“Attention, school. A casus belli has been claimed by Class F against Class E. As the ultimate arbiter of the Class Wars, I, Eterna, will determine that the casus belli claimed is true and justified. I now declare the commencement of war between Class F and Class E. Let the games begin!”

The principal’s announcement thundered throughout the entire school. The barrier around the school began glowing in a multitude of colours, signalling the strengthening of the barrier to handle the Class Wars; this is to make sure that she can reverse the physical damage to the school at the end of the war. To allow the heart of the school to be used as a battleground, the hole in the barrier at the atrium was also closed up for the duration of the war.

Through the alchemical barrier she set up, Eterna alchemically partially replenishes any participant’s cleanse tags that were saturated, but as this was the first war, none of the students’ cleanse tags needed replenishing. Non-participants’ cleanse tags were then reinforced with her magic so that their cleanse tags did not saturate for the course of the war. Regardless, the cleanse tags that everyone wore glowed a bit as the refresh came along. Those who were missing or forgot to wear their cleanse tags were granted divine protection by Eterna’s magic, the same injury immunity that a cleanse tag granted.

Upon the end of Eterna’s announcement, the classes immediately entered a state of war. The barrier’s presence was strengthened immensely, as it slightly discoloured everyone’s peripheral vision, so everyone knew that the war has begun.

“So let’s do this a second time, to cement our revenge.”

Evie said again emotionlessly to the men lying on the ground. Making it quick, she struck their vitals once again, causing another round of squirming on the floor and immediately saturating their cleanse tags black. To saturate a cleanse tag completely black required a lot of hurt, so it was impressive that Evie dispatched them so quickly: a preview to the damages Evie would soon bring forth. Since the entirety of the school was under the aegis of the barrier and they possessed cleanse tags, they did not get injured, but they sure felt the pain.

“I’m surprised that this school still has this uncivilized tradition in place.”

Caius said, slightly disapprovingly. It was true that compared to half a century ago, the nature of secondary education was very different. To have a barbaric tradition such as the Class Wars in this new era of civilization was indeed uncivilized.

“It still is technically a martial school, though only about twenty students are actually taking the martial arts classes as full-time students and can give Kato and Evie a bit of a hard time. But unless there are other secret deity-wannabes out there, Kato and Evie are the strongest fighters of our year.”

“Wannabes? Wanna correct yourself?”

Franco surmised. It was then followed by a harsh pull on the ear by Evie and some wailing from Franco, who, perhaps joyfully, refused to correct himself.

“In any case, with Evie and Kato here, Class E is only a pushover. The last thing to do is to locate the Class E representative and knock him out.”

Eon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Though it was still before school officially started, since the class representatives of both classes were present in the school, the war was able to start. This year, Class F representative was Kato.

Winning the Class War was simple enough to understand, but like any kind of capture-the-flag scenario, finding the opposition target could be difficult. But contingencies like these were already all thought out by their grand strategist, Eon.

“Teto, have you located the target yet?”

“Yes. Mira’s intelligence was usable. Andy Turok is located in the 3-E classroom. I will continue updating you guys his position.”

Teto answered Eon’s request. This was Teto’s second mission, and why she handed off her schoolbag to Eon. As a non-participant in the war and that class had not begun yet, she could, in theory, freely infiltrate the recesses of the school and find her target.

“Then let’s head out. Evie and Sisi, you guys are up.”

“Umu, let us move straight to the Class E classroom and get this war over with.”

“Okay, hop on, Sisi.”

Evie gave Sisi a piggyback ride as they bolted straight for the spiral staircase back in the centre of the atrium. Leaving the rest of them behind in the dust, they bore witness once again to Evie’s incredible physical abilities. That was not to say that Kato or Teto could not match Evie. Indeed, this year’s Class F representative would be the most difficult to take down in the history of all the Class Fs.

“Let’s get going too. We’ll need to catch up to them anyway.”

As they moved out according to Caius’ command, Kato gave Yui a nudge. Though he was no longer carrying her, Yui’s hands were locked with his, as Teto normally would have.

“We’re gonna leave them and your worries behind.”

Kato motioned to the Henderson party on the floor in pain.

“And we’re never ever gonna look back. Right?”

Yui finally gave Kato a genuine smile today, beaming at Kato with her soft indigo eyes.

“Yup.”

Kato nodded at Yui, who in turn held onto Kato even tighter. Without skipping a beat, they trudged onward following the rest of the Elites, leaving Yui’s demons behind.

“Oh!”

