Form a Group with Your Close Friends #3
The scratch of a pen filled the air as Enio finished signing the club membership form. Her handwriting was light, without a trace of hesitation or second thoughts.
“With this, I’ve become a member of this cooking club too. Though don’t go thinking I’ll actually show up for club activities or anything.”
“It’s not just any cooking club. It’s the Victory Cooking Club.”
“Victor, you really are too sharp about these little things.”
“And Enio, you don’t have to do anything at all. The membership terms don’t even require loyalty to the club. Just do whatever you feel like.”
It was incredibly helpful that Enio had joined to meet the minimum three-member requirement. But still.
Enio the student council representative was far too powerful an opponent for Nike and me to control. Even Victorica of the student council had to go all out whenever she faced Enio. If someone like that showed up consistently for every single club activity, we would literally be under constant surveillance from the council.
That was why I actually welcomed the idea of Enio becoming a ghost member—someone who only lent her name. If things went too far, I had ways to handle it, but it would be a hassle.
Enio looked slightly dissatisfied. “You could have tried recruiting me a little more enthusiastically,” she said, but she didn’t bring the topic up again.
Then she suddenly grabbed the paper as if something had caught her attention.
“Nike Mokemoke?”
“That’s the name of our club president. Make sure you remember it.”
“Nike…”
“Does it sound familiar?”
I asked purely out of curiosity as a veteran D&A player. After all, Victorica and Enio had been tied together by a childhood rivalry. The only two ducal families. Leading candidates for the empty throne. Black and white. Light and shadow. Rivals. Between two perfectly sculpted heroines like that, a new heroine named Nike was added? Before the game launched, I had quietly speculated that she must have some connection to them.
But Enio shook her head.
“No. Mokemoke, though. That’s a peculiar name. I’ve never heard that surname before, so she must be a commoner? It’s quite amusing.”
“Don’t say that in front of her. She seems to hate being teased about her name.”
That was when it happened.
“Lady Enio! So this is where you were! After you suddenly disappeared once we finished talking about the group project, I didn’t know how long I’ve been looking for you!”
A girl with short red hair came running toward us from afar, panting heavily.
“You must be Enio’s underling, Megaira.”
“Who the hell are you calling an underling, you bastard?”
She was still arguing even while catching her breath. Quite impressive.
After taking a moment to steady her breathing, Megaira turned to Enio.
“Um, Lady Enio. There’s an urgent matter and you need to come with me right away…”
“Urgent matter?”
“It’s… a bit awkward to say it here. I mean, isn’t there someone here who isn’t even worth the student council’s enforcers or the Arclight lackeys?”
“Then whisper it in my ear.”
“Excuse me, then…”
Whisper, whisper.
Megaira leaned close to Enio’s small ear and murmured something.
“The sealing facility has really…?”
“Yes. All the representatives have been summoned, so we should hurry.”
Enio cleared her throat with a small cough.
“Victor. It seems I have some business to attend to and must leave now.”
“Of course. The higher the position, the busier one becomes.”
After a brief exchange of greetings, Enio walked off somewhere with Megaira. It looked like they were trying to keep it secret in front of me, a student who had been demoted to ordinary status. But I knew exactly what was happening.
“The sealing facility must have been destroyed.”
It was a fixed event that occurred on the day of the opening ceremony in every route. There was always an incident where the sealing facility that prevented monster invasions into civilian residential areas was damaged. The protagonist Luke would then jump in and experience the ‘first battle with a monster!’ system.
The monsters in question were weaklings like a Weakened Lugaru or a Starving Spider.
“They’ll manage just fine without me worrying about it.”
Originally, neither Ha Seungri nor Victor should even exist here. They would handle it on their own.
…But what about the group project?
Everyone would be preoccupied with restoring the sealing facility and exterminating the monsters. There probably wouldn’t be any time left for group assignments. It felt like I would have to do it alone.
The problem was that the strict teacher Berjurak would definitely not take my situation into consideration. At least Enio was a representative even the teachers respected, and Megaira was her cherished underling. They would probably get a B by default even if they didn’t submit anything.
But me?
A Victor whose connections had been severed was no different from a dog without a leash.
“I knew it would come to this.”
Enio was slightly irritated that her rare chance to talk with Victor had been stolen away.
That stiff man, joining a cooking club? It was the first she had heard of it after being so busy over the weekend. She had thought the boring life at Prison Academy—aside from teasing the Arclight duke’s daughter—might finally get a little interesting. And yet an unexpected interruption had come like this.
Megaira spoke up.
“Well, this time it seems the sealing facility wasn’t just old and worn out—it was deliberately destroyed. That’s probably why they’re calling for you, Lady Enio…”
“They want me to trace the culprit’s movements using my shadows? Since I can rewind shadows, after all.”
“Probably. Those student council guys. They usually just act all high and mighty, but when something important happens, nothing gets done without you, Lady Enio.”
Megaira laughed with a huhuhu, and Enio lightly agreed. “Indeed.”
‘It’s probably nothing serious. These things happen all the time.’
She was thinking along those casual lines when Megaira asked,
“By the way, Lady Enio, is it true you joined a club? And of all people, with that Victor guy? He’s lost all his connections to the Arclights, so honestly he doesn’t even seem worth using anymore.”
