Final Exams (12)
It was around lunchtime on the sixth day of finals.
By now I'd grown used to getting sharp glares from every direction, so I was sitting in my usual corner of the cafeteria, waiting for my food to arrive like always.
I'll admit, the first time people stared at me so openly, I was honestly a little nervous. Having people hate me was an everyday occurrence, but rarely had I ever been stared down this brazenly. Usually everyone just steered clear of me, afraid I might start something with them.
But once I actually thought about it, nothing changed just because they were looking. In the end, those guys only glared at me — they didn't pick a fight, didn't spew insults loud enough for me to hear, and didn't pull any of the vicious pranks the commoners had tried a while back. They just watched me like an animal at the zoo, and honestly, I couldn't see why I should care about that.
So I decided to let them stare all they wanted. Who knows? My looks were pretty decent, after all. Maybe at some point, mid-stare, they'd find themselves falling for me.
There might even come a day when I get to say what was trending in a mobile game I used to play: "So what? I'm cute, aren't I?"
Imagining myself saying something so blatantly self-serving made my stomach turn a little, but then I remembered I'd said pretty much the same thing every time I taunted someone else...
...Now my stomach turns even more.
Think of something else. Something else.
There are plenty of good things, after all. Like how, as of today, my academy finals were finally over.
Academy exams typically ran across a full week, and since every student had a different set of subjects to take, when your exam period ended naturally varied from person to person. In my case, it ended with the history exam I'd just finished this morning.
Old man Halbae had insisted that this history wasn't the one he knew, and kept tossing out pointers left and right, but I ignored every single one and trusted only what was recorded in the Log Function.
After getting burned so badly at the last Partran Festival, how was I supposed to believe anything he said? The exams don't ask about real history — they ask about the history written in the textbooks! The vivid firsthand testimony of someone who actually lived through those times is worth nothing!
Halbae was still grumbling away, as if someone had pressed his berserk button during the history exam. As I was tuning him out, I spotted a staff member walking toward me from across the hall.
Ah. It's finally here.
The Academy's special cream pasta that I ordered.
Even from a distance it looked delicious. Heheh. I can already taste it. Winding the noodles around my fork and biting in — that thick, velvety cream would flood my mouth with rich, nutty flavor...
"Excuse me for a moment, if you please, Lady Arln?"
I was just licking my lips in anticipation of the pasta's taste when someone stepped in front of me. Who on earth? What kind of insolent brat was blocking my happy little daydream?
I looked up with a scowl and found a completely unfamiliar face staring back at me. Who's this guy? Judging by the uniform, he looked like a second-year academy student. Since I'd never seen his face in my life, he was probably one of those extras who never even got a mention in the game.
I was tilting my head when I noticed a few more students clustered around him, so I rested my chin in my hand. If a pack of guys who didn't even know me had come over to talk to me, there was only one reason.
These bastards were one hundred percent here to start shit with me.
"Nope. Not pleased, actually."
"Maybe try thinking before you open your mouth? Trash like you has no right stealing the time of someone as noble as me, don't you think?"
I waved my hand in a shooing gesture, like telling them to get lost quietly, and the guy at the front flushed bright red. Already quivering before I'd even thrown a real provocation — whoever this was, with emotional control that bad, he probably wasn't anything impressive.
"Please, just spare me a moment. It's a matter of importance."
If there hadn't been so many people watching, I'd have knocked him down a peg and been done with it, but right now there were far too many eyes. Most of the people in the Academy cafeteria were staring at this very spot.
My reputation was already scraping rock bottom thanks to the dungeon studies exam. If I acted violently here, who knew how it would get twisted into some kind of freakish rumor?
So I'd give him an unmistakable justification. I'd make him throw the first punch.
I crossed my arms and leaned back — and apparently taking that as a signal that I'd hear him out, the extra I didn't even want to identify forced his mouth into a smile.
"Thank you kindly. I am—"
"Um, excuse me♡ Mister nameless lackey whose species I can't even determine♡ Don't you think you're looking a little high-and-mighty for someone asking a favor♡ Just because you look privileged doesn't mean you get to act like it, 'kay?♡"
"...My apologies."
"Then you should be sorry♡ If I weren't as sweet and adorable as I am, you'd have been in serious trouble, you know?♡"
At my dripping sarcasm, the guy bit his lip hard and — apologizing — actually moved to take a seat across from me. Did he misunderstand "meet my eyes" as "take a seat"?
"Did I say you could sit?♡"
"...Pardon?"
"You're the one who looks more animal than human♡ So the place for you would be wherever the animals belong♡ Right?♡"
When I pointed at the floor with a flick of my eyes, the extra's face went crimson and his fists clenched tight. On top of that, his lackeys, clearly infuriated by the open contempt, started muttering and grumbling among themselves. Scratch them a little more and someone was bound to blow.
"What's wrong?♡ I'm surprised a pack of trash who gang up just to bully one girl would have any pride left~♡ Truly astonishing~♡"
"We merely—"
"Don't care♡ Go on, then, squeal for me♡ I'm curious what kind of noises a beast makes♡"
"...The reason we sought an audience with you, Lady Arln, is that we wished to ask about this dungeon studies exam."
Ha. I was wondering what kind of nonsense they'd come to spout, and it was about the dungeon? What is it? Did they come here to whine that it was too hard?
Then just look at the hints. Sure, the vocabulary on it was weird, but the actual content was perfectly reasonable.
"That dungeon. Is it truly a place that can be cleared at all?"
...What?
"Even those currently at the top of the rankings have spent an entire day attempting it and still cannot get past the fifth floor. Did you never intend for it to be cleared in the first place? Because you couldn't bear to part with the rewards..."
