The Wist Forest (2)
The carriage rattled along at a steady pace. I opened my eyes, feeling a strange, ominous sensation—like the moment before plummeting in a dream. Except I hadn’t been dreaming, so that wasn’t quite right. Still, something felt off. Very off.
I glanced behind us. The other carriages were following without issue. Yet that nagging discomfort kept scraping against my senses, refusing to fade. Now that I was fully accustomed to Schlus’s body, I could identify it immediately.
Someone was interfering with the surrounding mana, editing and reshaping it. In other words, they were constructing a spell formula.
Who the hell is it?
Was it one of the students? Or Sergei? But no one inside our carriage seemed to be preparing any magic. Then was it coming from one of the carriages behind us? No, that wasn’t it either. The direction of the mana wave was clearly coming from the right—straight out of those bushes.
Boom!
The carriage suddenly lurched forward and tipped violently. The horses screamed as they were dragged into a pit, and the front wheels followed, tilting the entire vehicle. My forehead slammed into the back of the seat in front of me.
A trap.
“Ah, is everyone alright? Just stay calm for a moment—”
Sergei was trying to laugh it off and settle the students when—
Bang!
“Huh?”
“Is that smoke?!”
“Everyone stay calm! Do not get up from your seats!”
Thick white smoke billowed out in every direction. In an instant, it blanketed the area, turning everything hazy. Within seconds, nothing beyond ten meters was visible.
Ah… Damn it.
Only then did I realize what was happening. This was a bandit ambush. If you’re wondering why I forgot something so important, I’ll just say that it never appeared in the original story. And before you ask why bandits who weren’t in the original are showing up now—the answer is that in the novel, they were quietly torn apart by the intelligence agents tailing Hurtlocker’s group.
“Professor, what’s going on?”
“Are those mountain bandits?”
“Quiet, all of you! Focus on listening!”
Sergei’s voice had grown slightly sharp. Understandable. The students’ lives were on the line.
Then I felt a chill run down my spine. That immense mana… There was only one person it could belong to besides Sergei. That crazy bastard was about to fire off a spell without hesitation.
I was about to dismantle his formula when a better idea occurred to me.
“Eight o’clock direction!”
Boom!
The moment I shouted at the top of my lungs, an explosion tore through the air loud enough to rupture eardrums. That son of a bitch. He really just dumped all that mana into one shot.
As expected, Sergei and the students were staring behind me with their mouths hanging open. I let out a sigh and turned around as well.
“Ugh…”
The strong wind had already cleared most of the smoke. In the eight o’clock direction I’d indicated, the ground was scorched a deep red, carved out in a long crater. I remembered seeing something like this before—Ainz’s flame magic. This was basically an enhanced version of it.
“Assistant! Stay here and protect the kids! I’ll go check it out!”
Sergei leapt from his seat and disappeared into the bushes. Soon he came trudging back out with a dumbfounded expression.
“Looks like the bandit group has been completely wiped out.”
“Waaa…?”
The students looked equally stunned, as if they couldn’t believe it. This seemed like the right time for me to step in.
“Uahaha! I did it! I fired that shot! You see that crater? Hngh! Look at that insane power!”
…Of course.
I’d been wondering why he hadn’t shown up yet. The loud voice could only belong to Ainz, bragging at full volume. I seriously wanted to smack him upside the head.
“Ainz.”
“Yeah! Schlus! Obviously it worked because you gave me the direction! Thanks, man! Your sharp senses combined with the power of my magic… Hngh! Wasn’t that just perfect? Total dream team, right?”
…Dream team my ass. More like a nightmare combo.
I approached to give him a warning, but he just kept running his mouth.
“Ainz. What were you planning to do if I hadn’t given you the direction?”
“Well, obviously I wouldn’t have fired—”
“When I told you the direction, your spell formula had already entered the activation phase. Am I wrong?”
“Uh… But even if I didn’t know the direction, I would’ve just shot it somewhere. It would’ve been fine!”
“In a situation where the fog was so thick you couldn’t see an inch in front of you? What if there had been an innocent person where you fired?”
“But there’s no way there’d be people on this mountain path—”
“That’s not something you can know for sure.”
“……”
Ainz’s shoulders slumped as he slowly closed his mouth. He seemed to understand, but not fully accept it. It was the face of a child who had been excitedly boasting for praise only to get scolded instead.
Was this guy really supposed to awaken? Maybe I had been expecting too much.
“With great power comes great responsibility. Keep that in mind, Ainz.”
“…Got it.”
I ended up saying something pretty cringeworthy. If I’d said it back in reality, I would’ve died of embarrassment, but no one in this world would recognize the line.
Ainz pouted and turned away, clearly unhappy with the situation. Honestly, I wasn’t really qualified to lecture him like that. It probably came off as annoying.
“Haha. What Schlus said isn’t wrong, but in the end, everything turned out fine. How about we all give Ainz a round of applause?”
“Wow. Woooow…”
Sergei, who had been watching with bated breath and sweating bullets, jumped in at the perfect moment. Good timing for some mediation. After all, the result was that we had eliminated the bandits without suffering any casualties. I was about to clap along with a cool smile when—
Creak…!
Boom!
The sound of something crashing down echoed. When I turned, a massive tree as thick as a baobab had fallen and completely crushed the second carriage. The horses pulling it had been flattened along with it. They hadn’t even managed to scream before being turned into jerky.
