Chapter 140: Course Concluded

Three people gathered inside the dense forest, peering through the lush leaves that blocked their view to observe the battleground where Saeko Busujima and Shiina were fighting. The sight instantly startled them. They were among the few who had fled into the woods at the very beginning of the exercise.

When they left, at least half of the freshmen had stayed behind to deal with Saeko and the others. Yet, what they saw now was an uninjured Saeko walking toward the forest, while the freshmen who had previously occupied that space lay sprawled across the ground in all directions.

"Listen, Toru, I think it would be better for us to just hide here until class ends." After witnessing the outcome of the battle between those freshmen and Saeko Busujima and Shiina, Kokonoe Toru instantly lost the courage to fight head-on and made his proposal.

"Hmph, well, if you're determined to say that no matter what, ugh, I won't object either." Torao Aoi lacked the courage to fight Saeko Busujima as well. With so many people going up against her and ending up flat on their faces, heading over there themselves would simply be courting death. Yet, too proud to admit it aloud, he spoke in that manner.

"Yes, yes, it's all because of my cowardice that you can't go and fight." Kokonoe Toru was long accustomed to his friend's obsession with saving face, and simply went along with his words.

Having reached a consensus, the two of them turned their attention to the third member of their group. The three of them had run into each other upon entering the forest at the very beginning, and had since been operating together, offering mutual support.

"I have no objections. Any one of them could easily defeat me," replied a raven-haired girl with a shrug. Her facial features possessed the softness of a young girl combined with a certain valiant aura.

"Since Miss Kiritani has also decided, let's move out first. We're still a bit too close to the edge of the forest here; if we were..." Before Kokonoe Toru could finish his sentence, sunlight suddenly struck his face. The thick foliage hiding in the tree used to shield their bodies seemed as though it had been deliberately trimmed away, exposing the three figures to the sunlight.

"Found you!" Maintaining the posture of having just swung her blade, Saeko wore a mature and beautiful smile not far from them.

In the eyes of the three, however, Saeko's smile could not possibly look beautiful. They immediately leaped down from the tree and fled into the nearby jungle. If they had still possessed any confidence in their own strength before, they now thoroughly understood the chasm-like gap between themselves and Saeko.

"Running away, are you?" Having eliminated the vast majority of those hiding in the forest, the search had grown increasingly troublesome. Saeko had managed to find the few hiding in the trees with great difficulty, and she had no intention of giving them a chance to escape. Her wooden sword, unremarkable in appearance, smashed and shattered the jungle foliage blocking her path one by one.

Passing through the jungle, Saeko discovered that the few individuals from moments ago had vanished. It was unclear whether they had escaped or simply hidden themselves. However, such simple concealment was far too rudimentary for Saeko. By her side was, after all, the Blaze Echo of a top-tier assassin girl.

"You lot are still far too inferior compared to Shiina!" Having located one of their positions, Saeko thrusted the wooden sword in her hand directly into the trunk of a tree. The wooden sword pierced straight through a trunk thick enough to conceal a person's figure. Behind that tree, Kokonoe Toru looked at the wooden sword suddenly protruding right beside his head, and no longer dared to continue hiding, turning to flee in the opposite direction.

Perhaps wishing to avoid inflicting severe injuries upon them, Saeko deliberately waited until he had run a certain distance before executing a horizontal slash. The thick tree trunk was severed midway, and under Saeko's calculation, the direction in which the giant tree fell happened to be precisely where Kokonoe Toru was fleeing.

"Blaze!" Seeing the tree trunk about to crash down upon him with no way to dodge, Kokonoe Toru released his Blaze. The shield on his arm was truly too small compared to the falling tree trunk, rendering his so-called extraordinary shield useless at this moment. Kokonoe Toru utilized the physical enhancement bestowed by the Dawn Star Glyph; tiny points of light flickered along his arm, converging upon his fist to ultimately form a gauntlet affixed to the surface of his knuckles.

"Haaaaah!" Kokonoe Toru roared to elevate his spirit, his fist carrying the sound of rushing wind as it struck the tree trunk like an iron hammer. The thick tree trunk instantly burst into wood chips the moment it was hit.

"A decent move, but your arm can't move anymore, can it?" Having moved behind Kokonoe Toru, Saeko noticed that his arm hung down unnaturally and was completely out of her control, making it clear to her that Kokonoe Toru was certainly incapable of continuing his attack with that arm.

Torao Aoi, who had been hiding to the side, suddenly lunged out and unleashed a fierce punch, as if attempting to force Saeko back and rescue Kokonoe Toru. The speed of his fully unleashed outburst made him feel as though he were a gust of wind. Saeko merely glanced sideways at the menacing Torao Aoi without paying him any real mind, slipping her body to the side.

At that speed, Torao Aoi was completely incapable of controlling his own momentum. After Saeko stepped aside, he continued barreling forward along his original trajectory. However, the moment Saeko moved, Kokonoe Toru became Torao Aoi's target. Unable to check his momentum, amidst Kokonoe Toru's tragic gaze, the two collided and flew backward together.

The raven-haired girl also darted out the moment Torao Aoi appeared, pressing her body low as she advanced hugging the ground. A pair of black and white dual swords slashed toward Saeko's sides in succession. Saeko twisted her body to evade the attack of one sword while using her wooden sword to parry the other.

Instantly, the wooden sword slid along the blade toward the girl. Saeko closed in and pressed her attack; at this close range, the girl's dual swords could not be effectively deployed. Saeko struck her forcefully in the chest with an elbow, sending her flying. Following that, Saeko realized that besides those three, there was actually a fourth person.

And this fourth person was someone she was quite familiar with—it was none other than Julis, who had been put through her paces by her that morning. With her petite figure, she had been shielded by the aforementioned girl. Operating under the assumption that there were only three opponents, Saeko had carelessly failed to notice Julis's arrival.

Flashing past the girl's back, Julis wielded her dual blades like an elf dancing lightly through the forest, the twin weapons spinning in unison as they slashed downward at a right-oblique angle. The wooden sword and the dual blades intersected, sending intense sparks flying. As a follower of the Night Star, she had acquired certain special abilities just like Shiina.

One of them was the ability to use a shield-like defensive skill, possessing a one-percent chance to completely nullify damage, a fifty-percent chance to halve the damage, and a one-hundred-percent chance to reduce damage by thirty percent. Right now, what Saeko was utilizing was simply the auxiliary effect of this ability; as long as the damage was within her capacity to endure, there was an overwhelmingly high probability she could parry it.

"You almost succeeded~ Julis~" Saeko said with a smile, showing no trace of anger despite almost being struck.

"Indeed. I admit defeat!" Having failed to land her previous strike successfully, Julis abandoned the thought of continuing the fight and conceded defeat very straightforwardly. Since she couldn't win, there was no point in dragging it out.

"Yey-hey! Time's up! Everyone except Yachen-kun, Hakuhime-kun, and Tachibana Kanade-kun has failed! As for the penalty~ it's running three laps around the academy before lunch! No running, no eating, y'know~!" In reality, time had run out several minutes earlier, but Tsukimi Rito had been thoroughly enjoying the spectacle, deliberately waiting until Saeko finished dealing with Kokonoe Toru and the others before making the announcement.