[579] The Probability of R (2)
'Damn! The shock went straight through. It feels like my bones are being crushed.'
He'd wrapped himself in the thickest ice he could manage, but it all shattered.
"Ugh…!"
Prings' shoulder convulsed.
"Kuhahahaha! So that's it! You got angry. You unleashed that hidden power of yours, didn't you?"
"I still haven't opened the Immortal Function."
The laughter cut off, and a cold killing intent crept into Prings' eyes.
"Still, do you know why I could subdue you? Because a day passed."
"A day?"
A day's strength was significant.
"I've already experienced your ability. That's why I could prepare a countermeasure."
Shirone's eyes flashed.
"Today's me is different from yesterday's me."
"Ah, I see."
Prings brushed the ice from his arm.
"So, in short, a proverb. Then I'll answer with one of my own."
He spread his limbs and shouted.
"Tomorrow's me is different from today's me!"
'What do you expect me to do with that, lunatic.'
The moment Shirone lunged, Prings twisted his mouth into a grotesque grin and cast a spell.
Ice Wave!
A photon cannon like a tidal blast smashed through the incoming ice.
'Immortal Function. The power really is different.'
As he shot into the air, Shirone activated Sibulsangpokmae and bound Prings' whole body with a Shining Chain.
Ice shards clung to the chain, trapping the light, but Prings strained and snapped it.
"Slow."
Prings' eyes widened at the voice behind him.
"Yaaaaah!"
Ice Crow.
With a buzzing crackle, dozens of icicles sprouted from behind, but Shirone was already in front of him.
"I told you you're slow."
'Damn…!'
A curse flickered through Prings' mind.
'You're the one who's fast…'
As the Shining Chain wrapped, Prings' body spun dozens of times in an instant.
"Uaaah!"
Blood roared in his head; it felt like his skull might burst. Prings' Spirit Zone vanished.
The orthodox tactic in the Grand Mage manual was to aim for the head—Shirone had learned that from Kaiden.
Shirone threw the Shining Chain with everything he had, and Prings' body dropped straight down.
At the impact point, two overlapping berserk spheres implemented via time-splitting were pulsing.
'Ice Armor…!'
At the last moment Prings' iron will had clad him in ice armor.
But being slammed between the berserk spheres meant that armor was torn to shreds by the storm of mass.
"Uaaaaaagh!"
He, who'd been flying wildly between the pulsing orbs, bounced off with a thud and rolled across the ground.
It wasn't enough to break his ribs, but all ten fragile finger joints were grotesquely bent.
"Ugh…!"
Shirone walked toward Prings, who was on the ground crawling on his elbows.
"Hand over the Master Card."
"...."
Giving up the Master Card wouldn't be difficult, but Shirone hated the idea of letting him go willingly more than death.
"It's in my underwear. Try and take it if you can."
"I will."
As Shirone approached, Prings blurted out something unexpected.
"You've been using magic since you were a kid."
No answer came.
"Why you passed Overflow and insisted on the path of a genius ice mage—want to know the reason?"
A photon cannon had been mounted in Shirone's hand.
"For this very moment!"
Prings screamed until his jaw ached and fired his flame magic, Fire Flame, at the maintenance depot.
"Crazy…!"
Shirone hurriedly put distance between them, scooped up a still-unconscious Sabina, and flew into the sky.
BOOM!
The maintenance depot erupted.
"Uahahahaha! Try and kill me, Shirone!"
With all his fingers broken, Prings limped and dove into the flames.
'He's lost his mind.'
No matter how shady the research group, casually wrecking a factory meant they were already past the point of being students.
"What do we do? Won't we all get expelled if this keeps up?"
Sabina asked, staring at the chain of explosions.
"It should be fine. Probably."
Not because it was an easy problem to fix.
With the world's attention on them, the faculty would find some way to classify today's events as an accident.
"Let's head back. It's time for assembly."
The fifth-day Scramble Royal had ended.
* * *
Shirone's team waited in their hideout for Nade until an hour past midnight.
"He's not coming," Iruki said.
"And he won't. He's not the type to skip a summons without giving notice."
Shirone asked with concern, "Shouldn't we go look? He could be injured."
Sabina glanced at Iruki.
'As suspected… Iruki knows.'
How many people in the graduating class could have injured Nade?
Even if they could, he wasn't the sort to be incapable of sending a distress signal.
'Nade's last active location was…'
Iruki traced the remembered coordinates.
'As I thought, it's closest to Anchal.'
That was why Iruki suspected Nade's absence was a deliberate choice.
'Anchal's mental projection. Definitely Nade's nemesis.'
Concluding that, Iruki said, "Let's wait until morning. For now, leave Nade out and let's review things among ourselves."
No sooner had Iruki finished than Amy brought up the core issue.
"Today Eden completed the Infinite (○○○○○○)."
Silence fell for a moment.
"I clashed with Eden in the third round too. But…."
Shirone shook his head, pale.
Who understood that feeling better than Iruki, who'd blown apart the summit created by nuclear fusion?
"We need greater power. Either increase the detonation reaction, or…."
Iruki looked back at Shirone.
"How about Ataraxia? You've faced it before, so you should have an idea."
If the allied team would fight without regard for themselves, Shirone would have no choice but to match them.
"Let's try it. I'll settle it tomorrow."
"How long to charge it?"
"With everything I've got, late in the ten-second range."
His friends' mouths fell open.
