13. Academy Terror WWE
13. Academy Terror WWE
Final exams.
As the date drew closer, the pre-exam tension began to coil through the student body. Unlike midterms, this one hung over every field equally—martial arts, magic, and administration—all of them wrapped in the same grim atmosphere.
Training halls and practice rooms booked solid. Students running laps where they hadn't before. Workout intensity cranked up for no apparent reason.
Every bit of it traced back to one fact: the final exam had a fixed, traditional format.
'Outdoor Training.'
A simple phrase. And one that carried a great deal of weight.
Every year, the first-years entering their first finals would ask the suddenly stone-faced second- and third-years what exactly the exam entailed.
The upperclassmen always gave the same answer.
"You don't need to know. You'll find out soon enough."
They said it with a bright smile, but few missed the menace lurking underneath. The only people in on the joke were the ones telling it.
The peculiar part was that it didn't matter whether you saw through it or not—if you were a student, you were getting hit either way. And then there was the other thing.
"Welcome, juniors."
"Sorry?"
"Initiation time...!"
In short, the final exam was beyond anything you could imagine.
Risha Claudia, a girl with her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, stared blankly at the retreating back of the upperclassman who'd just brushed past her.
He was the scion of a great noble house, same as her, and someone with whom she was fairly close, both politically and personally. That was exactly why she'd asked him about the exam. And the answer she got was the same one everyone gave.
You don't need to know. You'll find out.
She briefly considered approaching the Finance Director and calling in a favor, but wasting him on something like this would be a shame. Whatever bribe she gave the Finance Director ought to be spent on something more useful.
With that conclusion, Risha put her faith in her own skill. She'd pushed herself to the very limit of 4th Rank, trained so hard she could feel 5th Rank right around the corner.
First place was already locked down by that 6th Rank monster anyway. Whatever Outdoor Training turned out to be, she was determined to claw her way past the youngest knight and seize second—
[Kyaaaaaaaahk!!!]
"...A basilisk? A real one?"
"Junior Claudia! What are you doing?! Run!"
"W-wait! Senior, what even is this—?!"
"You're saying that word for word exactly the way I said it last year!"
"Wha—?!"
A 5th Rank monster. A basilisk.
Compared to the manticore from the entrance ceremony, sure, it was infinitely weaker—but that had been an illusion. Not real.
This was different.
An illusion wouldn't tear up the dirt with its footsteps and come charging with drool flying from its jaws.
Thud-thud!
"Wh-what is that?! Don't tell me Outdoor Training is—?!"
"It's breaking through this godforsaken Sea of Trees while avoiding those monsters!"
Breaking through the Sea of Trees. That part, Risha had already heard.
The final exam sounded simple enough: every student starts from the same point, crosses the Sea of Trees, and reaches the finish line. That was supposedly it.
The exam officers had only added that there would be "minor threats" along the way.
'Are they insane?!'
In what world was a basilisk a minor threat? A single one of those crazed monsters could level an entire frontier settlement!
Going all out, she could certainly fight one, but that would drain her stamina to the point where crossing the Sea of Trees became a nightmare. In almost every case, evasion was the correct play against monsters unless a fight was unavoidable.
But that was logic. The hateful glare she shot at the senior who'd ditched her and bolted ahead was purely emotional, and there was no helping that.
"Senior! Are you serious right now?! Ever heard of noblesse oblige?!"
"You're a great noble too! No, wait—Claudia's a step above us, so shouldn't you be the one practicing noblesse oblige? Hold it off for me! I'm a 3rd Rank, what am I supposed to do?!"
"What kind of—"
The sheer audacity had Risha seriously considering planting her spear in the back of that senior's skull when—
A flash of blinding light.
Crrrk!
[Kyaaaahk!!]
"That's...?"
"W-wait, sword aura? No way."
"Ha ha!"
No. Not him.
For a moment she thought of that 6th Rank, but the insufferable laugh she'd just heard didn't belong to him. Rus Spero hadn't even been visible at the starting line, for reasons unknown.
But the fact that it wasn't Rus Spero was, in its own way, what made Risha's expression harden.
