Classroom of the Elite: Crimson Usurper (Volume 4)

Chapter 5: The Irony

(Rewriting some parts of Volume 4 since it may seem like the strategy came out of nowhere)

"HOW ironic. It seems like the tables have turned." Horikita snorted.

"Ironic indeed, but let's go to an emptier place. I don't want anyone overhearing us."

All three of us went to a more closed and silent place. 

"Come on Horikita. Just tell him." I begged.

"And from the beginning too." Ayanokouji added.

"Alright." Horikita took a small, deep breathe before continuing.

"After Shinjiro-kun apologized to me, he was wondering if I had a plan in mind to win. To be quite frank, I did, but not the one I used now."

Horikita's original plan wasn't the best, that's for sure.

"After talking a bit with Shinjiro-kun, he made me realize something. He was rereading the rules of the exam when he spoke in a loud tone about emails. In which, you could not modify, change, delete or transfer an email to misinform other students."

However, there was something people didn't catch on.

"Although we can't do that, there wasn't any rules stating that the teachers couldn't. In this school, you can buy most with private points. There was a chance that this idea wouldn't get accepted."

Horikita continued on,

"The rules were directed only to the students, not the teachers. This would mean that the teachers could influence the emails. Of course here, they can only send the emails. In this case, they can use the emails sent by the school and send it to the students."

"After learning upon this, me and Shinjiro-kun went Chabashira-sensei to confirm, in which she did." Horikita continued. "Due to how this could sweep the entire exam, there was a system in place where the number of emails sent by the teacher is heavily limited."

Since we couldn't make the teacher send the emails in every group as we were allowed to only receive 4 emails, that meant that we had to strategically select certain groups. However, that would only win use some groups, not most of them.

"There had to be another way for us to win the other Zodiac Groups if the fabricated emails were heavily limited to prevent us from winning the exam with one sweep...There was a pattern of how the VIPs were chosen. Ryuen-kun managed to figure it out with 6 VIPs but Shinjiro-kun was able to induce it to only 3 VIPs, being our VIPs."

Horikita looked at me. Horikita was also able to figure out how VIPs were chosen but she was giving me praise. Thank you, ma'am.

"And thanks to him, we were able to figure out who was the VIP in each Zodiac Group. Of course we were still skeptical, however one of the Zodiac Groups ended and we confirmed it to be the exact VIP we predicted."

As she previously said, the way the VIPs are chosen are through a specific and linear pattern. The Zodiac groups from the exam are based on the actual Chinese Zodiac groups, from 1 to 12. 

The pattern is matching the order of the Zodiac Group with the alphabetical order of student names in that group, essentially what Ryuen said back when we were awaiting the results. 

I asked Horikita to ask our classmate to make a list of all the people that were present in their group with their full names. If I were to explain it in detail, it would undoubtedly turn this conversation even longer.

"Using our knowledge of all VIPs, we made it so certain groups, specifically 4 of them, were to betray the group, submitting the VIP's name. One student is assigned in doing this. Our goal for this part was to gain 200 class points, but thanks to Koenji-kun, it went up to 250 class points that we've earned."