233. Gulliver's Travels (2)
233. Gulliver's Travels (2)
FLASH—
A brilliant light blinded me.
When I opened my eyes again, the library scenery was nowhere to be seen.
All I could see was a training ground......?
"Hut! Hut! Hut! Hyaaat!"
On the training ground, where clouds of dust billowed, hundreds of people in perfectly aligned rows and columns were swinging their swords, sweating bullets.
In the midst of it all, I tilted my head and checked myself over.
Clank-clank.
A rusty chain-mail hauberk hung on my body, a shoddy iron sword rested in my hand.
Even a massive helmet that almost completely covered my head.
'Jin Yu-ha is...... a common soldier.'
When you accept Chairwoman Rina's Library Quest,
the characters who take part in the quest become some of the characters within that story.
But since I'd never accepted this quest with the Jin Yu-ha character,
I hadn't known what role I'd be playing.
Well...... now I do, though.
'......I'm an extra. Tch.'
I hadn't particularly expected much from the start, but as usual, I guess you could call it the Jin Yu-ha class—a Base 1-Star trash character.
Somehow, I appeared to have become a low-ranking soldier in Gulliver's Travels.
'First, I'll blend in with the training naturally...... and get a feel for the atmosphere.'
Since it was my first time as a low-ranking soldier, I had to be careful about everything.
That was when I was watching the other soldiers' training methods, picking them up visually.
"Recruit Jin Yu-ha! You again!!!"
A woman with her bright-yellow hair tied up, carrying a spear, shouted my name and strode straight toward me.
'......Is she an army drill instructor?'
"Yes, ma'am!"
I answered, snapping into a rigid, disciplined stance at attention.
From my military experience in my previous life, I knew that showing a crisp, disciplined attitude in these situations was the right move.
"You always answer so well......."
But the instructor's reaction was cold.
"No matter how much a war is looming, I told you over and over that accepting a man into the army is wrong....... Instead, all it does is shatter discipline."
She muttered in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
At that, the people who had been training around us also stopped and turned their heads this way.
Every last one of them was a woman.
'Whoa. It's been a long time since I've had this.'
Those gazes laced with contempt and pity.
It had been so long since I'd been treated like this that it almost felt welcoming.
These days, with Utopia blowing up, the people who looked down on me—their party leader—for being a man or a quota student had practically gone extinct, you could say.
A fresh realization dawned on me from this familiar situation.
'So the gender-role-reversal world setting carries over even into the game's stories, huh? Come to think of it, if it didn't, it would be weird for the mostly-female Velvetsra cast to be active in a medieval period.......'
I might not know much, but gender discrimination in the medieval era had to have been incomparably worse than in the modern day.
Anyway.
If that gender-role reversal carried over as-is,
it was obvious how a man like me would be treated in this period.
"Why'd a guy like him even enlist?"
"Right? Coming here pointlessly, making us pay attention. He's a total nuisance."
"Since his face is half-decent, if he just quietly went off to a brothel and sat nicely on a bed, I'd make him feel pretty every single night."
"Kek. You? Dream on. Hey, look at his face. With a face like that, he'd be dragged off to serve the nobles at night, you know?"
Yeah, this is how it goes.
"Recruit Jin Yu-ha."
The instructor spoke in a chilly voice, as if she couldn't even hear the surrounding soldiers stopping their training to whisper about something.
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Did you come here to play?"
"No, ma'am!"
Whether the people around me mocked me or not, I answered with a booming voice.
"Really? I had assumed you'd come to play, seeing as you were standing around dumbly, doing nothing at all."
"......."
"Ha. If you can't even keep up with the basic training, what in the world am I supposed to do?"
"I will do better from now on!"
"No, 'from now on' is useless. After observing you all day today, I've become certain. Our unit does not need a man like you. Just pack your things right now and leave this place. That's the last mercy I can offer you."
'Huh?'
I couldn't help but be flustered by her threat.
To be forced to retire the moment I started the quest.
'......No, fuck. This is way too harsh of a spite check!'
I thought maybe it was a route where I'd get kicked out of here and enter elsewhere, but
considering the future story, sticking around in the army seemed like the most standard way to go.
'What do I do?'
I squeezed my fist tight and racked my brain furiously.
"Why no answer? Am I going to have to pack your bags for you myself? Unless a man is incapable of even doing something like that properl—"
"I...... can beat anyone in this place in a fight."
