CH 268

"Fuhahaha! It's finally the time for justice to be served! Today's the last day you could stay above us!"

"Fufu, indeed. I will be leading the class from tomorrow onwards, so you can be relieved and just come under us silently."

"What the, are you daydreaming? I'm the one who stands on top! You can leave everything to me!"

"Don't disparage me! This Venerable is the one who will lead everyone!"

As usual, it's really hard to tell if they get along well or not. They were acting like they had already won. This scene kind of looks familiar.

Today was Thursday, yesterday was an awfully hectic for me to arrange things like like calling out Lana and others after classes, holding a preparatory meeting for the practice guild battle, handed some of the commanding roles to Rina, putting up the preparation for quests, requesting Hannah for alchemy and etc though it would be never ending if I began to explain it so let's omit it.

The day for the practice guild battle had arrived in the blink of an eye. I guess I was also a bit too excited for this.

I felt relieved that I wasn't the only one excited seeing their antics.

At present, we were in No.7 arena, after classes were over.

We were following the code of sportsmanship and were greeting each side.

In my abreast lined up were Lana, Shizu, Rika and Karua.

On the opposite side were Saturn-kun, Jilong-kun, Tom-kun, Helck-kun and a familiar looking ‹Rabbitkin› girl.

I ignored the Quartet and tried calling out to her since I was more curious about her than their internal strife.

"You're from the same class, I think, Misato-san, right......?"

"Yes! Feel free to drop honorifics and simply call me Misato, Zephyr-kun!"

The girl as she replied so in high tension was the classmates from the same class.

Bearing the category of ‹Rabbitkin› from ‹Beastkin› category , she was an awfully cute girl with white fluffy rabbit ears growing on top of her head. My gaze involuntarily shifted to them.

Her waist length white hair was cascading behind her, and her amethyst eyes giving the impression of amicable were looking at me.

She is a nice girl who talked to everyone in the class without any differentiation and apparently, she is also well known in other classes.

I do have greeted her in the classes many times but this was the first time I was having a proper talk with her.

"Misato. Let's hope today's match will be a fun match. Though I have to say, I am surprised to see you here."

"W, why?"

"No, it's just I never thought there would be a student from our own class joining ‹Best of the Best, the Great Star›."

"Hey, Zephyr! What do you mean by that!"

Saturn-kun shouted from the sideline but I ignored him since I was chatting with Misato.

There are around 11 boys in our class but since 2 are in ‹Eden›, 5 in ‹Machos› and 4 in ‹Best of the Best, the Great Star›, the only one left are girls.

They had flashily blown themselves during the class introduction and were given the name of ‹Pri-4› from the girls of our classes so honestly speaking, it never occurred to me that there might be a single girl from the class willing to join their guild.

I was completely sure that they must have pulled a boy from another class.

Misato, when she heard my doubt, flashed a bitter smile.

"Ah~, tahaha. I have been getting a lot of invites too, you see. I was fed up with solicitation contests from upperclassmen, and I also have some things. So I thought I should try joining them as a trial run." (*Tahaha - not a typo, that's just how she laughed)

Sure enough, there were some circumstances behind it.

That was so stupid of me. Of course no one would join ‹Best of Best, the Great Star› expressly unless there were some kind of circumstances.

As I nodded in realization, I heard the bewildered voice of the Quartet saying something like “what? Was it a trial run?” but of course, I ignored them.

It was something I heard about it later, apparently Misato was invited to many high-ranking guilds and they were all awfully persistent and buzzing her.

After all, the job she has was one of the popular jobs in the game ‹Dungeon Activity›一一«Sage». They're the genuine healer with a high aptitude for healing, lifting abnormal status conditions and barriers.

So of course she was someone high-ranking guilds would want to get on their hands desperately. Besides, she herself was a talented girl and her performance was excellent in both yesterday's and today's practical class.

Even I want her in ‹Eden› if possible.

But from Misato's perspective, she couldn't see any charm in the high-ranking guilds. Either of them were so stringent she could see herself getting fed-up even if she joined one.

The truth was, seniors had just graduated from academy at that time, guild battle had once again become upperclassmen's battlefield and whichever guild you take, were burning in revenge and improving their guild battle records.

Since I'm on this, I should also point out that the reason Misato attracted the attention of so many guilds was also because she was an elite selected for Class-1 when there was a wave of first years getting high-ranking jobs and talented individuals shining one after another.

In short, the scenario until now was that guild would immediately go into full-battle mode just by seeing a freshman achieving a high-ranking job but everything changed this year and now they had to go even one step beyond than just looking for high-ranking jib individuals; seeking out talented personal even among the high-ranking job individuals.

Henceforth, the majority of guilds pushed forward to Misato which considerably exhausted her.

There was such a thing happening but when it became clear that I had formed my own guild during the solicitation battle, the number of invitations gradually dwindled down.

Coincidentally, it just happened to be that she received an invitation from Quartet who hoped she would join them since they want to form a guild. Saturn-kun party was lacking a healer apparently.

That being the case and the earlier ruckus being the trigger that burst forth the feeling that upperclassmen guild would be hard to deal with, she decided to join their guild ‹Best of the Best, the Great Star› on the condition that it would be a trial run first and she could withdraw anytime she feel like without any restrain.

"Hey there! Cut it out with your act and stop ignoring us!"

"Fufu, you sure have guys to ignore us."

Yikes. I tried to ignore them but it seemed to have gotten on their nerves. That being said, our side also has one person who couldn't wait for the guild battle to begin.

"For god's sake! That's enough, hurry up and begin! You're such a dullard Zephyr! Hurry up!"

It goes without saying that person was Lana. We could only hurry up now.

On her face was written “Hurry up, I want to beat them down thoroughly”.

I hope she doesn't go too hard on them.

We quickly went over greetings since there were people clamouring to start already and confirmed the rules.

"Let's confirm the rules once again. This might be a mock guild battle but there aren't much changes in rules compared to actual guild battle. Except that attacks aren't allowed on the base. Also, the guild battle this time has ‹Capture the Castle›, ‹Five Person Battle› and ‹Diamond-shape› field. Does anyone have any questions so far?"

By the way, the ‘no attacking base’ rule was basically due to the difference in our levels.

Just mine and Lana's attack would be enough to settle this mock guild battle in a matter of minutes so no attacking base rule was an obvious measure. It was a rule often used in mock guild battles.

Seeing that no one showed any objection at my explanation, this was the end for greetings and rule confirmation time.

Both guilds headed to their respective base and waited for the signal to start.

On this note, the referee and the one to operate the arena this time was Mukai-sensei whom we had been under care of before too in our E-rank promotion exam. As a matter of fact, Mukai-sensei was also one of the assistant teachers of Class-1. Class-1 has two assistant teachers in charge and Mukai-sensei mainly support from the sideline.

As we were heading to our base, I spotted Rina on a nearby audience seat. This was also a part she had to study so I asked her to come and watch.

Rina waved back blushingly when I lightly waved my hand to her.

"Zephyr! I don't see any trace of tension from you even though we're about to begin! Get yourself together!"

Lana jabbed at me when I was doing that.

O, ohh. She's so much looking forward to it huh. Alright, time for me to focus too.

Countdown began on the screen in the air operated by Mukai-sensei.

And then, reverberate the start buzzer.