Critical Matters of the Second Gate
Orknodi had been eating poisoned candy all this time.
Yet she appeared completely unharmed.
And that made it all the more terrifying.
"Give me one too."
Isabelle broke off a tiny fragment of a candy, dissolved it in her saliva to test the taste, and promptly spat it onto the ground. She hurled the remaining piece away, her face hardening into a grim mask as she lowered her voice. "It has psychoactive compounds in it."
Giselle sampled a few pieces as well before his expression froze solid. "There are also toxins that induce respiratory arrest and paralysis. Every color contains an entirely different toxic profile."
"Hey, is she really fine? No matter how you slice it, these sweets are insane." Son Ocheon rubbed the tip of his tongue, still annoyed by the sharp, persistent sting prickling across his taste buds. If an adult beastman felt this much irritation, the strain and agony inflicted on a frail child's body would have been beyond imagination.
"My candy! If you weren't even going to eat it, why did you take it and throw it all away?!" Orknodi cinched the drawstring of her pouch tight, her eyes slanting into furious little triangles as she shrieked at them.
"Runt. Who gave you this?"
"The maid gave it to me! She told me to savor every piece!"
And you guys just smashed and tossed it without even eating it!
Not a single one of them felt the slightest pang of guilt under her accusatory glare. The one who deserved to feel guilt was not them, but the monstrous maid who had handed these to a child in the first place.
"Should I go kill her?" Son Ocheon growled.
"Stand down, Mr. Son Ocheon. Violence will not resolve this," Giselle cautioned.
"Boss, aren't you the one who's been bending over backward trying to save this kid?"
"A maid is merely an operative at the very bottom of the chain. Someone else undoubtedly pulls the strings. Unless we settle accounts directly with the house that raised Lady Orknodi, there will be no end to this."
"Pisses me off," Son Ocheon muttered, his irises flaring with a dangerous, golden fury. "It's been a damn long time since I felt a genuine urge to murder someone."
"Should we at least confiscate the pouch?"
"There's likely no need to go that far," Isabelle interjected, drawing upon her expertise as an adventurer. "The child possesses poison resistance. The fact that she ate these constantly without issue, combined with her negligible physical reaction, makes that abundantly clear."
"Poison resistance is hardly an omnipotent shield, is it?"
"She'll be fine as long as she takes specialized neutralizing agents that flush out the toxins without straining her organs. Poison specialists among veteran adventurers operate the exact same way."
Giselle's expression softened slightly, but Isabelle shook her head. "Even so, this is exceptionally dangerous."
"Are you trying to reassure us or terrify us?"
"How many distinct colors were in that pouch?"
When Giselle glanced toward the bag, Orknodi quickly tucked it deep into her robe and bared her teeth like a threatened cub.
...Is she genuinely planning to bite us?
Startled by her feral reaction, Giselle blinked before Isabelle turned back to Son Ocheon. Having peered directly into the bag earlier, the ape beastman scrunched up his brow and dredged up his memory.
"Quite a few. Definitely more than ten."
"Resistance training invariably starts with mild toxins before advancing to lethal ones," Isabelle explained. "Which means she has already completed conditioning against every poison weaker than the ones in that pouch."
"...How potent were the ones we just tasted?"
"I could identify over forty varieties among the mild psychoactives alone. Building tolerance to one a day would take forty days, but standard protocol requires at least a week per toxin. That's forty weeks—ten whole months of conditioning."
"That long?!" Son Ocheon's jaw dropped.
That meant for at least an entire year, she had been systematically poisoned week after week, forcing her body to suffer and generate antibodies over and over.
"Keep in mind, those forty varieties account only for psychoactive agents," Isabelle added grimly. "Depending on her curriculum, she must have ingested at least twenty to thirty varieties across every other category as well."
Snake venom. Wasp venom. Jellyfish toxins, spider venom, and beyond. The animal kingdom alone harbored countless lethal secretions, and once you factored in toxic flora, poisonous minerals, corrupted mana, and corpse putrefaction, the sheer catalog of poisons spiraled into an astronomical number.
"Then... just how many kinds of poison has Lady Orknodi been forced to consume?" Giselle asked, his voice shaking.
