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With the end of the fifth event, all the morning events are finished and it’s now time for a lunch break. We’ve informed everybody beforehand to prepare their own food, so the students are probably eating together with their friends now. We also gathered to eat lunch together at the student council room as usual, but the only members right now are me, Selena, Jason, and Sharl the event commentator and host. Right now, Urania is nowhere to be seen.

「Come on now, big sis! Pull yourself together!」
「But……. But…… Uraniaaa……」

While eating my handmade boxed lunch, Selena slaps me on the back as I lay face flat on the table. It is somewhat painful, but I don’t have the energy to resist, so I can only lament the fact that Urania isn’t here.

「Well, it can’t be helped. No matter how close you two are, it’s not good for the event organizer to be together with an event participant after all.」
「That’s true~. I can understand Lady Lily’s feelings but I also agree with Lady Urania’s thoughts~」

While smiling wryly at my suffering, Jason and Sharl still show support for Urania’s decisions. Different from her enthusiastic tone when hosting, Sharl usually has this sort of carefree tone.

As they just said, Urania declined to have lunch with me and should be currently eating with the members of team D. Honestly, I really wanted to have lunch with her but she ended up telling me off; saying she has a strategy meeting with the team, the organizer shouldn’t be with an event participant and that I also have my own preparations to do. The best I could do was to hand her my handmade boxed lunch.

「Urania…… I hope she’s eating lunch……」
「Your lunches are delicious, big sis, and she isn’t really the type to neglect eating lunch, so she probably is.」
「This rolled omelette is absolutely delicious. I’d love it if our chef could learn it.」
「These Lil’ Shoggo modeled wieners are adorable~! Though I’d rather stay away from the real thing~」

The lunch I prepared today, since we’re having an athletics festival, is a recreation of the lunch mom made me during a sports meet in the past. The main dishes are rice ball, fried chicken, octopus wieners (Lil’ Shoggo style), and rolled omelette that’s on the sweeter side. And to make sure that there’s a good nutritional balance, I also added Japanese spinach salad and some other vegetables on the side.

The dish I put the most effort into this time was the Lil’ Shoggo wieners, no, actually it was the rolled omelette. While I made sure that it absolutely didn’t char, the tender texture and the subtle sweetness should do well for the tired body. I hope Urania ate her lunch by now so that her exhaustion from the morning events gets healed and it would give her the energy she needs for the afternoon.

「Just when you started looking better, suddenly you’re in your own world, gross.¹」
「Ggh!? Gross!?」
「More importantly! The next event is Tentacle Wars! It’s time to show everyone the improved true Shoggo!」

Without any care about how shocked I was after being suddenly called gross, Selena has already shifted her interest to Lil’ Shoggo.

Lil’ Shoggo has already been tuned up based on our discussion after the second event. On the sixth event, she should be able to show her true form.

「Lady Lily, Lil’ Shoggo is that tentacle creature, right?」
「That’s correct. However, that form is, in a sense, a temporary form. Her true form will be displayed at the next event.」
「That’s… I’m not sure if it’s relieving or terrifying to hear…… Suzy might go crazy again, too.」
「Ahh, that……」

I never expected Urania to not be here today, but another thing I didn’t expect is Suzy’s fervor. Generally, only a few people hold the alchemic attribute and out of these few, even fewer are willing to learn alchemy. Sorcerers, in particular, don’t have much interest in magical tools, and out of all the first-year students, only two sorcerers are learning alchemy.

Suzy is one of them and I thought I understood her passion for magical tools, but I never would have imagined that she would show that much fervor.

「Team A is a bit unexpected after all~ There were some happy surprises though~」
「Jassie, correct? Was it that surprising?」
「From your wording, it seems like you knew.」

In regards to Jassie, I was aware that she’s likely hiding her true abilities, I didn’t really have any exact ideas of what these abilities are. Even so, I anticipated that her concealed abilities are at the very least comparable to those of higher ranks, so it didn’t surprise me that she had that much power.

「Totaling the points, team B is totally dominating~」
「Oh? Is that so?」
「Yes, please look at this.」

Seeing Sharl’s total scoring on paper, team B is certainly overwhelmingly strong. It helps that they haven’t gotten the last place in any event so far, but a big part of it is that in all the events Sola participated in, she always took first place.

Currently, the placement is team B on First, team D on second, team A on third, and team C on last. The gap between the two is about two first-place wins, so unless team C gets two wins on the next three events, victory is off the table.

On the other hand, they still have a chance to win first place, but even if Mahara and Hermie wouldn’t join again until the final event, it still doesn’t change how difficult this will be.

On the other hand, the gap between team A and D is small. It’s small enough that A can catch up with D with one win, so it’ll be necessary to strategize how to keep the first place from team B from here on out.

With that in consideration, it can’t be helped that Urania is taking her lunch in team D’s waiting room for the sake of their strategy meeting. I still feel a bit sad, but I hope Urania does her best and wins first place.

1. Lyly: Ouch, absolutely cheeky there, Selena