Chapter 27
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: Elective Subject (6)
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As the S-Class cadets and a few others regained their senses and began walking toward the white space,
a thick fog soon swallowed up all the cadets who had started moving—including me—in an instant, blocking our vision.
"Huh..? Aden-!"
"This is..?"
Libia and Isabel, who had been walking toward the white space alongside me, let out panicked voices laced with confusion as the fog trapped them.
But their words failed to form full sentences before vanishing into the thick mist.
Soon the fog lifted, restoring visibility.
The interior of ancient stone ruins came into view.
"Wow.. this is impressive.."
A maze-like space of moss-covered stones.
The sheer scale drew gasps of awe incomparable to the game screen, exuding a majestic, overwhelming atmosphere unique to itself.
It hardly felt like a basic dungeon created just for a single dungeon practice class.
'Everyone must be scattered somewhere in here.'
All the cadets who had started moving were likely dropped somewhere in this vast space.
After a brief moment of admiration, I surveyed the basic dungeon.
Then I activated {Space Domination} and began to move.
The dungeon's entrance featured a maze-like structure.
Before escaping from here,
my first priority was to dodge all the traps as much as possible and destroy the chairman's golem hidden within the maze.
Click-
Whish-
As I pressed forward through the maze, recalling my goal,
a floor button depressed with a click, and arrows flew from all directions.
I quickly grasped their trajectories with {Space Domination},
then used the {Pioneer}'s action assist to leap into the air and evade them.
Crunch-
Hearing the arrows from every direction smash into each other at the center,
I resumed my steps.
It was impossible to reach the chairman's golem without triggering a single trap.
Finding its location was easy, thanks to the traces she had left on the walls,
but 'the real question is whether I can dodge them all...'
The closer I got to the golem, the more intense the traps became, as if explicitly warning me to stay away.
And sure enough, as if to prove it, increasingly bizarre traps began springing up with every step.
They had started simple—blunt arrows at first—
but soon escalated to walls spewing fire,
dragon-head ornaments ejecting electrified water,
and floors that vanished underfoot.
Deadly traps everywhere.
And before long—
'This is insane...'
A boulder wreathed in flames came rolling down an uphill path, completely blocking the way.
For any ordinary cadet, it would be trap enough to force a retreat and search for another route.
Seeing it, I felt conviction settle in and wrapped my body in mana.
{Moonlight}
Moonlight infuses your strike.
Even wrapped in mana, the height seemed impossible to leap.
But having played the game, I knew for certain.
No trap in this dungeon could seriously injure a cadet.
So that boulder was most likely just for show—intimidating but harmless.
Probably wouldn't hurt much even on a direct hit,
and breakable with a mana-infused sword.
Shaking off the primal fear the massive rock instilled,
I steeled myself and raised my sword to cleave the rolling boulder.
Even if my hunch was wrong, the {Ode to Humanity} skill I'd just acquired would keep me from dying.
With that faith, I activated {Moonlight} to empower my strike
and brought my sword down on the approaching boulder.
Kagagagagak-
The mana-charged blade screeched against the stone.
As expected, its imposing size didn't overpower me.
My body recoiled slightly at first,
but soon my mana-infused strength brought it grinding to a halt.
The sword dug into the stone,
and 'bingo'—
confirming my prediction spot-on,
my blade cleaved it completely in two.
Meanwhile, before the dungeon practice class even began,
inside the Frontier Academy chairman's office.
"So booooored..."
Chairman Eris was enduring a thoroughly dull stretch of time.
After the entrance ceremony, she'd been swamped nonstop for a week, with no chance to dwell on the world's impending doom.
But now that academy operations had hit a lull,
she'd delegated the rest to the other professors and was deep into her break—which, naturally, bred boredom.
"Anything to do...?"
In her idle haze, unwilling to tackle actual work, Eris racked her brain for something fun.
"Ah..!"
Momentarily, a spark hit her; she clapped and triggered a spell.
A magic formula embedded in the magitech tool used for grading the entrance exams
activated, projecting the image of one person.
"Oh right, Regressor-kun—today's your dungeon practice class."
Aden the regressor appeared on the screen.
His time-rewound self tackling today's dungeon practice,
and the first lesson was always exploration of the basic dungeon she had prepared.
To banish her boredom, the chairman decided to watch his feed.
"I wonder what it'll be like?"
Boredom already forgotten, she fixed intrigued eyes on the screen.
He was a regressor, after all.
She was dying to see how he'd handle her personal creation, the basic dungeon.
'Dodge every trap like he knows them all...?'
Or maybe flub one and panic—that could be entertaining too.
Brimming with curiosity, she observed him.
He evaded each trap with textbook precision, every time—regressor-worthy, sure.
But no fumbling panic, no omniscient mastery either.
"Well.. even a regressor wouldn't bother memorizing a safe intro dungeon like this..."
From the angle of thwarting world-ending doom, yeah—no need.
"Hm...?"
As she watched with faint disappointment,
something felt off.
"That's not the exit...?"
He was heading somewhere else entirely.
Not like he'd forgotten the path, though—he navigated with eerie familiarity.
A route familiar even to her.
"No.. surely not?"
An ominous hunch struck,
but she dismissed it.
No reason for him to go there, nothing to gain.
Yet with every correct turn, the dread swelled.
She didn't buy he'd lost his way.
From the start, he'd beelined there without a single misstep...
The hunch hardened to certainty
when he swung at the blatantly hazardous boulder-trap.
Pinpointing its harmlessness despite the "turn back" design, he shattered it,
then pressed on with flawless accuracy.
Nothing crucial there, really,
but she didn't want it found,
and this mounting anxiety as he neared gnawed at her.
And soon enough,
he started prodding the floor stones before an apparently blank wall.
"How the hell does he know about that.."
Aden methodically pressing them in sequence to open her secret door.
Surprise had long worn off.
Now she just wondered what he was after.
"Just get out already.."
Class was technically in session, so no intervening,
but god, she wanted to demand his motives right then.
The final stone triggered,
and the door slid open without a hitch.
Hidden meticulously, or so she'd thought—
useless against a regressor, apparently.
Resigned already, maybe?
She felt a thrill of anticipation regardless.
What would he make of her golem?
As he advanced on-screen,
her latest project emerged:
a colossal magic golem she deemed a masterpiece,
despite lacking its core for full realization.
She dreamed of piloting the thing herself.
Zeroed in on his reaction—
and there it was.
A familiar move, déjà vu.
Crimson lightning crackled faintly around him.
Unforgettable.
A power that defied logic, spurning causality.
Spotting the force she knew—was dead certain—summoned his past-loop strength, bewilderment hit first.
Just a moment...
Foreseeing the imminent disaster, she bolted up, unfurling a barrier spell—
but screen-Aden moved faster.
He vaulted from the ground in a flash,
sword arcing toward the hulking golem.
"No-!!"
The foreseen catastrophe flashed in her mind; she screamed,
but it never reached him.
And soon—
Boom-
Eris could only watch as her golem crumbled under Aden's blade with a thunderous roar.