Midterm Evaluation (3)
The moment I stepped through the portal, dizziness washed over me. I kept my eyes shut for a breath, and when I opened them, the world had changed.
One word for it: forest. Yes — a truly enormous forest.
The Academy professors and assistants who had surrounded us were gone. The clamor of the city had vanished without a trace, leaving only stillness and green — that was all my eyes took in, all my skin could feel. Insect chirps drifted over now and then on the wind, and every step crunched dryly through the grass. Set loose in open space, even for a little while, an immense sense of liberation came flooding in.
I enjoyed that lingering feeling only briefly. Then a voice rang out — one so clear it seemed to reverberate across the entire island.
"Greetings, cadets of the Academy."
Voices rose in answer to that single greeting, echoing across the whole forest. She was, after all, the most famous mage in the Empire and the Chairwoman of the Academy — a household name if ever there was one.
"The Academy's Midterm Evaluation will now commence."
"Whatever you may do, so long as you survive longer than your peers, you will earn a favorable grade."
"Even should you come under attack that threatens your life, there is no need for alarm."
"The bracelet each of you carries will absorb any life-threatening blow in your stead."
"Naturally, once such an attack is absorbed, the wearer's information will be relayed to the Academy, and you will be disqualified automatically."
"I therefore advise you to keep your bracelet on at all times, no matter what. Should it leave your body, that too will be counted as disqualification."
"Betray your teammates, and your entire team fails. The number of cadets remaining can likewise be checked through your bracelets."
"Those who can no longer go on may release their bracelets, and the instructors will see you out of this forest."
"Bonus points will be awarded to those who subdue the magic beasts of the forest — or dispose of fellow cadets."
"Then, cadets... I wish you all safety."
With those words, the resonant voice fell silent, and a time appeared on my bracelet — on Lianna's, and presumably on every cadet's as well.
Time Remaining: 4 Days 23 Hours 59 Minutes
In other words: survive five days.
Barely a moment had passed since the timer appeared before explosions began to sound from several directions — the noise, no doubt, of cadets already locked in combat. Lianna and I had agreed beforehand on exactly how we would move, so combat was something we intended to avoid entirely.
"Um... should I go pick some fruit first?"
"Please do. I'll set up the tent."
"Got it!"
There was little else we could have done. Neither Lianna nor I possessed any combat strength worth mentioning within the Academy. Our plan was simply to lie low, endure, run when we had to — and survive. Picking off the occasional magic beast along the way would earn us more than enough bonus points.
Fortunately, with the two of us able to wield both Creation and Transmutation, combat was the only real hurdle; survival itself promised little difficulty. And so perimeter watch was naturally added to my list of duties. I pitched our tent beside the river, then moved a short distance away to set my traps.
Back in my days as an assassin, the reason I stayed uncaught longer than the others was precisely this — I had disguised my kills as fatal accidents with traps like these. Not that it saved me in the end. They caught me all the same, and my body was carved to pieces.
And though these were killing traps, it hardly mattered — the bracelets the Academy had prepared would intercept anything truly lethal. Simple mines were well within my ability to build, and there was no harm in poisoning a few leaves, either. In short, I was free to run wild.
With that thought I set to work, and the traps took far less time than I'd expected. Mines planted around the tent's perimeter, poison brushed onto leaves, pits dug and lined with steel rebar — every species of trap I knew, laid out in force. Any cadet who so much as approached this place would be neutralized, that much was certain. Beyond that, I strung snares of steel wire and rigged crossbows to loose the instant a tripwire snapped. I was determined to install every trap I had learned in my assassin days, one and all.
Satisfied with my own handiwork, I returned to the tent — to find Lianna, at some point, already back with an armful of fruit, nibbling away at it piece by piece. She waved when she saw me and beckoned, as though offering me a share.
"Where'd you run off to?"
"Had some business nearby."
"Mm... really? Here, eat this!"
The fruit she held out had ripened red as an apple, yet was small and round as a strawberry. Having never seen it before, I hesitated a moment before eating — and noticing my hesitation, she launched into an explanation. Everything from the fact that this was a fruit called a Belfi, down to the detail that fully ripened ones turned red. Thoroughly.
