Munchkin
KRA-KOOOOM—!
“Kyaaaaah—!”
“What the hell?! That power—!”
Where the holy spear had passed, a massive crater blazed with roaring flames. The C-class monster that had stood at its center was long gone—vaporized so completely that not even ash remained.
Iris stretched out her hand toward the spear. The holy weapon, still embedded in the heart of the crater, shot back into her grip at blinding speed.
“Whew. Not too hard. Do I pass?”
“Th-that… y-yes… you pass…”
People scrambled frantically across her field of vision. Was it really that shocking?
I haven’t watched other ability users lately, so I don’t really know where I stand.
Honestly, she hadn’t expected the building to start collapsing. It had only been a probing shot—just enough to check her opponent—so she’d assumed they would block it without trouble.
Crackle—
Iris stared at the shattered barrier that had failed to withstand her attack.
Do I need to hold back even more than this?
Cutting it any further wouldn’t be easy.
With that thought, she walked out of the testing ground.
“Let’s see… the second practical exam is… this way.”
Iris headed for the center of the island. There, an artificially created ecological park sprawled across the heart of the land—the battlefield where candidates would fight for admission to the Academy.
Crrrack—!
Snap—!
The world froze solid.
In an instant the temperature plummeted near absolute zero, encasing the monster’s body in ice at terrifying speed.
Krrr… rrrk…
Krrk… krr…
“Haa…”
The creature’s movements grew sluggish, then locked completely still.
Yeona slipped her curved blade back into her coat.
“Is it over?”
—“…”
“Hmm. The radio’s frozen solid.”
CRACK—!
She smashed the radio hard against the ground. Power flickered back to life.
“Hello, can you hear me?”
—“Wh-what on earth just—”
“Sorry, but could you come collect my teammates? They’re in no condition to move right now.”
Her teammates were sealed head-to-toe inside solid ice. They should have gotten out of the way the moment she told them they were interfering.
Yeona sighed and left the sparring arena.
“Well, that one’s cleared. The next exam is the real problem…”
The next practical test was set up in a rather entertaining way.
“Looking forward to it.”
If she washed out early, she could always just regress.
“As long as I don’t run into that hero, I won’t even need to. And what are the odds of that?”
She had the hero’s early movement routes memorized perfectly. All she had to do was avoid Iris, scrape together points with the information she already knew, and first place would be a cakewalk.
Whoooosh—!
Kieeeee—!
A howling vortex of wind shredded the monster’s flesh. A pseudo-tornado roared into existence in the middle of the space, devouring everything nearby as it advanced. The C-class monster’s carapace shattered into thousands of tiny fragments. A beast that must have weighed well over ten tons could not withstand the storm conjured by a small girl.
“Everyone get back! If you don’t want to die!”
“Y-yeah…!”
“Fall back, all of you! Hey! Snap out of it!”
Julia swung the sword in her right hand in a wide horizontal arc. At the same moment a blade of wind erupted from the tip, slicing through everything in its path as it shot forward. When the wind blade passed, only the bisected corpse of the monster remained.
“…Done.”
Julia reined in her unique ability and turned away. Moments later the teammates assigned to her group came running.
“W-whoa! I’ve seen you on TV, but the real thing is insane!”
“Thank you so much! Thanks to you we’re definitely passing!”
“You carved up a C-class monster like sashimi…”
“Haha, not at all. It’s because you all supported me so well. Honestly, I’m nothing special.”
“Nothing special? You’re way too humble.”
“I really am nothing special. I could only do this thanks to my friend. Compared to a real monster… no, it’s embarrassing even to make the comparison.”
“Ooh, if a Wittelsbach heir talks like that, now I’m curious who it is.”
“Yeah. Can we meet them too? It’d be nice if we all knew each other.”
Julia shook her head at the students’ words.
“No… not right now. We’ve been apart for a little while.”
“Ahh…”
Leaving the kids behind, Julia gathered her gear and stood.
“Well then, shall we go? Proctor! We passed, right?”
“Yeah. The device we handed out has the location for the second practical. Grab lunch and be there by two.”
