"Well then, Students! Be like the fireworks and give your best in this mont of brilliance! However, make sure to uphold the rules, as your conduct will affect your result as well. While recklessness is the privilege of you students, overdoing is still not good. Be careful lest it gets on your marks."
Ladvena-sensei's word of advice bood across the arena.
The total of eight classes—and overall 240 students, had gathered in the centre of the arena, now in the midst of receiving the final speech.
Everyone listened to the speech sincerely, so it pushed for a sombre atmosphere all around. I guess they might have caught up with the negative result part in sensei's speech.
I guess so. The interclass battles were sort of extended end-term examinations ant to prove your calibre in a battle for class ranking. And there's no exam where students don't fret about marks. Everyone was motivated. So was I, obviously.
After then, Ladvena-sensei continued with rules about «Base Capture», and soon even that was over.
"—This is all. We all are looking to your gallantry. Now make haste to your position. The match for first block will start in 10 minutes, and any class who failed in arriving at their base would be forcefully deported out."
Forcefully deported, so scary.
But the deportation makes sense in reality. It was impossible in the ga given the chanism though. So, this was probably a asure to remove the unwanted personnel in the field.
As soon as Ladvena-sensei ended her words, a teleportation magic circle appeared beneath our feet.
Appearing similar to the shortcut magic circle to exit, this one teleported students sowhere beside their base. I glanced at Mukai-sensei beside Ladvena-sensei, and sure enough, he had been controlling his tablet.
It sure was quite a luxury to use teleportation to move us, but this was a well thought action to prevent inferring from other classes' base from their direction. If it hadn't been so, there wouldn't have been any aning behind the base selection order.
Class-1's base was located in the mountain range in northwest direction, with the edge of the arena and mountains working to limit the possible routes to it.
Montarily, our gazes were enveloped in nothing but bright light. Once the radiance cleared off, we found ourselves in front of our base.
"Woah! So this is our base!"
"It doesn't seem much different than strongholds huh."
"Well, this is how it is. However the interior is slightly different."
Lana reacted with an exciting squeal, while Sierra made her calm remark.
I nodded and answered. The stronghold, and the Base had certainly resembled exactly to each other, like a big castle. But it did have sothing that stronghold hadn't, and that was—
"Look at the command console here."
The entirety of the 30 students entered the Base at once—the entrance was wide enough to easily allow that—and arrived at the centre.
In the centre lies a black stone. If one had been familiar with RPGs, they would imdiately connect it with the fantastical stone monolith control chanism. I approached it, and raised my voice enough for everyone to hear.
"Command Console? Never heard that."
"No surprise, eh. This is the device to summon monsters through that «Summon Disk»."
"We’re going to use this?"
Sierra—or not, the entire class looked at black stone with curiosity.
"Oh, there are three spots to inlay the Summon Disks."
"Yes, once you insert them in, you can position the guardian monsters. You can summon up to 10 of them."
"However this cos with a cost, so you can't summon much stronger monsters, right?"
"Indeed. There's a total of 100 costs freely available to use. And once you set up the «Summon Disk», they'll be unremovable until the end of the match. Each summon Disk allowed multiple monsters to be summoned. Weak monsters have low cost, and can be summoned up to 10 from each disk. Though they're also easy to take down. The summoned monsters' stock would be lowered from its maximum limit for the next 20 minutes they've been taken down, and limited for that duration, the stock wouldn't recover as well. At the sa ti, the point equivalent to the cost of fallen monsters would be transferred to the class that slayed it."
A perfect example was Goblin LV10. It takes 1 cost to summon one of them, and we could have a maximum of 100 of them in stock. If we summoned one, that would leave the summoned count to 99. And corresponding to their low cost, ten of them were possible to be summoned at once. Though low cost also represented their weak strength.
Either way, once they're defeated, the stock would be reduced to 90. Whether they could be summoned imdiately after would depend on the upper limit. After the 20 minutes duration, the cost would recover back to 100, and monsters could be summoned again.
In strong monster situations, like «Chamisen LV56» from «Cat-Dun», their cost would be 20.
Their maximum limit was 5 at once, and once defeated, their slayers would be awarded 20 points. Plus, the defence of Base would drop hard at once, and since the cost had been completely depleted, no other monsters would be able to summon in those 20 minutes.
The gap in this defence could put Base's situation into jeopardy, so selection of guardian monsters was a crucial step to secure that.
Also, monsters couldn't be healed. they couldn't be made to return from the summoned state and then summoned again, so accumulated injuries would remain throughout. In short, it could be easily predicted when they might go down. The only exception would be monsters capable of self-regeneration. And since they're also not construct of «Summoner» job, they couldn't be healed by them as well.
This array of choices and combination choice could also influence overall outco/
"Well, would you cut down on defence because you hate to make an offering of points to another class, or you would rather bolster the defence to max is the choice here."
As Sierra quipped, the rest of the mbers renewed their outlook for the «Summon Disk».
"There's also the option of infinite summon loop; summon in the low cost monsters so that their numbers can be instantly replenished, and are good enough to stand the 20 minutes of onslaught. After all, summons don't disappear unless the base is down."
This strategy takes advantage of the fact that monsters had no fear and they could continue fighting regardless of the accumulated damage to the bitter end. If monsters couldn't be cleared soon, attack on Base would naturally falter. Overall, it was a good strategy to earn ti.
I had once used that trick to take down an opponent's base while they're bust accumulating points. Though it could have gone wrong as well.
Everything depends on how you pull the strings.
"Have you already thought of sothing, Zephyr?"
"Fufu, yes. You're the leader here to decide about the «Summon Disk»—no, the entire defence setup after all."
Well, yes. I had been asked to be in charge of the overall defence of the Base, including the summoned monsters, by them.
It had been the first ti for everyone in the interclass battle, so they concluded it would be best to leave the matter in my hands. But it really made slightly sad that neither of my classmates had raised the voice of objection. Like, c'mon guys, you could have surely said sothing in an argunt!? Where's the youthful spirit of yours!?
Haa, then again, I was being unreasonable to ask that. Everyone was a rookie here after all, a pity.
Whoops, right, we're talking about Summoned Disk.
I nodded, and took out three different types of Summoned Disks from the Inventory Bag.
"Of course, I have already determined it. These are my recomndations."
I inserted them into the available slots. The command console made a beep sound, and soon, a part of the monolith activated and showed the hologram.
The hologram depicted the huge life-sized models of the monsters from the summon disk.
"Aaaahhh!! What in the world is this, Zephyr!?"
"Fufuu!?! A-Are you sure it's allowed, Zephyr!?"
A shout ca from Saturn and Jilon. The whole class was caught in stir, except Sierra, Lana, Ester, Karua, and Celestine.
The Summoned Disk I had used were;
«Wolf LV15» (Cost 2)
«Leader Wolf LV25» (Cost 7)
and, «General Bull-Orc LV70» (Cost 70).
Everyone's gaze was nailed to «General».
Author's Note: Incidentally, General can't summon its subordinates even if it used «Subordinate Summoning Horn». As it had been described, it calls the monsters from around the field, not actually 'summon.' So in case General used that, it would have played out like "General used its horn...... but nothing happened."
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