The Pressure of Pulling One's Weight
Throwing away your allies just for a measly hundred points was the height of foolishness. If points had been my sole objective, I could have easily teamed up with Isabelle, Giselle, and Son Ocheon to split the payout four ways. But this wasn't about points.
This was about preventing Hestia from being pushed over the edge.
Hestia's practically a newborn kitten at heart. Her mental fortitude shatters at the slightest provocation.
She didn't just snap overnight into a homicidal maniac, but when minor psychological traumas piled up stack after stack, the sheer cumulative weight would eventually detonate her sanity. Much like Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix in the film Joker (2019), who lost every shred of modest happiness to endless betrayal until his very will to live collapsed, steering him down the path of a monster—Hestia was slated to walk that exact same trajectory.
If there's ever a female Joker in this world, it's Hestia.
In the original timeline, after surviving the reckless, suicidal schemes of her mercenary comrades through sheer grit and passing the entrance exam, the reputation that greeted her was that of a cowardly berserker who had bashed in her allies' skulls to survive alone. The very mercenaries who owed her their lives did nothing to clear her name; instead, they twisted the narrative to make it worse. The Group B imperial nobles harassed her endlessly, viewing her raw strength as an intolerable eyesore, while the Group A frontier nobles couldn't have cared less about the plight of an uncultured mercenary. To make matters worse, the Group A commoners shunned her just as fiercely, disgusted by her supposed betrayal of her own kind.
And her last refuge was the cruellest joke of all.
The Answering Door and the friend on the other side of the wall.
The sanctuary she had pinned all her hopes on was a complete illusion. In the original game, Room 111 was totally vacant. The entity she poured her heart out to wasn't a person at all, but the Answering Door, a sinister anomaly merely mimicking human speech. Even the door's sole purpose was to exploit her broken psyche.
Goodwill repaid with malice, no one to shield her from the deluge of venom, and even her emotional sanctuary turned out to be a fraudulent trap. Stripped of all faith in humanity and denied the simplest happiness of living, Hestia's soul fell into total darkness, transforming her into a genuine butcher. By her own volition, she manifested the very derogatory slur everyone had used to mock and revile her.
Instructors who rushed in to quell the nightmare were slaughtered on the spot. Even the academy professors deployed en masse found themselves hard-pressed to subdue her terrifying, unleashed combat prowess. It culminated in an indiscriminate bloodbath of her fellow classmates—a catastrophe so lethal it was hard to believe it took place during the first-year, first-semester midterm exams.
Yet the method to avert that horrific tragedy was astonishingly simple.
All it took was protecting Hestia from unjust persecution and having the player show her a modicum of basic human decency. Allowing a human being to live like a human being—that alone was enough to prevent the catastrophe entirely.
“I'm worried about Hestia,” I said, looking up at my friends. “Everyone keeps saying awful things to her. I want to be in her group.”
“Can’t be helped, then,” Isabelle replied warmly, understanding where my heart lay. “If a child wants to do a good deed, I’d rather cheer her on than complain.”
“In that case, the two of us will join your three,” a voice chimed in.
“We’d be indebted to you,” another added.
It was Dorothy and Rockfell. The two students I had crossed paths with during the entrance exam ended up rounding out the group with Isabelle, Giselle, and Son Ocheon. Thanks to that, I ended up joining Hestia, Jigoku, and Lotto for the Dragon Headmaster's lecture—a ragtag assembly of the lonely, the fallen, and the outcasts.
Zhuang is surprisingly social, huh!
Zhuang, lurking behind her fox mask, arguably possessed a personality far nastier than anyone in this room, bordering on that of a sadistic degenerate, but at least she knew how to play normal when necessary. In contrast, Hestia and Lotto had suffered fatal blows to their public reputation, while Jigoku was simply born an incorrigible lunatic with no filter whatsoever. Naturally, everyone had abandoned them. The end result was this bizarre squad comprising the top student of Group A, Orknodi, and three absolute pariahs.
“Why did she do that?”
“She’s just a kid. Probably acted out of naive kindness.”
“Tsk. Guess we can’t even badmouth them freely now. Slip up with your tongue, and you’ll end up ruined like Lotto.”
“Must be nice for that hulking berserker. Hiding behind a little kid's coattails so nobody can curse at her face.”
Hmph. Go ahead and grumble behind our backs all day, you petty cowards.
“Our Hestia is so adorable,” I said loudly, standing on my tiptoes and stretching out my arms. “Don’t listen to a single word of those nasty things!”
I reached up to cover her ears, but—whoops.
Hestia stood well over two meters tall. My hands couldn't even reach her chest, let alone her ears. Just as I was seriously contemplating whether I should climb onto a desk, Hestia slid her large hands gently beneath my armpits and hoisted me effortlessly into the air.
“Did you want to do this?” she asked softly.
“N-No, not like this!”
Who asked for an airplane ride?!
Still, once I reached over and pressed my small hands over her ears, a dopey, blissful grin spread across Hestia’s face.
—DID ANYONE GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO FRATERNIZE?!
—THAT IS NOT WHY TEAMS WERE ASSIGNED!
The Headmaster’s thunderous roar shook the room, making the students jump in terror.
“The Headmaster seems to prefer a serious academic atmosphere,” Hestia murmured apologetically. “I’m sorry, Orknodi.”
Stop treating me like a kid pouting because she had to put her toy away!
—Team selection exists solely to foster agony, despair, and burning hatred toward asymmetrical organizational structures!
“...?”
“...?”
“...??”
Had I misheard him?
Could that possibly be right?
Every student wore an identical expression of dumbfounded disbelief, but no, we had heard him loud and clear.
