Soon.
Three days passed.
Hoshinomiya Chie stood before the podium.
She began explaining the rules for the final special exam.
"In addition to following rules similar to ordinary baseball games, after hitting a base hit, the runner must correctly answer a question provided by the school to successfully stay on base. Home runs and returning to home base do not require answering questions."
"The difficulty of the questions is set to medium-high. Generally, a C+ academic evaluation is needed to answer correctly. Those with a B evaluation or higher can solve it within three minutes."
"The time for each question must not exceed three minutes. Just like in ordinary baseball, except for pinch hitters, the written portion allows the runner to designate a substitute to answer."
"Each team has a total of ten opportunities for a substitute answer. Substituting an answerer does not require replacing the participating player."
"Additionally, something to note."
"After exhausting the ten substitute answer opportunities, you can use private points to purchase more from the school. Each time costs 50,000 private points!"
"Finally, regarding the Captain's Privilege: the Captain must be on the field and possesses the right to direct base access. Whenever it is the Captain's turn, they are considered to have reached the base directly."
Over these three days.
Everyone had taken the time to understand baseball rules, so they could understand professional terms like "base hit."
A base hit means the batter hits the ball thrown by the pitcher into fair territory, allowing the batter to safely reach at least first base.
Maintaining a high answer rate under high-intensity exercise.
The difficulty was likely beyond imagination.
In fact.
It was essentially an impossible task.
High-intensity exercise inevitably leads to a state of mental hyper-arousal. Trying to calm down and solve a difficult test question within three minutes is almost impossible.
It was dangerous.
And yet, one must answer correctly.
Otherwise.
Even if you hit a base hit, it would be for nothing. The difficulty was extremely high.
Those good at sports would participate in the game, while those good at academics would be off-field, ready to take the tests at any time.
Furthermore.
It required the participants to have a sufficient understanding of everyone in the class.
They needed to know who was good at which subject.
Everyone's strong subjects were different; basically, everyone would be involved.
However.
While substitute answering was allowed, there were only ten opportunities.
In a game like baseball.
Ten opportunities would likely be used up in the blink of an eye.
Most importantly.
In previous special exams, there had never been a precedent for using private points. They were always used as insurance to protect comrades from expulsion.
While some rules could be bought with private points, testing private points.
Each exam usually had its own special points.
But now.
Private points directly interfered with the special exam, tangibly converting into a class advantage.
It was as if telling everyone that the more private points, the better.
Money is strength!
As long as a class had enough private points, they could infinitely purchase substitute answer chances, allowing the players to focus solely on the game.
This was an undeniable and massive advantage.
"Additionally, regarding rewards."
Hoshinomiya Chie said somewhat seriously:
"Based on the previous unanimous special exam, you chose Class C as your opponent. If you win, you will receive 50 Class Points."
"And if Class C wins, they will receive 100 Class Points."
"Using this reward as a baseline, at the end of the match, for every point you lead the opponent by, the reward is 0.5 * baseline reward + baseline reward. For example, if we win the game with a two-point lead."
"The reward would be 50 * 1 + 50, which is 100 Class Points."
"Huh?"
Shibata and the others said with some confusion: "Teacher, as the final special exam of the second year, isn't this reward a bit low? It's not even as much as the second-semester finals."
"No, that depends on how many points you can beat your opponent by! And..."
Both of Hoshinomiya Chie's eyes turned into money symbols.
"Furthermore, if the main starting lineup includes one female student who participates for six or more innings, the reward will be multiplied by 1 on top of the baseline."
"But it should be noted that any reward exceeding the baseline is plundered from the opposing class. Any deficiency is made up by the school."
"What?"
Hikigaya and the others were momentarily stunned.
Females are indeed on average physically inferior to males.
And baseball is a high-intensity sport that can easily last two or three hours.
But this reward was simply too much.
Taking their Class B as an example.
Suppose.
They used nine female students as the main lineup.
And ended the game early in the 7th inning with a ten-point lead.
Then.
In theory, the maximum reward could reach 700 Class Points, and Class B would directly double that to 1400 Class Points.
Even ascending directly from Class D to Class A in one step.
Would not be a problem!
Although Hikigaya had suggested to the school to significantly increase rewards to heighten the competitive spirit between classes.
He hadn't expected the school to play this big.
This exciting.
Of course.
These were all theoretical values.
Trying to win a game with nine female students, and having them play more than six innings, was clearly impossible.
If the team consisted entirely of girls, they would probably be crushed by the opponent.
Moreover.
While the reward for this match was theoretically high, the next one would likely be just as substantial.
Even with a brief defeat.
A class would not lose its chance to compete for Class A because of it.
"So."
Hoshinomiya Chie's eyes gleamed as she said:
"How many Class Points you want to obtain, how much risk you are willing to take, who you arrange to play, and who answers the questions—it's all up to you to decide. However, don't let money cloud your vision."
Silence.
"Teacher... your eyes have already turned into money symbols..."
But even so.
The members of Class B were still heart-pounded; the reward was truly too generous.
Summary of Rules.
Rule 1: The captain of the losing side will be expelled.
Rule 2: Base hits require answering questions. Only if the answer is correct is the hit successful. An incorrect answer counts as an out. The time limit for answering is three minutes.
(Question difficulty is C+ or above. Solving within three minutes requires an academic level of B, preferably scoring over 80 in the specific subject.)
Rule 3: Runners can designate a substitute answerer.
Rule 4: Substitute answerers do not need to replace the participating player. Pinch-hitting follows general baseball rules.
Rule 5: Substitute answers are limited to ten per team. Exceeding this allows for the purchase of substitute answer chances at 50,000 private points each.
Rule 6: Home runs and returning to home base do not require answering questions.
Rule 7: The captain has the right to direct base access without needing to hit or answer questions.
The rules were not particularly complex.
However, Hikigaya had a bit of a headache.
In his view, besides physical strength and academic ability, the biggest test was actually the level of understanding of one's comrades.
If a base hit was made.
If you couldn't do the problem yourself and didn't know who was good at that subject.
Then the hit was essentially wasted.
The captain has the right to direct base access. With such a privilege, situations with loaded bases would likely occur quite often.
Then.
There might frequently be situations where three people are answering questions simultaneously.
Those with outstanding academic ability would be very busy.
Looking at it this way.
Hikigaya felt somewhat helpless; if he had known, he wouldn't have let Ichinose be the captain.
It completely wasted Ichinose's academic ability.