Why Is This Guy Here?
'Why the hell is this guy here?'
Kang Sian doubted his own eyes. He had clearly sent her away to escape, yet here she was, suddenly reunited with him in this place. It made no sense from any angle. Had she been caught on her way out? No—if that were the case, she should have been found aboveground, not down here. The fact that she had emerged from this sack meant…
“Huuuuurgh…”
I have no idea.
She must have had her own reasons. He decided to just let it slide. With a sullen expression, Kang Sian pulled Shannon out of the sack. He untied her bound arms and legs and patted her back. Checking over her entire body was just a bonus. Since both her body and clothes looked intact, it seemed she had avoided any real harm. Still, that begged the question of why she had been stuffed into a sack in the first place.
Kang Sian wiped away her tears and examined the sack. It was made of synthetic fabric with no notable markings. The only symbol was an inverted swastika-like pattern rotated about forty-five degrees. He clicked his tongue and turned back to Shannon.
“Are you okay?”
“Hic… Yes…”
She claimed to be fine while clutching her tail tightly to herself. In reality, she was anything but. But since she said she was okay, he had no grounds to press the issue. He patted her back as she calmed her breathing, trying to steady her sobs, when she finally spoke.
“How did you even get caught? I told you earlier that if you just went straight, you could get out.”
“Well, it’s just that… that…”
Kang Sian had assumed she’d been captured the moment she stepped outside. The reality, however, was completely different.
“I did get out, but…”
“But?”
“It was complete chaos out there…”
Pillars of fire shooting into the sky. Buildings collapsing. Streets in total pandemonium. Knights appearing. People being slaughtered.
“So I just took the stairs next to me and went down underground… but there were people chasing me…”
Kang Sian dragged a hand down his face. If it was madness outside, she should have looked for safety up there. Why on earth had she gone downstairs? And if she was going down, why hadn’t she hidden properly instead of getting caught again? She should have put as much distance as possible between herself and her pursuers, ducked into any random room, and stayed quiet. If that didn’t work, she could have fought like he had. She was a mage, after all—more than capable of holding her own in a fight. If even that was beyond her, coming to the academy in the first place had been a massive deception.
I knew she was a bit of a mess in the game, but still.
She was an absolute idiot. Of course, the kind of idiocy he meant wasn’t the same as Cheon Mari’s brand of idiocy. Cheon Mari was the crazy bitch who charged into whatever she had to do with infinite confidence and did it in the most batshit way possible. Shannon was the coward who got scared of what she had to do, avoided doing it, and then screwed everything up anyway. In other words, Kang Sian was currently staring at her with an extremely pitying gaze.
The silver lining was that he hadn’t shown it outwardly. In the end, he helped her to her feet. Staying here would only increase the danger, so it was the obvious choice.
“If you’re going to hide here, go into an operating room, lock the door, and stay quiet.”
“…Huh?”
“I got you out safely this time, but I might not be able to next time.”
“W-where are you going?”
Kang Sian pointed at the ceiling. It was clearly directed toward the surface, not the upper floors.
“The surface is a total disaster right now…?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to just hide here…?”
“That’s true too.”
It was a reasonable point, so he agreed. But that didn’t mean he would follow it. The reason was obvious: Cheon Mari was almost certainly up there. Even if he hid, he’d have to take her with him.
“Wouldn’t it be better to block the floor entrance together and hold out as long as we—”
“My friend is still on the surface.”
“Ah…”
Shannon looked at him with an expression of pure terror, like she was staring at death itself. Of course, it wasn’t because she had foreseen his future. It was the realization that she might soon find herself in an even worse situation than before. The thought that there needed to be more people, that there needed to be someone who could actually fight. In this precarious reality, her survival instinct was desperately trying to hold onto him.
But personal circumstances were always just that—personal. Kang Sian pointed at the operating rooms beside them as if telling her to hide on her own.
“Y-yes…?”
Then he spun on his heel and headed for the end of the corridor, toward the stairs. He was going aboveground without even a decent weapon.
“W-wait… ow?!”
Shannon hurried after him but tripped over something and fell. Wincing in pain, she looked down at her foot. There lay a squire with one leg bent at a grotesque angle. He wasn’t unconscious or dead, though. He was clearly alive and conscious. He had simply grabbed her ankle in his agony.
“H-hiiik?!”
She kicked at the squire repeatedly, but he refused to let go. Instead, he crawled closer, trying to grab her other leg as well. In a panic, she cast a self-suggestion, spreading her palm toward him and activating her magic.
Chrrrrrr…
Tragically, all that came out was a stream of water that only soaked his clothes. She had been so flustered that she hadn’t properly circulated her mana. Shannon stared at her own palm in dismay and flailed desperately. She kicked with her feet and even whipped him with her tail, but it was useless against his thick armor. The moment the squire grabbed her knee—
“You bastard!”
Thud—!
Kang Sian’s kick slammed into the squire’s abdomen. Infused with magic, it crumpled the armor instantly.
“Khup… Gaaah…!!!”
While the creature was reeling in pain, Sian snatched the sword from its belt. He immediately channeled magic into it and stabbed the weak point of the steam engine. Then he grabbed Shannon by both horns and dragged her back roughly. The instant the squire’s bloodshot eyes met hers as she was pulled away—
With a loud bang, the steam engine on its back exploded. Blood splattered across the floor. The pain in her horns was forgotten. The threat vanished in an instant.
Shannon sat there in shock, staring blankly.
“I completely forgot about that guy.”
The words came out casually. Unlike her, he seemed far more relaxed than afraid. Sure enough, he walked over to one of the corpses and picked up a sword.