But the instructor spat out her words as if she had no intention of giving me time to think.
At that, I cut her off and answered with whatever popped into my head.
"......What?"
At that, the instructor's mouth fell open in an expression of sheer disbelief.
Honestly, if I'd said that in the army, it would've been an act of insubordination warranting the stockade, but well, what could I do?
I couldn't think of any other way at the moment.
Yeah. The milk was already spilled.
"I believe a soldier's worth should be judged not by gender, but by how many of the enemy they can cut down—by that strength. Please, just give me one last chance."
I straightened my back even more commandingly and spoke.
*
In the middle of the open training ground, a circle of people formed a tight ring.
And in its center, a man with long black hair and a woman with yellow hair stood far apart, confronting each other.
It was a sparring match between me and training instructor Elena.
Murmur-murmur—
The onlookers encircled us, whispering amongst themselves in dumbfounded voices.
"Is he on something......?"
"Has he lost his mind? He should've just bowed his head and said he was wrong back there....... His face is half-decent, so I was enjoying the eye candy......."
"Instructor Elena never goes easy just because you're a guy."
"Yeah, we'd be lucky if she only breaks one of his limbs. That woman's the one who threw the biggest fit this time about men getting mixed into battle......."
The instructor with her yellow hair tied up, Elena, leveled her wooden spear at me and spoke with a cold, frozen gaze.
"I don't suppose you imagined your sparring partner would turn out to be me. Recruit Jin Yu-ha."
"Hmm, that's true."
'......I wish they'd just grabbed some other random kid to spar with me. Mm, can I handle this?'
Of course, it wasn't worry about whether I would lose. It just seemed like I, a mere low-ranking soldier, was causing a bit too big of a scene.
'Mm, it's a relief that this isn't a soul-only transmigration, but one where I bring my actual body with me.'
If it were a soul-only transmigration, this would've been a reckless gamble.
But my physical condition was at its peak.
It hadn't been long since I'd hit 3-Star, and on top of that, I'd just taken the Fire Dragon Elixir right beforehand.
Gripping a wooden training sword, I scratched my head.
I'd already taken off and tossed aside the helmet that didn't fit right.
Even that sight seemed to wound Elena's pride.
Grind—
She gritted her teeth and spoke in a low voice.
"You said you could beat anyone here in a fight. That would include me, the one who trains the recruits. That is an insult to our entire Fierce Tiger Unit."
"Ah, sorry about tha—"
"No. Don't apologize. Regret is useless now. Besides, you said with your own mouth that a soldier's worth does not lie in their gender. Therefore, I too shall face you with that in mind."
Finishing her words, Elena signaled with her eyes to a fellow instructor standing nearby.
At that, a woman stepped forward hesitantly to referee the match, standing between Elena and me.
"W-Well, then, the sparring match will now begin! The sparring opponents are Elena and R-Recruit Jin Yu-ha! The rules: if one side is rendered combat-incapable, or cries out their surrender, they will be declared defeated!"
After that, the referee, who had been glancing back and forth between the two of us, gulped audibly.
Then she dropped her hand.
"Begin!"
* * *
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Elena's figure, charging toward Jin Yu-ha with her spear at the fore, resembled a colossal tank.
Before long, Elena reached point-blank range with Jin Yu-ha.
"Hyaaaaaah!!!"
With a vigorous battle cry, her spear began to weave dazzlingly.
As if proving her words that she would never go easy, the sharp sound of air being torn apart rang out.
Shoop! Shoop! Shoo-shoo-shoop! Shooooop!
At that, everyone squeezed their eyes shut.
The male recruit named Jin Yu-ha hadn't even managed to assume a proper stance in the first place while Instructor Elena had been approaching.
He simply stared dully at his opponent with his training sword lowered.
He had clearly frozen up from the terror of battle.
He'd stepped forward boldly enough, but ultimately, this was what he amounted to.
He must have become a pitiful sight.
"......."
A brief silence fell.
That was when I slowly opened my narrowed eyes.
"......Huh?"
A bewildered voice escaped from someone.
After that, everyone's eyes flew open in blank disbelief at the scene before them.
"!"
Because right there, Jin Yu-ha was gripping the spear shaft in one hand
and holding his blade to Elena's throat.
She looked up at Jin Yu-ha with vacant eyes.
"Hmm, I don't think you'll be satisfied with just this, so let's go once more."
"......."
At that utterly nonchalant voice, an earthquake rattled through Elena's pupils.