A Risky Proposal
The growth of Siu and Sia had been heartwarming, but I had adopted some rather dangerous fellows as my companions.
Prim and Rumi of all people.
They were no slouches. Looking at the current point in the story, we had actually allied ourselves with true rankers.
Should I tell them about this?
No.
If I meddled too hastily, the situation could unravel even further.
Ever since the Rox incident and the Ichor days, strange threads had been quietly knotting together in ways that didn’t make sense.
I couldn’t afford to tangle the relationships of the future party members who were supposed to defeat the calamity.
If I simply believed they would manage it on their own, and stepped in only when things truly went wrong, wouldn’t that be fine?
“Then I suppose I can take the second exam too, right?”
“Correct. All the business I had here is finished.”
Baba Yaga, who had been waving her hand and directing the cleanup of the site, suddenly turned back toward me with a suspicious smile.
Hmm.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“Why not? I have something to propose. Something interesting came to mind.”
Baba Yaga presented me with a deal wrapped in a sinister grin.
“What kind of terms?”
“You’ll participate in the second exam, but on the villain side.”
“Eh?”
[What?]
Why was she twisting the knife so thoroughly this time?
Shouldn’t suspicions have been cleared by now?
“I’m about to be tested again, aren’t I?”
“Nope. Nope~”
Shaking her hand dismissively, Baba Yaga clarified that it was entirely separate from that.
“She already offered it first. She vouched for your strength and introduced herself to me. I never imagined I’d be keeping a guardian for such a child.”
Guardian?
Where on earth would I find such a person?
I still had no idea what Baba Yaga was talking about.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Perfect timing, then.”
[Ah…!]
The door swung open with the sound of shoe heels, and a familiar face greeted me warmly.
The guardian. Of course.
“Hello? Little girl. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you like this.”
“Emily!”
Emily greeted me with a bright smile and bowed her head respectfully toward Baba Yaga.
“It’s been so long. Thank you for coming, Baba Yaga-nim.”
“…Yes. You look well. That’s fortunate.”
Baba Yaga’s expression when she looked at Emily was oddly complex—something between longing, sorrow, and the ghosts of old memories.
Baba Yaga was honest with her own feelings.
As long as she was expressing her joy, anyway.
For instance, when she pushed the exam candidates to their limits and tormented them, that sadistic spark appeared.
But when it came to her personal vulnerabilities, the story changed completely.
Someone who had lived through the twelfth century, Baba Yaga’s accumulated heart wounds were not easily uncovered.
That Baba Yaga would allow even the slightest tremor of emotion?
[Tiss, there’s something between the two of them.]
The relationship between those two was a complete black box to me.
More than anything, information about Emily—who didn’t even appear in the original story—was shockingly scarce.
I hadn’t avoided her for the past two years.
Whenever Emily returned from a mission, she visited Area 7 more often than not, exchanging messages via terminal and occasionally letting me gain real-world experience under the pretense of local cooperation.
She had protected me by arranging monster hunts that were nearly impossible in Area 7.
Right now, I felt certain she had become an ally.
[Ah, I still can’t read Emily’s mind.]
[But why she helps us remains a mystery. I’m not completely distrustful, but it still nags at me.]
Exactly as Shan had said.
She had sworn she would reveal her secrets when the time was right, but she never did.
Should I call it hesitation to cross the final line?
I still didn’t know the clear conditions for the quest.
Perhaps I hadn’t yet reached the conditions I desired with my current self.
What kind of condition was it?
When the game stalled, leveling up usually solved everything.
Maybe it was a matter of combat power.
[Is it really that low? We’ve been working hard these past two years, haven’t we?]
We had definitely grown in every way. I had become stronger.
[Hehe…]
Shan tried to distract me with an awkward laugh.
I’d have to check later if there was some secret growth factor hidden somewhere, especially since Shan was keeping it secret from me.
[Hmm… If it’s that deep… maybe something to do with the Central Area?]
There simply wasn’t enough information to guess.
