I Learned My Lesson
Monk Myeongho had steeled his resolve.
He was prepared for the worst—even the grim task of carrying out Orknodi’s lifeless body.
It’s just ahead.
The damp, stifling stench characteristic of fungal monsters drifted toward him on the subterranean breeze. Bracing his mind for horror, Monk Myeongho charged into the chamber.
The sight that greeted his eyes was a Clawman, its wicked, blade-like talons pressed directly against Orknodi’s slender neck.
“Ack!” Orknodi let out a sharp cry.
Monk Myeongho’s hand struck like a bolt of lightning.
“How dare you!”
His face twisted into the ferocious scowl of a wrathful Yaksha emerging from the depths of hell as he unleashed a devastating palm strike. Following the trajectory of his strike, the Clawman’s body dissolved into a spray of minced gore, splattering against the dungeon wall. Terrified that toxic spores might scatter, he used Gathering to condense the surrounding air into a vortex, plastering the monster flat against stone in a single blow. The Clawman had died before it even knew what hit it.
“Huh?”
Orknodi merely blinked, unable to keep up with the abrupt whirlwind of violence.
Seeing her standing there in such an apparently bewildered state made Monk Myeongho’s heart ache. How much terror must this tender child have endured, cornered and surrounded by vile abominations?
“It is alright now, young patron. You remember me, do you not? I am Monk Myeongho, who proctored your first entrance exam.”
“Why did you kill him?!”
“Fret not about the spores,” he replied gently. “Lest you fall under a fungal parasite's mind control, I eradicated the fiend without letting a single spore escape into the air.”
So you may set your heart at ease.
Yet before Monk Myeongho could utter those comforting words, his benevolent smile began to fracture. Orknodi was glaring up at him with an expression of sheer outrage, as if demanding how he could commit such an unforgivable atrocity.
“Why on earth would you do that?!”
“...Were you not in mortal peril?”
“Of course not!”
Had he underestimated the cohort’s top student? Orknodi showed not the slightest trace of fear toward the monsters. Far from terrified, she looked downright heartbroken, mourning the creature as though someone had just senselessly slaughtered her favorite pet.
What could have possibly happened in this cavern? How could she display such unfathomable audacity?
“Just what in the world were you doing in here?”
“I was getting my hair cut!”
“A... a haircut?”
“Geez! Just because you’re bald doesn't mean everyone else is fine without hair, Monk! Mine is long!”
“……”
Orknodi. She had literally been using a Clawman as a substitute barber.
People commonly assume that wild monsters are heartless beasts that butcher and devour each other the second they lock eyes. In reality, surprisingly many of them maintain symbiotic relationships.
Take the Clawman, a monster typically handled by Copper Badge adventurers. Its behavior was defined by an extreme punch-down, suck-up mentality. When facing creatures weaker than itself, it would snap open its razor-sharp claws with a dramatic flourish and rampage like an unstoppable warlord. But the moment it encountered a superior predator, it bent over backward to prove its absolute harmlessness.
Look at me, I’m a good, obedient monster. If you spare my life, I can be remarkably handy.
And the specific skill they marketed to show off that domestic utility was grooming and styling hair with those very blade-fingers.
“Oh, perfect timing. Give my hair a trim!”
The Clawman had stood there dumbfounded at first, nervously glancing sideways at the cluster of Red Teeth Mushrooms. The mushrooms merely shook their caps in weary resignation, sighing as if telling the beast to just do whatever the terrifying little human wanted. Such was the inevitable dynamic after these creatures recognized humans as the undisputed apex predators.
The upperclassmen rounded up every single one of them for bizarre laboratory experiments. Would these monsters ever view humans as food? Hell no, humans are walking disasters.
In truth, monsters weren’t all that different from ordinary animals. If an opponent was huge, they cowered. If a roar sounded menacing, they shrank back. If a creature’s coloration or behavior was bizarre, they felt deep anxiety. I would bet good money that if Titocoga simply brandished her Light Stand and flicked the switch, that dazzling beacon alone would terrify the top twenty percent of monsters across the entire continent.
Stone Badge: Top 90 percentile. Novice punching bags.
Copper Badge: Top 50 percentile. The baseline for true monsters.
Iron Badge: Top 10 percentile. Designated dangerous threats.
Silver Badge: Top 1 percentile. Triggers regional evacuation orders.
Gold Badge: Top 0.1 percentile. National disaster class.
Platinum Badge: Top 0.01 percentile. Global crisis class.
When broken down into percentiles, monster ecology formed roughly that sort of hierarchy. Within that scale, the Clawman occupied the threshold where one could say, Right, from this guy onward, you can officially call it a real monster.
Lethal, yes, but once you showed them the insurmountable gap in power, they became as docile as whimpering lapdogs.
“Trim off just one more centimeter!”
Snip.
“Hey! Who told you to give me a bowl cut?!”
The moment I barked in indignation, just look at how pathetically it hunched its shoulders in fright. Cringing in fear that the human might punish it—now that was the quintessential demeanor of a Copper Badge monster.
“At this rate, how do you expect to survive in this cutthroat academy? You've got to master hair styling so you can get hired as an apprentice salon assistant! Got it?!”
If even bloodthirsty monsters could find ways to coexist, there was no reason humans and monsters couldn’t do the same. Having it cut my hair wasn't solely because my locks were so long that shampooing took an eternity. It was also an earnest effort to demonstrate their domestic harmlessness to the faculty and secure them steady employment.
Besides, if I reform enough wild monsters, I unlock a rare Taming title!
