Base Camp, Stew, and a Shameless Plan
Once we had made our way to the auditorium, we activated the Tower of Ordeals and stepped inside.
"Wow..."
The interior of the Tower of Ordeals was, quite literally, an entire world of its own. A brilliant blue sky stretched overhead, and vast plains rolled out before us.
'So it's just me, Seo Gayeon, Yuhwa, and Subordinate A out here, huh.' I swept my gaze around our surroundings.
"What do we do first?" Hong Yuhwa asked, drifting over to my side.
"Let's find a base camp first."
"A base camp?"
"Yeah. Somewhere with water nearby and terrain that makes it easy to stay hidden."
I dug through my memory. There was one decent spot around here.
Click. I switched on my Star God Eyes and scanned the area, settling my gaze on a place that would serve nicely as a base. Mana hung thick and clustered there.
A base camp mattered. We would be surviving out here for five days, and resting at one boosted your recovery, among any number of other perks.
'...Which means I'll be pulling night watch, won't I.'
Standing watch itself was no trouble. I simply loathed the act with a passion. Sighing inwardly, I led the team onward.
About thirty minutes of walking later, a promising base camp appeared.
"But how are we supposed to make a house...?"
"Oh, I have just the thing for that."
Hong Yuhwa's Subordinate A drew a black sphere from her bag. It was roughly the size of a soccer ball. She pressed the button set into its center, and the ball swelled outward before unfolding into a proper tent.
"I specialize in artifacts on the blacksmithing side, you see."
"Impressive."
"Hehe..."
Subordinate A beamed at the praise. Good news, that — and here I'd been bracing myself to build a hut from scratch.
"So how shall we divide the work?"
"We'll need to split into a food-gathering team and a monster-hunting team."
"...Can one team actually manage all that?"
"We can, because we have a base. If you assumed no base and sleeping rough in the open..."
"That would be dreadful."
Hong Yuhwa said it while eyeing the tent. She didn't look entirely satisfied with the canvas, but I supposed she'd decided it beat sleeping under the bare sky.
"By the way, what do we do about the tent itself?"
"I'll handle that."
'Yeongcheon.'
"—Yes, Master Seoha! Ready and waiting!"
Yeongcheon wove a spell into being. I raised my Yeokcheon and poured it into the working, exactly along the channels she had laid out.
Saaaaah! A veil of black wrapped itself around the tent.
"—It came out even cleaner than I expected!"
"—That is my lord's dominion over Yeokcheon at work. At this level, it should turn aside most any spell."
Yeongcheon and Heukcheon admired the finished working between them.
"...Was spellcraft your major?" Subordinate A stared, thunderstruck, at the shroud around the tent.
"There wasn't even a mana signature."
"And the subtlety and precision are just absurd."
Hong Yuhwa and Subordinate A both turned their eyes on me.
"Shall I take food duty, then?"
"And I'll handle hunting the monsters?"
"Yeah. This kind of thing is what mages are better at in the first place."
I stole a glance at Subordinate A's status window. Two mages plus a warrior type should cover just about any situation.
"Wouldn't it be better if I went instead of you, Seoha?"
"I'll be picking up food along the way, and there are a few other things I want to see for myself."
Besides, I ought to take a look at the boss the Tower of Ordeals had planted midway. The lineup was randomized to a degree, so seeing it ahead of time was the only way to know what strategy to run.
"Then let's regroup here by five o'clock and pool what we've learned."
"Okay."
With that, we split up.
I made swift time with the Black Flash Step. Traveling on Black Wings would have been faster, but they burned through my Yeokcheon far too quickly, so they had to be conserved.
As I ran in the direction of the boss, I bagged a wild boar and two rabbits, butchered them, and stowed them away in my subspace.
'This should be enough, right?'
I gathered mushrooms and wild herbs growing nearby that would deepen the flavor of whatever I cooked.
'There are even tomatoes and melons out here.'
What an absurd environment. Then again, it was precisely because the setting was like this that a sudden survival test posed no real problem at all.
Everything went into the subspace, and I set off once more. I ran deep toward the interior until, at last, the boss came into view.
"Hmm..."
It was a figure wreathed in smoldering flame. A humanoid frame, crowned with the head of a bull.
'A Minotaur. An elite boss, no less... That one shows up in the second-year exam.'
The boss was stronger than I'd expected. A flame-wreathed Minotaur boasts high resistance to fire — and it was big. A body a good five meters tall; from a distance it looked like a small apartment building that had gotten up on two legs and started walking.
'And the size was only part of the problem.'
What truly made the flame-wreathed Minotaur nasty was that when its flames split, the boss split along with them. Strictly by ranking, it was a monster standing right at the threshold of the tier above. Not that it was supposed to spawn on this field in the first place.
'Not bad at all.'
One might think there was no upside to my having chosen Hong Yuhwa — but the red mana she carried had a rather special property. And her Usurper talent had, by now, bloomed to a considerable degree.
'Time to head back.'
I turned around and departed with the Black Flash Step.
"It's hot."
Yoo Eunchae and Seo Gayeon were quick to agree. All three of them had already cast temperature-maintaining support magic, but perhaps the swamp was to blame — the humidity bored straight through the spell and was steadily grinding down their condition.
"Not exactly prime terrain for a fight."
Seo Gayeon gave a soft reply to Yoo Eunchae's remark, and Hong Yuhwa nodded.
"Shall we start heading back, then?"
