Start-of-Semester Evaluation (2)
If there’s screaming already…!
Dammit. Things were moving far faster than anticipated.
Under normal circumstances, all hell shouldn’t have broken loose until I reached the spot where those two were stationed. I had zero desire to drag a prickly, difficult girl like Charlotte along with me, either. Honestly, every fiber of my being urged me to wash my hands of the whole mess, run away, and look out for myself. Why shouldn’t I? As long as I survived, what did the rest matter?
Yet how could I actually do that? The moment the magical beasts pouring from the subterranean waterways launched their counterassault, taking them on one-on-one wouldn’t even be an option. If even a single casualty occurred, scattering the pulverized Mistellis beforehand would have been entirely pointless. What was worse, if Charlotte died here, Team Tembris would lose a core member before it ever took shape—an abysmal outcome for the future. I had to endure it. If even one member of that future party fell, the combat prowess of the entire Grand Duchy would plummet in the years to come.
"What on earth was that scream…?"
"This isn't the time to stand there looking dumbfounded. Just follow me, now."
"Follow you? What are you suddenly talking—!"
Skrrreeeech!
A grotesque creature burst through the shadows before us. It was undeniably a Kud Rat, yet of a monstrous scale entirely incomparable to ordinary specimens.
A Giant Kud Rat.
Massive enough to rival an elephant, the overgrown rodent locked its beady eyes on us like prey and slammed its foreleg down with crushing force.
"Get back!"
Fortunately, its fleshy bulk was softer than its sheer size suggested. Shoving Charlotte aside, I barely managed to deflect the initial impact with my Mana Shield. But against a creature of such terrifying mass, the physical recoil transferred directly into my frame was punishing. From that single strike alone, a sharp, throbbing ache flared in my ankles.
The purifying agent takes at least five minutes to kick in. If I want to hold out until then…!
I desperately needed Charlotte's firepower.
"Do you see the white powder clinging to its hide?"
"White powder…? What does that have to do with anything—"
"It's a neutralizing purifier ground from Mistellis leaves! Its effects will show in five minutes, so just back me up until then!"
"..."
Charlotte fell silent for a beat. Yet if we split up now, our fate would be no different from the victims screaming in the distance. Luckily, the beast didn't pursue her; by shifting my footing and changing angles, I kept its aggro squarely on me. Charlotte wasn't foolish enough to lose her head when desperate shrieks were echoing through the woods around us. Sure enough, she did not disappoint.
Kreeeehk!
Sharpened icicles slammed dead-center into the rat's jaw. It was Charlotte's specialty—ice magic.
"...You owe me a proper explanation later. One that fully satisfies me."
Charlotte's spell successfully sealed off the beast's secondary offensive weapon—its vicious jaws. With its bite neutralized, bringing down a creature of this size became vastly more manageable.
"Yeah, yeah! I'll explain everything later, so let's just kill this bastard first!"
Not that I actually had any time to sit down and chat.
Coated in the white powder, the Giant Kud Rat would steadily weaken as time went on, and even with just the two of us, the fight was doable. As long as I deflected its blows from the frontline while Charlotte cast spells to incapacitate it, lasting five minutes was well within our reach.
Kkreeee… kheek…
The giant rodent's movements grew noticeably sluggish. Forget five minutes; barely one had passed. The fact that its attacks could no longer track me properly was almost entirely thanks to Charlotte's barrage. Torrents of foul blood gushed from the jagged wounds where ice spikes pierced its flesh from every angle, and with its muscles rapidly freezing over, the beast could hardly drag its own weight. Unable to let out another shriek, the giant rat collapsed with a dull thud, its breathing cutting off entirely.
"Whew."
It was only a single beast, but this had been the absolute best I could muster with my current capabilities—my very first real battle in this timeline. Having relied on someone else's aid rather than taking it down solo, it wasn't an outcome I could brag about. Yet this was far from over.
"Now, tell me. The explanation you promised…"
Skree! Squeeeak! Chk-chk-chk! SKRRRREEECH!
"Aaaaargh!"
"W-What the hell are these things…?! How are we supposed to fight that?!"
"What is this…?"
"You can tell just by counting the noise, can't you?"
"...You don't need to state the obvious."
"Remember what I said earlier? That the powder takes five minutes to take effect."
