It's Called an Academy
“Ugh...”
When consciousness returned, her head throbbed mercilessly. Even the worst hangover after a night of heavy drinking would have felt gentler than this. The pain went beyond mere ache into pure agony, and she wanted nothing more than to clutch her forehead—yet strangely, her body refused to move.
What the hell?
It felt like being trapped in a deep sleep paralysis, her limbs heavy as if sunk into waterlogged cotton. The suffocating weight forced a deep breath out of her, and with it her vision snapped open.
“...Ah.”
Instead of the familiar ceiling of her own room, she saw a damp sky that looked ready to pour rain at any moment. Where was this? And what was this pain in her head? No—not just her head. There wasn’t a single place on her body that didn’t hurt.
I am...
Garnet Washer. Twenty-four years old.
Yes. That was her.
Garnet forced her memories back into order, trying to understand how she had ended up like this.
She was a C-rank hunter belonging to the guild Blue Moon of the Night. Her class was Maple Forest Keeper, and she had just hit level 47. The “maple” here didn’t mean autumn leaves turning red—it meant “severing the wind.” Her seniors in the guild never let her forget that her red hair made the name a perfect joke.
As the class name suggested, it was an advanced ranger job that specialized in the bow, yet her true strengths were Enemy Detection and Pathfinding. That didn’t mean her archery was lacking. She had trained hard enough to confidently claim she was better than most half-baked archers, and that recognition had earned her the right to take the exam for a B-rank promotion this time around.
The test was simple: clear a C-rank field-type dungeon perfectly with a party of four or fewer.
But this was the season when the academy’s new students would flood the market. The annual rite of passage made dungeon bids as scarce as stars in the night sky. So she had chosen this particular dungeon—relatively unpopular, and one where her specialties in detection and pathfinding could shine. It was a remote backwater of a place, but the three others who formed the party with her were veterans who had been ground down by the industry just as thoroughly as she had. They weren’t the type to get stuck in a same-rank field dungeon. If only that monster hadn’t been waiting at the place they reached to raise their progress rate.
“Ah.”
Yes. The monster.
“Hiiik...!”
Just recalling it made her body curl in on itself. Against her will she began to tremble violently. Compared to the ordinary trash scattered around, there had been not one but two entities of an entirely different caliber.
A dragon and a wolf.
A dragon covered in pure white scales so pale they looked cold to the touch, and a strange wolf that was equally white yet somehow even redder. At first she had assumed they were simply named guardians of the ruins. But even when they closed the distance, no named-monster alert sounded. That was when she realized something was wrong. The sharp intelligence in the eyes looking down on them sent chills racing across her skin.
An unexpected variable. The one situation her seniors had drilled into her ears until they grew calluses—the most dangerous thing that could happen in a dungeon—was now standing right in front of her.
She had no desire to court danger, so she quietly suggested they turn back. But one idiot magic swordsman in the party started insisting that they could take the monsters down. Those things weren’t ordinary. They might be a hidden piece of this dungeon that no one had discovered yet, or some kind of opportunity. If they claimed them, they could reach A-rank—or even S-rank beyond that.
The other two, who had initially sided with her, gradually got swallowed by the magic swordsman’s nonsense. When conflict arose inside a dungeon, majority vote in the party was as good as settled law. It was an unwritten rule of the hunter industry. Not ordinary. An opportunity that might make them S-rank? What certainty did they have that they could even take them? Were those things even monsters in the first place?
No matter how hard she argued, her words never reached ears already blinded by greed. Outnumbered three to one with no way to reverse the vote, she was forced by majority rule to move not back out of the ruins but toward defeating those monsters.
She never should have.
For the first time she cursed her own powerlessness to the bone. If only she had possessed even half the silver tongue that idiot had used, she could have avoided that nightmare.
The moment the magic swordsman’s mana-charged attack cut through the air, the tank who had always stood firm against any form of monster went flying. It happened in an instant.
The tank’s condition when he hit the ground was horrific. The shield and armor liberally crafted from B-rank magical beast hide and magic stones were crumpled like discarded newspaper. Both arms were crushed beyond recognition of bone, fragments punching through muscle and skin.
Before she could even process what had happened, the magic swordsman went flying as well. The fool had always taken meticulous care of his own body, so watching the multi-layered barriers he had stacked shatter into glittering fragments was pure shock. Even more shocking was the fact that the monster hadn’t simply blocked a devastating attack—it had intercepted the magic swordsman’s attempt to use them as bait.
