Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
The week was over quite quickly and the students of various magic high schools returned to school two weeks earlier than what was considered to be normal. The Magic High School Combat Tournament was set to be conducted as a spectacle under the supervision of the newly created Ministry of Magic Affairs of the Government of Japan as well as the National Magic University. Since the number of magically talented individuals required to conduct such a large tournament was far greater than what the government could provide, the University requested help from the Numbered Families who collectively agreed to the request. To avoid any chances of favoritism from occurring, the proctors for the exams were assigned in such a manner that the chances of them proctoring a family member were zero. For example, Tatsuya had heard from Maya that all the members of the Yotsuba from Genzou's generation including the Yotsuba patriarch himself, had joined as proctors for the tournament. However, they were not assigned to First High since both Miya and Maya were studying there.
Although he was a contestant, Tatsuya was asked to arrive earlier than usual to school by the principal to give an opening speech to the student body. The chief guest for the opening of the tournament at First High was Kudou Retsu, who, at this point was still one of the strongest magicians in the world.
"Tatsuya!" As he entered the schoolyard, he heard two voices that he had been dreading for a week. If he was being completely honest, Tatsuya still didn't know how to deal with the Yotsuba twins. His reasoning abilities completely broke down whenever he tried to think up a solution for the current dilemma, which was a new experience for him.
While he was remembering his past struggles, both his arms were snatched up by the girls who had latched onto them. Tatsuya had half-expected this behavior from Maya but the fact that even Miya, who he had considered to be a reserved person, was doing the same thing, surprised him.
"Onee-chan? What exactly are you doing?" Judging by the sound of her voice, he wasn't the only one surprised.
"I am holding the hands of my future husband. Is that so difficult to comprehend, my dear Imouto?" Miya was playful but she still wasn't letting go of his arm.
"Your future husband? Have you finally gone mad after studying for so long? This is obviously my future husband here." Maya was playful but there was a hint of steel in her voice.
"Can you let go of my arms? It's only morning and we are already attracting a lot of unwanted attention." Tatsuya couldn't really move right now. Technically speaking, he was more than strong enough to lift both the twins in a single arm if he wanted to, having trained his muscles with magic since he could remember, the fact that they were hugging it so tightly meant that his arms were currently nestled in a soft place. Since he didn't know if moving his arm would count as sexual harassment, he decided to play it safe. He wasn't joking when he said that he wasn't into exhibitionism, after all.
"Well Tatsuya, as the future husband to the future head of the Yotsuba Clan, you should try to get used to the attention. After all, you are a person destined to stand at the top with me." He could tell that Miya was not joking.
"You sure have gotten better at telling jokes now, Onee-chan. I almost thought that you were serious for a moment." Maya was not letting up either.
"For the moment, let us stop here. I have a speech to prepare and wasting too much time here would be a problem." Tatsuya refused to believe that he was running away. What he was doing could and should be considered to be a tactical retreat.
The Greenn room beside the school auditorium was unusually crowded. Although Tatsuya was supposed to be the only student in the room full of the faculty members and the proctors for the tournament (The Chief Guest would not be arriving until the meeting began), Miya and Maya had casually waltzed into the room with no sense of decorum, with him in the middle. The principal seemed to be amused by the situation and let them stay with him, completely ignoring the pleading look that he gave him. Since Miya helped him to prepare the speech and Maya trimmed the boring bits, it was relatively peaceful.
Once it was time, they walked out of the small room to the auditorium where the entirety of the student body was waiting. The contestants in the tournament were dressed in their gym uniform while the eight students who had not applied for the contest, were in their regular uniform, standing in a corner of the room.
"To all the eminent people present on the dais and to all my fellow members of the student body, I welcome you to the first-ever Magic High School Combat Tournament." Tatsuya opened his speech. Since he was specifically asked to keep his words as short as possible, he didn't bother addressing everyone separately. Needless to say, he had informed and received permission from the principal beforehand for this.
