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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: bchen3
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“Huhu. Everyone’s eyes look quite frightening.”
Everyone was watching Shoenji with tense expressions as she laughed like a noble lady from a historical drama.
What’s going on? Does this woman have something I don’t know about?
However, Saito and a few others seemed to have realized something, and their hardened expressions softened.
Seeing this, Shoenji let out a soft laugh elegantly and lifted her cup to take a leisurely sip of tea.
“…Um, Miss Shoenji?”
“What is it, Miss Tsurushima?”
“Are you… possibly.”
“Are you asking if I might be the mastermind behind this situation?”
“Ugh.”
At Shoenji’s direct question, the timid-looking Tsurushima flinched and lowered her head.
Watching this reaction, Shoenji chuckled as if finding it cute and nodded as if to say it was okay.
“I can certainly feel that you all are under a lot of mental pressure. While someone who appears to be a middle school student calmly realizes the truth, it’s interesting to see adults with abundant social experience sinking into unreasonable thoughts.”
“…I’m not a middle schooler. I’m a high school student.”
“Oh my, I’m sorry, ‘Master’ Kudo.”
Shoenji looked adoringly at Kudo, who was protesting with a disgruntled expression, and apologized with a subtle accent on the honorific.
Seeing her expression, I thought Kudo would show his temper, but he just made a subtle expression and shook his head, saying, “She’s a woman whose thoughts I can never understand no matter how many times I see her.”
Despite her openly treating him like a child, he only showed that much of a reaction, yet why had he been so desperate to get at me from the moment we first met?
What an irritating kid.
Once the competition ended and the original party came back, it seemed like I would need to thoroughly torment-educate him.
“I understand why you all suspect me now, but I find it a bit bewildering.”
Shoenji placed one palm against her cheek and tilted her head, her ladylike character so apparent it almost seemed like she was playing around.
“Indeed, my family name is ‘Shoenji,’ and we are one of the conglomerate groups with assets in the 10 trillion yen range, but I’m just an ordinary person, you know?”
“…I don’t think being the heir to a conglomerate family makes you an ordinary person…”
“Rather, because we are a conglomerate family, to prevent the kingdom from fragmenting after the death of the chairman – that is, the king of the group – the succession is strictly determined. We’re much more conservative than you might think, and there’s almost no chance for a girl to get involved in succession disputes.”
This Miss Shoenji.
She really was a daughter, or perhaps granddaughter, of a conglomerate family.
But Shoenji, huh.
Honestly, besides the top three conglomerates in our country, I didn’t know much about them, and since I wasn’t particularly interested in conglomerates from neighboring countries even though they were close, I didn’t know much about them.
I know about To*ota and So*y though.
From the current situation to the appearance of this powerful character of a conglomerate family’s young lady, it was starting to feel like a light novel.
It might get a bit more exciting.
“Still… we don’t know about conglomerate succession structures…”
“Even if you don’t know about that, it’s irrelevant to this situation. Um… Mr. Yashiro, was it?”
“Ah. Yes.”
“How much did you say the estimated development costs would be for this game ‘Elysium’?”
“…Based on what we’ve seen so far, hundred billion… depending on the volume after that, it could be even more…”
“Are you certain?”
“…Even if a game-changing development engine were to come out, I don’t think it could get much cheaper than that.”
“I see… hundred billion… hundred billion…”
Shoenji, who had been muttering that amount, let out a hollow laugh.
“That’s truly an absurd amount. To think it would be 1% of our entire group’s valuation. If I really had access to such an amount, I wonder if I would have had a chance…”
The last words were barely audible.
For a brief moment, Shoenji showed a lonely expression, but then she smiled elegantly again and spoke.
“You all seem to have typical fantasies about the children of conglomerates.”
“…Is that not the case?”
“While it’s true that the Shoenji Group’s assets are in the 10 trillion range, and our family’s share in the group is certainly significant, it’s not as large as you might think. In fact, my grandfather, who is both the group’s chairman and head of the family, doesn’t even rank in Japan’s top 20 richest people. Moreover, most of the assets are in stocks, not money that can be used whenever needed. A hundred billion? Even my grandfather, the chairman, would find it difficult to not only use such an amount for entertainment but even to acquire it. Let alone me, a mere girl who’s not even the eldest son’s child, but a granddaughter far removed from the succession line. The money I can freely use…”
Shoenji let out a soft sigh and shook her head.
“It’s only a few million yen at most. Of course, it’s a lot for a mere college student who hasn’t even properly started working yet to use freely… but a hundred billion? That’s ridiculous. It’s an amount I couldn’t even imagine.”
The people who nodded at Shoenji’s words were Saito and those who had initially looked at her with stern faces but quickly relaxed.
