Survival Exam (5)

Birdsong pulled my eyes open.

I started to sit up — then felt the weight on my stomach and glanced down. Rumi was lying on top of me.

"Oh. Right..."

Only then did I register the sensation of her pussy still clenched tight around my cock.

"Nnn..."

Rumi stirred as I moved, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

"Yaaawn... Ho-yeon... good morning. Mmm..."

"Rumi. One more time before we get up."

I caught her by the hips as she tried to rise.

"Ah... o-okay..."

Her face went scarlet, but she settled back down against me.

I'd pictured this more times than I could count — waking up hard and fucking before the morning wood faded. I just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never thought I'd actually get to do it.

The second I had her consent, I drove my hips up.

"Ah, nngh...!"

When we finished, my body was drained of mana.

I'd kept the Rune Barrier running all night. The thing had been unstable, too — flickering on and off while we slept, from the look of it. Luckily nothing had gone wrong.

Next time I was shutting everything down properly before I passed out.

Rumi was still on the blanket, hips raised, her body twitching in little aftershocks. Maybe I'd gone a little too hard for first thing in the morning.

I dropped the barrier, stepped outside, and checked the area. Nothing had changed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠since last night. A splash of cold water from the stream cleared my head.

Rumi stumbled out of the tent not long after, walking like a corpse. She dunked her face in the water, then stretched with a long, shaky breath.

"Morning."

"Y-yes... good morning."

A late greeting. I rolled my shoulders and worked the stiffness out of my back.

Must have been the decent night's sleep — her fatigue had dropped quite a bit. Her appetite, though, had climbed even higher. Apparently we'd burned more calories fucking than those eggs and that chocolate bar had put back in.

"Rumi, I'm starving. Want to eat breakfast?"

"Yes. I'd like that..."

I was hungry enough myself, so we ate together. Greasy food on an empty stomach was a bad idea, so I pulled out beef porridge and soy-braised beef and we kept it light.

"Ho-yeon... thank you. Really..."

"Don't worry about it. I bought extra for you two anyway. So, where to next?"

"I want to go find Lucy. I want to do this with her."

"Then let's go together. I'll tag along."

"No. This time we want to try it just the two of us."

I hadn't had any particular plans, so tagging along had seemed obvious. I hadn't expected her to turn me down.

What, am I getting rejected here?

"Oh. Yeah?"

"Yes. Lucy and I talked about it before the exam started. We agreed that once we found each other, we'd try coordinating on our own."

"Ah..."

So they were finally starting to work as a pair. Fair enough. If I kept holding their hands through everything, they'd never get the chance to grow. Every now and then I had to let the two of them handle things themselves.

"Then at least take some food."

"It's all right. We'll manage."

"Don't argue. If I'm giving it to you, take it."

I ignored her protests and pulled food from my spatial inventory, packing the lightest, highest-calorie stuff into a plastic bag and pressing it into her hands.

"Ah, but I'm really fine..."

"I bought it for you two. I already told you it's fine."

"...I'll eat it well, then."

Rumi had already lasted a day out here. She knew exactly how hard it was to find food on this island. Supplies would start dropping today, sure — but the energy she'd waste fighting over them was energy I could replace right now. That bag would last a few days at most. After that, her gratitude toward me would only grow.

"Hang in there. I'll share my location with you, so if you ever need to run, you run to me."

"Pfft... okay."

Rumi said her goodbye and trotted off into the trees.

Watching the old shut-in Rumi grow like this... it actually made my chest swell. I was a little worried, but I couldn't hold her hand forever. Sometimes you have to screw up to grow.

Once she was completely out of sight, I packed up the tent. I needed somewhere quiet to meditate and refill my mana. Luckily I'd spotted a small cave in the rocky hill behind us yesterday. That would do.

I'd barely finished packing when I heard it — a rustle, then unsteady footsteps behind me. I turned.

"Elise?"

She looked awful. Elise came shuffling toward me like her legs could give out at any second.

Fatigue at ninety, appetite at eighty-five... she really was in bad shape. And her libido had climbed all the way to fifty-seven. Some animal part of her wanting to reproduce before she keeled over?

"Elise, what's going on? Want me to share some food?"

The girl was in no condition to talk. I needed to get something in her first.

"A mana stone... just give me a little."

"What?"

No hello, no nothing — that was the first thing out of her mouth. Why was she coming to me for a mana stone? She had spares.

"I've got food, but I don't have mana stones. Why would I even bring mana stones to an exam?"

"I already know. You packed them."

"No, I didn't?"

I had no idea why she thought I was carrying mana stones. Sure, I'd bought a mountain of useless junk, but mana stones? What would I even do with those?

"Haa... I know everything. I know you have a mana disorder. I know you're physically involved with Rumi, with Ms. Baek A-young, with Professor Lim Sol. I know you're secretly living with a woman. I won't spread any of it. In exchange — help me. Just a little. On this exam."

What?

The mana disorder part was complete nonsense, but my relationships? She knew about those?

How the hell did she find out?

I'd been as careful as I reasonably could. And if she'd uncovered Professor Lim Sol, that meant someone had gotten into the professor's lab...

So they put a seriously high-ranking operative on me.

