Chapter 200: Even Amano Rei Can't Wipe Us All Out Single-Handedly!
The two new transfer students in Class 1-E became the hottest topic during break time at light speed.
Both Yukki and Kikawayu were immediately surrounded by curious classmates with no shortage of questions.
"Yukki-san, you're the class rep's cousin? Does that make you a Nanki'in family young miss too?"
"Kikawayu-san and the duel committee rep are childhood friends? That's outrageous. Committee rep, you already have the class rep, and now you've been hiding a childhood friend this cute from all of us?"
"Is he actually a boy? Look, I don't care, cute is cute. I'll take it either way. Committee rep, what do you say?"
"Don't ask me things like that," Amano said, shaking his head.
In the old days he could have introduced Kikawayu to everyone with genuine pride, his childhood friend who somehow came out cuter than the actual girls in his life, and laughed with full sincerity about what a strange twist of nature that was.
Things had shifted slightly from that baseline.
Fortunately the sharp drop in temperature meant Kikawayu had dressed in thicker layers today, covering over some of the more distinctly feminine contours. From Amano's angle, the most noticeable differences from before were the added height and that long silver-grey hair. Everything else still read as roughly within acceptable range.
Sakuya leaned over from the next seat. "I never expected Kikawayu to actually transfer over for you. Since he's your best friend, should I go introduce myself?"
Unlike Finesse, who shared a dormitory building with Kikawayu, Sakuya barely knew him. The two had never exchanged so much as a proper word.
"Nanki'in-san, you must be the class rep." Kikawayu took the initiative and approached first. "Rei mentions you often."
"Really?" Sakuya's interest sharpened immediately. "What does Amano-san usually say about me? Can you repeat it?"
"Rei always says the class rep is a real handful..."
Amano's hand shot out and covered Kikawayu's mouth before the sentence could finish. He had been braced for exactly this. Kikawayu's social awareness in casual conversation had always been a liability.
There would be no open-air assault on the pure and uncomplicated relationship between himself and his class rep.
Yukki smiled pleasantly. "Amano-san and Kikawayu really do seem close. If Kikawayu were a girl, I suppose no other girl would stand a chance."
He had been so focused on stopping Kikawayu that he had completely forgotten about this particular instigator.
Why did academy life suddenly feel so exhausting?
Kikawayu, you had a perfectly good situation at Fusion Academy. Coming here to set a new standard for academic intensity and then suffering through evening study sessions you had never had before was going to be your problem to deal with.
And the timing could hardly have been worse.
The monthly exam was tomorrow, a Synchro Academy exclusive feature that neither of the other academies had to deal with.
"Class rep, don't even worry about it!" Kozuka Yoka pushed her way out of the crowd and crouched in front of Sakuya with complete seriousness. "The whole of E-class is behind you. We'll all deliberately tank our scores so you sail into the top ten without breaking a sweat."
"Exactly. After everything the class rep has done for us, we can't let her get removed."
"She's the people's class rep. The people will carry her."
Looking at the energy in the room, Amano felt fairly comfortable that even without tutoring her, there was not much to worry about. Given Sakuya's standing in the class, Kondo could try to replace her and probably fail to find a single candidate willing to run against her.
Kozuka turned her head toward Amano. "The written test is one thing, but what we actually care about as a class, committee rep, is the Class War."
"Class War? What's that? I've never heard of it."
An unfamiliar term had just appeared out of nowhere. Amano was simultaneously the duel committee representative and study committee representative for this class, and somehow Kozuka Yoka knew more about it than he did.
"That's because you kept skipping evening study, so you missed Kondo's explanation. The Class War is when you challenge a higher-ranked class to a duel battle in your class's name."
Synchro Academy sorted each year level into five classes from A to E based on academic performance.
Amano had assumed this was simply the academy encouraging a competitive ranking culture among students. He had not expected the class rankings to feed into the monthly exam activities as well.
Though as someone with deep roots in a certain style of fiction, the setup did feel oddly familiar.
