This Is What They Call an Academy

I had clearly used the crows to steer him toward Heroine Number One, yet the idiot had gotten himself tangled up in an incident nowhere near the others.

It wasn’t like he was some random event NPC you could encounter on any field. What the hell was this guy? Nothing ever went according to my plans, and my head was already throbbing from the sheer frustration of it.

“What the actual hell…”

“Caw?”

No one was around to answer my question. Hive itself was tilting its head, just as clueless, so who was I supposed to ask? Right then the shadow crow that had been submerged in Ban Taewung’s shadow popped out and fluttered over to me. It hung its head like it was ashamed.

Ah. I got the picture. The crow had done its job. It had guided Ban Taewung exactly as ordered—only the guy himself had ignored the whole thing and wandered off. A walking natural disaster who went out of his way to cause problems.

Not your fault, buddy.

I stroked the embarrassed shadow crow’s neck, letting it know I didn’t care. Probably that damn god bastard had pulled another one of his stupid stunts again.

The guy was dense enough that he couldn’t even make out a whisper right next to his ear, yet he had an uncanny talent for picking up on screams and the sound of people suffering. I was starting to suspect he had some kind of skill for it.

“A sacrifice!!!”

“The power to defile the light!!!”

“Ah… ahhhhh!!!! O Darkness!!!”

The way they were screaming so over-the-top made them look like they’d been fanatics from the start. The problem was that while their lines were pure third-rate, their actual skill was close to first-class. They hadn’t landed in Class A for show. Magic and sword aura flew everywhere without a shred of restraint, but the raw firepower was the real deal.

Thanks to the mental contamination they were pouring out every drop of mana without a care for their own bodies, and you could see their condition deteriorating by the second. Even Ban Taewung couldn’t just rush in and attack.

In this case the problem was that Ban Taewung was simply too strong.

Barrier Cells linked through the wearer’s mana. If someone was completely drained, a single hit could land before the cell even activated and leave them with a serious wound.

Normally the match would be called right there and medics would rush in, but that wasn’t an option now. So he was stuck carefully blocking and parrying every attack just to keep anything worse from happening.

Stubborn idiot.

He put others first and treated injuries to his own body like they were nothing. His ridiculous toughness only encouraged him to push himself harder.

He could have just run. Watching him throw himself into danger for complete strangers he’d never met before made a sigh slip out of me on its own.

I’d told him over and over not to stick his nose into things beyond his ability, yet he kept doing exactly that—and my workload kept growing because of it. Couldn’t he just live quietly for once? The world wasn’t going to end if things stayed peaceful. I was cursing under my breath before I even realized it.

“…Let’s go.”

“Grr.”

What choice did I have? I was going to have to clean this up myself. Unlike Ban Taewung, I didn’t particularly care if those bastards ended up crippled or vegetables. They were the ones too weak to resist a little mental contamination in the first place.

Even if it hadn’t been voluntary, the fact remained that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they had turned hostile toward someone. You couldn’t take back what had already happened.

So spend the rest of your lives atoning for it, you pieces of shit.

Hive rose into the air and Growl started moving. The target was the mages casting from the rear. I drew my shadow blade and immediately switched it to a bow.

Then I poured mana into the shot—not at them, but at the ground they were standing on.

Ping!

The arrow, saturated with mana, slammed into the earth before Ban Taewung could even react, even though he’d noticed it.

KWA-AAAANG!!!

“Uwaagh?!”

The ground exploded, stone shards flying in every direction. Most of the mages who’d been preparing spells lost their concentration and collapsed. Dirt and dust billowed out, and even the ones outside the blast radius lost track of Ban Taewung’s position.

The activation conditions for Sadism and Torture only applied to actions I performed myself. It looked restrictive at first glance, but from another angle it was incredibly convenient.

“The light’s!! The light’s trickeryyy!!!”

“Darkness… ghk-rrrk?!! A-ah, it huuurts…!”

Just because I had done it myself, the effect transmitted no matter how far away they were.

Of course it only worked when I intended to use the skills, but the end result was that I could inflict mind-breaking pain with the lightest graze—no poison or drugs required.

From the receiving end it must have been pure hell, but it worked for me, so I called it a win.

I honestly didn’t understand why more people didn’t use a combination this good. I’d never seen anyone around me with a skill set like this. Maybe the acquisition conditions were ridiculously strict.

I should seriously think about getting a resistance skill…

If I ever got hit by pain like that without warning, even I would have my attention yanked elsewhere. Usually you built resistance to this kind of skill by experiencing it yourself and enduring it, but…

A shiver ran through me at the thought of having to deliberately injure myself. As long as I wrapped myself in shadows and reinforced them with mana I could block most things, so I’d put that idea on the back burner for now.

