The event had begun.

We immediately started moving.

My enhanced body sprinted along at the same speed as the girls riding Mashiro.

Running through the gaps between the trees, we headed for where the sphere of light was coming down.

And almost immediately, we spotted other participants.

“I’m getting the hell out of this shitty environment as fast as I can!”

“That thing’s mine! I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way!”

“Hey, whichever one of us gets it, don’t you dare break our promise to wait until the other one gets the Right to Return too!”

“You neither...!”

We found two boys in tattered uniforms.

From the sound of their conversation, they seemed to have formed a party, but it was obvious they weren’t in any condition to cooperate properly.

When I looked toward Shion, she shook her head.

In other words, that whole exchange just now—“Whichever one of us gets the Right to Return, let’s keep cooperating until we can go home together”—wasn’t sincere from either of them.

Well, when it came to escaping this brutal deserted island life, whether someone could stay behind for a friend was going to vary from person to person.

Even fake cooperation had its place as a strategy, but whether I wanted to welcome people like that into our group was another matter.

“Migi... HIdari...”

I heard Minori murmur.

Right, maybe those had been their names. It had only been a little while since the new school year started, so it hadn’t been long enough for me to memorize everyone in class.

It made sense that Minori, as the class rep, remembered them, but what caught my attention was her tone.

It sounded like she was recalling something unpleasant... no way.

I remembered what she had told me before.

“Were those two the first people Minori ran into?”

She gave a small nod.

She had escaped trouble because she could use magic, but it was still true that the two boys had cornered a female student by themselves.

I believed Minori, and even aside from that, Shion’s ability had already confirmed there was no lie in her account of what happened before she joined us.

Those two were guilty.

“Guys like that can’t have the sphere.”

I separated from the others for a moment.

“Hey!”

Then I stepped in front of the two of them.

I was holding a spear in a blatantly showy way, but it was only meant as a threat.

“What the hell!? A spear!?”

“Tch... i-it’s obviously a bluff! Move already!”

Maybe because of the spear, the two of them stopped and stared at me warily.

—That was enough to win.

If they stopped moving, there was no chance I’d miss.

From my stone materials, I placed a stone cage directly above them.

It dropped instantly, successfully trapping both of them—Migi or Hidari or whatever their names were.

There weren’t any bars like you’d imagine from a normal cage. Except for the bottom, all five sides were made entirely of stone.

I’d left air holes so they wouldn’t suffocate, but they probably wouldn’t be able to see outside at all.

It was far too heavy for them to escape by themselves, too.

And during the event, I doubted there would be people willing to gather in numbers to help those two.

Their elimination was decided right here.

“This is still a light punishment for what you did to Minori, but stay there until the event ends.”

They had run away the moment they saw magic, so Minori hadn’t actually been harmed.

Even so, it pissed me off, but I didn’t have time to dwell on them any longer.

Once the event ended, the rules said everyone would be teleported back to their original positions anyway, so I wouldn’t even have to bother releasing them afterward.

Not having to see their faces again was a relief too.

“Well, if they’re all like those two, this’ll be easy.”

Leaving the pair behind, I rejoined the others.

It was one thing to hold up people like those two—criminals I could stop without feeling bad about it—but if I had to trap some earnest girl just doing her best to chase the sphere of light, that would hurt.

We couldn’t afford to give up the sphere, though, so at some point I had to make peace with that.

The others called me kind, but if I started showing universal benevolence here, it would only push their chance of going home farther away.

I wanted to avoid that.

“Red...!”

Minori called out to me.

Since there was no point hiding our faces if we kept using our real names, we’d decided to call each other by colors.

I was Red, Chiyu was Platinum, Shouko was Yellow, Shion was Blue, and Minori was Black.

“I’m fine! I didn’t hurt them!”

We could see other participants here and there too, but plenty of them fled in terror when they saw Mashiro.

We didn’t chase people like that.

If they lost their fighting spirit and moved away from the sphere, that was enough.

Right now, catching up to the sphere mattered more.

Before long, we reached what seemed to have been the place where the sphere had descended, but it was already gone, apparently having started moving.

“Platinum, keep the healing and buffs going.”

“Roger.”

That meant refreshing Strength Up and using Advanced Heal to recover my fatigue.

“Red! Mashiro says he knows which way the light went!”

“Good. Have him take the lead.”

Mashiro barked and immediately sprang forward.

I chased after him with my enhanced legs.

“Damn it, that sphere’s way too fast!” “What the hell am I supposed to do with just one knife!?” “At least you’ve got a knife! I’ve got a fork!” “That’s right! Keep talking shit and I’ll crack your head open with this pot!”

I didn’t know if they were in a party or not, but as we chased the light, I caught sight of a group of boys arguing.