“Th-there’s a wildfire over there!”
“What?!”
I whipped my head around at the urgent cry. This time, the bushes had caught fire.
…Fuck.
I was losing my mind.
. . .
“My mana is completely drained…”
“I can’t cast any more spells!”
“Hoo… Haah… Everyone worked hard!”
Under the calm leadership of Sergei and the assistant, we surrounded the area where the wildfire had begun and started extinguishing it from the outside in. After an hour of dozens of students firing water cannons, we finally managed to completely put out every last ember. Even Trie, who couldn’t use water magic, had worked hard swinging an axe to clear away any flammable brush nearby. Meanwhile, Ainz—who had used up all his mana—could only fidget anxiously on the sidelines.
“Hahahaha… Well, there was a bit of a commotion, but it’s better than anyone getting hurt by the bandits, right!”
Sergei seemed determined to laugh the whole thing off. After all, the only damage was that every student had run out of mana and one carriage had been completely destroyed along with its horses.
“Everyone get on the first carriage! It’ll be a little cramped, but still—”
Sergei walked over to the pit where the first carriage had tipped over and suddenly stopped talking. Why? We all followed him curiously and peered down into the hole.
“Hihiiing…! Hiiing!”
“Ah…”
The horses had all been impaled on stakes driven into the bottom of the pit. None of them could even stand properly. They were done for. They wouldn’t be able to walk again. Which meant…
“Haha. How about we all do a little marching practice a semester early?”
“Ehhhhhhh?!”
We’d have to walk. All the way to the Wist Forest. And there were still at least ten kilometers left. I suddenly felt like collapsing on the spot.
Ten kilometers? If you set a proper pace, it’s not actually that far. Anyone who’s served in the military knows that. The problem was—
“Hoo… Heuk… Huk…”
“Professor… Are we still far?”
“We’re almost there! Just a little more! Uahaha!”
“That’s what you said ten times already…”
I had to drag along these people with pathetic stamina. They kept speeding up and then dying out in cycles, so I got exhausted quickly too. Still, I knew that panting or slouching while walking wasted even more energy, so on the outside I probably didn’t look tired at all.
“Hehe. The results of your training are showing.”
“……”
Trie puffed out her chest proudly, apparently mistaking my condition for improved stamina. As if. I shook my head and opened my status window.
Health: 17
Strength: 12
Agility: 5
Durability: 5
Mana: 1
Mana Compatibility: 1
Mana Sensitivity: 75
Calculation Ability: 48
Wait, it’s actually true?
My health stat used to be 15, right? It had somehow crept up to 17. Come to think of it, I had unconsciously been treating stats as fixed, immutable numbers. But the values I’d set were just the character’s starting stats from the early parts of the novel—they were never meant to be absolute.
Things like health, strength, and agility could clearly be raised through regular training without any special opportunities or epiphanies. Realizing that now made me feel incredibly stupid. Or maybe I really was just stupid.
“Everyone! We’ve finally arrived! You can rest now!”
“Waaaaah!”
Still, by walking diligently, we managed to arrive before the sun had completely set. In the distance, I could see a small walled town. That wasn’t the Wist Forest, though. The forest was the dense woodland behind the village. What was the name of this town again? I couldn’t remember. Maybe I had never set a name for it.
“Everyone be careful. Never step off the path. You might trigger a mana mine.”
“Hiiik!”
“And even if you follow the path, do not go deep into the Wist Forest. There are times when mana energy gas floods down like a tidal wave.”
“Hiiik!”
By now, the students probably understood why this village was deliberately built on high ground. Or maybe they were wondering why a village even existed in a place like this at all. To ordinary people, the Wist Forest was nothing but a dangerous area. But to scholars, it was different. An environment packed with high concentrations of mana energy and unknown magical creatures was extremely rare. That was why, ever since ancient times—back when this land still belonged to the Trude Kingdom—scholars and merchants had come and gone, eventually forming this small village. The permanent population was around eighty people. A truly tiny place.
“Then for today’s first test—”
“Professor! Please no!”
“Uhhahaha! Just kidding, just kidding!”
“……”
It was a joke that sent chills down the spine. Knowing Sergei, he really might have thrown the students—who were completely out of mana and stamina—into a surprise test against magical beasts. Somehow he seemed a bit more vicious than he had been in the original story.
“I’ve prepared an inn, so everyone rest well tonight.”
“Yes, Professor!”
As expected of the Imperial Academy, they had spared no expense even here. Every student got their own room, no matter how small. That meant there wouldn’t be any of that cramped, noisy university MT atmosphere of everyone crowding into one room. Then again, after a day as exhausting as today, no one would want to gather and chat noisily anyway.
I washed up comfortably, then plopped down on a chair.
Should I go find the opportunity at dawn tomorrow?
I unfolded the map I had received from the innkeeper. Since it was the same map that had an illustration in the original novel, I remembered the location of the opportunity clearly. It was here—among the rocky mountains east of the Wist Forest. The forest blocking the direct path was a minefield, so I’d have to circle around the lake. To get back in time for wake-up, I’d need to leave pretty early. I should get to bed soon.
The moment I lay down on the bed thinking that—
“Ah, shit.”
I remembered something I had forgotten. My hazy mind snapped awake instantly.
I’m screwed.
It looked like the opportunity was about to be stolen by someone else.