The Class Assignment Exam (Part 2)
It's a forest...
No matter which way I looked, endless towering trees and choking underbrush filled my vision. Calling this place the Great Rainforest was certainly no exaggeration.
Expecting us to survive in a place like this...
One might wonder if the Academy had lost its mind, dumping students into the untamed wild without a care, but this reserve was a forest carefully maintained and managed by the institution for generations. Surveillance spells were active across every sector to monitor us in case disaster struck, and we had all been equipped with enchanted wristbands before warping in through the Teleportation Magic Circle, allowing emergency recall at a moment's notice. In truth, there was little reason to fear fatal accidents during the exam.
Of course, that wouldn't stop someone intent on begging for an early grave, but anyone that suicidal wouldn't have enrolled in the Academy in the first place. It was a pointless worry.
What I actually need to worry about right now is...
Dragging these two along and racking up enough points to land us in Class A.
Unlike when facing demons, right now I was in a position where I couldn't do much beyond healing and buffing. Sure, I could erect sacred barriers for defense, but without drawing upon the Red Stone of the Radiant Sun, my direct offensive output was vastly inferior to theirs. At best, I could shape weapons out of divine power and swing them around. In other words, when it came to actual combat, I had no choice but to place our fate in their hands.
Can they really pull it off...?
For now, I just prayed they wouldn't tear into each other and could actually cooperate. My best bet was to pretend to consult them on our next move, subtly steering the conversation to nudge them in the right direction. With that in mind, I was just about to call out to Evan and Albert to break the ice when—
"Hmph."
Without a word, Albert ignored us entirely and began marching off in an odd direction.
"[B-Brother Albert...?]"
Where on earth was he going all of a sudden? I called out to him in flustered tones, but he merely cast a cold glance back before snapping his head away and quickening his stride.
Seeing Albert's blatant insolence, Evan's expression darkened. He stepped up immediately and reached out to grab Albert by the shoulder, but Albert glared daggers, violently swatting Evan's hand away.
"You..."
The atmosphere curdled with murderous hostility in an instant, making me flinch. I couldn't let them start brawling again. Stepping swiftly between the two as they squared up, I cut off their line of sight. Evan's shoulders jerked back in surprise the moment I intervened, while Albert clicked his tongue and averted his gaze in disgust.
Good grief, these two are going to be the death of me.
"[...Where are you planning to go?]"
"They said earlier that taking down the command unit yields the highest score, didn't they?"
Hearing those words, I froze solid on the spot.
No way... This lunatic isn't actually thinking of...?
"[Are you intending to subjugate it...?]"
"Is there a problem?"
There's a massive problem, you psycho!
Even in the original game, taking down that boss monster was a living nightmare. If you didn't know its attack patterns, clearing it was an outright impossibility. And even if you did know the patterns, with starting early-game stats, a single stray graze would send you straight to the graveyard—meaning you couldn't afford to take damage even once. Pulling off a flawless, no-hit run was the bare minimum requirement just to survive the fight.
On top of that, my own offensive output would deal rat-sized slivers of chip damage, forcing players to rely on cheesy gimmicks. The most famous exploit was playing a necromancer to stack layer upon layer of curses, chipping away fixed damage proportional to its maximum health while maintaining razor-sharp focus to dodge every attack until the thing keeled over. Or playing a mage and slowly burning it down tick by tick.
As was usually the case with bosses of that caliber, bizarre gimmick-kill videos eventually flooded the forums later on, but that only proved just how absurdly overtuned the boss was in the first place. Defeating it through an honest, head-on brawl was so brutal that even veteran guide writers declared it impossible for any beginner. The cruel irony was that defeating the boss not only guaranteed passing the Class Assignment Exam with flying colors but also yielded astronomical rewards, making it practically mandatory if you wanted to min-max your character's potential.
Of course, as an ultra-hardcore veteran who had min-maxed every single class and cleared the game inside and out, I had memorized every attack pattern down to the frame. Yet I had to remember that this world was reality. It could execute movements I had never anticipated, and I had already sworn never to place blind faith in game knowledge. There was simply no reason to take reckless gambles on a boss.
And yet...
He wants to go hunt that thing?
