Scarlet

“Is it still too late to voice how against this plan I am?” Tar says for the third time as I continue crawling through the little tunnel that I found some sort of mole demon having made and realized led straight to the center through my ears and the sounds of combat.

I ignore the tanuki.

This plan is great, and you know it. Because unless I attack them, they’ll get a penalty for attacking me, and I’ll be awarded free points. And if I do attack them, it’ll be when I have a chance to kill stea- I mean, defeat one of them fairly in battle.

Tar just sighs and doesn’t say anything else, not even commenting on my minor slipup.

I continue crawling my way through the tunnel until I finally find a sudden bend in it that goes upwards, leading to the surface where I see a few fireballs flying by overhead.

Yeah, that’s not a welcoming sight. But I have to remember. Even if I get killed by a stray fireball, I’ll be fine since I’ll be getting compensation points due to being killed by someone of a higher Class.

I take in a deep breath before letting it out and slowly climbing my way to the top before just poking the top of my head and ears out enough to look around, finding the three Guardians standing at three opposing places in the center of the forest, which while used to be a nest for a giant spider is now just charred black and full of holes. Meanwhile, of the three students, I find the closest one to me actually being the one seeming to be on the worst terms at the moment.

He’s wearing a set of red armor that appears to be made up of scales and is very obviously the one throwing the fireballs. And that’s a lot of fireballs.

All three of the students look exhausted and are likely almost out of mana by now. Considering how long they’ve been going at it.

Especially the fireball guy, since he is just chucking those like they’re baseballs from one of those baseball throwing machines I’ve seen on tv shows in batting cages. Those things used for practice for one of the old world sports that some museums like to keep around and let people try. Some sport where you throw a ball around and try to hit it with a stick.

Not really sure why people wanna watch that much less do it though.

That aside, none of them seem to be making any progress in their fight, and it doesn’t look like they will finish each other off before the timer hits zero. Meaning it should be fine for me to interrupt.

I watch the guy go at it for a few more seconds, with most of his fireballs being cut in half by the girl on the other side of the center’s katana – a girl who, by the way, looks very similar to Michael and Emily. Meanwhile the other dude in the center is just kind of once in a while throwing out purple arcs that just straight up mess with everything around it by pulling them in. Including some stray fireballs.

Obviously some sort of gravity magic.

Now then… how to sneak up on them…

I purse my lips while still taking in the battlefield, only to glance at the timer that is high in the sky stating only a few minutes left.

Then I just nod my head and go down a little bit into the tunnel before shifting my right arm and activating blood claws, then using my ear to guide me as I dig a little more tunnel in the direction of the fireball guy. Which takes about a minute from where I was at until I get to the point where I think he’s almost directly above me.

I make sure to not be directly below him though, since that would make it hard to jump out and kill him if he’s, well, falling feet first into my hole that is only about a couple feet tall. Tall enough to fit me crawling through it.

Actually, in hindsight, I should make it taller.

So I do that. Then I take a deep breath, listening for right after he throws a fireball before bursting out of the ground right behind him. But the guy isn’t so easily taken by surprise as he almost immediately turns around to face me despite me having broken through the ground behind him, reacting far faster than anything I’ve seen before even with his clear exhaustion.

Just seconds after bursting out of the ground, I find myself almost directly face to face with him as I bring my claws up to rip through the holes in his armor directly into the wounds he already has beneath it on his front. At the same time, he moves his fist around while coating it in a very weak looking flame considering that he’s Class III and slamming it into my side right when I reach his neck.

His punch sends me flying with a burning wound in my side and a massive hole in my jacket, but I soon hear the message I’m hoping for from the earpiece before I even land.

[You have killed the student known as Jake Argol. One fifth of his points have now been transferred to you. Your total points now equal 5231 points.]

Even with the massive amount of pain burning through my side and practically everywhere else as I continue skipping across the ground, destroying parts of it in the process until I slam into a tree, I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face.

But then the actual pain reaches me, and I cough out a mouthful of blood.

My vision begins to fade as I find myself looking up at the blood moon in the sky and the floating countdown that is now at ten seconds.

“You,” I hear a girl’s voice, making me slowly – with a lot of effort – turn my head to find the girl with the katana looking at me from the other side of the charred center of the forest with a rather calm look on her face. “You’re Michael and Emily’s teammate, aren’t you?”

I can’t help but blink at her in surprise through the pain, but I don’t manage to make a response beyond a rather wheezy one that is completely inaudible now that the burns of that wound managed to spread all the way across almost a third of my body.

Guess the punch was much stronger than it looked. I’m just lucky the guy was already close to dead.

Slowly my vision begins to fade away, but before it does, I hear the girl say, “No need to answer.” She pauses for a second as the sound of metal sliding against metal as she sheathes her sword echoes from there into my ears. “On account of not seeing a way to finish him off myself in the time we had remaining, I will let this slide.”

I look up at the sky again to see the countdown at three seconds left.

“Take care of my siblings.”

Then right when my vision is about to go fully black, the countdown strikes zero and I suddenly find myself back in the auditorium feeling perfectly fine as if I wasn’t just dying.