What They Call an Academy (5)
Murmur, murmur.
The classroom was noisier than usual today. I wondered why, until it hit me—our resident protagonist, Ban Taewung, had gone and caused another incident.
Focusing a little, my high-level senses picked up the whispered details. According to the chatter, he had killed an E-rank magic beast only for a B-rank one to burst out of it. Not one, either—six of the damn things.
The professors and teachers had scattered to protect the students, leaving them unable to stop the monsters from spreading in every direction. To make matters worse, those B-ranks were highly mobile, perfect for sowing chaos.
In the frozen moment when students froze and nearly got hurt, our hero made a dramatic entrance and started fighting. Inspired by the sight, his classmates joined in. Together they managed to take down two of the B-ranks. The rest? Hong Su-ah wiped them out. That explained why she had looked so oddly exhausted the last time I saw her.
Hong Su-ah’s reputation was already sky-high, so the reaction there was just the usual “as expected.” Ban Taewung was different. The world always cheers for a new hero’s debut.
A model of heroism. S-Class really is on another level. Even among S-Class, the gap between some people is night and day. Challenging B-rank beasts this early and winning? Truly incredible. And so on, and so forth…
Well, good for him. I was genuinely relieved he was diligently stacking up protagonist points somewhere I wasn’t. Somewhere I wasn’t! Worth saying twice.
These weren’t random trash mobs—they were full-on B-ranks. Me, the guy who still trembles at the thought of soloing an E-rank? Getting tangled up in that would have been pure misery. Even if I’d been there, I probably would have just hidden behind the faculty and watched the fire from across the river.
The only real regret was not filling out the bestiary.
B-rank sits right in the middle of the hierarchy, and there are more of them left than any other rank. Plenty of reasons: not enough reward for top-tier hunters to bother, yet far too much for lower ranks to handle. The moment a monster climbs from C to B, its intelligence spikes and it starts using skills tactically. That’s why B-rank is called the filter that weeds out S-rank candidates and the wall of lamentation for C-ranks.
Our protagonist had taken one down—team effort or not. Provisional A-rank was locked in, and a new S-rank might even be on the horizon. The uproar made sense.
No wonder it’s been so quiet.
That was why no one had been clinging to me.
Friends or not, he was too loud. Add the harem members chirping along and the noise doubled. Mornings were already rough for me; having someone glued to my side making a racket made my head throb. The crease between my brows would only get deeper.
I wish every day could be like this.
It was only a fleeting peace that could shatter at any moment, but it felt fantastic. This must be how a hero feels after protecting a village from a demon king’s rampage.
If this world had a storyline, the protagonists would be giving detailed debriefs or trading war stories about yesterday right about now. Maybe sitting down with some high-ranking academy official? The absence of his usual hangers-on suggested they were either with him or waiting nearby.
Man… this is nice.
Had the spring sunlight pouring through the window always been this warm? The world looked almost beautiful today. Perfectly peaceful. The faint buzz of insects outside was a little annoying, but I could live with it. As if a few bugs were going to ruin my nap.
Classrooms didn’t have assigned seats, but the spot that had become half-mine already had a vase of white chrysanthemums waiting when I arrived. What the hell? Who left flowers here?
Giggle, giggle.
I glanced around for the owner and caught the sound of laughter. A mixed group of guys and girls were huddled together, snickering over something. Weren’t those the same pests who usually buzzed around Ban Taewung?
They weren’t even S-Class. Why the hell were they in someone else’s classroom acting like this? Taewung wasn’t even here today.
At first I thought they needed a center of gravity, but they were doing just fine without the protagonist.
I still couldn’t understand what was so great about that guy that they swarmed him like flies. Some incomprehensible popular-kid habit or humor, I supposed. Not that I cared to figure it out.
Smells nice, though.
With no trouble in sight, even this plain flower looked beautiful. The muscle aches that had been nagging me since morning seemed to ease a little. Was this that aromatherapy thing?
The effect kicked in so fast it had to be expensive. The owner would come looking soon enough. To avoid any baseless complaints, I scanned the windowsill for a good spot. There.
Leave it there and the owner would find it. I set the flowers in the sunny window, then flopped face-down across the desk.
The best part of awakening? I could go three days without food and never feel hungry. A full week before my stomach finally screamed. Only two days had passed, so I was fine.
