Survival Exam on the Uninhabited Island
On the morning of the first school day after the weekend—once my disciplinary suspension had finally been lifted—Hong Su-ah dropped a bombshell during morning assembly.
“The midterm exam will take place on an uninhabited island a short distance from the academy. Check the details regarding the schedule and the exam that have been distributed to your devices.”
A few students let out sighs and half-hearted grumbles at the sudden announcement, but most of the class had already grown used to life at the academy. They simply accepted it with a resigned “figures” and began checking their devices.
I was closer to the latter group. More precisely, I was closer to “figures, that’s just how the academy is,” but it amounted to roughly the same thing.
I cleared my head and turned Hong Su-ah’s words over again.
Midterms.
Come to think of it, those were a thing. It felt like I’d only just enrolled, but that was only because I’d missed a few days. Purely in terms of coursework, we were already past the fourth week.
Sunrise Academy leaned hard into meritocracy. Crisis, hardship, and cutthroat competition, they believed, forged stronger people. So while other academies treated midterms as little more than a skill check, this place ran them as full-scale operations.
They were properly difficult, and the results fed straight into final grades. For anyone hunting high points or aiming to climb into a better class, this was an opportunity they couldn’t afford to miss.
It wouldn’t be quite as brutal as the finals, but anything the academy threw its full weight behind was never going to be ordinary.
What a pain.
To me, the whole thing was nothing but a headache. Just as Hong Su-ah had said, my device was packed with the midterm schedule and related information.
The explanation ran long, but stripped down it was simple enough.
“A survival game, huh.”
Yeah. A survival game.
The premise itself was straightforward. Starting next Monday, we would spend five days on a prepared uninhabited island living off the land. Every action we took inside the island would be logged on our devices and scored as points.
So were we stuck on the island for the full five days no matter what?
Not quite. Once your score crossed one hundred points, the remaining days were waived. You were considered to have successfully survived and could leave the island immediately.
True to its academy-modified nature, the island was divided into several zones. Solving the riddles or missions in those zones earned bonus points.
The catch was that the livable area shrank every day, and with it the places where you could scavenge necessities. As long as you survived the shrinking space and dwindling resources, any method was fair game.
The entire island functioned like one of the academy’s special arenas. Even if you took lethal damage, you wouldn’t die—you’d be instantly transferred to a cruise ship waiting nearby. The setup only ran for major events like midterms and finals; otherwise the annual maintenance costs alone would have bankrupted them.
They also leaned into the island’s isolation. Outside of a few controlled areas, the place was left completely wild, building a more authentic ecosystem.
Taking all of that into account, I decided the exam was a survival game pure and simple.
Even the broad strokes made it clear this wouldn’t be easy. And yet they were handing out this much advance information. That meant either there were hidden elements you could only discover once you arrived and started moving, or something so disruptive that no amount of preparation would matter.
Open-book tests being harder was just common sense.
“You have one week left. Study survival if you want. Outfit yourselves with better gear. Sharpen your skills. But remember this one thing.”
Hong Su-ah’s tone turned warning as she manipulated her device and projected a hologram.
“The academy is not a place that cultivates criminals. We told you that anything goes, but there is a line you must never cross. Keep that firmly in mind.”
The hologram displayed various crime scenes—some of them graphic enough that the more squeamish students swallowed hard and looked away. Hong Su-ah’s next words forced their eyes forward again.
“If the offense is judged severe and intentional, the professors on site have the authority to punish you on the spot—no warning, no trial. Remember that. Remember it well.”
In a world where non-standard powers like mana and skills were handed out to individuals as a matter of course, people were especially sensitive about crime. The academy itself had already suffered multiple external attacks that could only be called incidents, and petty student-on-student trouble never stopped.
Power demanded matching responsibility.
It was a line you heard constantly once you became an Awakened, and it never left the curriculum. The privileges that came with being Awakened were many; you were expected to do work worthy of them. That was the duty and the role of those who held power.
Part of that duty included reclaiming land so thoroughly overrun by monsters after the Great Catastrophe that humans could no longer live there. The places where endless waves of monsters were fought and unknown territory was explored—we called those the Front Lines.
The nonstop barrage of artillery and combat made them feel exactly like a battlefield.
I suspected this exam was meant to give us a preview of Front Line conditions. A few others had probably reached the same conclusion.
Hong Su-ah finished explaining a few more precautions listed on the devices, then left the classroom the moment the bell rang.
“Whoa… are midterms for real this time?”
“I heard from a club upperclassman that if you end up on some island, the first thing you grab is drinking water.”
