Period 5: A Different Art Style
Monday, fifth period.
At the lecture grounds for Adventurer's Night Operations, darkness hung thick and quiet.
"Where's the classroom?"
"There isn't even a single light on."
"Did the professor just go to sleep or something?"
The handful of students wandering hesitantly among the pitch-black barracks turned around with deeply disappointed faces.
"Let's just go take the lecture on sleeping anywhere."
"Yeah, good idea. The classroom's close by, too."
"I only wandered over here because that class had too many people and competing for grades seemed like a nightmare... Tsk. But if the lecture isn't even open, there's nothing we can do."
Watching the students turn back after failing to locate the professor, Orknodi offered a silent prayer for their souls in advance.
If you complete that course, you really can fall asleep in any extreme environment imaginable. Hang in there, newbies!
Even if dropping out midway would leave them with nothing to show for their suffering, she sincerely hoped they would stick it out to the bitter end.
Still, this class really is unpopular.
Though before popularity even entered the equation, most students simply gave up because they couldn't track down the instructor in the dark. A tiny fraction lingered behind, harboring the eccentric hope that, this being Adventurer's Night Operations, perhaps the lecture was genuinely intended to take place outdoors without any lights.
And their hunch was spot-on.
Rustle, rustle...
"Huh? Didn't something just stand up over there in the shadows?"
"Cast an illumination spell, quick!"
A familiar magical spotlight flared to life, casting a soft pink glow over the clearing as an effect shower of fluttering flower petals burst through the air. And there, revealed in the center of the illuminated patch...
Draped in sodden, pitch-black hair that hung like waterlogged seaweed, a woman clad in a white burial shroud was rising from the dirt, her bones popping and grinding with sickening creak-cracks.
"Eeeeeeeek!!"
"W-Wait for me! Don't leave me behind—!"
"It's a ghoooost!! Somebody save meeee!!"
"Aaargh! I'm losing my mind!!"
"H-Hey, guys?! Wait for me, please!"
"Run for your lives!!"
"Dammit, hold on! It's hard to run while dragging this spotlight—!"
Like a shattered militia suffering total morale collapse, the students scattered in every direction, screaming at the top of their lungs. The girl who had been hauling the heavy spotlight tripped over an exposed root and took a hard tumble.
Boasting surprisingly sturdy craftsmanship, the toppled fixture survived the impact without breaking. But having struck an improper toggle on the way down, the light suddenly shifted from gentle pink to a lurid, bloody crimson.
Creeeeak, crack, crunch.
With joints groaning like rusted hinges, the black-haired woman in the burial shroud slowly pivoted her head toward the fallen student.
"Eep! D-Don't come near me! Do you have any idea who my father is?! He's the mayor of the Sacred City-State Alliance! One of the great city-states known as the Southern Pantheon belongs to my father!"
"……."
"Y-You understand, don't you?! So back off! If you take one more step... I'll tell my dad on you...!"
"……."
"...I really will... okay?"
No answer came from the shrouded figure. The spotlight girl's bravado rapidly crumbled into pathetic whimpers.
Looking down at her own burial dress, now bathed in the gory crimson beam, the woman slowly raised her head back toward the terrified girl. Gripped by an overwhelming sense of doom, the student couldn't even force a peep out of her throat, shaking her head frantically in sheer denial.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
"Ah."
The moment the shrouded woman sprinted straight toward her on all fours, the spotlight girl simply rolled her eyes back and passed out cold.
"Sloppy child."
Naturally, this woman in the burial shroud was not some vengeful spirit cursed to haunt the campus after a tragic demise. She was none other than the esteemed professor assigned to teach Adventurer's Night Operations.
"...Class is in session. ...Come out, quickly."
Righting the lighting apparatus, the professor swept its beam through the surrounding darkness. Even setting aside the space behind the barrack where Orknodi had been concealed using the Hide skill, the beam panning straight up into the treetops was a genuine surprise.
"Whoa. That was just you, Professor? I thought you were a real ghost. You scared me so badly I almost attacked."
Dropping down from the branches was the masked assassin, Zhuang. Leave it to an assassin to cross paths in a class that practically screamed covert field ops.
Monday, fifth period.
Scheduled in the twilight hours between seven and nine in the evening, Adventurer's Night Operations was led by Professor Sadako, a nocturnal educator who draped herself in a white shroud and kept her face buried behind long, tangled hair. Because her body was perpetually freezing and prone to stiffness, every movement she made produced unsettling pops and clicks, and her obscured features had earned her a reputation as the academy's resident apparition.
Naturally, her popularity among students was absolute rock-bottom.
In a previous academic year, she had held a night class that coincidentally drew an enrollment of exactly zero. Having savored the blissful paradise of collecting her salary without needing to teach a single soul, she had achieved profound spiritual enlightenment.
If I terrify the students away, I won't have to conduct lectures, and my time will be entirely my own.
It was the ultimate freeloader's secret: reaping every lavish faculty privilege granted by the Dragon Principal without shouldering any of the dreadful obligations of actually teaching! Having mastered this art of academic truancy, Sadako made a habit each year of staging an unforgettable entrance at dusk by the edge of an unusually gloomy forest to scare prospective enrollees out of their wits.
She had assumed that once the spotlight girl woke up, she would spread spine-chilling rumors so terrifying that even students who hadn't attended today would never dare set foot here out of mere curiosity.
