Dungeon Practicum (3)
I didn't show off anything special when taking down the monster.
I gathered the mana pooled in my heart, then drove it into the enemy—the one my instincts recognized as a target. A simple act. I'd merely loaded the power I already had into my fist and swung. But that was precisely what gave it meaning.
"Ahem. Not bad... decent skills."
Mori cleared her throat and passed judgment on the results I'd put on display, speaking flatly, as if to say it was neither spectacular nor disappointing. A lukewarm assessment. And yet, in stark contrast, cold sweat beaded along her brow, her eyes trembled faintly, and the bewilderment was written all over her as she avoided my gaze. I had produced results worthy of genuine praise, but she'd deliberately handed down a stingier verdict.
Hubris, arrogance, carelessness—Guardians gambled their lives against monsters, in dungeons so treacherous that a single slip of the mind could cost even a prodigy their neck, the kind of place where people worked around the clock just to stay alive. Since Purity Academy students followed a fixed path from enrollment to graduation to selection as Guardians, she, as a senior, had chosen from the start to play strict rather than shower praise. Even in the original story, that was how she'd treated Chloe, working to drill humility into a girl who kept delivering brilliant performances.
"Wow! How is our junior so strong?!"
"Kael!"
And then Kael, utterly oblivious, went and wrecked her entire plan from the sidelines with all that commotion. Mm. Exactly the flavor I remembered from my reading days.
"Did you see that? That student's incredible, right?"
"Right? He's not even applying mana properly—just brute-forcing it straight in, and look at that output."
Toma chimed in, matching Kael's excitement with exclamations of her own. "Is this really this year's Purity Academy intake? Impressive."
"Once he graduates, we should send a recruitment offer his way."
"Ha, you two."
Praise so lavish it would embarrass anyone listening. The two of them carrying on like that had Mori clutching her head in despair, but either way, the reactions of Guardians who made their living on the dungeon's front lines confirmed it for me: my combat power, by this world's standards, sat well outside the realm of common sense.
"Th-that thing you did just now... was it really that impressive...?"
Eva, who'd been glued to my back the whole time, finally worked up the nerve to ask. To her, it probably hadn't looked like anything remarkable—after all, everyone around her, herself included, along with Chloe and Marin, could pull off the same feat without breaking a sweat.
"It's not something you can just do easily. Those people weren't born with bloodlines like ours, you know."
Mana. The power that lets ordinary humans reach a realm they could never touch on their own. Some call it a miracle; others sing its praises as a heaven-sent gift. But the author—the author, from the omniscient standpoint of a god—had defined mana in a single word.
A universal tool.
Humans are frail in the flesh, but a human holding a tool turns the impossible possible. Just as we can fly without wings and hunt down even the largest predator with the flick of a switch. In that sense, mana was best understood as a tool in and of itself, and also the raw material from which tools are forged.
For those who wanted to breathe fire, it became a flamethrower; for those who wished to cut something down, it placed a blade in their hand. Just as, when I'd reached out and willed it, my hand had become a raging flame that roasted a monster to a crisp. The catch was that what I'd just demonstrated was the equivalent of building a gun and bullets, then choosing to jam the bullet into a monster's skull with my bare hand instead. It was a performance you could only pull off with absurd reserves of mana or an overwhelming, crushing gap in raw power between yourself and your opponent.
That was exactly why Purity Academy ranked its students and treated the top seat as something special. It put them on an entirely different track from the seniors who'd graduated ordinarily and become Guardians.
"You're not done yet. This much isn't enough."
Mori added that with a deliberately stern face. The logic being that once might be a fluke. "From here on out, I'm going to work you to the bone, so brace yourself."
With that declaration as our starting gun, we combed through the dungeon's interior, devoting ourselves wholeheartedly to monster extermination. Pushing forward through thorny vines, hunting down every monster that crossed our path.
"That one over there is a yellow-eyed monkey—one of the faster monsters around here. Take it down in a single strike before it notices you."
A simple order, but she tacked on a condition to raise the difficulty. For a student setting foot in a dungeon for the first time today, it might have been an unreasonably cruel demand.
"This much is a cakewalk."
Crunch!
"Skreeek!"
Before the words had even left my mouth, I compressed my mana into the shape of a spear, squared my stance, and hurled it at the beast. The spear arced through the air and skewered the thing clean through its heart, dropping it with a single, dying shriek.
"Next, a red-shelled crocodile. Subdue it in the water. Shouldn't be easy down there."
Sometimes she'd present an environment stacked against me and try to shove me into dire straits. When she did, I wrapped mana around my whole body for protection. All her muttering about how being underwater would limit my movement meant nothing—the monster's teeth never so much as broke my skin. I hauled it onto dry land in that window, gave it a punch, and it did the decent thing and died on its own.
"Eeek! Then how about that flock of green-beaked wyverns? Even you could never handle all of them!"
"Whoa, Mori. There's a limit, even for you."
"She's straight-up holding a funeral telling the student on a field trip to go die."
This is supposed to be an educational practicum, right? Feels like it's drifting further and further from the original point the deeper we go. I found myself wondering whether any of this really warranted her grinding her teeth and pushing this hard.
"We'll be right back."
It wasn't a difficult request, so I dove straight into the heart of the monster swarm, exactly as she'd ordered.
"Kraaak!"
"Sorry. Die quietly, would you?"
Crack!
"Gwaaaagh!"
Beating a swarm of monsters was simple: be stronger than they were, and it was over. The wyverns that had invaded—or rather, whose domain I had invaded—resisted fiercely. They were mana-wielding beasts too, and with their bodies reinforced, they pecked with their beaks and raked with their claws in desperate struggle. I paid it no more mind than a farmer harvesting fruit, seizing their necks one by one and twisting. Just as a bee's stinger, however deadly, cannot pierce a bear's hide, the monster swarm that had come at me like a cloud of hornets ultimately failed to overcome the difference in weight class and scattered into the sky in every direction.
