[251] System Operation (4)
Actually, Overflow wasn't such a big deal.
To ordinary people he'd look like an eccentric genius, but if you went to the Royal School of Magic it was full of kids like that.
Among them, only those who stood out and then clawed their way through fierce competition could even be called geniuses. That was the world of talent.
In any case, since she was on the job Olivia couldn't be careless. She smiled the smile that had charmed countless students and walked over to Dante.
"Hi. You're Dante, right?"
Dante didn't even raise his head. Olivia looked down at the gray hair like a storm cloud. Knowing this wouldn't be easy, she sat across from him to bring herself to his eye level.
The boy still only stared at the grass.
What was he looking at?
Olivia followed his gaze and lowered her head.
It was ordinary grass—no sign of buried treasure, no hidden corpse.
But with patience and persistent observation a tiny presence concealed in the scene revealed itself.
A procession of ants.
Is he interested in insects?
Olivia asked him.
"You like ants?"
....
As she expected, no answer came. But Olivia didn't press him.
She'd raised students as young as four and as old as thirty-something; she knew how to handle this.
"I hate ants. They're gross. They'll even chew up expensive furniture if they get into the house."
Olivia rattled off a meaningless anecdote.
"When I was little I saw ants swarming a worm's corpse. Ugh. Ever since then I've been scared of ants. You know, when they crawl all over you—"
"Those aren't ants."
Dante spoke for the first time.
Olivia smiled triumphantly.
Whatever awakening had given him Overflow, he was still a child. Once he spoke first, she expected he'd spill everything.
"You're reading channels, right?"
"Channels?"
Dante pointed at one of the ants threading through the grass.
"This ant is 1011001. That's the name I gave it. Its movement radius is four meters. It's a patrol — it circles the perimeter to check the territory."
Olivia watched closely.
Even though he'd labeled it 1011001, she couldn't find anything that distinguished it from the others.
Dante pointed to an ant climbing a bent blade of grass.
"This one is 1010111. It moves vertically. It climbs the grass to collect moisture. 1010101 over here is the same, and 1101001 is too."
Olivia felt awkward. She couldn't tell if he really remembered the ants' names or if he was inventing them on the spot to tease an adult.
"Ants carry out a single purpose. Those ants together activate the whole. That's a channel."
If Dante could read channels—if he was reading flow rather than form—then there was at least a sliver of possibility he could distinguish individual ants by role.
But was that really possible?
Strictly speaking, everything in the world is a channel.
If you could break down ant society into units of information, there would be nothing in the world you couldn't analyze.
As her eyes adjusted to the natural scene, Olivia's vision filled with ants.
Now that she noticed, the four‑meter radius was an entire field of them.
She got goosebumps, but curiosity about Dante outweighed disgust.
"So you mean you can read channels?"
Dante lifted his head. Olivia saw his face for the first time.
He was a pretty child. One side of his eye was bruised dark, as if he'd been hit by friends.
"That must have hurt."
"It's fine. I don't have to go to school anymore."
Most teachers would soothe him and send him back to class. Even without invoking hollow social norms, common sense would say don't run away—face it head on.
Olivia didn't try to persuade him. This boy was special. The instincts of a great mage told her so.
"Why don't you get along with the other kids? You didn't say a single word?"
"If you can't transmit anything, not speaking is the same as having said nothing. There's no reason to, so I didn't."
Dante made a disgusted face as he recalled that time.
"Friends talk a lot. But they're noise. Ants are different. They have purpose. Even ants that look purposeless are supporting other purposes."
Olivia became certain this was Overflow.
Dig deep into anything and you'll find a world utterly different from common sense.
Dante had entered that world far too early.
"This ant is 1010110, but it just follows 1010111. Yet that's very important. Because it's a channel. If nobody follows 1010111, nothing gets transmitted. Look closely—most ants exist only to maintain channels. Ants that do truly special work are very few. Can you tell them apart?"
Olivia smiled awkwardly and shook her head.
No matter how talented a mage she was, she couldn't distinguish the role of every member in an ant kingdom.
"If you watch all day it's fascinating. All the channels are connected. For example, ant 1111 just follows the one ahead to keep a channel, but surprisingly it's involved in almost every channel. If that ant were gone—"
Dante pressed his forefinger down on 1111. Olivia frowned, then widened her eyes as she sensed a change in the ant society.
The ant line collapsed and scattered in different directions. When a line spreads into a plane, the channel loses meaning.
The boy watched the ant kingdom crumble with sparkling eyes, smiling so purely it was chilling.
Olivia shivered. The ant Dante had pressed wasn't a soldier, nor was it specially important.
