Motivation
She might have been much younger than him, but her skills far surpassed his own.
She was the top student of their year—adored by many, envied by just as many. Opinions on her were sharply divided, but one thing remained indisputable: Orknodi was a celebrity. And not just any celebrity, but the kind whose every breath and gesture drew the spotlight.
And right now, Mob was wandering around with that very same Orknodi in search of food.
Wait… isn't this basically a date?
There had been a brief, fleeting moment when Mob actually entertained such a thought.
"Have mercy…"
"Where do you think you're running off to? You haven't even cleared your plate yet, Mob!"
"My stomach's gonna burst…"
Scattered across Mob's table lay the picked-apart remnants of what had once been potato salad, tornado potatoes, potato pancakes, braised potatoes, and stir-fried potatoes.
"You haven't even tasted every single dish that starts with 'Potato' yet! You can't be whining over something this small!"
"Who the hell goes on a date like this?!"
"A date?"
"N-No! Not a date! Training! A mentoring session!"
"Hmph."
Orknodi, who had been chasing him down with a platter in hand, rested her chin on her fingers and narrowed her eyes, looking precisely like a palace guard scrutinizing a suspected felon.
The culinary torture had been so severe that his tongue slipped.
Mob cursed his own foolishness.
She's just a kid trying to help me out, and here I am letting my head fill with romantic nonsense!
A person's private thoughts were their own business, but the moment words left one's lips, one had to bear full responsibility for them.
"Oho. So Mob was tagging along thinking this was a date, huh?"
"I-I'm sorry, Orknodi."
He had no defense whatsoever.
To begin with, Orknodi was barely ten years old. Even if Mob was still a teenager himself, bringing up the word "date" with a child like her was more than enough reason to be branded a degenerate or beaten bloody as a pervert.
Mob's eyes trembled with pure, unadulterated panic.
What if she starts crying? Am I about to get dragged before the Student Council as a predator? Don't tell me… expelled?!
As he shook in terror, Orknodi tossed out a nonchalant reply.
"It's fine."
"...What?"
"I said it's totally fine if you want to think of it as a date!"
Mob's brain completely stalled.
Why would she say that? A girl, to a guy? And it's not like the age difference is small either! There's a massive gap between early teens and late teens! Does she even realize what she's saying?!
His heart began hammering against his ribs in an entirely different way.
Then, a small finger poked him hard in the flank.
"Gaaah!"
The sheer, terrifying physical force instantly snapped him back to reality.
"Now run it off so your belly goes down before you try anything!"
Any romantic flutter evaporated in a fraction of a second.
Mob was promptly subjected to an unrelenting, merciless sprint.
By the time he was completely spent, every shred of interest in "dates" or whatever else had vanished into thin air. He felt like a single additional mention of the word would cause his heart to give out on the spot. He swore an oath never to let it cross his lips again.
You have trained Lower-Class Student Mob.
Running EXP +2
Good Child EXP +1
Eat, sprint, eat, sprint.
Having someone beside me devouring all the dishes I hadn't registered yet made filling out the food codex an absolute breeze.
It was a title that granted the passive ability to unconsciously detect the presence of nearby potatoes.
Now, just because it didn't buff raw stats didn't mean it was something to sneer at. When you burned all your points on impulse purchases and found yourself in the middle of a voluntary starvation experience without the funds to eat at the cafeteria, the ability to locate wild potatoes was practically an extra life. On top of that, fantasy potatoes were common flora that could be dug up virtually anywhere.
Whenever you were on outdoor excursions and needed emergency provisions, you were bound to search for them at least once. They were a quintessential double-edged staple: eat them too often and you grew utterly sick of them, but run out of food and you'd give an arm and a leg just to find a single tuber.
Despite its somewhat pitiful reputation, it was a solid utility title that would undoubtedly help secure daily rations during a food crisis.
Furthermore, if you gathered enough similar "Enthusiast" titles, they would eventually fuse together—and that was my real long-term target.
Once all the detection titles merge, it yields a massive boost to overall sensory perception!
It was an elite endgame feature obtainable through food codex grinding that newbies wouldn't dream of! In this world, the mighty and the aristocratic didn't chase gourmet cuisine and exotic delicacies merely for luxury.
