Chapter 85: Side Story - The Correlated Axis

Chapter 85: Chapter 85: Side Story - The Correlated Axis

Kinko’s monologue, POV

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?The sudden, brutal flash of the central monitor ripped through the stunned silence of the classroom. The retroactive prediction results—which had just upended the entire board by handing Ginton a sweeping, unblemished victory—vanished beneath a fresh overlay of cold, metallic blue light.

?[INTERVAL 2 CONCLUDED]

?[PREPARATION WINDOW: INTERVAL 3]

?A thirty-second countdown began ticking downward in the corner of the screen, its harsh digital digits glowing like a heartbeat. The brief, fragile equilibrium we thought we had secured during the opening rounds had been violently dismantled.

?Yet, even as the shockwave of Ginton’s perfect prediction sweep settled over the room, the operational machinery of our rival factions did not hesitate. They were already moving.

?Three rows over, Fāng Xuě sat completely upright, her eyes tracking the countdown timer with absolute, unyielding focus. In the frantic seconds following the system update, her mind had already integrated the new data and synthesized the next phase of her campaign.

?After two intervals of silently watching it all play out, it became clear. The terms of the silent, unspoken pact between Faction A and Faction C were clean, brutal, and remarkably efficient:

?Capital Flow: Faction C would transfer a moderate, stabilizing amount of capital to Faction A for the next one or two intervals to keep A solvent.

?Reciprocal Return: Faction A would transfer a smaller, calculated amount back to C to maintain the ledger’s motion.

?Mutual Disarmament: Faction A agreed not to predict C’s incoming and outgoing transfers, and Faction C agreed to extend the exact same courtesy to A. It was obvious seeing Ginton hold back some predictions he might have already foreseen, keeping them to himself, not to mention Faction B only making two predictions, which could most likely be our faction’s.

?The Strategic Objective: Both factions would actively coordinate their transactional footprints to make Faction B’s predictive models look obsolete, forcing us into a corner of systemic uncertainty.

?It was an axis of convenience, forged in the fires of mutual desperation and directed entirely at isolating the dominant faction on the board.

?Across the aisle, Ginton didn’t even need to speak to his faction’s representatives. A single, subtle nod of his head was all it took for one of his trusted proxies to stand up, smoothing down his uniform jacket before addressing the room with calculated theatricality.

?"A brief public notice from Faction C," the proxy announced, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet hall. "C prioritizes Stability."

?It was another masterclass in the gray zone of the Lex Veritas Protocol. It wasn’t a lie—every faction technically prioritized stability to avoid system penalties—but the timing and the delivery were weapons. It was a public signal to Faction A that the terms of their private arrangement were fully active, while simultaneously throwing a dense smokescreen over whatever capital movements they were about to execute in Interval 3.

?In Faction B’s section, the tension was thick enough to choke on.

?Ichika leaned back against her chair, her fingers tightly interlaced as she looked between Ginton and Fāng Xuě. "They’re openly coordinating now," she whispered, her voice tight with suppressed frustration. "They formed an axis right in front of us, and C just used every prediction point they recovered to lock down the board. Nanami... what are we doing? Are we just going to sit here and let them box us in?"

?Reina kept her eyes locked on her terminal, her expression a mask of cold concentration. "If we retaliate blindly, we walk straight into the trap Ginton just laid. His predictive sweep proved that he can reverse-engineer our defensive counters before we even execute them."

?All eyes in our core circle slowly drifted toward me. They were waiting for the command—waiting for the tactical pivot, the defensive counter-strike, or the angry pushback that a leading faction was supposed to make under pressure.

?I just sat there next to Nanami, blending completely into the group, doing nothing but listening.

?Nanami didn’t move a muscle.

?Her fingers rested lightly against the surface of her tablet, completely idle. She didn’t type a single character, nor did she issue a frantic instruction to her members. She simply watched, cataloging every micro-expression, every delayed heartbeat, and every calculated glance passing between Faction A and Faction C.

?Trying to break their coalition right now would be an amateur mistake. A public axis built on mutual survival was inherently brittle, but attacking it prematurely would only validate Ginton’s models and force them into tighter, more dangerous synchronization.

?Instead, she chose absolute stillness.

?Her members followed her lead, maintaining a heavy, disciplined silence that radiated calm indifference across the aisle. They were absorbing the pressure without returning a single ounce of kinetic energy, starving them of the behavioral data they desperately needed to calibrate their next attack.

They’re going to crash. Hard.

Look at them over there, arguing internally about what next.

If they had walked into the test with only that strategy they had, it’s not going to be a test; it’s going to be a crime scene.

I could step over. I should?. It would take me, what, a few minutes to straighten out their notes? But this test?. I know exactly what’s going to be on the test but—

But then what?

The second I open my mouth, I’m the designated savior. They’ll start asking a million questions. They’ll want me to explain the entire syllabus from week one.

Suddenly, their panic becomes my panic. My neat, quiet, perfectly organized evening gets swallowed whole by a black hole of group anxiety. I can already feel my chest tightening just thinking about the frantic energy vibrating off that table.

Why do I always feel responsible for fixing things? The test clearly isn’t that important for me.

They had the same weeks to prepare that I did but wasted it on some investigations.They had the same weeks to prepare that I did but wasted it on some investigations.

?On the massive black monitor, the countdown numbers bled away into nothingness.

?[INTERVAL 3 COMMENCING]

?The digital chime rang out, sharp and final. The board unlocked, and the next phase of the war began.

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"As a group one’s problems should be shared"

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