The Academy Students Are Way Too Strong (1)
A magic show, the kind you watch while laughing and talking over one another with the people you love.
What unfolded before my eyes was not a spectacle of wonder. It was unreal in an entirely different sense.
"Kyaaaaa!!!"
"R-run!!"
"What the fuck is going on...?!"
The crowd shattered into panic and bolted for the exits all at once.
The academy grounds had gates on every side, the main entrance among them. If Eilenna and I ran from the western hill, we could be clear of the place in no time.
As if I don't know that.
Anyone with eyes who wasn't a fool could see it. Even so, I couldn't make my feet move toward an exit.
Eilenna spoke in a rush.
"Jinwoo, we get ourselves clear first. Hurry!"
"Wait. Then the people at our stall..."
"Ah, damn it..."
Brunok, Ruri, James, Jerry. Everyone who had gathered to see this job through was in danger.
Worse, the stall sat on a lonely stretch of road in the northwest. There was no straight line to the northern exit; you had to swing south and circle out. Which meant the staff still there, and the customers who hadn't left, were rats trapped in a jar.
Eilenna must have realized it too. She turned a stricken look toward the sky in the direction of the shop. Mercifully, no black smoke was rising out of the northwest yet, and nothing out there was coming apart.
I racked my brain.
Arthur? He'll be guarding Ishilla. And Lady Ermia — where is she, and what is she doing? Holding the monsters off?
Birds of a feather. How many people good in a fight does a cook who runs a shop even have among his acquaintances? Arthur and Ermia were the closest thing, and both of them would already be fighting their own battles wherever they stood.
"I understand how you feel. But... there's nothing we can actually do. Jinwoo, let's get out fast and find someone who can help. All right?"
"Hah... Yeah. That's the sensible call."
I dry-washed my face with both hands and looked toward the central plaza. After that roar and the column of black smoke, the square had gone abruptly quiet.
I would have liked it to be our side cutting down every monster until silence settled in, but this mess was not going to resolve itself that neatly. More likely the monsters had simply scattered in pursuit of the people who fled, and that was why it had gone still.
Before long the capital guard would send reinforcements, and houses from the territories near the capital might dispatch troops as well. If things turned truly ugly, even the imperial knights could be mobilized. Following Eilenna was the wise choice.
I caught her hand and ran for the exit.
Then she glanced back at me, and that glance opened a blind spot for a fraction of a second. Through it, a monster came charging like something mad.
I had no idea what kind it was. I could have stared at the thing all day and still not known. Part of that was my own ignorance of monsters. Part of it was that the creature was simply too hideous to make sense of.
"Gwee, gwee. Gwee. Gwee. I'll eat you!!"
"Nngh— kyaaa—!!"
Spitting broken scraps of language, it closed to arm's reach. In a few seconds at most, those vicious claws would reach Eilenna.
Shove her clear? No. It would just come at her again. Pull her into my arms, then? But while I was drawing her in, those claws might strike first.
Time stretched thin, slow as a long pull of honey taffy. I searched for the best choice the man I was now could make.
This is the only way.
If I counted the follow-up, simply dodging would not be enough. So I pulled Eilenna in and stepped into her at the same time, wrapping her up in my arms.
"J-Jinwoo?!"
"Eilenna. Get a spell ready. The moment it hits me, attack."
Eilenna's small, neat lips parted. There was no time left to put anything into words.
"Kyaaaak!!"
I forced myself to ignore the chilling cry right behind my head, and squeezed my eyes shut.
Brunok was hauling beer in a daze when he happened to glance up at the sky over the central plaza.
It was past nine at night by a good five minutes. This was the hour when the magic show ought to have been rattling the heavens.
"Hm? Isn't this when the magic show's on?"
"It is, nya. Something wrong, nya?"
"No, it was flashing all over the place earlier, so I figured it'd started... but now there's nothing but black smoke going up."
"Ehh? There is, nya?"
At his doubt, Ruri rose onto her toes and looked at the sky. Just as he'd said, black smoke was billowing overhead, and then—
"Kyaaaaa—!!"
"R-run—"
"Hnya? Was that a scream?"
"A scream? You sure you didn't mishear?"
"Aaaaaagh!!! I was gonna confess to her at this festival. I even bought the bouquet!!"
"You idiot. You should've told her ages ago. I saw her watching the festival with some other guy."
"You think I don't know that? That? Me? Graaah!! I'm just gonna drink..."
Right on cue, a noisy wail rose from the next table. Watching them, Ruri let it go with a private did I mishear?
"Wahaha!! Last night of the festival, everybody drink!"
"Yeaaah!!"
"Whew... Vacation at last. I want to get home and see my family."
"You little bastard. You sure you actually want to go home? Talk about tempting fate."
Even now, Kang Jinwoo's stall was packed shoulder to shoulder. They had thought the magic show would thin the crowd at least a little, but from the first day to the last, customers had crammed in until there wasn't a gap left.
Ruri and Brunok were tired to the bone, and still they steadied themselves by picturing the pay about to land in their hands.
Then it came — a heavy tread from the street toward the central plaza. Thud. Thud. Thud.
It wasn't only Ruri, whose beastkin hearing was keen. Brunok, James, Jerry, and even the customers bellowing over one another all turned their heads at the sound.
"What is that? They firing cannons at the magic show?"
"No way. I saw the seniors rehearsing this time. There wasn't any magic like that."
