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Chapter 125. Starling Party (3)

Desir quickly realized they had a logistical problem on their hands. With the increase in party members, their small office simply couldn’t accommodate them any longer.

Given the importance of Desir and his party, the academy happily granted them the entire fourth floor of the west wing building. The Starling Party excitedly moved into their new home.

With all the new members that Desir was expected to train, he became aware that his current method of operating the party could no longer continue. He was already stretched as thin as possible, and the number of new members would only continue to grow in the future.

Desir restructured the party into three different subgroups: the main party, the sub party, and the probationary party.

The probationary party would be composed of new students with low or unreliable military might and were still in need of further training.

Desir instructed them to familiarize themselves with the basics taught in their academy classes, and furthered their education as a group outside of class, focusing on the elements that the academy neglected.

The current notable sub-party members were Freechel and Takiran. They had some military might, but they still lacked the experience to contribute reliably to the overall party. What little experience they had and their trivial achievements put them ahead of the probationary party, but not by much. These factors prevented them from being considered part of the main force. For their level, they could provide limited assistance to the main force as they continued to develop. If there was further growth, these two had the potential to become active members of the main party.

The main party members, of course, contained the core power of the Starling Party: Romanica,

Adjest, and Pram as well as Desir acting in the role of party leader. Each core member had the strength and experience to do their part, as well as pull their own weight even in higher leveled Shadow Worlds.

Overall, these classifications made sense and created a natural hierarchy, but Ronde Fizzlebang was different. He found himself working as an individual, rather than as a part of the three levels in the hierarchy.

It wasn’t exactly because Desir favored him. His skills were outstanding amongst the freshmen. Although he had no actual experience, others could easily mistake him for a Shadow Dungeon veteran.

Despite all his skill, Ronde still had a huge anchor holding him back. Due to his rough way of speaking and his constant behavioural issues, he found himself unable to get along with the other freshmen.

New students trained together and talked together while hanging out in the office at the end of each day, forming natural bonds. However, Ronde just wasn’t able to blend in with the crowd and join them.

Over time, an invisible wall seemed to be built between Ronde and the other freshmen.

Desir, who already knew about Ronde’s personality, felt the need to solve this issue somehow; but he couldn’t think of a good solution since his relationship with others wasn’t that much better either.

Things came to a head sooner than expected.

A few days later, out of the blue, Romantica started yelling at Desir. He had spilt a bit of coffee on his desk.

“Oh seriously! Desir, you idiot! Even a little bit of coffee creates a permanent stain. I’m always telling you to drink carefully!”

It was an extreme amount of noise and emotion for what was merely a drop or two of spilt coffee.

Romantica continued yelling while jabbing at Desir’s forehead with her finger.

“Really, I’ve said it again and again, but nothing changes. You really are worse than a slug.” Ronde looked up to and respected Desir as both a role model and a brother. He didn’t last long before shooting an antagonistic glare at Romantica.

“How can you speak so badly of my brother over a drop or two of coffee?” “HA? How pitiful you are to have this stupid guy as a brother.” “WHAT? What did you say? Apologize to my brother right now.”

“If you have a complaint, why don’t you challenge me to duel? Not that you ever would, though.”

Ronde turned to Desir revealing eyes that appeared to burn hot like naked flames.

“Brother, I will challenge Ms. Romantica to a duel. In the meantime, I will surely fix her behavior.”

“Don’t do that. I know you are thinking of me, but Romantica is many times stronger than you.”

“I can’t give up on this, brother. For your honor, I must defeat this woman.”

After pretending to deeply consider this request, his face creasing in the anguish of his alleged internal conflict, Desir accepted the request. In the interest of both party’s feelings, he had to at least make them think he gave this serious thought. Thus the duel of Ronde versus Romantica was established.

Romantica haughtily faced off against Ronde.

“If you beat me, I’ll apologize to Desir. But it’s not fair for only me to have loser conditions? I want you to add a condition too.”

“Of course. What should I bet with? You can choose anything.”

“No need to go that far. I want you to clean our areas up. As you know, I am doing the cleaning of this office alone. If you lose, you have to clean the whole office instead of me. And you are not allowed to use magic.”

“Of course I will accept it, let’s start.” “Good. Then show me what you’ve got.” The sparring match began.

Ronde Fizzlebang was one of the strongest amongst the first years. Even though he was still just a Second-Circle wizard, the spells he utilized and the mana he had at his disposal had long reached the level of a Third-Circle’s.

[Flame Ring]

A ring of flames splayed out in all directions around Ronde.

The heat it generated was enormous. In terms of pure power, it was close to outright Third-Circle magic, even though it was a Second-Circle spell. In terms of destructive power, it could not be compared with any regular Second-Circle magic.

[Burst Fire]

Rapid-fire magic. The Sparring place was already showing signs of significant damage. “So what do you think, Ms. Romantica! Look at this awesome destructive power!” Ronde Fizzlebang had not even entertained the notion of losing.

He knew that Romantica was a sniper and had determined that in close-quarter sparring, she would not be able to rely on her specialty. He just had to focus on limiting the amount of space that she could use to her advantage and it would be an easy victory.

But it was a ridiculous misconception on his part, stemming solely from his lack of experience.