True to form for an arrogant noble brat stuffed with vain pride and magical elitism, his line of thought made my fingers twitch with an overwhelming urge to flick his forehead into next week.
"[You must not. It is far too dangerous.]"
"Then don't follow me. I'll go alone."
Is this bastard out of his mind?
If he did that, the evaluators would rule that our team had fractured, slapping us with massive penalties and completely tanking our scores. Whichever path we took, it was a straight trajectory into total ruin. If we abandoned Albert here and operated as a duo, our teamwork evaluation would suffer a fatal blow, guaranteeing our demotion to the lowest classes. But if we followed him and failed to bring down the boss, we'd end up in the bottom classes all the same.
I'm completely screwed.
If both roads led to the bottom ranks anyway, it was better to take the path that at least offered a sliver of hope.
My head is spinning, seriously.
Out of all the people in the world, why did I have to get saddled with someone like this?
Swallowing my boiling irritation, I glanced over at Evan. From his tight jaw and clenched fists, he looked on the verge of snapping. If I weren't shackled by my Saint persona, I would have grabbed Albert by the collar myself, roaring in his face to ask if he had any intention of taking this exam seriously. No, roaring would be letting him off easy—I would have beaten him black and blue in places hidden beneath his clothes until he learned obedience the hard way.
The greatest crisis of my Saintly life...
I never imagined it would manifest in a farce like this... Fuck...
Unfortunately, even I didn't have any clever tricks up my sleeve. While I knew the boss's designated spawn zone, how could I pinpoint its location when I didn't even know our own coordinates in this dense jungle?
Guess there's no other choice.
The only option was to shadow him as closely as possible while praying that regular monsters would cross our path along the way. Clasping my hands together, I offered a desperate plea to the Goddess once more.
Please, just spare my life this once...
Just how long had we been trekking?
Whether fortunate or not, we hadn't encountered a single demonic beast during all this time. Considering we needed to slay monsters to rack up points, wandering empty trails was hardly a blessing; yet, given Albert's stubborn determination to act solo, avoiding immediate skirmishes was something of a relief.
What kind of mage even dreams of wandering around alone?
Did he have a single functioning brain cell? Unless one was a high-ranking sorcerer or had reached the pinnacle of an Archmage, chanting spells instantaneously while maintaining a relentless barrage of attacks was fundamentally impossible. Standing on one's own was practically suicidal. In any adventuring party, mages were prized assets because they wielded devastating firepower and wide-area annihilation spells that ordinary warriors couldn't dream of matching. Yet that coin had an ugly reverse side: no matter how catastrophic a spell might be, if the incantation took an eternity to cast and left the caster immobilized, the equation shifted entirely. A mage backed by a sturdy vanguard had nothing to fear, but a lone mage caught in the wild without a party was, by definition, utterly helpless.
Anyone calling himself a mage knew this truth in his bones. Albert was no exception—he had to understand that roaming off alone rather than advancing in formation with his team made hunting monsters a joke; he ought to be fearing for his very life. Yet he had dug in his heels, refusing to yield on marching alone. If he had acted with such absurd obstinance despite knowing the stakes, there could only be one plausible explanation:
A lure.
He was deliberately leading us somewhere.
In the first place, how could someone claim they were going to hunt the boss monster by simply picking a random heading in a forest this immense? Command units were elusive by nature, concealed deep within their territories. In a rainforest so colossal that a full day's march wouldn't cover a fraction of it, stumbling across a boss by wandering blindly would be a statistical anomaly. So what in the world had Albert been thinking, declaring he would slay the boss on his own? By all basic common sense, marching in a straight line through this boundless rainforest would never lead to a boss monster. I should have harbored suspicion much sooner. The realization struck me far too late.
And then—
"[T-This is...!!]"
By the time I recognized the trap, it was already sprung.
Wearing an expression far more hollow and lifeless than before, Albert—having successfully lured us into position—naturally triggered the magic circle inscribed into the clearing beneath our feet. By the time we realized we had stepped into an ambush, escape was no longer an option.
"[L-Lord Hero...!]"
"Ah...!"
Unable to flee, we could only watch helplessly as the circle flared with blinding radiance beneath our boots. The luminous lines surged upwards, enfolding our bodies in a brilliant flash of light before wiping us from the forest floor without a trace.