Franco cried out in surprise. The open space around the spiral staircase was clearly partitioned into two groups of people: one of Class F and another of Class E students. Between the two groups was a teacher and two students, one from each class. Surrounding this assortment of people were students from other classes, watching the spectacle up close.

“A Duel is already underway. That’s unexpected, but still all right.”

Eon fixed his glasses as he muttered under his breath. A Duel referred to a competition between two students moderated by a Supervisor. A Supervisor was any person who refereed the Class Wars, which included all the teachers and of course, Eterna. A Supervisor had many different overarching powers, and one of such was arbitrating Duels.

A Duel could be initiated by any student who issued a challenge against an opponent, generally by declaring something like “I challenge you, insert name here, to a Duel!” or something of the sort, in the presence of a Supervisor. Once declared, and the Supervisor could clearly understand the two students involved, the Supervisor could commence the Duel.

Depending on the Supervisor involved, the rules and nature of the Duel could vary. In this era, a Duel was usually academic in nature, and most likely devolved to a series of trivia questions on the subject of the Supervisor’s competence. For example, the current Duel was arbitrated by Mr Reed, a biology and chemistry teacher, so all of his trivia questions were from those subjects.

However, it was important to remember that a Duel could be of any rule or nature the Supervisor chooses, as long as the competition itself was fair. Since the homeroom teachers of the participating classes were also Supervisors, using your homeroom teacher to give your team a strategic advantage was a common and legitimate strategy. For example, the homeroom teacher most likely understood the academic strengths and weaknesses of the students, and would ask their questions accordingly; in isolation, the question could legitimately be fair. As each class have their own homeroom teachers, this strategy was historically fair game.

“What is the amount of thermodynamic free energy in the standard conversion of adenosine triphosphate plus water to adenosine diphosphate plus phosphate per mole?”

After Mr Reed finished asking his question he touched his own cleanse tag, which was glowing blue. Then the cleanse tags of the participants turned from glowing yellow to blue. It signalled the end of the preparatory period, i.e. the questioning period, and the start of the challenge period, i.e. answering period. Once a participant’s tag turned blue, they were allowed to answer.

“Thirty point five kilojoules.”

The student from Class E immediately answered without any hesitation. Mr Reed touched his cleanse tag again. Immediately, that student’s cleanse tag then turned glowing green while the Class F student’s cleanse tag turned red. It meant that the Class E student won the challenge this round, and the Class F student lost. When the glows of both students and the teacher subsided, the Class F student’s cleanse tag’s black colour deepened.

“Oh, what’s this?! The centre of the atrium is the site of a challenger zone! Mr Reed arbitrating a Duel between Kirill Bilashov from Class F and Samuel Everton from Class E! With the most recent loss by Bilashov, the score is now one to three, still in favour of Everton! Ah, that question: Gibbs free energy in the ATP to ADP conversion was a standard memorization of key numbers. Easy to regurgitate for the memorized! Bilashov has done goofed there!”

Eterna’s voice echoed throughout the school as she commentated the Class War with attitude. It was actually a common thing for Eterna to commentate Class Wars like a sports match. When she was absent, a few students from student council would volunteer for the commentary job and cast the Class War through the P.A. system instead of Eterna’s spell-enhanced voice projection.

“Kirill! Let me do this!”

Eon pushed many of his classmates out of the way and made it to the challenger zone. After a loss, the defeated challenger was entitled to substitution with another challenger from their party.

“Oh my god, thanks, Eon. I already lost three questions in a row.”

Kirill Bilashov whined to Eon in his nasal voice as he held up his cleanse tag to Eon. It was already spotted with patches of black like a milk carton.

“So the ante is about ten percent per question. That’s not too bad.”

There were no numbers to precisely show the saturation rate of the cleanse tags, so they had to keep count among themselves.

“Yeah, ten percent.”

“All right, then. Just leave it to me.”

With his usual bravado, he traded places with Kirill and stepped up to the teacher and other student.

“Mr Reed. I will replace Kirill.”

“Sure, no problem. Hold up your cleanse tag. Good. Are you ready for the next question?”

“Yes. Ready.”

“And Samuel is ready as well?”

“Ready.”

The opposing class’ student nodded at the teacher as well. Mr Reed was neither class’ teacher; he was merely here on duty for the morning. Mr Reed adjusted his glasses as he declared the next questioning period, doing so by touching his cleanse tag. Eon and Samuel’s cleanse tags glowed amber.

“Next question. What is the powerhouse of the human red blood cell?”

Once Mr Reed touched his cleanse tag to make theirs glow blue, Samuel spoke up again immediately.

“The mitochondria.”

