How to Survive
Once he finished speaking with the Great Chieftain and stepped out of the tent, the students were already gathered at the campsite.
A quick look around told him no one had managed to cause any real trouble yet. Their reactions ran the gamut—some craned their necks at the unfamiliar landscape of the North, while others were already hunched in on themselves against the cold.
"Everyone here?"
"Yes."
The warrior assigned to guide them nodded at the question.
"Then let's begin."
The first day's evaluation, settled in consultation with the Great Chieftain, was simpler than he had expected. Before sunset, they were to build the camp where they would spend the night themselves. Tents and a handful of basic tools had been issued, but where and how to pitch them, and where to gather the firewood that would keep a fire burning through the night—all of that was left to the students.
From their point of view, being dragged all the way to the North only to be hit with this nonsense on the very first day was probably infuriating. The Headmaster hadn't brought them here for a pleasure trip, though, and Lieben had no intention of going easy on them.
"Make your own place to sleep tonight."
A low murmur ran through the students.
"Ourselves, sir?"
"Yeah."
"We've never pitched a tent."
"Then today's a fine day to learn."
"…."
"Finish before the sun goes down. Once it's night, it'll be a hell of a lot colder than this."
Displeased faces appeared here and there, but no one stepped forward to announce outright that they couldn't do it. They had made it into the Academy, after all. Pride, at least, they seemed to possess.
Before long the students scattered, each collecting the tent and tools they'd been issued. He had no intention of helping, so he planted himself a short distance off and watched the circus unfold. It didn't take long for the scene he'd expected to play out.
"Tie it there and the whole thing comes down tonight."
"…Sir?"
"Anchor it properly from the ground up."
"Ah."
The noble students were, as expected, a disaster. The same ones who usually ran their mouths about swordsmanship and the honor of their houses couldn't even get a single tent standing. They clustered in twos and threes, groaning over the canvas, and just when one of them seemed to have the shape of it, a side would sag and they'd have to start over from the beginning.
The ones sent for firewood weren't much better. Getting into the woods and coming back with both arms full of branches was fine enough. The problem was that more than half of it wasn't even properly dry.
"Hey."
"Yes, Professor."
"Why'd you bring that."
"It's firewood, sir. For the fire."
"I can see that."
He took one of the branches the student was holding and pressed it between his fingers.
"This isn't dry yet."
"…It isn't?"
"Burn this and you'll get smoke before you get flame. Go get more."
The student trudged back toward the woods, crestfallen, and Lieben glanced around at the rest of them. It was exactly what he'd expected. Most of the nobles couldn't even pitch a tent, and when told to fetch firewood they grabbed whatever branches caught their eye without checking whether they were dry.
The commoner students, by contrast, were in somewhat better shape. They'd grown up digging earth and splitting wood, so even those handling a tent for the first time quickly figured out what needed to be secured—and at least they weren't hauling in armfuls of green branches and calling it fuel. Where a person had lived, it seemed, was not something you could ignore.
And among them, one student stood out more than the rest.
"Erin, pull that side a little."
"Like this?"
"A bit more."
"Here?"
"Yeah. Hold it there."
While the others were still wrestling with a single tent, Sienna had already roughed out the shape of hers. She left one line in Erin's hands and set about securing the opposite side. A moment later she circled the tent herself, checking where the canvas was slack, looked the ground over once, and only then straightened, apparently satisfied.
"Done."
Erin looked up at the tent, a trace of worry in her voice.
"This won't collapse, will it?"
"I did a lot of this with my dad."
"…Then I'll trust you."
He had no idea what kind of life produced that much practice, but she was certainly far better than the rest. And it wasn't only the tent. When Sienna went for firewood a little later, she didn't scoop up whatever lay on the ground. She checked each piece before choosing it, and even set aside kindling for starting the fire.
Watching her for a while, he found himself nodding. She acted like a country mutt, sure—but the makings were there.
"Professor."
She had noticed his gaze and turned toward him.
