The Magician of Sound

"Haha... So it was still no use, huh..."

Although he was frustrated by the result, Kai was still laughing. They truly did their best for that. It was only due to their miscalculation that they were ambushed by an A-rank magical beast.

Ayaka looked at Kai's laughing face and involuntarily smiled. Kai was indeed the silent type, but it was because he tended to avoid unnecessary conversation.

If he had to, he would say everything. At first, she wanted to show Kai her real strength, but he once again defeated her. She didn't understand why, but after they experienced that practice world, losing to him like this didn't feel that bad.

When she thought of that, she suddenly remembered the scene where Kai called her with her first name, and so did she. Her face slowly turned to red, and her heartbeat began to race.

Kai noticed the sudden change in her heartbeat. He saw her red face and asked, "What happened?"

"No," she looked away.

Kai tilted his head in confusion, "But your face is red."

"It's only your imagination. There's no way I'm thinking of how you called me with Ayaka or how I called you Kai." Ayaka said as her face became redder.

"Ah, I'm sorry I called you that. Since calling you politely would have only made the situation awkward and delayed the command, I called you that way. I apologize, you must be ashamed to have me call you that way," Kai apologized to her with a sincere tone.

"No, no. What you just said is right. I think it'd be better for you to call me Ayaka from now on. And I'll call you Kai," Ayaka said, flustered.

"..." Kai couldn't understand her, but he agreed to it since it would be more convenient that way. There was no other thought.

Ayaka looked at Kai. The government might regret their decision by grading Kai as a D-rank magician.

The government only tested their magic power and element for the evaluation and not their potential. She somehow could picture what her grandfather said about Kai being an unorthodox magician. Although it might not be now, it would happen sooner or later. After all, Kai was still growing.

"Since we're done with this, let's go out," Ayaka said.

Kai nodded his head and put his noise-canceling headphones back. He opened the tube and saw the principal, Shirotsuka Sanae, as well as two other people in front of their tube.

He and Ayaka were startled. Ayaka aside, Kai didn't even hear them. They had been waiting for them before Kai and Ayaka died in that world, so it was normal for Kai not to hear them.

But it was different for those people. They had been waiting for quite a while to check their condition. When they saw that the tube was turned off, they knew Ayaka and Kai had died in that world.

They gulped down as they didn't know what kind of reaction they would have. They were scared that Ayaka and Kai would have developed a trauma after this.

"Principal? And Teacher?" Ayaka furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. Shirotsuka Sanae aside, She didn't understand why all of these people stood in front of their tube.

"You two are fine… right?" the principal asked.

"What do you mean, Principal?" Ayaka asked back. She didn't know why the principal would ask this question.

"That world must have scared you, right?"

"Scared us?" Ayaka frowned. She shook her head. "The world was really challenging. I learned so much from that world, to say the least. I never thought that the outside world was that dangerous. I need to get stronger and use my magic better to challenge it again."

Ayaka only told the truth from her experience. The world sure was dangerous, because when they just teleported, they were already surrounded by magical beasts. If Kai hadn't been there with her, she didn't know how long she would be able to last in that situation.

If Kai hadn't been there with her, she would have gone around killing those magical beasts without care, and she would then be surrounded by them and die.

She realized that she was too reliant on Kai, so she decided to get stronger. The world didn't scare her. Instead, it encouraged her to get stronger.

The principal was startled when he heard that. He looked at the determination in her eyes and finally relaxed. Ayaka seemed to not have been affected by the world. He then looked at Kai Carter. Kai didn't have any expression on his face, and he only found confusion in his eyes.

But from the looks of it, he seemed to not have been affected by that world. It was a great relief to know. The principal wiped the sweat on his forehead and said, "I see. It's good then."

"What's this all about, Teacher?" Kai then turned to Sanae and asked.

"Ahem, I'll explain it to you. Since both of you have finished it, we can go to my office so I can tell you about it," the principal replied hurriedly without giving Shirotsuka Sanae a chance to say anything. "Let's go."