"Hmm... That's exactly what an ogre's footsteps sound like. Takes me back. A great big ogre, and you start at the ankle and work your way up, one cut at a time..."
"There he goes again. Hey, you. You telling us you went toe to toe with an ogre?"
"No. Figured I couldn't win even if I carved it from the ankle up, so I ran for it."
"Ah. Sorry."
The customers kept chattering without much sense of alarm. In a way, that was only natural. In all the decades of the festival there had never once been a terror incident, and the academy had the peerless Ermia Belfast stationed on its grounds.
Even so, something was wrong. Brunok and Ruri felt an unease they couldn't put into words. It belonged to instinct, beyond any logical explanation. Still, they were certain they had caught the smell of blood.
Thud.
The mysterious tremor in the earth came again, louder and clearer. Tension crept, little by little, across the faces of customers who had been gossiping as if nothing were amiss.
Before anyone noticed, Kang Jinwoo's stall had gone frighteningly still. Staff and customers alike held their breath and stared out at the street.
"Guwoooooooh!!!!"
"An— an ogre!!!"
At last it showed itself: a hulking giant of gray-green, an ogre. Not one or two. Five of them.
To ordinary people who could barely manage a single goblin, five ogres were a natural disaster.
Crash, bang!
The monsters they had half dismissed as impossible were actually there, and the customers lurched to their feet. They fled in a disordered scramble, and the cheap tables and chairs shrieked as they died underfoot.
"Well, I'll be... shit. Live long enough and you see everything. Hey, Ruri."
"Uu, uuuu..."
"Hey!! Get a grip, you cat brat! You think the ogres vanish if you cover your ears and shut your eyes?!"
"Ugh, how was I supposed to hide that I'm catfolk..."
"You walk around advertising it, and you thought one hat plopped on your head would hide you? You're an adventurer, aren't you? Quit yapping and pick up a weapon."
Steel hissed free. Brunok's bark snapped Ruri back to herself, and he hefted the axe he used to broach oaken beer casks as if it weighed nothing. It had always looked too much like a battle axe to waste on tapping barrels. Now it earned its keep.
Ruri stared at him, aghast.
"A-are you insane, nya?! You're gonna fight that thing, nya?"
"And where would we run? The fence is high as a castle wall, and the exit's back the way those bastards came. Fighting's the only option."
"Th-that's true, but..."
"I don't want to die either. This is the bare minimum of looking out for ourselves. Got it? Grab a butchering knife if that's all we've got. Better than nothing."
"H-hnya... Fine, nya. I'll do it if I have to, nya!!"
Once she had made up her mind, Ruri flung her hat aside and drew her tail out of her long trousers. All she had done was bare her ears and tail, and yet her sense for killing intent and her balance sharpened several times over.
"S-save me...!"
"Hiiiek... Mom..."
The people who had tried to flee in a panic ended up packed into a corner of the stall again. With no hole to slip through, huddling together was the least bad option they had.
"Guwoooooooh!!!"
The ogres reached the front of the awning and loosed a savage roar. Brunok and Ruri winced at the sound and dropped into fighting stances.
"Here they come! Get ready, Ruri!"
"Uh— uhhh! What about that guy sprawled out asleep over there, nya?!!"
"What?"
On the brink of the clash, what snagged Ruri's eye was a student. The same one who had been gulping liquor and moaning about a confession at the festival, until he drank himself into a stupor.
"Ugh, why's it so loud... whoooa?!"
"Hey! Run over here, now!!"
"H-hiiiek!! Stay back!!!"
The student, woken from his drunken sleep, saw the ogre looming right in front of him, yelped, and scrambled up. Terror had locked his legs, though, and he ignored Brunok's shout to run. He simply hauled up whatever mana he had and fired a blind bolt of lightning.
Fwoosh—!
Damn it. That'll only piss them off...!
An ogre's tough hide didn't so much as scratch under ordinary magic. A stout dwarf warrior could bring his full strength down on one and barely draw a little blood. Better to slow it with cold magic and aim for an Ice Shatter. Lightning, to an ogre, was nothing but a tingling massage.
Brunok squeezed his eyes shut against the carnage about to follow.
What reached his ears was not the sound of a human being brutally crushed.
"K-guwoooh..."
"Wh-what. The fuck. Why are they so weak...?"
Thud.
The ogre let out a feeble death rattle and collapsed. The lightning that had bounced off it struck every one of the ogres still clustered together, and all five of them were roasted crisp.
"What... what is this."
"Whoa, are academy students normally this strong, nya...?"
Brunok's and Ruri's eyes went wide. The ordinary folk trembling behind them were no less dumbfounded.
The daze did not last long.
"We're alive!!! Hell yeah!!"
"Damn right! Hey, your confession bombed, but your magic sure didn't! For a mage, that's what matters!"
"You son of a bitch!!!"
Crackle—!!
People shouted with the joy of having survived. In the middle of it, the student flung a carefully weakened bolt at the man who had tossed out that jab. The man went down with a yelp, and still he was grinning ear to ear, delighted just to be alive.
"Was I always this strong?"
The student muttered it, opening and closing his hand.
Brunok and Ruri set their weapons back down and got on with cleaning up the stall.
"I'll help."
"Me too."
"Thanks..."
James and Jerry, who had fled quietly into a corner, awkwardly joined the cleanup as well. All that remained was the stench of thoroughly roasted ogre, stabbing foully at the nose.