The Summoner of ■■ (18)
For someone who had been traveling with that woman, it was almost suspicious that nothing at all happened on the second day.
After sitting through Traveler’s so-called “class” and the accompanying field experience, we were dismissed before sunset and made our way back to the Academy. By the time we arrived, Lee Se-rin and Traveler had already vanished without a trace.
I stopped by a nearby supermarket, stocked up on long-shelf-life goods, shoved them into my shadow, and headed straight for the dorms. I wanted to enjoy at least a sliver of the weekend, so I crawled into bed and slept.
Then Monday arrived.
Instead of heading to the classroom, we followed the location marked on our devices and found ourselves at the harbor, staring at a ship large enough to rival a massive cruise liner. It came fully equipped with every convenience imaginable, plus enough personnel to handle any emergency that might crop up. Apparently the entire operation would move by sea.
The thoroughness of the preparations left everyone tense. I, on the other hand, simply watched Hong Su-ah with a blank expression as she barked orders left and right. Someone of her caliber should have felt my gaze, yet she never once looked my way. That struck me as odd—until I noticed the entire faculty was treating every student except me with the same icy distance.
I realized at once that the exam had already begun.
My original plan had been to hole up in a cabin and sleep a little longer, but I ended up on the deck instead, taking in the scenery. There was no telling what might happen on the way, so I needed a clear escape route—something I could use to jump on Kallion and flee if things went south. Less trouble that way.
While I was turning possibilities over in my head, time slipped by quickly.
Crossing the sea aboard the Academy’s prepared vessel, I finally caught sight of the island and let out a quiet sigh. The landmass ahead looked so remote and untouched that even a liar would struggle to claim anyone lived there.
What bothered me more was the subtle flow of mana the faculty had been quietly circulating through the entire ship for some time now. It wasn’t hostile. If it had been, Battle Focus or Subjugator would have kicked in the moment I interfered with the mana. They hadn’t. So this, too, was part of the test.
I still wasn’t at the level where I could identify a spell’s nature just by looking at mana, but raising Kallion had given me enough magical knowledge to read the runes riding the current. I knew what was about to activate.
“Illusion and phantasm.”
In other words, illusion magic.
I hadn’t experienced it myself during the first-day greetings, but I’d heard they used holograms and phantasms for a high-intensity initiation ceremony. The person who designed it was one of the Academy instructors—supposedly a master of illusion arts.
The picture was coming together. An Academy that prized real combat would never treat a simple field trip as a midterm. The faculty’s unusually cold attitude today had already seeped into the students; everyone was starting to tense up without quite knowing why.
For now they might dismiss it as exam nerves or just a bad mood. But humans are crafty little animals. When trouble keeps piling on, the natural instinct is to escape. That survival drive—the weakling’s urge to flee danger—is hard-wired into our DNA. It’s what let humanity endure and evolve. Evolution brought advantages, of course, but it also left clear flaws. One of them is self-justification.
Just for the sake of argument—what if something happened and this “exam” suddenly became a genuine castaway situation on an uninhabited island? And what if some unknown “presence” that might target them at any moment was added to the mix?
It might sound like overthinking, but I considered it entirely possible. This world was insane. Compare it to novel or game scenarios and it becomes obvious. These students might still be cadets, but they had already stepped into the realm of superhumans—a gathering of geniuses among the Awakened. Would the Academy really be satisfied with a pre-announced survival game? I didn’t think so.
In situations like this, you always plan for the worst.
As the island drew closer, the faculty stopped even trying to hide their mana. Students began murmuring uneasily.
Waaaaaaaaaaail!!!!
The moment the siren blared, I wrapped mana around my entire body. Even without hostility from the other side, the instant I took a combat stance my skills registered the situation as battle and began activating. With my stats climbing, I pulled the shadow mask over my face. My vision cleared instantly, and things that had been invisible a second ago snapped into focus.
Someone’s in the water.
The figures surrounding the ship like sentries were familiar faces—all Academy faculty. Some wore ragged cloaks, others had hats that looked like old-fashioned helmets. Tools for stealth, no doubt. Now that I could see them, it was almost embarrassing how thoroughly they had hidden. Maybe we had been under a high-level illusion from the moment we boarded.
