You Actually Came to Take This?
Fighting for the top ranks was brutal work.
Even among the academy's top two percent, the contest was fierce—a desperate scramble to claim the title of Gift Academy’s absolute pinnacle of physical endurance. Yet the only reason I stubbornly clung to the front of the pack wasn't pride. It was solely to clear the lecture's hidden achievement.
You placed among the top five in Mount Omine climbing distance during Professor Platon's Upper Class Physical Conditioning course.
Acquired 500 bonus Points for completing an in-lecture achievement.
No matter how many Points you hoard, it's never enough. That was why I ran as if my life depended on it, and the effort had paid off handsomely.
“Halt right there! Outskirt runts, you’re not going a step further. Anyone who tries to overtake us gets cut down!”
The real nuisance began when the selfish snobs of Group B made their move to block the finish line.
“That guy... he’s Horner, the lancer from the Fried Chicken Ducal House, one of the Empire's three founding pillars. Word has it he learned spear arts directly from the Divine Spear, the greatest lancer in the world.”
“And the one beside him is Tataya from the Chicken Makhani Count family! They’re an elite swordsmanship bloodline that produced three consecutive Sword Masters under Duke Fried Chicken!”
“Now I see why people warned me never to get tangled up with the continental Chicken Faction. If we don’t yield our rank, they’re planning to drag everyone down in a brawl!”
Horner and Tataya weren't merely barking empty threats. When the feline beastman martial artist Jenya tried to ignore their warning and surge ahead, a spear tip grazed her shoulder, sending her tumbling backward in sheer panic.
“That's dangerous, nya! I almost got skewered, nya!”
“I aimed to hit you, you brainless outskirt barbarian. That was your warning. Next time, I pierce flesh.”
“You think you can get away with this, nya?! The professor will slap you with demerits, nya!”
“Hah! You think we didn’t plan ahead? We asked beforehand. The professor told us that any bloodshed occurring during the lecture is perfectly fine, so long as it's part of the competitive struggle for rank!”
This was precisely why Upper Class courses were a hazard to life and limb. The students weren't the only psychopaths; the faculty were just as unhinged. What kind of professor on God's green earth gave students the green light to draw blood during class?
The problem was that in their breathless arrogance, they had shouted that precious intel loud enough for the entire field to hear.
“Is that sooooo?”
“What, another bastard wants a taste of the spear?”
“Gah! W-Wait, Horner! Not that one!”
“What's with you, Tataya? Getting cold feet?”
“That freak is genuinely insane! Don't you remember? The lunatic who gunned down five students on the way to course registration!”
Sporting a pirate tricorn atop fiery red locks, the landlocked pirate strode forward—a bona fide trigger-happy maniac willing to pull the trigger anytime, anywhere. Jigoku, the cross-dressing pirate, leveled a hefty revolver straight at Horner's forehead.
“If bloodshed is fair game, that means firing lead is totally kosher, right? I can go wild, right? Righttt?!”
“Y-You lunatic! Guns and spears are completely different!”
“How the hell are they different?!”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunsmoke erupted. While Horner scrambled to parry the incoming rounds with his shaft, his momentum stalled, and the surrounding students immediately seized the gap. Everyone surged forward in a chaotic stampede, tackling and sabotaging anyone unlucky enough to be ahead of them. That was the spark that ignited the brawl everyone had witnessed near the finish line.
Damn. Look at that bloodbath.
Sliding between the treeline where nobody was watching, I skirted the carnage entirely and slipped by at a safe distance. While their vicious clash was partly intended to knock down rivals, it was also calculated to burn off surplus stamina. To clear the professor's grueling pass condition, they had to exhaust their reserves, and an all-out brawl was the quickest way to do it.
The higher your stats climb, the faster your passive recovery ticks. Once you cross a certain threshold, half-assed exercise regenerates stamina faster than you can burn it!
The same held true for me. That was why I had exploited a prime opportunity to burn a massive chunk of stamina all at once: planting myself right next to Irene's frost magic and using sheer grit to endure the sub-zero backlash.
