This Is What They Call an Academy
Riri stretched out her hand toward the carriage hurtling straight at them, showing no intention of stopping.
In that instant, dozens of magic circles formed at her tiny fingertips, then fused into a single new array of her own design.
Tap.
There was no chant. No need to speak the spell’s name. This was a magic she had created solely for this moment. Without the slightest hesitation she gave it a gentle push, and the circle left her palm, shooting skyward.
“Freeze.”
KRA-KOOM!!!
The effect was devastatingly at odds with her flat, uninterested tone. In a heartbeat the surrounding terrain became a kingdom of ice, and a colossal shield of frozen crystal slammed into place across the carriage’s path.
Hiiiiiiing!!
The fire-steeds rearing in panic at the sudden ice wall refused to advance, yet the momentum already built could not be stopped. Carriage and ice collided; the flaming horses burst apart like overripe fruit and vanished.
BOOM!!
A thunderous shockwave followed, painting the world crimson as the carriage itself exploded in a towering pillar of flame.
Hissssss…!
The heat melted the ice into water that instantly boiled into steam. As long as mana continued to flow the ice barrier held firm, yet the flames only burned hotter, as if refusing to be outdone.
“Ugh… stubborn.”
“Hang on a little longer.”
I vaulted onto Growl’s back and rode down outside the castle walls. Earlier I had glimpsed something drop just before the carriage charged. If that was a skill, then someone had to be maintaining it.
Pushing through the heavy steam that hung like fog, I found a woman standing with a pair of flame-wrought hounds at her sides, scowling up at the sky.
Without hesitation I wrapped myself in shadow, drew my bow, and loosed an arrow at her. The mana-charged shaft streaked forward—then suddenly lurched mid-air as if snagged by something invisible and sailed harmlessly past her shoulder.
“Ugh…?!”
Even while focused on feeding the flames she managed to dodge. That unnatural motion told me some skill had activated.
Our eyes met. I poured mana straight into Hive. Purpose: attack.
“Hive!”
“Cawww!!”
“Hellhounds!”
Fwoosh!!
A swarm of crows took flight only to be swallowed by the green fire belching from the burning dogs’ maws. I kept flooding mana; Hive kept birthing more crows.
Black birds burned and fell. But only for a moment.
Crack, crackle
Whether the conversion efficiency was poor or the flames simply too costly to sustain, the fire’s intensity dipped. Crows punched through the weakened blaze and rose again.
“What the hell is this?! I have something I have to do… Don’t get in my way!”
Startled by the crows circling her, the woman began gathering mana in her hands. I seized the opening, projected mana into the ground, and pulled a shadow free.
Trap Installation
The image I held was a flipped table—ground surging upward like a jump pad to fling the target skyward. The instant the shadow settled beneath her feet I yanked it.
Whoooom!
“…?”
Her body sailed into the air. Confusion flickered across her face, then pure shock as she finally understood. The magic forming in her hands scattered.
I shaped the shadow into a bludgeon and swung.
Thud!!
“Urgh…!”
The blow caught her square in the gut. She bounced twice across the dirt like a kicked soccer ball, then curled up clutching her midsection. I closed in for the finish—only for Hive’s danger signal to flare. I leapt back hard.
Fwoooosh!!!
“Tch.”
Green fire scorched the exact spot I had occupied. So this was what it felt like to fight a summoner. I finally understood why every opponent who faced me had looked so annoyed.
“Uuugh… it hurts, it huuurts…”
By the time the flames died she had already forced herself upright. Tears streamed down her face and her voice was weak, yet she stood on both legs, glaring at me with murderous intent as she prepared another spell.
“You’re dead…! O solar strike that shall burn to ash the foe who dared mock me!!”
Crackle!
A small but intricate magic circle spat lightning as it completed in her palm. The vast surge of mana gathering inside it made every hair on my body stand on end.
Intercept with the bow? Too late. Moving Growl now would waste the ambush. Blocking with a shield felt risky. That left only one option.
Snap!
I flicked mana from my fingers. The familiar trigger. What appeared was the unruly little menace who had finally come to his senses.
“Kallion.”
Boom!!
“Grrrng!”
The white dragon materialized in front of me. I poured mana into him—not for a shield. The enemy was attacking with raw firepower, so I would answer in kind.
“Demi-Breath.”
Gulp!
In that split second, as her circle finished, the mana Kallion had swallowed compressed violently.
“Manifest here and burn everything away, Corona Buster!!!”
“Fire!”
Piiiiiiing!!!
Solar light condensed in her hand and lanced toward me. At the same moment Kallion’s jaws yawned wide and a roar of pure mana erupted.
Kiiiiiiiiii—!!!