When it became clear her lecture had no intention of ending, I simply brought the Belfi to my mouth. Its sweetness, far beyond anything I'd expected, widened my pupils all on their own. Delighted, it seemed, that the fruit suited my palate, she pressed more into my hands and urged me to keep eating — and somewhere in that absent-minded meal, the evening glow came creeping up on us without my noticing.
The evaluation had begun in the afternoon, to be fair; night was due around now. And this was precisely the hour when nocturnal beasts came out to hunt. Our packs were stuffed with preserved meats — food nearly impossible to find in the wild — and there was no chance in hell the carnivorous wildlife wouldn't come after it.
For that reason, we had to set night watches, and I yielded the first shift to her. Anyone who has ever stood watch knows that the overwhelming majority want the first shift — and with our team so small to begin with, that advantage only stood out more.
Even so: she took the first watch, I was chronically short on sleep anyway, and — decisively — a man and a woman sleeping in the same tent at the same time felt... improper. So for efficiency's sake if nothing else, I took the later shift. The decisive reason might look pathetic, but so what. Across all my lives, the number of times I had held a woman could be counted on one hand.
Living one unstable life after another, the closest I had ever come to holding a woman was blowing off steam in a brothel, at best. Sleeping soundly and at ease in an atmosphere like this was, for me, far too difficult a thing.
So I saw her into the tent, made myself a chair, and sat for a long while listening to the campfire crackle and blaze — until a strange sound reached my ears. Something like a wolf's howl, or perhaps a cat's low growl. It was followed by the crunch of grass being crushed, moving in a single direction.
I was on my feet in an instant, a dagger forming in my hand, and I hurled it straight toward the sound. Certainty beat hesitation, so I formed a second and threw that as well. Before long came the sound of the blades burying themselves in something.
Thunk!!
Kra-kaang──
Certain something had been hit, I ran to where my daggers had flown to confirm what it was. A wolf lay there, dead on the spot. Ordinarily I would have begun butchering it on sight, but for now I merely pulled my daggers free. The direction of that grass-crunching sound had not been here, after all.
"Come out."
"Kheheheh. Sharp ears you've got there, hm?"
Moonlight washed over us for a moment, and in its glow the figure of a man revealed itself. A face that even flattery could not have called handsome, on a body that looked a stranger to exercise.
"...So it was you?"
"Insolent attitude, that. Commoner?"
It was Derik Ruben — the cadet who had courted Lianna so relentlessly, and who had met her countless refusals with nothing but indifference. I had been wound taut as a bowstring, but the moment I laid eyes on him, I felt the tension drain out of me. And whether my slackening expression displeased him, his brow crept upward into a scowl.
"I don't know what you find so reassuring, but I have but one matter of business here."
"..?"
"Hand over that woman from before. She is to become my wife."
Had the man still not come to his senses? Rejected that many times, shouldn't he at least have taken the hint? Worse, his face brimmed with such confidence and self-assurance that he seemed genuinely unaware he had been rejected at all.
"Did she not tell you no?"
"Ha?! Naturally she'd turn me down — that's only proper. Show me a commoner alive who wouldn't want to be my wife."
Even I would refuse, honestly.
And I meant that without a shred of exaggeration — even if I had been a desperately poor woman, I would not have wanted to marry that creature. If even I, a man, felt this way, I shuddered to imagine what words a woman would have for a proposal like that.
"But why, might I ask, are you ordering me to hand her over?"
"Was she not your sweetheart or something?"
????
If that fool believed Lianna and I were lovers, then wasn't he demanding: hand her over, for I shall take your sweetheart as my wife? Maybe it was just my mood, but his golden hair, catching the moonlight, gleamed with a particular brilliance. My expression began to twist by degrees, and my opinion of him converged upon a single conclusion.
A lunatic. A blight upon society. Trash, through and through.
If I couldn't even beat a piece of trash like that, my midterm grade was as good as forfeit — and ridding the world of said trash would, as a pleasant bonus, do Lianna a favor too. The thought grew more compelling by the second. Besides, I had just been thinking it was about time to get reacquainted with my daggers.
And a pig I half-doubted could even move properly? A perfect practice partner. So thinking, I flung my daggers into the face of that posturing fool, who stood there without a shred of guard, and spat out a single word.
"I refuse."