**
◇[Ayaka Sogou]◇
Ayaka swung her flail with momentum.
*Boom!*
A heavy, resounding impact.
The dull thud reverberated through her wrist.
*Crack!*
A fracture ran through the monster's bones.
She readied the flail again after the strike.
The monster was—a skeleton.
The skeleton's movements halted.
Immediately after, it shattered and fell apart.
Ayaka wiped the sweat from her brow.
"Phew..."
This was the ancient ruin belt near the royal capital of Alion.
It was apparently called the Bone Ruins.
The heroes of Class 2-C had been sent to this ruin by order of the goddess.
The main objectives were two: to grow accustomed to real combat and to farm experience points.
They had been told it was a place swarming with monsters.
Permission had only been granted to enter the first underground layer of the ruin.
However, in this area, monsters were spilling out from the ruin to the outside.
The number of monsters was more than sufficient.
That said, they had been warned to flee if a "horned one" appeared.
The formal name of the horned one was Skeleton Knight.
In this vicinity, more than ninety percent of the monsters were undead types.
The majority of those were bone-based—skull-type monsters.
At first, the sight of bones moving around had felt eerie.
But she had grown used to it by now.
She picked up the spear she had leaned against some rubble.
*Snap*
She attached the spear to the leather strap over her shoulder.
What she held in her hands now was not a spear.
It was a weapon called a flail.
An iron weight connected by a chain to the handle.
A weapon that utilized centrifugal force to smash the iron weight into the opponent.
Against bones, blunt-force weapons were more effective than bladed ones.
Originally, the Oni Spear Style had aimed to master a hundred martial arts.
Its primary focus was the spear.
However, it was designed to adapt even in situations where a spear could not be used.
What the Oni Spear Style had envisioned was the battlefield.
In short, it was practical combat martial arts.
Seized weapons.
Weapons of the dead.
The more weapons one could wield, the higher the survival rate.
It allowed one to respond to a wide variety of situations.
(Even so, I had never actually used a flail before...)
Among the weapons she had used in the past, the weighted chain sickle came closest.
That said, the sense of balance and impact felt completely different.
"Ayaka has natural talent. However... whether it was unfortunate or fortunate that she was born in a country and era that had no need for this kind of martial art—I cannot say."
Her grandmother's words.
(It seems I have unintentionally arrived in a place where it is needed, Grandmother...)
"キしィぃェぇエえエえ――ッ!"
A skeleton armed with a short sword leaped out from the shadows.
A monster wielding a human weapon.
Was it using memories from when it was alive?
Ayaka timed it perfectly and stepped forward powerfully.
*Whoosh!*
*Smash!*
The iron weight pulverized the skeleton's chest.
This type of monster had differently colored bone sections as weak points.
Crushing the weak point made it easy to defeat.
[Level Up]
[LV 4 → LV 5]
She checked her status.
(Still no unique skill awakening, huh.)
The afternoon sunlight poured down.
Ayaka stood alone amid the ruin cluster surrounded by forest.
"..."
The students of Class 2-C were currently divided into several groups.
First was Kirihara Takuto's group.
S-Rank Kirihara served as the leader.
The rest consisted of A-Rank Oyamada Shogo and other heroes of B-Rank and above.
It felt like an elite upper-tier group.
Next was Ikusaba Asagi's group.
B-Rank Asagi acted as the organizer.
The highest rank was B.
However, this group had the largest number of members.
Most of the girls had gravitated toward Asagi's group.
The group was composed entirely of females.
From Ayaka's perspective, Kashima Kobato in this group was the one she was slightly concerned about.
(Please stay safe, Kashima-san...)
The third was Yasu Tomohiro's group.
This group seemed to consist of students who had nowhere else to go.
Those rejected by both Kirihara's and Asagi's groups.
Two C-Ranks.
The rest were D-Ranks.
The lower-ranked students below C seemed to have sought salvation from the A-Rank presence.
However, the girls below C-Rank had flowed into Asagi's group.
So this one consisted only of boys.
This group also had a large number of members.
The fourth was the Takao sisters.
S-Rank and A-Rank.
It might be difficult to even call them a "group."
The two of them had always acted alone.
That said, it was no different from how things were in the previous world.
The other students had consciously avoided the pair.
No—they treated the sisters' existence as something to ignore as much as possible.
The sisters showed no sign of minding such treatment.
Even in this other world, those sisters remained unchanged.
Ayaka thought that unwavering consistency was something worth emulating.
Several boys and girls who had failed to overcome the "rite of passage" imposed by their homeroom teacher Tsugaraigi and the goddess were still remaining in the castle.
And then there was the remaining one—Sogou Ayaka.
Ayaka was recognized as someone who had defied the goddess.
It seemed people believed that acting together with her would worsen the goddess's impression of them.
It couldn't be helped.
It was a natural emotional response.
(I simply acted according to the movements of my own heart.)
Her current state of isolation was the result.
She had no choice but to accept it.
"Wait up, damn it! You're just bones, how the hell are you so fast?!"
"Don't screw with us! Stop running away!"
"Come on, bones! You're already dead once, right?! Just let us kill you quietly!"
Familiar voices approached.
From the lineup, she knew which group it was.
Kirihara Takuto's group.
Several boys and girls in otherworld attire came to a stop.
"What the—?! The bone dude's already smashed to bits!"
"Hey! Ayaka!? Did you seriously steal our bones?!"
"Huh?"
"That's so mean! Ayaka, that's so mean! Those bones were ours!"
"If you're gonna take them down, at least ask our permission first! Now we ran all this way for nothing!"
"Just because you used to be class rep doesn't mean you can act this arrogant!"
The Kirihara group voiced their complaints one after another.
