Coming out of the capsule, I was surprised at seeing that the teachers had brought in an incredibly old CRT tv on a desk with wheels. It was just like the time in middle school when my teachers would let us watch a movie in class.
In front of the tv, they had brought several chairs in which not only Mr. Brown and Ms. Turner sat, but also Brad, Bradley, Anna, Sarah, and Peter.
'Huh... I thought I would be the second one to go...'
In my mind, I was sure that Peter would have been the only student to get eliminated, but it turns out that there were quite a lot of people out here already.
On the CRT, I got out just in time to see Bellatrix scream 'I surrender!' before it turned to static, liberating the focus of the focus.
"Oh, Sophie! Did you get your ass handed to you by some monster?"
Getting up from her chair, Anna walked over to me, bantering as always. Laughing I reciprocated, "Haha, not at all. I chose to surrender for other reasons. But by the sounds of it, you did? I guess it's hard for a bitch, I mean a witch, to survive."
As we were having fun, Sarah also made her way to our side. "Greetings Sophie. I see that your endeavor ended prematurely. My condolences."
She had fully reverted into royalty mode, walking tall with her moderate chest sticking out.
"Please stop, Sarah. We have talked about this."
While I was telling Sarah off for not acting more like a normal girl with us, two more capsules opened up with Bellatrix and Adam climbing out of them.
"Adam! Why didn't you defend me?!"
The girl was furious, enraged that her brother hadn't been able to watch her back during the fight. Adam, however, just explained himself calmly.
"I told you before the event, we probably shouldn't have teamed up. There is no synergy between an archer and an assassin, even more so when Sebastian was fast enough to keep me busy during the entire fight."
"Tsk!"
Turning on her heel, Bella just clicked her tongue and sat down in one of the chairs, ignoring my amused expression.
'God, she is such a bitch...'
Our short time at the academy had let me get a somewhat good grasp on a lot of my classmates, and if there was one thing I knew, it was that Bellatrix Rue was an absolute abomination of a person.
Overly prideful and elitist, with no sympathy for anyone other than Mike, whose pants she seemed to desperately want to enter.
I felt sorry for her brother who had to put up with her just because they shared the same blood.
"But Sophie..."
Sarah initiated another conversation, breaking the brief moment of silence that had emerged as we watched the siblings come out. "Yea? What is it?"
She started fidgeting with her fingers, her gaze gravitating towards the ground as she forced herself to continue, "Umm, you didn't happen to see James in there, did you?"
'Ah... Guess we are pretty similar after all.'
It didn't take a genius to figure out why she asked that question, she wanted to know if I had any information about how her interest was faring.
"I'm sorry, but I never saw him in there. Let's just sit down and wait, he is bound to show up on the screen at some point."
"Un..."
Nodding her head, a bit sad, we all sat down and waited for the next fight to start. As the time inside the VR world was acting on a 10:1 ratio, with the crt slowing down to show us the fights at normal speed, we shouldn't have to wait for long before something happened.
'Thinking about it, I'm surprised that idiot is still hanging on... He is going to be a pain when he gets out though, seeing as he made it further than me...'
****
[James's Pov]
"I'm bored..."
"Yea, me too..."
Two birds were sitting in a tree, having once again been submitted to the torment that is boredom. After the last fight, ending with Bellatrix and Adam getting eliminated, things slowed down again. Having already spent four hours waiting, I felt like I had to do something before night fell.
Chewing on some bark, the only food I had managed to come across, I began to make a plan to shake things up. As I knew where all of the students were currently located, at least in general terms, it didn't take long for me to come up with something.
'This will be fun!'
****
[Adriana's Pov]
Things were going well for me and my partner Trisha. Even though we had only eliminated the muscle brothers, we had killed a lot of monsters and solved a couple of puzzles. We would surely get a good score if we survived for long enough. This was my ticket to the A-class.
It was a bit frustrating though. Even if I had no issues with moments of silence, it was wearing me down to walk around with Trisha who almost never opened her mouth. It was completely going against her human nature.
The humans I had met during political and diplomatic meetings, were all letting their mouths run until they ran out of saliva, something most elves hated a lot. I was probably one of the most talkative people of my kind, a trait I had acquired after socializing with humans a lot in order to be used to bring our countries closer together.
There were a few students at Ainu that originated from Aldon, but they only consisted of either beastmen or dwarves. I was the first elf to ever attend an academy in Mensch, something that a lot of conservative elves found to be an atrocity. Elves were the nobles of Aldon, meaning many found it beneath us to mingle with humans.
That also made it even more embarrassing that I was part of the B-class instead of the A-class. Even though I could logically understand that humans developed faster, and I would probably get a lot stronger than all of them in the future, it hurt my pride a lot.
Throwing me out of my thoughts, the rarity that was Trisha speaking happened, "Look".
In front of us, there was a cloud hovering just a little bit over a meter above the ground, having a very specific shape. It was in the shape of an arrow going a little bit back and forth. 'What...?'
I recognized that substance so very well, it was made out of mist, making it obvious who is responsible for it. Looking at Trisha, she just shrugged her shoulders as if saying 'You choose, I'm up for whatever'. It was the same as when we had solved the puzzles, she had been leaning on me to do the thinking.
My mind quickly ran through a couple of scenarios, trying to figure out what James was thinking. There were two sides to the coin, both making me feel very stressed out about the whole thing.
On one hand, one could regard the arrow as being too obvious of a trap for it to truly be a trap, pretty much pointing to the fact that if he was going to bring us into a trap, he would've done so a lot more cleverly. On the other hand, it could be a triple-layered trap, where he expected me to assume it was a trap even though it was too simple, meaning he wanted us to either stay where we were or go in another direction.
'My head hurts...'
The royal princess of Aldon wasn't stupid, but this was such a mindboggling situation that I couldn't make up my mind about what to do. At the same time, if he wanted us to stay here he was already winning by me spending time thinking about it.
Minutes passed by, as I was still unable to make a decision, and when Trisha opened her mouth again, I knew I had fallen for James's trap. "We have company."
"Looks like we are finally going to get to have some fun, John! My greetings princess, unfortunately, I can't let you leave this place!"
****
[James's Pov]
What's the best kind of trick? A trick where all choices lead to the same outcome! And that was the kind of trick I had just let Adriana experience.
In reality, it didn't matter if she chose to stay or follow the arrow. If she chose to follow the arrow, I was planning on leading her and Trisha right into the clutches of Sebastian and Suzan, while I at the same time sub-me had conjured another arrow showing Mike and John the path to Adriana.
It didn't even matter if they chose to just walk in a different direction, as I would be able to lead Mike and John to them as long as they didn't walk in the opposite direction, where, as stated, Sebastian was.
The main factor as to why this plan worked in the first place was the fact that Mike and John hadn't ever seen me use my mist, therefore assuming the arrow was part of an event in the forest. They never thought that an introverted raven was sitting on a branch above them, orchestrating a very simple, yet efficient, trick to make sure the stage was set.
"Looks like we are finally going to get to have some fun, John! My greetings princess, unfortunately, I can't let you leave this place!"
Adriana didn't back down after hearing his words, instead, she took a step forward to protect her honor. "Greetings, Mr. Denver. And I'm also sorry, sorry because I can't accept your words!"
'Aaaahhhh, finally! Some entertainment!'