Academy First Week (1)
“Team D: Kang Hyun, Baek Woohyun, Yu Haneul, Lee Hayun, Han Yeoreum. Those five.”
Teams weren't left to the cadets to form on their own. The instructors and assistants assigned four or five students to each group themselves. And whether I should call it luck or misfortune, I had been placed in the team that would sit at the center of the coming incident.
Two heroines, the regressor who hated the Church with every fiber of his being, and…
Kang Hyun, the Union Church spy who had infiltrated the academy and would later set everything off.
If that counted as a dream team, then we were a dream team of sorts.
“Hey, you're Yu Haneul, right?”
As everyone gathered according to the teams Lee Jinwoo had drawn up, a woman with striking red hair walked over and spoke to me.
“Yep, yep. Nice to meet you!”
Han Yeoreum. A fire-mage-type Awakener and the heiress of a major guild. In the original story she had appeared as the sunny, model-student style of heroine.
“Nice to meet everyone. I'm Lee Hayun, tank type.”
Lee Hayun was a tank and bruiser who mainly used sword and shield. She had shown up in the story as a big-sister type with more raw teto energy than either of the protagonists.
…And she was also one of the few heroines who died.
“Baek Woohyun. Swordsman.”
At Baek Woohyun's socially bankrupt greeting, Han Yeoreum visibly flinched.
Well, fair enough. When you were about to do team practice and one of your teammates looked like his social skills had been completely wrecked, all kinds of thoughts would start running through your head.
Han Yeoreum was extremely sensitive about academy grades. Being the heiress of a major guild played a part, sure, but her own personality leaned a little obsessive-perfectionist as well.
The girl lived life the hard way.
Luckily for her, Baek Woohyun wasn't a bomb. He was closer to the bus driver, actually. The real problem was…
“Haha, I'm Kang Hyun, ranger type. Looking forward to working with you all.”
…this guy, wearing a full-face smile that oozed social competence.
As a spy who had slipped in undercover, he wouldn't openly troll us, but he was the one who would breach academy security and stir up trouble. Our team was scheduled to go through all sorts of large and small trials because of him.
After that, Han Yeoreum and I finished introducing our class types as well, and under Lee Jinwoo's instructions we began preparing to clear the dungeon we would enter next class: the Lava Cave.
It wasn't a real dungeon—just an artificial fake dungeon realized through temporary facilities—but that didn't mean you could clear it without any preparation at all.
Of course irregulars like Baek Woohyun or Yeon Hajin could probably twist their way through somehow, but for ordinary cadets that was the reality.
There were two main things to prepare.
Information on the Lava Cave, and team formation strategy.
“Does anyone know anything about the Lava Cave, even a little?”
When I asked, only Han Yeoreum raised her hand.
I stared hard at Baek Woohyun.
You know too. Out of everyone here, you should know the most, right?
Just raise your hand a little?
But even though Baek Woohyun clearly felt my gaze, he never raised his hand to the end.
…Stubborn bastard.
I turned my eyes back to Han Yeoreum, and she launched into everything she knew.
“The Lava Cave is an E-rank dungeon, but because of its unusual environment and structure it gets treated as half D-rank. The magic beasts that appear are flame bugs, flame field mice, flame bats, and so on. The thing you really have to watch out for is that the temperature inside the dungeon is so high that stamina drains fast, but if you bring water and ice and things like that you can more or less—”
Oof.
Han Yeoreum's eyes sparkled as she started dumping everything she knew in a rapid-fire torrent, and her voice faded into the background.
In its place, I pulled up Yeon Hajin's strategy from the original novel in my head.
Supplies to bring: water, magic tools that could cool heat, and if possible equipment and artifacts that provided fire resistance.
Most of the magic beasts were wrapped in flame, so deal with them at range whenever possible. Never let them get close if you could help it. Also, if too many beasts gathered in one place their flames could resonate and turn into a massive blaze, so always be careful not to face too many at once.
If you had a party member who used water or cold attributes, the clear would become much easier. Conversely, if you had a fire-attribute member you had to watch out for team kills. Because of the Lava Cave's environment, fire-type skills could spread with far more destructive force than the caster intended.
Still chattering away enthusiastically was the fire mage Han Yeoreum.
And standing beside her with a sunny smile, pretending to listen carefully, was Kang Hyun.
In the original, this party's lineup had been arranged under the Church's influence.
Lee Jinwoo had given final approval, but there was no way Lee Jinwoo could personally sort dozens or hundreds of cadets into teams from scratch. Spies from the Church had been planted both among the assistants who drafted the initial assignments and among the instructors who reviewed them. That was how it had been done.
Their plan was to stage a disaster under the cover of Han Yeoreum's rampage. For that purpose, aside from the spy Kang Hyun and the fire mage Han Yeoreum, the rest of the party had been filled exclusively with melee types…
…or so it had been in the original. Now a healer—me—had been added as well.
The reason? Probably to make it more plausible that Han Yeoreum lost control of her power and went berserk because of my Blessing.
Of course they wouldn't know that I had already hit level 18 and possessed a lower-rank Blessing, but from the Church's perspective it didn't really matter whether I had actually learned Blessing or not.
