Field Trip (2)
Could I dodge it? No.
Did I have any means of physically shooting it down? No.
Would it kill me if it hit? No.
Would it turn me into a worthless wreck if it hit? Yes.
Everything was accelerating past its limits. But thinking faster didn’t make my body any quicker.
My adrenaline was surging like never before, but even so, dodging that thing in time seemed hopeless.
At best, maybe I could avoid having my spine snapped.
Watching the icicle draw nearer in real time, I tried to figure out which part of me I should sacrifice to get off cheapest.
Damn it. What a cursed life I had. I should’ve been more careful the moment I realized Evil Society was watching me.
No, wait. On second thought, I was the one who’d been wronged here.
How was I supposed to predict they’d open with a sniper shot just because they were watching me?
In the original story, they had at least the courtesy of introducing themselves, explaining who they were and what they wanted before charging in. They didn’t just go straight for the kill like this.
Fine. Let me just lose a kidney and call it a day. Thinking that, I twisted my body to take the icicle head-on.
Then, just before it could touch me, the icicle froze in midair.
It wasn’t that my panic had sped everything up so much it looked like time had stopped.
"-Ka!"
That meant Yustitia had managed to pin the icicle in place just in time.
As the crisis reached that point, the world around us began to rush back into motion.
The kids, only now realizing what was happening, screamed or looked around in confusion.
But even then, there were a few who understood what needed to be done, and one of them was Im Changwon.
"Force field!"
The instant he grasped the situation, Changwon threw up a massive barrier around us.
As if someone were scraping circles into the pavement with an invisible compass, a ring of lines carved itself into the cobblestones.
The icicle fixed in the air was shredded the moment the barrier formed.
With the icicle broken apart, Yustitia stopped using her gaze and immediately checked on the students.
"Is anyone hurt?! Blanca, are you all right?"
"...I’m fine!"
I forced my shaking voice steady and answered.
The instant I said it, about five more icicles came flying for me, but the moment they slammed into the barrier Changwon had made, they were ground to pieces in an instant.
The sniper must have realized I was no longer worth targeting, because the barrage stopped.
"Hey, I was planning to start by taking out the one with the mismatched eyes. So you’re one of the ranks, huh? To sense that much..."
And then, in the blink of an eye, a man burst out of thin air.
Time.
Why the hell was that bastard already here?
But whether I could keep up or not, time and events kept rushing forward.
Yustitia turned on him at once and drew the scythe slung across her back.
Yet the man didn’t stay fixed by her ability and just kept running his mouth.
"Wow. As expected of a murder hero, trying to kill me right away. Scary, scary. Whew, could you turn off those eyes? I don’t have a physical body, you know."
"Are you villains?"
"Who knows. Would you spare us if we weren’t?"
The illusion shrugged as if it were a joke, then rolled its shoulders and loosened up.
And from behind him, countless clones burst out and surrounded us.
Yustitia must have decided she wasn’t going to get any useful information out of them, because she immediately called for support and gave us permission to fight.
"...In the name of Gazer, I hereby authorize all students to use their abilities. The enemy is an unidentified group of villains. Estimated threat level: A-class or higher. Do not do anything foolish. Your only goal is survival."
The clones were each stretching, or making threatening gestures, and had already come to a stop just one step in front of the barrier Changwon had made.
"You’re really going to make the kids fight too? That’s cold. In that case, I guess we have no choice but to go after the civilians—"
The clones spoke in unison, then abruptly cut themselves off in the middle of the sentence.
"I see. The real body is mixed in among the clones."
Yustitia’s eyes gleamed as she stared through the crowd of duplicates. It looked like she had found the original.
It was bait. I had to stop her.
But if I stopped her here, I’d expose myself.
So all I could do was watch as she walked forward.
She told Changwon to drop the barrier for a moment, then moved away from us and approached the body she had spotted.
"In the authority of the hero Gazer, I will neutralize an antisocial threat."
She raised the scythe and tried to take the original’s head.
But the original suddenly vanished, and the nearby clone reached out as if to grab her.
"Look out!"
That really was dangerous, so I had no choice but to warn her.
If it came down to it, I’d rather expose myself than lose her.
At my warning, Yustitia swung the scythe wide instead of completing the decapitation, severing the arm of the original body that had tried to seize her.
