The four of us took seats on the couches of our bowling lane. It was quite modern, with clean, colourful couches, self-serve drink machines and a large selection of bowling balls. I hadn’t actually done much bowling, so I wasn’t sure what a normal alley was supposed to look like, but just based on the general budget of the school, one could extrapolate that this was pretty high-end.

Sumire sat beside me and the other two sat on the other side. Erika said that she was treating us—despite my offer to pay for myself. I guess she really did want to become friends with us.

Fern stood up.

“Oh yeah, we’re allowing abilities,”

I looked around for a moment before replying.

“Are we even allowed abilities in here… at all?”

“There’s no rule against it,” he replied.

I hope that was true.

Sumire was sipping on some lemonade, which I think had alcohol in it, but I wasn’t really sure—she told me that it was lemonade so who knows.

I just had some coffee.

Fern began to make his way to the front and took a size-11 bowling ball. His technique seemed pretty professional, holding it with his middle and index finger.

However, his next movement didn’t look like something a conventional bowler would do.

Raising the bowling ball in his hand, he lifted it up and seemed to be holding his breath. A moment later, he did a little dance before launching the ball out of his hand. It flew through the air at immense speeds before smashing into the pins.

They split in all directions from the impact but all amazingly landed within the ‘catcher’ or whatever they had in the machine.

「Strike!」

Huh. I guess that was an ability. I hadn’t actually bought any yet.

Sumire looked over.

“That’s pretty impressive, was that [Power Dance]?”

“Yeah, do you also have that ability, Sumire?”

“Nope, but I did notice it in my duels.”

Erika was next up.

POINTS

Your current points: 131,786

Current Rank: #53,590

I decided to have a quick look at my phone as I waited for my phone. I did just unlock quite a few new minions.

SHOP - Minions

…

[Wood Minion] - 100 points

[Affinity Minion] - 16,000 points

[Minion Manager] - 150,000 points

[Mining Minion] - 40,000 points

[Bee Minion] - 50,000 points

*

… [Unlock More] - 16 Star

After every unlock, the number of stars required to unlock the next doubled. Regardless, that didn’t matter that much since I didn’t even have enough points to buy all the minions. Just from the names, the [Mining Minion] and [Bee Minion] seemed to be minions that would produce items related to points, like the [Wood Minion]. The [Minion Manager] was either a passive buff to all minions or something completely different and I had no frame of reference for the [Affinity Minion].

「Spare!」

“Akira, it’s your turn.”

Ah, it seemed that Erika had finished her turn. Looking up at the television screen, I saw that she got a 9 and a 1; also a very decent score.

“Do your best, Akira~”

With a somewhat mischievous smile, Sumire gave some motivational words.

…

I took the bowling ball and threw it down the lane with the best technique I could conceive. It even curved a little before hitting right in the centre of the pack. However, despite smacking into the pins with a decent bit of force, they didn’t budge.

Instead, my bowling ball rebounded and flew into the gutter.

“Hey, that’s not how bowling balls work.”

Suddenly, Erika smiled.

“Akira, you know abilities are allowed!”

I guess that it was her ability then. I didn’t really want to buy one for the purpose of just a bowling match.

Grabbing another bowling ball, I positioned myself.

I guess I’ll use a bit more force this time.

Throwing the bowling ball down the alley, it thumped a little before smashing into the pins. This time, several of them moved before toppling over. Clink.

「Four. Better luck next time!」

Erika stood up all of a sudden.

“Ooh, what ability was that, Akira?”

“Ability?”

Before I could finish my next sentence, Sumire got up and quickly made her way to the front of the alley. With the same smile on her face, she grabbed the size-9 bowling ball. Erika turned around to see her bowl—and to put up her ability again, I assumed.

Doing a little run up, she piffed the ball down the lane.

It flew at unbelievable speeds before crashing into the pins.

Crash.

Ceramic parts splatter all over the bowling alley. Like projectiles from a grenade, they flew all through the air, gathering up a cloud of dust. Crashing into the roof and walls, it was like someone dropped a bomb. The pins were nowhere to be seen, probably shattered into tiny pieces.

She threw that bowling ball pretty hard. Maybe it was an ability.

She turned and laughed a little.

“Ah, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”

We could hear the sounds of sirens as Servant Robots™ began flooding to the scene. The entire lane had been smashed to smithereens from the force, so there wasn’t much more bowling for us to do.

Fern and Erika ran up to us.

“Haha, maybe we shouldn’t have used our abilities after all!” joked Fern.

“Come on guys, let’s get out of here!”

Following behind Erika, the four of us quickly rushed out of the bowling alley.

*

Using my room like a gathering place, the three ‘friends’ of mine were seated on the ground.

I didn’t really know how I felt about that, but it didn’t that much I guess.

“You reckon they’re gonna penalise us for that?” asked Fern.

“Probably not. It wasn’t like they had a rule against that,” answered Erika.

Well, based on the nature of the school, I doubted that they were going to do anything. From what I’ve observed so far, they were quite lax with rules. It seemed that they were trying to breed freedom.

They won’t do anything—that’s the school’s motto that they don’t reveal to the public.