Mudwell Sweep Operation
Even with money doing most of the heavy lifting… factoring in the time it took to prepare a fireworks festival and promote it to the public, it wasn't going to open overnight.
"I'm bored…!"
I wanted to see Siyun and Carmen get all flustered already!
Cecilia, completely oblivious to my feelings on the matter, was diligently teaching class.
Still, today was less boring than most. I actually had something I needed to do.
Of course I didn't want to work—but sometimes even work beat sitting around bored out of your mind.
And what I was doing today wasn't the usual cleaning, either.
This wasn't some bounty. It was a request that had come to me!
Well—not only to me, of course… but even so, it was still a pretty big deal.
It was a request sent exclusively to C-rank Awakeners and above.
Which meant I'd been recognized as a C-rank Awakener. Without even realizing it…!
I never knew a little bounty hunting would raise my rank!
Anyway, the fact that they were recruiting Awakeners on this scale meant something serious had happened.
Apparently a massive villain organization had surfaced. Word was the Association had gotten intel that the group was planning a major terrorist attack soon.
So they intended to deploy Awakeners with at least a minimum level of combat power to suppress the organization.
It wasn't a mandatory request, either—only volunteers among the C-rank and higher Awakeners who'd been contacted would take part.
And yet the reason I volunteered anyway was… they were paying a ton of money!
Plus, the villain organization we were going up against this time had deep ties to How to Become a Hero.
The rising villain organization, Eclipse.
They called it a "rising" organization, but the Association had simply never known about it—Eclipse had been steadily building power in the underworld for a long time.
In How to Become a Hero, they were treated as the main villain organization.
Of course, the place the Association was hitting this time wasn't Eclipse's headquarters.
If it had been, I wouldn't have signed up. I had no interest in dying a dog's death.
Eclipse was strong enough to rival the Three Great Guilds or the Two Great Families… no, stronger than that.
In the original story, two of the Three Great Guilds and the Mors Family joined forces to attack them and still only managed a draw.
It was almost absurd… but I supposed that was the level of power you needed to qualify as a main villain.
What the Association was hitting this time was Mudwell, one of Eclipse's subordinate organizations.
In How to Become a Hero, this was the incident the protagonists first learned about through the news—the event that marked the true beginning of the main story.
C-rank, B-rank, and a handful of A-rank Awakeners stormed in and managed to annihilate them, but only half of those who went in made it out alive. The fact that a mere subordinate branch had that much power served both to showcase just how formidable Eclipse was and to foreshadow that Yi Siyun and Carmen would be fighting enemies like that going forward.
Even though it only appeared briefly as a news story in How to Become a Hero, experiencing it firsthand was on a completely different scale.
The total number of Awakeners storming in alone came to 132. In the original, without me, it would have been 131.
And the Mudwell Sweep Operation wasn't a one-day affair—it was a major incident that stretched across multiple days. In that time, roughly sixty Awakeners would die.
How to Become a Hero was hopeful. The world itself might have been a little bleak, but the protagonists always overcame adversity, grew stronger, and defeated their enemies.
But that hope only applied to the "protagonists."
To the extras, this world was nothing short of despair.
Extras who died like insects—mere devices to emphasize the enemy's strength.
There was no place for extras in this world.
I was Elysia, a supporting character in How to Become a Hero.
And I joined this war not to become an extra myself, but so I wouldn't forget every single extra who would die like trash.
If someone with a decent amount of narrative weight like me remembered them—if I grieved for them—then maybe the meaning behind those extras' deaths would change, just a little.
I had no expectation of making some grand contribution. I didn't even plan to.
The Mudwell Sweep Operation would succeed with or without me.
As long as I took care of myself, I wouldn't be in any real danger. I would simply remember as many of them as I could on the battlefield, and grieve for them.
Of course, I was doing this for myself.
If I got involved and saved even one more person, the world would change.
Siyun and Carmen's expressions would brighten, even if only a little, and the atmosphere of the world would grow just a touch lighter.
I loved everything beautiful.
Obviously, beauty wasn't limited to a person's appearance.
The way people looked out for each other. People who clawed desperately to survive.
All of it was beautiful. Though pretty things were still the best, of course.