“Do you think that destructive power is all there is to magic?”

Romantica puffed up into a brilliant smile as she invoked magic directly ahead of herself. [Swift the Air]

A spell that lets one compress a specified amount of space into a vacuum. The flames that had been soaring uninhibited in all directions, suddenly extinguished.

“Huh?”

Ronde was unable to re-cast the spell that he considered his greatest strength.

An experienced wizard would have adapted to the sudden change in situation, but he was just a freshman who had just entered the academy.

Romantica shrugged her shoulders, exaggerating her easy victory. “I think it’s over.”

“Oh, no I can still… !” “No. That’s enough.”

Desir spoke up and stopped the duel.

It was Romantica’s victory.

Ronde bowed his head while addressing Desir.

“Br-Brother. I wasn’t able to avenge her properly due to my lack of skill. Please let me… ” Ronde was beside himself in embarrassment and grief.

Before he could continue, Romantica jumped in. “I’m sorry for the words I spoke, Desir.”

“… You? Why did you apologize? You won.”

“Huh? I should apologize if I take something too far while I’m angry. What are you talking about?”

“However… ”

While still trying to process what had happened, Romantica’s next words snapped him out of his stupor.

“I don’t know what you are talking about. Go start cleaning. You start immediately.” “Oh, I see.”

He couldn’t understand the situation… But a bet is a bet. Ronde was defeated, and he had to fulfill the loser’s duties.

From that day onwards, Ronde cleaned the entire party office on his own.

If he used magic, the cleaning would have been a little easier, but it couldn’t be helped since that was an additional condition. He was not allowed to use magic.

Ronde was forced to sweep and wipe each surface while sweating heavily. While he was busy struggling to clean like that, a few freshmen approached him. “Did the seniors ask you to clean this?”

“… Well, yea. Something like that.”

“Why didn’t you tell us? Are you going to clean up everything here alone?” “Why you… You are actually kinder than the way you look.”

“You can ask us for help. We’re not going to just watch you do this.”

Each of them brought cleaning tools out of the closet and got to work helping Ronde.

At first, it was a bit awkward, but once they realized that Ronde wasn’t that bad, they gradually began to loosen up. After spending time cleaning together, they started to develop an easy-going relationship where they shared jokes and hung out afterwards. Desir and Romantica looked at them while smiling.

* * *

It was D-Day.

[A World anomaly has been detected.

Open Shadow Gates according to procedure.]

As the Shadow Gates opened, the full-scale attack of the Shadow Worlds began.

There was no top ranker or single rankers in the first grade, as the Shadow Worlds had appeared before the ranking exam. In addition, since they appeared so soon after the entrance ceremony, the first years had not received a proper amount of training yet.

“First years who have not completed their mental curriculum yet will be barred from entering the Shadow Worlds with difficulty of Level Four and higher.”

It was inevitable that a special measure had to be taken by the academy.

“I would like Freechel and Takiran to take the newcomers and lead a separate Shadow World clearing. Freechel, you’ll lead the party as the commander with Takiran acting as your assistant commander.”

“I-I’m the commander?”

“Yes. You’ve spent a lot of time studying tactics.” “I have been, but… ”

Freechel loved books, so she was very familiar with various battle tactics. In addition, rather than Takiran who would be positioned in the front lines, it was more reasonable for Freechel to observe and control the situation from the rear.

“Once you’ve got a better sense for leading while clearing a low difficulty Shadow World, go clear the Level 5 Shadow World, Rota Village Battle. This is a Shadow World that we have reserved, so there is no need to rush to complete it. However, please make sure to stick it out and complete it, even if it’s low level.”

“Roger.”

Desir entrusted the lower leveled Shadow World to the other party members.

Since the proper information had been delivered, things wouldn’t unfold like they did in his previous life. Desir, Romantica, Pram, and Adjest did not participate in the Shadow World with them. They were the core power of the Starling Party. There was a different Shadow World that they had to clear.

“The Shadow World we will clear is Level 3.”

Other party members nodded their heads in consent to Desir’s announcement. “I guess we really are going to target something like that, after all.”

“Well, I was expecting something like this.” [Estimated difficulty: Level 3

Level 3 Shadow Worlds based on the Ethena province.]

A Level 3 Shadow World.

At this point, Level 3 Shadow Worlds, which happen to actually be the highest level of difficulty that appear, were qualitatively different from other levels in terms of difficulty.

For this reason, the Central Committee did not easily give parties permission to attempt clearing such Shadow Worlds unless they were adequately qualified.

Desir’s success against a Level 4 Shadow World last year was largely attributed to Toa’s Crest, but his pursuit of this artifact happened to also be the reason why he targeted that Shadow World in particular.

However, things were different from last year. Their power had now been proven through a number of events. The Starling Party was acknowledged as contender for first place in strength against the Blue Moon Party, with a fraction of the members.

The central committee took this into consideration when judging this, and it didn’t take them long to accept Desir’s request. In fact, approval came almost as soon as Desir submitted it. -Participation request has been approved.

[Desir Arman, Pram Schneider, Romantica Eru, and Adjest Kingscrown. Please head to Shadow Gate 1.]