Smells Like Team Spirit
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After that, it was nothing but response training.
Monsters appearing without warning, lunging exactly as configured, so that the students would learn not to freeze up when they did.
Dealing with illusions that pounced from the canopy of dense jungle, students who failed to react in time were sent sprawling in every direction.
As it happened, not a single team managed to spot the monster first and pull off a successful ambush.
And that held true even though, thanks to Lee Yeeun's diligent answers, they'd been given conditions nearly equal to the monsters'—at least where vision and camouflage were concerned.
Well, of course.
What the students had been provided with was, after all, nothing more than a night-vision set bundled with camouflage gear.
The monsters' senses, by contrast, were the product of generations born and adapted to surviving in exactly this kind of environment.
A tool they'd never once handled properly, versus five senses they'd been born with. Ask which one they'd be more comfortable with, and the answer was obvious.
Besides, what Yeeun had covered was strictly preparation beforehand.
What needed doing after arriving on-site—on that front, they were still completely exposed.
Not that I'd withheld it on purpose. It was a matter of practicality.
Frankly, we had one day. Barely.
There was only so much the students could absorb in that time.
For now, getting used to a large monster's attacks came first.
Would've been a little easier if we had a gate.
No matter how luxurious the gymnasium was, it was still an illusion. It might work the first time, but once a person realizes it's all fake, they inevitably slack off. Human nature.
It simply couldn't compare to hands-on practice where things actually connected with your body.
Case in point: right now, most of the students were busy agonizing over how they were supposed to fight the monsters at all.
But if this had been live practice?
Nine times out of ten, someone would have noticed something off by now.
Despite being told conditions were equal, why did the monster side always get first strike?
I wasn't saying they were approaching it with a lax attitude—but compared to real practice where you bled for your mistakes, it was undeniable that their approach was somewhat careless.
To put it bluntly, nobody likes getting hurt, do they?
Whatever else you could say about it, people learn through pain.
Hey, smear this on.
What? Are you serious?
Of course I'm serious, is this a joke? Look, it's an illusion anyway. Who cares?
Well, it wasn't a bad line of thinking.
Take, for instance, the team of Hwang Yoonha and Lee Yeeun.
I'd mixed the teams arbitrarily this time, and when it came to monster knowledge, Yoonha was conspicuously outstanding.
Part of it might've been her part-time work, but mostly, I figured, she'd simply grown genuinely interested in monster ecology herself.
That said—illusion or no illusion, rubbing monster dung directly onto your own face without a moment's hesitation struck me as questionable conduct for a high school girl.
You're a regular grand general of the wilds, aren't you, Yoonha...
To be fair, though, she wasn't wrong.
The gap between unfamiliar equipment and senses honed from birth. Except it went beyond just that—the monsters' advantage was overwhelming.
In a situation like this, the rational move was to suspect that the monsters possessed detection organs separate from their sight.
The first thing to consider there would be smell.
Monsters, and wild animals for that matter, tend to be quite sensitive to human scent.
A smell too alien to their environment. That was the reason.
It was also exactly why you should never douse yourself in perfume before heading out on a subjugation.
Which meant, in that vein, using the mud of the actual site to mask your body odor was a fairly effective tactic.
On a grading scale, that's about an eighty.
Because at that rate, the camouflage cream might not get the chance to do its job properly.
And what if the dung happened to be toxic?
For situations like that, hunters typically carried scent pouches.
Literally what it sounds like—perfumed sachets that dispersed a scent suited to each environment.
Of course, the scent you needed differed depending on whether it was jungle or desert, so you had to stock a whole assortment of the things.
Either way, the point was that masking your scent required reading the environment of the field itself.
That was also exactly why I hadn't provided scent pouches. If there'd been intel on the gate, fine—but if the day came when they had to throw themselves into a gate with no proper information whatsoever, they needed to have learned to cope with that too.
And honestly, on a rainy day, you couldn't use a scent pouch anyway.
Instead, lower your mana too.
Huh?
I get what you're going for. But your mana's way too scattered. Like this, you'll get found out no matter how well you camouflage.
Oh—okay. So, uh, how do I fix it?
...Hold on. I'll show you.
Yeeun, who had resisted to the very last before finally kneeling before a magnificent dung-bomb baptism, muttered it in a sullen voice.