Only then did the party’s priest shout.
Magic! That dragon used magic! When the priest’s mana layered over her eyes, she could see the residual trail of the spell flying toward the magic swordsman. But even seeing it gave her no way to respond.
No—seeing it only made her understand more clearly.
We can’t win...
It was beyond their scale. An overwhelming torrent of power that they could never overcome sat right there. Even when they had been ambushed by an A-rank monster in an event dungeon the guild had challenged, it hadn’t been this terrifying. Back then there had been seniors who could hold the line. But now?
The vanguard was already half-dead from a single blow. The magic swordsman, whether from lost will or sheer panic, abandoned his sword and limped away as fast as he could. Without hesitation he crushed a blue crystal he pulled from his belt.
A transfer crystal.
An expensive one-use magic tool engraved with long-range teleportation. The moment it activated, it ignored every form of magic and sent the user to a designated location. It could carry up to six people, yet he deliberately used it alone after putting distance between them.
She understood the reason easily enough. He had committed the most fatal mistake possible in the hunter industry, and to escape the stain of that failure he had abandoned the living witnesses—them.
His sudden disappearance turned her mind pure white. The priest looked no better, frozen solid with a face full of terror.
Ah. So this is where I die. I should have ignored that idiot’s words and forced the issue. I should have spoken harder even if it ruined my reputation and destroyed the party’s atmosphere.
It was simply too hollow.
Thinking that all her effort and time had been for nothing more than dying in this place made tears fall.
Whoosh!
The priest beside her vanished. And she saw it—the pure white dragon that had never moved from its seated position casually opening its mouth a fraction and releasing a vast mass of mana.
The last thing she saw was the world spinning, and then her memories cut out like a blown fuse.
That was the final memory she retained.
“...Huh?”
She had been certain she was dead. So why was she still alive? Her head throbbed. Probably from that final impact. How? Before she could find an answer, a shadow fell over her.
“...?”
It was a young girl.
Black and white hair mixed without pattern yet somehow harmonious, and clear light-pink eyes that held both untainted purity and an indescribable holiness at once. She was beautiful enough to believe a god had carved her, but that wasn’t the problem.
She looked less than half Garnet’s age, yet the pitch-black mace nestled between the folds of her black robe was still stained with blood and scraps of flesh—proof that combat had just taken place.
In other words, this girl with the childlike appearance was another hunter currently hunting inside this dungeon.
The realization brought fresh tears. She was alive. The reason didn’t matter. What mattered was that this girl had saved her.
“Thank... thank you...”
She clearly remembered one of her seniors warning that judging people in the hunter industry by appearance was forbidden. No matter how young someone looked, digging deeper usually revealed someone whose aging had stopped because of high mana, right?
This person must belong to that category. Even if not, the fact that she was confidently present in a dungeon at such a young age meant she was probably the scion of some famous family.
The monsters that had attacked them had looked completely uninterested. They had clearly assumed she was as good as dead and left her alone. Maybe people from this girl’s family had defeated those monsters.
What did it matter? In the end she was alive. Grateful for that fact, she was about to offer another deep prayer of thanks to the god who had given her this chance when—
“Done crying yet?”
“...Sniff?”
A voice so deep it reminded her of a cave made the girl’s figure recede. Then she saw the ones looking down at her.
“...Ah?”
Monsters. The very monsters that had treated them like insects and casually disposed of them moments ago were standing right there. The relief that had loosened her mental grip snapped cleanly.
A nightmare. This was a nightmare.
Maybe she had simply died. The girl she had seen at the end must have been a reaper come to guide her. Right—there was no way a little girl would be inside a dungeon.
Garnet Washer. Twenty-four years old. Dead in a dungeon without ever properly enjoying her youth in the flower of her age.
Gulp.
As her vision slowly blurred, one last question rose.
Why did those monsters—who hadn’t even changed expression under their attacks—look so restless?
“Tsk. She fainted again. Did you actually heal her properly?”
At my scolding, Lee Se-rin poked the collapsed woman’s cheek and giggled as if it were the funniest thing in the world.
“The shock must have been pretty severe. Still, I brought something that was about twenty weeks of recovery down to light bruises and temporary concussion, so she should be fine.”
“...Right.”
Yeah. The one who healed her would know better than me. What would I know?
