125. The Hunt (5)
125. The Hunt (5)
CLAAANG—!
Lee Yu-ri's aggro skill enveloped the entire cadet body.
Their gazes snapped to a single point.
And the scene they beheld was Lee Yu-ri, together with Kang Do-hee and Shin Se-hee.
They had known that Kang Do-hee and Shin Se-hee were holding hands.
But since Shin Se-hee wasn't engaging Lee Yu-ri and was instead locked in a one-on-one with Kang Do-hee, the cadets had trusted their leader and briefly focused on their own fights.
"......Th-The Chieftain's in danger! A two-on-one combined assault from Kang Do-hee and Shin Se-hee—!"
Lee Min-young, who had been locked in a fierce battle with another cadet, belatedly rounded her eyes and issued the command.
"Everyone, please stop fighting for a moment and listen to what I have to say."
Shin Se-hee's voice sharply cut her off.
"First, allow me to apologize."
Shin Se-hee abruptly bowed her head deeply toward the cadets.
"......Huh?"
"What's that bitch suddenly doing?"
"She's bowing her head at us?"
"Uh, is this a surrender......?"
"......Shin Se-hee! What is the meaning of this!"
The hall instantly buzzed at her unprecedented action.
Shin Se-hee surveyed the battlefield with calm eyes and steadied her breathing.
'......First, I succeeded in drawing their attention.'
Internally, she recalled what Jin Yu-ha had asked of her a moment ago.
— You need to play the role of uniting the cadets into one.
— Excuse me? M-Me, uniting the cadets?
— Yeah. Some really dangerous bastards are about to attack from outside. What do you think happens if the cadets are still fighting each other?
— That opening....... They'll target it.
— Yeah, exactly. Even united we'd be short-handed; if we're fighting among ourselves, we'll just be the tastiest prey. So the fighting has to stop now and the cadets have to unite as one.
'......Does this man even realize what he's asking?'
These were people who had been thrusting blades at each other and fighting to the death until just now.
Of course, they weren't strangers on a battlefield where death didn't lead to actual death,
and when the first battle began, things had seemed to start pleasantly enough, with a fairly light atmosphere and a bit of humor mixed in.
— Heh, look at that sorry state. Ah, hilarious.
— Says the one doing a medieval knight cosplay?
— Have you perhaps looked in a bronze mirror?
But one hour, two hours in...
As the battle dragged on,
they were now displaying desperate, ferocious behavior as if fighting a real war.
— Die!!! You half-baked subhuman beast bastards!!!
— Ghk, you damned capitalist lapdogs......!
The absence of death didn't mean the absence of pain, and the scattering blood had bred madness.
It was, after all, a battlefield where wounds could scar if not treated in time.
In such a situation, it would be one thing if one faction had been overwhelmingly dominant.
But the evenly matched battle had also given rise to a deep sense of immersion between the groups.
The madness had become a far greater wave than expected and swallowed them whole.
So much so that one would have to worry about factions forming among the cadets after the exam.
'To unite such people into one....... And not even after the battle ends, but right in the middle of an ongoing fight, no less.'
— I know it's a difficult request. But this is something only you can do.
Jin Yu-ha's eyes, as he said that, were filled with trust.
Honestly, before that gaze, the words "I can't do it" couldn't leave her lips for the life of her.
'Honestly, he's a person who only ever asks the unreasonable.......'
Pfft—
Shin Se-hee let out a light laugh and scanned the cadets.
'From now on, this is crucial.'
Now she had to persuade them and unite them as one.
Using the weapon she was best at, the one she was most confident in.
That weapon was precisely,
'A lie mixed with truth.'
Shin Se-hee opened her mouth, her voice not loud, but clear.
"I'm sure everyone's confused, but first, please look around."
The cadets frowned, then did so.
And Kang Do-hee and Lee Yu-ri beside her likewise looked around at the cadets.
"What in the world are we supposed to....... Ah!? Wh-What is this......!?"
Lee Yu-ri's eyes widened to the size of lanterns.
And Kang Do-hee, though silent, had an unmistakably flustered look as well.
"......Wh-When did this many people vanish!?"
Lee Yu-ri's voice rang out, giving voice to everyone's feelings.
As if they'd all belatedly realized this, the cadets looked around in bewilderment.
And no wonder.
At the start, forces close to the size of an all-out battle had clashed, but the cadets remaining here now numbered barely a third.
There was no way they could see that and not find it strange.
As if proving the saying "assassination means not being detected," Jin Yu-ha had blended in among the cadets without anyone knowing, and sent every single cadet who saw him back on the flying ship!
Shin Se-hee had decided to exploit precisely this point.
If even she had only barely noticed this fact when she briefly withdrew from the battlefield to catch her breath, they likely hadn't noticed at all.
Truly an incredible person.
After internally repeating her admiration for Jin Yu-ha for a moment, she opened her mouth again.
"Isn't it strange? That so many people vanished from this spot, yet absolutely no one noticed."
"......Uh, um. H-How did this happen? Don't tell me, you guys caught all of them!?"
Beside her, Lee Yu-ri asked with a flustered face.
Shin Se-hee slowly shook her head.
"No, if we had, there would have been a dramatic change in the amount of Coins held. Nearly two-thirds of the personnel have vanished—if we had taken them out, wouldn't it logically follow that our Coins would have increased in proportion?"
At that, the cadets, every last one, checked their own Coins and their opponents' Coins.