“Move.”

I had Growl shift positions so the others couldn’t pin me down, switching between sword and bow and loosing arrows the whole time.

Part of me wanted to just attack them head-on and wipe the vermin out completely, but Ban Taewung would throw a fit about not being able to save them, so I held back. I planned to call for outside rescue anyway, so I’d settle for leaving them half-dead.

“Charge.”

“Grr!!”

Once the mages were mostly cleaned up I switched the bow to a halberd and charged. At the same time Hive’s shadow crows began diving in massive numbers. Their targets were the ones still going after Ban Taewung.

“Caw! Caaaw!”

“What the hell is this thing?!”

“Ghhk…! It hurts!! Get this bastard off my head!!”

The swarm of crows instantly blocked vision and started harassing them. The students swung their weapons wildly in every direction trying to drive them off.

I slipped through the openings, knocking them off balance or baiting them into hitting their own allies. In moments the one-sided assault on Ban Taewung was completely broken. Breathing hard, he finally got a second to catch his breath, looked my way, and gave a short nod.

I confirmed it and swung the halberd like I was batting the guy right in front of me.

Whoosh!!

“Ghk?!”

Growl’s charge plus every ounce of my strength landed square in his solar plexus.

His legs left the ground and he flew backward, crashing down on top of another student. The guy had been using a sword and was big enough that the impact alone flattened two more who had been distracted by the shadow crows.

“Sinwoo?!”

Ban Taewung yelped in shock. For a guy he sure spooked easily.

“I held back enough that he won’t die, so quit freaking out!”

I switched the halberd to a staff, caught the next one charging me, and heaved him skyward so he’d land head-first. A normal person would have broken their neck, but an Awakened would survive.

Crack!!

“Gyaaah?!”

The unlucky bastard cracked his head on the corner of another guy’s greaves, clutched his skull, rolled around like a maniac, and then dissolved into light and vanished. I hadn’t even hit him that hard—his Barrier Cell gauge must have already been nearly empty.

“See?!”

“Uh… yeah…”

Ban Taewung looked a little unsettled by the demonstration, but he sheathed his sword and started swinging it like a club, getting a feel for the new approach.

“About like this?”

The moment the sensation settled into his hands, gold and black light flared around him and his body slid forward like he was skating on ice.

Crack! Kraaack!!

“Ghk?!”

“Khaaagh!”

Thanks to the example I’d given him, Ban Taewung found the right amount of force and started batting the charging students into the air one after another like a fish in water. Naturally the ones launched skyward were swallowed by light and retired ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before they even hit the ground.

It looked so much like a hack-and-slash game that I almost laughed. Even if they were squeezed dry of mana, these were still students of Sunrise Academy. Was it really okay to just fling them around like that?

Looking closer, he was timing his sword blocks perfectly against the attacks aimed at the shadow crows, then immediately countering. In other words he was deliberately taking the hits just so he could bounce them back—extra work for no reason.

The whole sequence was so fast it just looked like he was swinging a sword.

Crazy bastard.

You could really tell the protagonist was getting stronger by the day.

Guys like Leus had been raised under their families from childhood to reach that kind of potential. This idiot was just getting stronger with nothing of the sort.

Even the force adjustment he’d just learned by eye was being refined with every swing, the process of launching each opponent getting shorter and shorter.

So that was talent, huh. Looking back, the way I’d gone completely feral against goblins just to learn how to shoot a bow made me feel like an idiot.

Not to be outdone, I cycled through shield, staff, halberd, and blunt weapons—anything good for knocking people out or launching them—and systematically took down the easier targets while pushing toward the flag.

I reached the Class A flag planted in the middle of what looked like the beginnings of a fortified position and put my hand on it.

Fzzzt.

A brief burst of noise, and a ten-second timer appeared above the flag. Every eye in the area snapped toward me. Even under mental contamination and something close to hypnosis, their basic thought patterns hadn’t changed.

“Ah, the flag! Ghk… no, we have to protect the darkness… kuh…”

“Sacrifice, the flag!! The sacrifiiice!!!”

“Protect it!!! Protect our darkness!!!”

So that was how it worked—gradually rewriting their perception. The flag was important, so the moment priorities shifted they simply replaced it with “darkness.”

Some of them clutched their heads or snapped out of their daze and charged me, but it was already too late. The time they’d kindly spent rewriting their own minds had let the ten seconds run out.

A Class A flag marker appeared above my head. The students who had been charging Ban Taewung a second ago let out enraged howls and fixed their eyes on me.

“Kiiill him!!!”

“How dare you touch the darkness!!! O great Darkness!!! Save the darkness!!!”