“Kh.”
“Aagh…!”
The two forces collided with a glass-scraping shriek that filled the air. Deflected beams of heat scorched the earth and detonated. Acrid smoke rose as the ground melted into lava-like pools.
“Dieeeeee!!”
Her thermal beam weakened—but so did Kallion’s. At this rate the dragon would give out first. I used the opening to surge forward.
“…!”
She whipped up her free hand and peeled off a fragment of the laser toward me. I formed a shadow shield and deflected it. The hastily torn-off attack was pitifully weak.
I kept pressing, transforming the shield into a spear mid-swing.
Slash!
“Ahk…!”
The spear tip carved across the arm she had raised for another weak laser. Under the dual effects of Torture and Sadism, pain erupted from her very soul; her concentration shattered. The solar heat lost coherence, warping like a mistuned frequency.
“…!”
KRA-BOOM!!!
“Guh…”
Kallion seized the momentum and shoved the light completely aside. The shockwave hurled the woman backward; she slammed into a tree and slumped, unconscious.
To finish it I drove a shadow blade through the blue gem on her chest.
Crack!
HP: 0%
Beep!
The moment the Barrier Cell hit zero her body was wrapped in light and ejected from the battlefield. Combat continuation was no longer possible.
That phenomenon was proof of complete elimination. I scanned the lingering flames, then turned a flat gaze toward the deeper forest and spoke quietly.
“Growl.”
Slash!!
“Gyaaaah?!”
As if he had been waiting, Growl tore open the back of the one who had been stalking me, then clamped his jaws around the throat. The mortally wounded figure thrashed once and collapsed, vanishing in the same light as the woman.
Six points and four. Class A and Class C students, respectively. Our base had already been discovered by other groups—hardly surprising. We had built a landmark visible from a distance; of course eyes would be drawn to it.
I climbed a nearby tree and, confronted by a sight far beyond anything I had expected, could only laugh under my breath.
“…Unbelievable.”
KRA-KOOM! THUD! BOOM!!
The pounding against the ice walls sounded like open warfare. Waves of students charged from the far side, dodging magical barrages with every skill they possessed, desperate to breach the castle’s frozen ramparts. It looked exactly like a tower-defense game.
“They’re openly forming an alliance?”
Not one class. Students from A through B, C, D, E, and F were mixed together, attacking as one. Their sole purpose was to tear down Class S’s walls, and a kind of madness burned in their eyes.
Simply uniting to take down Class S felt incomplete. It was more like they were staring at something that had to be destroyed no matter what.
“Caw…”
Information flooded in from Hive and my head throbbed. Not one or two directions—signals from every side at once. At first I thought they were just trying to screw with me, but the truth became clear almost immediately.
“…What the hell is that.”
High in the distant sky a colossal magic circle had appeared. Nothing ordinary. A sinister black-violet array pulsed in an eerie sequence, radiating an uncanny light.
The moment I looked at it my head rang and my vision swayed. From the depths of my mind a voice whispered.
You must eliminate them. They cannot be left alone.
Offer up the arrogant sovereign of magic, the blood-born product that twisted truth, as a sacrifice. Praise the greatest and deepest darkness. Dispose of the fools who still defy the dark.
The words repeated without end, ravaging my brain. I wrapped myself in mana and shoved them out.
My skull felt ready to split, but I ignored it. Using shadow I fashioned a mask that covered my entire face. Only then did the whispering begin to recede.
“…I see.”
I had suspected, but I never thought it would actually play out like this.
“Not so much brainwashing as temporary hypnosis via mental contamination.”
Mental contamination itself was the preparatory work for rewriting thought—if it continued long enough it would become indistinguishable from true brainwashing. Prolonged exposure would leave residual effects even after leaving this place. Whoever had set this up, it had to be destroyed immediately. And only one person here could do it.
The Archmage.
Sovereign of mana, creator of magic, the one who observed and dismantled every spell. The enemy knew that perfectly well; that was why the command was to eliminate the person closest to an Archmage on this field.
Vicious bastards.
The inter-class war no longer meant anything. The people sending me danger signals were those still resisting the contamination; everyone else was being attacked by the ones who had already fallen.
The other classes were almost certainly in the same state—or worse.
I used the crows to guide the remaining sane fighters toward a single rally point. Out of habit I checked my device; communications were, of course, dead. At least the forced-ejection system still functioned more strongly than the circle, so the arena’s core features remained online. Small mercies.
“…I need to get word outside.”
Best option: grab one of them, write a message explaining the situation, then force-retire them. Thanks to Hive my shadow held every useful item for any contingency—paper and pen included.
