The 20th installment of the DanMachi main story!

A huge shockwave, Orario vs. the school district competition [City Sports Festival] -- the Orario Piad is about to begin!

"We will not tolerate the tyranny of the guild!"

Student protests break out!

After the hardest metal, Orichalcum, is confiscated, the students of the "School District" explode in discontent.

With all communication with Orario severed and the whole city in uproar, the festival-loving gods would not miss this opportunity!

"Orario vs School District Representative Match!

The city athletic festival is about to begin!"

Funnily enough I just said recently that they could have their next big conflict be surrounding the Guild and now they're doing exactly that.

Also based on the title and the cover that's been going around, the SS most likely will be about Horn and Heith working at the Hostess of Fertility.

Whaaattt? That Deep Floor Elevator idea that was very obviously stupid is, in fact, turning out to be stupid?

@AP24 There's no way a Level 5 is going to join the athletic competition. Even if they tried to hide his identity, they couldn't trust that he wouldn't be cheating and any win of his would be suspect at best. Far more likely it'll be Nina on the students side, or the others of HF on Orario's side.

Of course watch Oomori go ahead and make him compete anyway.

I thought the consequences of the Guild hoarding the Orichalcum would be the dungeon elevator malfunctioning after it starts operating. Didn’t expect it would be this.

@ThatRabidPotato

You forgot the School District has Leon who is most likely Lv7. If Leon participates then Bell can too. The Orariopiad is probably the promised adventure that Bell and Leon will be in.

It's a competition for students vs adventurers. Leon isn't even a student. And of course Level 7 competing against Level 5 is just an automatic win for the Level 7, so there's no point. AND Leon wanted to work WITH Bell on an adventure, not against him.

If Leon is involved with this mess at all, it'll be in his capacity as a teacher, likely as a judge of the contests.

I still think it likeliest that Bell will be doing something completely different than this. But we'll see.

According to the synopsis, Bell & Leon would be on the same side. As for the sports festival, they can simply separate the activity into categories, we do use things like weight as the standard separation for competition so there is no reason why they doesn't do something similar with levels & maybe the age too.

Additionally with Loki Familia being on expedition, Ganesha Familia playing police as always, Freya Familia occupied at Mia bar & technically disbanded, most of Orario 1st tier adventurers & a big portion of the 2nd Tier won't participate anyways.

Which is even more reason for Bell and Leon to not compete; there'd be no fair competition for them no matter which side they played for.

Why would a teacher participate a school festival ? I don't see that happening except for a spectacle fight like in Grand Day or if Ottar come wanting for a fight.

Bell can also help Leon by playing the role of assistant coach while Leon is the coach of the Teams School District or they can trully act as captain for once & went solving Finn style with probably Eina assistance the initial problem (Royman) that caused this whole situation in the first place.

Bell and Leon will most likely be on an adventure while this is going on honestly.

Bell could be in attendance during the festival to cheer on the people he knows but that's all I really see from him during the festival since he will most likely be preoccupied with this.

To be fair, competing in a School Festival would still fall under the definition of an "adventure". It would be weird for Bell to just not be directly involved in the main plot of the book.

It's also possible that the Festival isn't about pure fighting and involves different types of activities to compete against, to make it more balanced. Especially since if Bell is still undercover, he definitely wouldn't be able to compete in a fight while lying about his Level.