For now, I had no choice but to trust Emily and focus on safely entering the Academy.
“Watcher and Modubu already know each other, so introductions are unnecessary.”
Hooh.
Baba Yaga introduced Emily as the Watcher.
Even the wandering hunter knew the word for Watcher, and she wasn’t even an A-rank hunter.
That meant this was Baba Yaga’s own decision, not an overreach.
“Then let’s get to the main point. I’ll explain. This is about the second exam.”
The theme of the second exam was ‘villain hunting.’
Whereas the first exam had been a competition among examinees, this time it was a simple test of how strongly we could confront a real villain.
“Modubu will be joining as the villain.”
And Baba Yaga had requested that I take the villain role.
“What’s the reason?”
“I judged that using the power of Ichor would be sufficient to pull off the villain act. Moreover, you’re already strong enough that you don’t even need to take the exam. I’ve made similar offers to a few others. If you perform the villain role diligently, I’ll count you as passing the second exam.”
[Tiss… there’s definitely something hidden here.]
She claimed it was nothing special, but it wasn’t.
This was 100 percent not something the examinees themselves were supposed to do.
On top of that, it was an entirely new development that didn’t exist in the original game.
Yet the fact that she was making this offer to me at all meant something had gone wrong.
The Management Bureau and the Academy were not as incompetent as the game or novels suggested.
They were a group powerful and organized enough to proudly claim they were the last bastion of humanity in this world.
But that didn’t mean they were efficient enough to handle everything on their own without the protagonist’s intervention.
If I were to analogize the Management Bureau in a state where the player didn’t intervene, it would be a Titanic slowly sinking under the weight of villain problems from both the calamity and the monsters inside.
The game required the player to fill the gaps in that ambiguous middle ground.
Emily, who had once been a central-area Watcher.
Baba Yaga, from the Central Area.
And now a request made directly to me, an examinee.
If I combined these three pieces of information, the conclusion was clear: there was a manpower shortage within the Management Bureau itself.
And the reason such a shortage would appear at this exact moment was simple.
“I think I understand why you’re making this offer to me.”
At my words, both Baba Yaga and Emily turned to look at me.
“What kind of brilliant idea has Modubu come up with this time?”
“It’s because of the attack, isn’t it?”
“Hooh?”
Baba Yaga wore the expression of someone who had just seen a particularly tasty morsel, while Emily simply nodded as if she already knew.
No major incidents had occurred during the zero and first exams.
In other words, the usual attack events—whether the welcome ceremony or the exam itself—were about to happen.
The Watcher side had probably noticed something odd.
Since they didn’t know the full details, the plan was to dispatch one of the Watchers, Emily, to monitor the inside, while sending the hero who was supposed to play the villain to outside surveillance.
The manpower gap created there would be filled by me, the guardian of the Watcher.
I organized my thoughts and asked Baba Yaga directly.
“My guess is correct, right?”
“Emily, did you tell her?”
“No. There’s no way. The little girl has always had a sharp head, after all.”
“Then you deduced it all by yourself? Hah.”
Baba Yaga’s eyes sparkled as she looked at me.
“What a white little rascal you are. The more I see you, the more I like it.”
Oops.
My recent action had triggered Baba Yaga’s favorability rating.
“Don’t bother. Just close your eyes and let this old lady make you her disciple. I could even turn you into the next Great Witch.”
“Ah, no, that’s a bit…”
“You’re demanding too much.”
If I crushed her favorability like this, she might get revenge later, but I had no choice.
I definitely couldn’t become a university student.
“Well, since you’ve already figured it out…”
“Wait. Before that, I wanted to talk to Emily for a moment.”
Before the explanation dragged on, there was something I had to say.
“Emily. Dorothy?”
“It seems we have something to discuss regarding her.”
“Discuss?”
The topic Emily had brought up was none other than Siu and Sia.
.
.
.
“Due to the queen hunt, the first exam has been ended early. The location and time for the next second exam will be sent to your registered terminals. Instructors will retrieve the bracelets.”