Yet in this world, there are always those who lack a shred of fear. And as misfortune would have it, the 981st Cohort happened to possess two such students in its first-year ranks.
"...Aren't you two... afraid of your professor?"
"Things stop being scary once you kill them, so it's totally fine! ...Well, actually, it's not fine because killing a professor isn't allowed!"
"I'm just not scared at all."
From behind her fox mask, Zhuang glared at Orknodi with deep resentment, silently asking how anyone could utter such an outrageous lie with a straight face.
"...Truly? You are not frightened of me...?"
With a dry crack, Professor Sadako stepped forward. Her neck snapped to an unnatural, impossible angle, bringing her obscured visage directly in front of Orknodi's nose.
Though Orknodi looked mildly taken aback by the gruesome display, her eyes simultaneously shone with unmistakable anticipation.
"You have such a lovely voice, Professor! And there's no such thing as an ugly woman who sounds that pretty!"
For such a tiny squirt, she had an astonishingly brazen mouth. A prickle of contrariety flared within Sadako's chest.
"Do you know what moniker they give me? I am Sadako of the Terror."
A single iris peeked through the curtain of matted black hair. The dark, abyssal chill pooling within that gaze was designed to stir the deepest dread buried in mortal hearts.
It was a purely instinctual horror—the biological revulsion a human felt when staring into the eyes of the inhuman. A foundational wrongness that made anyone who witnessed it realize their existence was in mortal peril, screaming at every survival mechanism to flee on the spot.
"The Headmaster possesses a knack for gathering exceptional talent... yet he bears an even more fatal flaw."
Sadako rested a pale, ice-cold hand upon the shoulder of the child, who didn't even reach her chest.
"His flaw is that he pays no heed to species or origin. And the professor standing before you, tasked with guiding your path, is an existence that defies the natural order of life. A creature forsaken by the gods. An undead."
"!"
"Do you feel it? This frozen palm, devoid of all life's warmth. Should you submit to the tutelage of the dead, you too may end up as nothing more than a corpse. Even knowing this, are you truly not afraid of me?"
Zhuang shivered violently beneath her mask and squeaked, "I'm terrified out of my mind, actually."
When an assassin trainee drilled in stealth and cold blood trembled this hard, the demonstration had been more than sufficient. This was enough. Zero students again this year. She could return to basking in her quiet, solitary night hours undisturbed.
While the dead possessed an eternity of time, their intrinsic nature loathed having their personal slumber interrupted above all else. Sadako felt a slight pang of conscience for intentionally courting hatred from a child who had praised her voice, yet she eagerly looked forward to reclaiming her peaceful slumber.
"Does any of that even matter?"
Yet Orknodi did not flinch in the slightest. If anything, her response rang out with absolute conviction.
"As long as you teach the material well, Professor, that's all that counts! It's not like that greedy Dragon Principal would ever hire an instructor who couldn't deliver proper results, right?"
Sadako stood frozen, struck by pure disbelief.
Even faculty members hailing from the prestigious Empire looked down on her with sheer contempt as a wretched corpse, yet a mere first-year student was openly, unequivocally acknowledging her worth. What was more, that confidence was backed by sheer pragmatic logic.
She had been recognized.
This child held genuine, earnest expectations for her teachings. She looked forward to learning from a creature that others couldn't even stomach looking at.
"...This is the instruction you asked for. If you intend to withdraw, speak this instant. If you disturb the rest of the departed solely to demand knowledge, only to drop out on a whim later... I will never forgive you."
"I'm not quitting! Out of every single course offered on Monday fifth period, this is the one I wanted to take the most!"
Faced with Orknodi's spirited, cheerful shout, Zhuang halted her retreat mid-step. She puffed her cheeks and stomped back toward them.
"Fine, I'll take it too."
"Why bother? I can just take it alone."
"Backing out now would feel like admitting defeat, and I despise losing!"
Observing the vibrant bickering between the two young girls, Sadako let out a dry, clicking chuckle from beneath her veil of hair—a sound like grinding bone. While she detested playing the role of educator, an inkling told her that this year might turn out to be a very strange exception.
How on earth could someone's laughter sound like cracking dry bones? Seriously, even knowing her full lore, it was terrifying.
Though I had put up a brazen front of nonchalance before Zhuang, my heart had been pounding a mile a minute on the inside.
As expected of the absolute champion of nightmare visuals. Even after seeing her a hundred times in the game, experiencing it in person still takes years off my life.
Owing to her ghastly, horror-movie aesthetic, Professor Sadako had been regarded by the player base as one of the most neglected, niche instructors in the entire game. Yet, there had always been one persistent rumor surrounding her.
Her real face beneath the bangs that she never revealed to players.
A shocking rumor claimed that beneath that hideous veil of matted hair, she was actually a peerless beauty.
Of course, no hardcore veteran had ever managed to confirm it in-game. Whether Sadako was breathtakingly gorgeous or nightmarishly hideous had remained one of the developers' classic MacGuffins.
Still, now that this world has become my reality, shouldn't I be able to crack the mystery once and for all?
The undead were the true sovereigns of the night. When it came to nocturnal survival and covert night operations, finding an instructor more qualified than the undead Professor Sadako was an impossible task. However, the true incentive of this course had nothing to do with such mundane practical utility.
I want to see Professor Sadako's real face!
Catching a glimpse of the professor's bare visage before the first semester concluded—that was my absolute, number-one reason for enrolling in fifth-period Adventurer's Night Operations!