"Well, Mob? Did today's training help?"
"I never want to do this again…"
"Don't worry!"
I won't make you do it again.
"Because we're doing it three times a week!"
"Are you for real…"
Hazing a newbie three times a week was something I could never pass up. Hehe. Prepare to taste the veteran's personalized carry service!
While I busied myself tormenting Mob, an entire week blew past in the blink of an eye.
Ah, it's the fourth week.
I had been treating the academy like my own backyard, but the fourth week always called for caution. In the final week of every month, an ominous or disruptive event was virtually guaranteed to occur.
I wasn't referring to the Headmaster's scheduled Weekly Events.
Rather, these were sudden crises and incidents unscripted by academy faculty that directly affected main and supporting characters alike. The fourth week of the first month was merely an introductory taste for the newbies—usually an unforeseen accident sparked by a lower-class student.
Normally, players don't have connections in the lower class, so digging up intelligence is a pain. But this run turned out pretty unique.
With Mob as an insider, even if the friction between the Upper Class and lower classes worsened or my faction reputation tanked, I could still extract intel through him.
"Is that her?"
"How pathetic."
"Don't look her in the eye. They say assassins can kill you just by holding eye contact for three seconds."
As I waited for Mob, whispers drifted from students strolling through the corridor. They weren't picking blatant fights like the central noble ladies had, but their malicious gossip and insidious ostracization were steadily snowballing in the shadows.
Hmph. How petty.
Dumb newbies didn't know what real fear was.
Deciding they weren't worth a second of my mental bandwidth, I tuned them out and spun a pair of metal chopsticks between my fingers, twirling them like batons.
He was taking his sweet time today. Had his previous lecture run late?
Leaning my back against a shaded pillar while waiting, I tracked a fluttering butterfly outside the high window with my eyes. Somewhere nearby, muffled snickers echoed.
Should I just chuck it?
I readjusted my grip on the chopstick, scanning the hallway to see if any penalty-docking instructors were lurking, only to lock eyes dead-on with an instructor standing nearby.
"..."
"..."
Without a word, the instructor stared squarely at the chopstick in my hand. More specifically, at the throwing stance my fingers had formed.
I immediately dissolved the posture, slapping on a cherubic, butter-wouldn't-melt expression that practically screamed, Who, me? I wasn't gonna throw anything!
"Chop-chop-chopsticks~"
I playfully snapped the chopsticks in the air as if trying to catch the butterfly through the glass. The instructor snorted and glared with narrowed eyes. The man's gaze made it abundantly clear that while I might fool the passing brats, I couldn't fool him. I pouted and stuck out my lower lip.
Tap-tap-tap.
The next class was about to begin; where was Mob? Just as I grumbled inwardly, he finally showed up, sprinting down the hallway at full tilt before grabbing my hand in a tight grip.
"You idiot! What are you doing out here all alone?!"
"Why am I an idiot? The real idiot is Mob, who's teetering on the edge of academic expulsion!"
"...You're way too kind for your own good."
"I'm kind?"
"Just come on."
Mob tugged at my arm, and I relaxed my frame, letting him drag me along. If he realized he couldn't budge a little girl by raw strength, his morale might crater, shattering any motivation to study. Ahh. Looking out for my mentee's fragile ego down to the smallest detail—I truly was an exceptional tutor.
Monday's third-period lecture, Mastering Combo Skills, had run far past its scheduled duration.
"Skills trigger abilities of fixed parameters, sharing fundamental principles with magic. However, physical skills only came under formal academic scrutiny following the advent of magical skills. The application of standard magic formula stabilization to the physical form is what we define as a physical skill. While offering ease of activation, this convenience comes at the cost of rigid drawbacks—namely, fixed casting motions and inflexible output."
"There are, of course, methods to circumvent the limitations of physical skills. Who can explain one? You there, Mr. Mob?"
Mob had promised to meet Orknodi during the break before their Ranged Weapon Mastery class, knowing she would be waiting. But having taken a seat in the front row, the professor's relentless questioning seemed never-ending.
"As skill proficiency increases, casting motions and verbal chants become condensed. Binding these triggers to specific gestures for near-instant execution is a phenomenon known as an Instant Link."