A somewhat pitiful sight, admittedly—but it was the right answer.
The six senses, including sight and smell, layered under beastly instinct.
And on top of that, an organ for detecting mana.
That was roughly the full arsenal of detection methods a monster could deploy.
There were giant breeds that lumbered around without giving a damn about mana detection, but monsters that dwelled in jungle like this were nine times out of ten equipped with the ability.
So you suppressed it—holding your breath, as it were, and lowering your own mana.
Screw up, and you'd be bisected at the waist before your ability ever got the chance to matter. But that was still better than letting yourself be ambushed.
And once you got used to it, you could even exercise your ability while keeping the leaking mana clamped down.
It wasn't only physical-reinforcement types who trained their bodies. Even without a mana-sensitivity ability, there was every reason to master at least the minimum of mana control.
In that regard, Lee Yeeun's mana control was genuinely excellent. She'd tucked her own mana away cleanly, and her telekinesis, which enveloped her whole body, hadn't wavered by so much as a thread.
Yoonha, by comparison, had accomplished nothing more than switching her ability off.
Well, aptitudes differ from person to person, abilities included. At the very least it beat blindly charging in.
If you couldn't control your own mana, a hunter—who was essentially a massive clump of the stuff—showed up far more vividly than an ordinary civilian ever would.
So while I hold the line, you do something. Agreed?
Whoa, hold on. I'm really not good at that kind of thing.
Shit, what do you want me to do, throw my shield at it?
O-okay. I'll try. Don't yell at me...
It was a pairing chosen purely for ability synergy, but the two of them clicked better than I'd expected.
In fact, they were the first to bring down a monster.
Yoonha, braced awkwardly behind a shield from the gymnasium's supply rack, weathering the monster's charge. Behind her, Yeeun wielding her telekinesis.
It wasn't clean, but it was a pretty satisfying victory all the same.
Congratulations, both of you. First pass.
When I approached and said it, Yoonha—splayed flat from the exhaustion of grappling with the monster—quietly flashed a V-sign.
Yeeun, who'd been sprawled out in a heap, on the other hand, abruptly lifted her head.
F-first place?
Yup.
I wondered why she was making such a fuss, then realized she had every reason to.
After all, Yeeun had been scraping bottom ever since she'd entered the Academy.
Her scores were plenty upper-tier by anyone else's standards, but for her, it made sense the feeling ran deeper than that.
Her gaze darted briskly around the room before landing on Jung Pilyeon, still locked in a scrum with his monster.
Kraaagh!!
And beside him was Hayeon, fidgeting helplessly, clearly at a loss for how to handle the situation.
To be fair, both Pilyeon and Hayeon had faced monsters head-on before—but being ambushed was probably a first for them.
Can't be helped, I thought, turning my head back—and caught Yeeun clenching her fist where I couldn't quite see it.
Fuck yes, die, die.
N-no, wait. That's not what I—
It's fine, kid. Savor it.
I chuckled, and settled down on the floor nearby.
I knew Yeeun's competitive streak well enough to figure she didn't need anyone deflating it at a moment like this.
That surprised me.
What did?
Hunter Shin Seoa.
Why? Surprised I'm her master?
No, it's just... I never imagined you'd have a disciple.
So saying, Yeeun cast her gaze into the distance—where Seoa could be seen floundering gamely under a barrage of questions from the other students.
I'd long since taught Seoa the basics of suppressing her presence, but apparently walking someone else through it so they could actually understand was an entirely different problem.
Which, fair. That was rather the point of making her do it.
Wait—is she actually feeding you?
I was genuinely just surprised.
Oh, please. If anyone's surprised, it's me. I spent a whole month trying to beat that combat style out of you, you got roasted about it by Yoonha recently, and yet you're still using it just fine.
Maybe people really do need to get chewed out to learn.
The telekinetic arrow she'd loosed moments ago, while Yoonha was busy blocking the monster's attack.
Considering that until recently she'd whined about how she'd never imagined using her ability that way, it was a monumental leap forward.
But Yeeun herself just turned her head away with an awkward expression. Beside her, her flushed cheeks betrayed exactly how embarrassed she was.
...It wasn't because of what Yoonha said.
Sure. Joking.
I mean it~
It wasn't a lie, though.
After the theater practice, Yeeun had started applying her ability in all sorts of new ways, breaking out of her old habits.