Watching them float above the sea on pure mana sent a cold sweat trickling down my back.
Ah. This is fucked.
“Wh-what the hell is that?!”
“Monsters! Monsters are attacking!!!”
“V-villains! Villains are driving monsters at us!!”
The students who spotted the figures erupted into panic and poured onto the deck, shouting. I followed the direction of a pointing finger and saw the sky filled with a swarm of monsters and black mannequin-like figures riding them. Just looking at the scene was enough to raise the hair on your neck—but I felt an overwhelming sense of wrongness.
For a surprise attack, they weren’t attacking. They simply hovered and watched, as if performing a staged scene. The wind was the biggest giveaway. Hair and clothing moved almost naturally, yet certain strands and hems clearly ignored the actual airflow. Tiny details you would miss without enhanced stats and skills, but I saw them easily.
The students’ reactions sealed it. The holograms just flapped their mouths while the real cadets turned deathly pale. The illusion was covering the gaps and selling the realism. I was certain now: they were holograms.
My elevated mana had forcibly kicked me free of the illusion, so I could observe at leisure. To everyone still trapped inside it, those things must have looked terrifying.
Rumble!!
Right on cue, the moment a holographic monster opened its jaws, the faculty in the water closed in and slammed mana into the sea, deliberately rocking the ship.
“Not on my watch!!”
Someone shot up from the deck—Ban Taewung. He thrust his sword forward, condensed mana, and swung a horizontal slash. The hologram merely flicked a finger in response.
“What?!”
Taewung’s startled cry rang out. The faculty moved in perfect sync: one side braced the ship so it wouldn’t fully capsize, while the other shoved it just enough to create a dramatic tilt. They wanted the visual of the vessel listing under enemy fire.
“Kh—the ship…!”
Still hovering in midair, Taewung looked flustered. A new figure appeared in front of him—black clothes, mask, gloves being adjusted. The mana that burst from those gloves told me exactly who it was.
Not just the first-year faculty. Upper-year instructors are here too.
The bald man I had seen before. Even after time had passed, that distinctive attack style and those habits were hard to forget.
Whoosh!!
Taewung noticed the delayed flaming strike and tried to react, but the attack landed first.
Clang!!
“Kh…!”
“Taewung-ssi!!!”
He twisted just in time to catch the blow on the flat of his blade—a half-success at best.
BOOOOM!!!
With a thunderous roar he was blasted straight toward the island. Luicia moved a beat too late and couldn’t land a meaningful hit.
Thud!
“…!”
Crash!
She leapt to intercept the flying Taewung, but a fist slammed into her before she could reach him. She tumbled across the deck, rolling again and again under the sheer force. Left alone she would have gone over the railing into the sea, so I stretched out a shadow, snagged her, and pulled her to my side.
“Cough, cough.”
“Get your head on straight. This is still an exam.”
“An… exam…?”
“Yeah. Remember the first day at the Academy? Same thing.”
Even while steadying herself, Luicia looked stunned. Then she rapidly wrapped her body in mana. The dense power swirling around her finally cleared her eyes, and she began scanning the surroundings—comparing what she had seen under the illusion to what she saw now.
For someone who had taken a heavy hit, her recovery was fast. All flash, carefully controlled force. Real attackers wouldn’t bother holding back. More proof it was staged. Taewung’s first charge had probably earned him bonus points—or maybe the launch toward the island was deliberate help so he would arrive ahead of everyone else.
I looked up at the masked figure. Our eyes met perfectly. The hologram’s mouth moved, but the words never reached me; I had already broken the illusion.
So I casually pointed a hand toward the sea—on the side the students couldn’t see. Instant panic rippled through the faculty floating on the water. They hadn’t expected anyone to pinpoint their exact positions through both illusion and stealth.
The shock lasted only a second. They must have noticed the change in Luicia after I whispered to her. Typical. Completely useless.
“Kill the reaction. You trying to advertise that something’s up to the others?”
“But—!”
“No buts. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
I turned only my head and fixed her with a flat stare.
“This is an exam, and exams are competitions.”
“What about me? You told me.”
She said it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You’re on my side. That’s why. You’re going to link up with that guy anyway—are you planning to freeze up then too?”