“Is that how it looks to you? But I see it differently. I think he didn’t lose his connections—he deliberately cut them off. And as for his usefulness, it’s more than enough.”
“Why? The Victor now looks so frail that even I feel like I could knock him down with one hit. He has way more openings than usual.”
That was true. The usual Victor had radiated a sharp wariness in every direction. He was like a finely honed blade—one wrong touch and you’d get cut. In comparison, that edge had dulled considerably now. It was almost like he was a completely different person.
“Against the current Victor, even you, Megaira, would be able to put up a good fight.”
“Not a good fight—I’d win for sure!”
“Yes, but what if it was Victor holding a sword?”
“…That’s…”
Megaira didn’t answer. As Enio’s loyal underling—no, her trusted confidante and friend who was practically like a sister—she didn’t want to belittle herself.
There was no fool who would charge at Victor once he drew his sword. Except for clueless freshmen or transfer students, that is.
That’s right—transfer students!
It was the moment a clever idea flashed through Megaira’s mind.
“Still, he lost, didn’t he? To some transfer student who came out of nowhere.”
Wanting to earn Enio’s approval, Megaira squeezed out what little remaining pride she had.
“Since he was defeated by a transfer student and expelled from the disciplinary committee, he can’t even carry a sword on campus, let alone draw one, right? There’s no way I would lose to someone like that.”
“That’s true. Except for a few student council officers and specially permitted individuals, carrying weapons on campus is prohibited.”
“He wasn’t carrying Balmung either. The Arclight family must have reclaimed it. Hehe, serves him right. Acting all proud carrying a famous sword when he’s just a commoner.”
“He never actually acted proud about it, though.”
A tiger with all its teeth and claws pulled out. A broken-winged eagle. Victor without a sword in his hand was even less than that.
But was that really all?
While Enio was lost in thought, Megaira puffed out her cheeks and said sulkily,
“Lady Enio, it feels like you’re defending Victor—who was the Arclight’s pawn until just recently—more than me, even though I’ve been with you since we were children. Is it just my imagination?”
“…It’s just your imagination.”
“Yes, if you say so, Lady Enio, then it must be. But I smell something. I can only hope my nose is wrong this time.”
Because Megaira had spent so much time with Enio, she could see straight into the heart of the girl who was said to be like a pitch-black shadow.
So Enio decided to change the subject.
“By the way, Megaira. Have you ever heard the name Nike Mokemoke? Since you three sisters are so close, I thought you might know. I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before, but I can’t remember.”
“Mokemoke?”
I had once given up on academics. Because I had no money.
Besides, I wasn’t good at studying anyway. So I had no regrets. There were far more things in the world I wanted to learn than what was in books.
But the situation now was different from back then.
“Doing both at the same time is quite difficult.”
Polishing my studies at Ludens while simultaneously paying off my debt? Even for me, who had repeated nearly every possible scenario in D&A, it wasn’t easy.
“But it’s not impossible. And academics and debt repayment may seem contradictory, but in truth, they are one and the same path. At least here in Ludens, they are.”
Therefore—
“Nike, aim to advance to Class A before this year is over.”
“Me? Class A?!”
“Yes. If you rank in the top ten of Class A, you receive a scholarship. That alone is a way to earn money. There must be a reason you endured living in this academy while camping out in the forest. So fight with everything you have.”
“……”
Nike looked somehow lacking in confidence.
“I’m not good at studying…”
Even I could see that. Nike was probably the type who would rather use the money for reference books or supplies to pay interest instead. But the same went for me. I had never been good at memorizing or using my head since long ago. This Victor was the type who poured in time rather than someone naturally gifted with brains.
However, when it came to things done with the body, both Ha Seungri and Victor were fairly competent. That suited us better. In that sense, Victor and I surprisingly shared the same tastes.
And Nike, who had spent three months in the forest without anyone’s help, was surely the type more accustomed to rolling around in the field than sitting at a desk.
“Don’t worry. I’m not telling you to sit at a desk and just memorize difficult formulas and regulations. Fortunately, there are school rules made for students like us.”
“School rules?”
“You must have heard of the subjugation bulletin board? We’ll take requests from there.”
In other words, subjugation quests. The kind that said, ‘Hunt thirty wolves. Reward upon completion—’
“The subjugation bulletin board…?!”
Was it really that surprising? It was a common thing in the game.
“That… requires Rene, doesn’t it?”
“Correct.”
In this D&A, subjugation quests require paying Rene when registering. You insert Rene to receive a subjugation request. As a side note, the subjugation target is random every time you put in Rene.
“But we have five million Rene. That’s more than enough.”
Five million would be plenty to reset until we drew the subjugation mission we wanted.
And we just happened to have the Luxury Herb Soup as well. At this point, even someone like me or Nike—who had little connection to fighting—should be able to handle that creature. Once we caught it, we would get cooking ingredients too. It would help us start developing a new menu.
“Plus, it gives good grades. This is truly the correct way to study at Ludens from the beginning. Subjugating monsters and exploring labyrinths. That is what this Prison Academy is all about.”
What kind of dungeon academy game would make memorizing subjects to raise stats its main focus? Of course you have to enter the dungeons.