Shareltea Campus #117
“Has everyone received their requests?”
“““Yes!”””
“You didn’t pick anything too difficult, did you?”
“““Nope!”””
“Make sure you follow the instructions and any additional notes on the request form!”
“““Understood!”””
“By the way, those who complete their requests diligently will receive a small reward or special privilege!”
“““Whoa!”””
“The March privilege is a free pass to a British cuisine specialty restaurant. So everyone, work hard and don’t miss your chance to eat fish and chips and jellied eels for free!”
“““Huh?”””
The March privilege: British food. It was hard to imagine a privilege that could make anyone feel quite so… enthusiastic. The academy must have understood the cadets’ needs exceptionally well if even the cadets who looked British were reacting with stunned awe. For those suffering from homesickness after leaving their homeland, this privilege seemed like an absolute must-reach goal.
“I’d rather have Finnish food.”
“This privilege is weird.”
“Why on earth would they open a British restaurant here?”
“They expect us to eat that and still attend the academy?”
“Throw it away. Good luck.”
Anyway, the general briefing was drawing to a close. Amid the murmuring, many cadets were already thinking about how to tackle the tasks ahead. The most important factor was, of course, the exam, followed by the effort required. No one wanted to spend more than five hours on a request, and no one wanted to sweat and then have to wash up afterward. It was a rather shameless way of thinking, but humans were that kind of creature.
Supervisor Ishmael seemed to believe they had truly become wolves among the cadets. With innocent, almost pig-like naivety, he wanted to give these cadets one final gift.
“Lastly, from now on, you don’t need to gather here for attendance during lecture hours. You’re free to act as you please and complete your requests however you like.”
In other words, the lectures were now effectively nonexistent. The dream of both students and professors had finally manifested at the academy. Some heretical students might complain that their tuition was exploding, but Palaestra Academy had always been tuition-free. Aside from a few who entered through donations, there was no tuition-like fee, so the psychological resistance was minimal.
“Oh……”
“Does that mean we can sleep in and play around until this time?”
“That’s the first good news I’ve heard in a while.”
“But what about lecture notices or exams?”
However, there was still the issue of what happened when attendance was no longer required, especially for group project-style lectures. Without a physical classroom, this problem was bound to become even more pronounced.
“Additional notices will be posted via messages or on the online lecture notice board. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“““Phew.”””
“As for exams, as I mentioned earlier, they’ll be graded based on your request scores throughout the semester. If you slack off, you’ll get a C, so be careful.”
That was the final answer. With the words telling them to go do their own work, the first gathering was dismissed. The academy cadets found themselves in an awkward situation, caught between lectures that weren’t really lectures. All that remained for them now was to solve requests that were easier than lying around eating macarons and then return to the paradise called home.
“Kang Si~ How about we just go home today~ and leave the request-solving to future me~?”
“drink!!!!!”
How dare you act so cheeky on the very first day! I pinched Cheon Mari once more for her sly behavior, then dragged her along toward the gate. After passing through the storm of time and space, a place filled with tents and barricades came into view. It looked completely different from the last time I had been here.
“This place is in really bad shape. Is this really the same spot from a few months ago……?”
Buildings were destroyed everywhere. The once-clean roads were pitted as if they had been struck by magic. Trash and plastic bags littered the ground. Metal collection bins and wooden crates were overflowing with decayed or abandoned items. Only armed or protected people were present at the scene. It felt like ordinary civilians or regular merchants wouldn’t even be allowed entry.
We followed the path guided by the makeshift barricades. It led us into one of the tents, where unidentified people were conducting large-scale inspections of the cadets.
“Are they checking for smuggled goods or smugglers?”
“Probably something like that.”
They roughly scanned our bodies with some kind of unidentified magical tool. They also opened our bags and checked the contents. After asking a few questions, they sent us out of the tent along with our belongings. It seemed only those who passed the inspection were allowed entry into the Shareltea campus.
Sure enough, the next person had something like a scroll in their bag. The inspector looked at it and said something to them. The bag’s owner couldn’t answer properly. Even from a distance, it was obvious they were flustered. Eventually, the inspector dragged them off to another tent without hesitation. Their somewhat coercive attitude made me wonder if this was really the academy.
“This inspection is being conducted because of internal spies! Please understand that it’s for the safety of all cadets!”
While watching the people ahead of us disappear one by one, feeling like we were going through airport security, a man with an armband approached me.
“Due to a backlog at the entrance inspection, could you please use the search gate over there? Thank you.”
I headed straight for the gate he pointed to. As I did, I casually glanced at the name tag on his chest.
[Palaestra Academy Emergency Defense Division]
[Richard P. Burrows]
It was a department I had heard of before. It was apparently established after the academy was thrown into chaos by terrorism. When I rolled my eyes slightly downward, I saw a second name tag that read Cottonmouth Guild.