“…Excuse me?”
“Draw a clear line between public and private. Don’t let him lose sight of the objective. Work with clear metrics. That’s your role, isn’t it?”
If she went charging off to “save everyone,” it would just become a headache. Someone had to firmly establish that this was still an exam and not a real ambush—a breakwater of sorts. Someone who trusted me enough to believe me once even if doubts remained. Someone who could stop that idiot from doing something stupid at the critical moment.
“Move with Riri. Looks like they’ve already decided their approach over there.”
Whoosh!!
The instant the words left my mouth, the black-clad figure dropped right in front of me and threw a punch. I slipped it. In the stretched time of Battle Focus I wrapped shadow around my hand into a gauntlet, met the next fist head-on, and shoved Luicia backward at the same time.
“Jang Sinwoo!!!”
“Do your job.”
Clang!!
The impact of fist against armored gauntlet rang out far harder than it should have. His expression never changed; I gritted my teeth against the pain that shot past muscle and into bone. Without even glancing at Luicia—who was still staring blankly behind me—I barked,
“Go already!!!”
“Ugh…!”
Only then did she move. Through the crow hidden in the shadows I confirmed she was gone, then simply dodged the next incoming fist instead of blocking it.
Even after everything she had just seen, I still couldn’t honestly say I trusted her. The only person I truly trusted was myself. But if a situation ever forced me to rely on her—and if I still couldn’t—then I would judge based on every observation, every thought, every analysis I had made of the person called Luicia.
If that judgment turned out wrong, it wouldn’t be because I trusted her; it would simply mean I had been lacking. Then I would correct my thinking next time.
I had believed I was pulling her onto my side, but in reality nothing had changed. Learning the secret only made her a more troublesome potential enemy. What I once thought might be poison or medicine had now clearly become poison. She could block my path, yet I couldn’t easily remove her. A person of interest who would only grow more obstructive with time.
Nothing was ever easy. Life never followed the plan. No matter how carefully I designed things, people who surpassed those designs kept popping up to torment me.
All that mental effort, all that emotional and temporal expenditure, and the result was this mediocre. So I decided to become the one who exceeded expectations. I would thoroughly trample any plan someone else had set and move exactly as I pleased, in the direction I wanted.
Standing here like this was already a waste of time.
Even while these adults played their half-assed make-believe, time flowed equally for everyone. The strong remained strong, and somewhere on this planet someone was growing stronger in real time. The fact that I alone seemed free of that cycle—and that I still felt impatient about it—pissed me off.
In every way, it was
“Bullshit. Truly.”
If this exam was a play, then they were the actors and the students were the audience to be deceived. But one member of that audience had instantly seen through the actors’ tricks. From their perspective—still wanting the show to continue—the best move was either to remove that audience member before he could tell the others, or to drag him into the play itself.
They chose the latter. Without asking my opinion, of course.
“It can’t be helped. All of this is for the sake of cultivating capable talent.”
“…Ha!”
I couldn’t help laughing at that.
See? The strong always push. They never consider what the weak might think; they simply force their grand causes and emotions onto others. Whether those causes are good or evil doesn’t matter to me.
I just hate being fucked with. I want to rest. I want them to leave me alone.
Even that simple wish is impossible in this world, and I hate it for that. I hate myself for not even being able to die if I wanted to. Most of all I hate the god who arbitrarily reincarnated me into this place.
Forcing things is always the privilege of the strong.
That’s why I’m trying to become strong.
So don’t get in my way.
…Because I really will kill every last one of you.
I chewed those thoughts thoroughly, swallowed them, and exhaled a sigh of pure irritation instead of murderous intent. If the desire to wipe everything clean was the fuse, then what I had just done was incineration. The annoyance and weariness on my face right now were nothing more than the smoke rising while the fire called “heavenly wrath” melted the sticky emotions inside me.
If there were a machine that measured emotional output, my current state would register at maybe thirty percent of what I actually felt. Letting any more out would burn the carefully built network of connections I had spent so much time cultivating. The aftermath would be even more troublesome, so I held it in.
Suppressing the feelings only made the desperate craving for rest burn hotter.
Fucking god-bastard.
I hope you drown face-down in a dish of water and die.