68 The line between Genius and Insanity

-Now that these matters are taken care of...

I look at all the students before me.

-Your task will be as follows: you will be separated into four batches, from the strongest to the weakest. Every small cycle [1], I will personally throw down a batch down this building. No matter the method used, as long as you survive the fall, it will be considered a success. You might consider taking a look at the library.

The library is 50 meters down the top of the building, 20 meters away. It doesn't matter if they are physically strong, they still have the equivalent of human strength. Those that are unable to think or socialize will be purged.

-Start! Here comes down the first group!

As I announce the names one by one, I teleport them where they can fall without interference.

-Sofia, Anna, DarkSasuke, Kawaii 1, Kawaii 2.

I don't want our student council to meddle, do I?

[Anna]

I use a series of physical forces opposing my weight during the fall in order to keep a slow enough speed.

We do not exactly all use the same methods, but the result is the same.

During the fall I take time to think about our situation.

Us being the first group to be thrown without preparation is a clear message. We are expected to not interfere in this matter.

I am of the opinion we should indeed stay out of this matter, but what does she intend to do?

I subconsciously look at Sofia.

[Sofia]

Tsk!

I can't stay out of this. It'd be being subservient.

It's fine to be officially named as leaders, but if we don't act now, it's bound to create resentment.

Wouldn't it make us look like we are working for him?

I finally got power, there's no way I'll let it be absorbed by this so-called "school director".

After we all landed, I say:

-We must act.

Unexpectedly, the first person to agree is not Anna.

-I think the same.

It's DarkSasuke.

-It's decided then.

What should we do...

[Moar]

You won't stay out of this, do you...

Then...

I send a soul wave in their direction:

-If you intend to interfere no matter what, here are the rules:

1) You shall not help any student during their descent.

2) You shall not help any student before they reached their destination.

If you do not follow these rules, I will directly destroy your seeds.

It's an empty threat, there's no way I'd destroy something so useful, but they don't know I could have a use for their seed. From their point of view, the only use of their seed is for themselves. They will definitely take my threat seriously.

I'm interested in knowing how both the student council and the students themselves will tackle this problem.

But any student that is unable to use its head is unworthy of my school.

[Anna]

As soon as I heard the director's statement, I gave up on the matter. Not getting a bit of influence does not matter in the face of losing it all. As I looked at the others, the face of DarkSasuke directly told me that his decision was the same as mine. Seeing DarkSasuke agree with Sofia on helping students was strange enough, there's no way he would take any risk beyond that.

Sofia was however deep in thoughts which her expression didn't betray. A look at the face of her friends however told me she might not have given up.

I know my position. I know I can't disagree in any way with Sofia's opinions. But... If I can postpone the moment I have to choose my life over safekeeping my seed even for a bit, I'll do it.

I totally won't bring up the subject until Sofia does.

I just hope DarkSasuke will wait too. He tends to have low patience, after all.

[DarkSasuke]

Seeing Anna's restless face, it's obvious she won't make a decision before Sofia does.

What intrigues me most is that Anna wasn't this weak-willed at first. Did she soften up after Sofia saved her or is there something more to their relationship?

I lean on the wall of the school building and close my eyes.

Is this what the school director wanted?

I might seem to be in a strong position on the fighting power side, but I'm actually already defeated on the diplomatic side. Pressured by a strong opponent, played with by a number of shrewd scavengers.

This decision might just be out of my hands, I'll just wait and see.

[Sofia]

"You shall not help any student during their descent"

"You shall not help any student before they reached their destination"

Being unable to help any student during their descent might be the first rule, but it's actually a supporting rule. The main rule is that we can't help students until they reached the library. The first rule actually exists to stop us from waiting for students to fall down to the library and cushion their fall as soon as they are inside its definition range.

After all, if it was just about waiting until they reached the library, nothing would have stopped us from skipping this step and helping them INSIDE the library.

Knowing we can't help them at any point before or during their fall, no matter how we bend the rules, it means we can't use saving them to solidify our position.

But I must think differently. I don't need to save the students to get gratitude and influence.

I just need to help them in a significant way.