"...Eliza. Alexei. Cayenne. Dumas. Begin, you useless trash! It’s time to make the name of the Executioners known! Primary target is that mismatched-eyed brat with the huge tits—capture her even if you die!"
The villain whose arm had been cut off, Wang Tai-ryun’s original body, glared at me through the pain, then vanished and switched into another clone.
That was his ability: he could create an illusion of himself and swap places with it.
The instant he switched, his original body disappeared, and the illusion that became the real one gained substance.
What’s more, every time he swapped with a clone, all the damage he’d taken healed. A cockroach of a power.
The problem wasn’t his ability.
The problem was him.
Why the hell was someone who should’ve shown up in the second year here already?
"Teacher, the civilians— people are—!"
Just as the clones had appeared, three more people suddenly materialized from the air.
That giant one must be Dumas, and the black-haired one is Eliza.
And the one whose gender I can’t even tell is probably Cayenne.
The civilians, still too stunned to react properly, stared blankly as people kept popping up beside them.
"You’re the only one acting like the boss... Tsk. Ugh, this is so annoying!! Fine, then I guess you all have to die!!"
Eliza scratched her head irritably and snapped her fingers.
Then, just like when they had appeared, enhanced humans suddenly popped into existence from thin air.
The sharper civilians had already run for it long ago, but unfortunately there were far more who were too slow to react.
—Aaaah!
It was only natural that civilians would get caught up in a villain attack.
"Teacher!!! Changwon, drop this!! The civilians...!"
"Where do you think you’re going? You have to dance with me!"
Yustitia immediately tried to rescue the civilians, but Wang Tai-ryun blocked her path at once.
"So, what’ll it be, hero? Will you abandon your duty and at least save your own skin? Or will you risk your life and fight?"
While the students were still in an uproar, the enhanced humans and villains were attacking the civilians.
It was an obvious trap.
They’d force Changwon to lower the barrier, drag us into fighting them, and then go after me.
But...
If things went on like this, there was no telling how badly the story would be mangled.
And that was a problem for me.
Besides, I couldn’t let Minho’s heart get ruined here.
Like the other students, I clenched my teeth and walked up to Changwon, who was keeping the barrier up while watching the civilians get attacked, and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Drop it, Changwon."
Changwon stared at me like he never imagined I’d speak to him first, then shouted at me like I’d lost my mind.
"They’re aiming for you right now, and you want to step in?"
"I know. That’s exactly why I’m stepping in. I’m not planning to die, so come on. You’re an aspiring hero, aren’t you? The civilians are in danger. You’re just going to stand there and watch?"
Saying that, I moved closer to the barrier.
"Blanca’s right. If you’re an aspiring hero, what good is it to watch civilians getting attacked?"
"...Jinhyun’s right. The teacher said we were allowed to fight! So let’s fight!"
"B-but the teacher said to prioritize survival..."
"We’re not weak enough for that. And... the victims’ families won’t care about that sort of thing anyway."
The first to make up their minds were Jinhyun and Yeonhwa, once they’d gotten over their shock.
"That’s right... We came here because we wanted to be heroes, so what good is hesitation now? How are we supposed to become heroes like this...!"
"Exactly. I’m scared too, but we have to fight."
"...So drop the barrier, Im Changwon! People could die, and you want us to just sit here sucking our thumbs?"
The fire Jinhyun started had spread to Minho before long.
I didn’t know anymore what this would turn into.
But it had to be better than standing still with my hands in my pockets and watching.
At our brazen, stubborn insistence, Changwon threw away the calm he’d been barely pretending to maintain and dropped the barrier, saying he didn’t know what else to do anymore.
"Be careful, everyone!"
Even while locked in a fierce exchange with Wang Tai-ryun, Yustitia looked over at us with obvious satisfaction.
She, too, seemed to think this was the righteous thing to do.
This world really was insane.
I coated both my hands in a paralyzing toxin dangerous enough to be lethal just by contact, pumped my reactions and strength up as far as I could with the drugs in my system, and the moment the barrier vanished, I sprinted toward the civilians.
A few icicles flew at me as if trying to snipe me down, but the moment they did, Changwon— behind me— spread an invisible psychic barrier over me and blocked them.
The place where the civilians had been watching was a scene of utter chaos, a ruin so horrible I couldn’t even tell at a glance how many had died and how many had survived.
So first—
I’d have to kill the enhanced humans, and fast.
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