Chapter 9 - Men's dormitory

Fuu.

I feel like I’ve done a lot of walking today.

I finally made it to the men’s dormitory.

It has probably been about an hour since I left the examination hall.

After that, I went to the cafeteria.

It took me a while to get to the dorms, having finished dinner.

Without stopping anywhere, I entered my room, which was prepared in one of the 12 men’s dormitories.

Currently, any sign of the observer has completely disappeared.

Considering that I stopped feeling any sign of them shortly after I entered the dormitory, it appears that they don’t intend to follow me inside the dormitory.

The rooms are all private, but bath and toilet facilities are shared on each floor, so there should be plenty of opportunity to monitor them.

Still, they do not intend to be that thorough at this time.

Given that they do not interfere directly, perhaps I should think of this as an ability investigation rather than anything else.

I should think of it as surveillance to observe the competence of the top freshman, rather than to learn about my past or character.

It seems that they will track me if necessary, but basically, the top priority is to investigate the contents of the examination at the examination site.

This would explain why they were at the exam center before me.

They were probably planning to investigate if I played a match.

If that is the case, of course, it means that there will be surveillance at that venue tomorrow.

Me and my observer.

They may have decided that they don’t need to track me 24 hours a day because we both have the same destination in mind.

That’s probably why they decided there was no need to wiretap me.

When I first entered my room, I warily looked around the room.

Considering the strength of the walls and ceiling, there seems to be no danger of eavesdropping.

It is hard to imagine that there are any special devices in the room.

I don’t think there is any need to be that concerned about it.

The school’s dormitory is a 10-story building with 100 students on each floor, and my room is on the third floor of the 8th male dormitory.

The assignment of rooms was decided by the school.

It would be easy to deliberately set up a trap, but there are probably better ways to do it than to go that far.

Therefore, I decided to assume that there was no trap.

The dormitory is used by 20,000 students to begin with.

The rooms themselves are small, but they seem to be soundproofed to avoid noise disturbance.

As far as I can tell, I can’t hear a single noise from the room next door.

It is hard to believe that they are taking the trouble to hide their breath in their own room, so I should assume that the soundproofing is working well.

Personally, I don’t care much about noise, so I think it doesn’t matter either way.

But still.

I am not that interested in the features and facilities of the dormitory, especially since I haven’t brought any luggage.

The room only has a built-in bed and a simple table with drawers.

There is almost nothing to do in such a simple room.

After putting all of my baggage on the table in the corner of the room and preparing a change of clothes for tomorrow, there was nothing else left to do.

That’s about as much as I can do on the first day, I suppose.

There is only so much I can do, for better or worse.

Still, it should be a good thing that we got the bare minimum of information.

After taking a breath, I decided to lie in bed for the rest of the day.

I’ve done enough research.

Let’s start the game tomorrow.

After making such a decision, I closed my eyes and thought about my future plans.

First of all, let’s talk about the crucial match.

It is said that in the exam matches, you can only be forced to play once a day with a student of a lower rank than you.

It seems that if an opponent asks for a match, they cannot refuse, so they are set up for a match unconditionally.

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I think this system is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

If this system was not in place, it would be difficult for lower-ranked students to challenge the high-ranked students.

Even if you want to get to the top, if your opponents don’t want to play with you and don’t take you seriously, you won’t be able to compete.

So to avoid that situation, this system would force them to compete with the top students for student rankings.

However, the compulsion is only one battle.

You don’t have to deal with a lower-ranked person over and over again.

Perhaps, this is a measure to prevent the students from being bullied in a series of matches.

On the other hand, you can battle as many times as you want with higher-ranked students.

If you lose, you have nothing to lose.

However, if a student is challenged by a lower-ranked student immediately after a defeat, he may be further defeated and lose their ranking.

Of course, with a defeat of that magnitude, there would be no need to think too hard about it, as they could simply rematch the next day and get their ranking back.

The question is, how many battles can we have?

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Even if you want to challenge higher-ranked students, if someone else challenges them first, they may avoid the challenge due to the one challenge per day condition for lower-ranked students.

That said, I’m not sure if I can take on a higher ranked student and win.

It is difficult to even assume how much of a difference in ability there is without having played a match against a higher ranked opponent at least once.

The only way is to go on the exam site again tomorrow and actually fight.

After thinking that much, I decided to go straight to sleep today.