"Kaern Deste."
"My lady of Claudia. Apologies if I've stolen your prey. Ah, I'm sure all that running you were doing just now was part of the hunt, yes? Didn't look very knightly, though."
"Don't be an idiot. The point of this exam is crossing the Sea of Trees, not monster hunting—"
"Scared, were we? Understandable. Having just witnessed my sword aura, it's only natural! I quite understand!"
God, he was annoying.
Just the sight of him was enough to grate on her now—that full plate armor, that nauseatingly refreshed smile. The youngest knight had a gift for plucking every last one of Risha's nerves.
And now this business about the sword aura.
'6th Rank? He's actually 6th Rank?'
If Kaern Deste had genuinely reached 6th Rank, there was no competition left to speak of. A chill ran through her. Lose first place, lose even second—and the name Risha Claudia would vanish from high society's radar entirely.
She kept that dread locked inside, though, and faced him with nothing but bravado.
"Sword aura? That crude little flash just now? Don't make me laugh."
"Mm, I imagine it looks that way to a 4th Rank. To a 4th Rank, I mean."
"I've already seen the real thing. You saw it too, didn't you? Compared to what Rus Spero showed at the entrance ceremony, that was nowhere close. And you're calling that sword aura?"
"...Tch. Sharp eyes, I'll give you that. A knight's observational skills."
Right. No way he'd already hit 6th Rank.
With an Irregular like Rus Spero around, she'd allowed herself to wonder, but Kaern Deste was clearly still 5th Rank. He'd only just ranked up—why would he have a sword aura, let alone 6th Rank?
Inwardly flooded with relief, Risha put on a mocking smile. She could probably brush off her earlier retreat with a little spin now.
"Well, then. My lady, feel free to keep running the way you were."
"...Excuse me?"
"A knight values practical combat over mere exam standings! That's the whole reason the finals take this form, is it not? It must be the will of the Chairwoman herself—a legendary knight!"
"The Chairwoman isn't a knight."
"Martial artist, knight—same thing!"
If the Chairwoman had been listening, those words would've gotten his skull popped on the spot, but Kaern had no qualms labeling her a knight. A shining example of ignorance as strength.
That said, a brief shudder ran through him right after.
"Although, hm. Could be I'm wrong about that."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. A certain estimable squire merely crossed my mind."
"...??"
Risha didn't follow, but Kaern was thinking of something Sir Julius had told him after he'd been called in and chewed out over the midterm fiasco.
The Chairwoman's fury, the reprimand, the fact that Sir Julius was footing the entire compensation bill.
Kaern had knelt and insisted it was all his fault, that he would bear the compensation himself—
—Shut it, kid. Save your thanks for the Finance Director.
—Sir? The Finance Director...?
—It was the Finance Director who talked Nunim down. Honestly, I feel a bit sorry for him, but anyway, thanks to that young fellow we got off with just the damages. Remember that.
The Finance Director. Kaern had glimpsed him during the midterm, but the Chairwoman's arrival immediately after hadn't left much of an impression.
Still, he'd heard the man was the closest aide to the Chairwoman—her, a great knight—and on top of that, he was the one who'd helped Kaern out of trouble.
A great squire in service to a great knight. Knight or not, Kaern harbored a deep gratitude toward that squire.
"In any case, as a knight, I mean to follow the Chairwoman's intent."
"......"
"I wish you the best of luck with all that running, my lady!"
The truth was that the finals being fixed as Outdoor Training dated back to the academy's earliest days, when the Chairwoman—a hard-line combat pragmatist—had made the call without putting much thought into it.
But things like that tend to get romanticized over time. With the destruction of the Dwarf City by monsters, Outdoor Training had even taken on a certain air of foresight.
Let students experience mankind's enemy, the monsters, while they were still in school. Unlike the illusion at the entrance ceremony, this had been academy tradition since the beginning, so there was little pushback.
If there'd ever been casualties, that might've been a different story—but in this Sea of Trees, casualties were all but impossible.
The Chairwoman had commissioned the place from an 8th Rank personal friend.
"...A basilisk, though?"