You can't bring down a system by suppressing a single ant.
No, that had always been her assumption. But Dante's action proved her common sense wrong.
A blind spot in an invisible system.
All the variables caused by neutralizing 1111 were being calculated inside Dante's head.
It was clear he perfectly understood the ant kingdom's system in ways the ants themselves didn't.
Dante looked up at Olivia and smiled.
"The queen will starve."
Another Sky (1)
Olivia watched eight years of growth in Dante and beamed with satisfaction.
"Dante has eyes that can read channels. And he strengthened them through training."
With the Immortal Function's gate closed, Shirone was frantic, dodging the barrage. A total of eighty‑six mansions were constantly reconfiguring, leaving him no time for other thoughts.
By contrast, Dante, who had entrusted the fighting to automatons, was calm. He could have sat there and read a book.
But I should return what was done to me.
Dante hovered over Pascal's magic circle. As he advanced slowly, hundreds of magic circles linked to Pascal surged toward Shirone in unison.
It felt as if a vast space was being moved as one.
Every time Shirone shifted, spells poured out in all directions like rotating gun ports.
Shirone felt like he was fighting an army. A massive host was slicing into his Spirit Zone.
Iruki's face twisted.
'Damn! How can he make that kind of magic—'
No countermeasure to Dante's system came to mind. Shirone hadn't been fatally wounded yet, but he couldn't dodge automated machinery forever.
Shirone knew that. He had no choice. And it wasn't as perfectly impossible as Iruki had thought.
'We just have to try.'
Shirone assumed one possibility and leapt into Pascal's center. Dante's mansions moved rapidly to raise firepower, but the faster they went the quicker Shirone chained his teleports.
He had to move.
He had to assimilate into Dante's channels.
After a while the students began to stir. It was a subtle, barely visible thing, but there was a sense that Shirone's movements were gradually meshing with Dante's system.
Nade sprang to his feet and shouted, "Instant teleport! So that's the way!"
Iruki grinned as if he'd landed a blow. "Teleportation is information. It's a strategy to get inside Dante's system and collapse it from within."
The Two‑Thousand Bracelet grew hotter. It was a sign that Pascal, tracking Shirone's movements, was being overloaded.
Shiina confirmed that the more complex Shirone's movements became, the faster Dante's mental gauge drained.
'So the outcome isn't decided yet?'
Alpheas let out a ragged breath. He felt a faint shiver run down his spine.
'Dante's ability is formidable. But his insight is also a terrifying talent that could rise to the top of the world.'
In a short time Shirone had pierced Pascal's weakness perfectly. Dante's automatons were flawless, but that's why you can't call anything truly perfect when humans are involved.
The one flaw in the impeccable Pascal.
It was Dante himself.
"I want to praise Dante for his perfect design. But it's still difficult. His spirit can't keep up with the tech."
Olivia had to admit it. It wasn't that she hadn't noticed Dante's weakness. Or rather, could you even call it a weakness?
Being young isn't a sin.
Dante would grow. Someday he'd surely reach a level where he could maintain Pascal for long periods.
But that didn't excuse him. The people facing Dante were in the same position.
Above all, Dante's durability wasn't lacking compared to his peers.
The only mistake Dante made in this match was facing Shirone, whose endurance was peerless.
'Perhaps… they met too early.'
It was regrettable that between Shirone and Dante one of them would have to bear the weight of defeat.
'No, that's true of anyone. There's no such thing as the right timing.'
The battle had already begun; time couldn't be turned back. Cold analysis still put Dante's win rate above seventy percent.
He could keep Pascal up for only about ten more minutes, and it was unreasonable to expect Shirone to last more than five minutes inside Dante's system.
"Even so, you probably won't beat Dante," Olivia said. "Not that I'm underestimating Shirone—the rarity of talent is different. Shirone doesn't have a means to destroy Dante's system."
Alpheas couldn't refute her. From his view, Shirone still had no clear advantage.
Even so, the boy gave them reason to hope.
'There must be something I don't know, Shirone.'
Shirone flew across the entire Two‑Thousand area. He'd been struck by countless spells while evading Dante's fire, but each time he paid the price for failure he adapted immediately.
Iruki was the first to notice and announced, "It's working. He's fully in."
At first nobody understood. But after ten seconds the students began whispering in astonishment.
Amid a battlefield blasted by infinite firepower, Shirone moved freely. It was as if the mansions automatically made way for him whenever he shifted.
Of course there was no actual linkage between Shirone and Pascal's movements; it was an optical illusion. Yet this phenomenon could only occur in one case.
"Shirone is reading the automaton's patterns perfectly."