"Correct. When one masters the Instant Link, one achieves Chantless and Zero Motion, enabling immediate activation without preliminary movement. Even so, it is exceptionally rare for an individual to handle more than ten instant-cast skills simultaneously, as human cognitive retention and spatial memorization—"
Mob already knew all the theory.
He knew that skill proficiency was something that could be chiseled down through raw, grinding effort. He also knew that geniuses sneered at that very effort, accumulating proficiency at a blistering pace and leaving ordinary folks in the dust despite attending the exact same classes.
He knew he possessed no such genius.
That was why he spent his nights sweating in the Secret Training Ground, desperately tackling assignments and raising his proficiency, fully aware that a single day of slack would see him discarded and weeded out.
He knew it all too well.
That was the sole reason he sat through these lectures: to glean any tip that might shave down the chasm of talent, to walk the proper path so that minimal effort might yield maximal proficiency gains. Yet this lecture crawled at an agonizing pace. The syllabus moved too slowly, the professor's voice droned too slowly, and the clock wound down far too slowly.
"That concludes today's lecture."
The instant dismissal sounded, Mob sprinted like a madman.
I have to apologize first. What if she got mad and went to the classroom without me? She's taking time out of her day just to tutor a lower-class nobody like me…
Guilt over wasting the top student's precious time spurred him faster through the halls. To his immense relief, he spotted Orknodi leaning against a pillar en route to the training grounds.
She was stunningly pretty today, too. Her profile, silently gazing out the window, was breathtaking. He found himself wondering just how many hearts she would break when she grew up.
Embarrassment crept in ahead of relief. He knew he shouldn't be conscious of it, but his cheeks warmed nonetheless, and he steeled his resolve to act dignified and composed.
Then, his pace slowed. His ragged breath caught in his throat.
"Isn't that Orknodi girl totally bizarre? What was that weird 'chop-chop-chopsticks' nonsense just now?"
"Search me. Waving metal sticks around and singing to herself. She seems completely unhinged. Just like those damaged test subjects from the Magic Towers, don't you think?"
"Ah, them? Right! The ones whose eyes never focus, slurring their words and acting like freaks no matter how old they get. Ten is old enough to have some sense, but she acts straight out of that mold."
"Maybe she's just playing coy for the boys. Seducing people at that age… truly shameless. No wonder those filthy rumors keep circulating about her."
"You think she was trained for that kind of stuff?"
"Drop it, shut up. If she catches you, you'll end up disgraced like Lotto. You know she just uses brute force to beat up anyone she doesn't like."
Students walked past, openly tearing into her character at volumes impossible to miss.
There was no way Orknodi hadn't heard.
Sure enough, looking closely, her trembling fingers betrayed her distress. She held the chopsticks awkwardly, twisting and fidgeting with them as though she didn't know what to do with her hands.
She had heard every single word.
If an adult had been present, they should have stepped in. Yet no one came to her defense. Not even the instructor standing nearby.
Orknodi had surrendered her precious weekends just to tutor a student on the brink of failure, yet when she stood under attack, not a single soul reached out to help her.
All alone.
In biting isolation.
She simply stared out the window at a lone butterfly.
"You idiot! What are you doing out here all alone?!"
"Why am I an idiot? The real idiot is Mob, who's teetering on the edge of academic expulsion!"
"...You're way too kind for your own good."
"I'm kind?"
Orknodi tilted her head in innocent confusion.
Mob grabbed her small hand firmly, pulling her along while she put on a bright, carefree facade.
"Just come on."
Furious indignation welled up in his chest. His heart ached with profound sorrow and bitter injustice.
It's because of me.
She was such a pitiful, tender child, enduring such humiliation without walking away just to keep her promise to meet him.
I want to pay her back.
A burning fire ignited within him—a desperate yearning to be of some help to this girl. Any faint annoyance he had felt over running until he dropped dissolved into dust. He would never whine again.
He would trust Orknodi implicitly.
As he forged his iron resolve, Orknodi chirped beside him.
"Don't eat dinner later!"
"What are we eating today?"
"We're eating rocks!"
"...Understood."
Mob's immediate, unwavering acceptance left Orknodi staring in utter bewilderment.