"What."
"We did well, right?"
"Best of anyone I've seen so far."
"Really?"
One word of praise, and her face lit up like a mutt that had just been tossed a scrap of meat.
"So I'm the best, then?"
"That… yeah. You are."
Well. It wasn't wrong. Of everyone he'd looked over so far, Sienna was the best, and Erin, for a first attempt, was following her instructions well enough.
He wandered among the students as they wrestled with their tents, and before he knew it the sun was slipping behind the mountains. Evening in the North grew cold far faster than he'd expected. The temperature dropped sharply, and the wind that had been merely tolerable by day now cut to the bone.
With reality slamming into them, the students finally seemed to understand what he'd told them that afternoon. Those who had thrown their tents up carelessly through the day scrambled to retighten the lines, and those who hadn't prepared proper firewood crouched over the ground trying to get something burning, producing nothing but smoke.
"Cough! Cough!"
"Ah, shit… why won't it catch."
"Put more in."
"More of what. All we're getting is smoke."
"The professor told you to go get more."
"I thought it'd be fine back then!"
They're doing just great.
He watched from a distance and let out a sigh.
When mealtime came, the tribal warriors distributed rations. It was nothing so generous as warm food already cooked and handed over—dried meat, hardtack, and a few ingredients simple enough to prepare themselves. That was all.
Those who had managed a proper fire could boil water or heat the ingredients on their own. Those who hadn't prepared firewood couldn't even manage that. So the students who had gathered wood at random through the day spent the evening working cold jerky and hardtack hard as stone down with spit.
"Does this even chew?"
"Soften it with spit and it's a little better."
"Bite straight into it and your teeth'll go first."
"Just eat it slow."
Nobles, through and through. The faces were something to behold. For kids used to collecting warm meals in the Academy dining hall, even this would count as a fine experience.
And a little ways off from that miserable lot—
Bubble. Bubble.
A sound so utterly out of place reached him that he turned toward it without thinking.
"…."
It was in front of Sienna and Erin's tent. A pot sat atop a small hearth ringed with stones, and inside it a stew was simmering, steam curling up in soft wisps. He wasn't sure where they'd gotten the pot. They'd cut the issued ingredients into reasonable pieces and set them to boil, and even the hardtack—nothing but a jawbreaker eaten as it was—had been crumbled and stirred into the stew.
"Erin, try this."
"It's still hot."
"Just taste it. If the seasoning's off, I'll fix it."
"…All right."
Erin lifted a spoonful, blew on it a few times, and ate. Sienna, watching, asked at once.
"How is it?"
"…It's good."
"Right?"
"Yeah."
The students around them began, one by one, to look that way. On one side, people were choking down cold jerky and rock-hard hardtack between gulps of water. Right beside them, steam was rising off a warm stew. Not looking would have been the stranger thing.
"…."
"…."
A few of those stares were nearly resentful. Sienna paid them no mind at all and took a large spoonful of stew.
"Ah, that's warm."
"It is."
Erin sat closer to the pot, her face far more at ease than before.
He watched the scene in silence, then let out a short laugh. They had all started under the same conditions. Some were shivering in the cold, gnawing jerky. Others sat before a warm fire, soaking hardtack in stew. The difference, on the very first day, was perfectly clear.
Well… this is probably why they were brought all the way out here. To learn even this.
He turned away without interfering any further. Better to let them spend the night like that. Tomorrow, even if they picked up a single stick of firewood, they'd pick up the right one.
Olven Kroheitz. Even at the age of one hundred and eighty-three, he still served as Headmaster of the Academy—the man known as the Mage of the Vast Ocean.
Over a lifetime as long as his, he had raised countless disciples. More than a few of the mages whose names carried weight across the continent had passed through his teaching, and by now he was a grand mage whom even the Emperor of the Empire did not treat lightly. And yet, for having chosen the wrong disciple in his later years, even he had been abandoned in the middle of an uninhabited island whose name he did not know, Mana Restraints locked around his limbs.