But before they went to the principal office, Ayaka didn't forget to ask Shirotsuka Sanae for their result. It was very important to them, since they had a bet with Katsuragi Takaki.

"Teacher, what's our result?"

"Ah, your result…" Shirotsuke Sanae was startled. A surprised look, which was very rare to appear on her face, could clearly be seen there. She looked at the principal first.

The principal contemplated a bit before nodding his head. Because he was too worried about them, he had forgotten about this. When he looked at the screen that displayed the number of monsters they killed inside, he dropped his jaw to the ground.

S – 0

A – 1

B – 4

C – 36

D – 98

E – 156

F – 237

Even the others, including Shirotsuka Sanae, got startled by the result. They even killed an A-rank beast. Normally, the students would get shocked by an A-rank beast that could also use magic.

Even students who were A-rank magicians would be shocked by those monsters. Even though they had the same rank, the A-rank students were like a newborn baby in front of a grown adult. That rank only indicated their potential.

They needed to experience battling the magical beasts, using magic, and so on to become a full-fledged A-rank magician. Then, they would be able to win even against a few A-rank magical beasts.

That was why they got shocked by their result.

As a teacher, Shirotsuka Sanae knew their ranks. Ayaka was an A-rank magician and Kai Carter was only a D-rank magician. So it was very obvious that Kai took advantage of Ayaka. But no matter how strong Ayaka was, she would never be able to kill this many magical beasts, considering the time it took them.

"How do you kill so many magical beasts so quickly?" Shirotsuka Sanae asked.

"It was Ka-" Ayaka wanted to tell her, but Kai suddenly spoke up. "I baited the magical beasts and she killed them all. Since she had powerful magic, I chose to be the bait."

"You-!" Ayaka was suddenly shocked by what he said. It was not true in the slightest. Kai was the one who killed those magical beasts, while she could only watch as he did that.

Shirotsuka Sanae frowned a bit because she felt something wrong, but she decided not to care about it any longer. She took a deep breath before announcing their result without giving a chance for Ayaka to correct Kai's statement.

"You two are the first ones to finish this task. You used one hour in the process. And you can look at this paper to know how we score you." Shirotsuka Sanae explained in her style. She gave them a paper.

F Rank – 1 point

E Rank – 2 points

D rank – 4 points

C Rank – 8 points

B Rank – 20 points

A Rank – 100 points

S Rank – 1000 points

Survival (6 hours) – 100 points

"Your total points are 1,409 points." Shirotsuka Sanae announced their score. Sadly, no one other than the two knew that the points they got were from Kai's suicidal skill.

"Congratulations to both of you. No one has managed to get this many points in their first time except Tasha Carter, who got 1,561 points in her first try. But I can proudly say that your group surpassed her." The principal congratulated them. "I'll explain what I mean in my office."

After that, the principal turned to Shirotsuka Sanae and said, "Teacher Shirotsuka, since they've finished this class, I'll be borrowing these two students."

Sanae only nodded her head.

When they left the gym, she then looked toward the screen.

"A shrewd student. But just one person's ability won't be able to fight all those magical beasts in the outside world," she said with a trace of reminiscence in her voice.

She shook her head.

After around half an hour, the tubes of the students started opening as they had died. She graded them one by one.

There was a special time limit for this class, which was six hours. After those six hours, the difficulty would become harder, and they would be forced to exhaust their everything and die. And surprisingly, there were a few groups that managed to pass the time limit, including George's group and Katsuragi Takaki's group.

When Katsuragi Takaki opened the tube, he immediately searched for Ayaka's group, but found out that the tube had been opened and seemed to have been open for quite a long time. In other words, they didn't manage to stay long enough to get the survival points. He became confident he had beaten them in this, but when he asked Sanae his group score...

"Your total points are 943."

"Teacher, how about Ayaka's group?" Takaki asked.

"We must've gotten a higher score than them. Just look at their tube, they must've come out long before us. That means that they died early." Wada Miyako, Katsuragi Takaki's partner, said.

"No, they got 1,409 points. They passed the thousand barrier mark." Sanae said casually.

Katsuragi Takaki and Wada Miyako dropped their jaws.