A little behind them, Oyamada appeared.
"Oho? Well, well! If it isn't the loner-fied Ayaka-sensei! Whoa〜, that's rough〜. Trespassing in our hunting ground, huh〜?"
Oyamada tapped his own shoulder with the flat of the greatsword he carried.
Almost as if provoking her.
(Hunting ground?)
She lowered her gaze.
A line had been faintly drawn on the stone floor.
"This area from here on is our hunting ground, yeah〜? And Ayaka-sensei is an outsider, right? You're not in our group! Hey hey, this is a clear violation, isn't it? Damn, Ayaka—going from class rep straight to criminal? That's cold〜."
"Knock it off, Shogo."
"What's that, Takuto? You're seriously defending Ayaka here?"
Finally, Kirihara appeared.
He wore a fur-trimmed coat-like mantle.
A golden lion.
That was the image he gave off.
Kirihara shook his head with an air of exasperation.
"Even if she's rotten, Sogou is still an S-Rank hero. No matter how much you guys below A-Rank bark, she's not gonna back down easily. You're being looked down on, you know."
Ayaka immediately countered.
"I didn't mean to—"
"It's fine."
Kirihara thrust out a hand to stop her.
"I've heard from Vysis."
"Heard? About what?"
"Sogou Ayaka has a fragile mind. The violent outburst when she discarded that E-Rank trash was caused by extreme tension leading to a breakdown, right? It's okay. I understand."
Kirihara stepped forward in front of Oyamada and the others.
He stopped leisurely and spoke.
"You're still in a state of breakdown right now, and you don't even really know what you're doing here, do you?"
"Do I...look that way to you?"
"I'm honestly terrified of you, Sogou."
"Huh?"
(Terrified?)
"In Class 2-C, I thought you were the most level-headed person. So the shock was huge when, just by being summoned to another world, the Sogou Ayaka turned out to be this broken..."
"Wait, Kirihara-kun. I just can't quite trust that goddess—"
"Listen, Sogou."
*Pat*
Kirihara tapped her shoulder from the side.
"The moment you refused my invitation to join our group, you stopped being normal."
The gazes directed at Ayaka.
Pity.
"Kirihara, you—"
"You still have value as an S-Rank. But because you've gone mad, you've lost the ability to make proper judgments right now. Honestly, I feel sorry for you."
Kirihara turned his back.
Suddenly, he lifted his chin.
As if something had occurred to him.
"If I'm to be king—then Sogou Ayaka would be best suited as a knight who protects the king, I suppose? At the very least, she's definitely not queen material."
Kirihara turned his head and faced Ayaka.
His expression brimmed with absolute confidence.
"I'll at least wait for the day you wake up and become a proper vassal, Sogou Ayaka."
Oyamada chuckled under his breath.
"This fall from grace is seriously hilarious. Dropping ranks so hard inside 2-C, huh, Class-Rep-Senpai."
The expressions on the rest of the Kirihara group.
A strange sense of superiority enveloped them.
"I don't really get it, but like, Ayaka can just work hard at her club stuff and it'll be fine, right?"
"Surprisingly, Tenjou-chan might actually be able to solo a boss on her own!?"
"She's got this, she's got this! The part where she got one-punched in the gut by the goddess was definitely some kind of mistake!"
"Tenjou-san is seriously way too strong! As expected of someone who defied the goddess! We could never pull that off!"
Ayaka silently turned on her heel.
"Hey, Ayaka."
Oyamada called out to stop her.
"What?"
"If you pay up, I could let you into the hunting ground ahead for a limited time. Actually, Asagi and the others who paid are grinding exp right now in the area up ahead where the bone guys keep spawning."
So that was why the Kirihara group had temporarily turned back.
"I don't have much on hand."
"Huh? Didn't the goddess just give out 'pocket money' the other day?"
"...I wasn't given any."
"For real!? Damn, she hates you way too much! Poor thing! That's brutal〜."
Ayaka clenched her fist.
She felt no regret for having defied the goddess.
At that moment,
"Kyaaaaaaaah!"
A scream rang out.
Ayaka turned around.
From beyond the trees, multiple screams approached along with something.
Human silhouettes.
Female students.
They came fleeing in disarray.
"It's out! It's out, it's out! Nooooooo!"
Ikusaba Asagi's group.
So they had been grinding experience in the area ahead.
The Kirihara group braced themselves.
"Wh-what the hell!?"
Asagi came running.
"Idiot! Can't you tell what's happening just by looking at the situation?! It's out! The so-called 'horned one'!"
(Skeleton Knight!?)
Ayaka also readied her weapon.
"Ah."
She gasped.
"Haa... haa...!"
Kashima Kobato appeared, supporting a girl who was hobbling along with injured legs.
It seemed one of the girls had hurt her foot.
"Haa... haa... Being saved by Kobato, no way... that's hilarious..."
"It's okay! We linked up with Kirihara-kun and the others!"
Kobato's eyes spotted Ayaka.
"Look, Tenjou-san is here too!"
Relief lit up Kobato's expression when she saw Ayaka.
Seeing that, Ayaka fully shifted her focus to combat.
It was right after the switch.
"Uwaaaaaah... a゛a゛〜..."
A single girl emerged from the trees.
Behind her loomed a massive bone-human-like shadow.
Easily three meters tall, perhaps.
A sinister silhouette crowned with ominous horns.
Oyamada recoiled.
"Geh!? For real!?"
One member of the Kirihara group covered his mouth.
"Ugh!?"
Another girl emerged belatedly from the trees.
"Aaaahhh!゛... It's gone... gone... my hand's gone〜..."
Her left wrist and everything beyond it was missing.