"Pfft♡ Pffhah♡ PUHAHAHAHA♡"
That's what this bastard is trying to say, isn't it? That I built a dungeon that couldn't be cleared in the first place because I was too stingy to pay out the rewards. That I planned nothing more than to put the academy students through hope torture.
Ha. Fuck. This is hilarious.
I was planning to just scare them off with a warning, but no — you guys are beyond saving. How dare you lay hands on the pride of a hardcore veteran like me.
"Lady Arln? Are you listening to what I—"
"Shut it♡ Listening to your repulsive voice is making me want to gag♡"
I rose slowly from my seat and moved to stand in front of the trash. Being short is such a pain at moments like this — no matter whose front I stand in, I'm always stuck looking up.
The only way to meet someone's eyes is to make them kneel, isn't it?
"...Lady Arln?"
When he called my name, I answered with a sweet smile — and sent his gaze where it belonged with a swift kick to his ankle.
Mmm. See, trash really does belong on the floor. Fits perfectly.
"What do you think you're doing!"
"We were merely—!"
"Shuuut♡ it♡ Didn't you hear what I just said?♡ I said I don't want to listen to pigs oinking?♡"
I clearly spoke in words any human could understand, so why can't they comprehend? Should I ask the Horny Fox to teach me actual beast noises?
I was genuinely puzzled, tilting my head, when the trash who'd collapsed on the floor got back up, limping on the leg I'd kicked.
"If you come at us like this, Lady Arln, then we—!"
"Try me♡"
"...Pardon?"
"I said, tryme♡"
Come at me. Let me show you just how amazing you people are, that you'd call the dungeon I poured my heart into making a troll dungeon.
I stared down at the guy at the front, contemptuous, waiting for him to charge — but the trash only exchanged nervous glances, and not one of them stepped forward.
Second-years of the academy, cowed into inaction by a first-year? A girl who barely comes up to their waist? Make it make sense.
What pissed me off even more was that pieces of garbage like this had doubted my dungeon! If someone actually qualified — at the very least, the people leading the rankings — had asked me whether this thing was even clearable, I'd have answered with a smile.
Because they'd have earned the right to ask.
But for a bunch of losers who couldn't even crack the rankings, let alone claim first place — who probably never even attempted it — to pin their own incompetence on my dungeon?! Unforgivable.
"Cowards scared of one little girl♡ Helpless wimps who can do nothing but tremble because they're terrified of getting flattened♡ Loser professors' babies who ran crying 'Mommy~' to an easy target of a girl♡ Garbage, every last one of you♡"
"..."
"PUHAHAHA♡ Angry?♡ So what are you gonna do about it?♡ Can you hit me?♡ You can't, can you?♡ You can't do anything but stand there and take my abuse, can you?♡ Hm?♡"
"...Enough."
"Ahh♡ Oh, I get it now♡ You came picking a fight on purpose because you wanted me to curse you out?♡ Ooooh♡ You revolting, perverted, masochistic freaks♡ Would you kindly drop dead?♡ If I keep talking to you, I might catch whatever's wrong with you♡..."
The guy I'd been provoking head-on raised his fist, teeth gritted. I could tell from the veins bulging along it — that punch carried this trash's full power.
But so what if it's sincere. When it's this pathetically slow.
I caught his fist by the wrist and twisted his arm. He tried to resist, but the difference in strength was far too vast, and his struggle meant nothing.
"GAAAAAGH!"
All that whining over a twist that wasn't even that hard. At this point, calling them mere amateurs is too generous.
His shrieking was grating on my ears, so I shut his mouth with a brutal strike across the bridge of his nose, then drove a fist into the solar plexus of the one beside him winding up an attack and sent him sprawling. Then I turned my head.
There was a huge hulk of a guy charging at me. He'd grabbed at my waist — trying to pin me down with his weight?
I won't say his read was entirely wrong. But who's going to stand still and take it when you charge in that obviously?
I took the hulk down with an uppercut to the jaw, gave the head of the man crumpling forward a casual flick of my foot, and scanned my surroundings.
Pathetic cowards. What possible confidence did they have when they came to pick a fight with me? Do they not know my reputation? There's no way they don't.
I couldn't understand it at all, so I marched over to the ringleader bleeding all over himself, and silenced his whining about apologies and misunderstanding by grinding my heel into his mouth. Then I continued.
"Let me answer your first question♡ Yes, of course that dungeon can be cleared♡ It was built so that even hope~less wimps like you — so pathetic I question how you ever became second-years — could clear it♡"
Well, this works out nicely. I'd been getting pretty frustrated watching everyone flail at the dungeon anyway.
"I'll show you myself♡ Just how stupid you all were♡ How abysmal your level truly is♡ I'll walk you through it so thoroughly, so painstakingly, that you'll die of sheer humiliation♡ Aaaah~♡ I really am so kind, aren't I?♡ Aren't I?♡"
When I asked while looking down at the guy whose mouth was under my heel, the trash nodded his head frantically, desperate.
Even these beast bastards seemed to understand me by now, so maybe this was enough. I knocked the ringleader out cold with a kick to the jaw, then snatched a plate away from the hapless waiter standing nearby, frozen and helpless.
Ugh. The noodles have gone completely soggy. And I was really looking forward to this.
...Ah. Just looking at this pisses me off more. Time to beat a few more of them up and vent.
"Haaah."
What now. Who else wants to pick a fight with me?
Hoping this one would at least make a satisfying punching bag, I turned my head — and there stood the dungeon studies professor, hand pressed to his forehead. I froze on the spot.
"Lady Arln?"
"...Nyo—?!♡"
"Shall we have a little talk, you and I?"