It was probably hard for anyone to stay calm, but the way their eyes were blazing with anger was bad news.

“Ah, I see the light!”

In the direction Shouko pointed, I saw the sphere of light slipping through the gaps between the trees.

It was fast, but maybe because of the rule that it had to remain visible to at least one participant, it kept a distance that was neither too close nor too far.

“Whoa!? What is that!? A-a monster!” “...A wolf, maybe?” “Was somebody riding it...?” “N-no way... are those the people in the dream who were talking about abilities and stuff? Did they actually get those as-is...? That’s way too unfair...!”

...I understood how they felt, but being resented for it wasn’t going to help.

In that dream, everyone had been asked what they wanted to bring, and everyone had been given the same chance to think about it.

We passed /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ by them quickly, but even among the other transfer participants, Mashiro stood out.

“Hey, let me ride too! Let me join your group!” “Shut up, asshole! This guy’s a scrub who drank all his cola and only brought the empty bottle! I’ve got a survival knife, so I can actually be useful! Let’s work together!” “Shut up! Hey, my sick grandma’s waiting for me at home, please!”

Two boys shouted at us while arguing with each other.

I looked to Shion just in case, and she gave me a regretful shake of the head.

“‘Let’s work together’ and ‘my sick grandma’ are both lies. ...It was a power I wanted, but when I actually see through lies like this, it hurts.”

“In that case...”

The two of them started grappling with each other.

As I ran past, I trapped both of them together in a stone cage.

“...Are you sure? I could be lying myself.”

“It’s fine. I trust you.”

“...Mm. ...Hehe, thanks.”

Her ability must have told her I was speaking from the heart.

After a startled pause, Shion smiled happily.

“Save the flirting for later. The sphere’s getting close.”

At Chiyu’s voice, I turned my eyes forward, and sure enough, the distance between us and the sphere was gradually shrinking.

“Alright! If it looks like you can secure it, use your abilities whenever you can! Just watch out for friendly fire!”

“Mm.” “Got it!” “Understood...!” “Everyone, do your best...”

All four of them answered in their own way.

Then, in the next instant—

BANG...!

The sound of bursting air rang through the forest.

“Was that... a gunshot?”

In Japan, there probably weren’t many high schoolers who had heard the real thing, but in fiction, it wasn’t exactly uncommon.

That sound just now had been very close to a gunshot.

And there was someone in our class who had chosen guns.

Then the sound came again, several times in a row.

“Ah, I see him! He’s firing like crazy at the sphere! Isn’t that dangerous!?”

Shouko shouted.

Ahead of us, I could see a boy holding what looked like a handgun.

It was dangerous, sure, but what was stranger was how little hesitation he showed.

Using precious bullets here made sense, but he should have been firing more carefully, and yet the shots just kept ringing out one after another.

“...He can probably replenish ammunition.”

“I guess, the same way abilities seem to depend on your image of them, maybe he imagined a ‘gun that can keep firing forever.’”

Shion added that to Minori’s observation.

“When a Japanese high schooler thinks of guns... maybe he learned about them from FPS games or something. If that’s the case, imagining a gun with a reload time of a few seconds and a huge supply of bullets wouldn’t be strange.”

Like bullets being things you replenish from the ground, or pick up from enemies you kill.

Since people were being given abilities and magic just as they imagined them, it wouldn’t be weird for someone to get a dreamlike gun too.

The problem was the skill of the person using it.

“Come on, come on, you’re gonna get hit! Give up on the glowing ball...!”

The owner of the gun was a mean-looking boy, spraying handgun fire while running.

—Considering the range, shouldn’t he have picked something else...? Or maybe his gun ability is fixed to that handgun?

If he could summon any gun he wanted, there ought to have been weapons better suited to the situation—or even more extreme ones.

Still, this was bad.

He had to know other students were chasing the sphere too, and yet he was firing anyway.

Of course, he was probably thinking enough to use warning shots to drive everyone else back first, then take his time aiming at the sphere once he was alone.

But if he fired with the attitude that he didn’t care whether he hit another participant, and someone got hurt, he’d lose 100 points.

Even if he got the Right to Return, adding a hundred days of coma per injured person on top of that would be unbearable.

He looked dangerous, but surely he had at least thought that far ahead.

“We do have healing magic. We could force our way through if we had to, but...”

Chiyu said it hesitantly.

That kind of strategy might work in a game, but doing it with real human bodies was rough.

It was possible, but mentally harsh.

“We’ll deal with him, but we’re not forcing our way through. Black and I will neutralize him.”

“Yes, leave it to me...!”

There were other people with abilities too, and others carrying useful tools.

I knew that.

But the ones who were going to win this event were us.