The reason it operated at the class level rather than the individual level was probably tied to Synchro Summoning's core philosophy: the idea that weak duelists can support one another and gather hope into something greater than any one person alone.
"So what's the reward for winning against a stronger class?" Amano guessed. "Better classroom equipment, maybe?"
"See, committee rep, you do understand! Beat a higher-ranked class and the classroom gets upgraded."
He was about ninety percent certain this Class War rule had been borrowed wholesale from a certain old-school anime.
"Though what is there to upgrade?" Sakuya glanced around the room. "This seems fine to me."
She was not wrong. Even as the lowest-ranked class in the year, E-class had a perfectly serviceable classroom. Nobody had found it uncomfortable during the month they had been sitting in it.
Kozuka's expression turned serious. "Beat D-class and we get heating."
Amano's demeanor shifted in an instant. "We're declaring war."
This was practically a gift from the universe. The temperature had just dropped today. Heating could be installed as early as tomorrow.
He was done sitting in this classroom freezing.
Amano moved into planning mode. "Fujiwara. Take a few of the more physically imposing people and go deliver the declaration. We need to project the right kind of energy going in."
"On it, committee rep. Leave this kind of work to us."
Charging openly into another class's room to pick a fight meant that while nobody would throw punches, a strategically launched portion of someone's lunch was well within the range of acceptable responses. Sending a small group of tall, broad-shouldered students to do the announcing was one approach. Sending several beautiful girls who opponents would hesitate to retaliate against was another.
"Actually, hold on a moment," Kozuka said. "We don't have to stop at D-class. The other classrooms have better upgrades."
She opened her notebook. "Win against C-class and we can install air conditioning."
Air conditioning was more versatile. Heating only handled winter, but having a cool room in summer was equally valuable.
"Win against B-class and we can install a dynamic ambient temperature regulation system."
That name sounded impressively technical. Probably quite sophisticated.
"And if we win against A-class..." Kozuka closed the notebook and let unmistakable hunger show in her eyes. "The classroom upgrade becomes secondary. Being A-class means no homework during evening study."
Sakuya was on her feet before anyone else could react. "We are declaring war on A-class immediately."
It was clear enough which incentive hit hardest. Among students, the promise of no homework outweighed any physical improvement to the room.
"Is going straight for A-class actually viable, though?" Yukki offered a calm counterpoint. "A-class would be the best performers in the entire year group. Pulling anyone from that class at random would mean going up against someone whose scores would crush E-class."
"Anyone except Amano-san, of course."
E-class's willingness to aim for an upset victory at all rested entirely on Amano's presence. His dueling ability had already constituted a complete mismatch against any other first-year student in the academy, A-class included.
But a Class War was a class-level battle. Individual strength alone was never the complete picture.
Except that E-class no longer had only one strong duelist.
Kikawayu had just transferred in at exactly the right moment.
"If we're declaring war," Amano said, "we go straight for A-class."
"That's what I'm talking about, committee rep!" Fujiwara had been waiting for exactly this permission and led his group out of the classroom at a sprint, three broadly built young men making a direct line toward A-class.
Losing was fine. E-class had nothing to lose, no shoes to protect. That was about as solid a strategic advantage as this class was ever going to get.
Though Amano had to admit that when he made the call, there had been a real pulse of something youthful and hot-blooded running through him. He had not felt like that in a while.
He also did not yet know the specific rules for how a class-level duel battle actually worked.
"Where's our military advisor Kozuka?"
"Right here!"
Kozuka accepted the emergency commission and went straight to the blackboard, drawing diagrams for Amano and the other classmates who did not know the format.
The basic structure was still one-on-one dueling, but the scale was entirely different.
In a Class War, each student's LP was tied to their exam score. Maximum 8000, minimum 100.
The Synchro Academy would use its virtual world devices to generate a battlefield. After both classes entered the virtual space, they would split into three lanes and advance toward the opposing team's base.
Students who encountered opponents along the way would be forced into immediate duels. The battles remained one-on-one, but they formed a running gauntlet: LP did not recover between fights. Only after every student on a given lane had been defeated could that lane's surviving team push forward to attack the enemy base.