Mr Reed did not respond verbally nor did he touch his cleanse tag again to end the challenge period. Instead, he looked over to Eon for his answer. Clearly, the other student had the wrong answer.

“Glucose in the blood, using it to perform glycolysis to create adenosine triphosphate.”

Mr Reed then touched his cleanse tag. Eon’s cleanse tag glowed green, while Samuel’s glowed red. Waving vigorously at the crowd of Class F students behind him, Eon celebrated his first victory in a Duel with pretentious flair and rallying cry.

“Class F. F is forever!”

Their class gathering laughed out loudly at that while the remaining Elites were in various stages of face-palming.

“Ooooh! The entry of the new challenger, Eon Koziko, seemed to turn the tide for Class F! Of course, red blood cells do not have their own powerhouses! As a side note, their lifespans are fairly short and macrophages recycle the old red blood cells.”

Eterna closed off the round by dropping another line of commentary.

“The other student didn’t get a second chance?”

Yui asked inquisitively. Though she has been here for her three years of senior high, she was still a bit unsure of how the Class Wars worked as it was never a priority for her.

“That’s an unspoken rule of this trivia question format. One answer from each side in succession. Once someone gets the answer right, then the round ends with a clear victory. If neither gets it right after three rounds, then both get the red glows.”

“And how does the teacher’s cleanse tag know which is right and which is not?”

“The Supervisor’s cleanse tags are special. They can alchemically manipulate cleanse tags around it, sort of like a prepared spell. That’s why Eon had to hold up his cleanse tag at the start. In any case, Lady Eterna will fix anything that goes wrong with the saturation; she’s watching us from everywhere.”

Kato explained the usual format of the Duels to Yui. Essentially, the special cleanse tags that the teachers wore gave them the ability to be Duel arbitrators.

“I’m surprised that there aren’t any brawls happening around the challenger zone. Last year, there were plenty of fistfights, no?”

Franco wondered. While observers can’t interrupt a Duel, they could certainly go have a good old physical fight.

“From our intelligence, Class E doesn’t have any trained physically superior guys, fortunately for us. I mean, you can go out there and wipe the floor if you want, but if you ain’t trained like Kato and Evie, you’re just a slightly stronger version of the rest of us. The peaceful tend to be peaceful.”

“But Kato is right here! They ain’t aiming for him, what the hell?”

“Kato is still disguised in his very poor disguise. Maybe the people around here don’t recognize him.”

“Then this is just a sideshow. A Duel that doesn’t bring you closer to victory. It just does damage to each other.”

“How observant, my slave. Clearly, you're a lot smarter than we’d like to think you are.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Franco comically snapped at Kato’s random shot at him, jabbing his finger on Kato’s forehead.

“Hey, it’s still good to do damage. They might have other parties scouring the school for Kato.”

Caius shrugged. Without a doubt, everyone should be gunning for Kato as it was their win condition, but luckily for them the baseball cap and sunglasses were still working. Unbeknownst to the students around them, Kato was intentionally hiding his presence by brutally suppressing his killing intent, thereby reducing any aura he gave off in people’s peripherals. By snuffing out his presence in people’s subconscious, he was hiding in plain sight.

“Caius, do you think they have the smarts to even do that?”

“From what I understand, most likely not. Class E is probably the weakest of the privileged classes this year, so we could get away with this kind of haphazard declaration of war.”

“Huh, so we’re lucky that our situation landed us with a war with Class E.”

“We’re even luckier that Eon has the foresight to come up with this entire plan. As much as I hate to admit it, Eon foresaw every contingency that happened up to this point and formulated a strategy against it accordingly.”

“If only he wasn’t so eccentric, he could easily belong in Class A.”

“Probably because he doesn’t want to put you out of your misery yet.”

“What the hell! Besides, it doesn’t matter because you need to get out too if we want to put me out of my misery!”

“Heh-hey, would you look at that! Franco actually threw one back at me. It’s like watching your kid grow up. Get the cameras, Kato, Yui! Ready? Cheese!”

Yui, alongside Kato and Caius, laughed at the agitated Franco. It was a moment of pure hilarity that made it the more amusing because of the uncharacteristic expression of excitement from Caius.

Then, a familiar high-pitched voice rang throughout the school again.

“Ding dong! The war has been decided!”

On the third floor, with Sisi perched on Evie’s back, they stormed inside the 3-E classroom together, causing the sliding door to slam into its crevice permanently, unable to be pulled back out. The classroom was sparsely filled with students, and the homeroom teacher was not present. The morning light filtered through the rainbow-coloured barrier and the open windows effortlessly, brightening the room with unnatural light.