She was the one who had restored a body that had been bound and dying with arms torn open and guts spilling from a ripped belly back into a complete form. Without her I would have accidentally killed someone for real.
Of course, since they had attacked first they deserved to die, but if I was going to keep them alive I might as well squeeze every last drop of use out of them, right?
Besides the red-haired woman who had just fainted again, there was the one who looked like a priest, the one who looked like a tank, and the bastard who had attacked first yet fled fastest of all—four people total.
That was as far as the information Kallion had passed along allowed me to guess. It was biased data sent through the link, so I couldn’t be certain.
In the end they had to wake up.
I needed to find out why they had attacked first, and if it wasn’t coincidence but a deliberate attempt to target me, I had to thoroughly dig out whoever was behind them. Unless I cleaned this up completely, noisy trouble would keep coming for a while. Living in constant fear of assassination attacks that could come from anywhere was something I had already done enough of in my previous life.
“...What a waste of time.”
“What about herding monsters over like you did at the start?”
You think I didn’t try that? While thinking about how to handle these guys, the wait for them to wake up felt so wasteful that it was the first thing I attempted.
“This area is a named zone, so the aggro keeps dropping weirdly.”
“Ahh.”
Just from that single sentence Lee Se-rin understood and accepted it on her own, then squatted down again and started poking the groaning woman’s cheek.
Echidna looked puzzled by the sight yet still trotted over, and the two of them began whispering together. For a moment I felt uneasy watching Lee Se-rin’s giggling, but whatever she had said, even Echidna—who had been staring at her—joined in the mischief and started poking the opposite cheek of the unconscious woman.
Teaching a kid weird habits. I considered smacking their heads to stop them, but realized that would just redirect the annoyance onto me, so I neatly folded that impulse away.
I operated the device Lee Se-rin had given me and quickly checked the dungeon entry roster.
“This must be it.”
Comparing the ID photos on the Awakened certificates made it surprisingly easy to find them.
Garnet Washer. Guild: Blue Moon of the Night. C-rank. Class: Maple Forest Keeper.
Kaga Itachi. Guild: Susanoo. C-rank. Class: Underworld Magic Swordsman.
Jang Cheol-su. Guild: Iron Man. C-rank. Class: Town Gardener.
Choi Joseph. Guild: Church of the Radiant Sun. C-rank. Class: Solar Priest.
That was the information on the party this woman belonged to.
The only one missing from this place was Kaga Itachi—that bastard alone.
According to Kallion, that guy had been the first to attack with killing intent. Of course, with his stats reduced by Subjugator, Kallion had calmly erased the attack and tried to fire a warning spell as I had ordered beforehand. But at that exact moment his eyes had been drawn to the tank against his will.
Probably some kind of provocation skill. Because of that, the shot meant as a threat had been fully unleashed toward them instead.
The tank’s judgment hadn’t been wrong. Kallion’s attack had simply been stronger.
On top of that, since Kallion was treated as my skill before being a summon, every attack he unleashed carried the effects of Torture and Sadism. The result needed no explanation.
No wonder the tank had been the most severely injured.
A string of coincidences had complicated things, but looking only at the outcome, Kallion had done well. Still, letting his mind go slack enough to get caught by a mere provocation skill was definitely a mistake.
I had loosened the reins a little because he had been performing well lately, and it seemed the old habit from his hatchling days of nearly getting done in by goblins had flared up again.
Didn’t he understand that no matter how weak the opponent looked, getting hit by a single skill could reverse the situation at any time? Or was carelessness just part of a dragon’s nature?
In this insane world you never know what might appear, yet he was letting his guard down. He should be on high alert and still it wouldn’t be enough.
Do I praise him for this or not?
I pondered carefully but decided to put it on hold for now. Noticing that I had no intention of getting angry immediately, Kallion and Growl visibly relaxed, and I let out a sigh.
“Ah, she’s waking up again. All that hard work bullying her paid off!”
“Never say that in front of her.”
“Come on, I’m not a doctor. I’m not that tactless.”
I wanted to punch that irritating head of hers right then and there. The moment I merely thought it, Lee Se-rin—as if she had learned a skill that detected killing intent—quickly grabbed her own head and skittered backward.
Would you believe that brief movement contained the mana control of someone called a Transcendent, fully displayed?
For just an instant the enormous surge of mana I felt made even the stats strengthened by Subjugator look as insignificant as a handful of ants. While I forced the chill down, the only visible result was her retreating so fast that afterimages almost seemed to linger.
