“How have you found that out?”

“My underlings aren’t useless you know? There’s lots of things you can hear about if you just ask around.”

I guess people weren’t being as secretive as they should’ve been.

“How many points do you have now, Giselle?”

“Around two million. I’m really no match for those in caste one with this amount.”

I looked at the Leaderboard.

 

LEADERBOARD - CASTE ONE

1. Gehlee Mendoza - 123,927,473

2. Hiroto Kumagawa - 89,382,571

3. Hana Tobiichi - 71,394,853

4. Darren Kangim - 70,198,858

5. Scarlette Patel - 67,183,483

…

 

The distance between normal students and them was certainly growing day by day. When you have that many points, your level of influence is on another scale. Like a monopoly manipulating politics, whales like the students in caste one can easily control others as they like.

That’s why it is important to have a solid foundation in order to push into caste one.

As such, I’m not in a rush to enter it just yet.

“Are you up for another round, Sumire?”

“Sure, I’ll do one more.”

 

[Sumire POV END]

 

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

 

[Akira POV]

 

There seemed to be a girl crying by herself on one of the benches. It very quite out of place in such an upbeat environment.

I wasn’t planning on approaching them, but given Erika’s personality, it was basically a given after she saw.

She walked up to the girl. The girls was looking down with her face in her hands. Whilst her hair did block any view of her face, it was pretty clear from the scene and the sobbing that she wasn’t having a good day.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Erika asked.

She didn’t respond.

Well, that was to be expected, at least.

Erika kneeled down and pulled her shoulders up a little.

“Hey, what’s your name?” she whispered, her voice a little quieter this time.

After a short moment, the girl looked up.

“Um… it’s Jaerin… who are you?”

“I’m Erika. You’re crying all alone on the bench, so what’s wrong?”

The girl took a few breaths, trying to calm herself down.

“I-I just don’t know what to do…”

“What happened? You can tell me~”

“I’m going to get e-expelled… there’s nothing I can do now…”

Despite trying to breathe slowly, the girl still didn’t seem to be regaining her composure. Still, the way Erika communicated was definitely very impressive. To be able to mould the way she spoke was no small feat.

After a little while, Erika’s smile even seemed to cheer up the distressed girl.

“We can try to help you if you tell us what happened, Jaerin,” consoled Erika.

Ah.

“Um, well I gave all my Points to my boyfriend since he said he could invest them well… then one night, he was robbed and threatened. And afterwards, he lost everything in a duel.”

Robbed and threatened.

Erika looked over at us.

“Fern, Akira, what do you reckon we can do?”

“If he was threatened, we could probably report it to the school… or maybe not… um. Does he know who the attacker was?” Fern asked.

“Yeah, he duelled him. But I don’t think he actually hurt him outside the duel, so I’m not sure what we can do.”

If he lost the points officially through a monitored duel, then there was not likely to be any recourse from the school regarding the incident—lest they undermine their own authority. There really weren’t many easy things we could do to help, short of just giving and donating her Points.

“Why would your boyfriend agree to a duel with all his Points?” Fern asked.

“I’m not sure. He hasn’t talked to me all day and I don’t know what’s going on…”

“That’s a problem. Do you know where he is?” Erika asked.

“He’s in his room, but he won’t let me in no matter how much I ask!”

Erika turned to us.

“Let’s go over. I’ll see if I can talk to him,” she suggested.

Fern seemed a little concerned.

“Are you sure? He’s probably not going to talk to us either.”

“We won’t know unless we go.”

He still didn’t seem very convinced. To be fair, there was little chance that he’d speak to us if he wouldn’t even speak to his own girlfriend.

The only way is if we somehow offered him a way out.

I looked over at Jaerin.

I might ask some questions of my own. This seemed like it could be related to what Fern was facing at the moment.

“Do you have any more details on what happened?”

“I’m not sure… I just heard that there were a few boys who went into his room.”

It was pretty clearly a planned operation of some sort and their goal was to extort points out of her boyfriend.

I guess we might have to see for ourselves.

“I think visiting him isn’t a bad idea,” I said.

Erika quickly turned to me.

“Alright! Let’s go then. Lead us there, Jaerin.”

“Y-yeah, okay. Thanks for helping me… and sorry that you have to see me in such a state.”

Erika and Jaerin continued to chat with each other as we made our way over.

 

*

 

Fern leaned toward me.

“It’s very concerning that there are groups of people attacking random guys.”

It wasn’t necessarily attacking per se, since the school did have a strict ‘no violence’ policy. Whoever they were, they must have had some method of forcing their victims to agree to a hopeless duel—or maybe the duels weren’t as hopeless as they seemed.

“Yeah.”

“How do you think they choose who they attack?”

“It’s hard to tell.”

Based on what Jaerin said, it could’ve been related to wealth, since she was transferring her boyfriend her points, so naturally, he’d have a large amount. But that wouldn’t make sense to explain everything. It wasn’t like you could see how many points other people had anyway unless they were in caste one.

There was definitely something else.

The elevator had a short ring before opening its doors.

“He’s in room #11.”