—Therefore, I shall teach you precisely how agonizing it is when the incompetent are forced to band together out of sheer lack of talent!
—From this moment until Thursday, you are to search for and collect the ‘flags’ hidden throughout the campus!
—An unowned flag belongs to whoever picks it up first. However, for a flag that has an owner, the first person to satisfy the holder’s condition shall claim it!
—Mark this well: flags will be evaluated not by individual, but strictly by team!
—Even if one of you loafs around, as long as the rest bust their guts, the assignment will be completed. It is a wonderfully convenient task! What is more, whatever rewards you earn shall be split equally among all members!
“Good grief!”
“How could anyone be so monstrous?!”
“You mean someone can just free-ride while I break my back, and they still get an equal share of the fruits of my labor?!”
A wave of indignant outrage washed over the students' eyes. And that, of course, was precisely what the Dragon Headmaster had intended to see.
—This lecture is not meant to help you adapt to the academy by touring facilities open to freshmen. It is not meant to teach you regulations through communication with instructors, nor is it meant to build fellowship and camaraderie with your peers!
—This is an ordeal designed to make you taste the ruthless cruelty of group projects, so that you may mature into an exceptional, solitary individual capable of accomplishing everything entirely on your own!
—Ask the instructors wandering the grounds for flag point values and detailed regulations. Answering questions is a bother, so I shall entertain none. Lecture concluded. Dismissed!
Having said his piece without leaving a single second for rebuttals, the Headmaster vanished with a deafening pop.
In the heavy, awkward silence that followed, the remaining students slumped in their seats across the lecture hall, united by the singular, creeping dread that things had gone catastrophically wrong.
“U-Um... so what are we doing about the flag gathering?”
“For now, let’s divide the campus into sectors, search until lunchtime tomorrow, and reconvene to plan our next move.”
Lotto merely gave a timid, mosquito-faint, “Alright...” before slumping her shoulders and shuffling off in dejected solitude.
“I’ll take the mountain,” Hestia declared with unexpected vigor, bolting off toward the rugged peak we had visited during first period.
“A pirate belongs on the river! Gahahahaha!” Jigoku bellowed with wild laughter, vanishing into thin air before anyone could even attempt to stop him.
“Wait... I meant dividing sectors inside the campus grounds...!”
How is it that not a single one of my three teammates listens to human speech?!
In any ordinary team, the leader would have rightfully thrown their hands up in disgust at such a hopeless squad and abandoned ship. But since I was perfectly capable of getting things done myself, I felt zero pressure. Besides, since I gave them tasks, isn't it entirely possible they'll each come back carrying their own weight before the deadline?
Ah, there’s one. Another over there. And look, one more tucked in that corner.
Relying on my encyclopedic meta-knowledge of the game's flag spawn locations, I made swift rounds through the campus, gathering an enormous bundle in no time at all.
Giselle, who happened to stroll past, stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me in sheer disbelief.
“Others consider it a triumph to uncover two or three flags, yet you have gathered over twenty all on your own? One would think you are operating a flag dealership.”
“Hehehe. I happen to be pretty good at hide-and-seek and finding lost items.”
“Might you spare a humble tip?”
“Of course!” I chirped cheerfully. “Just imagine you're the Headmaster. Ask yourself: where could I hide a flag that would infuriate the students the most?”
“Hmm. If it were me, I would place a flag in plain sight for everyone to see, surround it with dozens of self-repairing traps, and subject the students to sweet, lingering torture.”
“Oho? You talkin’ about this one?”
A singed, soot-covered Son Ocheon suddenly leaned through a second-floor window, proudly brandishing a flag in his hairy fist.
“Mister Son Ocheon,” Giselle said, his eyebrow twitching. “We are currently on the second floor. How on earth are we making eye contact through a window?”
“Thought they might’ve stashed some up in the canopy, so I was climbin’ the trees. Didn’t find no flags up there, just a potion, a pillow, and a wooden board somebody hid away.”
“Ah...”
“Please let me down.”
“I just want to sleep on solid ground.”
Desperate, frantic pleas had been violently gouged into the wood with a dagger. I had a pretty good idea of what had transpired. Some poor student with an extreme fear of heights had probably been strung up in the branches during the Sleep Anywhere practical course.
“By the way, pint-sized squirt,” Son Ocheon grunted, glancing down at my arms, “why the hell did you gather such an ungodly pile of flags? Did you decide to do the work of five people all by yourself?”
“Oh, come on, surely not. Everyone will pull their own weight, won't they?”
Pulling one's weight meant bringing in around three flags per person. Honestly, I didn't expect anything more than that.
“Orknodi is seriously terrifying. She’s already gathered twenty flags.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, and word is she expects everyone on her team to pull their own weight too.”
Meanwhile, across the academy grounds, snippets of conversations half-overheard in passing began mutating into wild exaggerations. Like a runaway carriage gaining speed down a hill, the rumors rapidly spun out of control, arriving at a completely unhinged conclusion.
“I heard Orknodi declared that any teammate who fails to bring in twenty flags is useless trash who can't even carry their weight, and that she’ll never forgive them!”
“That’s so brutal...”
“Is that the price of being on the top student’s team? Man, I’d rather just slack off together and fail in peace. I actually feel sorry for those poor souls.”
When Hestia, Jigoku, and Lotto returned to the main courtyard for dinner, the whispers drifting through the air made their eyes widen in absolute horror.
“T-Twenty...?”
“She’s insane.”
“Is that... even a physically possible number...?!”
Having heard that most groups considered finding just one or two a massive success, the three of them had taken solace in securing three or four flags each, patting themselves on the back for a job well done. But now, all sense of relief evaporated into cold, suffocating dread.