She didn’t just put distance between us. She turned around at a suitable range, curved her eyes prettily, and began mocking me.
“Hehe! If you think I’ll just keep taking hits forever, you’re sorely mistaken. Weakling♡ Pathetic doctor♡ Completely useless without skill crutches♡ Mana premature ejaculator♡ Trash stamina that can’t even keep up with this♡ Kya-hoong...♡”
She stuck out her scarlet tongue while swaying the hem of her skirt as if telling me to hurry up and chase her, looking exactly like a matador training a bull.
Of course, everything she was doing was deliberate—calculated to seduce and fan emotions. I knew that, so I wouldn’t charge in like a stupid bull. That would just mean moving exactly the way she wanted.
Instead I felt sick of how a child’s prank had instantly turned into an adult’s game.
Was she trying to pay back all the violence she had suffered so far now that she saw an opening? Or maybe, after I kept showing no reaction to her approaches, she had changed her conquest route.
Compared to everything she had done before, her current behavior was far too childish. Dealing with Echidna must have finally lowered her mental age enough to affect her mind itself.
There was no other explanation for acting like this.
Grit.
But childish or not, the provocation was definitely effective because of the way she looked while doing it. My clenched fists and grinding molars were proof enough.
“Ugh...”
I wanted to give her a serious lecture so she would never pull that crap again, but Garnet Washer chose that exact moment to open her eyes, so I clicked my tongue.
“Just you wait.”
“...G-glaring like that doesn’t scare me at all!”
She pretended to tremble while her eyes glittered with undisguised interest and delight, which was genuinely annoying.
What the hell did I do wrong to get stuck with this crazy woman?
The answer was to escape this insane woman as soon as possible. Burning with the will to strip her of everything without leaving a single scrap, I grabbed the collar of the woman who had just started to rise and hauled her up.
Lifted from the ground to my eye level in an instant, the woman quickly came to her senses.
“...Huh? Where is this... I...”
“You with us now?”
“...Yes? Um, wait? Hiiik?!”
Still dazed, she looked at Kallion and Growl behind me and immediately filled with terror. If she fainted again it would be a pain, so I poured mana into my grip on her chin and forced her gaze to stay locked on me.
“If you don’t want to die, spill everything you know.”
“...Hic.”
Whether from the collar choking her or pure fear, she coughed while tears welled up drop by drop. The reflection of me in her eyes was so rigid I could have been the villain of the century.
This was all that woman’s fault. Making an already irritated person even angrier? This woman who had provided the spark for that whole incident shared some of the blame. So I was definitely not taking out the anger I couldn’t vent on Lee Se-rin on her instead.
...If I say it’s not, then it’s not.
At first she kept her mouth clamped shut, but after I had Kallion swing her around a bit she finally spilled every last detail—from what had happened in this dungeon to recent events in her guild.
If she had just done that from the start it would have been so much better. Of course, once the interrogation ended she was completely drained and collapsed on the spot, living up to her name by soiling herself.
The sniffling from the corner was so distracting that I ordered Kallion to clean up every foreign substance, then interrogated the others.
The remaining two, who had woken up midway and watched the whole thing, seemed to have developed quite the trauma from Kallion’s presence, so they answered my questions obediently. The results were similar at best, never less.
In the end I hadn’t obtained a single piece of real information.
“Looks like I’ll have to catch that last bastard after all.”
A guy who made everything from one to ten a pain in my ass. With a name like Itachi, his escape skills were top-tier too. At least the other Itachi had ideals and convictions; this one was just a pure bastard.
Since I hadn’t gotten the information I wanted, there was no point holding these three any longer.
“Get lost.”
“Y-yes?”
“I said get lost.”
I said that, but if I just left them here they would almost certainly die. Except for the woman, the others really deserved to die, but abandoning them would only create more annoying problems. Better to send them off and wait for them to catch the runaway bastard themselves.
As a lesson in cleanup, I ordered Kallion to deliver the three of them to the entrance, then we focused on accelerating Echidna’s leveling.
Having realized that endlessly killing trash mobs was meaningless, Echidna began insisting on fights against named monsters, and I respected her will. We needed to raise the progress rate by touring the ruins anyway, so I let her do a named circuit until she was satisfied.
Progress: 100%
Five hours after entering the dungeon, Echidna’s level finally reached 10.