"I raised her wrong……."
Olven sat hunched on the sand near the shore, both hands clutching his head in pure misery.
"I raised her all wrong……."
It was a lament he had already lost count of. Looking down at the Mana Restraints on his wrists and ankles, fresh rage welled up. It wasn't that he couldn't use mana at all, but compared with his usual self it might as well have been nothing—and if he tried to force them off, electricity ran through the restraints, some trick Dorothy had rigged.
"Since when is a vacation getting dumped somewhere like this……."
Dorothy had shown up out of nowhere and announced, without preamble, that she was sending him on vacation. She had spent her whole life doing exactly as she pleased, so he had even been a little moved, thinking she might finally be trying to repay her master. He had asked where she meant to send him.
Instead of answering, Dorothy clapped the restraints on him and flicked her fingers as if it were nothing. When he came to, he had already been abandoned here.
"After everything I did raising you……."
She was the disciple he had been thinking of entrusting the entire Academy to. Of course, with a personality like that, he was still debating whether he actually could. She spoke in scraps, had no manners to speak of, pulled all sorts of strange stunts under the excuse of observing people, and whenever she got bored she gambled away her entire fortune. He had thought he'd at least raised her into something resembling a person. Looking at things now, that itself had been his own delusion.
"No—a vacation, I tell you……."
Olven lifted his head and stared out at the empty sea.
"A vacation is letting someone drink themselves stupid at a resort and get some proper rest. Since when is abandoning them on an uninhabited island a vacation……."
No answer came, of course. Only the sound of waves rolling gently in brushed past his ear, as if in reply to his lament. In the end he dropped his head again.
"That girl, I swear……."
Just then a rustling came from the nearby woods, as if something were moving. Wondering if the island might actually be inhabited, he lifted his head and started to rise—and a man in a familiar uniform emerged from the brush. The man spotted Olven crouched on the sand and blinked.
"Oh."
"…."
"Headmaster? Is that you?"
Olven's brow twitched. It was a face he had seen somewhere. He searched his memory, and before long an old matter surfaced. After the war, when the Academy guard was being reorganized and new personnel recruited, he had taken one look at a record that read former Vanguard Unit and stuck the man straight into the guard without a second thought.
Only then did he realize he had been squatting on the beach with a miserable face. He scrambled up and brushed the sand from his clothes.
"Ahem."
Straightening as if nothing had happened, expression composed once more, he looked at the man.
"The guard, are you?"
"Yes."
"And what are you doing here?"
The man answered as if it were nothing at all.
"Ah, the mage from the Hero Party said she was sending me on vacation, then suddenly flung me out here."
"…."
Olven's face hardened. The man, perhaps failing to notice, glanced around and asked,
"Are you on vacation too, Headmaster?"
"…So I am."
He could hardly admit that his own disciple had dumped him on an uninhabited island.
"She really is a good person, isn't she. Giving you and me a vacation and all."
"…."
No wonder he was one of that bastard Lieben's men. This one had clearly lost his mind as well. Any ordinary person, dropped without warning onto an uninhabited island, would have panicked or started looking for a way off. This one was calmly looking around, pleased to have been given a vacation.
Seeing that, Olven decided there was no point in saying more. He gave no answer and quietly watched the sea. Not a single ship showed on the endless horizon, and the Mana Restraints were still fastened tight around his wrists and ankles. If Dorothy had flung the man beside him out here herself, he wouldn't have any means of escape either. That left only one option: wait here quietly until Dorothy came back for them.
The moment he understood that, what little spirit he had managed to gather drained out of him again.
"…."
In the end Olven crouched back down on the sand.
"Headmaster?"
"Stay still."
"Sir?"
"Just…… stay still a moment."
And a short while later, the Headmaster—making a mockery of the title Mage of the Vast Ocean—stared out at the endless sea and muttered, pitiful as could be.
"Aigoo……."
"…."
"Aigoo… you wretched girl… when are you coming……."