'That's absurdly fast now.'
A year ago Ataraxia had taken over a minute.
"We have two days left. We need to find a way to break Eden's Infinite in that time."
"There's one advantage," Amy said. "Eden can't Kang anymore. Because… she's naked."
-You can't call a Kang without possessing a Master Card.
"Where did she hide it? If I were a search type I could find it," Dorothy said.
"Either way, that was part of their plan. Hickory can store scrambles like Pisho did," Shirone said. "If Eden can't Kang, we can bomb without worrying about Pao."
"On the other hand, that means she's confident."
Confidence in invincibility.
Her entire life she'd had zero attack power. She couldn't protect allies or turn the tide, yet in this match that absolute defensive ability was decisive.
"Even if Eden can't Kang, Scramble Royal ends in two days. To prepare in case I can't break her shield, we should line up our own Infinite."
Dorothy's point made sense.
"Let's conserve scrambles from tomorrow. Gather six and complete the Infinite in one go."
"The enemies won't sit still," Iruki said.
"That's Dorothy's job," he added, and Dorothy smiled.
'Looks like she's overcome the trauma.'
Shirone said, "If I'm up against Eden, I need to hold the Infinite. If by any chance Eden abandons defense and calls Kang, we'll need scrambles. Once we gather them, we'll reshuffle my hand."
Shirone currently had six cards, so to get the Infinite he'd have to reshuffle his hand.
"That's another problem. None of our allies have a hand higher than Shirone's Annihilation (●○●●○●). In the end we'll have to make another Infinite…."
Iruki trailed off and everyone turned.
"What's wrong? Is there a problem?"
"Wait."
Iruki's pupils flickered with the speed of thought.
"Shirone, about your Sibulsangpokmae. Tell me every random result you opened so far. I can't track results when time is rewound."
"Got it. So… on day one, trying to make a trinity, I spun the random cards—"
"Just the results."
Shirone sifted through his memory and recited them in order.
"Black, white, white, black…."
Because he'd spun Sibulsangpokmae until the best hand appeared, Shirone had opened randoms far more times than anyone else.
Iruki then calculated every combination and reshuffle the five teammates and the allied six teams had made over five days.
"See? It's different. The probabilities don't match."
"What are you talking about? Probabilities…?"
Iruki held out his hand and muttered, "Wait. Huh? That's odd. This doesn't add up."
Tracing back to the start, he found and fixed an error.
"I see. It resets every twenty-four hours. That makes everything align."
"What do you mean? Explain it so I understand."
Iruki snapped his head up. "This is like a real card game."
"...You've figured that out by now," Hershi said, and Pisho asked, "How can you be sure? Even if the calculations are fast, paying attention is a different matter."
"Moving a servant isn't intuition. If a normal person acts on a mere impulse, the servant generates every possible action and picks the best. It lives across the whole instant, moment to moment. It's inefficient, but their thinking is so fast you can't tell them apart from a normal person. By day five it will extract meaningful data from past hands."
"So from tomorrow they'll manipulate probabilities too?"
Hershi raised a finger. "The number of scrambles summoned per day is seventy-two. The blacks and whites are exactly half and half—thirty-six each. Think of it as seventy-two cards being dealt."
Anchal asked, "Random, but countable?"
"Exactly. Like a real card game. There are thirty-six black cards and thirty-six white cards; someone holds blacks, someone holds whites. The probabilities change based on those counts. For example, if thirty-six black cards have already been revealed and you open a random card, what will come up?"
"White. No blacks remain."
"Correct. Just knowing that lets you steer the game in your favor. Like I do."
"So that's how you've been playing," Iruki continued. "Otherwise you can't explain why Hershi kept taking the favorable hands. Sona's search ability plus probability manipulation—that's how they controlled the matches."
Shirone asked, "But still, sometimes you're forced to open random cards. You can get a useless hand; you can't always keep control, right?"
"Here's another rule," Iruki said, flipping his palm.
"A hand that's reshuffled by a Kang isn't destroyed; it returns to random state—it's shuffled back."
"Is that so." Hershi raised both thumbs. "Assume a total of twenty cards, and Anchal holds six blacks while Pisho holds six whites. If someone opens a random card, black-white odds are fifty-fifty. But if Pisho calls Kang and reshuffles Anchal's hand, what happens?"
Anchal said, "The six black cards I held go back into the shuffle."
"Right. With more blacks among the random cards, black's probability increases."
"That's counting."
Hershi nodded. "Also, the cards you held yesterday don't affect today's odds. So you can move probabilities by calling Kang to win, or by intentionally reshuffling an ally's hand."
"Two assumptions come in here," Iruki said. "If Hershi discovered this rule on her own, she would never know the facts I know now—because my probabilities were computed via Sibulsangpokmae. But if she got the information from someone else, I can't be sure."
"What facts do you know?" Hershi and Iruki asked together.
"R's probability comes in two types."
Iruki pointed at Shirone. "The reason I was confused at first was that during Shirone's Sibulsangpokmae he spun random cards about five times in a row and got probabilities that deviated from the average. Then I remembered: Shirone once deliberately refused a Kang."
"Yes. I could have taken the Kang, but I didn't. I let it reshuffle to rebuild my combo."
"That was the variable. From that, you can find another hidden rule."
"A hidden rule?"
"If, in a Kang duel, cards reshuffled by Kang are returned to the deck, but cards reshuffled due to timeout are not shuffled—they're destroyed."