“Strike!! Beat him down!!!”

The way they all attacked in perfect unison told me just how precious this thing had become to them. It was pretty clear what they’d substituted for “darkness.”

Even the ones watching looked shaken by the sheer frenzy. I dodged the incoming attacks and ran for it.

“Sinwoo!”

“Forget about me and follow the crows—get to the others fast! Their real target is the Archmage!”

“The Archmage… you mean Riri?!”

That should keep him from wandering off again. No way the protagonist would get distracted while his heroine was under total assault.

Of course I had no intention of getting caught. My mobility was better, and every second they spent chasing me pulled a little more aggro off Ban Taewung. The important thing was getting him out of here as soon as possible.

“Gather the ones who still have their heads on straight and move, now!!”

“…Ugh, got it! You better come back!!”

With those last words Ban Taewung swept his sword in a wide horizontal arc and launched every nearby student into the air. The sudden clear space revealed people who had been hidden by the crowd until now.

That woman, huh.

What Ban Taewung had been protecting even while exhausted were the injured members of Class A.

Standing in front of them like she intended to shield everyone, a blue-haired woman had planted a staff topped with a cross into the ground and deployed a barrier. She stood out immediately.

Nice performance.

The barrier seemed to carry a healing effect as well—soft recovery light continuously washed over the wounded. On top of that she was feeding Ban Taewung some kind of buff. She was clearly skilled.

No wonder he’d felt too strong earlier. He’d been buffed the whole time.

Ban Taewung’s current party was pure DPS. The overall balance wasn’t terrible, but their sustain left a lot to be desired. Stick this woman in the middle and the whole equation changed.

Was this whole mess just to fill the missing healer slot? Or was it a favorability event for Heroine Number Two?

…No idea.

What I did know was that this woman was just as valuable a sacrifice as Riri.

I’ll look into her later.

I memorized her face. The way her eyes locked onto the marker above my head instead of me told me she was Class A. Once we regrouped there’d be no avoiding a conversation anyway, so I needed to keep moving on my end too.

“Next flag—move out!”

“Caaaw!!”

I urged Hive onward and tore through the forest. Along the way I sniped anyone who tried to stick to me with arrows, stabbed them with spears, or shoved them back with the staff while collecting more flags. Without Ban Taewung around, nothing close to Class A numbers piled up, so I could break through on my own without ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠much trouble.

“You!! What the hell are you doing in a situation like—”

“No time, you son of a bitch!!”

Crack!

“Gyaaaaah?!!?!”

Halfway through I ran into a coalition of students who still had their wits about them. One of them saw the flags hanging off me and attacked without a word, so I burned a Pain Token to amp my mana, switched to gauntlets, and put everything I had into his face.

Whether his nose broke or his whole face caved in, he clutched the mess, twitched once, then fainted and vanished in a burst of light. Not my problem. A piece of trash who couldn’t even defend himself in that moment simply disappeared.

While the rest of them stood there stunned, I handed them some crows, told them to regroup, and dumped the lunatics chasing me onto them. The crazy ones had exhausted themselves trying to keep up, so they should be easy prey.

It got noisy behind me with all the screaming, but the fact that they didn’t kill the shadow crows I’d left meant they’d figured out my intent well enough.

Thanks to the bait I’d used along the way I managed to snag the Class F flag as well. That opened the map function for every class except S.

If I headed straight for Class S now, everyone would naturally converge on one spot. Even half-dead academy students would prioritize wiping out the completely insane ones first.

“…Fuck, I’m tired.”

It would be nice if I could just score the goal and end the inter-class match right here, but as long as that magic circle floating in the sky was still active, that was impossible. Until Riri dismantled the damn thing I was stuck grinding through this hell.

By the time I hit the last Class F group they were basically a zombie horde. The only silver lining was that they were weak; otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hand off anything that could report the situation inside before retiring them.

There were so many of them that they just kept pouring out with no end in sight. No time to rest. Even holding back, I was still human. A few of them ended up with holes punched through them, necks bent at impossible angles, or spines folded clean in half.

Past a certain point I got tired of carefully managing every hit and just dumped every Pain Token I’d stockpiled into Kallion, letting him spam Demi Breath nonstop. That was pretty much all I remembered.

I wanted nothing more than to land direct hits and wipe the whole lot of them, but that wouldn’t have stopped at half-dead, so I held back.

Even a light drizzle will soak you eventually.

Blind arrows and magic nearly knocked me off Growl more than once, and a cleverly dug trap almost killed Hive. When a pinpoint mine-type spell blew off one of Growl’s legs I felt genuine murderous intent boil up.

From the middle onward students from other classes mixed in, and I brushed past death more times than I could count.

