Chapter 49: Above the Others
Marie spent almost 50 minutes building various rubber balls, and I gave her the idea to leave the rubber balls to avoid them breaking if they’re dropped or experience light impacts.
And with that, we now have 143 small rubber balls that are unlikely to break easily.
"Okay, big sis, now we need to hide them everywhere!" I tell Marie, who agrees. I start hiding some in my clothes while Marie does the same.
"The rooms insulate sound from the inside and outside, so I’m going to start hiding the spheres quickly outside," I say, grabbing a small pile of balls and quickly going to the door.
"I’ll also hide some in this room while you hide those outside, and it’s better not to reveal the plan!" She speaks sharply as I open the door with my foot and go outside.
’Esther will destroy most of the spheres... I need to ensure the safety of at least one of them...’ Esther shouldn’t know how many spheres there are, or she’ll target each one individually.
While if she doesn’t know how many there are, she’ll just have to get lucky that they’re all destroyed after she uses her blessing.
Also, to maintain consistency between projects, everything made must be similar, so even if she sees our idea, she won’t be able to do anything with the remaining materials.
...
...
...
"Augustus, could you complete the magic circle of the sphere?" I say to Augustus while thinking about the rules, discovering the loophole and the real objective.
"Sure, Esther, one moment," Augustus says as he finishes shaping the sphere that will be the globe. Fortunately, he’s not a bad partner, as he’s paranoid and quiet, just doing his part without talking too much or questioning too much.
’The rules are clear, ruin the projects of others while keeping your own safe... I should have noticed this earlier, then we wouldn’t have wasted time on this sphere.’
We created something big, complex, and that consumed a large part of the materials.
’Well, if the rules allow cheating... winning will be easy, I just need to damage the projects of others with my blessing.’ I get up as Augustus goes to the sphere.
"Augustus, I’m going to leave the room and see the projects of the others to see how they’re doing," I say as Augustus just nods in affirmation. I want to see what the others have done, and this is not against the rules.
I go to the door, leaving the room and going to the room in front, without knocking, I just open it and see Lucien and Laplace, both working together on an elegant painting made with various fragmented materials.
’Elegant, undoubtedly a very good project.’ Their project focuses on aesthetic beauty, while my project with Augustus focuses on complex beauty, with an incredibly well-made magical system and natural magical elegance.
Of course, if I had noticed that cheating was possible earlier, I would have created something simpler since, in the end, the beauty of what was created doesn’t matter.
"..." Lucien and Laplace stop to observe me. Lucien was going to speak, but then remembering that he can’t talk to the opposing team, he just ignores me and goes back to painting, and Laplace makes a sour face but also decides to ignore me.
’It’s a painting, just make the canvas have a hole, I can easily make one of them make a mistake, but it’s better to wait for them to finish the work so it will be harder for them to notice the error.’
I leave the room thinking of going to see the project of the last team, Evelyn and Marie, thinking that Marie will probably try to dominate everything and treat Evelyn as useless while trying to make something beautiful.
And focusing on beauty and her common hobbies, she’ll probably try to make a statue or maybe a miniature of something, but I deduce that it will be a statue since it has more connection with her tastes.
"..." I reach the door that I know has them and open it, but I’m surprised to have been wrong, I see Evelyn and Marie sitting in chairs waiting while dozens of colored balls are scattered around the corners.
’This...’ I look at them, knowing that this can’t be Marie’s idea, observing the various colored balls, my mind comes to the answer.
’!!!!’ I’m shocked, Evelyn thought of an idea that I didn’t even think of, creating multiple copies of the project so that no matter which ones are damaged, if something is still good in the end, they can win if they damage the projects of the others.
’Evelyn... it was her, she noticed the loopholes in the rules probably at the beginning of the competition... she was faster than me...’ This bothers me, having lost a logic competition to Evelyn makes me feel a bitter humiliation.
Even the idea was really good, with so many copies, it’s difficult to damage each one, and it’s not like we can just break things in front of the other.
It may not be written in the rules, but if you are seen destroying the things of others, it would count as "psychological violence," and this is against the competition rule, which means we can only destroy the projects of others if we are not seen doing it.
"..." I observe the various objects, seeing some hidden, it seems they really did everything to protect at least one until the end, and even with my blessing, it will be difficult to destroy them all.
This has always been the biggest weakness of my blessing currently, its extremely limited range. It’s complicated to use my blessing against dozens to hundreds of different targets.
In the future, this will be easy, but for now, my blessing doesn’t have that power yet, so I need to destroy each ball individually, but with so many and some hidden, it’s becoming extremely complicated.
I leave the room, closing the door. Initially, I didn’t tell Augustus the real winning condition of this competition, but now it’s better to tell him, any help is useful.
’I need to somehow win, I refuse to lose to a plan as stupid as creating dozens of copies.’ As much as I call the plan stupid, it’s undeniably clever.
It’s simple, easy, and efficient for the competition, even if the chosen object is simple, as long as all the other team’s objects are damaged, they will win by following the rules.
I hear the sound of the balls when I use my blessing to start destroying them, from the sound, each ball is made in a way to be elastic, which only makes it harder to destroy.
’Tsk... she even thought of that?’ Now this really irritates me, I don’t underestimate Evelyn, I don’t treat her as the family’s failure now that she’s changed, but having her surpass me pisses me off.
’That damn greedy hamster thinks it can bite the hand of its superiors? She’ll pay dearly for it.’ I’m going to win this at all costs, she’s not going to beat me, and I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure that.
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...
...
Almost 10 hours have passed since the competition started, the plan worked, "mysteriously" at least 40% of the balls ended up destroyed in strange ways, making it clear that it was Esther.
Marie doesn’t understand how they’re breaking with these minor accidents, but I, who know Esther’s blessing, understand, and if she’s so determined to destroy us, it means she’s afraid of losing.
’I... shouldn’t.’ I thought about telling Marie about Esther’s ability, but I should never do that, no one should ever know what Esther can do, and there are 3 reasons for this.
First, if I reveal Esther’s blessing, naturally Esther will have a mortal hatred for me and will make sure I die in the worst possible way, using her blessing to ensure I suffer a lot.
Second, if someone knows about her blessing, she won’t have to limit herself to small things anymore. Normally, she only doesn’t use her power for everything because she doesn’t want others to discover or suspect it, so she uses it in a slightly limited way.
And third, if they know about it, I have no way to predict what will happen. No one in the game should know what Esther’s blessing is, so much so that none of the romantic targets or Grace herself were able to discover this blessing in the game.
So, as tempting as it may be to reveal Esther’s ability, it’s not worth it, it’s too dangerous for me and the others as well.
’This makes me think... I don’t even know what Esther’s curse is...’ The game doesn’t explain, and the description doesn’t help at all, seriously, the description is literally [You are able to perceive the truth of the world].
Perception of the World (Description = You are able to perceive the truth of the world)
This description really doesn’t help me at all, and Esther herself never mentioned in the game what it means to see the truth of the world. Probably this content was going to be mentioned in the version I was going to play before I died.
And that’s why it’s so frustrating to have died without being able to play the full game. If I had at least finished 100% of the original work, I would know better how to deal with this genocidal full of secrets!
"big sis, you still have a lot of balls, you don’t need to be so nervous, it’s been 10 hours already, there are only 14 hours left and we can win," I say as Marie nods.
"Evelyn, you don’t need to keep talking, shut up so I can think of how to sabotage the other projects! We can’t get caught doing this, I’m thinking of using... forget it," She gives up on talking, but I imagine she’ll think of using her blessing.
’Well, all I can do is wait...’ I hope at least one ball survives in the end.