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Volume 3 Chapter 7.2

Translator: Adam Seacord
Editor: Weasalopes

“Woah!”

“Wow!”

“Amazing, Haru.”

With her long blonde hair waving, she stylishly stepped across the rocks with ease, and made it across the pond without an issue. Haruna Toudo was the kind of woman to not show her quirks when it mattered.

“How ‘bout you, Brother?”

“I think I’ll manage. Didn’t want to follow that, though,” Tatsuya joked as he carefully observed the correct path like Haruna did before boosting his Dexterity with a spell, and slowly but surely making it across.

“As careful as ever, Brother.”

“We may be adventurers, but we don’t have to be adventurous when we don’t have to.”

“Indeed. Tatsuya-dono is right.”

Primula fully confirmed Tatsuya’s not-so-adventurous motto. Kind of a grey area if she only agreed because of how she felt about him, or if she wholeheartedly agreed.

“Mako, go.”

“I know.”

Breezing by the Primula’s forced attempt at flirting and Tatsuya desperately avoiding that situation, Mio egged Makoto on. Thanks to the enchantment on them, her clothes were completely dried, but her hair was still not there. She was towel-drying and blow-drying it over and over.

“I don’t have much an eye for detail, so I’ll go Haruna-style.”

“Need a spell, Makoto-san?”

“Yes, please.”

With Makoto’s request, Haruna cast a spell to her, using Tatsuya’s wand to extend her range. The one who made the wand had said that, since it also boosts output, it was too dangerous to use without extending the range.

With her increased speed from Haruna’s spell, Makoto ran across the stepping stones. She stepped on a decoy rock once along the way, but powered through with her speed.

“I feel like I brute-forced it, but I think it’s one of the right answers.”

“Mm-hm. From the videos I’ve seen, that was one of the best methods.”

In fact, in real life examples of games like this, the Tatsuya method of careful observation was surprisingly unsuccessful. Half of the time, their observation was wrong, and the other times they couldn’t make the jump.

“Next up’s Judith. You got it?”

“Um. Probably?”

Judith didn’t seem to confident. Unfortunately, she was just the priestess in training without much observational skills or speed. She couldn’t get her maximum velocity enough to powerful, nor have enough experience and eyes for taking a long route. Of course, Primula had the same problem, too.

“Well, you ain’t gonna die from fallin’ in. Let’s give it a shot.”

“Ok, I will!”

With Hiroshi’s encouragement, Judith carefully hopped from one rock to another. Just when she made it halfway through, she stepped on a decoy. Without a chance, Judith fell right into the pond.

“Are you all right, Judith!?”

“I just fell in. I think I’m fine…”

Since she could touch the bottom, she showed everyone that she was fine before almost heading to the other side, but changing her mind and coming back to the starting side.

“You might have just made it to the other side.”

“There’s a wall or something, Sensei.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. I didn’t think I could make it past it, so I decided to come back.”

“They put a lot of effort in this thing, huh…?”

Hiroshi couldn’t help but let out a sigh at the strangely thorough security. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or over the insistence upon making them follow the rules with everything they got.

“Primula-san, you’re up next.”

“Yes…”

Hiroshi and Mio looked at the nervous Primula with pity. As far as they could tell so far, she wasn’t the athletic type. While her rather large breasts might get in her way, that factor would have incapacitated Haruna.

“In any case, we better think of the worst-case scenario.”

“Got any ideas, Sensei?”

“To be honest, it ain’t my favorite idea, but I got one.”

Watching Primula timidly hip hop across the pond, Hiroshi let out another sigh. It looked like she was going to fall in pretty soon. Just as he thought it, she fell in, failing to jump to the next rock despite being on the right course.

“Oof…”

“I did see it comin’, to be honest.”

Primula returned to the starting point as soaked as her sister. It didn’t like these two would make it across any time soon.

“…Hey, Mio.”

“What’s up, Sensei?”

“What do you think of that display over there.”

Mio turned to where Hiroshi was pointing to find a digital display of the number 2. Of course, it wasn’t there a few moments ago.

“Are we playing with stocks?”

“Didn’t sound right that there weren’t no penalties for screwin’ up.”

