Chapter 105: UA Sports Festival Obstacle Course

Midnight finally had enough of all the noise. "Keep quiet!" she commanded as a massive screen lit up directly behind her. "Now, let’s get started right away! The first game is what you’d call a qualifier! Every year, a lot of students drink their tears here! Now, here is the fateful first game!"

The screen started rolling a bunch of random words extremely fast, spinning through choices until it finally stopped. "This year it’s... this! Obstacle Race!"

"All eleven courses will participate in this race," Midnight explained, looking around at the kids as she laid out the rules. "The course will be the outer circumference of the stadium, around four kilometers, give or take! Our school’s selling point is freedom!" Midnight licked her lips with a theatrical smile. "As long as you stay on the course, it doesn’t matter what you do! Now, take your places, everyone!"

All of the students instantly moved toward the big, narrow gate as a digital timer started a countdown. The field was tense; the students had way more information on each other than they did in the canon timeline. Thanks to the shared training dimension, everyone had a rough idea of what everyone else could do, which meant Class 1-A and 1-B were immediately being targeted as the threats to beat. Still, for the kids in the hero course, that target didn’t matter.

Bakugo kept letting off small, rhythmic blasts from his palms to start heating up his sweat glands. Todoroki exhaled deeply, a cold mist appearing around his lips as he stared straight ahead. Nearby, Momo Yaoyorozu had already materialized several specialized defensive items while she waited. And, of course, Izuku had deliberately stayed in the back, quietly concentrating as he activated Full Cowl; he pushed his output up to a stable 20%. Thanks to his training, he could manage up to 25% without much strain, and if he needed a burst of speed, he could push it to 35% for a few minutes before muscle tears started setting in.

Present Mic started hyping up the audience again, and as soon as the timer hit zero, the massive gates flew open. "START!"

The wave of kids instantly started shoving and pushing each other, desperately trying to jam through the narrow exit to gain an early advantage. Naturally, Todoroki was the first one to make a definitive move. Pushing his right leg forward, he unleashed a massive wave of ice, freezing the ground instantly to lock down the competition.

However, the hero course students had already planned for it. While most students in the general studies and support courses were immediately frozen in place, not a single student from Class 1-A or 1-B was caught by the sudden freezing attack. Seeing his opening move fail to clear out his main rivals, Todoroki didn’t look discouraged in the slightest; he simply ignored the setback and dashed forward into the tunnel.

Izuku, sitting at the very back of the pack, leaped over the initial ice wave. With his enhanced speed, he started running effortlessly along the walls and on top of the frozen, stuck students. He looked like a green blur as he began rapidly passing the crowd, moving toward the front of the pack.

Izuku took no time at all to catch up to Todoroki and the rest of the front-runners. Todoroki was about to unleash another massive ice blast to slow his classmates, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw the obstacle ahead. Hundreds of mock villain robots materialized in their path, including around a dozen towering zero-pointers blocking the entire way. Changing his strategy, Todoroki froze the giant mechs in a fragile, unstable stance and passed through as fast as he could.

Meanwhile, Izuku managed to catch up and blow right past Todoroki without even pushing himself too hard. Thanks to the massive boost to all his physical stats from his quirk, he started pulling farther and farther away from the rest of the pack.

Todoroki tried to accelerate to close the gap but couldn’t match the green blur. Bakugo, seeing Izuku effortlessly pass him without even bothering to look his way, grew more furious with each passing second. Realizing he was losing ground fast, he decided to reveal one of his hidden cards. Rhythmically timed explosions popped from his feet and palms, letting him navigate the air faster and effortlessly with a hyper-optimized mobility technique. While the remaining students from the other courses struggled with the standard 1-, 2-, and 3-pointer robots, most of Class 1-A had already broken away. In the canon timeline, Yaoyorozu used a cannon to blast the zero-pointers apart, creating a path for the other students; this time, she ignored the crowd, materialized a sleek pair of ice skates, and coasted smoothly down the frozen trail Todoroki had left behind. 𝖋𝘳ℯ

The moment Izuku arrived at the second obstacle, the Pitfall, he instantly got goosebumps. Thanks to Vice Admiral Garp’s brutal conditioning, he could use his body infinitely better than before, but just remembering the terrifying times the old marine had thrown him into rocky ravines and bottomless pits made him shiver. Shaking his head to clear the trauma, he took off. Instead of balancing across the narrow ropes, Izuku simply leaped across the massive, bottomless pits, making it safely to the other side in about a dozen colossal bounds. Glancing back over his shoulder, he spotted Bakugo making an aerial beeline straight toward him. Seeing the smoke and fire trail behind the angry blonde made him hurry.