Running and fighting aren't the only ways to dump stamina.
Battling extreme cold consumed an absurd amount of energy. When a living body plunged into freezing temperatures, it burned calories at an exponential rate to generate heat and preserve its core temperature.
You have successfully completed the first assignment of Professor Platon's Upper Class Physical Conditioning course.
Acquired 50 Points as a completion reward.
A few others were still finishing their run.
With Holy Sword Descent, the female Hero tore cleanly through Irene’s glacial barrier using overwhelming holy firepower. Right behind her came the Berserker Hestia, who unleashed Body Ram to smash straight through solid ice with muscle mass that rivaled Son Ocheon’s. Led by those two powerhouses, the named prodigies of the Upper Class breached the perimeter one after another.
Even so, the glory belonged to the early finishers who crossed the line first.
Professor Platon let out a booming laugh, his metallic physique gleaming under the sun.
“Those who have cleared the trial, take these Points and raid the cafeteria to your hearts' content!”
“Wait, the 'free meal' was only free because we won the Points for it...?”
“Hey, I'm not complaining.”
“Right? With fifty Points, you can buy ten standard meal vouchers at five Points each!”
“Or!” Professor Platon bellowed, hoisting a massive vat. “You can pay a mere five Points right now to partake in my hand-crafted, special protein shake!”
The students recoiled in visceral horror at the bubbling, viscous gray sludge sloshing inside the container.
“Whoa! A new food entry!”
“Di! Absolutely not! You can't put that in your mouth—that's gross, it's icky!” Isabelle lunged forward, waving her hands frantically.
“Good grief, she gets that sparkle in her eyes the second she spots something edible she hasn't tasted yet.”
While the rest of the class shook their heads in disbelief, Irene—who had been glaring daggers my way over my shameless freeloading—fiddled with her magical pocket watch to check her point balance. Her pale eyes widened to three times their normal size.
Blink. Blink.
She turned toward me, utterly bewildered. Forgetting her grudge from moments ago, Irene drifted closer and lowered her voice to a discreet whisper.
“Orknodi. Did you... receive bonus Points just now?”
“Shh. Don't let the others overhear, or it'll become a giant headache. Play dumb.”
Broadcasting that I'd walked away with five hundred bonus Points from a hidden achievement would only paint a target on my back.
“Still... I received fifteen hundred bonus Points.”
“Fifteen hundred?!”
Why the hell did she get a thousand more than me?!
“It says... as a reward for 'Maximum Obstruction of Examinees'...”
“......”
No wonder Irene had looked so flustered during every Upper Class session. She hadn’t just cleared a standard five-hundred-point feat; she’d gone a step further and completed an ultra-rare, thousand-point tier-two achievement! She had walked away with thirty times the standard completion payout. Small wonder she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“You absolute deceiver!”
“Me? You’re the one who hitched a free ride on my coat-tails!”
“Urgh.”
As I winced, Irene suddenly caught my hand in hers. Wait, is she about to freeze me solid for having the audacity to exploit her?!
“Look at that. Bright red. Check your palm. The closer you stand to my magic, the faster frostbite sets in.”
“You're... not going to scold me?”
“Didn't your own body teach you a lesson already? You must never approach a cryomancer carelessly.” Irene’s pale cheeks flushed with genuine irritation. “And stop suppressing your presence like that! You were lucky I had already exhausted most of my mana back there. At any other time, the moment I accelerated using a mana draft, you would have frozen to death on the spot!”
“M-Mana draft?!”
“I have no desire to accidentally freeze an innocent person to death without even realizing it, so exercise extreme caution from now on.”
Wait, in the original game, she didn't unlock that technique until second year!
Dropping second-year kit in the very first semester felt like a blatant balance patch violation, but considering this was reality and not a monitor screen, anomalies like that were par for the course.
“I'm sorry...”
“...I apologize for lecturing you so harshly. Here. Consider this a gift from me.”
Irene untied a small pouch at her waist, withdrew a smooth pebble, and pressed it into my hand.
