“Then, let’s begin the competition without further ado!”
“First up is the footrace.”
As before, the competition’s operations were handled by volunteers and golems.
While the entire 200-meter dash could be seen from the spectator stands, it was also projected onto massive magi-screens thanks to the magic eyes installed along the track.
There were five magic eyes in total: one at the start, one at the finish, and three positioned along the course. They were even capable of recording for slow-motion playback.
“Every participant is at the starting line!”
A heavy silence dominated the stadium.
“Ready... go!”
A thunderous boom echoed as the starting line was gouged out. This was despite the ground having been reinforced with both hardening and toughening magic.
A mere instant later...
“Finish.”
A voice rang out. The toneless, flat declaration belonged to a golem.
A human likely wouldn’t have been able to tell who won or lost with the naked eye. After all, everyone had crossed the finish line in roughly a second.
(Ah, I guess two hundred meters was way too short...) Jin thought.
“I—I’m not even sure how to describe that. It was incredible,” Luckhart, the MC, stammered in bewilderment.
“They were all amazing. Though I couldn’t see a thing,” Sion added, her tone a mix of amazement and exasperation.
“Let’s play back the recording so the audience can see what happened,” Stayhart suggested.
The ultra-large magi-screen displayed the footage of the finish.
“Oh, there it is!”
In the span of a fraction of a second, all thirteen contestants had crossed the line. Luckhart began reading out the results. Since they were automata, he addressed them by their individual names.
“First place, Bib #11, Reiko! Her time was 0.54 seconds—that’s a staggering speed of three hundred and seventy meters per second!”
It was a supersonic sprint. The thunderous boom from the start had been a shockwave, not just the sound of the ground giving way.
“Second place, Bib #13, Hanako! Third place, Bib #10, Alice!”
When Rubina’s Alice was announced in third place, a roar of applause erupted from the crowd.
“Fourth place, Bib #12, Momoko! Everyone up to this point was moving at the speed of sound or faster!”
The MC knew this because data was being fed to him directly from Testa. Momoko’s time was 0.59 seconds, which equated to 339 meters per second.
“Fifth place, Bib #2, Merry! Sixth, Bib #1, Nave! Seventh, Bib #8, Clark! Eighth, Bib #5, Allen!”
The top eight participants were all moving at over 300 meters per second.
“Ninth place, Bib #3, Melanie! Tenth, Bib #4, Shal! Eleventh, Bib #9, Cyrus! Twelfth, Bib #6, Liddel! And in thirteenth place, Bib #7, Leila!”
“Even though Leila came in last, her time was 0.73 seconds—two hundred and seventy-four meters per second. The gap between first and last is a mere 0.19 seconds. This is an absolutely insane level of competition,” Stayhart Randol added, his voice full of disbelief.
“Well done, Reiko.”
Jin praised Reiko as she returned to him.
“Thank you, Father. I kept my output at thirty percent as you instructed. Was that sufficient?”
“More than enough.”
Reiko had not been constructed from Onogoro Island materials, so Jin had imposed a self-restraint, limiting her output to thirty percent to keep things fair for the local entries.
(Even so, a two-hundred-meter dash is so fast it’s hard to even enjoy the spectacle...) Jin reflected.
“Next up is the obstacle race!”
“This should be interesting.”
“To ensure the contestants don’t interfere with one another, a separate set of obstacles has been prepared for each lane.”
The first obstacle was the balance beam. It was only one millimeter wide but stretched for one hundred meters. If a contestant fell, they had to return to the beginning and start over. Jumping over it was strictly forbidden.
Next was the zigzag course. Twenty rectangular gates, each one meter wide and two meters high, were set up over a two-hundred-meter stretch. The automata had to pass through them without touching a single one. Naturally, the gates were positioned so that a straight-line approach was impossible.
Following that was the pool. They had to swim one hundred meters through a pool filled with a liquid with a density of 0.2. Again, jumping over it was not allowed.
Then came the wall climb. They had to scale a vertical, one-hundred-meter granite wall using only their arms. Jumping over the wall was prohibited, as was the use of force generators. There were no restrictions on the descent.
The final stretch was a gravity field area. Gravity magic was used to increase the weight of the environment over a two-hundred-meter distance. Near the entrance, the gravity was 10G; it gradually increased until reaching 50G at the exit. Force generators were banned here as well.
The finish line lay just beyond that field.
“Alright, everyone is at the starting line. Ready... go!”
Once again, the contestants dashed forward. Because this was an obstacle race, there were no shockwaves this time. Even so, it took barely more than a second for everyone to leap onto their balance beams.
“Oh! They’re fast! Incredibly fast! They’ve all cleared the balance beams in the blink of an eye!”
Reiko was in the lead at this stage, followed closely by Alice, Hanako, and Momoko.
“They’ve entered the zigzag course! Cracking the ground that’s been treated with hardening and toughening, they’re darting left and right to clear the gates!”
“Everyone is doing their best. There’s hardly any gap between them at all.”
Reiko maintained her lead, but the distance between her and the current last-place contestant, Bib #3, Melanie, was less than ten meters.
“I suspect Melanie is finding it difficult to move because of that tight skirt,” Stayhart noted.
“The frontrunner, Lady Reiko, has dived into the pool! She’s fast! So fast!”
“That pool is filled with a low-density liquid,” Stayhart explained. “Low density means low resistance, which might sound like it’s easier to swim in, but it actually means your limbs can’t get a proper grip on the liquid. Furthermore, you can’t float in it. Since the pool is five meters deep, you’ll simply sink.”
“Despite that, her speed is incredible... It just goes to show how extraordinary Reiko-chan is,” Sion remarked.
True to Sion’s words, the pool was where the field began to separate. Bib #8, Clark, and Bib #9, Cyrus, had sunk to the bottom and were struggling to make progress.
The standings so far were: Bib #11 Reiko, Bib #10 Alice, Bib #13 Hanako, Bib #12 Momoko, Bib #1 Nave, Bib #2 Merry, Bib #4 Shal, Bib #7 Leila, Bib #6 Liddel, Bib #3 Melanie, Bib #5 Allen, Bib #9 Cyrus, and Bib #8 Clark.
“Lady Reiko has leaped out of the pool and is making a beeline for the wall!”
The obstacle was a vertical one-hundred-meter wall of granite. It was covered in plenty of protrusions and indentations, making it a simple enough task for an automaton with high physical strength.
Luckhart, the MC, had alternated between calling her "Reiko" and "Reiko-chan," but he seemed to have finally settled on "Lady Reiko."
“Oh, Lady Reiko is as fast as ever!”
“Reiko-chan is quite light, after all.”
Using even the tiniest nooks in the stone, Reiko nimbly scaled the wall. As long as she could hook a single fingernail into a crack, she could support her weight.
Since Jin had painstakingly applied hardening and toughening magic to the wall, there was no danger of the stone crumbling under her grip. She reached the top in moments.
With no restrictions on the descent, she casually hopped down from the hundred-meter height. The reinforced ground cracked under the impact of her landing, but Reiko ignored it and headed toward the final obstacle.
By the time Reiko had jumped down, the other automata were still fighting their way up the wall. The fastest among them was Rubina’s Alice.
“Bib #10, Alice, is incredible! She’s leaving Bib #13 and #12 behind and has already reached the summit!”
Following Reiko’s example, Alice leaped down from the top of the wall. She landed perfectly and charged into the gravity field.