The Coins of the remaining cadets had risen bit by bit, but not dramatically so.
The faces of those confirming this were overlaid with confusion.
Shin Se-hee waited briefly for them to process the current situation. Then she spoke again.
"......We had utterly failed to grasp the true purpose of this exam."
"......!"
"This Midterm Evaluation was never about fighting each other from the start. Rather, it was about fighting an external enemy besides ourselves."
Click—
Shin Se-hee stepped forward.
"In other words, the battle between cadets right before our eyes was merely bait."
Shin Se-hee's lucid voice struck the cadets sharply on the back of the head.
Those who had been in a daze soon regained their senses and wore dismayed expressions.
"Th-That's....... Then what have we been fighting for until now......."
"We were...... taking the exam the wrong way?"
"If that's the case, then what kind of bastards......."
Dejection began spreading among the cadets who had been bleeding and sweating through the exam until now.
But of course, there were those who couldn't accept this at face value.
"Don't be ridiculous....... Don't be ridiculous!!! It's a trick! Chieftain Lee Yu-ri! You must not be played by that vile serpent's tongue!!!!"
The owner of that voice was Lee Min-young, who styled herself as Lee Yu-ri's trusted confidante in her faction.
'Hmm, as expected....... She won't just let this slide.'
Shin Se-hee, who had anticipated this reaction, smiled slyly.
"In that case, allow me to prove it. That there is not a single shred of falsehood in my statement."
"......H-How! How do you intend to prove something without any substance!"
And Shin Se-hee slowly turned her head to look at Lee Yu-ri, who wore a bewildered expression.
"I acknowledge responsibility for leading the cadets down the wrong path until now, and I will forfeit all the Coins I hold on this spot."
*
Shock.
There was no other word to describe the current situation.
The one mentioned as the most likely victor of the Midterm Evaluation, the one who held the most Coins—Cheonhwa.
Had just declared she would withdraw from the game of her own accord.
So great was the confusion that those who had been fighting forgot they were even in battle and began to talk among themselves.
"......Hey, what did I just hear?"
"She says she's forfeiting her c-Coins?"
"Huh? C-Can you do that......?"
"......Dunno either?"
Shin Se-hee had been one of the people who had dug most deeply into this Midterm Evaluation's 'Coin system.'
Starting with whether Coins could be exchanged between cadets.
How far the objects sellable to the shop extended, and whether purchased items could be resold.
And how to increase Coins exponentially.
It was only around the time the homunculus in the shop, a perfect likeness of the Chairwoman, was begging and pleading for her to please just leave, that Shin Se-hee had managed to discover a few loopholes.
'......Pff, I never imagined I'd get to use it like this.'
And in a way that truly didn't suit her, no less.
Originally, letting Lee Yu-ri kill her here would have been excellent proof as well.
But she didn't like that.
It wasn't even dying to Jin Yu-ha,
but to Lee Yu-ri.
'And this is the first mission he's entrusted to me as a combatant. I can't handle it in such a shoddy manner.'
Shin Se-hee took a Mana Potion from her chest.
One she'd bought at the shop in case her Mana ran out.
'Fundamentally, this Coin system is a kind of safety net that protects the cadets' bodies.'
If they sustained life-threatening injuries, high-level healing magic sufficient to preserve their life would be instantly cast, and they would be summoned to the flying ship.
And then they would receive proper treatment inside that flying ship.
An unavoidable measure because this wasn't Velvet Academy, constructed by the Magic Emperor over a long period, but an Uninhabited Island.
And that was precisely what had given Shin Se-hee room to dig in.
After all, it wasn't likely to be an easy task for a mere cadet to unravel something created by the 'Magic Emperor,' the No. 1 ranked hunter.
'There was one more hidden condition for being summoned to the flying ship.'
A fact that the homunculus resembling the Chairwoman had let slip with a face pushed to the peak of laziness, as though telling them to take it and get lost.
That condition was the complete depletion of one's Mana.
But no matter how much you pulled out and used your Mana, it was practically impossible to completely exhaust the naturally replenishing Mana.
Which was why she had blurted it out without much thought.
However, Shin Se-hee could, by using a slight trick, artificially reduce her Mana to zero—at least for a single moment.
Huuuu—
She focused her mind.
Shin Se-hee's Mana slowly pushed outward, sealing off her surroundings.
As if a transparent membrane had been cast,
the path through which naturally absorbed Mana entered was blocked.
Hummm—
Next, she summoned the largest flames she could manage into the empty air.
"......Ah, Ah!? What's she doing?"
"Se-See, Chieftain! Hurry, that woman!!!"
But Shin Se-hee fired that massive sphere of fire not at anyone, but into the empty air.
Whoooosh—
A fireball hurtling vertically across the sky.
Everyone's eyes chased the tail pulled by that flame.
Since her magic hadn't struck anything,
it merely flew into the void and vanished into a single point.
"Ngh!"
The recoil from her Mana level hitting zero in an instant scraped across every pressure point in her body.
A horrifying pain assaulted her.
With trembling hands, Shin Se-hee hurriedly drank the Mana Potion.
Gulp—
Hummm—!
Then in that instant, her body blurred and became sharp again.
And on her chest,
[ 0 Coin ]
was all that remained after the reset.
Shin Se-hee looked at the dumbfounded cadets and wiped the trickle of blood at her lips with the cloth Jin Yu-ha had tied on her.
"Now, have I proven my sincerity?"
It was a magnificent smile, as if drawn in a picture.