"I would like to keep my speech short so that we may avoid any unnecessary time wastage but I would like to state that all of us have been given an opportunity. The chance to fight magicians who are at a similar level to you is a luxury that very few magicians have had access to historically. However, all of us have been given the opportunity to test our strengths and find out our weaknesses today. I hope that all of you can make good use of this opportunity. Without further ado, I would like to welcome our chief guest for the evening, one of the strongest magicians in the world and the patriarch of the Ten Master Clans, Kudou Retsu-sama." Tatsuya closed out his speech to excited applause from the students. As he walked away from the podium, his eyes met that of the Kudou Patriarch, who gave him a small nod.
"My dear students of magic." Retsu opened his speech to which the student body listened with rapt attention.
"Magic is something that can only be mastered by practice. The opportunity that you have been given, to be able to test your magic against talented individuals your own age, is an opportunity that very few magicians have gotten before. Not all of you will win in this tournament but that shouldn't deter you from chasing your magic. I will not delay any more with my words and I wish the very best to all of you." The Kudou patriarch closed out his speech to thunderous applause.
There weren't any big speeches afterwards and soon, everyone was asked to move to the respective stages. The school had gone all out in preparing stages for all the sixteen groups across various locations on the school's premises. Since the twins had to go to different locations for their matches, he was left alone for the moment. The tournament was arranged in a manner that Tatsuya, the first seed would face the second seed Miya in the semi-finals of the final tournament should they both win the required matches. Maya, who was the third seed, was situated in the opposite block and would only be able to meet either of them in the finals.
The ground prepared for his own group was located at the gymnasium. The battlefield was a twenty-meter by twenty-meter square which was reinforced by my strengthening magic. Since all the twelve members of the group were present, the first-round matches were soon announced and Tatsuya, as the first seed from the group, was up. Since the entire school was part of the tournament, there weren't any spectators around, and only a few medical staff and one member of the faculty were present. To avoid any huge gap in CAD quality, the school provided top-class CADs to every student participating in the tournament should they wish for it. Tatsuya however, brought one of his backup CADs since the Trident was practically useless in the current situation with how deadly the spells stored in it were.
As a magician, Tatsuya would admit honestly that attack magic wasn't his area of expertise. In his previous life, he wasn't able to use any magic above C-class and even in this life, attack magic was something that he largely ignored, focusing on spells that helped him in his research. After all, why would he need to attack magic when he had the deadliest magic known to man with him? Even base Decomposition, his 'weakest' spell, was A-rank when it came to lethality and the only reason why spells like 'Mist dispersion' were considered A-rank was because there were no classes between A-rank and Strategic-class spells.
Therefore, when he had to use different attack magic for the first time in a long while, Tatsuya was understandably uncomfortable. After all, the last time he used a different attacking spell was during the Nine-School Competition in his previous life. Given the fact that this current body was actually able to use attacking spells, Tatsuya programmed a few simple attacking spells into his CAD.
"The first-round match between Shiba Tatsuya of Class 1-A and Igarashi Kaede of Class 1-A will now begin." The proctor for his group, Tsuzura Minato, a middle-aged man from the Tsuzura House of the Hundred Families, announced. He was a good-looking person, as most magicians tended to be with brown hair with a tint of grey here and there. After his announcement, Tatsuya and his opponent stepped up to the battlefield.
The girl opposite him, called Igarashi Kaede was a beauty no matter who you asked. She had chestnut brown hair that was cut in a bob style which gave her the feel of a girl next door. Her figure was excellent for a high school freshman and she was quite excited. Since she was ranked 13 in the practical test, she was the second highest-ranking contestant in Tatsuya's group which meant that the first round would be between group favorites.
"Go easy on me Prez." The girl said in a cute voice. She was a member of the club committee and he had seen her multiple times during class.
"Likewise, Igarashi-san." Tatsuya gave her a light nod in acknowledgment.
"Contestants, please take your position." Proctor Tsuzura asked. Since any type of offense was legal in the tournament as long as magic was used, including Kenjutsu and physical attacks using Body-Strengthening Magic, the combatants were required to stand at the edge of the twenty-meter square. This was so that fighters who relied on magic wouldn't be at an immediate disadvantage against Kenjustsu users due to being at a close range of them. A twenty-meter gap was more than enough for a good magician to keep a Kenjutsu user at bay and for a good Kenjutsu user to take out an ordinary magician before he could cast magic.