“Really? My older brother who already graduated said food comes first.”
The classroom erupted into noise. Students traded half-remembered tips, arguing over what was right and what wasn’t, and the conversation bloomed. Through that chatter Ban Taewung pushed his way over and waved at me.
“Sinwoo. How are you spending this week?”
“Dungeon.”
Honestly, food or anything else wasn’t hard for me to obtain. I just had to pick out what I needed for survival and toss it to Hive; the skill General Store would store it and spit it out whenever I wanted.
Information was the same. Once I locked it into Record, I could pull out only what I needed later.
What I actually needed right now was to strengthen my summons’ combat power. I’d spent the entire weekend attaching Magic Armor, so all that remained was getting used to it.
I’d decided that grinding skills for proficiency was better than pure power-leveling on overwhelming experience, and I’d shifted their training midway. I’d also been swapping dungeons to match the weakest summon’s level, so Bihos and Haze were still stuck at level 5 while Keres was on the verge of evolution. The earlier dungeon grinding had clearly paid off.
My immediate goal was to finish evolving Haze within the week, and beyond that to unravel the mysteries of the newly acquired Book of Combination. Digging up information was bound to yield at least a scrap of a clue.
“Then how about we try the temporary membership for the Survival Club together? Word of the midterms must have already spread—they’re letting first-years join for one week.”
It was a pretty tempting offer. If I didn’t have Hive’s General Store and had trouble securing supplies, I might have considered it.
But that was only for a version of me that lacked those things. For someone who could live in luxury whenever he felt like it, the offer didn’t apply.
“Why bother?”
That was my honest reaction. I could already handle everything, so why go looking for extra hassle? More importantly, getting involved with this guy meant nine times out of ten an incident would explode. Deep down I wanted to avoid him if at all possible.
That didn’t mean I could just wash my hands of him entirely.
I couldn’t forget that he was the protagonist. No matter how much I refused or said I hated it, if the world decided that dragging me into something would help the protagonist, it would find a way to throw both of us into the middle of the chaos.
So the smart move was to assume entanglement was inevitable and steer things toward the least annoying path—ideally one where I didn’t even need to be involved.
“Other classes will flood the place for sure. Instead of getting packed into a crowded mess, you’d be better off asking Luicia to hook you up with a real expert.”
“...Huh? You think so?”
“Yeah. You really think you’re the only one with that idea? Better to hire one specialist for one-on-one lessons than end up in a mob where management falls apart and the teaching gets half-assed.”
The important part was making Ban Taewung believe my suggestion was reasonably sound.
“You’ve got a point, Sinwoo. I’ll go ask Sia if it’s possible!!”
“Go for it.”
I watched him walk off toward Luicia with a bright smile and nodded to myself. It was already half-confirmed. Whatever else happened, some kind of incident involving the person hired before the midterms was guaranteed. If things went well, the heroines might even band together.
Usually an important event was preceded by a slice-of-life stretch. It was a kind of event for managing the heroines and deepening their bonds at the same time.
Survival meant camping, so they’d probably get the basics during the weekdays and then head out somewhere on the weekend for a bit of practical experience.
Hopefully it has nothing to do with me.
Having shaken off the annoyance, I did what I always did when my body felt heavy—I planted my face on the desk to rest.
My tasks were already set.
If nothing was predetermined on my path, then all I had to do was get stronger in my own way.
I followed the usual routine: entered a dungeon and released my summons. I pushed them into fights that focused on skill training, then either watched quietly or joined in myself, analyzing openings and figuring out the most effective combinations.
Since things had turned out this way, I paused Keres’s leveling so we could all evolve cleanly together and concentrated on growing Bihos and Haze.
I lost myself in experiments and growth, and time itself flew by. The problem was that I’d completely stopped thinking about the things that would happen as time passed.
Maybe I’d been too focused on Ban Taewung alone.
“I heard everything! You’re planning something fun again and leaving me out, aren’t you?!”
An unexpected ambush made me smack my forehead.
“We’re coming along to play too! Oh, don’t worry—I’ve already gotten permission!”
Completely ignoring my irritation, the woman had already geared up for a full-on vacation, stylish sunglasses perched on her platinum-blonde hair. She grinned and latched onto me.
I shoved Lee Se-rin’s head away with force and let out a long sigh.
Right. There was one more thing I had to watch out for in my life besides the damn protagonist. I’d completely forgotten that simple fact. I really was getting rusty.
...Shit. Should I just bury myself in a dungeon for real?
I seriously considered holing up in a field-type dungeon and pressed my throbbing temples hard with my thumbs.