nowhere suddenly. “Now, I made a bit of assumption that the other dot that was picked up in the same area it spawned in is related somehow, and looking at it… Hmm…”
“So it took the monster roughly only two minutes to spawn in and make its way here?” She said, noticing the time-lapse. She doesn’t seem to care about the assumption I’m making.
“Yep, it’s a fast giant chicken making its way here. No idea how it flies so fast with metal armor on its arm wings or whatever. All magical stuff that betrays what our eyes can see.” I said while scratching my head. “Anyway, it seems like the other dot I highlighted might have been the one commanding it. Still can’t really zoom in and get all the details, unfortunately. Doesn’t help that it disappeared on top of the other one since it’s an overlap, or maybe there is a more detailed version I can’t access.”
“The amount of ground it covered is immense. It wasn’t even from the same state.” She remarked, still not caring that much about the culprit. Guess I can’t really blame her for not focusing on that, but I don’t like being ignored.
“Yeah yeah, we can all guess that.” I said, feeling a bit annoyed. “That is way faster than what I could do. You’d think something that big would be slow, but nope.”
“That pressure it exudes was clearly not an illusion then. No doubt something you and the other students shouldn’t try to provoke.” She remarked.
“Come on, no one is stupid enough to do that. The only one who might do that is also preoccupied right now, so we’re fine on that front.” Good thing Emmie is on a schedule, otherwise we might get a chaotic match coming up… Wait, that thing can’t even fit in the stadium, ain’t that false alarm then?
Ah, whatever. I doubt we have to worry about that monster anyway, the faculty members are dealing with it. We’re gonna go back to the regularly scheduled show soon. Any consequence related to that most likely wouldn’t take effect this afternoon.
It is still the Emmie show for now, nothing could suddenly take that away. The lunch break is gonna be the same with a monster crashing the party or not, and the event will resume the same as well.