"Strictly speaking, it isn't real."
Created by one of the kingdom's only four 8th Rank beings—a Druid—this forest crawled with all manner of monsters. But in practice, they were nothing more than animated clods of earth.
Granted a false semblance of life and set loose to attack, they were still just dirt. Even if one bit you, you'd only end up with a face full of soil.
Unlike illusions, they had physical substance, hence the footprints. And what looked like drool was actually moisture drawn from the soil, staged for realism.
Hundreds of these dirt-golems prowled the forest, and the precision of their movements was staggering.
Risha had heard about the Druid from her grandfather, the Margrave, but she still broke out in a cold sweat.
'It's just physical substance, but illusions can't compare to this.'
The real basilisk was surely far worse, but the feeling it gave was close enough. Genuinely invaluable experience.
Watching Kaern's back as he bisected the basilisk and moved on toward the next dirt-monster, Risha tightened her grip on her spear.
"...Go on ahead, senior."
"What? But—Risha!"
"I'll crush that bastard's ego and still won't be late!"
Running with her tail between her legs wasn't an option. Rankings be damned, that youngest-knight jackass was pissing her off past the point of reason.
The strategic calculus, of course, was that Kaern had bombed the midterm—no matter what score he got here, she'd outrank him. But it was also true that she'd chosen monster-killing over crossing the Sea of Trees, a choice with zero practical upside.
"Hold it!"
"I knew you'd say that! The title of knight suits you far better than 'my lady'!"
"You damn viscount—!"
"Hm? Sorry, 4th Rank words are hard to hear from up here! Ha ha ha!"
Her vision went white.
Teeth clenched, Risha hurled her spear.
The spear's arc carried it past the smugly laughing Kaern Deste—
And straight through the brow of a monster lunging to ambush him from below.
Wrenching her spear from the collapsing mound of dirt, Risha fixed Kaern with a baleful glare.
"I'm not losing."
"How convenient. Neither am I."
Risha Claudia and Kaern Deste. Two rising stars of the martial arts field, talked up as prodigies long before they'd ever set foot in Grandis Academy.
They'd barely interacted in person, but the rivalry had been set in stone ages ago, and the mutual hostility was real. Whoever came out on top here would have their name ringing through high society after graduation, and that only made it more vicious.
The greatsword and the spear began to move—
BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
"—?!"
"What—"
A detonation and a tremor that shook the entire Sea of Trees.
Smoke and a mushroom cloud rose in the distance. Iron chains longer than the trees themselves flickered into view.
Students had been divided into different sectors based on their field—martial arts, magic, administration—so the location of the explosion was instantly obvious.
And so was the culprit.
"Chloe Pisti...and Amatrius Delphia Beatrice."
"...Truly extraordinary."
The magic department's sector. Only two people in the entire academy could set off magic of that scale. There were no 5th Rank mages among the current second- and third-years, and the Student Council President Cassandra had withdrawn from the exam for reasons of her own.
Staring blankly at the spell that had probably incinerated dozens of dirt-monsters, Risha looked down at the one she herself had killed.
Two monsters between her and Kaern. Over there, at least a few dozen.
'Should I have learned magic...?'
The thought flickered across her mind before she could stop it. Kaern, apparently, had been thinking something similar—their eyes met for an instant, then slid away.
The hostility that had crackled between them moments ago had thinned, just a little. Just barely.
...A grudging sense of kinship had settled between the two.
*
That same moment, at Grandis Academy.
While the students were away for Outdoor Training, the campus stood empty—
BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
—and an explosion ripped through it, remarkably similar to the one in the Sea of Trees.
"Get him!"
"H-huh?!"
"Gyaaack! They got me!"
A bewildered cultist smashed through a pre-designated building while the Third Guard Corps officer chasing him crumpled to the ground in an extraordinarily theatrical display.
"This way! After him!"
"Wha—"
"Gah! The collapsed debris—we've no choice! Per Third Guard Corps protocol, rescue the wounded first!"
"...?"
Watching the guards go through their regulation-mandated motions with equally stilted acting, as if performing for an audience only they could see, the cultists finally stopped trying to think.