Chapter 267: The Conception Inside Ryuen Kakeru's Brain

The morning sun streamed through the wooden window glass, striking the group dormitory room and forming rising pillars of light. Fine dust danced within them, illuminating one sleeping face after another in the dim room in turn.

Today was Sunday, the fourth day of the joint camp exam. A rare rest day. No annoying broadcast to disturb them.

After several consecutive days of high-intensity classes, plus the occasional major battle erupting within the group, even though most of the group’s members had decent physical fitness, mental exhaustion was still unavoidable.

Inside the room, as the warm sunlight streamed in, it added a touch of laziness to the already quiet dormitory.

By eight o’clock, aside from Kouenji Rokusuke, who had gotten up early and disappeared off to who-knew-where, everyone else lay in their own bunks, enjoying this rare moment of peace.

After several days of probing, the content of the final day’s exam had been roughly confirmed. Four items in total.

[Zen]

That was the morning and evening zazen. Scoring was based on the etiquette before sitting and the posture of the sitting itself.

[Road Relay]

On the exam day, the group would run a relay race with a total distance of eighteen kilometers. The finishing time would be weighted against the group’s headcount to determine the specific ranking.

[Speech]

Ryuen had already demonstrated this once. No need to elaborate further.

[Written Exam]

Centered on moral questions, students would explain their views on various social phenomena, ranked directly by score.

Aside from the road relay, which had to be held outside the forest school, the remaining three were exams where a student could achieve a decent result through their own efforts alone. At the same time, these three exams were also hard to manipulate with schemes.

About half an hour later, the boys in their bunks began to get up one after another, rustling into their clothes, preparing to wash up.

“Yo, everyone. How are you planning to spend today?”

Class A’s social peacock, the bat-diplomat spokesperson, Hashimoto Masayoshi, was the first to speak.

“No idea.” Shibata So scratched the back of his head and grinned. “Probably go wander around the school with Kanzaki and the others…”

“No thanks.” Yukimura Teruhiko wiped the fog off his lenses with a lens cloth and put his glasses back on. “I’m planning to read through yesterday’s handouts a few more times. Watanabe, be careful. Don’t get lost.”

“Relax, relax. We’re just taking a walk around the forest school. Oh, right,” Watanabe Norihito replied with a smile, then seemed to remember something and looked at Satonaka Satoru in the neighboring bed. “Satonaka, want to come along later?”

After a few days of getting along, the atmosphere in the group had undoubtedly become a bit friendlier.

And in this Ryuen group, where everyone had non-human stamina, the three of them, the physical fitness dropouts, had formed a band of brothers-in-misfortune to survive this savage environment, watching out for each other.

“No, Tsukasaki and the others asked me to play a tabletop game.” Satonaka bent down to tie his sneaker laces.

“Huh, you guys actually brought that stuff?” Yukimura was a little surprised. “Seems there really isn’t a rule against bringing cards.”

“I heard Katsuragi’s group gets along pretty harmoniously. They play like crazy every night,” Watanabe said, tugging at the corner of his mouth, his voice lowering a notch. “Compared to ours…”

“Well, well, it should get a bit better in a few days, right?”

With a zip, Satonaka pulled his zipper up, stood, and headed for the door.

“Well then, see you all. Have fun.”

“See you.”

“See you tonight.”

The dormitory group waved goodbye to him amicably. A few seconds later, the room’s main door clicked shut, and Satonaka vanished completely behind the door.

At this moment, Ryuen Kakeru, sleeping near the door and having witnessed everything, silently sat up. A smile of certain victory appeared on his face.

Don’t let the past few days of him and Hashimoto going at each other like cats and dogs fool you. The truth was, he had never for a single moment forgotten his true objective: to find the mastermind he’d been dreaming of!

According to the conception inside his brain, the damned mastermind should be someone who on the surface hid among the crowd, got along harmoniously with everyone, and whose abilities seemed unremarkable at first glance. But behind the scenes, he was actually a sweet-faced villain hiding in a dark corner, leering with two sleazy eyes, only capable of petty tricks!

Based on the mastermind clues he had gathered over these two semesters.

First, his looks couldn’t be bad. At minimum, he had to be handsome. He had already had people repeatedly confirm Albert’s aesthetic tendencies. No problem there.

Second, he had to have strong personal connections. Otherwise, it would be impossible to spread a video of his humiliation everywhere in a single day.

Third, to be able to play him around in circles, his own hidden strength couldn’t be bad.

Finally, to have eluded his investigation for two whole semesters without a single scrap of information, it meant he didn’t act easily in normal times.

In summary.

That damned gutter-dwelling stinking rat, the best suspect is you!

Satonaka Satoru!

Ranked first in the grade for “male students you’d most want to date,” even above that Hirata Yosuke. Thinking about it carefully, for Albert to take one look and instinctively judge someone handsome, it couldn’t possibly be a piece of goods like Yamauchi Haruki.

Handsome looks bringing extremely high popularity, while also possessing strong intelligence capabilities.

Next in line after him were first-year Class D’s Yukimura Teruhiko and first-year Class B’s Watanabe Norihito.

In the Hirata Yosuke incident back then, to have timed it so precisely, the mastermind must have known Horikita Suzune’s plan. The people present at the time included Class B and Class D students. It wouldn’t be strange if the operation had leaked by accident.

Then, next…

Ryuen slowly clenched his open palm into a fist, and the corner of his mouth twisted into a cruel smile.

He only needed to investigate one by one, and he’d be close to peeling that bastard’s damned rat skin off. Surely he’d sensed Ryuen closing in step by step, and was already trembling in fear behind the scenes, right?

“Heh… heh haha—!” A laugh trembling with excitement spilled from his throat.

“What are you doing?”

A sudden voice abruptly sounded from beside Ryuen. Fuyuji Mikage, dressed and about to head out, glanced at him strangely.

“Having your unification-of-Advanced-Nurturing daydream again? Still not awake?”

“Get lost, Class A weirdo. None of your business here!”

The smug laughter cut off abruptly. Ryuen shut his mouth, let out a cold snort, lay down, turned over, and pulled the blanket up, turning his back to Fuyuji. This kind of reasonably capable, ordinary-passersby face was not within his hunting range.

“Ahh…”

Fuyuji let out a regretful sigh, shook his head, and reached out to twist open the door.

“It’s really rare to see someone whose chuunibyou still hasn’t healed at this point.”

With that, he walked straight out of the room. With a soft click, the door shut again, completely cutting off the view inside.

He was going to meet up with his few cute girls.