Chapter 49: Gate of Trials and Black Flash (Patreon)

Chapter 49: The Gate of Trials and Black Flash

...

"As for Ichinose, she's in her dorm room."

Satoru Anjouin showed him his phone screen.

That left Ryuji Kanzaki completely stunned. He blurted out, dumbfounded,

"Why can you track Ichinose's location...?"

"..." Satoru Anjouin fell silent.

Ah, geez.

He genuinely had no idea how to answer that.

Granted, it had only been about ten days since enrollment, so it was understandable if some phone features hadn't been fully explored yet.

But as the class's second-in-command, being this slow on the uptake was a little hard to stomach.

So Anjouin went ahead and taught him how to check a friend's GPS location.

"Kanzaki, I think you need to step up your game."

"Frankly, Ichinose isn't cut out to be the top dog, and you're not cut out to be the second-in-command either."

"This school trains jujutsu sorcerers, and being a jujutsu sorcerer means fighting curses in a life-or-death profession. Cling to naive fantasies of a pleasant school life here, and you'll only end up suffering for it."

In truth, this year's batch had plenty of problem children, and both Class 1-A and Class B had their fair share.

Watching Honami Ichinose's location appear on his own phone, Ryuji Kanzaki couldn't help but go blank for a moment.

"On the very first day, twelve students in our class discovered this GPS feature. By the second day, that number had grown to thirty-five."

"..."

Kanzaki's mouth hung open, but no words came out.

He couldn't shake the feeling that the gap between Class B and Class 1-A was just too vast — it hit him like a ton of bricks all at once.

It hadn't been long since school started, and even though the homeroom teacher had said the school sorted students into Classes A, B, C, and D by merit from the very beginning...

Kanzaki still felt that quite a few of his classmates had A-class potential — and honestly, he'd thought he himself belonged in Class 1-A.

Still, he preferred Class B's friendly atmosphere, and more than that, Honami Ichinose's charm made him more than willing to serve as her second-in-command.

Ai Morishita had a sharp eye for people, but even she lacked some perspective here — if it had been Anjouin, he probably would have just called Kanzaki a simp outright.

Of course, he didn't deny Honami Ichinose's charm, either.

It really did work on everyone, men and women, young and old alike.

Sunny and cheerful, lively and adorable, gracious and proper, pure and kind — Anjouin ran through every adjective he could think of and still felt it wasn't quite enough.

"Did Ichinose head back?"

"Her location shows the dorm. But GPS won't tell you which floor she's on."

Hearing that, Kanzaki flushed red at once.

Privately, Anjouin thought, blushing over what, exactly, you weirdo?

It wasn't out of the question that Kanzaki had just been staring at the GPS, trying to figure out exactly which floor Honami Ichinose lived on.

Honestly, few rich second-generation heirs ended up quite like him.

"Anything else?" Anjouin asked.

At the question, the young noble finally snapped back to his senses — and in his fluster, dropped his phone straight onto the ground.

Smack.

The phones the school issued were decent quality, but after a fall like that onto the ground by the field, Anjouin still suggested he take it to the electronics store for a checkup.

Kanzaki muttered his thanks, but as he watched Anjouin's retreating back, his expression carried an indescribable complexity.

Truth was, he'd secretly tailed Anjouin and Honami Ichinose earlier.

Anjouin had left the café first, but when Ichinose came out afterward, her face had been terribly pale.

He'd wanted to pry some information out of Anjouin.

Yet somehow, before he could even get a word out, the guy had simply brushed him off.

—

After dinner came tutoring time for the Class 1-A students.

Which, naturally, also meant it was meeting time for Class 1-A's three heavyweights.

Kohei Katsuragi and Arisu Sakayanagi had deliberately picked the same session to come to Anjouin's dorm room for tutoring.

After a quick check of everyone's progress, they got down to business.

It wasn't as though they couldn't hold their meeting in the classroom, but there were too many eyes and ears around at that hour. Right now, though, there was hardly anyone in Anjouin's dorm room.

Sakayanagi had brought her little attendant along, and Anjouin had his little tail in tow — only Katsuragi had come alone.

Anjouin then gave a rough rundown of what had happened that day.

"So what you're saying is... you've already collected ten million points?"

The corner of Sakayanagi's eye twitched slightly.

Her own phone currently held just over a million — the fruits of these past few days squeezing the chess club.

He'd made ten million in ten days, while she'd only managed one million in the same span, which made it a little hard for her to say anything.

"Anjouin, would you introduce me to your 'wallet'?"

Sakayanagi put it bluntly and without any subtlety — she wanted to team up with Anjouin and exploit the 'wallet' together.

"Senior Nagumo isn't any kind of wallet."

"..."

Sakayanagi was a little speechless at how Anjouin had deliberately let Nagumo Miyabi's name slip.

That was basically the same as admitting Nagumo Miyabi was exactly the wallet she'd wanted to know about.

Anjouin then gave a rough explanation of how he'd gotten his hands on that pile of money.

"Oh, so that's why you had those guys digging through the trash for something so disgusting."

Sakayanagi's smile was sweet, and cold at the same time.

She didn't think Anjouin's methods were wrong — if anything, they suited her taste just fine.

"What a shame. If Nagumo Miyabi were still Vice President, that 'weapon' would've been worth well over ten million."