Having some social awareness, they must have realized that even a conglomerate’s granddaughter wouldn’t have access to such large amounts of money.
‘…Though the Chinese fans I saw… their spending was on a different level altogether.’
Well, since she said she was far removed from the succession line, maybe it was a bit different from them.
Still, Shoenji calmly dispelled the suspicion directed at her without getting flustered.
“But while I might not mind about others, I feel a bit hurt by Mr. Fujikake and Mr. Amakas. I thought we had built quite a bond, yet you suspected me.”
When Shoenji puffed her cheeks and expressed her dissatisfaction, the two members of [Golden Apple] hurriedly tried to appease her with flustered expressions.
“Then… what exactly is going on…”
Tsurushima’s shoulders slumped as if the tension had left her body after hearing that Shoenji wasn’t the mastermind.
At this rate, the conversation would keep going off track.
There was too little information to begin with, and in such a state, I found it hard to trust any conclusions.
“Rather than pointlessly thinking about something we can’t figure out accurately at this point, why don’t we organize the reason why we gathered here?”
I understood the anxiety, but once negative thoughts started creeping in about things we couldn’t solve immediately, there would be no end to it.
“I agree with what Saito-san said. My party is doing fairly well, and we’re in a relatively comfortable situation for now.”
“I oppose. Useful resources should be provided to the capable.”
“Then you should definitely be excluded.”
Saito stopped Bakugo and Ishiraki who were growling at each other again during the discussion, then raised his hand to proceed with the vote.
The result was 12 in favor, 3 against, and 1 abstention.
What was surprising was that while Luna’s vote was understandable, the school lunch kid who I thought was a second-year middle school chuunibyou voted in favor.
The three opposed were Bakugo, the delinquent wannabe, and one samurai who had been quietly saying nothing throughout the meeting.
I was the abstention.
Honestly, I had kind of hoped the opposition would prevail.
“Then according to the vote results, let’s do our best during the competition to help raise up those below who haven’t been able to adapt while we still have room to breathe. Those who opposed might not be happy with the result, but I hope you can follow along if possible.”
“…Hmph.”
Bakugo snorted with a dissatisfied expression but didn’t say anything more.
Saito nodded, interpreting this attitude as meaning he would follow along even if he didn’t like it, and announced the end of this round table conference.
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“I’m glad we all gathered and talked for the first time! It seems like the things we were worried about got resolved somewhat!”
“…Luna-san, it’s nice that you’re so cheerful.”
Unlike Luna who was wearing a bright expression for whatever reason that pleased her, I sighed at the contents of the round table conference that hadn’t particularly yielded any results for me.
Well, anyway, while we had shared our types and thoughts to some extent, the rules for the competition I had been expecting just became “let’s do our best,” so…
‘…Honestly, I prefer just the main battles.’
While Ishiraki from Saito’s party had mentioned me to counter Bakugo, honestly, I didn’t care much.
‘…It really would be more comfortable to fight alone than to fight with that party.’
Still, I planned to follow along since what Saito’s side brought up made some sense.
The users assigned to my party really seemed like they might die if we went into actual combat.
It was concerning.
‘…Though surprisingly, Kinoshita, who I thought might be a trap card, seemed okay.’
[Thunder Bolt].
While some other users had learned it too, I couldn’t know the exact mechanism of electric magic skills since I hadn’t learned them myself, but everyone’s accuracy was terrible.
However, the advantage was that if you could aim accurately, it would hit the moment it was activated.
And from my estimates, it seemed to have high maximum damage.
While other skills were around 10-20, electric-type skills seemed to have a wide damage range of about 1-40?
This could be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
The disadvantage was the low accuracy rate.
‘Whether it was luck or not, even though it was activated quickly, it hit Fujikake accurately.’
In a situation where allies overlapped, and Samurai was a job specialized in agility.
Despite being an A-rank Samurai who was quite quick even with buffs, it hit accurately.
If even 70% of that result was skill rather than luck, Kinoshita was quite a good card.
‘In the end, the biggest problem would be Fatty.’
I sighed at yesterday’s pathetic poor showing.
Even if healing was provided, what good was a tank who couldn’t block?
‘Even if we tried to survive without a tank… none of them have particularly good sense…’
Above all, in Kinoshita’s case, he seemed quick-witted, so when the frontline broke and he became targeted, he just cleanly surrendered.
‘In the end, we need to make Fatty usable, but…’
But was that even possible in the first place…?
Or should I just not use Fatty as a tank, and instead tank myself even though I’m a priest?
My steps felt heavy as I headed to the training grounds along with Luna, who was chattering away, and the school lunch kid who was quietly following behind.
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