"If both fighters are ready, then begin." The proctor said and Tatsuya could see that Kaede was already readying a spell, albeit a bit slow compared to the ones he was used to. A quick look with Elemental Sight confirmed that it was a variation of 'Ice Bullet' toned down to the competition standards. There were a thousand different ways Tatsuya could have stopped the girl but he chose the method that would attract the most attention in the long run which was to cast 'Gram Demolition'.
Out of all the spells in his arsenal, 'Gram Demolition' was one of Tatsuya's personal favorites due to how simple yet effective it was. The only thing he was doing was to create a ball of psion that would explode in the information dimension near the target casting magic and as such, cause enough interference to completely dismantle the spell being cast. It was simple, effective, and had almost no drawbacks to speak of aside from its short range.
The girl opposite him was shocked to see that her spell was disturbed and had lost focus for a moment. This was more than enough for Tatsuya. He cast 'Resonate' near Igarashi which was one of the only attack-type magic he had. 'Resonate' too was a simple spell. All he did was to create two separate psion waves that converged near his target, Igarashi, in this case, and gave her a feeling of sea sickness. In his previous life, Tatsuya's magical ability wasn't strong enough to actually knock out the opponent but he had no such problems now.
Igarashi, as expected, was knocked out soon and the proctor announced his victory. The whole thing lasted a few seconds at most which surprised even the faculty members watching.
"Are you all right, Igarashi-san?" Tatsuya made his way to the girl who was being treated by the medics. Since the only damage that she took was a bout of seasickness, she had regained consciousness rather quickly.
"As expected, you are too strong, Prez. I had no idea that Magic Sequences could be destroyed like that." The girl in question admitted sheepishly and Tatsuya could read that there was no hidden hostility in her voice.
"That spell was created with no obvious weakness but requires a lot of psions to pull off. You have very little chance of running into someone using it in the future. You just happened to be unlucky today, is all." He tried his best to cheer up the girl.
Since Tatsuya's second match was only afternoon, he had free reign to move around the school if he wanted to. Since he didn't feel any need to observe his fellow competitors, (he could have observed them from anywhere with Elemental Sight anyway) he made his way through some of the other battlefields. Unlike his fight which lasted exactly 2.43 Seconds (Official confirmation had arrived after a while), most of the fights in the tournament were much longer affairs with many of them becoming drawn-out battles of attrition between equally matched students. Therefore, the atmosphere was pretty heated up.
"Tatsuya!" He was brought back from his musings by a voice that he was quite familiar with by now. Maya's voice had a different tone to Miya's which was one of the easiest ways to distinguish between the two. Hers was much sweeter and had a bit of a seductive edge to it.
"I suppose there is no need for me to enquire whether you won or not, am I right?" Aside from Miya and possibly him, there wasn't anyone in the school that posed a challenge to her.
"Of course. It was over pretty quickly. I was searching for you all this time." She said sweetly. "By the way, Tatsuya, something happened between you and Onee-chan, right?" Maya asked out of nowhere.
To his credit, Tatsuya managed to remain calm despite the accusation from Maya. After all, the events of that evening were largely out of his control with Miya taking the lead in almost everything and him being forced to react each time.
"I do not deny that." Tatsuya said.
"I knew it. I didn't think that Onee-chan had it in her to do something." Maya sounded like a proud parent for a moment.
"You are not angry?" Tatsuya questioned. He was confused at the moment.
"Of course not. I knew that Onee-chan had a crush on you since you reworked Ichihana-kun's CAD but I wasn't sure that she would be brave enough to do something about it. You see, my Onee-chan has the bad habit of giving up things to me even when she wanted it, ever since we were children. I half-expected her to remain the same. So, imagine my surprise when she did not back down at all today morning. I feel proud of her, you know." Maya ranted to which he listened. To be honest, Tatsuya had no idea that the Yotsuba Twins were so close to each other. All the interactions between Miya and Maya that he had ever witnessed contained enough venom to poison an entire city. In fact, he knew that the only reason they weren't actively trying to kill the other was because both Miya and Maya had uses for each other. This made him glad that he decided to change that future.