Seeing Charlotte strike dumb, it seemed the reality of the situation had finally set in. She had wanted to satisfy her curiosity by grilling me for answers, but we had no leisure to leisurely chat. The piercing screams of students mingled with the hideous chittering of an entire swarm—a volume of enemies far beyond what any two people could handle alone.
Were there eighteen of them?
The only silver lining was that all eighteen hadn't converged in one spot.
"Hold the formation! We take them down before the frontline collapses!"
"Quit panicking over oversized pests! Cast your spells instead of screaming!"
Echoes of explosions and clashing metal reverberated throughout the lowlands. If students held together in cohesive squads, a full team could comfortably bring down two or three beasts. However, the most urgent priority lay where the first casualties of the exam were destined to occur.
"What are you planning to do?" Charlotte asked.
"Even with the two of us, bringing down a single beast wasn't a walk in the park. So what do you think happens to stragglers who were kicked out of their teams like us, facing two or more at once?"
"Well, obviously they'd…"
They would die without question. Charlotte couldn't refute that harsh reality, leaving her speechless.
"We're out of time. I'm moving ahead."
The moment those beasts consumed a single human corpse, the situation would spiral out of control. That was why I had to intervene. If isolated frontliners were devoured and the infestation surged inward toward the unsuspecting teams deeper in the zone, the casualties would follow the exact tragic course of my past life.
"W-Wait! Where are you going?! Don't tell me you're…!"
"If you don't want to come along, go your own way."
If my calculations were correct, the first ones under attack were the two vanguards cast aside by their team, just as I had been. Charlotte was on her own now; I had to reach them immediately to stop the body count from rising.
Skrrreeeech!
Kree! Kk-kheek!
"Urgh… so heavy…!"
"You have to hold on, Noel! If even one of us breaks, we're dead!!"
Just as Junon had predicted, the first to be ambushed were Noel and John, discarded by their unit solely because they were vanguards. Worse still, the numbers were overwhelming. Struggling to manage even one beast, they had been ambushed by two simultaneously. Without backup, their survival was grim.
As if confirming that dire forecast, John's arms buckled under the crushing weight, his knees shaking as his legs gave out.
"Gaaah!"
"Noel!!"
Noel's spear scraped uselessly against thick hide, unable to parry the momentum, and slipped from his trembling grasp.
"John… I can't… anymore…"
Noel whispered an apology toward his friend. Bracing for the heavy paw poised to crush the life from his chest, his body went completely still.
"No, Noel!! Get up! GET UP!!"
Claaang!
In that razor-thin instant, the one who foresaw this tragedy arrived. A boy treated with no more respect than they were—perhaps subjected to even harsher contempt.
"Huh…?"
"Junon…? How did you…?"
"Is this really the time to ask why I'm here?! Pick up your spear and get on your feet!"
"B-But… I…"
"If you die, the friend holding the line next to you dies too. Is that what you want?!"
Did he want that? Absolutely not. To Noel, John was a cherished brother-in-arms who had shared two long years of hardship at his side. Among all the classmates he had met at the academy, John was the one he did everything with, sharing the same tastes and dreams. They had supported each other through misery and celebrated every small joy together; it was solely because of John that Noel had endured the grueling academy life.
"Of course not… OF COURSE I DON'T!!"
The legs that had buckled beneath Noel locked straight once more. Blistered, bleeding hands snatched the fallen spear from the mud.
"Good. That's the spirit. John, how long can you hold out on your side?"
"If it's just holding on, I can manage two minutes easy!!"
Not good enough. The purifying power latent within the Mistellis leaves would take far longer than three minutes to fully manifest.
We have to decisively eliminate one first. That's the only way all three of us survive.
Junon abandoned the glancing deflection stance, squaring both shoulders to absorb maximum impact. He barked an order to Noel, who gripped his spear from behind.
"I'll take the defense! Thrust!"
"Attack…? Me…?"
"Do you think someone with no offensive spells like me can deal lethal damage?! If you don't want to die, channel every scrap of mana you have and drive that spear through! We have to bring this one down to deal with the other!"
Noel looked stunned for a fraction of a second before setting his jaw, readjusting his grip on the spear to follow the command.
"HRAAAAAAH!"
Roaring with desperate fury, Noel lunged forward. The spearhead bit deep, and the beast let out an agonizing shriek.
SKREEEECH!