"DEKU!" Bakugo roared across the canyon.

Izuku ignored the yelling behind him. Instead, he focused, pushed his Full Cowl output a bit higher, and sped up as he entered the final leg of the race. While 90% of the students were still hopelessly trapped behind the frozen debris the zero-pointers had left behind, 100% of the hero course students from A and B had smoothly made it past that bottleneck. A few kids with non-physical quirks lagged slightly behind the lead pack, but compared to the general studies students, their overall physical conditioning gave them an advantage.

Izuku finally burst into the last section: the minefield. If the students paid close attention, they could spot the slight distortions in the dirt almost instantly. However, stepping on just one would violently blast a runner away, potentially triggering a catastrophic chain reaction. Izuku got an idea. Instead of slowing down to navigate the field safely, he focused on the exit and rushed forward at maximum speed. His heavy footsteps detonated the mines beneath him, but his enhanced speed was so great that the explosive force and blasts couldn’t catch up and make him waver. He simply outran the explosions.

Bakugo was hot on his tail. Thanks to his aerial advantage, he’d skipped the second and third obstacles entirely, but no matter how violently he detonated his palms, he couldn’t close the gap on the frontrunner. "Deku, you bastard! Don’t you dare ignore me!"

Todoroki, meanwhile, had stayed significantly more composed and calculated than in the canon timeline. He kept a steady, easy pace, not even attempting to burn himself out to catch the two front-runners. Thanks to Midnight’s explanation of the rules, he kept the core objective in mind: only the top 42 runners would qualify for the next stage. Instead of burning his fuel early, he held back and conserved energy for the brackets ahead.

Izuku cleared the minefield in record time and made a final, powerful dash through the concrete tunnel. Bursting into the blinding stadium light, he crossed the finish line as the first-place winner. A few seconds later, Bakugo skidded into the arena, his face red with pure, unadulterated fury.

Up in the VIP stands, Gray had already pulled his video camera back out the moment he noticed the lead runners entering the tunnel. He started recording the second Izuku passed through the gates, immediately zooming in on Bakugo’s trembling, enraged expression. He fully planned on making a hilarious compilation for the kid later. Since the explosive blonde had been arrogant enough to declare he’d be number one on the podium in front of the whole stadium, Gray was going to record every single one of his shortcomings to show him the next time he started getting rowdy in class.

Students started arriving one by one, filing through the concrete tunnel. Eventually, every single student from Class 1-A and 1-B had successfully made it through the gates. Only two students from the other departments passed the qualifiers: Hitoshi Shinso from the general studies department and Mei Hatsume from the support course.

Mirko leaned forward in her seat, her eyes locked onto the giant monitors as the stadium began playing high-speed replays of the race. Seeing how Izuku had casually outsped the entire field and run straight through a detonating minefield got her incredibly hyped. Gray, noticing the feral, fight-hungry glint in her eyes, let out a loud sigh.

"Please don’t traumatize the kid," he muttered.

"I won’t!" Mirko shot back, narrowing her eyes as she looked over at him. "But looking at how he moves... what the hell have you been doing to that kid?"

"Nothing?" Gray shrugged casually, leaning back in his seat. "The kid simply put in the effort inside the Training Dimension. If the other brats took their training as seriously as he did, they would have finished the course a whole lot faster..."

Down on the field, Present Mic’s booming voice began reverberating around the stadium once more. "We’ll make a list of the results later! For now, excellent work out there, listeners!"

The qualified students gathered in the center of the arena. From his vantage point, Gray watched Ochaco Uraraka happily jog over to congratulate a panting Izuku, while Tenya Iida stood a few feet to the side, looking deeply depressed as he stared silently down at his own hands.