All they needed was for the sole survivor, Kang Hyun, to testify that I had used Blessing. A weird healer who walked around with a gun, grinding levels before enrollment so she could use the level-8 lowest-rank Blessing—there was nothing hard to believe about that story.
Even for a healer, level 8 was something you could reach somehow if you just had enough time and money.
It wasn't like there were no similar cases. That was how people even knew healers could have a skill called Blessing in the first place.
If we were lucky, Kang Hyun's side might even prepare something before the next class so I could level up and give them a more perfect pretext?
Then just in case, should I hide my level for now? You never know. Places like the honey experience-farming dungeon Yeon Hajin had taken me to yesterday might exist on the Church's side too.
“Hmm, I think this is enough that we don't need to dig up extra materials. What does everyone think?”
The moment Han Yeoreum's long explanation ended, Kang Hyun smoothly added his own comment.
“I don't have the confidence to research it any more thoroughly than this.”
Lee Hayun answered with an awkward laugh.
Encouraged, Kang Hyun moved to the main point.
“Then shall we decide on the formation right away?”
Thanks to Han Yeoreum's enthusiastic dump of Lava Cave information, we could jump straight into strategy planning.
The problem was that Kang Hyun was the one leading that planning.
“Lee Hayun at the very front, Baek Woohyun right behind her as vanguard, Han Yeoreum in the middle, Yu Haneul behind her, and me taking the rear. How does that sound?”
…Having the Church bastard standing right behind me felt a little unpleasant, but the formation Kang Hyun proposed was thoroughly textbook.
Hard to argue against, even.
They had probably designed the roster from the start with this formation in mind, so of course it was.
The same went for Kang Hyun taking the rearmost position, the perfect spot for him to pull something on the side. The whole reason a necromancer like him had bothered to disguise himself as a ranger was so he could claim the rear.
And so, using the simulation system installed in the training grounds, we roughly assembled the formation and practiced.
Of course I never revealed that I had the Blessing skill.
Just the healing skill.
It was lower-rank Healing rather than lowest-rank, but I brushed the difference off as a margin of error caused by Amplifying Shot.
Kang Hyun was surprised by the healing amount, but he didn't seem particularly suspicious.
It was only simulation training, so no one had actually been wounded; accurately gauging the healing volume was difficult, which made the excuse possible.
“Whoa, that skill is crazy. The amplification amount seems really high?”
“Ahaha, thanks for the compliment.”
Kang Hyun never for a second imagined I might actually be level 18; all he showed was mild surprise at Amplifying Shot's performance.
Even socially bankrupt Baek Woohyun displayed solid, reliable skill if not quite full power, and our team's practice wrapped up under a harmonious atmosphere.
The next dungeon practice session—the day we would actually enter the Lava Cave—was seven days away.
Before then, Kang Hyun would probably make some kind of move, right?
For example, claiming he had discovered a dungeon or gate that was great for experience farming and coaxing us to visit it for practice.
…Please let him do exactly that.
Because grinding all the way to level 18 and then only shooting healing the whole time had been setup work for precisely that.
During the following lunch period someone suggested the team eat together, but Baek Woohyun, who gave not the slightest damn about other people's opinions, boldly declared he was bailing. The rest of the members drifted apart without much resistance.
Thanks to that, I was able to head straight for Yoon Chae-ah without any real interference,
“Hey, why am I—”
and on the way I also scooped up Chae Yujeong, who looked like she had zero friends, and dragged her along to the school store.
“Does anyone know what today's cafeteria menu is?”
“You're asking that now all of a sudden? What, are we going to go eat it if it sounds good?”
On the way to the store, Chae Yujeong jumped on the question the second I asked it, so I answered with maximum snark loaded into every syllable.
“No. If the cafeteria food is bad, the store is going to be packed. Could you maybe think for two seconds before you open your mouth? Pretty please.”
“…Why do you only talk to me like that?”
“Chae-ah, do you remember what Yujeong said to me the first time we met?”
Chae-ah's pupils shook violently at my question, but she didn't answer. Not that I had been expecting an answer from her in the first place.
I had said it for Chae Yujeong to hear.
“…….”
Chae Yujeong herself seemed to know she was in the wrong, because she clamped her mouth shut.
“…And I even gave you a bracelet.”
But she quickly started muttering under her breath beside me.
Had that bracelet yesterday been her own personal version of an apology?
For someone who didn't look it at all, she had some surprisingly cute sides.
As a mature, refined person, instead of calling her out with something like “You only gave me that so a major guild wouldn't get its hands on it, didn't you?” I chose to roughly ruffle Chae Yujeong's hair until it was a complete mess.
“Ah, what the hell are you doing?!”
She immediately slapped my hand away and glared at me fiercely.
“If you keep acting that cute I'm going to eat you up.”
“…What the hell are you even saying, you crazy bitch.”
When I snorted a laugh, Chae Yujeong scrunched up her face and started smoothing her ruined hair back into place with her hands.
Watching her get irritated while laughing and chatting with Chae-ah, we reached the school store in no time.
— Han Yeoreum Illustration —