In other words: pure, unadulterated nap time.
“Zzz…”
It really was the best.
Thud!
“Guh…!”
Tsk, what the fuck. I was sleeping just fine—who the hell? Blinking, I pushed myself up and found Hong Su-ah staring down at me with a blank face. The faint crease in her brow smoothed out on its own. The air around her was murderous.
“I wondered where you’d gone after boldly skipping my class. Here you are.”
“…”
When had the bell even rung? I’d slept deeper than I thought. Looking around, the room was empty. I scratched my head, stood, and bowed.
“I’m sorry. I was so exhausted yesterday I must not have heard the bell.”
Immediate apology was always the best move. But first period was supposed to be classroom lecture, right? Why was no one here? Whether she read it on my face or not, Hong Su-ah let out a short sigh and showed me her watch. It was well past 12:40.
“First period was self-study due to a faculty meeting. Second, third, and fourth periods were switched to off-campus practicals and are already over. It’s still lunch, but elective A—fifth period—starts soon.”
“Ah.”
Nothing I could do about that. Checking my device late confirmed the notice about the outdoor classes. Being left to sleep was a little annoying, but free nap time made up for it.
I was still the one who had skipped, so I bowed again in apology, then headed for the door to reach the multipurpose hall on the second floor where the elective Summoning Arts was held.
“Cadet Jang Sinwoo.”
“Yes?”
Hong Su-ah called me. I turned, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze was fixed on the window—specifically the vase I had set aside.
“…Teacher?”
She had called me yet stood there for a long moment just moving her lips. Very unlike her.
“Is this flower yours, Cadet Jang Sinwoo?”
Ah. Maybe she thought I’d brought personal belongings to school. I didn’t remember any rule against it. Or maybe she was about to sarcastically praise the guy who skipped class and still decorated the room with flowers.
I quickly shook my head.
“It was on my desk when I got here this morning.”
“…This is a flower obtained from a magic beast called Dumpynite. It’s the main ingredient in fatigue-recovery medicine.”
So it really wasn’t an ordinary flower. The easing muscle pain hadn’t been my imagination.
“But if you’re exposed to the unrefined scent, you fall into intense relief, sleepiness, and extreme lethargy no matter the situation. Your brain mistakes this place for somewhere happy and safe. The dreams that follow are so sweet that when you wake, you reject the reality waiting for you.”
Dumpynite turned people into idiots who craved those dreams and wanted to sink back into sleep, then used them as fertilizer.
“It was wrapped around the body of one of the B-rank beasts that appeared yesterday. More precisely, it’s believed to have been used when they stuffed a sleeping B-rank into an E-rank’s body.”
The way she looked at me after that sent a chill down my spine. Fuck. Someone put that on my desk? Wasn’t that kind of thing used as a drug? No—that wasn’t the point.
“I’ll ask once more. You truly don’t know who left it?”
She was suspicious of me. Not as the culprit, probably.
But as a possible lead the real culprit had dangled. I had been wiping out F-ranks like I wanted them extinct, after all. Naturally that would push attention toward E-ranks, which were already scarce.
She thought some process had left me intoxicated by the flower’s scent and that was why I was like this. Completely unfair, and I had no way to prove otherwise.
I scratched my head hard. Heat suddenly flooded me. The back of my skull tingled. The happy feeling I’d had before falling asleep drained away in an instant, and it pissed me off. Yeah. This was the feeling.
“…If I knew who did it, I’d have already killed the bastard.”
“Quite the insolent thought.”
Her eyes turned cold. Until now they had been probing; now they looked ready to use force at any moment. I sighed while looking at her. Flexibility, my ass.
“Teacher. How far are you connected with the government?”
“…”
She stayed silent at my sudden question and began drawing mana to suppress me. I scowled hard and operated my device.
Whoosh!!
Gravity seemed to double in an instant. A warning not to try anything funny? I was trying to prove my innocence—what was her problem? My head was spinning for real.
This was only this mild because my mana reserves were high. A normal person would have been crushed flat like a squeezed can.
Fuck, weak-mana people really can’t catch a break.
I sent an emergency direct signal claiming an assassination attempt, then found the Grade-3 final approval document Professor Yoon had mentioned last time and shoved the entire device at her.
That made twice I’d held back. Endure three times and even murder is forgiven. I was following Confucius to the letter.