The win condition was to defeat the opposing class's class rep, who held position at the base.
"This sounds a lot like a MOBA," Amano said.
"A what?" Kikawayu looked puzzled.
"Nothing, talking to myself."
Three lanes, push to destroy the enemy crystal. The structural resemblance to a MOBA was undeniable. He had spent enough hours in front of a screen in his previous life to recognize the format immediately.
While E-class buzzed with excited discussion, the atmosphere inside A-class after receiving the declaration was a different matter entirely.
Cold.
Getting challenged by E-class during the very first Class War of the new semester was one thing. Getting challenged by the bottom-ranked class was, for the top-ranked students, practically an insult.
"Their E-class does have that Amano Rei, though, class rep."
"Amano..." Kirisame Fuyuo's brow drew into a sharp crease. "The one who defeated Kaiba Chiha in the entrance exam and won the first-year joint tournament duel."
"There's more, class rep. Rumor has it that last week, Amano Rei apparently dueled Kuroshio Nagi from Xyz Academy's second year right outside the academy gates, and won. Kuroshio Nagi is one of the top-ranked duelists at Xyz Academy right now."
"Even so," Kirisame said firmly, "that E-class rabble has exactly one person worth worrying about. In terms of overall academic performance, we have an overwhelming advantage."
"Right. Even if it's Amano Rei, one person cannot kill all forty of us alone."
Kirisame Fuyuo, class representative of Year One A-class, had been the top academic performer in Academy City's middle school division. That distinction was the foundation her current position rested on. She had been first since she was old enough to understand what first meant.
So when she discovered that her own academy ranking had been overtaken by a student from E-class, her initial reaction had been genuine disbelief.
Kirisame's current rank was 18,854. By first-year standards, that was genuinely strong.
But Amano Rei's rank was 299.
She had stared at the number long enough to wonder if she was misreading it. Whether she had somehow dropped two digits off the end.
That student was truly that capable?
The same age, the same first-year standing. Could the gap between two people really be that wide?
Kirisame was not quite ready to accept it. She had been first her entire life. She had been the center of attention for as long as she could remember. And some part of that history refused to believe that the distance between herself and some E-class duelist was actually as large as the numbers suggested.
She gave the order to her class. "Everyone scores as high as possible on tomorrow's exam. When the time comes, we dismantle E-class completely."
"Yes, class rep!"
News of E-class challenging A-class spread through Synchro Academy in under half a day.
The initial reaction was mostly spectators preparing to watch a spectacular failure. Nobody expected E-class to actually win.
Then Rin Seiya, the academy's undisputed first-ranked duelist, pointed out that Amano Rei was in E-class, and the discussion turned genuinely heated.
People started claiming spots at the virtual world devices in advance, wanting to see for themselves whether the first-year whose name had become a constant presence in recent weeks would lead E-class to a come-from-below miracle or get crushed by A-class's collective weight.
Two days later, the Class War opened.
For Amano, this was his first actual monthly exam, and he finally understood the complete structure.
The Synchro Academy monthly exam had three components: the written test, the practical duel, and the Class War.
The Class War was the most unusual of the three. Without a formal declaration, it was an optional component and its result would not be counted in the final evaluation. But once a declaration had been filed, it fed directly into the comprehensive evaluation score.
The comprehensive evaluation worked the same way as the weekly duel evaluations Finesse had run at Fusion Academy. Based on the rating the Eva system assigned, it would provide a corresponding card as a reward.
That had been the mechanism that gave Finesse Destiny HERO - Plasma.
Amano had performed well enough on the written test and had won his practical duel against the assigned teacher's test deck without any real difficulty. The only piece of the comprehensive evaluation still unresolved was today's Class War result.
Outside the virtual world device, Rin Seiya moved through the crowd with her Eva Terminal extended, calling out as she went.
"Step right up, all bets accepted. A-class versus E-class, combined odds sitting at ten to one, more you put in more you take out. Transfer payments welcome, first come first served!"