She'd always had the talent, and given that she'd been rehearsing a lunatic combat style designed to blow out her own nerves, her control wasn't bad either.
But still.
Where on earth did this come from? Did your brother say something?
No.
Really?
The admiration I'd felt—that brat finally did something useful—evaporated in an instant.
Lee Joongoo, that bastard, what the hell...?
But instead of answering my suspicion, Yeeun simply turned to meet my eyes, unhurried.
Her sky-blue eyes—clearer than when I'd last seen them—looked straight at me.
I just... told him about it.
Told him what?
Something that happened a while ago.
And what would that be?
Again, no answer. She only smiled, briefly.
Teacher? The results of that practice exam—remember them?
Huh? Uh, yeah. They were a bit unusual, weren't they.
I answered vaguely, thrown by the sudden change of subject.
Yeeun's case—hadn't she been in a burning-library-like place, running a chase against some lizard-like monster?
What stuck with me was how, though she'd panicked like the others during the first practice run, she'd handled the exam day itself with perfect composure.
That's why.
What?
Whether I wanted to be like someone, or had to be like someone... I talked it over with my brother.
Uh... right. I have absolutely no idea what you mean.
Of course you don't. I told you precisely because I figured you wouldn't. If you'd actually remembered, I'd have been happy—but I'd have died of embarrassment instead.
Her tone was perfectly matter-of-fact, yet taking it at face value didn't feel quite right. Probably some verbal judo she'd learned from that bastard Lee Joongoo.
Well, either way, as long as she didn't cling to that bizarre combat style, it was no business of mine.
So, feeling a little unsatisfied, I gave up on prying anything further out of Yeeun and turned to Yoonha instead.
Yoonha, you holding up?
I'm dying.
She looked so drained that the odd distance that had lingered between us since the kidnapping incident felt entirely gone.
Ssaem.
Hm? Yeah?
So, uh—what are you, exactly? Is Hunter Shin Seoa some kind of secret agent too?
But Ssaem, this kind of question is toooough~
Ever since that day, Yoonha had apparently concluded that I was some kind of extraordinary special operative.
Well, she had watched me drag a classmate along to a duel with her kidnapper, so I could hardly blame her.
And honestly, I wasn't sure how else I'd explain it either.
Worst of all, that kidnapper bastard had gone and summoned monsters. To impose a gag order on Yoonha, I'd had no choice but to actively exploit her misconception about me.
It's not like that, kid.
Oh, really? And here I thought you were the sidekick.
That's right, it's not—so treat her nicely. Your siblings? They doing okay?
Pfft, those kids? They're fine.
Good. You bawled your eyes out when you got kidnapped, so I figured I'd ask.
Yoonha, for her part, only stared at me with a blank expression.
That look was so irritating that before I knew it, I'd flicked her on the forehead.
Ow!
What's so fascinating?
I mean, obviously it's fascinating!
So what is?
Was it funny, the guy she'd once assumed was part of some special forces unit now talking like an ordinary teacher?
But I figured this much, at least, deserved correcting.
Don't stress yourself over it. I didn't come here on some mission or other.
That was all I could say for now.
Strictly speaking, I did have a protection detail, of a sort.
But I hadn't become a teacher for the sake of the protection detail. If anything, it was because of me that Hayeon had ended up semi-coerced into attending the Academy in the first place.
When I said it with all the gravity I could muster, Yoonha wore a blank look for a moment—and then, before long, burst out laughing as if she hadn't expected it at all.
Wait, seriously?
Yeah, kid.
Oh—here I was thinking I was getting in the way of your secret mission.
How does a person even arrive at that conclusion?
Well—I mean, put yourself in the hostage's shoes, doesn't it kind of make sense?
Don't worry about it, kid. Your teacher's scary strong.
No, that part I know. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Right. So you can drop all that. Bring your siblings by sometime and say hello properly.
Those little ones had shipped Yoonha back home and never managed to give a proper thank-you.
When I grumbled that out as an afterthought, Yoonha ducked her head low and answered in a trembling voice.
I will. Definitely.
Definitely, huh? No need to make a big thing of it.
Instead of saying that, I shrugged.
It wasn't like buying a few kids a meal down the road was any great burden.
So rather than open my mouth any further, the two of us simply passed the rest of the session in comfortable silence, watching the other students drill.
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