Chapter 22
Chapter 22
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 22
Chapter Title: She Ordered It All
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As the dungeon collapsed, a new passageway opened up right next to the campfire where I was standing.
After squeezing through the rather narrow tunnel, Victor was waiting for me.
“You really took down every single examinee.”
“It was just luck.”
It really had been luck.
Especially since Luna had gone easy on me at the end.
But unexpectedly, Victor said nothing about that part.
“Follow me. Time to say hello to the examinees.”
The place he led me to was the waiting room for rejects from the Luidel Academy entrance exam.
It was the back of a space shrouded on all sides by blackout curtains, large enough to hold about a thousand people.
“Number 201 lacks balance. We should deduct points there.”
“What about 121? They seem talented.”
“44 is a bust. Shouldn’t they at least come prepared with the basics?”
Dozens of examiners, all Luidel faculty, were evaluating the examinees from behind the curtains.
Alicia stepped out from among them.
“Good work. Duke Grace.”
“Haha. It’s all thanks to this fellow.”
As the current Luidel student council president, she naturally had the right to observe the entrance exam.
“I don’t know who you are, but you worked hard today. Especially that fight with Lady Ren—it was impressive.”
“…”
“I’d love to see the face behind the helmet, but are you someone even I can’t ask?”
“Please bear with me just a little longer. The final reject will arrive soon.”
At that moment, one of the examiners shouted.
“The final reject, student Luna Grace, has arrived in the waiting room!”
“Oh dear. What a shame.”
Hearing the exam end declared, Alicia turned and took her seat.
The faculty, who had been laughing and chatting, cleared their throats one by one and adopted serious expressions.
In the original story, when the final reject entered the waiting room, the blackout curtains would drop, revealing the faculty who had been evaluating the students all along. It was a cutscene.
It meant we were watching you the whole time! And it showed Luidel’s authority.
From the protagonist’s perspective, it felt incredibly intimidating, but who would have thought I’d see it from backstage.
“Are you memorized on the speech?”
I just nodded at Victor’s question. I’d been instructed not to speak until I revealed my identity.
In my hand was the speech Victor had given me. Recite it the moment I revealed myself, and the mission was complete.
The speech’s core was to reveal Luidel’s ambitions and encourage the examinees. I was told to mix in some ad-libs about myself.
As I mentally reviewed the speech one last time, majestic drumbeats sounded, the blackout curtains fell, and the examinees came into view.
As dozens of examiners revealed themselves at once, the examinees sensed the unusual atmosphere, and the murmurs leaking out gradually died down.
Confirming the silence, Victor stepped forward, and I followed him onto the stage.
As I appeared in my Valhillar guise, the quiet waiting room erupted in whispers again.
“Valhillar!? What’s he doing there?”
“Luidel’s Blade!”
“What the hell is that?! Why do you all know something I don’t?”
Few examinees had made it to the boss room.
Thanks to that, the reactions split between those who’d faced Valhillar and those who hadn’t—it was quite amusing as the man himself.
“To all who participated in the Luidel Academy entrance exam, I declare: Today’s trial was to test your courage in facing the wall of your limits, and that wall—the special examiner—was…”
Now?
“Sir Halibal Belder.”
The moment he finished speaking, I removed my helmet, revealing my face, and the hushed examinees grew rowdy once more.
“Valhillar was the Dirge Sword?”
“I thought he wasn’t part of the exam!”
“So the exam site being a beast dungeon was all because of him?”
Surprisingly, more people recognized my face than expected. It was ridiculous even to me, but at this point in the story, my notoriety was quite high.
For now, I scanned the crowd, rolling my eyes over familiar faces.
The first to catch my eye was Aren.
His complicated expression made sense after my cryptic words hinting I knew about the Heavenly Extremity God.
‘It’ll take a while to explain that later.’
Mina already knew my identity from my tip-off, so she seemed relatively calm. She nodded toward me, then gave her usual eye smile.
Eugene and Ran, on the other hand, glared like I was some final boss they had to defeat.
Eugene’s eyes were literally burning. I wished he’d direct that heat at Aren instead.
Cecilia was shaking Senia by the neck in rage, while Senia just shook like a paper doll, holding back laughter.
Luna… Where’d she go?
Finally, turning my head, I saw Alicia staring blankly, coffee dribbling from her mouth.
‘Why’s she worse at managing her expression than me?’
Then, a voice of complaint burst from among them.
“Dirge Sword! What are you going to do about us failing because of you?”
“You should’ve at least given us a chance to cross swords!”
“Aren’t you being too arrogant, even for you?”
A scene from the original story.
I’d braced myself for it, but controlling my expression wasn’t easy. It wasn’t just hate—it was resentment, something I’d rarely faced.
But since I’d effectively knocked them all out, it was my own doing. It only made my heart heavier.
Victor continued, unperturbed by their complaints.
“As a senior in dungeon conquest and special examiner, don’t you have a word for the examinees?”
That brought the speech to mind.
The content was no different from the lines I’d spouted in my knight persona.
About five lines of typical, pumped-up knightly dialogue.
Truth be told, everything up to this point was the same as with Adelin. Just Adelin swapped for me.
What had Adelin said back then?
The scenery of the front-line dungeons, the beasts’ numbers and strength. The fear and helplessness felt, the sorrow of losing comrades.
She’d pulled out those memories one by one, igniting the examinees’ hearts.
Could I do something like that?
…As I thought that.
“…Incredible. And he’s the same age as us.”
A small mutter from one of the examinees.
The words echoed in my mind.
I closed my eyes and focused on the voices around me.
“…The Dirge Sword was Valhillar?”
