The Summoner's Respite (24)
Sip.
I lay back on a sunbed by the cruise ship's pool, drawing on the straw until a bright, sweet drink soothed my mildly parched throat.
It would have been perfect with a little alcohol in it, but unfortunately the hired bartender kept pouring me nothing but non-alcoholic concoctions, on account of my being a cadet. The taste wasn't bad, so I put up with it, yet deep down I still wanted to kick back at a resort like this with a proper drink in hand and a pleasant buzz.
The final day of the exam had arrived, yet in these five days not a single person besides me had made it to the ship. Thanks to that, I was enjoying a proper rest.
At first the faculty had watched me like some rare animal, restraining themselves, but when a day passed, then two, and nothing of note happened, they went back to enjoying their own vacations. After all, they'd lucked into some rare downtime—wasting it on pointless hovering would have been a pure loss.
I learned later that the personnel waiting on the ship and the criminals who would assault the cadets on the island had been decided in advance by lottery. The woman lounging elegantly beside me right now, sipping a cocktail—Hong Su-ah—was one of the lucky ones who'd drawn the rest side.
In an academy where not a single day stayed quiet, this was a rare stretch of legal downtime, so even a former soldier like her seemed eager to unwind. Honestly, I suspected being an academy instructor was more grueling than military service. No matter how many professors and outside personnel they brought in, how many people could actually handle that murderous schedule?
In that sense, this woman was a thoroughly capable elite. She had the skill, the looks, and a résumé that would make anyone nod in respect. She probably had a tidy sum saved up as well.
With so few people around these past few days, we'd ended up eating together whether I liked it or not, and her sense of money turned out to be worse than any nouveau riche. This cruise was, first and foremost, a facility for cadets. Basic amenities were free, but everything else was ruthlessly charged. Faculty therefore had to pay out of pocket for meals and other diversions.
Hong Su-ah was subject to the same rule. Sitting across from me while I enjoyed a modest meal, she placed her order with the waiter—and the total she racked up left me feeling a profound sense of psychological deprivation. Who the hell burns four figures on a single meal?
And yet, ta-da—there she was, right next to me.
She'd even tried to treat me as if the amount were nothing. I refused, of course. I had no desire to hand her any sense of financial superiority over pocket change like that. Strictly speaking, I had more than enough money to buy the same things myself. Setting aside the deeply ingrained commoner's mindset from my previous life, I simply saw no reason to sink that kind of cash into food. I could do it if I wanted to.
Still, no matter how I looked at it, torching a thousand on a meal was going too far. You eat it once and it's gone. Even if they used elixirs and mana-infused ingredients, everything still ended up digested and finished. Far better to spend that money on something that temporarily strengthened the body and run another dungeon. When you had a status window that let you see meaningful changes with your own eyes, throwing money at superstition-level nonsense was something I simply could not understand.
...Anyway, this woman was useful enough in her own way. Her flaws were an excessively self-centered way of thinking and a rigid insistence on hierarchy, but those could be fixed if one put in the effort. Looking at the overall score, she was definitely a high-quality asset.
My gaze, which must have looked as if I were appraising her, clearly didn't sit well with her. She turned to me with a sharply furrowed brow.
What of it? Who told you to sit next to me? The place is huge, yet you came over here of your own free will—that's on you. If you'd been a man I'd have already punched you in the face and you wouldn't have had a leg to stand on, you bitch.
"...Cadets are so consistent. It's almost refreshing to watch."
Far from shrinking back, I was shameless to the point of brazenness. Her high-pitched voice came out like a small dog growling, the words chewed and forced through gritted teeth. To show how little I cared, I simply drew on the straw again and emptied more of the cup.
Now then—what answer would irritate her the most?
Gulp.
The cold drink soothed a mouth that had grown a little warm under the sunlight. I swallowed, nodded to myself, and decided this was the way. I'd throw it out as casually and thick-skinned as possible.
"Is that a compliment?"
"Of course it's an insult. If my face right now looked like it was about to praise you, I'd be happy to recommend a good ophthalmologist this very second. Or would you prefer a psychiatrist? Just say the word. I'll arrange whichever you like."
The sheer exasperation on her face and the sharp way she snapped at me drew a cynical smile to my lips. She really did have good impact. That was exactly why I couldn't stop needling her.
She wasn't even half the age I'd been in my previous life, yet she kept putting on adult airs. Watching her was like watching a child straining on tiptoe to imitate a grown-up. That was the full extent of what I thought of her.
Lately she'd been doing nothing but commendable things, but the first impression she'd left had been so intensely bad that I still had a habit of deliberately making easy matters difficult and twisted for her. Somehow I felt that if I didn't poke her once or twice like this, she'd get full of herself again and revert to the days when she was so grating I almost wanted to brush her aside without a second thought.
With this type of person, it was more useful to keep them firmly in check than to give them free rein.
"...So, how are the teachers reacting after last time?"