“Kh…!”
Instead of easing up, she ramped the suppressing mana even higher. Then she took the device, checked the screen, powered it off as if nothing had happened, and looked back at me.
“What is this?”
“…In short, it’s a technique for catching every bastard that breaks out of a dungeon and locking them in a pseudo-dungeon favorable to us.”
The kind of arrogant shits that go berserk, reject their own dungeon nests, and go into exile. The ones that don’t just leave quietly but tear through every zone they can find. The ones that suddenly pop up in cities. One of those had destroyed my house once.
If it had only been the house I might have been less angry. The problem was my mother, who had still been inside. Debris from the collapsed building broke her spine and took her left arm. In my previous life that would have been instant death at best, lifelong disability at worst.
But this world erased even those horrific wounds cleanly. Realizing I had reincarnated, I cried for the first time. Later I learned that when I myself had been hurt, my neck had been completely snapped.
Seeing my mother laugh and say it was a miracle we hadn’t died in that chaos sent chills down my spine.
Hearing her talk about it like it was nothing made me rethink the absurd power of this world. I needed the strength to fight that unreasonableness—to bind those bastards so it never happened again.
I hadn’t even planned on getting a doctorate, but in my rage to crush those things I somehow earned one and started the project: Exile.
“And what of it?”
“Until the week before last that was top-rank classified. And I’m the one who led the project.”
“So.”
Hong Su-ah’s face remained cold and blank.
“And what of it?”
Blank. Emotionless. No—not emotionless. Her eyes had been burning with a strange heat this whole time, as if she wanted to incinerate me on the spot. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
What mattered was that I had already endured three times. This made four.
Grit.
“Why the fuck would I waste something that valuable on some shitty terrorist stunt, you bitch.”
“Proof this isn’t a forgery? Even if you produce classified material, I have no way of knowing it’s real.”
“Then learn it now.”
“Your speech is getting short.”
I raised my middle finger. I’d held back long enough, fuck. I was the victim here—who the hell was she to threaten me?
“You started it first.”
Bang!! Rumble!!
In an instant black-suited people flooded the classroom. Confirming the standoff between me and Hong Su-ah, they immediately shielded me and trained their guns on her, ready to fire at any moment.
“Are you all right?”
Someone approached my side and the suppressing mana vanished completely. More accurately, the person beside me had withdrawn it. I could finally breathe.
“Rank?”
“Colonel of a classified unit. Codename Nickel.”
“EM-1.”
“…Here.”
Click!
The man who called himself Nickel loaded a pistol and handed it to me. The chamber was transparent enough to see inside.
The Mana Erasure series, commonly called EM.
I made this too. Not only does it suppress mana—on contact it sucks the mana dry regardless of control and sets it ablaze. The resulting flames act like white phosphorus. The only target is mana itself.
No physical damage to the body. But the pain is real. When we field-tested it on a death-row inmate with body-enhancement abilities who had laughed through every torture, he begged for his life in three seconds flat. He described it as the sensation of his soul burning.
I aimed the loaded barrel at Hong Su-ah and spoke.
“Resist. Use that fancy mana of yours and threaten me like before. What? Now that the numbers against you have gone up, you can control your temper a little?”
Even under my mockery she kept her blank expression. Unable to watch the standoff any longer, Colonel Nickel stepped forward, held up a seal proving national affiliation, and spoke.
“…Suppress your mana and raise both hands above your head in surrender. Failure to comply will result in charges of attempting to assassinate a national asset and a wanted order. Please consider carefully. Balsam.”
“Who gave you permission.”
“Doctor, please calm down as well. If it’s a misunderstanding, we should resolve it by clearing it up.”
The tone of someone soothing a sulking child grated, but he was right. Still—my mood? Having that thing left on my desk was already foul enough. Did I have to endure this treatment too?
“She. Pressured. Me. First. I even showed her classified documents and the first thing she does is call them fake.”
“Haah, Doctor. With that statement you’ve just added the crime of leaking classified information…”
“Exile is about to be made public anyway, right? Then anyone who needs to know already knows.”
I jerked my chin forward. Hong Su-ah’s movements had been strange for a while. Too rigidly frozen. And I caught the faint residual mana. Colonel Nickel let out a deep sigh.
Honestly, I’d loaded the gun in a fit of temper, but I had no real intention of firing.
