Chapter 169: Event No. 5 Dimension Run 1st Part

Event No. 5, Dimension Run, is a baton relay. However, unlike the usual baton relay, the participants won’t be running on their own feet. Riding a specially made board, they’ll be moving around inside a box.

Since they’re not actually running, it’s not an actual run but, well, it sounds nice so I’d be glad if this fact stays ignored. Inside the box are various different stages, the team members will finish two stages each, totaling 8 stages that need to be completed.

Moving the board requires magic power and, naturally, conquering these stages requires magic as well. In other words, they’ll need to manipulate magic power simultaneously for two different purposes, moving and defending. Well, it shouldn’t be a problem for them since they’ve participated in the student council training session.

『Event no. 5, Dimension Run is a team battle that requires all team members to fight as one! A fervent battle befitting the last contest of the morning will surely unfold!』

This event’s stage, a large perfectly squared box, has already appeared before the participants. Right now it’s pure white but once the game starts, each surface will turn into a large screen that will show the happenings inside.1

『With that said, let us begin! Our first runners are Tebby for team A! Aura for team B! Mahara for team C! And Ethel for team D!』

The rules of the game and the board prototype have been shown beforehand but since this will be the first time they’ll actually ride these boards, it seems like each team has assigned the skilled ones as the first runners. In particular, team A put Tebby as the first, so it’s clear that the team is aiming for an overwhelming lead all around.

『Ready? Go!!』

On Sharl’s signal, everybody’s board simultaneously accelerated forward. As to be expected, the first out of them is team A’s Tebby, next is team D’s Ethel. A bit behind them is Mahara and Aura respectively, but it appears that team A didn’t gain as much distance as they expected.

The first stage is the forest behind this academy. Their boards weave between the gaps of the trees but, naturally, avoiding obstacles will cause an equivalent loss of time.

「That’s annoying. Burn to ash! “Fire Lance”!」 『That’s Tebby! Using fire magic, his specialty, he burns down the trees before him one after another, brute-forcing his way through!』 「Uwah, is that even fair……」

If this was a real forest, then this wouldn’t be allowed out of fear of the fire spreading, but the forest right now is something I made. Knowing that, Tebby is holding nothing back. The other three don’t really have magic that can attack at the same scale, so the most they can do is move the foliages that block their way.

『Team A is gradually gaining more and more distance from the other teams! And now after plowing straight ahead, Tebby has left the forest area and moved over to the mountain area!』

Next, after the forest is a mountain. They’ll climb a practically perpendicular cliff using their boards. While the forest stage may be about overcoming the trees, the mountain stage is all about how they dodge or handle rocks falling down to them. Being rocks, Tebby’s flame magic can’t burn them; and while explosion magic might be able to destroy them, since these are falling directly downwards, the fragments might cause him injury.

In the end, Tebby chose to simply maneuver the board and dodge the obstacles in this stage with minimal movement. Having said that, his speed naturally fell.

『There it is! Mahara is gaining distance with amazing speed! With wind, she blows away the rocks falling before her and accelerates herself even more by making a tailwind right behind her!』

Taking this chance, team C’s Mahara is quickly closing the distance. Meanwhile, Aura and Ethel seem to have a bad affinity for this stage, as they’re having a tough time unable to pick up much speed.

With the three’s situation, Mahara is quickly approaching Tebby. Being solidly planted by their roots, trees are difficult to move using wind magic, but it’s a different story for falling rocks. Wind attribute magic is quite useful here. And with nothing being able to stop her, accelerating is pretty easy. Still, it seems that the distance gained at the forest area was quite large, as the next area is now visible before Mahara could overtake Tebby.

『Will Tebby be able to shake her off!? Will Mahara be able to overtake him!?…… Closer! Closer! And closer! And now here they pass the baton! Uh-oh! Team A dropped it! They dropped the baton! Taking this chance, Mahara beautifully passes the baton to Hermie! Demonstrating the bond between master and retainer, team A has been overtaken! Team A’s Kief quickly picks up the fallen baton with wind magic and chases after Hermie! Falling somewhat behind, Ethel passed their baton to Kut and Aura passed theirs to Liev. As anticipated, passing the baton here is quite difficult, each team seems to be quite stiff with their movements.』

That’s only natural, since the third stage is the cave area. And it’s not that there’s an entrance to a cave leading inside the mountain, just above the summit itself is the entrance to the cave. In other words, the ones that have climbed so far don’t really change their angles, but while the first runners are going up, the second runners are in a flat plane. It’s a result of me messing with the gravity a bit, but it looks like it messed up the baton pass more than I anticipated.

Even so, Hermie and Mahara didn’t have any trouble at all, so this just shows the depths of their bond.

『In this cave area, the obstacles consist of bats and falling crystals, but Hermie enveloped her own body with a super small scale tornado and shut them all out! On the other hand, the bats and crystals blown off of her are heading towards the direction of team A’s Kief!』

While the eye of the storm is a windless area, that’s pretty skillful of her. Hermie also did this before during Tentacle Guard. Perhaps she was really frustrated with how I hijacked her “Fire Arrow” the first time we met, as she’s been training predominantly on magic control.

Still, since she’s focusing on defense, she’s not gaining that much speed. But as she doesn’t need to dodge the obstacles, she is still gaining considerable speed.

In contrast to Hermie, team A’s Kief, who fell behind a bit after missing the baton pass, seems to be focusing on speed rather than defense. Keif is gaining speed with wind magic but moves too much while dodging the falling crystals and flying bats. Even so, Kief is gradually closing the distance with the current first place Hermie but……

『While not showy by any means, Liev’s solid run is gradually closing the gap with the others! Swift, quite swift! While using the minimum required movement to dodge the crystals, she shoots down the bats with fire arrows. The pacing is quite good! Team D’s Kut seems to be having a tough time? Even so, he’s still keeping up with the others!』

In truth, team D is falling behind overall. Kut ran out of magic power in the previous event, so this is honestly inevitable, but this is a tactical mistake for team D. If they had at least assigned him to be the fourth runner, then he might have fared a bit better.

『Beyond the cave is the desert! Water attribute magic receive a radical decrease in effectiveness!』 「Kya!? What’s with this!?」

As Sharl just announced, after this cave is the desert area. This desert area weakens the effectiveness of water attribute magic greatly while, at the same time, causes those that use wind attribute to get covered in sand just like Hermie right now. Noticing something strange, she immediately stopped her use of magic but even so, the sand that was gathered by her wind magic rained down on her.

If she had stopped it just a bit later then she might have ended up receiving significant damage.

The same happened with Keif who’s currently chasing after Hermie; in his case, he was too slow in stopping his magic, which ended up decreasing his speed greatly. In contrast, while a bit behind them, Liev came this far with her ability to maneuver her board with only little use of magic. With the disappearance of any obstacles and the full use of fire attribute magic, which has increased effects here in contrast to water attribute, she accelerates greatly.

『Liev is showing an amazing catch up, but Hermie isn’t losing that easily! If wind isn’t usable, then just go with fire! With that, Hermie is speeding up as well!』

Being able to use three of the four attributes, wind, water, and fire, is Hermie’s greatest strength. Just because wind and water attribute isn’t usable here doesn’t mean that Hermie can’t do anything anymore. If these aren’t usable, then just go with fire attribute. Hermie recreates the flame boost I showed before. With that, Hermie secures the 1st place out of the second runners, with Liev at 2nd, Kief at 3rd, and Kut who’s a bit behind at 4th; and they’re about to pass to the third runners now.