A few minutes later, Midnight took the podium again, cracking her riding crop through the air to command attention. "The first game of the first-year stage is finally over!" she declared, gesturing dramatically toward the massive digital board behind her. "Now, take a look at the official results!"

The screen flashed, displaying the final placement of the forty-two students who would be moving on to the next round:

1- Izuku Midoriya (Class 1-A)

2- Katsuki Bakugo (Class 1-A)

3- Shoto Todoroki (Class 1-A)

4- Momo Yaoyorozu (Class 1-A)

5- Ibara Shiozaki (Class 1-B)

6- Juzo Honenuki (Class 1-B)

7- Tenya Iida (Class 1-A)

8- Fumikage Tokoyami (Class 1-A)

9- Eijiro Kirishima (Class 1-A)

10- Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu (Class 1-B)

11- Mina Ashido (Class 1-A)

12- Yuga Aoyama (Class 1-A)

13- Tsuyu Asui (Class 1-A)

14- Ochaco Uraraka (Class 1-A)

15- Mezo Shoji (Class 1-A)

16- Hanzo Tsung (Class 1-B)

17- Neito Monoma (Class 1-B)

18- Itsuka Kendo (Class 1-B)

19- Koji Koda (Class 1-A)

20- Rikido Sato (Class 1-A)

21- Kyoka Jiro (Class 1-A)

22- Toru Hagakure (Class 1-A)

23- Hanta Sero (Class 1-A)

24- Denki Kaminari (Class 1-A)

25- Minoru Mineta (Class 1-A)

26- Mashirao Ojiro (Class 1-A)

27- Nirengeki Shoda (Class 1-B)

28- Yui Kodai (Class 1-B)

29- Sen Kaibara (Class 1-B)

30- Togaru Kamakiri (Class 1-B)

31- Shihai Kuroiro (Class 1-B)

32- Kosei Tsuburaba (Class 1-B)

33- Manga Fukidashi (Class 1-B)

34- Pony Tsunotori (Class 1-B)

35- Reiko Yanagi (Class 1-B)

36- Jurota Shishida (Class 1-B)

37- Hiryu Rin (Class 1-B)

38- Kinoko Komori (Class 1-B)

39- Setsuna Tokage (Class 1-B)

40- Kojiro Bondo (Class 1-B)

41- Mei Hatsume (Support Department)

42- Hitoshi Shinso (General Studies)

Midnight continued explaining, "The top 42 will continue to the next stages, but not to worry if you didn’t make it! We have prepared other chances for you to shine."

She cracked her whip to the side. "The real competition begins now!"

The screen behind her started rolling again, shuffling through options just like it did for the first stage.

"Now then, here is the next game!" The screen behind her stopped, locking onto the final choice. "Cavalry Battle!"

She continued, "Let me explain. The participants can form teams of two to four people as they wish. It’s basically the same as a regular cavalry battle, but there is a catch!"

The screen behind her flashed again, this time showing the same list of 42 students who had just passed the qualifiers. Only this time, specific point values had been assigned to each name.

"Based on the results of the previous race, each one of you has been assigned a point value," she explained with a smile. "Starting from the bottom, you get 5 points, and the value goes up by 5 for each placement." She cracked her riding crop to the side once more, and the final number-one spot on the board flashed brightly. "The number-one spot gets 10 million points!"

Instantly, every single student in the arena turned their heads toward Izuku, staring at him as if he were the very last bottle of water in a scorching desert.

Izuku let out a loud sigh as he looked around at the predatory glints in everyone’s eyes. "Well... shit."

Midnight chuckled as the tension in the stadium spiked, clearly enjoying the dramatic shift in the atmosphere. "Keep your eyes on the prize, people!" she called out, gesturing toward the giant board. "The points assigned to each person are added together to create your total team value! Your goal is to steal headbands from other teams and rack up as many points as possible before the clock runs out!"

"You have exactly fifteen minutes to negotiate and form your teams!" Midnight announced, cracking her riding crop through the air to start the countdown. "Choose your partners wisely, because everyone is coming for that number one spot! BEGIN!"