While getting soaked may seem like a penalty, it was unnatural that there wasn’t a team-wide consequence for failure.

“If we only got two more chances to fail…”

“There’s no time to wait for those two to make it?”

“That’s where we’re at…”

They didn’t to have a choice but to start cheating.

“What’s your idea, Sensei?”

“Simple, really. I just gotta carry ‘em two on my shoulders and make it across.”

“…Can you do it?”

“…If I buck up, I think I can last three minutes.”

Three minutes, in this context, wasn’t very long.

“Can you make it in three minutes?”

“That’s where Haruna-san comes in.”

With that, Mio understood what Hiroshi was saying. She was astonished at how far he was willing to go, in more ways than one.

“So, Haruna-san! I’m gonna cry ‘em over, so gimme a speed-boost and Over Accelerate!”

“What!?”

Hiroshi had just requested her to use her trump card, and Haruna was dumbfounded. She had a million questions running through her mind, like ‘can you really carry two female bodies?’ or ‘does this course really require that much?’ but Haruna’s side had took notice of the number display, too. Considering the athleticism and observational skills of the Norton sisters, it might be better for them to use any card they had, while they still could. Once she reached that conclusion, Haruna swallowed all sorts of questions she had, and prepared to cast the spell in assistance. Forcing her logic to click, Haruna bottled up her dubious emotions, and managed to activate her speed-boost spell. Even though he was only carrying the Norton sisters by his sides, she couldn’t help but feel strangely agitated by them being so close to him. Still, she used her logical side to its full potential to keep her calm.

“Here we go!”

“Brin’ it!”

Even with something tar-like sloshing around in her gut, Haruna maintained a semblance of calm as she activated Over Accelerate. Despite her slight lack in concentration, perhaps thanks to Tatsuya’s wand, her trump card activated with the best quality it had ever been. Even though she was irritated by little things like that, if she were to show any of that emotion, a lot of things could end right then and there. Not that these were emotions that could be bottled up from sheer force of will, but she still clawed to keep her definitely less-than-perfect emotions down. Just when she had decided to rope Tatsuya and Makoto into complaining about her emotions later, Hiroshi blinked right in front of her, carrying the two girls in his arms.

“…A-Are you all right!?”

Seeing Hiroshi in front of her, all the murky emotions were swept away, as Haruna was only worried for his wellbeing.

“T-That was somethin’…”

“W-Were we too heavy?”

“It ain’t about the weight. It’s that I had to carry two girls…”

With color completely drained from his face, Hiroshi had curled up on the ground and kept his eyes down. Seeing this, Haruna couldn’t help but beat herself up for being jealous.

“Are you okay, Sensei!?”

“I-I’m alive, at least…”

“You look far from okay…”

“Sorry, but, could Mio and Makoto-san handle it, next time…?”

“Sure.”

Neither Makoto and Mio couldn’t say no after seeing him like this. Upon witnessing Hiroshi’s reaction, the Norton sisters couldn’t keep their cool, especially Judith.

“U-Um. I’m so sorry that we’ve caused such trouble.”

“I mean, this is what happens when someone’s who’s afraid of women decided to carry two feminine bodies across a pond…”

“H-Hey. He’s the one who came up with the idea this time, and it’s his fault you’re here in the ruins, anyway, so…”

Watching the depressed sisters, Makoto couldn’t help but try and console them, even though she knew it wasn’t her best work. It might have been his own fault, but this comment still made out Hiroshi, who took the most damage out of the ordeal, to be the villain. Even though it was absolutely true that he was the one who suggested it, it was most likely one of the only options they had. With those thoughts written on her face, Makoto’s consolation must not have been that effective.

Of course, even though Makoto didn’t really mean it this way, Hiroshi was the one who decided to dive into this ruins (neglecting any opposition) on a whim, so it wasn’t off-base that it was his fault for bringing two women that were now slowing them down.

“That’s that. Once he’s recovered, let’s move on.”

“Haru used a big spell, too. Good time for a break?”

“Sorry, folks. For weighin’ us down and worryin’ y’all every time.”

“When it comes to this, it can’t be helped.”

When it was all said and done, it took about five minutes for Hiroshi to recover.