As dumb as she was being, she was still categorized as an ally. Fighting each other would only leave both sides worse off.
Besides, one of these rounds cost two billion to make. Time-consuming too. I’d basically designed them for bastards rated S-rank and above. Frankly, wasting something this expensive on a situation like this felt wasteful.
On my order, Colonel Nickel stepped one pace ahead of me, reached into empty air, and grabbed.
Crack!!
“…!”
Hong Su-ah’s fist was there. She looked stunned, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and tried to pull back too late. Nickel subdued her instantly, binding all four limbs and slamming her to the classroom floor.
Thud!
The exchange was too fast for my eyes. One blink and she was spinning through the air; the next she was pinned to the floor. The moment he placed a hand on her back—
“Guh…!”
Hong Su-ah’s face twisted. Such a simple action, yet the subdued woman couldn’t keep her expression steady. Her unchanging face crumpled as she began breathing hard.
“I told you to calm down. You still haven’t fixed that temper after running off from the military alone? Balsam. No—Second Lieutenant Hong Su-ah.”
“So… it really was… Lieutenant Colonel Kim Hui-gun.”
“It’s Colonel now. And didn’t you hear just now? My name is classified too.”
As if that settled it, Hong Su-ah gave up resisting. Confirming the strength had left her, Colonel Nickel removed his hand and released the restraint. She stayed face-down on the floor, breathing like someone who had achieved enlightenment.
“…Have I failed again this time?”
“No. You didn’t fail. You just pushed yourself too hard alone and made a small mistake. Back then, and now.”
Clap!
“Enough.”
It looked like they were about to sink into a private world only the two of them knew, so I struck first—crouching in front of the prone Hong Su-ah and clapping to forcibly snatch her attention.
“No time for reminiscing. The fact that you attacked me doesn’t just disappear. Shouldn’t we start with a situation report? Hmm? Teacher Hong Su-ah, who threw the first punch and still hasn’t apologized once?”
“…I see. So the cadet is the type who becomes endlessly arrogant the moment he holds the advantage.”
“Sorry? My ears must still be ringing from that fancy mana suppression earlier. What was that?”
A forehead-slap and a groan of despair came from the side, but I kept looking down at her without flinching. Hong Su-ah’s eyelids trembled, then she rose to her feet and bowed at a perfect right angle toward me.
“Though it was a misunderstanding, as a teacher I failed to protect a student and instead persecuted him. Furthermore, I doubted the truth and put you through hardship. I sincerely apologize.”
She didn’t stop there. She dropped to her knees and pressed her forehead fully to the floor in a perfect full prostration. I snorted once and stood. After unloading the round, performing a full safety check, I returned the gun to Colonel Nickel beside me.
“I don’t want to know your past, Teacher, and I have no intention of finding out. Let’s just not let it hurt other people. I’m not exactly proud of cursing out someone older than me just because I got hit first either. We’re going to keep seeing each other, so let’s end this here and not make things awkward. Understood?”
“…Thank you for your leniency.”
Even after I finished speaking, Hong Su-ah didn’t rise. I’d been half-ready to step on her head and force her back down if she tried to get up too quickly—disappointing. I pointed at the flower still sitting by the window and spoke to Colonel Nickel.
“Colonel Nickel, investigate that for me.”
“Inspection is already investigating everything that happened at the academy. Including—”
“No.”
I jerked my chin at Hong Su-ah, still bowing on the floor, then looked at Colonel Nickel. I’d given enough hints; he should get it. He sighed and nodded.
“When does the barrier drop?”
“Everyone will withdraw and it will lift in one minute.”
“Colonel Nickel and a few others stay as academy security and work with the teacher. The rest move separately. If you’re spotted, just use the cover of being my escort.”
“Haha, is that an order?”
“Want me to make it a real one?”
He knew perfectly well I hated trouble. More importantly, he’d come here for exactly this in the first place.
My instincts were screaming. This was definitely an incident the protagonist would get tangled in. The kind where you think you’ve found the mastermind only for a bigger one to be waiting.
Yeah, it was big. An E-rank magic beast had been brought in with a B-rank stuffed inside. In a city that would cause massive chaos. But this was the academy—the gathering place of people who each thought they were the best in the world.
The people who taught those talents weren’t ordinary either. Just look at Hong Su-ah. The personnel stationed here could hold out against an S-rank magic beast until reinforcements arrived if they gathered.