If my summons hadn’t been the type that recovered through mana, those attacks would have dropped them long ago.

There wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t creak. Even with mana reinforced by Pain Tokens, the constant sensation of wringing every last drop out just to stay alive piled mental strain on top of everything else.

If I hadn’t been wrapped in shadows, losing an arm or a leg wouldn’t have been surprising.

To make it worse these bastards had zero hesitation about friendly fire. In the end one of them realized ordinary attacks couldn’t stop me and tried to overload his own mana and throw himself at me in a suicide blast.

If I hadn’t retired him first he really might have died.

Fuck…!

My hands were shaking. From fear? No. This was pure rage. I wanted to tear the bastard who made this mental contamination circle into pieces.

No—just killing him would be too kind. I’d peel his skin off one strip at a time until he begged me to end it.

Once the flesh was exposed I’d pour salt on it. When the osmotic pressure forced the blood out and the meat shriveled, I’d dump boiling water over it and cook it right there.

Then I’d carve the flesh off again. When there was nothing left to slice I’d heal him and start over from the beginning.

Injecting shadows into his blood vessels for continuous torment didn’t sound bad either. Or maybe I’d just grab his heart and squeeze and release, over and over. A literal heart-stopping experience.

With the effect of Torture I could keep him just short of death and make him feel every second of having his guts stirred, or force him to watch his own organs put on a show.

Might as well use the chance to test exactly how many Pain Tokens I could extract from a human.

I am not letting him die cleanly.

Yeah. For the finale I’d rip his heart out and crush it right in front of his eyes.

Slowly, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠leisurely, but with crushing force—squeeze until it was pulp, and only then snuff out his life. Having decided that, I cracked the back of the skull of a guy preparing magic to attack the castle from a distance with a blunt weapon.

I was getting close to Class S’s base. In proportion, the number of Class A students kept rising.

One-on-one would have been fine, but against this many I was at a crushing disadvantage. I just draped shadows over Growl entirely and ordered a full breakthrough.

Hive briefed me from the sky the whole way, so I made it to Class S’s position safely.

Of course walking straight in would make the marker disappear, so I circled the perimeter, thinning out as many of the hunters as I could and buying time.

“…Haa.”

Despite all that effort the ice walls were already half-shattered, and the castle itself was so badly collapsed you could barely recognize the original shape.

But it hadn’t fallen.

Because the white-haired little girl was still standing firm on the battlements.

“Hold them!! If they break through here we’re all dead!!!”

“Pour mana into the catapults! Faster!!”

“Repair the walls first!! Magic’s coming in from that side!!”

It wasn’t just Riri holding the line. The teams I’d organized before leaving had actually meant something—clumsy as it was, they had a chain of command and were intercepting the enemy.

Against the endless waves from the other classes, Class S was hanging on by a thread, but they were hanging on.

Which meant I couldn’t back down either. The silver-haired girl irritably chopped her hand from high to low. Hundreds of magic circles bloomed in the air, transformed into ice arrows, and rained down on the attackers.

KRA-KA-KA-KAK!!!

Sometimes a massive wall of ice erupted to block incoming attacks; other times a violent storm swept aside the barrage aimed at that wall. Then her eyes met mine.

For a split second Riri’s eyes went wide. Her brow was furrowed like she’d been through hell in the meantime. Her hair, which usually fell to her waist, was a complete mess from the fighting.

She’d used too much mana—her complexion was a little pale—but a faint smile still sat on her lips. She crushed the candy she’d been holding in her mouth, then stretched a hand into the air and began constructing a magic circle.

For someone whose expression almost never changed to react like that… she really must have had a rough time.

“You held out well.”

Now it was time to cash in on that effort. According to the intel Hive had passed me, the others should be arriving any second.

“Over here!! The signal’s right here!!”

“Ugh…! Who the hell pulled a stunt like this?!”

“Who else? You think there’s only one or two villains targeting the academy?!”

“Mental contamination on this scale has to be at least Blood Magic or Black Magic Tower level, right?”

“Fuck, those are both S-rank villain organizations!!!”

Students who had followed my marker came crashing out of the forest one after another.

Right on cue Riri’s magic fell from the sky. Crystalline white snowflake-like mana crystals rained down, drawing a clear line between friend and foe and carving a straight path all the way to the castle.

Riding that momentum, the newcomers poured into Class S’s position and joined the defense.

“Sinwoo! I brought everyone!!”

At their head stood Ban Taewung, looking like a triumphant general returning home with the whole group in tow. Every class was gathered now. The protagonist had arrived, so all that remained was to wrap up this goddamn mess.

I looked up at the ominous magic circle in the sky—larger than before—and frowned.