"You might consider taking a look at the library"...

It's not just an empty remark. It means there are benefits to this library.

Most students will anyway try their best to fall on a floating island. The library is the highest floating island there is, and as such the easiest to land on.

If we just wait for the students to get there and rip the benefits, it will be perfect.

I just need an excuse to look good in front of the students.

I send a soul-wave in all directions.

-Director, does encouragement counts as a form of help?

[Moar]

That's interesting. She clearly knows I know about everything in the school. She doesn't know that I have access to her soul, but she knows I listened to their conversation earlier on. Yet despite that, she sends such a strong and noticeable soul wave. It's definitely for the others to know she has a plan.

-It's fine if it's just encouragement.

There's something I didn't say, however. You don't plan to just encourage them, do you?

It's funny so I'll let it slide this time, but don't underestimate me by using such a simple ploy.

Even without access to your thoughts, it wouldn't go undetected.

I didn't expect her to have already found this frequency, however. It seems I didn't keep a close enough look at her. Reverse engineering my methods is an incredible feat. She might just be a genius.

[Sofia]

After this many rounds of announcements from the Director, I already understood how he transmitted his soul waves all around the school.

He didn't just use relays, or any messages could pass through them. He also doesn't use any kind of identification method, as it could be leaked. He actually gives several special frequencies to his soul waves. Every soul wave he gives a meaning to are different variations of the same pattern.

So using my seed, I just need to cheat my way through using several alternative soul-type forces to simulate waves.

It's a pity I could keep this trump card for later on.

I starting suspecting something was up when I noticed that beyond the soul waves those without a seed couldn't detect anymore, the words seemed to enter our thoughts instead of entering through our hearing.

These words seemed to match the main method I used to communicate. When I was mostly thinking about using my mouth, I felt like I heard it despite it never happening, when I was mostly thinking about using soul waves, pure meaning entered my thoughts.

You wouldn't notice such a thing without thinking about it, but once you noticed it, it's obvious.

It was then obvious than the words entering my thoughts were translated to match me, while unchanged soul-waves were the source.

Just by finding the common point between every soul-wave and calculating a common pattern, I am now able to use this system at my own advantage.

-Everyone, it's the student council's Sofia talking.

If I'm pushed into this position, I might as well use it to my advantage. I didn't concert with them, but...

-We're going to wait for you at the library! No matter how hard things are, impossible is just an opinion. Don't limit yourself by what you think you can do. Use every means at your disposal to succeed! We'll be waiting for you! Every means, remember!

I'm giving them a little push by saying every means they can use. They already have what they need to help themselves. Now let's just wait for the successful ones.

[Moar]

I'm speechless. Did you just search inspirational quotes on google? [2]

Anyway, as a former human, I obviously thought about all the uses they can make of their clothes and the items I gave them.

I know she did think it could be a good occasion too, reducing the number of people with items left removes them from the list of potential seed owners, on top of increasing their survival chances.

Some methods are better than others.

One must not underestimate the strength of gravity.

Remember how the strength of gravity is so much more than an Earth-size planet, and as such, I was barely able to jump 10 meters at first? I'm the god of several universes, and I have to cheat to do anything in this universe. That's the kind of gravity we are talking about. The whole center universe is a big planet. Light comes out of nowhere. The planet is 100 000 to 1 million times bigger than Earth, which makes it smaller than most other universes, except of course drifting ones like Moth's world. But it's because of its size and position that this universe's energy is so concentrated too.

Their body constitution is reduced to the equivalent of Moth World's humans too.

The strength of the gravity makes both the acceleration and terminal velocity much higher than normally possible. At the same time, while they are mostly relieved of the crushing effects on gravity by the same formation that allows a simple concrete building such as the school building to not collapse, they are only relieved of the pressure on the body, but not of the acceleration of the body itself and as such will still keep the acceleration and terminal velocity of this planet.

Even using a makeshift parachute, they can't do much.

But they seem to indeed be more resourceful than I thought they would be.

Now, they are considering several very interesting means. As expected of my students, they are surpassing themselves in entertaining me.

[1] A small cycle is about 28 hours

[2] ngl I did