“There shouldn’t be any survivors left now, so you can hide without worry!”
“Huh? Y-yes…”
“Well then, I’m off!”
His tone had subtly changed now that he had a weapon. It was thanks to the confidence that he could handle whatever waited outside. Kang Sian headed up the stairs without another word.
In the chilly corridor, only blood, corpses, the remnants of battle, and Shannon Redmond remained. She was alone once again.
So she agonized. And agonized some more. A few seconds later, a strange scream of “Kyaaaak!” echoed from the floor above.
“A woman’s voice?”
It wasn’t Kang Sian. It was clearly a woman’s scream. From the faint words drifting down, it sounded like an English speaker. A test-taker was undoubtedly being attacked by the World Tree followers. Hiding here in the training area was practically suicidal.
In a reality filled with anxiety and fear, Shannon made her decision.
“W-wait! I’m coming too!”
She hurried toward the stairs. Right now, this was her only way to survive.
Sin was being purged. Some people would think that.
We are under attack. Some people would think that.
Buildings are collapsing. Families are being destroyed. To someone, that was the scene before them.
Here, Cheon Mari was the prime example of someone thinking exactly that. She was incredibly confused by the sudden event that had interrupted her practical exam.
Those crazy bastards! So this was that incident?! Why the hell did it have to start today?!
She had known a terrorist attack would happen because she was a regressor. But she had never guessed it would be today.
And it’s not even a regular gun terrorist attack—it’s a scroll terrorist attack!
Separate from the event itself, since it was happening in America, she had assumed it would be one of the commonplace gun or bomb attacks. She had never imagined the academy would be torn apart like this.
“Cough! Cough! Damn… it!”
Cheon Mari spat curses as she staggered out of the building. The moment she escaped the flames, she had to brace herself against the ground. After catching her breath for a moment, she looked behind her. Multiple pillars of fire reaching all the way to the sky filled her vision. It was both a spectacle and utter madness. If this were a lucid dream, she would rather believe it was one.
In short, because she hadn’t paid much attention to events from this period, her vague memories had come back to bite her like a boomerang. It was ridiculous, but with overlapping incidents and the fact that she had spent her childhood years half-assing everything, it was unavoidable for Cheon Mari. Besides, what kind of insane group would commit such an act by invading another country’s territory like this? And when people heard about terrorism in America, it was only natural to think of guns or small-scale magic attacks. This was on a scale no one could have predicted without prior information.
That was why Cheon Mari feared that Kang Sian might seriously scold her later. Failing to act on knowledge she possessed as a regressor was a massive blunder.
“Ah… wait, Kang… Sian…”
The problem was that all those thoughts were completely pointless. What mattered right now wasn’t what she had missed or what was happening. It was that Kang Sian—her precious childhood friend—had been caught up in this incident. A terrible premonition gripped her: that she might have driven her only friend to his death.
“No, no, no.”
That was something that absolutely could not happen. To protect their bond and friendship, she pushed herself up from the ground. But her body was in terrible shape. The aftermath of the explosion scroll had dealt critical damage to half her body.
“First, I need somewhere to recover…”
Her skin was burned away, her muscles had melted, and bits of bone were exposed everywhere. The entire left side of her body was like that, and smoke was still rising from it. A metal rod had even pierced straight through her neck. With half her face charred to the point that muscle was visible, Cheon Mari struggled to breathe.
It was a level of injury that would have killed an ordinary person instantly. Even a hunter would have died from shock long ago. Only her monstrous regenerative power from her superpower and a mental fortitude that contradicted her lowly humanity allowed her to endure. She shouldn’t push herself. Yet Cheon Mari yanked out the metal rod anyway. She clenched her teeth as blood poured from her neck and mouth. The gaping hole healed far too slowly. With so many wounds, her recovery rate had plummeted sharply. It was something she had experienced countless times, even if the setting was different.
Using the metal rod as a cane, Cheon Mari took one step after another. She was moving so slowly that it was questionable whether she could reach Kang Sian in time. Still, with a sound like leaking air, she kept walking. When her body had improved even a little, she performed self-treatment inside a destroyed medical office in one of the buildings. It wasn’t precise treatment, though. Just ordinary hunter-style first aid.
She forcibly ripped off the melted clothes and skin, then dumped an entire bottle of antiseptic onto the wounds. She swallowed a handful of fentanyl—enough to kill a normal person several times over—and since she lacked bandages, she only wrapped her palms. It was such crude treatment that any doctor who saw it would have fainted on the spot. The only saving grace amid the horror was that she had found a set of clothes, so she wasn’t left naked. The unpleasant sensation of fabric sticking to exposed muscle washed over her instantly.
Honestly, she wouldn’t have minded showing Kang Sian, but she put them on anyway out of consideration for others. Cheon Mari left the building without leaning on the metal rod. The moment she stepped outside, however, she came face to face with a group.
“W-what the hell is that thing?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“World Tree, how can such a being…”
A normal human man carrying a greatsword. An elf woman holding a bow. A human woman in a pointed hat gripping a staff. A human man who looked like a rogue. A human woman dressed in pure white clerical robes. A dwarf man carrying a massive bag.
“A-anyway, we don’t have far to go until the support point. We should take care of this quickly and move on.”
“R-right.”
“Saintess, please cast support magic.”
They were a group made up of hero candidates. A hero party. They had clearly been deployed alongside the fanatics and knights. In other words, they were the masterminds behind this entire disaster.
“…Perfect. I had some questions anyway.”
They were excellent sacrificial lambs. Cheon Mari gripped the metal rod tightly.