62 Plan for it: Chapter 61

As the air around the car fills itself in this nervous tension, one could not help but try to ask if anyone was ever confident with the upcoming event.

"I feel…sick." said Sofia as she got more nervous as we got closer to the destination.

"You okay?" I asked her if she was doing well, but looking at her pale face, I felt dumb just by asking her this.

"I got some medicine for a situation like this in case something did happen." Rebertha pulled out her purse and brought out a medicine case. As she ran through the different variations of medicines, she came to pick out a certain blue pill that Sofia immediately took in.

Not long after, she was back to her normal self. But her nervousness was still present by how her knees were shaking.

Noticing this, I could only ever try to ease her by talking to her.

"...If you guys are nervous about this event, as an advice from a D-rank hunter, the only thing I would ever do whenever I face off against an enemy that is twice as strong as me is that I should never think of the possibility of dying. I do my best all up to a point that I get this sensation of my life being something that I should protect. I always do my best all to a point that I blinded my fear and just went in with the intention to not die…my will to live overcame my fear of dying."

"..." Sofia then looks to my direction with hopes of wanting to learn from me and I proceeded to speak out my experience.

"Being nervous isn't that different from fear…in fact fear is the reason why one is nervous. I can see it in you that your probably nervous because you don't want to fail but just as I said, never think of the fact that you will fail, instead think of what you should do instead of failing."

"That's cringe." Said Sarah as she smirk her way to my direction.

"IT'S FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE!" I said while blushing from the embarrassment of my advice.

""hahaha!"" they laughed as I blushed at the edge of my seat. Sofia on the other hand looked at me with a more softer expression.

It looks like my advice was somewhat helpful to her…

After minutes of riding across the streets, we finally arrived at the location.

"..." I look to the outside and saw that the building we were entering was like a massive corporation. On top of that building was an emblem of the Dottingham family, so I was right to say that I was in the right location.

As the car stops, we then went out one by one until all of us were out of the limo.

"Follow me." said Rebertha as she lead the way to a certain elevator that had a very unique lock to it. I guessed that this lock was only available to certain people and I was not a part of that said group.

As the elevator opened, we were greeted by a large build man who wore a black suit.

"...What class are you representing?" asked the man.

"Class C." said Rebertha in her confident tone.

"Hmm, okay then." as he give the okay, we proceeded to get in the elevator and soon made our way down to the 10th underground level.

"Here, wear these so that the handlers can easily recognize the representatives." the man gave Rebertha five pieces of badges that had certain marks on them that were different from one another. It wrote from C-1 all up to C-5.

Rebertha then proceeded to pass on the pins. She wore the number 1, Sofia was number 2, Remmy was number 3, I was number 4 and Sarah was number 5.

As the elevator finally arrived, we were greeted by an unexpected person who was assigned as our handler. The type of person who was in charge of taking care of us through this whole event.

"Oh! Hi guys." said a certain cheery person.

"...Ah." all of use came to a halt when we came face to face with this person.

"Man, I can't believe you guys already made the choice to be the representatives of our class. You guys sure are responsible. As your teacher, I couldn't be more proud."

Yes… to your guest, you were correct.

This person was none other than our usually tenacious drunk of a teacher…Ms. Eva Von.

Aside from that surprise, we were also shocked to see her not be drunk for once.

She walked up to us and then gave Rebertha a certain key that seemed to be a place that lead to our room for us to rest and gather.

"I thought teachers weren't involve in this event?" I tried asking this to Rebertha, but all she gave me in return was a look that was the same as mine. A questioning look.

Ms. Eva then proceeded to lead the way to our room and on the way, she tried making conversation to us as we walked.

"So who was the one that picked the representatives for our class?" asked Ms Eva as she continued to walk.

"It was me." said Rebertha.

"Hmm, did your other classmates know of this event?" asked Ms. Eva.

"N-no, I tried calling out a meeting to some of my classmates but not all of them joined us…"

"Some?" Ms. Eva was caught by the word 'some', intending that not all of our classmates were shown of the information about the event.

"...I didn't invite the other student's who weren't all to strong to fight or act as a representative." explained Rebertha.

"...Hmm, okay then." Ms. Eva was a bit silent after hearing her reason…it seemed like a logical reason but it felt unfair from her perspective…but even still, she moved on.

As we were making our way to our respective room, we happen meet the other representatives from the other sections. I could tell because of how those students were wearing a pin from their section.

This particular group we meet was none other than class B who also was just arriving into the building.

When we came across one another, a tense feeling enveloped the hall. Almost as if someone was deliberately pushing out his killing intent. And in response to this, Rebertha could only look away as if nothing happened. She didn't want to create conflict right out of the bat with the other group and so did I. If they were to attack us though, that was another different story.

"...Hmph. These weaklings." I could hear one of the B students smirk as they saw our group pass by theirs. It was obvious that they were looking down at us and it was also obvious that this particular student was a noble.

"...*Grit!*" when I looked around my friends, I saw that Sarah was showing a very uncomfortable expression. I could see how irritated she was by how she was gritting her teeth and how veins were showing on her face.

"..."Before she could do anything, I needed to try to stop her from doing anything reckless. So I reached out my hand and grabbed her shoulder. I needed her to know that I was watching her and that she needed to recognize that what she was acting about was pretty much a childish thing to do. If she was this influenced by a simple taunt, than she wouldn't last long inside a dangerous gate.

"...!?" she looks at me with a shocked face and then looked away seeing as how she noticed how she reacted.

"...Don't be easily swayed by these taunts." I said with a rather calm tone.

