58. Foolish Children
58. Foolish Children
"Your condition... isn't that bad."
I skipped morning exercise and headed straight to the infirmary.
The school nurse turned my wrist this way and that, swept her hands over my shoulders and back, and nodded.
"The bones seem to have set well. The muscles and ligaments have healed nicely too. Your resilience is better than I thought?"
"Ahahaha....."
It was probably thanks to the bare-handed combat passive skills.
The teacher examined my body a few more times, then declared it was finished and returned to her seat.
"Is it because you're Eve's disciple? You'd be fine to attend classes right away."
"Really?"
"Yes. But don't go running off to a dungeon or anything like that just yet. You can manage classes by adjusting things here and there, but if you go to a dungeon and fight, you'll come back broken again in no time, won't you?"
"....Does that mean I'm not fully healed yet?"
"Did you think a shattered bone would heal in a day or two?"
"............."
In short, classes were fine, but if I moved too intensely, the injury would just flare right back up.
At this rate, my final exam grades were getting a little worrisome...
1. Chrono : 1,021 point
Record: [Cave Ant Extermination][Cave Ant Extermination][Cave Ant Extermination][Cave Ant Extermination][Cave Ant Extermination]...[Soldier Ant Extermination][Soldier Ant Extermination][Soldier Ant Extermination]...[Captain Ant Extermination][Captain Ant Extermination][Captain Ant Extermination]...[Ant Queen Subjugation]
"........?"
...It seemed I didn't really need to worry.
Anyway, the number of digits looked a bit strange.
'Did I... exceed a thousand?'
No matter how I looked at it, it seemed like a bug.
But when I actually checked the logs recorded below, it didn't particularly seem like a bug.
When I tallied them up one by one and scored them, there was no issue with the total value.
Which meant that I really had hunted all of those, just as it said.
"....The math actually checks out."
Just in terms of proficiency alone, I was already beyond first-year level.
My stats were still a bit lacking, but I had caught up to most extras by now.
Could it be said that being worked to the bone by Eve all semester had finally paid off? I ended up feeling the reward of waking up every morning to exercise and being ground down during club activity time.
'At this level... is it okay to loosen up a bit?'
Actually, come to think of it, my stat growth rate was abnormally high. Same with my skill proficiency, and same with my skill points.
This was entirely the result of abandoning the heroines and investing solely in my inner growth. If I had done this in the game itself, I would have already seen six or seven NTR CGs by now, but unfortunately, I was the NTR villain.
The ridiculous situation of an NTR villain getting NTR'd never actually occurred.
If I had to say whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, it was definitely a good thing.
I moved my feet and headed to the classroom.
"Take it easy this week."
"Huh?"
"I said take it easy."
"........"
And so, I was sent right back by my homeroom teacher.
I mean, that teacher really was a kind teacher.
He would be a genuinely kind teacher if only he didn't occasionally hit on female cadets behind their backs.
"It's fine."
"...Do as you like."
However, separate from the teacher's kindness, I was in a position where I absolutely had to attend classes right now.
The points I had spent just to take down the Ant Queen alone had wiped out most of what I had saved up over a month.
And that was from points I had barely scraped together by attending every single class without fail every week. Seeing them disappear in an instant left no room for anything but bitterness.
'Still, it wasn't like there was absolutely no harvest...'
No. No matter what, this was too much of a loss.
I could have raised a top-tier skill right away, but because the situation was urgent, I ended up unlocking passive skills and various other skills, and I still regretted it to this day.
...Would it have been better if I had just stopped time and run away back then?
If I had done that, I could have escaped without having to spend any skill points.
No, in that case, I wouldn't have been able to save those people, even if only a few.
'But if I was going to reason like that, why didn't I just use the skill points sooner...'
It was regrettable. It felt like a waste. And I had no idea the situation would play out like that.
Later on, I had no choice but to invest in the skills anyway──but it bothered me that a few people looked at me and scolded me, asking why I hadn't done it sooner.
"Huuuuuu...."
After classes ended, during lunch break.
On the way to the cafeteria, I checked my cadet account at the ATM.
[5,445,165 Point]
"........?"
Wasn't the number of digits off by one?
When I checked the transaction history, it seemed the damages from the Athena Guild, request rewards, and the amounts from various other miscellaneous matters had all been settled into this sum.
'Wasn't the exchange rate clearly 100 times?'
I recalled that when converting to cash, the money entered the account multiplied by 100.
So, in terms of value, that meant a sum reaching the hundreds of millions was now in my hands.
"....Oof."
I immediately took the bracelet off at the ATM.
The sudden magic that made all money look like scraps of toilet paper.
Normally, only the monster by-product settlement and request rewards would have come in, so I would have had to knock off the last two digits. But with things blowing up in various ways, and the requests being completed, it seemed the fallout had arrived in this form.
"Let's eat first."