Lim Sol was treated like a living saint in the magic world, but she was still only in her mid-to-late twenties. Against the real apex predators — people who'd been accumulating experience for decades — she wasn't enough. Not this early in the story. I hadn't expected someone of that caliber to be watching me. I should have been more careful.

"...Eat first, then we'll talk. You look like hell."

I pulled out smoked pork belly. Greasy food on an empty stomach wasn't ideal — but I wasn't about to go out of my way for someone who'd shown up to blackmail me.

"Here. Eat slowly."

"..."

Elise started picking up the meat with her chopsticks, one piece at a time.

How had she ended up like this? This wasn't who Elise was supposed to be.

She was the poster child for the proud, stubborn type — but once you reeled her in, she folded fast and went soft. I'd already seen a glimpse of that not long ago, when her affection had spiked and she'd suddenly turned kind.

So why the change? Because I had too many women? Because I was trash?

No. That's not it.

Elise was surprisingly tolerant of harems. She'd grown up watching her father — a legendary scumbag who cheated behind his wife's back — and a mother who forgave him because he had the ability to back it up.

The original game only had a pure-love route, but Elise had a line in there:

In other words, ability bought forgiveness. And I'd been proving mine this whole time. At this point I was a walking guarantee of success. Claiming I didn't have the ability was absurd.

So what was I missing?

Affection.

She didn't like me. Once she did, she'd accept the other women too.

First I need to get that affection back up.

And I needed to establish a clear hierarchy. If I was the flower, Elise was the bee. She needed to be the one who came to me — not the other way around.

Being upfront about the other women from the start was probably the right call, too. I needed at least one heroine like that.

Elise was almost finished with the meat. I spoke up.

"I bought that because it was on sale at the supermarket. Taste okay?"

"...Yeah."

"Good. Then again, everything tastes good when you're starving."

"...You're really weird. I came here to blackmail you. Why do you keep acting like we're friends?"

Elise set down her chopsticks and stared at me like I was something she couldn't quite figure out.

"Heh."

I made sure the scoff was loud enough to hear. Her expression tightened.

"Elise. You're going to spread rumors? Go ahead and try. This isn't your home country. This is Korea."

"..."

"Ms. Baek A-young and Professor Lim Sol are both with me of their own free will. There's a web of contracts under the surface that you don't know anything about. And even if you did take this public — whose side do you think the press would take? Yours, or mine? You graduate and go back to France. I stay in Korea."

It was the most obvious logic in the world. Elise would become another country's asset the moment she graduated. I would become the hunter representing Korea. There was no question whose side this country would take.

Whether either of us was telling the truth didn't matter in the slightest. People believed whatever the media poured into their heads.

Of course, if Elise actually pulled that trigger, it would be a massive headache for me. It would put a serious obstacle in the way of conquering the heroines — and Elise herself was one of them. I couldn't afford to make a real enemy of her.

But the important part was this: Elise didn't know that. If I didn't have a condition forcing me to seduce specific women, the damage to me would be almost nothing. Worst case, I could just find someone else. I had that kind of ability.

Someone as sharp as Elise would have understood exactly what I was saying.

"Do you... actually think that makes sense?"

"Elise. You're the one who dug into my private life. Why are you the one getting angry? I just want to help you as a friend. You know better than anyone that what I said holds up."

"...So you're not after my body?"

"Sorry, but if I were after your body, I'd already be doing something about it. You don't have a scrap of mana left in you right now."

Elise's mouth snapped shut.

Ah. That had come out a little more threatening than I'd intended.

"I don't just jump every woman I see. And I'm sorry, but I really didn't pack any mana stones. As for the mana disorder — I honestly have no idea what kind of misunderstanding that is."

I couldn't bluff about something I didn't even know the full story of. If she caught the lie, this would get messy for no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reason.

"...Fine. I'll tell you. I have a Congenital Mana Disorder. Obviously I know a lot about mana disorders."

I hadn't expected her to confess that with her own mouth. She must have been truly desperate.

"And you. You've been buying top-grade mana stones that are completely useless to a cadet. You've been getting regular treatment from Ms. Baek A-young. And your mana capacity is low compared to your actual skill. If that isn't a mana disorder, how else do you explain it?"

"..."

Elise laid it out point by point, pressing me like she was running out of time. She looked genuinely desperate. Underneath it all was the assumption that if she didn't have leverage, I wouldn't help her on the exam.

Yeah... I can work with this.

Her fatigue was so high she clearly wasn't thinking straight. For someone as meticulous and thorough as Elise to dump all of that information on me was a serious mistake.

I had the picture now.

Unlike the original, Elise had assumed I had a mana disorder. Her affection had spiked, and she'd turned kind. Then she'd found out about the other women, and it had crashed right back down.

So how did I raise it again?

Talk about the mana disorder, obviously.

I kept my face carefully neutral and went on.

"Haa... fine. You're right. I had a mana disorder."

"You had a mana disorder...?"

She didn't miss the past tense I'd let slip on purpose.

"Yeah. I got it treated recently."

The moment the words left ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my mouth, I pulled mana out of the air. It flooded into me in an instant, racing through my mana circuits.

"H-how is that...?"

Drawing mana from the atmosphere without a mana stone was something a person with a mana disorder could never, ever do.

"As you can see, I cured it. And... I know how to treat it."

Elise's eyes went wide.