The problem was punching through that chaos, capturing someone, and destroying only their Barrier Cell. Even I had no confidence I would survive showing my face in the middle of that.
They were only lasting this long because they were mindlessly sieging. If it continued, Riri’s mana would run dry first. She was probably chewing candy and crying right now just to keep the walls up.
That left me one job.
“Time for a little housebreaking.”
Steal a flag. My location would be broadcast to every other class. Anyone still sane would use it as a beacon and head my way. If they were going to overwhelm us with numbers, we would answer with numbers. Eye for an eye.
Anyone with a working brain would see the situation and not attack me.
…Yeah, right.
I had a sinking feeling there would absolutely be idiots who ignored everything and attacked anyway. Still, no other plan presented itself.
“Hive, find the flags.”
“Caw!”
I dismissed Kallion and climbed onto Growl’s back. Time was short. Best to start in the direction the woman had come from. Anyone left along the way could be taken down and used as a messenger.
Keep repeating the process and eventually the academy professors would notice. They weren’t fools; they had to be searching for a solution outside right now.
“…Or is this it?”
I recalled the “big job” the woman had mentioned. Right—the professors weren’t idiots. They had been hired at premium rates; they had to deliver results.
If they couldn’t even handle an academy disturbance, their reputation would be the least of their worries. They would be accused of colluding with evil organizations. Outside personnel always drew the first suspicion in cases like this.
Unfair, but that was the natural order of things.
They should have been working desperately to avoid that fate. Yet they weren’t. Or rather, they couldn’t. What if something outside was so chaotic they couldn’t spare a glance this way?
I pictured that future and scowled. Honestly, it was bullshit. What the hell had I done to get dragged into this? Infuriating.
“Should I just call them?”
The government emergency call was a type of ritual that activated the moment the button was pressed, independent of mana.
Being constantly tailed was more exhausting than people realized. You could never relax; the mere knowledge that someone might be watching at any moment was a constant mental weight.
I had found various excuses to shake them off because it was annoying, but given my position the black-ops unit was required to remain stationed near the academy at all times.
That was why they had arrived so quickly when I called them during the Hong Su-ah incident.
One press of the button and this whole mess would be cleaned up in minutes.
The problem was what came after.
What if I had overthought it and was completely wrong? What if the delay was simply the gap between inside and outside?
I would end up receiving full VIP protection in front of the entire student body.
They were classified, yes, but still government. And nothing was more obsessed with bizarre regulations and rigid professional pride than government dogs.
Once Project Exile was announced, plenty of people would learn of my existence—but that would still be unofficial rumor. This would be an entirely different level of exposure.
“…Haah, damn it.”
In the end, if I didn’t want to create a mountain of future headaches, I had to handle this myself right now.
No matter how game-like or novel-like this world felt, it was still reality. Get hurt and it hurts. Get sick and you die.
Because real danger was always close, human life was treated as lightly as roadside trash—which only made caution more necessary.
Imagine the protagonist’s heroine dying suddenly in some incident. You think the protagonist wouldn’t go dark? That wouldn’t just be a step away from peace; it would be a full U-turn and a crash through the guardrail.
That scenario had to be prevented at all costs.
According to Hive, the people on the protagonist’s side were still safe. Over seventy percent of Class S retained their sanity. The problem was the remaining thirty percent who had completely lost it and were causing serious injuries.
KRA-BOOM!!!
A massive explosion from the far side made me urge Growl even harder.
First priority: link up with Luicia and Ban Taewung. Then send them to Riri. I would recover the flags and use the remaining personnel to subdue the contaminated.
Unlike heroines who could die at any moment, the protagonist—directly favored by the world itself—would awaken and escape any crisis no matter how dire.
Growl’s speed finally brought me to a clearing. The scene before me made me slap my own forehead.
“Snap out of it, guys!! This is wrong! You’re being controlled by someone!! Please, open your eyes!”
Someone was desperately pleading while deflecting the magic and attacks aimed at him. The only answer he received was a massive fire spell.
KRA-BOOM!!
He batted the fireball aside with his blade; it struck the ground and scattered searing heat and embers everywhere.
“Shut up!! You’re the enemy for refusing to serve the darkness!!!”
“He’s right! This is just a trick…! Drag that bastard out now!!”
“Just because you’re Class S you think you can look down on us?!”
“That bitch is a sacrifice for the greatest darkness!! Don’t interfere!!!”
The shouts never reached the Class A students. If anything, the attacks only grew fiercer, as though the pleas had confirmed their purpose.
Clang! Boom!!
“Damn it…!”
There he was—Ban Taewung, fighting alone against a half-mad horde of Class A students, protecting someone behind him with everything he had.
…What the hell are you doing here when you left your heroine behind?