The smile vanished from my face in an instant as I turned serious. Hong Su-ah looked faintly sick of me, let out a sigh, and opened her mouth.
"Between the fact that demon-worshippers were openly operating and that information on the academy's defensive barriers leaked to the Black Magic Tower, they're planning to turn everything upside down properly over the summer break."
Which meant she was looking at a vacation-less stretch of exhaustion, she added with a grumble. I turned the information over in my head.
There was still no sign of the great calamity Lee Se-rin had mentioned. The expression she'd worn when she confidently declared that the results of my Project Exile would shine brightly rose in my mind, and my mood soured at once.
Damn entertainment addict.
What was so important about her fun that she deliberately left out the critical details when giving me clues about a bothersome incident that might get people killed?
I hated fortune-tellers. No matter how elegantly they dressed themselves up as diviners or astrologers, at their core they were nothing more than con artists who deceived people. The genuine article existed now and then, but they were an extreme minority; the vast majority were trash who used emotion as bait to manipulate others. When that intensified they became cults; when it took concrete form they became politicians with distinctive mustaches who shouted propaganda.
I'd hated them in my previous life, and I hated them even more now that they came packaged with the peculiarity called skills. They spoke in vague, ambiguous terms while carefully avoiding any definite answer. They never made firm assertions that sounded like conclusions, and they never hesitated to quietly shift responsibility by saying the choice was ultimately mine. Why dress up the obvious in pretentious packaging?
In my previous life nine-tenths of it had been made-up nonsense designed to sound profound. In this life the real signs were actually there, which made it even more of a hassle. With the former, you could simply refuse to believe and be done with it. With the latter, refusing to believe meant you ended up taking the loss yourself.
The information Lee Se-rin had given me was closer to a prophecy—specifically, the kind that was guaranteed to happen. Even if some twist somehow threw the prophecy off course, she would simply force events to unfold that way, so the information effectively belonged to a "fixed future." Judging by her temperament, I suspected something would blow up in the not-too-distant future. That was precisely why I kept considering evolutions for my summons that focused on building or annihilating enemies.
In fact, most of the magic Kallion used fell into the area-of-effect category, and the "Magic Armor" I'd developed this time was also an effort to turn things that were a little lacking into something usable. She had deliberately mentioned something I invented and declared that an incident would occur. Adding Magic Armor to it didn't change the fundamental framework of the event itself.
The problem was when it would happen... This was only a gut-level prediction, but the D-Day Lee Se-rin had announced didn't feel all that far off. The growing restlessness I'd felt lately was probably because of that.
Telling anyone else wouldn't solve a thing. The event was already locked in. What I had to think about was the aftermath—how to produce a better result with the least amount of hassle. An answer definitely existed. That woman wanted to watch something entertaining, not something boring and hopeless.
So I had set out to grow strong enough to prepare a solution no matter what situation arrived. I'd rested enough. It was time to move again.
I sucked hard on the straw until every last drop of juice was gone, then rose from my seat.
"I've followed the rules and filled out the fifth day, so I'll be moving freely from here on."
It wasn't a question—it was a declarative order. Hong Su-ah shot me a weary look, then simply stretched out fully on the sunbed.
"...Haah. Even if I tried to stop you, you'd ignore me and do whatever you wanted anyway, so suit yourself."
"I'll drop by a nearby dungeon, kill some time, then head back to the academy, so don't worry."
"If you die, I'll be the one left looking bad, so just get yourself hurt a little."
Not even a token "don't get hurt," huh. Lucia was the same, and this woman was starting to treat me more and more casually. Still, it didn't feel bad. If they came at me like that, I could just respond in kind. I'd planned to handle things roughly even if they treated me with perfect courtesy, so in a way Hong Su-ah's attitude was the correct one.
Yeah—you had to look after your own rice bowl. I wasn't a nanny, and the days when I had to spoon-feed everyone had long since passed.
I stood, roughly straightened my clothes, draped my body in shadow, and gathered mana at my fingertips.
"For the official story, just say an emergency support request came in from a dungeon discovered nearby, and that I was the spare combat power they hastily dispatched."
In reality the one waiting in front of that dungeon wouldn't be someone from the Association but Lee Se-rin, yet what did it matter? The conversation had already been finished yesterday. Even if I said nothing, the "someone" who was peeping on all this would probably prepare things on their own.
"...You're still thorough. I'll handle the report and the cleanup myself."
"Appreciate the hard work."
I truly was glad, more times than I could count, that I'd cultivated people like her in advance. Offering that silent, not-quite-praise in her direction, I waved back at the woman who was shooing me away with a deeply furrowed brow as if swatting a mosquito, and flicked my fingers.
What I called forth was the dragon—the one I now felt incomplete without.
"Kallion."
Answering my summons, the creature appeared in a burst of light and immediately lowered its head to me. I stepped onto Kallion's head, formed a saddle of shadow, and settled into place.
"Let's go."
The destination was a dungeon sitting in the middle of the open ocean, far from this island—One Horn of Purple Blue.