“Long time no see, Raphael? Busy with real world rubbish? Well, I can’t complain since you have slayed the most bosses for us.”
Peter, Laila, and Celestina sat somewhere next to me on the front bench while the rest sat behind us in the back benches. The four of us were facing Eilis, Nanashi, and the other top members of the Elite faction.
Rina was seated in the speaker’s chair between us, towards the back of the room where the entrances were, while wielding and overlooking us who sat on either side of her.
“Hey what’s the girl from the tutorial doing in the big chair? Is she also going to judge?” asked Keaton.
“No. Don’t you know? She is from the Castle Academy.” Someone else replied from behind us.
“Bah, isn’t it enough to have those military goons from the Black Guard to watch us.”
In total if you added up the Elites and Populares there were twenty-five of us. It was rare for so many to be gathered, as usually there were only a dozen who were not busy enough with other things and so able to attend the meetings. The punishment for not attending enough meetings was simply that one would get expelled from the Senate. Of course I as First Consul was exempt from that, and could vote on decisions even when not present. The Elite faction had similar discussions on my side until Eilis called across to me again.
“Let’s give those Castle Academy snobs who tell us what to do from here hell today!”
The room erupted into cheers, from both the Elite and Populares factions.
The reason we were gathered finally came up. Once the commotion was over Rina snapped her fingers to make a series of screens appear in front of each. Through the video feed the screen was showing us I was able to see some familiar faces. Rina, as usual, was tasked with explaining things, even if we knew why we were all here.
“Thank you for coming to do your duty as Senators today. The purpose of this gathering will be to judge the performance and evaluate the abilities of the Academy’s students. And also to choose a champion among them.”
Now all that was left was to watch my AIs do their thing.
“So all we have to do is to clear every level of that tower and kill the Female Knight at the top, right? Seems pretty simple.” said Lain.
“There must be some kind of trick to it,” replied the small knight next to her.
“Can you even fight, like that, aren’t you in charge of information and security despite being a knight?”
“I will not be goaded or goad you into a fight.”
“That’s so boring. Okay, I’ll start by just destroying the entire structure so we can go back home already.”
Lain launched a large blue beam of light by holding both her hands together but it was reflected right back at her, and missed her face only by a few inches to create a huge gorge in the ground behind them.
“There is a strong wall around this structure. You won’t be able to beat it that way in at least a month.” came a voice behind them. It was John II.
“And how do you know that?”
“I am an expert at breaking into walls. Or at least the previous owner of my memories was. So who designed this place anyway? If it wasn’t you people?”
“You’re here and you don’t even know that.”
“Well, I am new here so..”
“Then listen to me when I say it once, transfer student, the dungeon was designed as a kind of punishment for us by the players, as revenge for what we put them through in dungeons, but of course unlike those humans, we won’t be revived if we die in this dungeon. What are you doing here anyways? Shouldn’t you be with your after school club or class?”
“There were no other students left in my class since they all had joined their after school clubs. The teacher didn’t feel like it was worth risking it with just me so he joined some other group too.”