With the first exam ending late at night, Lionel gathered the successful candidates and delivered the announcement, explaining the next schedule.
Thanks to the exam ending ahead of schedule, there were two full days of rest.
While the examinees who had received the notice dispersed to their dorms to recover their fatigue, three people remained in the lecture hall.
“Um, Dorothy. Where’s Sis Tiss?”
“It’s strange… I can’t see Sis Tiss anywhere.”
Dorothy had originally planned to meet Tiss with Siu and Sia.
Whether she passed or failed, Tiss should have been here.
Since I had promised Dorothy that I would take her home if she were eliminated, she had stayed behind with Siu and Sia, but Tiss was nowhere to be seen.
Beep beep.
“Even the call isn’t going through.”
Worried, Dorothy tried calling again, but it didn’t connect.
“Message received! Eh?”
Dorothy showed the terminal to Siu and Sia.
The screen simply read: Please wait here for a moment.
“We’re all gathered here?”
Startled!
A surge of killing intent.
‘Behind!’
‘Behind!’
Siu and Sia immediately reacted to the voice behind them and threw punches and kicks, but…
The attacks were perfectly blocked with a dull thud.
“?!”
With a light push, Siu and Sia were sent flying several meters away.
“Oh my, your instincts are excellent. Fast and fun reactions.”
“Who are you!”
Just as Siu and Sia tried to activate their mana, Dorothy turned around, saw the newcomer, and greeted her with a bright smile.
“Emily Unnie!”
“It’s been a while, Dorothy.”
Emily smiled lightly, brushed off her hands, and approached Dorothy cheerfully.
While the two exchanged cheerful greetings, Siu and Sia stood there awkwardly alone.
“I… Dorothy? Is that person… someone you know?”
“Yeah! She’s Unnie’s friend!”
“Ah.”
“We made a mistake.”
Siu and Sia lowered their heads in apology as soon as they released their mana and rushed to correct their blunder.
“I’m sorry!”
“It’s all right. I was the one who attacked first. Thanks to that, I received quite a fresh welcome.”
They had grown sensitive to the fact that suspicious individuals shouldn’t be allowed inside the exam site, and they had panicked and made the mistake of not recognizing Tiss.
“That’s fortunate. Since we’re all together, we won’t have to keep repeating the same explanation many times.”
Emily seemed genuinely happy to have all three of them together.
“We three?”
Siu and Sia had never met Dorothy before the first exam.
There had been one connection between them.
Tiss.
She was there.
“Yes. I came to find the three of you. Little girl, no—my apologies. I came to deliver Tiss’s message?”
Emily lowered her voice with meaningful intent.
“I’m afraid it might be difficult to meet Tiss before the second exam.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did Tiss Unnie get eliminated?”
“Is something wrong with Tiss?”
Siu, Sia, and Dorothy stared at Emily in surprise, and Emily paused briefly before responding.
Hmm.
Just as the three of them were about to burn with impatience.
The words that left Emily’s lips were something they could never have imagined.
“It’s not that. It’s just that Baba Yaga, the chief examiner, has taken notice of her.”
“That… must be good news, right?”
“Of course. Since I’m staking my name on it, rest well for the next two days until the exam. You may even meet her then.”
Emily was not lying.
Around that time, Tiss was receiving the Witch’s Trial from Baba Yaga in the name of practicing villain acts.
“Why are you doing that, Modubu? If you smile more wickedly, you’ll look more like a villain.”
“What does it matter what the villain act looks like!”
[Aaaaah… Tiss! Head! A meteor is falling on my head!]
“That’s right. If you’re determined to become evil, you’ll look more wicked, won’t you? I could stop it if you say you’re a witch.”
“I don’t want to!”
“Then there’s no help for it. I’ll just keep going…! Ah, this is a trial and adversity. Let’s overcome it once.”
[Save me! Eek!]
Hehe.
The wicked witch’s laughter echoed through the night sky.