"Even if it were worth that much, he wouldn't have sold it. He'd have made a scene instead, and the Student Council, wanting to end things as quickly as possible, would've just buried the whole issue."

The institutions and higher-ups of this island nation never actually tried to solve problems — most of the time, their approach was to get rid of whoever raised the problem in the first place.

Or they'd just let the matter cool off quietly, using a flood of other news to draw people's attention elsewhere.

"Too much greed, and you end up with nothing at all."

"Mm."

Sakayanagi nodded, actually in agreement with what Anjouin had said.

If the value of points hadn't risen — if they couldn't be used to strengthen oneself through the 'special classroom' and were still tied to real-world currency like before —

then Sakayanagi wouldn't have cared in the slightest about gaining or losing points.

Put plainly, she — like Ryuji Kanzaki, Rokusuke Kouenji, and the other second-generation heirs — was essentially a VIP at this school built to churn out workhorses.

Whether she graduated from Class 1-A or not didn't matter one bit; the futures of these heirs had already been written long ago.

"And besides, you're missing the point."

"Hm?"

As he spoke, Anjouin revealed that he'd sold the information about the 'Gate of Trials' to Nagumo Miyabi for two million points.

That included the fact that Manabu Horikita was a Semi-Grade 1 sorcerer.

Anjouin had shared plenty of intel with the two of them before, but putting these two facts side by side, Sakayanagi immediately caught on.

"So you're saying the Student Council President reaching Semi-Grade 1 within a week or two has something to do with that 'Gate of Trials'?"

"And that's why you're planning to have Nagumo Miyabi go test out that 'Gate of Trials'?"

Of course Sakayanagi saw through Anjouin's intentions.

Claiming with one breath that 'Senior Nagumo isn't a wallet,' while with the other coaxing said senior into scouting the way ahead.

She nearly blurted out, "well played."

"So, what do you two make of that 'Gate of Trials'?" Anjouin asked.

Sakayanagi and Katsuragi both fell into thought at once.

"Probably something similar to the 'special classroom,' I'd guess."

Katsuragi said, after a moment's hesitation.

But Sakayanagi shook her head. "It can't be the same kind of facility. If it's called a 'Gate of Trials,' then its main function ought to be trials."

"So you mean combat? I recall you saying that the best way for jujutsu sorcerers to grow is through fighting."

Anjouin nodded at Sakayanagi's guess.

In truth, he already had an answer for the 'Gate of Trials's' real nature.

Or rather, he'd first heard about the 'Gate of Trials' on the very day he met Satoru Gojo — and before Gojo arrived, Kento Nanami had spent a while coaching him.

It was then that Anjouin had recognized just how vast the gap was between his own cursed energy and Kento Nanami's.

"A sorcerer's grade sometimes depends on merit — being Grade 1 doesn't automatically mean you're truly strong. But most Grade 1 sorcerers really do have power far beyond non-Grade-1 sorcerers."

"Aside from having powerful cursed techniques, their cursed energy core is also stronger than an ordinary sorcerer's."

As Anjouin got to this point, Sakayanagi and Katsuragi — both of whom he'd previously briefed on 'Black Flash' — caught on as well.

"You're saying the 'Gate of Trials' is connected to Black Flash?" Katsuragi couldn't help but ask.

"Yeah. I'd guess one of the conditions for triggering the 'Gate of Trials' is having ten million points on hand."

"Trading ten million points for the experience of Black Flash, which could trigger a drastic transformation in one's cursed energy core — that's a pretty reasonable guess."

"Combat is the easiest way to spur a sorcerer's growth, and Black Flash is a state that can only be triggered in the heat of an all-out, self-forgetting battle."

A sorcerer without any Black Flash experience, even after reaching Grade 1, would still be as different from a Grade 1 sorcerer who had experienced it as a candle flame is from the bright moon.

"Ha, this school really is something else. So that's how it is — even Black Flash can be bought and sold?"

"No wonder you didn't want me to go after Nagumo Miyabi — you want to see whether his cursed energy core changes, to confirm your theory."

Sakayanagi let out a soft hum. "In that case, I won't do anything unnecessary."

"Right. But I'm not factoring in Black Flash for now, so I'm planning to transfer some of the points over to you two first."

"Got it."

Katsuragi said, with a nod.

After all, neither Sakayanagi nor Anjouin liked dealing with trivial matters, which meant all the class's day-to-day business fell on him.

Honestly, Katsuragi was starting to feel like giving up on the class representative race.

He had only four supporters left, and wasn't particularly competitive to begin with.

If it had just been a race against Sakayanagi, his tall, steady build alone would have easily earned him approval on image.

Setting aside actual ability, Katsuragi's serious, composed first impression was, compared to Sakayanagi's, genuinely more convincing.

But who could have guessed that Anjouin would step into the race?

Even though he presented himself as unwilling to compete, claiming to be neutral, the whole class was still more inclined to follow someone like him.

Of course, the real problem was that Katsuragi had grown thoroughly numb to it all.

Both Sakayanagi and Anjouin loved dumping tasks on him, and the endless stream of trivial matters was enough to make his hair fall out.

Except he didn't have any hair.

"Interesting. In that case, I suppose I'll set my sights on the third years."

Sakayanagi's aggressive streak was as strong as ever.

At the very least, 'staying out of trouble' simply wasn't in her vocabulary.