"Does that mean you will admit defeat to Miya?" It felt weird saying this, especially since he was the prize in question but he asked anyway.
"Of course not. Especially now that I am all but guaranteed that you are a once-in-a-lifetime genius in Magical Engineering. I will defeat her fair and square. Plus, she might have stopped holding back but I still have the lead." Maya leaned uncomfortably close to his ears as she said this. "We did kiss, after all."
To this, Tatsuya actually flinched. He, someone who had murdered people in the millions and could end the world in seconds if he wanted to, flinched.
"What is with that reaction?" Maya was curious. "Don't tell me-?" She looked shocked all of a sudden.
"I did not know that my prude of an Onee-chan had it in her. I don't know whether I should laugh or cry." Maya said, clearly amused.
"Miya and I did share a kiss previously when she visited my house." Since there was no reason for him to deny it, he didn't.
"Really? The Tatsuya, who did it better, in your opinion?" Maya was, once again, uncomfortably close to him.
"Well, compared to the kiss that we shared, which was a simple peck, Miya did use a lot of force in hers." Realizing that there was no way for him to win against Maya if he remained on defense, Tatsuya matched her attitude. The best defense was a good offense, as they said.
"Ho? Did no one tell you that two-timing is bad, Tatsuya?" Maya remained close.
"As the victim who was kissed without consent, I do not consider this two-timing."
"Getting to kiss two extremely beautiful girls is a reward for most men, no?"
"I won't deny that but the point still stands that I was not the one initiating the contact."
"Does that mean that you will initiate the contact in the future?"
"I certainly am not denying my intentions to do so."
After this, Maya pulled her head back and laughed. He too gave an amused chuckle.
"This is fun, you know. This is the first time that I have bantered so much with someone from outside my own family. I could get used to this." Maya said. "By the way, Tatsuya, did you do something to Nee-chan's CAD? It is performing far better than it is supposed to. I wanted to ask you this before we got sidetracked." Maya was curious.
"I did. Miya wanted me to rework her CAD to make it better and wouldn't take no for an answer." Tatsuya replied honestly since Maya could have gotten this information from Miya anyway.
"Doesn't that mean that you took her readings?" Maya was embarrassed for a change as she said this. Then again, letting an engineer of the opposite gender take your Psion readings was almost the same as baring it all to them.
"I did not. All I did was upscale the performance of the hardware without altering the OS or the spells themselves. There was no real reason for me to take her Psion readings."
"How boring!" Maya was a bit deflated now. "But you do know that admitting this means that you have to tune my own CAD, right?"
"I was already prepared for that outcome the moment I said the truth. However, I would prefer to do this on the weekend since it would give you more time to adapt to the changes. It would be bad if you lost a match because you were not familiar with the changes in your CAD." Tatsuya gave an honest reason. He didn't want to cause any unforeseen accidents due to any changes that he made.
"Okay. I did not expect you to agree so readily. Does that mean that you want to see me on the weekend, Tatsuya?" Maya teased which he promptly ignored, causing her to pout.
"Tatsuya? Maya? What are you two doing together?" Their conversation was halted by the arrival of the other half of the Yotsuba twins. Unlike Maya, who clearly had some sense of
"Tatsuya here was telling me your deepest, darkest secrets, Onee-chan." Maya said in a teasing manner. "I did not know that you had it in you. To think that you kissed a boy, on your first date to boot. Where did your shame go, Onee-chan?" Maya was in full swing but to Tatsuya's surprise, Miya was smiling instead of feeling embarrassed.
"Of course, I kissed him. Why wouldn't I kiss my future husband?" Miya made it sound as innocent as possible but Tatsuya could still hear the slight amusement in her voice. Apparently, both the twins were sadists since they gave no concern for his own embarrassment. After all, they were currently attracting a lot of attention from the nearby students. Since he didn't want to repeat the fiasco of today's morning, he grabbed the hands of both the twins and made his way to a less crowded place. Until the afternoon, the three of them spent time together with Tatsuya acting as the middleman between the two.
