How to Eat Flags as Easily as Cake
When Lotto, Hestia, and Jigoku gathered at dinnertime to share their progress on collecting flags, the three of them froze in collective horror, their faces pale with despair.
"S-So, how many did everyone manage to get...?"
"Five. I ran all over the damn mountain like my life depended on it, but that was it..."
"Four. Shook down every pushover I ran into, but..."
"Just three for me. And that was after running errands for the instructors all afternoon..."
Their blood, sweat, and tears hadn't amounted to nearly enough.
No matter how they looked at the situation, it boiled down to a single grim conclusion.
"We have no choice. We have to take them from other students."
"My reputation can't get any worse than it already is anyway. If it's for Orknodi, I won't hesitate to get my hands dirty."
"The three of us hitting targets together? In that case, we can shake down way tougher bastards!"
Honest hard work was never going to cut it. The time had come for an extreme solution.
"Let's move. Sixteen per person. That's just sixteen people each, one flag a pop."
The era of fair play was over.
A three-man flag-robbing crew was born.
After classes let out, Academy students could join clubs to enjoy extra content. Newbies desperate to survive actually boasted a surprisingly high participation rate, largely because they fell hook, line, and sinker for the cheap food used as bait by shameless upperclassmen.
"Put some back into that rake!"
"Hup!"
"Till the soil!"
"Yaaah!"
The freshmen, drenched in sweat as they churned and unearthed fields frozen solid through the winter, finally turned toward the upperclassmen in bewilderment.
"Um, sunbaenim... how much longer do we have to keep tilling the fields?"
"Yeah, seriously. Wasn't this supposed to be the Hunting Club?"
"Ha, listen to these cheeky little shits."
The upperclassmen—who had been all smiles and hospitality during recruitment, grilling succulent meat and handing out free samples—wiped the warmth from their faces in an instant, barking down at the poor new members.
"Hey. Did you eat the meat or not?"
"W-Well, yeah, we did..."
"'Yeah'?"
"Yes, we ate it, sir!"
"Then you'd better earn your keep, hadn't you?"
"Then shouldn't we be going out on a hunt together? Why are we farming...?"
"What if the hunt fails?"
"Excuse me?"
"What if the hunt's a bust and we come back empty-handed? What are we supposed to eat then, huh?"
"The cafeteria food, maybe...?"
"Cafeteria food, my ass! Do points just sprout out of the ground if you dig for them? We have to farm so we can be self-sufficient!"
The bitter truth dawned on the freshmen.
Their seniors' prior kindness had been nothing but a charade, pure hypocrisy—a myth as fictional as a gentle, understanding, moral professor. From the very beginning, the seniors had tricked them with a predatory contract just to secure free manual labor.
"I-I didn't join the Hunting Club to do farm work! Let me quit!"
"Is that right? Then pay the penalty fee."
"Wh-What kind of absurd point penalty is this?!"
"What do you mean? It's what you signed."
"This is fraud!"
"Nope, not fraud at all. It's an official contract guaranteed by the Academy Administration, and you signed it with your own two hands. If you want out, take on this debt in points and start paying it off."
"Guh...!"
"Or, of course, you could just bring in two friends to work in your place."
"F-Friends?! Just bringing friends will let me escape without working?!"
The upperclassman offered a sickeningly benevolent smile.
"That's right. Just find two friends willing to sign on the dotted line. As long as they write your name in the referral box, you can walk out of here without paying a single point."
"I'll do it! I'll drag someone in no matter what!"
"Finding recruits is your own business, but you still have to finish today's club duties. You know you'll get slapped with another fine for unsatisfactory performance if you slack off, right?"
This place is sickening. I'm getting out of here if it's the last thing I do.
Burning indignation welled in the eyes of the entrapped freshmen.
"Those seniors are literal demons. How can they force people through this horrible misery without a shred of conscience?"
"I know, right? If they suffered under their own seniors, they shouldn't pass that crap down to us."
Mob and Zaku.
The two freshmen who had succumbed to the sizzling aroma and juicy allure of roasted meat were thoroughly disgruntled.
"And what's with dumping all these weird flags on us? What are we even supposed to do with them?" Mob grumbled, clutching the bundle of flags the seniors had tossed to them with the vague promise that they'd come in handy somewhere.
"Huh? Look over there. There's a kid hauling an insane pile of flags on her back."
"Oh, I know her. That's Group A's top student, Orknodi."
"The youngest and shortest freshman? The one rumored to be half-orc?"
The two bolted straight toward Orknodi.
The moment she spotted them charging her way, Orknodi kicked into high gear and took off like a startled rabbit.
"H-Hey! Wait up a second!"
"Pant, huff! Holy shit, how is a little kid that fast?!"
"No! Don't wanna! Leave me alone!"
Mob shouted in exasperation.
"What did we even do?! We just wanted to ask if you knew what those flags were for since you're carrying so many!"
"Really?"
"Yeah! And on top of that, we were just gonna tell you that you can eat free meat if you join the Hunting Club, and ask you to write Zaku as your referral!"