“Understood. Thank you for your hard work!”
“Sure. Oh, and don’t eat too much. You’ll get a stomachache.”
Julia picked up a useful scrap of information from his words.
A stomachache, huh… so it’s not going to be a short fight.
They would probably have to stay active for a long time.
With my style, finishing quick is better.
Her endurance ranked high, but compared to her other abilities it was lacking. A drawn-out battle could leave her short on mana.
My ability burns through mana especially hard.
Unique abilities with “Dominator” in the name usually did. They could unleash tremendous destructive power, but the mana cost ran several times higher than most others. Of course, she had more than enough mana to compensate, so it rarely mattered.
Out on the street she found the students split into two groups. Roughly two-thirds of the total candidates had washed out here. Fewer eliminations than she had expected.
Which means…
Nine-tenths of the remaining candidates would fail the next exam. And after that they still had to clear the final hurdle of the interview.
But failing the entrance exam itself was not what worried her.
I have to take first place. Nothing less.
She was afraid she might not become the top student.
“I need to find Seo-hyun.”
Every hero who held the title of Emperor—except the First Emperor—had entered the Academy as the top student. The First Emperor had been born before the Academy even existed, so he didn’t count. Holding an Emperor title would let her build her own faction and give her direct access to the information network provided by the Association. When that day came, she would be one step closer to the person she intended to spend the rest of her life searching for.
“All right. Let’s go.”
With that thought she set off toward the next location—completely unaware of who would be waiting for her there.
“Huff… huff…”
Joseph gasped for breath. We had just finished off a D-class monster and confirmed our passage through the first practical exam. Most applicants would move on from here, but we decided to push a little further.
—“Good work. Shall we move on to the next one?”
“I… I can’t—”
—“Joseph, do you trust me?”
“…!”
At those words, life flooded back into Joseph’s eyes. See? Perfectly fine.
“Ohh, that’s our Joseph! I knew you could do it!”
“Whoa~! People from prestigious houses really are different!”
“You’re our hero!”
The kids who had looked at him sideways when he bragged about his family were now complete fans, following him without question. Standing at the front and tanking every attack had made everything so far relatively easy.
“Whew. I’m good. Recovered.”
—“Then let’s begin.”
After a quick discussion with the other assistants, I summoned the final monster.
GRRRRNNNK—!
Massive iron bars ground open, and an enormous monster lumbered into view. The moment the kids recognized it, broad smiles spread across their faces. Anyone living in this world knew exactly what that thing was.
“It’s a golem.”
“A golem!”
“Ah… of all things, a golem. Physical attacks barely work on those…”
Golems appeared often enough in fiction to be famous, and countermeasures were equally well known.
“So we just need to hit the core, right?”
Kaede flipped her dagger into a reverse grip, ready to strike the golem’s core. But something felt off to me.
—“Hold on a second…”
“What’s wrong?”
—“The shape of the core looks weird.”
The cores I knew didn’t look like that.
—“Let me analyze it.”
“Analyze?”
—“I can tell the type of core with the naked eye.”
A core was essentially a magic stone. To ordinary people every magic stone looked roughly the same, but dig a little deeper and each one carried its own unique wavelength. I had more or less learned how to distinguish them.
“You can identify magic stones by eye? Is that even possible?”
—“It’s not that hard. You just need better eyesight than a Mongolian.”
I studied the stone for a moment and realized what it did.
—“It’s an explosive type! Looks like it’ll detonate if you hit it with any impact!”
“What? Then what do we do?”
Ordinary kids would have charged the core without thinking and gotten wiped out by the blast. The Academy had almost certainly planned for that. Anyone who challenged a C-class monster from the start was confident they could take one down. They couldn’t just throw a B-class at them after advertising a C-class, so they had stacked the odds as high as possible using a C-class base. Planting an explosive magic stone inside a golem to wipe out reckless students in one go was the strategy they had chosen.
Handing command to assistant candidates who had never even taken a proper Academy class was probably a test of whether we could spot the trap and deal with it beforehand.
But if we figured it out in advance, there was a much easier way to take the thing down.
—“I’ve got a good idea.”