Staring at the number for too long made my head go dizzy.
First, I went into the cafeteria to fill my stomach and checked the menu.
...But why did all the prices suddenly look so cute?
"If even that [Deluxe☆Bomber] looks cheap to me...."
Most of the prices in the cafeteria were around 100 points.
However, the [Deluxe☆Bomber], unlike other foods, had an extra digit tacked on the back at 1000 points.
Simply put, it was an ambitious menu questioning whether you could burn 100,000 won on a single meal.
"Let's try it once."
But so what? Right now, my bankbook showed hundreds of millions.
"────!!!!"
The taste of the Deluxe☆Bomber was roughly on the level of a Deluxe Fighter using the Deluxe☆Bomber.
In a word, it was a meat bomb, and it was disgustingly delicious.
I could feel the flavor of something that hadn't been nuked in the microwave.
...
..
.
After finishing lunch, I attended the rest of my classes.
Swung daggers, fired guns.
During club activity time, I went to where Eve was.
"...You want to... exercise?"
"Yes."
"........"
"Coach??"
As I tried to receive personal training, Eve clenched both hands into fists, trembling as she spoke.
"Y...outh......!"
".....Excuse me?"
Why did youth suddenly come up there?
"The spirit to rise again even after your body breaks! That is truly the youthfulness befitting youth!"
"....Hello?"
Something was a bit off.
I had to run.
The moment my instincts spoke to me, Eve rushed toward me.
"Do you want to get stronger?"
"Uh......"
"Do you want to get strongerrr?"
"....Yep."
"Then try chanting this incantation."
Asura Balbal Ta
Asura Balbal Ta!
...Somehow it felt like a chant that would make someone really good at playing cards.
"Ugh... Aaaaaaaaah!!!"
"Assei! Don't give in here!"
It turned out that was Eve's awakening chant.
Eve ground me down even harder than usual.
Suddenly she measured the three major lifts and started saying something about how this level still wasn't enough to break her spirit.
"Youth does not break! If it's going to break anyway, better to shatter! It's youth until the moment it shatters!"
"Aagh! Aaaaaaagh!"
Whatever.
Someone save me.
I said someone save me...!
"Hmm, fighting spirit! All answers will be standardized to 'Aagh'!"
"Aaaaaaaaaagh!!!!"
That's not what I meant by that...!!!
...
..
.
"I'm so screwed, seriously...."
On the way home after being thoroughly ground down by Eve.
Returning to the dormitory, I washed up, lay down, and gasped for air. A strangely hollow feeling washed over me.
"I feel like I'm... forgetting something...."
A feeling of something being empty.
The feeling that I had forgotten something, had let something slip my mind.
I quietly closed my eyes and thought it over carefully.
"....Huh?"
And at the end of that, a single question occurred to me.
"Where did they all go?"
The original Protagonist and the heroines.
While roaming the school today, I hadn't run into a single one of them.
Of course, the possibility that my timing was just so bad that I happened to not see a single one wasn't zero──but even if that were the case, I should have been able to see them during class time.
Especially since I didn't think both Yuno and Minerva would skip class to go do something else weird.
So, the conclusion was one of two things.
The first case was that they had fallen victim to an NTR villain and were currently being NTR'd, hence they couldn't show up.
The second case was that they were outside doing requests because of the final exams.
'Of these, the one with the higher possibility is...'
The second one was definitely correct.
Even if they were currently being NTR'd by an NTR villain, if that were the case, only one person would have vanished at most.
If absolutely everyone was absent, it was correct to view it as them having taken a request and gone out on a quest.
"They went out on a quest without me, huh...."
There was nothing particularly strange about it.
Expecting them to keep waiting for me when I was running off doing individual activities, for who-knows-when I'd return—how long could they possibly wait?
So, forming a party among themselves and going out was, from the original story's perspective, an extremely natural outcome.
'Still, it feels a bit disappointing...'
I didn't particularly expect them to wait for me.
But just a little, just a very little, I felt disappointed.
I wasn't quite sure why.
"....Eing, I'll just sleep!"
Anyway, my final exams were completely over.
All I had to do was welcome the girls back when they returned later, and my part would be done.
And so, I closed my eyes and fell into sleep.
A few days later, like that.
[Emergency Mission]
[Foolish Children]
-This is an emergency mission given by Cronus.
1. Rescue the Apostle of Hera (0/1)
2. Rescue the Apostle of Athena (0/1)
3. Rescue the Apostle of Ares (0/1)
4. Rescue the Apostle of Hermes (0/1)
5. Subjugate the true boss of the Orc Slave Camp, the Troll (0/1)
[Location: Orc Slave Camp]
Reward: Contribution + 100/ Rank Up Qualification
On Failure: Trust in me. You will not fail.
"Uh....."
I stared blankly at the mission window.
"......What?"
Is this right?