It seemed they were maintaining the place through external hires, and this guild was one I had heard of before. Not in this world, though. It was a guild I had seen in my previous world while playing Gray Zone.
“Hmm.”
In the game, depending on your choices, they could appear as enemies. They weren’t exactly good, but they weren’t particularly bad either. They were a large guild that, even if their reputation was poor, never crossed the final line. If they had been a completely villainous guild, I might have felt inclined to act aggressively, but there didn’t seem to be any need to stir up unnecessary trouble. Pretending not to notice, I underwent the inspection at the gate. I answered questions about why I had come, what I was carrying, and whether I understood the request. After confirming there was nothing unusual, the inspector let me through.
When I stepped out of the tent, an even more miserable sight unfolded before my eyes.
“This isn’t even a battlefield.”
“It looks impossible to reclaim this place.”
The nearby areas had been somewhat cleaned up, so they weren’t too bad. But the distant areas looked as if a war had just ended and peace had returned. It was post-apocalyptic in every sense. With a hollow laugh, I approached the bulletin board set up near the tent. A large map was posted on it—the complete map of the Shareltea campus. The area around the World Gate was painted green, probably indicating it was safe. Areas a little farther away were yellow for caution, even farther were red for warning, and the outermost areas were black for danger. The colors varied according to the level of risk.
“Let’s see…… Our destination is…… in the corner of District 2…… Thankfully, it’s only a caution zone!”
Green was the safest, but unfortunately, requests in green zones all had low point rewards. If you wanted to secure safety, speed, and points all at once amid the flood of requests, yellow zones were the next best option.
“Hey, our destination. It’s less than 5 km away?”
“We can finish this in under an hour, right?”
It was a good thing. We immediately set off toward the request location with light steps. Naturally, there shouldn’t have been any problems with just walking……
“Hey, why are you touching my butt?”
“You touched mine earlier. If a man touches a woman’s butt, isn’t it ‘common sense’ for the woman to touch the man’s butt too?”
……Of course there would be problems. Cheon Mari suddenly started kneading my butt, shattering the peaceful atmosphere.
“You crazy bitch.”
“An eye for an eye! A tooth for a tooth! How dare you insult this lady!”
“You crazy bitch!”
I quickly swatted her hand away, but she kept putting her hand back on my butt. A nerve-wracking battle of nerves ensued, with R-18 level curses flying back and forth.
“Uh…… Common sense……?”
Shannon looked at us strangely. Her expression was exactly like someone who had been hit with a gender-reversal common-sense alteration hypnosis beam. We should have stopped after reading the room, but I had a feeling Cheon Mari wouldn’t stop even if I did. In the end, the fierce hand battle driven by pride continued even as we walked. A few times, we even punched each other in the sides. But thanks to our protective barriers, it was all in vain. As the fight dragged on, Shannon wedged herself between us as if to separate us. She held Cheon Mari back with both hands and restrained me with her tail.
“Um, excuse me, you two, maybe you should stop now……”
At her trembling voice, we had no choice but to stop. If someone as mentally and physically fragile as her got scared and caused an accident, it would be a disaster. Reluctantly, Cheon Mari and I reached a peaceful agreement. Namely, we would continue walking with our hands on each other’s butts. Of course, we weren’t touching them in an unpleasant way. We were merely resting our hands on each other’s butts. There was a difference between touching and resting—just like the difference between spam and luncheon meat. The former was only possible between lovers or true friends, but the latter could happen even between regular friends. If we were just resting our hands like friends, there wouldn’t be any more fighting like before.
And the person beside me was a beastly bastard who treated such promises like scrap paper! In less than five minutes, she started fondling my butt again. Without a word, it felt incredibly shameless. Eventually, not wanting to lose, I touched her butt as well. The problem was that the more we did it, the more I felt like I was losing. It felt like doing something weird with family. Cheon Mari seemed to feel the same way, her expression twisting.
“Ah, fuck, I started it first, so why does it feel so shitty?”
“It feels shitty for me too, you bitch. Stop putting your hand in the crack!”
“Ack.”
The pride battle was about to start again. This time, even Shannon probably couldn’t stop it, and it seemed like we were about to start throwing punches at each other.
Thud!
Something slammed heavily into the ground. When we turned our gazes away from each other, we saw people fighting. Not academy cadets, but actual hunters. Three ogres that looked to be 2 to 3 meters tall. The two groups were fighting fiercely in the middle of the road. Naturally, the hunters should have won, but unfortunately, they were barely managing to dodge attacks.
“Huh? Hunters? I thought only cadets were roaming around.”
“They’re probably here for security maintenance……”
“Judging by how they’re dodging, their skills seem pretty lacking.”
It was a situation where someone needed to help. Only then would they have a chance of winning, even if barely. But something kept bothering me. I stared intently at the hunters.