The students, however, were in disarray. No doubt, the declaration of war caught them off guard and they were in a state of panic. The cause of the war was not even known to them, as Henderson operated on his own and did not affiliate himself with the rest of Class E. With their homeroom teacher’s whereabouts unknown, it was even more disadvantageous if the opposing class mobilized their own homeroom teacher. The doors to their classroom flew open only mere minutes after the commencement of hostilities.

“Andy Turok, I challenge you to a Duel!”

Evie scanned the classroom for her target, which she located immediately. From the files that Mirabelle provided them late at night yesterday, she was able to memorize the opponent’s face and recognize him.

Sisi then dismounted from her horse (?) and touched the cleanse tag on her wrist, making it glow blue. Evie held her cleanse tag up to Sisi for her to turn it glowing yellow. Then Sisi walked up to Andy, who had no choice but to hold up his cleanse tag to Sisi. Refusing a Duel meant losing the Duel, and the usual penalty for a forfeit was a twenty-five percent saturation rate. In fact, there was almost never a situation to refuse a Duel, as another challenge could be issued immediately afterwards and they would be back to square one. In most cases, the better option would be to enter the Duel, lose, and swap out for a cannon fodder with only ten percent damage.

The tall and scrawny Andy Turok held up his cleanse tag to Sisi, who turned it yellow like she did with Evie’s. The two were in the preparatory phase of the Duel now. Sisi just needed to explain the terms of the Duel and begin asking the trivia questions if it was the usual format. However, Evie was not particularly good at academics, so it was obvious that their wombo-combo here would not involve abiding by the current Duel meta.

“The challenge is a physical contest. The winner is determined with a single, convincing strike that the opponent did not defend. The loser forfeits ten percent saturation. That is all.”

Sisi declared what essentially was a sudden death brawl between the two students. Without even finishing his complaint, Andy was left in the dust as Sisi tapped her cleanse tag to turn their cleanse tags blue.

“Wait---”

Andy choked on his words as Evie quickly closed the distance between the two of them. Still, her expression remained as rigid as it did when she was in the atrium.

“Sorry. But this is nothing personal, kid.”

Evie muttered as she swung her arm squarely onto Andy’s torso. The force pushed him back and flying towards the wall behind him, fortunately missing the windows. He clipped onto a couple of desks along the way, sending those desks several feet away from where they stood too. When the dust settled, his body peeled back from the wall that he struck, falling with his face flat on the floor.

The other students stood in place, unmoving. Though Class E was probably the weakest of the privileged classes this year, they did not expect a total rout so easily dealt to them by a class below them. Ever since the introduction of Duels, the physical playstyle of the older generation was slowly phased out of the metagame of the Class Wars. It was simply too easy to defeat muscle if they had no brain, and once their cleanse tags were completely saturated, it was easy pickings for the next class.

Andy Turok was still conscious, and although all of the damage was absorbed by the cleanse tag, but his movements were impaired nonetheless. While the cleanse tag protected the person, their senses still experienced the full effect. So he was shook with massive pain and almost suffered a mental shutdown from a concussive blow to the head, even though it did not actually do any damage. In other words, the person wearing the cleanse tag has all his senses as normal, and any real damage to their person doesn’t actually occur. In fact, an infamous joke within the school since time immemorial was that a Class War was the perfect time to “practice” suicide by jumping off the building and experiencing the pain that it comes with, but make sure the war doesn’t end right when you make the jump.

The cleanse tag on his right arm coloured itself completely black, clearly saturated to win the war. Evie had made a slam dunk at full force at his body. By saturating his cleanse tag completely through the absorption of physical damage, the ten percent saturation from the Duel loss was not even needed to finish him off.

This was Class F’s secret weapon and the source of Sisi’s confidence in their victory. Evie’s super-soldier abilities and Sisi’s Supervisor status could literally brute-force victories like this one very easily. Evie wiped her hands as though she was finished cleaning up after a job, which she was.

“I’ll be taking this victory for Class 3-F.”

She declared stoically to the other people in the classroom. As she did, the purplish fringe in her vision cleared up, signalling the retreat of the barrier’s presence and the end of the war. The aurora colours that shimmered outside at the edge of the school’s barrier subsided, returning to the normally invisible barrier.

“Ding dong! The war has been decided! And in unorthodox fashion too! Using a Supervisor to sanction one-versus-one physical brawls and then using their physical superiority to their advantage! Superb! Though only seconds short of the fastest victory, it was the second-fastest victory in the history of the Class Wars! Congratulations to Class 3-F!”