"..."
"Some got away. Should I wait here and catch the ones that circle back?"
"W-would they really come back after you tore through them like that?"
"I left the eggs in the nest untouched on purpose. They're strong on maternal instinct, so if I pretend to leave and hang back, they'll return quickly."
The moment I showed off my encyclopedic knowledge of dungeon ecology as a bonus, Mori stalked over with a sour expression and planted a hand on my shoulder. "Be honest with me. You're an active-duty Guardian disguised as a student, aren't you?"
"Not at all. Just an ordinary student who happens to have picked up more book knowledge than most."
"Ha, damn it. You're so annoying."
I made absolutely sure the Guardians had my abilities seared into their memories—enough that, depending on how you looked at it, they might conclude I'd be just fine without their help at all. This wasn't me showing off for the sake of it; it was groundwork, a way to divert the attention that should have been aimed at me somewhere else entirely.
"That kid—there's nothing left for us to teach him."
"Yeah, this one's a bit out of left field."
"At this rate we'll head back without filling our quota, teaching-wise."
The Guardians put their heads together and launched into a strategy meeting. I left them to it, pulled out my phone, and killed some time. Reading a novel on the job really is peak entertainment.
Anticipating there'd be no signal in the dungeon, I'd saved the novel as a text file in advance, and now I scrolled through it. Since the Guardians had nothing left to teach me, they left me to my own devices. Their attention drifted, naturally, to the other student.
"Kyaaak!"
"Heehee—hiyaah!"
A monster came swooping in, wings spread. Eva released her mana in a panic, but rattled by the sudden ambush, her spell missed its mark. It was the kind of situation that could spiral into an irreversible accident at the slightest misstep—and exactly for moments like this, Guardians had been assigned to the group.
Shhk!
"Gwaak!"
"You okay, student?"
Kael cut in with perfect timing, blocking the monster and stepping in front of Eva. Eva grabbed hold of her sleeve and wailed, "Waaah! I-it's, it's scary...!"
"Our little lady needs to pull herself together. For a mage, staying glued to your teammates is rule number one."
"Don't worry—I'll teach you positioning from square one, one step at a time."
Mana and talent by the bucketload, yet the moment a monster appeared, Eva turned into a helpless little lamb. A textbook promising prodigy who'd proven her talent upon entering the academy, only to freeze under the weight of real combat. In other words, the exact specimen of a student worth teaching that the Guardians had been hoping for.
"I-it's scary. I don't want to do this kind of thing..."
"Aww, it'll be fine. Your big sisters will be right here watching over you."
"We'll fill in whatever you're lacking, so you just do your best at what we tell you."
Having found their purpose, the two threw themselves into nurturing Eva with blazing enthusiasm. With the attention of two people concentrated on one, the object of it all froze stiff like a mouse standing before a cat.
"Huuuu..."
Trembling all over, Eva's eyes turned toward me. A desperate SOS: please help me, I can't breathe, get me out of this.
Do your best.
This, too, was experience that would become flesh and blood. I deliberately feigned blindness to her distress signal and kept my gaze locked on my phone. By the time we wrapped up the first arc at the very latest, shouldn't the protagonist be pulling her weight—doing her share, at least?
"Hiiiing..."
Resigned in the end, Eva dropped her head and, awkward as it was, struggled to keep up with the Guardians' instruction. Better to be pushed around by people than by monsters, at least. And so, bathed in her seniors' overbearing love, she endured an exhausting day.
"Alright, we'll camp here for the night."
By the time we'd cycled through monster hunting and Spartan training enough times, darkness had quietly settled over the dungeon, and a full moon hung high above. Beneath a galaxy stitched across the sky by starlight, we unpacked our gear in an open clearing.
"Setup complete."
"That's incredible? A whole campground, out of thin air, in the blink of an eye."
"Camping magic is the most basic of basics for a Guardian. Without it, you'd be sleeping rough inside the dungeon half the time."
The campsite Toma built with magic was perfection itself. Torches and tents, a bonfire and a grill—the whole thing looked as if an entire campground had been transplanted wholesale. As a finishing touch, she layered sound-masking and protective wards over everything, and a secure safe haven was complete.
"Since you're the man, I put up a separate tent just for you. Shouldn't be too cramped for one."
"Thank you."
The space she'd allotted me was a two-person tent—more than enough room to lay my body down alone. The women's quarters, meanwhile, were as plush as a luxury camper, but with four of them sharing, that went without saying. They'd even set the communal supplies outside my tent out of consideration for me. I couldn't imagine having any complaints.
"There's a lake about five minutes east of here. Use that if you want to wash up."
"Appreciate the thoughtfulness."
"Well then."
With her explanation finished, Toma slipped back inside the camp. Once she was gone, I gathered up my disposable toiletries and got ready to wash.
"Um, excuse me..."
Just then, Eva poked her face out between my tent and the neighboring one. Why on earth was she here? "If you're here to sleep, you've got the wrong address. Your bed is in that tent over there. Off you go."
"I-I know that... I know this isn't my spot..."
Her voice, with that signature creeping, shrinking quality of hers, felt somehow even smaller than usual—or was that just my imagination? Cowering more than normal, lips wavering, she finally worked up her courage and spoke. "I came over because... I have a favor to ask."
A favor. A request from the protagonist of this very world. If I wanted things to proceed smoothly going forward, I needed to get close to her. I was more than willing to grant even an unreasonable demand.
"I-I'm going to... wash up, but I'm scared..."
"And?"
"S-so... could you stay close, maybe..."
"Done."
It took me less than a second to answer.