The Practical Exam (2)
Everyone gets three chances in their life.
…Or so they say. I never believed it at first.
“Heh heh, hee hee… Teehee…”
Now, though, I have no choice but to believe it.
Ahh, seriously. Who would have thought fortune like this would ever find its way to me? All I did was play friendly with that girl from the Recovery Department a few times and then betray her, and in return I get a hundred million won. What an absolute windfall.
Granted, I had to give up the Cheonmu Hunter Academy exam, but that hardly matters. There's no way I would have passed the practical with my own skills anyway. A practical exam based on live monster subjugation? Yeah, right—as if that were a real thing.
And even on the off chance I'd passed, would that have been worth more than a hundred million? It's not like Cheonmu is the only hunter academy out there. I can just do well on some other academy's exam and call it a day.
How many zeroes is that, honestly? So my bank account really is capable of holding this kind of money.
With this much, I wouldn't have to think about tuition for at least four years. Actually, it's more money than the question of tuition even needs—it's overflowing.
That said, that girl Kim Isabel seems to have made an enemy in some truly bizarre way. A hundred million won just to make her flunk an exam? Who on earth is this psychopath she managed to offend?
…Well, I made money off that psychopath, so it's none of my concern.
If it weren't for this insane job—live monster subjugation of all things—I would have run out the door the moment I heard about it.
God, how exhausting it was talking that scared little thing into it. Not that I'll ever have to see her again.
There's no way a single Recovery Department girl, dropped alone into a dungeon, could actually take the exam properly. And since a fatal accident would be unacceptable, the academy would rescue her somehow, right?
I mean… if she has terrible luck and gets hurt, that's not really my fault.
It does leave a bad taste in my mouth, though.
…Come to think of it, how did that man know the practical exam would be live monster subjugation? I distinctly remember it being hologram monster subjugation until just last year.
I asked him all sorts of questions, but he wouldn't answer—he only told me to do what I was told, so I did it.
Ah, whatever, whatever. It's done and over with. Even if I noticed something was off now, there's nothing I could do about it.
The money came through clean and proper. So from here on out, I'm not going to think about it.
Tonight I'm ordering chicken AND pizza AND even malatang!
Eat my fill, and forget all about it.
I'll just think of it as the day I worked a really well-paid part-time job!
“D-Dark Spear!”
—Thwook!
Ghhk…
The orc's corpse collapsed backward, its throat pierced clean through by Cha Eunju's dark magic.
Thirty minutes into the dungeon, and Cha Eunju—who had already taken down a dozen or so monsters—was starting to show visible signs of fatigue.
“Whew… huff, huff…”
Unlike Shadow Ball, which she could churn out mindlessly, Dark Spear demanded compressed mana and a high degree of concentration.
She'd started out hunting goblins for her first few kills, but as of a little while ago she'd been dealing with nothing but orcs. It was easy enough to understand why she was wearing down.
The fact that she had to hack her way through forests and mountain trails hunting for prey—rather than standing still in one spot waiting for monsters to come to her like at the Training Grounds—couldn't have helped, either.
“Tired? Want to rest for a bit?”
“I-I'm fine…. I still need to gather more materials…”
“No need to push yourself. There's about an hour left on the exam clock, so you can take it slow.”
“B-but wouldn't gathering as fast as possible get me a better score…?”
“Nobody docked you points for turning in the written test late. I doubt the practical is any different.”
“I… I guess…”
“I'll handle the harvesting, so hand me your pouch and go lean against that tree over there and rest.”
“O-okay…”
Apparently deciding it was fine to rest since she'd be immobile during harvesting anyway, Cha Eunju passed me her pouch and leaned her back against a tree.
Already working on my fourth orc, I dismantled its chest and head, extracted the two most valuable materials, and stowed one in each pouch.
The orc's heart—the single most valuable part—went into Cha Eunju's pouch, and the second-richest prize, the orc's brain, went into mine.
Honestly, if we'd been splitting evenly, I could have divided the spoils two and two. But I was deliberately funneling the good stuff her way so she'd score higher.
It wasn't as if I had tuition to worry about—passing was all I needed. In that sense, Cha Eunju acing the practical and landing a scholarship worked out in my favor too.
If she started some part-time job over tuition, that would cut into our dating time. Which meant less time for training her, and a longer road to turning her into the obedient little slave she was meant to be.
I wasn't doing this out of any particular fondness for Cha Eunju—I was acting purely out of self-interest. It just so happened that the process benefited her as well.
Two kills left, and one of them is already reserved for "that one" at the end….
Once I bagged about one more orc or a pair of goblins, the hunt for me and Cha Eunju would be over.
There was a little time before the main event kicked off, so I figured I'd spend it focusing on her recovery.
“Harvesting's done, Eunju. Let's rest here a little longer before we get movi—”
“Mmm… mmnh…”
…….
She must have been more worn out than I thought; at some point during my harvesting, Cha Eunju had quietly drifted off.
Well, fair enough. She'd spent thirty straight minutes doing all the hunting herself—my share included. Of course she was tired.