"At an absolute minimum... likely over three hundred varieties."
Calling it a daily dose for an entire year would hardly be an exaggeration. Even spaced out in weekly intervals, that equated to six full years of systematic torture. For a child who barely looked ten, it meant her torment had begun when she was barely four years old.
The horrifying calculation left everyone struck dumb with horror.
Oblivious to the existential dread suffocating the adults, Orknodi huffed and urged them forward in an exasperated tone. "The other examinees are already walking past us! How long are you going to stand around dawdling like that?"
Listening to that blithe, innocent voice, they desperately wanted to ask her: How could anyone endure such an atrocity and still speak with such untainted cheer?
A sudden wave of petty spite washed over me.
"Uncle Ocheon. Carry me."
"What? What the hell happened to your own feet?"
"I'm sickly, so I don't have any strength."
"...Sickly? What? Siiicklyyy?!" Son Ocheon gaped at me with a face that screamed, Did every genuine patient in the entire empire drop dead overnight?!
Hmph. Glare all you want, it won't work on me.
My bad mood isn't going away that easily.
I went out of my way to stay behind for your sakes—well, mostly for the chef's sake—and what do I get? You smash my candy, throw it in the dirt, and make us fall behind the whole procession.
None of you have any idea how furious I am right now.
Perhaps reading the dead-serious glint in my eyes when it came to food, Son Ocheon clicked his tongue with a defeated sigh and lowered his back.
"Hop on, runt. I'll grant you a glimpse of the lofty heights only grown-ups get to see."
Always so quick to act smug. Before I ended up in this body, I used to play games looking down from the exact same eye-level, you know! Grumbling internally, I scrambled onto his broad shoulders, and my field of view widened drastically. It didn't just feel like reclaiming my old adult perspective; it felt like the entire world had grown immense.
"Pffft-gah!"
"Gwahahaha!"
Right up until the low-hanging tree branches and razor-sharp leaves began violently battering my face at adult eye-height.
"Put me down! Put me down right now!"
"You chose this mount yourself, kid! Clench your teeth and power through it with pure grit!"
My face took a relentless, merciless beating all the way to the Second Gate examination grounds.
After escorting the students safely to the threshold of the Second Gate, Monk Myeongho slipped away into the staff cafeteria.
"All right, listen up!"
Stepping forward to replace Monk Myeongho was the second proctor. She was a ranger, clad in a sleek cape, fluttering mantle, and form-fitting leather armor that accentuated every curve of her athletic physique.
"Whoa, listen to that voice."
"So raspy and cool."
"Even that ranger mask covering up to the bridge of her nose looks amazing."
The examinees erupted into unanimous praise!
Meanwhile, my veteran-gamer review: absolute garbage-tier!
Ugh. Of all the people, why did it have to be her?
I had run straight into my natural predator—one of the TOP 3 examiners every player dreaded encountering during the entrance exams.
"I am Examiner Minerva, proctor for the Second Gate: Hunter's Forest."
"Lady Minerva, you're so cool!"
"What a shame. You'll be despising me shortly."
"...?!"
"The format for this stage is a composite hybrid of Search and Point and a Finish Marathon. You will advance alongside me through the forest until we reach the exit. Any top-scoring candidate who completes secondary sub-quests along the route to amass high points will be granted the privilege of Immediate Admission."
It sounded brutally demanding on paper, but that wasn't even the worst of it.
"Examiner Myeongho had a soft spot for examinees during the first stage. I am not so charitable. Fifty points. Anyone who scores below fifty points in this gate will be eliminated, even if you cross the finish line."
Minerva paused, letting her cold gaze sweep over the crowd. "Furthermore, while examinees are off completing sub-quests, I will not halt my march toward the exit for a single second."
Only then did the full gravity of the nightmare dawn on the applicants, draining the color from their faces.
"In other words... we have to complete sub-quests along the trek, and then sprint to catch up with your advancing formation before you pull too far ahead?"
"Precisely. Excellent summary. State your name."
"Rockwell, Silver Plate Rank adventurer!"
"A Silver Badge holder, hm? One bonus point awarded."