Benevolence driven purely by the sacred grind for titles and achievement hunting! Whatever my impure gaming motives, it was an indisputable win-win. I walked away with stat boosts and achievement perks, while the monsters escaped being dissected to death on laboratory tables, landing salaried jobs instead.
“Ack!”
Which was why the haircut needed to look decent, yet these brainless beasts had carelessly hacked away until my bangs were horribly crooked. Just as I let out a shriek of righteous frustration, a Buddhist monk materialized out of thin air and detonated the poor Clawman into chunky mist.
And that was the unabridged truth of the incident.
“Have you finished writing your letter of reflection?”
“Yeeees.”
In the end, I was hauled straight to the Main Building and forced to compose a written apology. The official charge: recklessly engaging in hazardous conduct. An uncertified student attempting to tame and train wild monsters without professional qualification was a flagrant violation of academy regulations.
“Mocking baldness is a heinous offense in this academy—one that could provoke a deadly feud in certain circles,” Monk Myeongho admonished solemnly. “You must reflect upon that far more gravely than your folly of treating a dangerous demonic beast as a pet.”
“Yeeees.”
“I pray that this is not mere lip service, and that you are truly repenting from the depths of your soul.”
Monk Myeongho must have been extraordinarily rattled, as he gave me several more stern lectures even after accepting the paper. As a consequence, I ended up skipping my second-period lecture, Tales of Adventure from a Retired Hero. Fortunately, because Monk Myeongho had contacted the instructor directly to explain my detention, I escaped without any disciplinary penalty points.
“Quite the spectacular adventure you embarked on. You truly live up to your status as an aspiring Adventuring student.”
Professor Destroyer personally stepped into the reflection hall to offer his wry commentary.
“Monk Myeongho. May I take custody of the child now?”
“Of course,” Myeongho replied, bowing slightly. “If anything, I must apologize for detaining your student for so long.”
“Think nothing of it. I shall make sure she receives a thorough scolding on your behalf as well.”
Taking charge of me as if signing off on a formal prisoner transfer, Professor Destroyer scratched his prickly stubble with a fingertip and looked down at me.
“I’m sorry...”
“Enough. It’s not as if you wronged me personally.”
“You aren't mad at me?”
“If I lost my temper over petty mischief like this, I would have slaughtered Nyarlathotep a hundred times over. That lunatic was a walking catastrophe.”
“What kind of trouble did he cause?”
“He claimed he wanted to see whether breeding wing-clipped aerial monsters would produce flightless offspring, so he ran an unauthorized breeding program in the rapid cultivation chamber. He ended up spawning a colossal Land Dragon Drake.”
“Whoa.”
“Don't sound impressed. That cursed drake is still rampaging through the western breadbasket, devouring a billion tons of grain every single year. It’s a miracle the man founded some shadowy foundation and made a fortune to pay annual reparations to the affected farmers. Otherwise, our Hero party would have spent our retirement on the continent’s most-wanted posters.”
Nyarlathotep, the previous generation’s Hero, certainly lived a wild, chaotic life in this timeline.
Wait... that foundation couldn't possibly be the Weihimhai Foundation, could it?
“Looks like your friend has arrived,” Destroyer said, glancing toward the hall. “I’ll cut the lecture short here. She must have been frightened out of her wits, so go comfort her as you see fit.”
A true gentleman knew precisely when to take his leave. Having delivered his piece, Destroyer jammed both hands into his trouser pockets and strolled away down the corridor.
“Orknodi!”
“Waaaah—!”
“Do you have any idea how terrified I was?!”
“Aaaack—!”
Jigoku grabbed me by the shoulders and began shaking me back and forth like a rag doll. “I heard you hired a bloodthirsty monster to give you a haircut! Not even the craziest buccaneers on the high seas have screws as loose as yours!”
“Stop shaking meee—!”
“If you’d ended up dead, were you planning to drive me mad with guilt?!”
“……”
I walked away from a den of monsters completely unscathed, only to sustain severe cranial trauma right here in the hallway. My head was rattling around so violently I felt like I was getting a concussion!
Watching Orknodi and Jigoku’s boisterous reunion from around the distant corner of the corridor, another student quietly turned on his heel.
“Ah, you are safe as well, young patron,” Monk Myeongho called out as he walked past. “Please exercise caution in the future so you do not tumble into the drainage canals again.”
“Thank you, Monk Myeongho,” the lower-class student replied, offering an embarrassed, deferential smile.
Yet the instant the monk’s concerned gaze shifted away, the boy’s humble smile froze into an icy sneer.
Tsk, rotten luck. I thought this was the ideal chance to get rid of her without dirtying my own hands.
Monk Myeongho hovered around Orknodi with irritating frequency. Whether he was acting as her watchdog or her self-appointed guardian, laying a finger on her while that monk was watching was an impossible task. The student had deliberately staged a disturbance at just the right moment to divert the monk’s attention, giving the trap time to spring. Yet against all odds, Orknodi had walked out of the monster warehouse entirely unharmed.
As expected, the Foundation’s top scholarship student is no easy prey.
The anonymous lower-class student swallowed his bitter frustration. There would be plenty more opportunities down the line.
If not for you, I would have been the most successful operative of our generation. No matter when the chance arrives, I will eliminate you, Orknodi.
The boy’s true identity was another elite scholarship recipient bred by the Weihimhai Foundation—a lethal rival aiming for Orknodi’s throat.
“Hoh. A student harboring murderous malice toward that little girl? Now that is intriguing.”
And watching that very student from high above, casually walking upside down along the ceiling rafters, was Destroyer.