Rin Seiya's Unofficial Betting Corner had been operating for some time now, and her academy standing meant nobody feared the house taking the money and running.
"Senpai, transfer sent. Five thousand Eva Points on A-class."
"Transferring now, twenty thousand on A-class. Thank you, enjoy~"
Rin Seiya's smile was threatening to split her face in half.
She was not like the well-connected family daughters who never had to think about money. After prepaying her monthly allowance to buy a new D-Wheel, she had been scraping through the weeks. The level of interest this Class War had attracted was considerably higher than she had anticipated, which meant today had been an unexpectedly good harvest.
All that remained was hoping for Amano to pull off something spectacular.
"My living expenses for this month are riding on you, little junior! If you earn me enough, I'll personally treat you to a visit to the clubroom's finest entertainment!"
Inside the virtual world device, every member of E-class had already finished connecting.
Pre-battle speeches were clearly mandatory.
"For the climate control system!"
"For no homework!"
"For the pride and glory of E-class!"
"Move out!"
The same weightless falling sensation as entering a Duel Chronicle. When everyone opened their eyes again, they were standing inside the virtual battlefield the Eva system had built.
The terrain resembled a canyon. Towering ridgelines divided the paths forward into three distinct lanes: top, mid, and bottom.
Sakuya held the base. Everyone else departed along their assigned routes.
The first clash happened in the mid lane. When the A-class students saw the wall of E-class students pouring toward them, their faces went blank.
"Wait, what is happening right now?"
"Why are there so many of them?"
A-class had forty students total. With their class rep holding the base, the remaining thirty-nine had been split across the three lanes, thirteen per lane.
The thirteen students in the mid lane watched an absolute flood of E-class come at them and could not make the numbers work.
That looked like over thirty people. Even accounting for the two transfer students who had joined E-class that day, the difference should not have been that dramatic.
The top and bottom lane collisions delivered the explanation.
"What?" Inside the base, Kirisame Fuyuo received the report and her mouth fell open. "E-class has how many students in the top lane and the bottom lane?"
Top lane: Amano Rei. One person.
Bottom lane: Kikawayu. One person.
Two childhood friends, each holding their lane alone, each touching off an eruption among the spectators watching from outside the virtual space.
"I've never seen anyone play a Class War like this."
"One person against thirteen?"
"How do you not get ground down by the gauntlet?"
The rules were straightforward on this point. A lane could only push toward the enemy base once every opposing student in that lane had been defeated. That meant as long as Amano remained standing in the top lane, not a single A-class student could advance toward E-class's rear.
Amano deployed his Duel Disk, going second, and looked across at the thin A-class boy in front of him.
"Have you Synchro Summoned yet?"
"That's none of your business. Synchro Summon requires two monsters, so I'll be doing mine next turn!"
Fair enough. A-class or not, they were still first-year students who had only recently learned what a Tuner was. The average student at this stage would barely have a handful of Tuners in their deck. That level of performance was about right.
"You haven't Synchro Summoned. I'm going to."
Amano's fingers swept across his Duel Disk's monster zone. Synchro Summoning light blazed across the top lane of the canyon.
"King and demon, now converging here! Touch the soul of the red dragon, and let out a roar that shakes heaven and earth!"
"Synchro Summon! Appear! Level 10, Red Dragon Archfiend Tyrant!"
Red Dragon Archfiend Tyrant. Level 10. DARK Attribute. Dragon-Type / Synchro / Effect.
ATK 3500 / DEF 3000.
Cannot be Special Summoned except by Synchro Summon. Requires 2 Tuner monsters plus 1 or more non-Tuner monsters.
Effect 1: Once per turn, during your Main Phase, you can destroy all cards on the field. If you do, monsters you control other than this card cannot attack this turn.
Effect 2: When a Spell Card or Trap Card is activated during the Battle Phase, negate that activation and destroy it, then this card gains 500 ATK.
The Tyrant's roar rolled through the canyon.
Amano's Synchro Summon sent every A-class student in the top lane stumbling backward by several steps.
All thirteen of them. Not one was getting past him.