“I couldn’t even keep up with him.”
“Could I ever become like that?”
Then it hit me.
I’d been chasing only the playable characters all this time.
I opened my eyes.
This time, I looked at the examinees—not the playables.
The so-called NPCs.
The ones like original Halibal.
[Apocalypse Academy] was a surprisingly bright story. The academy setting helped with that.
But whether the devs were on drugs or not, from Chapter 4 onward, students started dropping like flies as the scenario progressed.
Even playable characters died without exception if you made the wrong choices.
That’s why some users called the devs evil for getting you attached then killing them off casually.
Looking back, maybe I’d treated non-playables as NPCs since coming to this world.
They’d die eventually anyway, and their lives depended on the protagonists, right?
Probably.
That’s why I wasn’t that sad when comrades died, why I haggled for shards while bereaved families prayed.
Playing boss and knocking out examinees felt fine. ‘Adelin did it in the original,’ so lightly.
But now, looking at these examinees, I realized it was wrong.
Some complained.
Some raged.
Some cursed.
Some despaired.
Their reactions weren’t so different from the playables’.
That nameless expression resembled Cecilia’s.
That nameless gaze was like Eugene’s.
Surviving.
That was my goal.
But was mere survival enough?
I looked at the examinees again.
This time, without distinguishing playable from NPC.
Treating each one as a person.
Valuing my own life while treating theirs as mere backstory. Hypocritical as hell.
I immediately erased the prepared speech from my mind.
How strong Barhatan was, how dangerous the faceless beastmen. That was for someone else to say.
Maybe that’s why what came out of my mouth was so ordinary.
“You all worked hard.”
This exam ending didn’t mean everything was over.
It was just the beginning. The real scenario started after enrollment.
“And let’s keep working hard together.”
How many of these examinees would pass? How many pass among them would survive until Aren subjugated the Demon God?
I set those thoughts aside.
I’d already given up on coasting sweetly. Throwing myself into hardship was my choice.
So if need be, to face the Demon God myself. Or at least, to let more people survive.
“I’ll keep striving too.”
With those words, I bowed my head.
Not a speech, just a plea. Reactions varied, but the most prominent was bewilderment.
Valhillar’s identity aside, the guy who knocked them out suddenly saying that—who wouldn’t be baffled?
Yet faint applause leaked out.
Looking up, Senia was clapping toward me.
Cecilia, watching her, looked displeased but glanced at me, sighed, and joined in.
Starting with them, the applause grew, soon filling the space.
“Was that hidden sword the Halibal Style?!”
“What do you do if you actually face a boss like that?”
“How do you block that charge?”
It was a bit embarrassing, but looking around, reactions weren’t bad.
Some disliked Valhillar, sure, but others were clearly impressed.
“Isn’t charging in without warning right at the start too much?”
…Or not?
Meanwhile, Victor’s gently curved eyes twitched unpleasantly beside me.
The original speech had a subtle nod to him.
Not overt, but along the lines of ‘Thanks to Duke Grace, I got this chance.’
Reciting that would’ve made entering his good graces easy. Flaunting ties to Victor would reduce suspicion from his side.
But I’d wiped it all without consulting, so of course he’d react like that.
I didn’t want to get too entangled with him.
At this point, he was already gearing up to turn the imperial family into enemies, gathering pieces within the academy.
No good could come from catching his eye now. He’d just say something like ‘Let’s overthrow the imperial family together.’
Any scenario making me an enemy of the protagonist’s party was the worst. That’s why I’d gone through all this to avoid it.
Even with the scenario broken here and there, you had to follow the basic framework.
So how to avoid his notice without drawing suspicion?
That’s when blankly staring Alicia caught my eye.
Yeah. That’ll do.
“Finally, this whole thing was entirely Her Highness the Imperial Princess’s plan.”
“……?”
I felt Victor’s gaze shift to Alicia following my words.
Of course, Alicia’s eyes never left me.
“The Imperial Princess?”
“So she ordered the Dirge Sword as the boss beast?”
“As expected of the Red Scales!”
To players, Alicia seemed inept, but in noble society, she was seen as surprisingly capable.
Someone who’d pursue any means if the scales of profit tipped her way.
The problem was those means often showed as sloppy, like hiding her identity to approach me.
Hence her in-story moniker: Red Scales.
And Victor shared that view of her competence.
‘She ordered it all.’
In other words, one line to pass Victor’s aggro, and I’d want for nothing.
“Above all, let’s give hot applause right here to Her Highness the Imperial Princess who worked hardest.”
I pointed at Alicia with my chin and clapped wildly.
Clap clap clap.
The applause, catching the mood, naturally shifted to her.
Even the unfriendly gazes nodded at ‘the princess ordered it’ and kept clapping.
“……?”
Only Alicia seemed utterly clueless about the situation.
But it wasn’t bad, right?
⁎⁎⁎
[Top Scorer: Eugene Raygal]
[Runner-Up: Ran Pen]
Unlike the original, Cecilia dropped early and didn’t claim top scorer.
Eugene took her place instead.
Word was, teamed with three lacking examinees, he supported them maximally to reach just before the boss room.
Of course, the chimera slaughtered all three in the end.
Meanwhile, Senia, who’d pushed me hard, couldn’t even make runner-up—her record of downing every examinee herself.
Since Luidel prioritized teamwork over individual prowess for dungeon conquest.
With that announcement—that other results would post within three days—the year’s Luidel Academy entrance exam drew to a close.
And that evening, I—
“Explain in detail what happened during today’s exam.”
—was meeting Victor alone at his mansion.
“Why did you do that?”
As expected, he wouldn’t let it slide.