"Let's."
A glance at their wristwatches showed it was already four in the afternoon.
Yoo Eunchae — the girl Lee Seoha called Subordinate A — had butchered a swamp crocodile just in case and packed it into her backpack, and the three of them set off for the base camp.
"By the way, Yuhwa — are you and Seoha dating?"
"...Me?" Hong Yuhwa's eyes went round at Seo Gayeon's question.
"Mm. There's a rumor going around that Seoha carried you on his back all the way home the other day."
"...You saw that?"
"Yep."
Hong Yuhwa's face flared scarlet.
Truth be told, the memory embarrassed her. To Hong Yuhwa, Lee Seoha was something like a rival. She had accepted his help, yes, but she fully intended to overtake him someday — and that was exactly why she hated showing him anything less than her best. For three days she had barely slept, hauled around like so much luggage. Back then, there truly had been no other choice.
"...It's not like that."
"Is that so?"
Seo Gayeon tilted her head.
Hong Yuhwa admitted it to herself as well: Lee Seoha was handsome. On the rare day he let a smile slip, the girls in their class would dissolve into squealing. Even from a woman's standpoint, a face like that cleansed the soul just to look upon. And judged as a man, there was hardly anyone more appealing — his abilities were outrageous on top of it.
But romance was a luxury she could not afford.
"Besides, I have no intention of dating anyone yet."
"Really?"
Seo Gayeon tilted her head once more, then walked on ahead. Hong Yuhwa found the subtle gesture odd, but soon quickened her own pace. Being up in the mountains, the air carried a distinct chill.
Following the markers they had carved in advance, they pushed deeper inward — and the scenery abruptly changed.
'Fascinating.'
Hong Yuhwa was still marveling at the high-caliber spellwork when she stopped short. A rich, savory fragrance filled the air nearby.
What on earth was he cooking to give off a smell like this? Guided by nothing but primal instinct, Hong Yuhwa, Yoo Eunchae, and Seo Gayeon drifted inside.
There was Lee Seoha, hard at work over the fire — grilling trimmed cuts of meat, simmering a stew, roasting mushrooms.
"Oh, you're back? That was quick." Lee Seoha smiled and ladled stew into wooden bowls.
"I had some time to spare, so I carved bowls and spoons out of wood. They look pretty decent, don't they?"
"They do."
Hong Yuhwa gave an absent-minded answer, her eyes locked on the stew. It brimmed with meat and vegetables. Where on earth had this guy foraged all of it?
Nom. The moment it entered her mouth, Hong Yuhwa's eyes went wide.
Delicious. She couldn't tell what he had put in it, but a deep, layered savoriness rolled off the stew. The meat melted in her mouth before she had chewed more than a few times, and with that very first spoonful, warmth spread through her whole body.
"It's good."
Hong Yuhwa forced her composure and complimented the dish. Yoo Eunchae and Seo Gayeon had already buried their faces in their bowls.
How unrefined. But even as the thought crossed her mind, her gaze had glued itself back to the stew — which was running low. Keeping up her aloof expression, Hong Yuhwa began shoveling spoonfuls into her mouth at remarkable speed.
Lee Seoha watched the whole scene with a fond, contented smile.
The next day, we threw ourselves into hunting monsters at a rapid pace.
We still had a fair stock of the vegetables and fruit gathered yesterday, and meat proved easier to come by than expected, so I joined the hunts myself.
"With a vanguard this solid, the hunting goes fast." Subordinate A said, all smiles. I nodded along — and found it strange. Somewhere along the way, her manner had turned oddly warm.
'What's that about?'
Well, if Hong Yuhwa's subordinate wanted to cozy up to me, that only worked in my favor, so I humored her.
We pressed forward, hunting as we went, until I sensed human presence nearby.
"Hold on."
I brought the group to a halt and stoked my senses, staring ahead through my Star God Eyes. There, I spotted Erciel and Kim Ara — and Kim Seohyun and Park Unhyeok besides.
'...What is this?'
My gut felt off. Foreboding — that was the word for it. My senses had sharpened considerably since acquiring Sword Demon (S-), and I was the type to trust them.
'Are they out to bag us?'
Hunting us would look appealing from where they stood. I was a great deal weaker than I seemed — but to their eyes, I must have looked tremendously strong. Taken one at a time, they were mostly opponents I could beat — though the Saint, or Park Unhyeok and Kim Seohyun, would be a real handful.
'If only Kim Ara weren't there—'
Then I saw Kim Ara's eyes. Blazing embers, both of them. And quite suddenly, I remembered what she had tossed my way just before we entered the Tower of Ordeals.
"......Should we fall back?"
"Enemies?"
"Enemies... yeah, I believe so."
In the final exam, the truly dangerous thing was never the monsters — it was your fellow students. You never knew when someone might strike at your back.
"Are they difficult to deal with?"
"Erciel, Kim Ara, Park Unhyeok, Kim Seohyun — plus five others."
"...We'd best not cross paths with them, then."
Typical of Hong Yuhwa — her pride would never allow her to actually say the word retreat.
I nodded. Fighting them would cost more than it gained. I had no intention of losing — but it was the kind of fight where even victory would be a loss.
"—My lord, the cow-skulled brute we saw the other day stands over yonder."
Heukcheon pointed off to one side. There, wrapped in fire, stood the Minotaur — at a considerable distance.
'...Oh.'
A brilliant idea flashed through my mind.