"Th-thank you!"
"As a side note, points can also be stolen by ripping the ticket-watch from another examinee's wrist."
Rockwell's face instantly twisted into a tearful scowl. He had just realized that his bonus point was nothing more than a poisoned chalice.
This was precisely why the player base dubbed her Hate-nerva or Sadistic Minerva. And the titles bestowed upon her by the in-game NPCs were just as terrifying:
The Malicious Proctor.
The Do-S Ranger.
The Mass Cull Course.
The Hell-Difficulty Gate.
Examiner Minerva was an unmitigated nightmare, universally ranked among the top three worst examiners an applicant could possibly draw.
Damn it, I should've just slammed the Immediate Admission button back in stage one...!
Regret was entirely useless now. The trial had already begun.
"We depart immediately."
"Ah, wait, Proctor! What about meals?!"
"Showing concern for an examiner's health? How thoughtful. State your name."
"Michelle!"
"One bonus point awarded to you."
In a test where higher points turned you into prime prey for everyone else, handing out free points was pure psychological malice. That woman truly was a sadistic piece of work.
"I have already dined while you took your first exam, so there is no need to fret over my welfare."
"No, wait, that's not... hehe. What about us?"
"Why on earth should a proctor care about that?"
"Pardon?"
"We are entering a forest."
"Yes...?"
"Forests are teeming with food."
"Huh?"
"Forage and feed yourselves on the march."
At those chilling words, even the charismatic Eastern swordsman Sing and the Northern Grand Duchess Irene—who had displayed overwhelming magical firepower earlier—wore frozen, grim expressions.
"Wh-when does the exam begin?"
"Right now."
"Whaaaaat?!"
"The academy assumes zero liability for the life or death of any missing persons stripped of their ticket-watches. Examinees who commit murder will incur catastrophic penalties. That concludes the briefing. Commencing the Second Gate exam."
"Ack, she's so fast!!"
Beneath our feet lay tangled tree roots and choking briars; around our torsos grew dense thickets and lashing boughs; and high above, a suffocating forest canopy blocked out every sliver of sunlight. The worst terrain, the worst format, and the worst examiner imaginable had aligned to kick off the Second Gate.
"Runt. Want me to keep carrying you?"
"No thank you!"
Who do you think you're fooling, trying to use my head as a meat shield against the branches!
Minerva strode briskly into the gloomy forest, and the examinees scrambled in a frantic rush to match her pace. Our party melded into the flowing herd.
"This examiner has an extraordinarily swift stride, as expected of a ranger," someone remarked from the rear.
From the front, she appeared to be merely walking, yet those at the back had to maintain a brisk jog just to keep from falling behind.
"At this speed, won't we lose the main group the moment we detour for a single sub-quest?"
"The exam was designed with that dilemma in mind from the very beginning," Giselle observed. True to his reputation as a prodigy who had breezed through the ticket trials using pure intellect, he immediately deduced the underlying trap. "The instant someone breaks formation to complete an objective, they lose the main force and are forced to track us down."
"What a nuisance of a test."
"It hardly ends there," Giselle continued. "The individuals who manage to secure points will become the highest-priority targets for those lurking to poach them."
Isabelle clicked her tongue in disgust. "Points-stealing, huh?"
"Simply jogging alongside the proctor yields an unpredictable tally, yet breaking away leaves you isolated from the main body—and taking that risk invites ambush from other candidates."
Leaving the pack carried a guaranteed disadvantage. Staying with the pack elevated the risk of elimination due to point starvation.
"We will need to make a choice," Giselle said quietly.
Whether to become a risk-taking quest-farming unit, or a predatory hunter squad stalking the farmers.
A cutthroat trial where quest hunters and student predators coexisted had officially begun.
"Goodness. Poor thing... Are you worried as well, Lady Orknodi?"
You completely missed the mark, Mr. Giselle.
My worries were on an entirely different plane.
"Miss Isabelle."
"Hm? You want me to give you a piggyback ride this time? I wouldn't mind, but..."
"Do you happen to have any bug repellent spray?"
Piggyback rides didn't matter in the slightest.
Warding off mosquitoes was the real matter of life and death!