LMHS 30

Chapter 30

“Eek!”

The boy turned pale as a sheet and covered his lower half.

“I-I’ll let you off this time, but just you wait till next time!”

He threw out a line straight out of a third-rate villain and ran off in frustration.

After that, a few more tried to come over and smash our eggs, but they kept getting blocked by the monsters and ran away.

Still, after about three hours passed, even that started to get boring.

“Marie, I think there are probably quite a few people eliminated by now. Let’s head toward the safe zone.”

“Why there? Raspi told us to wait here until she got back…”

“Anyway, because of the difference between high tide and low tide, people will soon start gathering toward the center.”

“Huh…? The tide is… different between assistants?”

I didn’t really understand either, and while offering silent condolences to all the assistants across the country who had been ‘dumped,’ I searched for an easier way to put it.

“Do you know about high tide and low tide?”

“N-no.”

“Mm. Basically, it means the island will get submerged, so there won’t be much space left to stand.”

Isn’t the fundamental rule of battle royales that the arena shrinks as time goes on?

“Gasp, how did you know that? Did you predict it with foresight?”

“No, just a hunch.”

“…That’s awesome!”

In fact, adjusting the size of the arena in a battle royale was essential.

It was to prevent people from just hiding and slowing down the progress.

As the arena gradually shrinks, participants are forced into a smaller space, which makes encounters and battles happen more frequently.

I took Rosemary and the monsters with me and headed deeper into the island where the safe zone was.

That was when I spotted the backs of two kids—a boy and a girl—ahead of us.

They also seemed to be heading toward the center of the island, like us.

Rosemary’s eyes gleamed like a predator that had found prey. She leaned close to my ear and whispered softly.

“Hero, may I try eliminating those two?”

“Without the monsters?”

“Yes!”

After sitting around in one place for three hours, it was only natural that restless Rosemary would be itching to move.

She wasn’t even an Abiliter, but she looked so eager that I figured I should just let her go.

This was all experience, too.

[Saving the current time point to Slot 1.]

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Thank you for trusting me. I’ll go annihilate the enemies and return!”

…Where did she even pick up the word ‘annihilate’?

With distant eyes, I watched what Rosemary did next.

She matched their pace, padding along lightly like a cat. Then, when she got close enough that her nose could practically touch them if they fell—

She slipped between the two of them, tapped their shoulders with a quick pat, and darted past.

“Eek!”

“W-What the heck!”

The two immediately tensed, readying themselves to attack.

They hurriedly rummaged through their pockets, checking whether their eggs were still safe.

Only after confirming that their eggs were intact did they begin glaring at Rosemary.

“Damn it. I didn’t sense a thing…”

“We’ll make you pay for laying a hand on us!”

But Rosemary just flashed a refreshing smile and, as if to provoke them, held up her own egg.

“If you can, try breaking it.”

“Let’s see how long you keep smiling!”

In an instant, a powerful gust of wind erupted from the girl and surged toward Rosemary.

It seemed the girl was an Abiliter who controlled wind.

“Ahh!”

Rosemary was swept up by the gale, staggered, and as she fell, she let go of her egg.

Splat!

The egg broke limply, the yolk and white oozing out and dripping down.

“Hah! You’re not even an Abiliter and you thought you could mess with us?”

“I have no idea how someone this stupid even got into the talent academy.”

Her egg shattered, and she’d been showered with mocking insults.

Rosemary, however…

“Pfft—bahahaha!”

She burst out laughing, clutching her stomach.

“What, what is it? Did she lose her mind after getting eliminated so pathetically?”

After laughing for a while, Rosemary dusted off the dirt from her clothes and stood up. Then, as if nothing were wrong, she revealed the truth about the egg.

“The egg that just broke belonged to your boyfriend.”

“What?!”

“H-He’s not my boyfriend!”

“Hey! Is that really the important part? Check your egg first!”

“That can’t be true. I just checked—it was fine in my pocket…!”

The boy frantically dug into his pocket and pulled out his egg.

Whoosh!

A pebble thrown by Rosemary struck the egg in his hand perfectly, and it shattered with a crack.

Only then did the two finally seem to realize something, staring at Rosemary in shock.

Scratching her head in embarrassment, she confessed.

“Actually, the egg that broke from the wind earlier was your girlfriend’s. Even for me, switching out two eggs at once was a bit much.”

I let out a quiet gasp of admiration.

If she’d had time to switch the eggs, she’d also had more than enough time to just apply force and smash them.

And smashing them directly would have been far easier than switching them.

The fact that she went through all that trouble meant only one thing…

She’d done it purely to toy with them.

“Yikes. That’s scary.”

I shuddered briefly.

Now I understood how, in the previous timeline, she ended up becoming Duke Papiope’s third adopted child.

…Come to think of it, when was Marie going to awaken her abilities?

Unlike the previous timeline, where she lost her brother and was left out on the streets, her life was much more stable now. I worried that maybe things were going too smoothly for her to awaken.

While I was lost in those idle thoughts, Rosemary sneered and threw their own words back at them.

“Life is real combat, idiots. Walking around without watching your back is the same as begging to be killed. And people like you still managed to get into the talent academy—what a miracle.”

Khat—ptoo.

Watching Rosemary even spit crudely, I felt grateful all over again that she was on my team.

It was a complete victory for Rosemary.

✦ ✦ ✦

“I had no idea you’d be this reliable, Marie. You should’ve been the hero.”

“Hehe, I was pretty cool, right? But there can’t be two heroes. Lady Tania is the one and only hero.”

“Y-Yeah.”

After Rosemary’s unexpectedly strong showing, a weight lifted from my heart.

Without realizing it, I’d been thinking of her as someone I had to protect.

But I also couldn’t very well tell an excited Rosemary that she was weak and should just stay in the safe zone.

As we went deeper into the island where the safe zone was, we saw several teams already engaged in battle.

Those who would be eliminated were being eliminated, and with the tide rising, the island was narrowing, forcing people to gather toward the center.

In the safe zone, the kids who had chosen not to participate from the start, the eliminated participants, and the academy staff were gathered, watching the fights.

“Oh, it’s big brother!”

Among them was Raspi, riding atop a monster and attacking her opponent.

But even among all these people, the one who stood out most by far was—

Elysion, sitting leisurely atop a tall rock, watching everyone else.

“Wow… That’s the final boss. The demon king.”

There were still quite a lot of people alive deeper inside, each engaged in their own battles.

Yet despite sitting so openly in such a conspicuous place, no one was daring to target Elysion.

“Marie.”

“Yes, Hero!”

“Can you take all the monsters and join up with Raspi to reduce the number of people inside?”

“If I take all the monsters with me, what about you, Hero?”

“I’m going to go after Elysion.”

“…Without any monsters?”

“Even if we brought every monster on this island, we still couldn’t beat him. We’ll have to win by some other means.”

“Just what kind of Abiliter is he?”

“He’s not an Abiliter. He’s a mage.”

Elysion had become the youngest archmage in history, and during the monster war started by Raspi, he’d carried out a smiling massacre.

He was a war hero of the Empire. Compared to that, this little battle royale was nothing more than child’s play to him.

I either had to persuade him to give up the adoption slot of his own will—

Or exploit an opening and smash his egg.

If neither happened, my chances of becoming Duke Papiope’s adopted child would be effectively zero.

At least one fortunate thing was that, despite meeting me for the first time just yesterday, Elysion had been quite friendly.

Hoping my hypothesis—that he’d fallen for me at first sight—was correct, I took a steadying breath.

“Then fight well. I’m going to go see Elysion.”