Chapter 31: The Glacier and the Boiling Point
The instant the final green light flashed, the stadium erupted.
"START!" Present Mic roared, his voice nearly drowned out by the thunderous roar of the crowd.
A chaotic, desperate stampede surged forward. Hundreds of highly ambitious first-year students threw themselves toward the narrow exit corridor, instantly creating a severe bottleneck. Shoulders slammed against shoulders, elbows dug into ribs, and the air was immediately sucked out of the tight space. It was a suffocating wall of flesh and uniform, a pure test of physical displacement.
Sakazuki did not rush blindly into the crushing wave. He planted his heavy boots firmly into the ground, letting the frantic mass of students push past him, waiting for the inevitable opening.
Suddenly, the ambient temperature in the corridor plummeted.
Every exhaled breath turned into a thick cloud of white mist. The steel walls of the tunnel frosted over in a fraction of a second. Before the massive crowd could even process the sudden, biting cold, a catastrophic wave of jagged ice swept through the corridor from the front line.
It was not a thin layer of frost. It was a violent, sweeping glacier.
The ice surged forward with terrifying speed, crashing into the students and rapidly freezing them in place. In an instant, hundreds of teenagers found themselves firmly encased up to their knees in solid, unyielding ice. Shouts of shock and frustration echoed through the tunnel as the stampede ground to an abrupt, freezing halt.
At the very front of the pack, Shoto Todoroki exhaled a long breath of frigid air. He did not break his stride. He simply began to glide effortlessly over the frozen path he had just created, securing an immediate lead.
However, Todoroki did not allow himself to become arrogant. He glanced over his shoulder, his mismatched eyes scanning the frozen sea of students behind him.
I know this is not enough to stop everyone, Todoroki thought pragmatically.
His assessment was proven correct a second later. High above the ice, Katsuki Bakugo propelled himself through the air using fierce, crackling explosions from his palms, furiously screaming insults at the "half-and-half" boy. Below, Eijiro Kirishima hardened his entire body, shattering the thick ice around his legs with a sharp, jagged crack, breaking free entirely through sheer physical force.
Deep within the frozen corridor, Sakazuki stood immobilized, his legs buried up to his kneecaps in dense ice. The freezing pressure threatened to numb his muscles, but his expression remained a mask of stony indifference. The biting cold of Todoroki's ice was nothing compared to the lethal, sub-zero temperatures of the cryogenic chamber he had endured for the past two weeks. His newly forged physical vessel—the scabbard—was ready.
He recalled Principal Nezu's directive: Aim your weapon at the environment.
Sakazuki did not throw a punch. He did not aim a blast of heat at his rivals. Instead, he closed his eyes for a fraction of a second and focused his immense, volatile power entirely into his trapped legs, turning them into a radiant, superheated core.
The thick ice did not merely crack or slowly melt. It violently boiled.
A deafening, aggressive hiss tore through the corridor. In less than three seconds, the massive glacier encasing Sakazuki and the dozens of students surrounding him was reduced to a sudden, ankle-deep flood of scalding hot water.
The immediate transition from a freezing prison to a boiling bath triggered a wave of chaotic, comical panic.
"Hot! Hot! Hot!" a student from General Studies shrieked, frantically high-stepping through the water.
"I am boiling alive!" Minoru Mineta wailed, flailing his short arms as the scalding water threatened to submerge him.
"Hold on, man!" Kirishima shouted, grabbing the small purple-haired boy by the collar and hoisting him onto his hardened back, charging through the steaming flood with a wide grin.
The heat was intense, but the U.A. students were far from fragile. The sudden boiling of the ice had freed them, and they immediately capitalized on it. Ochaco Uraraka tapped her own boots, making herself weightless to float just above the stinging water. Momo Yaoyorozu quickly synthesized a long metal vaulting pole, launching herself forward to avoid the heat. Tenya Iida revved his calf engines to their maximum RPM, blasting a path through the ankle-deep water, while Izuku Midoriya gritted his teeth, ignoring the stinging heat as he pushed his way through the dense fog alongside them.
The explosive evaporation of the ice created a massive, impenetrable cloud of thick white steam that swallowed the entire starting corridor.
Up in the commentator's booth, Present Mic leaned over his desk, squinting intensely at the monitors. "WHOA! WHAT IS HAPPENING DOWN THERE?! I CAN'T SEE A THING! IT'S LIKE A MASSIVE SAUNA JUST EXPLODED IN THE TUNNEL!"
High up in the steel rafters, Hawks rested his chin on his gloved hand. His sharp golden eyes pierced the thick fog below. Despite the flashy display of ice and steam, his expression remained unimpressed. To the Winged Hero, surrounded by the life-or-death stakes of the real underworld, this was still just an energetic playground for children.
Down in the VIP boxes, the Flame Hero Endeavor stood with his massive arms crossed. His fiery beard flickered intensely as he stared in total silence at the billowing steam. He noted exactly how fast his son's absolute freezing attack had been completely eradicated.
In a private booth nearby, a skeletal All Might gripped the metal railing, his blue eyes focused intensely on the screen. Push through it, Young Midoriya! The real test is just beginning!
Inside the steam-filled corridor, the scalding water beneath Sakazuki's feet began to bubble and hiss with even greater ferocity.
He did not walk out of the tunnel.
Thick, glowing crimson magma secreted from the soles of his feet, instantly vaporizing the water upon contact. Using the intense, localized thermal expansion, Sakazuki propelled himself forward. He slid across the wet concrete like a heavy, unstoppable dreadnought, the magma beneath him acting as a frictionless, highly destructive thruster.
He burst out of the dense wall of steam and into the bright sunlight of the open track.
His standard U.A. gym shoes had been completely incinerated by his own heat. He was barefoot, the bottom edges of his dark gym pants heavily singed and torn just above his ankles. Steam rolled off his broad shoulders, his dark eyes locked firmly on the long, winding dirt path ahead.
Todoroki and Bakugo were already in the lead, but dozens of freed students were pouring out of the steam cloud behind him, and dozens more were fighting for position ahead.
The bottleneck was cleared. The actual race had finally begun.