“?”
“You like stones, don't you?”
“Well, it’s not like I love every random pebble on the ground...”
“Are you saying you dislike a stone given by me?”
“N-No, that's not what I meant.”
This isn't a Stat Stone! Why is she casually carrying regular rocks in her pocket anyway?!
“Thank you. I'll cherish it.”
“And...”
“Yes?”
“If the burden of your house ever becomes too heavy to bear... No, pretend you heard nothing.”
“??”
Only after I stowed the rock away in my pouch with a distinct clatter did Irene turn on her heel, her expression tight, as if holding back a torrent of unspoken words.
What was that all about?
Irene wasn’t the type to fret over other people. Sure, she had that textbook 'cold Northern lady who warms up only to her inner circle' trope once her favorability maxed out, but I couldn’t recall doing anything that would trigger a romance flag. Experiencing an adult’s instinctual wariness—feeling more unsettled than grateful when hit with unprompted kindness—I trudged toward the Department of Adventuring with a lingering bad taste in my mouth.
Isabelle called out from behind me.
“The dining hall is the other way.”
“I know. I'm heading to my next lecture.”
Isabelle and Giselle froze, their faces twisting into the horrified expressions of medieval serfs witnessing an unspeakable monstrosity.
“...Did you take the same course as us?”
“Do you honestly have the stamina left to sit through another lecture?”
“It recovered while we were chatting.”
What's with the faces? Isn't passive stamina regeneration when standing idle basic common sense?
“Oh, looks like I’ll be cutting it close, so I’m going to run ahead!”
“Bwahaha! Look at this pint-sized runt, overflowing with vinegar! Splendid! Then you shall race this venerable one!”
“Ehh, no way. Uncle Son Ocheon, you're faster than me.”
“All the more reason to race! Fifty Points on the line!”
“I'm telling Isabelle that you’re bullying me!”
Well, whatever. As long as it was fun, who cared? Leaving the dumbfounded duo in the dust, I sprinted alongside Son Ocheon toward the lecture hall.
The Department of Adventuring.
Within the academy, it served primarily as a refugee camp for soft-hearted slackers: students who had enrolled hoping to become renowned figures through the Knight or Magic Faculties, only to realize they lacked the stomach for lethal competition and settled for skimming by just to snag a graduation diploma. Consequently, while enrollment numbers were massive, the peak combat caliber of its students was pitiful compared to the other faculties.
For professors whose prestige relied on cultivating brilliant prodigies, taking an appointment in the Department of Adventuring was viewed as a losing battle—an unfavorable handicap. Worse, swarms of mediocre students packed the lecture halls, forcing faculty into tedious, drawn-out teaching marathons.
Heheheh. But right there lies a blind spot the other professors never noticed.
If high-tier students were scarce, all one had to do was designate the lecture exclusively for the Upper Class. Better yet, make it an elective rather than a requirement. Almost no top-tier student in the Upper Class would ever go out of their way to seek out a course under the Department of Adventuring.
And on the off chance one actually does?
Then one simply scheduled it at the most impossible time slot, under the most punishing conditions imaginable.
Period one mandatory run. A student who just burned through ninety percent of their stamina at the base of Mount Omine could never cross all the way to the far outskirts of campus without being late! It's physically impossible!
Barring someone armed with an unnatural, ironclad obsession to attend no matter the cost, the classroom was guaranteed to stay empty. Having successfully maintained a spotless zero-student record ever since being dragged kicking and screaming onto the academy faculty, the delinquent professor rubbed his eyes in utter disbelief.
“Are you... a new janitor hired by the academy?”
“I'm a student.”
“Did you mistake this room for another class?”
“I came to attend Tales of Adventure from a Retired Former Hero!”
“This is an Upper Class-exclusive lecture, you know?”
“I'm the valedictorian of Group A!”
Against all statistical probability, a complete freak had conquered every single impossible hurdle, arriving at his doorstep bursting with pure, unadulterated resolve to take the class.