And yet prosecutors had deployed immediately over a mere B-rank? Without first investigating the company that supplied the beasts to the academy? They might be doing both at once, but something felt off.
The reason she had moved alone and suspected me was clearly connected to the inspectors already in motion.
In other words, the mastermind had a mole inside the prosecution—someone high enough to steer a government organization. That influence already reached inside the academy. Faculty side we could investigate from now on, but a student-side plant was confirmed.
Whoever had pulled that stunt on my desk was getting their face ground into steel plating. Absolutely. Without fail.
“Now go do your actual jobs. Just diligently enough for the tax-funded salary. I’ll move on my own.”
As I spoke, Colonel Nickel reached out and slowly helped Hong Su-ah to her feet. The size difference made it look like he was hauling her up by force. Leaving the two of them looking like they had a lot left to say, I turned and headed for the classroom door.
If my read was right, something else was about to blow. The star of that show would be the protagonist who had shone brightest in this attack. The goal: elimination, or leaving him with a crippling disability.
The bought media were probably already churning out headlines like “Future Hero Dies in Terror Attack! Is the Academy Safe?” They would have everything ready to publish the second they got the signal.
That way they could sow doubt about the academy and create chaos. Misdirection? Some grudge I didn’t know about? Maybe both. Either way, it was better to poke every possible soft spot.
“Haah, are kids these days always this mature? Or am I just getting old? Hmm? Second Lieutenant Hong?”
“Your comparison is wrong. And I’m a teacher now, not a second lieutenant.”
Colonel Nickel gave a bitter smile and shook his head. He had known a situation like this would come. More precisely, he was someone keeping the mastermind in check. Otherwise this level of elite manpower would never have been deployed just for someone like me.
I need information.
More desperately than ever. It felt like a time bomb was ticking, ready to go off at any moment. Whether the signal came late or early, if it was going to explode I might as well be the one to set it off. That way the enemy would panic and make mistakes.
From now on, everything I did had to be improvisation—and a fatal blow that twisted the enemy’s intent.
Pry, twist, grab the tail, and drag them onto my stage no matter what.
I’ll make them pay dearly for using me without permission.
Time was short. There was a limit to what I could do alone. So I’d dump it. Hand the things I couldn’t do to someone who could. Right person, right place. They had opened with an information war, so I’d use the right tool for the job.
Before the sudden stop could draw questions, I moved first. The trigger, as always, was a finger-snap loaded with mana.
“Hive.”
Snap!
The name rang out with a wave of power, and something fluttered up from my shadow to settle on my shoulder. Look at that—now that it had grown a bit, it didn’t even screech. Quiet and solemn, waiting for orders. I stroked its chest once, then jerked my chin at Colonel Nickel.
“Move with him and gather intel.”
Whoosh!
At the command, Hive spread its wings wide. The gently swaying feathers looked like the hem of a long coat flaring.
Gulp.
“Caw!”
From the deep shadow formed under the wing, a small crow appeared and immediately slipped into Colonel Nickel’s shadow.
The ability of the trait Crow Swarm. The one that just flew off was the temporary Number Two I’d named—the one with its tongue sticking out.
Yeah, it was the same crow I had tamed before. Numbers Three, Four, and Five would also burst out and start gathering information on their own.
Hm? Why no Number One? Number One went to America. I sent it myself.
Anyway, the remaining crows had been swallowed by the trait that appeared when Hive evolved last time and reborn as shadow crows.
Whether they still counted as the same beings was a little ambiguous… but the trait that bound the flock to itself as one body synergized with the skill Swarm Command, letting them act independently like this.
At first I had made it purely as a control tower. Now it was different.
The strength of Guild Raven lay in numbers. If I could keep increasing them, the versatile side benefits that came with it would approach true all-purpose power.
They were still just crows, but I believed in them. These guys were the crows that would rule the world. If I didn’t believe in them, who would? Someone had to, or they’d lose the will to try.
I would move on my own while combining and reinforcing the information Hive and the others collected.
More than anything, there was only one place I was headed. The guy who always stood at the center whenever something happened was right nearby.
Fuck. Goddamn god bastard, go die.
I never thought the day would come when I voluntarily went to the protagonist. Today, like every day, I spat curses at the god who made this world.