The second match he had to play went the exact same way that his first match did. The opponent had no answer to the Gram Demolition and Resonate combo. Since he was finished for the day, Tatsuya was allowed to leave. He did so after informing the twins that he was leaving to prevent them from looking for him.
Shichinomya Kaguya considered herself to be a lucky girl. As the eldest daughter of the Shichinomiya family, an associate house of the Saegusa, she lived a very luxurious life. She was even talented in magic so it wasn't as if her position in the family was under question. Therefore, when she was asked to join First High School as a spy, she wasn't sure how to feel. On the one hand, she was happy to be of use to the Main House, and on the other, she was miffed that she was being reduced to fodder. Even still, she did her duty diligently, monitoring First High's Student Council President, Shiba Tatsuya, at every possible opportunity. She did not know why she was asked to monitor him at first but as she met the Main House's heir, Saegusa Koichi, her doubts were cleared. It didn't take a genius to understand that it was done out of Koichi's jealousy towards Shiba due to his apparent closeness to Koichi's former fiancée, Yotsuba Maya. Kaguya was aware of the circumstances regarding the cancellation of the engagement between the Yotsuba and the Saegusa, almost all the family members were, to be honest, and she couldn't say that she blamed the Yotsuba. After all, his act had been incredibly cowardly and would make any girl fall out of love with him in seconds.
Even still, she diligently monitored her target and made reports to the Main House regarding his interpersonal relationships and activities. She didn't see any reason for Koichi to be jealous of the President since his relationship with the Yotsuba twins wasn't too deep.
When summer vacation was finished and she had returned to school for the Combat Tournament, something shocking caught her eye. The Yotsuba Twins, who were at most close friends with the President before the vacation, were suddenly acting like his lovers with no shame about being in public whatsoever. Something had happened during summer vacation and she couldn't figure out what. Since she had her fights, she couldn't continue her monitoring and by the time she was finished, the President had gone home which meant that she was left with only questions and no answers.
As she made her way out of the school to report to the Family, she was stopped in her tracks.
"Can we talk for a moment, Shichinomiya-san?" For some reason, she was being stopped by the Yotsuba Twins who looked amused.
"If you don't mind, I am in a hurry, Yotsuba-san." She tried her best to remain as calm as possible.
"Don't worry, it won't take long. We just want to know why you are spying on Tatsuya and to an extent, us." Miya said and Kaguya's heart almost stopped. She was aware of the Yotsuba's reputation when it came to these things and she was scared.
"Onee-chan, you are scaring the poor girl." Maya chided Miya. "Kaguya-chan, we do not mean any harm to you, you know? We were just curious why. Did your family ask you or something? We can understand that the other Clans are keeping an eye on Tatsuya as well." Maya's words eased the pressure on her and she confessed that she was asked by her clan to spy on Tatsuya. The girls had let her go as soon as she confirmed this, much to her surprise. Still, she needed to make the report.
As Tatsuya entered his house he was greeted by his mother. "Tatsuya, you have guests." Mayuri said cheerfully as she prepared tea. Tatsuya was already aware of that fact after he had used Elemental Sight before entering the area.
As he entered the Living room, he was greeted by two people whom he had never met before and had hoped that he would never meet for a long time.
"Good evening, Shiba Tatsuya-kun or should I say, Lord Maheshwara, the God of Destruction?" Yotsuba Ayame, in her midnight black dress, flanked by her brother who was a two-meter-tall behemoth, appeared to be the Goddess of Death to Tatsuya. Death of his peaceful life, to be exact.
Hello there. Once again, I have written a bigger chapter than usual but I didn't feel any issue since the ideas were flowing quite nicely.
To Maheshwara10, I already have the pdf of the novels but I don't have time to read the entire thing due to being back on the job after the new year but thank you for the offering.
I realize that Tatsuya for now isn't as badass as the canon version especially when it comes to behaviour but please understand that my version of Tatsuya is someone who is trying to cope with his regained humanity with no training whatsoever. That said, he will never be a wimp, is a guarantee that I give you.
Once again, thank you all for the continued support and I will see you soon but enjoy the cliffhanger for now cause you ain't gonna guess what happens next.