Dark blood poured along the shaft embedded in its chest. Shifting its focus, the beast raised its opposite foreleg, hammering downward toward Noel's skull like a falling boulder.
Your opponent isn't him.
BAM!
"I deflected it to the left! Circle around and thrust again!"
Junon's Mana Shield continuously interposed itself, shielding Noel while weathering the beast's violent thrashing. Yet time was running dangerously thin. It was not the two giant rats running out of time, but the three exhausted students. They needed to finish off this first beast immediately so all three could gang up on the second.
Here it comes. Once I parry this enraged swing, Noel can—
"How long do you intend to take at this rate?"
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
A sudden barrage of crystalline ice spikes struck home, piercing clean through vital points and snuffing out the life of the battered beast in a single, devastating volley.
Ice spikes… That means…
Charlotte had caught up. Despite Noel driving his spear in repeatedly, he had lacked the sheer destructive firepower to finish it off, merely causing superficial bleeding. But with Charlotte's arrival, that lack of offensive output was no longer an issue.
"Buy me some time," she commanded crisply. "These rats possess far more resilience than anticipated. If you want me to wipe out the remaining one in one blow, I need to cast a higher-tier spell."
In that case, the plan changed.
"John, swap with me. Noel and John, your job is to pin down one foreleg each. If the beast thrusts its head forward, whoever has the longer spear range drives it straight into its eyes to blind it!"
"Got it!" both boys shouted in unison.
"Casting time is twenty seconds from now. Can you hold it?"
After enduring two whole minutes, asking for twenty seconds was practically a gift.
"It's sweeping horizontally! I'm redirecting this one, so fall back!"
Twenty seconds was more than enough to butcher the final beast.
Two massive carcasses soaked the muddy soil in dark, viscous blood. Utterly drained, Noel and John leaned their backs against a nearby trunk, gasping for breath.
It felt almost surreal that both of them had survived—that killing the three giant rats we encountered had completely severed the chain of impending doom. Yet it was reality. The proof was that the shrieks echoing across the Tveshar Lowlands were steadily dying out.
Human corpses were the most potent, concentrated source of mana for magical beasts. In the previous timeline, these three rats had emerged slightly later, butchering and devouring Noel and John. Gorging on two human bodies, the beasts gave birth almost instantly, and the ravenous brood devoured their mothers' mana-soaked flesh to rapidly swell to two-thirds their full size. Though slightly smaller, their numbers multiplied twentyfold—an uncontrollable swarm. Shortly after, an unbalanced team lacking a frontliner was completely wiped out, spiraling the crisis into an all-out catastrophe.
The Great Subjugation of the Tveshar Joint Practical Training.
That had been the historical name for the campaign mobilized to exterminate the Giant Kud Rats. It was an infamous disaster where over half the student body was killed or crippled, transforming a routine academic exercise into a blood-soaked battlefield.
Yet this time, that catastrophe had been averted. The shortage of vanguards had been solved when Renias Lantana made her appearance at the banquet, seamlessly fulfilling the frontline role. Furthermore, preemptively placing Mistellis powder and leaves throughout the subterranean waterways had crippled the beasts before the assault even peaked. The specialized medicine that Professor Muniher and Professor Dahlia had been forced to invent on the fly in the past was never needed, and the subjugation war had been smothered in its cradle.
"Was this the outcome you wanted?" Charlotte asked, eyeing Junon with lingering suspicion.
"How could I have predicted this? Look at what just happened. If you hadn't shown up, we would all be dead—me, Noel, and John."
"...Is that so."
Charlotte retrieved a clean handkerchief from her pocket and gently pressed it against Junon's left shoulder. Only then did a sharp, stinging sensation register, drawing a quiet wince from his lips.
"Now, I believe you owe me that conversation. Even if it's just while I stem your bleeding."
The inevitable had arrived: Charlotte's interrogation, completely out of character with her usual indifferent demeanor.
Yet her questions never found their answers.
"H-Hey!! Look out!!"
"BEHIND YOU!! LOOK BEHIND YOU!!"
Startled by Noel and John's panicked shrieks, Charlotte spun around, but it was already too late.
"Huh…?"
"Cough!"
A heavy spray of crimson blood erupted from the lips of the young man who threw his body between her and the shadows. As hot blood splattered across Charlotte's shoulder, her wide eyes locked onto Junon—the man who had taken the fatal blow meant for her.