And lugging that enormous chest around through the woods on top of it—unlike me, who trained my stamina every morning and night, she barely ever left her room. To her, this must have felt like a punishing forced march.
—Thump.
Since I'd been planning to start out a little slowly anyway, I sat down beside Cha Eunju and quietly watched her sleeping face.
I'd seen her usual "hypnotized act" expression plenty of times, but this was the first time I'd ever seen Cha Eunju genuinely asleep.
“Mmmph… haaaah…”
…….
Her enormous chest rose and fell in time with her breathing, swelling and shrinking with every breath.
That obscene, naturally-gifted body of hers went and stirred up another one of my wicked urges.
There's… no one around, looks like.
We'd deliberately pushed deeper in hunting for strong monsters, so most students probably wouldn't even think of coming this far.
This might just be the perfect opportunity. Not with Cha Eunju under Suggestion: Hypnosis, but with the ordinary Cha Eunju—a chance to confirm just how thoroughly trained she'd become.
—Poke, poke.
“Mmm… mmmh…”
She was reacting to my fingertip prodding her soft, squishy cheek, which meant she probably wasn't in all that deep a sleep.
Convinced an opportunity like this wouldn't come around again anytime soon, I carefully brought both hands to the sleeping girl's chest and began rubbing, slow and gentle.
—Rub, rub.
“Mmmh… n… nhh…”
At first I merely glided my palms smoothly over the thick tracksuit, and her reactions were mild—half-asleep murmurs, nothing more.
But if I kept touching her slowly like this, gradually ramping up the intensity, Cha Eunju would naturally wake. And at the same moment, she would slowly realize that my hands were on her breasts.
From there, I could judge how far her conditioning had come by whether she kept "pretending to sleep" or put up a little resistance and "pretended to wake."
Granted, a normal girl might have bolted upright and demanded to know what the hell I thought I was doing. But I doubted Cha Eunju—whose heart, by every indication, had already almost entirely crossed over—would go that far.
So reasoning, I kept rubbing her chest at a leisurely pace, then this time tensed my fingers and gave her a firm squeeze.
—Sqooze.
“N… nngh…?”
…Yeah, that one woke her up.
I'd have liked to catch a glimpse of her expression as she surfaced from sleep to the sensation of being touched, but if our eyes happened to meet, she'd lose her chance to play asleep, wouldn't she.
So I deliberately avoided looking at her face, kept my gaze fixed on her chest, and rubbed up and down, slow and steady.
—Squish, squish.
“……Nnh.”
—Squish, squish.
“……Hnn, nh…”
…Going by these reactions, she's planning to keep up the sleeping act.
While she'd been drifting in shallow sleep, natural moans had slipped out of her—but the moment she decided to pretend to sleep, she was forcing them down, doing her best to act. Which made it painfully, laughably obvious.
If her conditioning had been less complete, she'd have sneaked awake and pretended nothing had happened at all.
The fact that she wasn't resisting even though she knew full well I was groping her chest meant the past several days of training had taken firm root.
And above all, the biggest payoff was confirming that she reacted like this even without Suggestion: Hypnosis active. Used well, that meant going forward I could train her body itself without ever bothering to lay a suggestion on her.
Say, for instance—I pretended to hypnotize Cha Eunju without actually doing it, then simply acted as though I had, leaving her with no choice but to play along.
And that way I'd get to see Cha Eunju genuinely "pretending to be hypnotized," rather than the suggestion-manufactured performance I'd watched until now.
Just thinking about it is almost too much to bear.
Yes, using Suggestion to force the hypnosis act is the easier route. But nothing, nothing gets me going like her sincerely playing the part of a girl under hypnosis.
—Grope!
“Nnh, nngh…!”
For the finale, I gave her chest one last firm squeeze, then let go.
The environment here wasn't great for a proper training session, after all. If I kept at it too long, someone else might wander by.
Everything I'd wanted to confirm, I'd confirmed—this much touching was plenty.
—Tap, tap.
“Cha Eunju, wake up.”
“……Wh… whaaat?”
…God, she is terrible at acting.
Her "just woke from a nap" performance was awkward enough that anyone could see through it. I did my best to hold down the laughter in front of her.
“Let's get moving. Harvesting's finished.”
“A-ah, s-sorry. I-I guess I nodded off…”
“Yeah, looked like it.”
“I-I was really asleep, right up until you woke me, Seonho.”
“Mmhm. You were out cold.”
“…….”
Worried I might suspect something, she went out of her way to add the extra explanation. How adorable.
Cha Eunju's body seemed mostly recovered by now, which meant it was time to go find one of the other two—Kim Isabel or Han Sora.
If I botched the timing and missed the event, Kim Isabel would weather the crisis with nothing but Han Sora and the protagonist's help—and that, in turn, would become the bastard's awakening event.
Seo Woojin's awakened ability, the Strength Growth from Female Affection. Given how that power worked, flags like that had to be cut off at the root, as many as possible.
My women will not be looking twice at that pathetic little worm.
Kim Isabel, Han Sora, Cha Eunju—all of them were going to be mine.
Anything that stood in the way of my harem plan—protagonist or otherwise—simply had to be swept aside.