And above all, if Yi Siyun and Carmen smiled brightly for me—
If Tania, Adele, Luna and Rina, and Cecilia all smiled brightly—
Then the world would undoubtedly become even more beautiful.
After all, a world where beautiful girls could smile freely couldn't possibly be anything but beautiful!
I would create a beautiful world where beautiful girls could smile without a care.
That was the only reason I'd signed up for this potentially dangerous Mudwell Sweep Operation.
The moment Academy let out, I raced straight to the Association.
Apparently the operation would begin at dawn, so I needed to greet the Awakeners I'd be working with and sit through the mission briefing.
Whether this was good luck or bad luck, I wasn't sure… but most of the C-rank Awakeners, myself included, had been assigned to rear support.
Four A-rank Awakeners, sixteen B-ranks, and about twenty C-ranks would make the initial assault.
Apparently they needed to handle things quietly to minimize civilian casualties.
Those left for rear support consisted of one A-rank, five B-ranks, and eighty-six C-ranks including me.
The initial assault team totaled forty people. Those remaining on standby in the rear totaled ninety-two.
"……."
The number of people going in first wasn't even half the total force. Which meant—
The assault team was going to die. A lucky few might scrape their way out alive, but…
They'd be a tiny minority.
If things wrapped up at the rear standby unit—which was mostly C-ranks—that would mean the assault team had done well.
If I suddenly butted into the strategy meeting and insisted we should all charge in at once, would fewer people die?
Well, my opinion wouldn't be accepted in the first place.
I was still only C-rank, not a veteran. On top of that, I was just a twenty-one-year-old baby still enrolled at the Academy.
All I could do was stay quiet and try to keep the rear standby unit from dying as much as possible.
The big-chested Association sister running the meeting started calling out Awakeners' names one by one, announcing which team they'd been assigned to.
"Yoon Damin, Assault Team A. Chil Seonghun, Assault Team A. Elysia, Assault Team B."
"Huh?"
"Hm? Is there a problem?"
"I'm on the assault team too?"
"That's right."
The big-chested sister flipped through her papers with a rustle.
"Name: Elysia. Given the considerable number of jobs you've cleared recently, we put you on the assault team. Is that a problem?"
"Ah, no…"
What do I do? Should I say I'm out and run for it right now?
I'd definitely still be beautiful even in death, but that didn't mean I wanted to die!
"Hngh……."
"Elysia."
As I sat there looking thoroughly dejected, someone approached from the side and suddenly spoke up.
"Huh? Oh… Cecilia-sensei?"
There stood Cecilia-sensei, beaming.
"I didn't expect you to show up too."
She plopped her hand right on top of my head.
The weight of it wasn't unpleasant, so I didn't bother brushing it off.
Had I been tensing up without realizing it in this unfamiliar environment? Seeing a familiar face somehow made the tension melt away, and I felt at ease.
"You came too, Sensei. What's your rank?"
"Mm. I'm A-rank."
She raised one hand and made a V-sign.
"…Higher than me, then."
"Different levels of experience."
She laughed as if something was hilarious and ruffled my hair vigorously.
Just then, the Association's big-chested sister called out Cecilia's name.
"Cecilia, Assault Team B."
Hearing that, Cecilia smiled gently and looked down at me.
She was a little taller than me, so I had to tilt my head up slightly to meet her eyes.
"Lucky us. Same team."
The moment I saw her kind face saying that, I realized.
The reason I'd never once seen Cecilia in How to Become a Hero.
If she had appeared, there was no way I wouldn't have remembered her.
Beauties as pretty as Cecilia were rare, she had the distinctive trait of being blind, and she was strong on top of that.
It wasn't impossible that Siyun, being a first-year, simply never met Cecilia, a second-year teacher… but considering that Elysia from a different year appeared frequently, her complete absence was strange.
If I'd been the author, there was no way I wouldn't have introduced a character that pretty.
She'd died.
She'd died in the Mudwell Sweep Operation.
She'd died far away early in the story, so she never got to appear.
It was still only a hypothesis, but just imagining the death of someone I knew felt like my chest was being torn apart……
"…Are you crying?"
"…I'm not crying."
"……Did you hate being on the same team as me that much?"
Cecilia muttered that awkwardly.
No. I'm so glad I ended up on the same team as you.
Because now I have a chance to save you.