"...I..I know…and I'm sorry." as she apologized, she clearly understood her action after that.

As we arrived at our room, Ms. Eva then proceeded to explain to us what were the challenges we had to go through throughout this whole event.

"First things first is the Group event called the "Tower Defense". all of you guys get to participate in this one. The game is simple, you are to enter in an artificial gate and have your own Tower as your base. In that tower, you have a simple objective…to crush the other team's Tower and the same goes for the other team.

"...Do we know what class we're up against in the first event?" I asked.

"That'll be handled in a random shuffling. So it's going to be a mystery to who you guys will face off against."

"How do we know when a tower is completely destroyed? Does it include just destroying the upper part or do we have to destroy the over all tower into dust?" asked Rebertha.

"The tower has a measuring system that shows a simple health bar. Once you destroy 80% off its structure, you can win the event." answered Ms. Eva.

"...How long does this event last?" asked Sofia.

"It has a time limit of two hours…" said Ms. Eva.

"I see, so we don't have much time on this one. I guess we have to go straight at the tower the moment we enter the gate…we have to choose which one of us gets to defend the tower while the others go and attack the other team." I said while observing how we were going to act on this event.

"Do you have a scale of how big the tower is?" asked Rebertha.

"The Tower is around five stories long and is at a diameter of 10 meters. The material they used to simulate the towers are Hardened Cement that is reinforced with a barrier magic."

"Does this go for all the towers?" asked Remmy.

"Yeah."

"..." I look to Rebertha to see if she was confident in bringing down the tower, and looking at her smile, I could guess that she was happy to see a strong target for her magic.

"Can you do it?" I asked Rebertha.

In response, she looks back at me with a confident smile and said:

"Of course, something like this can easily be toppled by my magic." she said this with a smug face.

"So we're relying on magic to take down this tower?" asked Sofia.

"...Yeah, the swords and all other weapons that we carry right now aren't really something that could easily take on big structures." I explained. While I may be enough to take on the tower using Apolo, I couldn't show them my full strength. Sarah may be able to take it down, but since she was going to use a bat, I couldn't really imagine the tower falling that fast from her attacks and the same goes for Remmy and Sofia.

Magic was the only thing we could rely on in this event.

"Since Rebertha will be the one who will act as our cannon, She'll need guards to join her while she makes her way to the tower." said Martha

"Are you a fast runner Rebertha?" I asked her while she was observing the tower with scheming eyes.

"Huh?…uhh, sorry, but my stamina isn't all that high." she said.

"If we want to finish this quick, we need to traverse through field fast." I said

"What's the terrain like in the Artificial gate?" asked Rebertha to Ms. Eva.

"It's a thick forest, and the Towers itself is 50 km away from each other." said Ms Eva.

"Ehh…I think I'll be out of breath before I could even make it there." said Rebertha with a conflicted expression.

"Hmm, I think I can probably make it to that place in twenty minutes if I run…twenty-five minutes if I carry you on my back." I said while thinking through how fast I need to be just to make it seem natural.

"Ehh?" Rebertha was a bit bewildered by my suggestion to carry her.

Sofia and the others were also the same.

"What?" I asked, not sure what they were on about.

"I-I guess we can do that…surely." said Rebertha with a tense expression.

"Shouldn't we need at least two people to come with Rebertha?" asked Remmy.

"Hmm, I don't know if that's a good idea. The pins you carry with you act as a location marker. When you enter the gate, the enemy can easily see where you are…but that's before the fifteen minutes mark where it actually starts to activate. Your given fifteen minutes of a time limit before your location is found, before the pins start to show where you are. " said Ms. Eva.

"How do you know this?" asked Martha

"Because I'm your handler and your teacher. I'm sure every other handlers also told this to their groups. Information is key when it comes to war." said Ms Eva with a rather smirky face.. as if she was happy to speak out her knowledge to her students.

"If that's the case, this mean that if we prioritize speed to our advantage then only Hamil can be the one to take Rebertha to the enemy tower. I'm not confident enough to run for thirty minutes to the towers and be completely fine afterwards." said Martha.

"So do I." said Sofia.

"Me too." and Remmy.

"Hmm, I guess we'll stay at the tower and defend it then." said Remmy.

"I guess, I'll leave it to you guys then." I said while smiling at their resolve.

As we decided at our tactic to go through with this challenge, Ms.Eva then presented the next course of the event.

"Next challenge is called the Monster Hunt Challenge. In this challenge, you are sent to a real E-ranked gate that is owned by the Dottingham Family."

"The objective of this course is simply to hunt monster and gather points from those monsters. The one thing I worry over this is the fact that it instantly involves all of the students, so the hunt will be rough."

"The tactic we should follow should be to hunt as a group." said Sarah as she knows full well how dangerous gates were, and the others would surely agree.

"I guess we'll go with that then." I said since it didn't seem like it needed any discussion over its tactic. Hunting in a real gate was the safest thing to do with them…and also the safest way to not stand out from hunting on my own.

"And since I'm a D-rank hunter, I'm sure we can hunt faster for points." I said while eagerly pushing for hunting as a team.

Not one rejected the idea and so we moved on with the last course for this event.

"...The last event would be something that the patriarch of Dottingham intend to announce after the two whole events finish…So I'm not fully sure of what's to come at the last event." said Ms. Eva.

Hearing her be a bit nervous of what was to come our way, she proceeded to tell us that the events were going to start soon, so we need to rest as much as we could and be prepared.

It was finally going to happen and I was sure that for the last event, it would involve Richard Vener Dickson to duel Martha Dottingham…

I'm excited of what was to come.