Chapter 48: Competition in Pairs of Older Siblings with Younger Ones
"...For real?" I say angrily to the maid who came to give me an annoying notice.
"Yes, Miss Marie, the Demon King has ordered that you 6, candidates for the throne, enter a team competition. The teams are based on the younger sibling paired with the older sibling, which means the team order is..."
"Lucien Ashcroft will be paired with Laplace Ashcroft, Marie Ashcroft will be paired with Evelyn Ashcroft, Esther Ashcroft will be paired with Augustus Ashcroft, and the rules will be explained when you two meet. You cannot get help from maids or servants." She says as she stands up and goes to the door.
"Shall we go?" She says as I just let out an annoyed sigh. Great, I’ll have to team up with that loser. If that’s the case, it would be better to be alone than have a useless person getting in the way.
I end up just following the maid. I can’t disobey my Father, he’s the Demon King, and as much as I hate the idea of having to be with Evelyn as a partner, I still have to do it.
The maid ends up taking me to a room that I notice is full of various types of magic, mainly magic to prevent the sounds from inside the room from leaking out. Evelyn is already here, without that identical servant of hers.
"..." I sit in the chair next to Evelyn while noticing there’s a table in the back full of different items, but without much time to think, the maid calls for attention.
"Okay, I’m going to explain the competition, the rules, and then I’ll leave the room and let you two do it on your own," the maid says quickly.
"The competition is about creation. You can make a painting, sculpture, an object, any kind of magic anything, as long as it’s 100% made by you two without support from anyone else."
"It can literally be anything, and the best thing will win the competition after a full evaluation of each created item."
"In the rooms next door, the other teams can be found, and each team has 24 hours to create whatever they want. The winning team will receive some rewards after an evaluation of what they created."
"The rules are simple: first, you cannot get help from any servants, only from your partner; second, you cannot stray too far from this place, a maximum of 8 rooms away, or it’s an instant disqualification."
"Third, as long as you don’t hurt anyone, almost anything will be allowed without limitation on what will be done."
"Fourth, you can only use materials from within the rooms, nothing from outside the area; fifth, it’s forbidden to fight with the other teams, physically, verbally, or psychologically."
"Sixth rule, one team cannot talk to another team in any way, you can only see each other; seventh rule, what you made must be complete before the 24 hours are up, any incomplete or damaged item will be disqualified."
"Eighth rule, you cannot attack other teams in any way, even if you’re not the ones directly doing the attack; ninth rule, you cannot break the rooms. And those are all the rules. Now I’ll leave, any extra thing would count as a rules violation." The maid leaves the room.
"Okay, loser, better not get in my way," I say, getting up from the chair and going to the table with objects to start creating something right away. I don’t need Evelyn’s help for anything; she’ll just get in the way.
"You know this competition isn’t really about that, right?" She says, catching my attention. Her tone has a strange conviction that immediately draws attention.
"What do you mean?" I say, looking at her.
"I know what you’re going to do, you’re probably going to make a statuette using the items on the table and your blessing," she says, surprising me.
’She knows what my blessing is? How? Who leaked that information?’ Almost no one knows about this, I tense up, thinking about whether she really knows what my blessing is or not.
"Don’t worry, I may not have many skills, but I understand things quickly. There’s something you haven’t noticed in the rules, so don’t build anything yet without understanding that," she says, and I decide to listen.
"What haven’t I noticed?" I ask, going over the rules in my head. If there’s nothing I haven’t noticed, she’ll pay dearly for making me waste time.
"It’s simple, did you realize there are no rules prohibiting cheating? We can’t go too far away, but the rooms of our rivals are right next door, and we can go there, which would already be suspicious for a competition like this."
"There’s also rule number seven, which says the created item must be complete, but nothing saying it prevents damaging what others have created. We just can’t talk to another team, but we can break what others have done." She speaks while I think.
’Our Father would never make a competition without some kind of trick...’ Wasting time making something complex is stupid. It’s better to build something simple and just sabotage the things of the others, since that guarantees victory.
"Okay, you got my attention... how are we going to manage to break the things of the others then?" I ask, now giving her some degree of respect. She’s right, I should have noticed that it couldn’t be as easy as just creating something and expecting them to evaluate it.
"Well, I think it will take a while for others to notice the real goal of the competition. In the meantime, I have an idea, but I need your help. Do you trust me, big sis?" She says, calling me ’big sis’.
"I... I’ll hear your idea..." I say, with no interest in what she’ll say, but she was right about the rules, so I’ll at least hear the idea and mock it when the idea she states is stupid.
"My idea is actually pretty simple, big sis. The point is, there’s also no rule that prevents us from creating more than one thing. We just need to create something and keep that something safe."
"So my idea is to choose something simple and create dozens to hundreds of copies, like creating about 100 square blocks or colored balls."
"Damaging all of that without damaging the room is extremely difficult. We just need to make a lot of things and hide them in various places! And when they try to break it, they’ll never know if they managed to break everything, and a simple object is also easy to create in large quantities." Evelyn finishes her idea.
"This idea... is actually genius," I say, amazed. I never imagined she would come up with a good idea like this. She follows all the rules and even allows us to use other nearby rooms to hide the objects.
Plus, with my blessing that allows me to create anything using the objects in the room, I can easily create dozens to hundreds of simple things.
"So... we can create things and then focus on sabotaging the things of the others, so in the end, even if our creation is simple, we’ll win because we’ll be the only ones not to break the rules!" I say as Evelyn nods in agreement.
"Exactly, big sis," Evelyn says with a smile. Good thing she stopped me, or else I would have wasted all the materials creating something big and complex to try to stand out.
"How about we make spheres then? It uses less material than a cube, I can make at least 139 little balls if I use all the materials on the table," I say, pointing to the materials.
"Sure, big sis, I’ll do whatever you want to do, and after that, we can hide them in other rooms too," she says, and I agree.
"You know... I... thought you were useless, it seems I was wrong... you did well in pointing out the real goal of the competition," I say.
"Oh, how sweet," she murmurs.
"Did you say something?"
"I-I just said that I appreciate the recognition," she says, while I go back to ignoring her, going to the materials to start creating a lot of things with focus. We need to be quick to start hiding what we’ve created.
...
...
...
’Phew... good thing I was able to convince Marie.’ We would have lost this competition if we had followed Marie’s idea. I remember this event in the game Marie would never have noticed the real goal of the competition on her own.
She would have built a 1.69-meter sculpture of a girl, the sculpture was elegant and even magnificent, but it would have been damaged with three cracks that would have caused Marie to lose.
Lucien and Laplace would also lose they took too long to notice the real goal of the competition and the rules game, which made them spend 5 hours creating a painting with fragmented materials. In the end, this painting had a small hole that made them lose.
And finally, we have the winner of the competition in the game, Esther, who noticed the reality of the competition an hour after it started. She and Augustus built a magical globe that moved through magical waves.
When Esther discovered that she could cheat and that was the focus, she used her blessing to make Marie accidentally create the cracks in her sculpture without even realizing it, while also causing Lucien to accidentally make the hole in the painting that led to his defeat.
The Evelyn in the game didn’t do anything, Marie didn’t let her help and called her useless when she tried to do something, but now I know these rules and that’s why I suggested a way that makes it difficult for Esther to cheat.
In the end, Esther’s ability is still weak with hundreds of objects, at least some will remain unharmed, so even if Esther comes to this room to see what we’re building, she won’t be able to break everything.
’I almost lost! I’m lucky that apparently Marie has a weakness to being called "big sis".’ I see Marie starting to make the spheres and decide to just wait.