Orknodi, who had begun slowing down at Mob's explanation, whipped right back around at Zaku's shameless recruitment pitch and sprinted at top speed without looking back.
"You absolute moron! Shut your damn mouth!"
"Gwah!"
An infuriated Mob shoved Zaku to the dirt, sprinting after Orknodi while desperately shouting that he had nothing to do with the scheme. Only after breathless pleading did he manage to coax Orknodi to a stop.
"Huff, wheeze, pant..."
"So, what do you want?"
"H-Hold on a second... pant, pant..."
"Can I go now?"
How does a kid have this much stamina? Mob glared resentfully at her before catching his breath.
"These flags are what we got for doing club activities in the Hunting Club. The seniors gave them to us saying they'd come in handy somewhere. Since you have so many, we figured you might know what they're for."
"Aha. So this time, they were hoarded in the Hunting Club."
"'This time'? You really do know how to use them, don't you?! Please, tell us!"
Orknodi casually held out an open palm.
"Give me five."
"Me? Why?"
"Then I'll tell you."
"Fine. But I'm holding onto you so you can't run off."
"Suit yourself."
Mob kept a firm grip on Orknodi's arm, his legs trembling from the sprint as he reluctantly handed over five flags.
"Alright, spill it. What are they for?"
"They're an assignment for the Upper Class. Students in the Upper Class have to collect flags and submit them for their coursework."
"Wait, then aren't they pretty valuable?"
"As you can see, there's a ton of them floating around, so their individual value isn't that high."
It made sense. Orknodi herself was hauling an entire mountain of them on her back like a traveling merchant.
"Still, running all over the place to gather them is annoying, so I'll buy them from you with points. One meal costs 5 points, so how about I trade 5 points for the rest of what you've got?"
"No way. 5 points only covers the basic ration."
"Why are you trying to sell them so expensively when even a kid can gather this many in half a day?"
"I'd rather use these to recruit Upper Class freshmen. I'll offer them these flags in exchange for joining the club."
Orknodi clicked her tongue in disappointment.
Seeing the little girl instantly pout when things didn't go her way, Mob let out an amused snort.
He had pictured an unprecedented prodigy worthy of the youngest top scorer, or perhaps a brainless muscle-bound monster fitting an orc half-breed—but in reality, she was just an ordinary child, no different from the kids back in his hometown.
"Forget points. If you get two friends to join the Hunting Club under my name, I'll give you all the flags."
"Really?"
"Of course. A man never goes back on his word."
Even if I make a serious deal with a kid, how many friends could she possibly drag in? Is it even right to trick a child like this?
Mob felt like a scumbag adult doing something unforgivable, but when Zaku finally caught up and chimed in—"Whatever he offered, I've got the exact same deal!"—every shred of Mob's guilt evaporated.
Escaping that demonic club was the priority. Who had time for a conscience?
Unfortunately for them, they had vastly underestimated Orknodi.
A mere thirty minutes later...
Four students came obediently trotting along right behind her.
While touring the clubs to scope out which upperclassmen belonged to which factions, unexpected good fortune had practically walked right into my lap.
A low-probability gift given to new recruits by club seniors had yielded an even rarer drop: Flags Collected by Upperclassmen.
"Hehe. Free loot!"
I had already gathered plenty of flags, but in a game like this, the more surplus you hoarded, the more useful it became.
After luring four obnoxious Imperial snobs and selling them off to the Hunting Club, I cheerfully handed each of them a single flag as promised.
"Here you go! Your agreed-upon compensation."
"Wow! A free flag just for joining a club?! This is incredible!"
"Thank you, Orknodi. You're actually pretty sweet, aren't you?"
I felt zero guilt about selling those poor fools down the river.
Their polite act was pure hypocrisy anyway.
Did they honestly think I didn't know they badmouthed behind my back? Whispering that frontier folks—nobles and commoners alike—lacked dignity, or sneering that Orknodi was an orc brute hiding behind a cute face? Did they think I was deaf?
Even right now.
Hardly a moment after receiving their flags, they were snickering behind my back, snorting at what they thought was a gullible little brat.
You'd better learn to be nicer to people from now on. That's the only way you won't get played like a fiddle by a wicked kid like me.
Grabbing my bag stuffed to the brim with flags that I had set aside earlier, I skipped back in high spirits.
Thanks to this little transaction, my flag stash had doubled in a single afternoon.
I was sitting on an inventory of nearly forty flags.
"Thanks, Orknodi!"
"You're a lifesaver!"
Compared to the measly four flags I parted with, Mob and Zaku had handed over more than twenty.
Turning four flags into over twenty was an absolute steal by any metric. Having surrendered every flag they owned and successfully escaped the club, the two boys waved cheerfully in farewell.
Pitiful suckers.
I certainly wasn't going to break the shocking news to them: that later on, the price of a single flag would skyrocket all the way to 100 points.
You two brought this on yourselves, anyway.
You're the ones who made fun of me for being half-orc!