Fixed Zone (2)

At its heart, Dragon Slayer Academy was a single-player game — but it also offered content where players competed and went head-to-head with one another.

Certain practical evaluations and events, for instance, had their results tallied across every player in the academy.

And naturally, I had been rank one.

Whichever ranking I pulled up, my name sat at the very top of the list — and not just at the top, either, but with a sizable gap yawning between me and second place.

In the Fixed Zone, that gap had been wider still.

Wide enough that the word overwhelming actually applied. That was how, embarrassing as it was to admit, I'd ended up with the nickname God. That was how untouchable I was in the Fixed Zone — nobody could push me down there, no matter how hard they tried.

I skimmed the notification and called up my status window.

Just as the Fixed Zone's rules demanded, every skill, trait, and piece of equipment was locked down to F-rank. For my part, since nearly everything I owned had been E-rank to begin with, little had actually changed. Besides, a skill like Hummingbird had never been about raw destructive power in the first place — its real job was controlling enemies — so even at F-rank it would perform much the same.

Of course, this time I intended to seal away even the Hummingbird and take on the challenge using nothing but my basic physical abilities.

Time to loosen the body up.

Partly to see exactly how much I had in me right now, I swept my gaze over my surroundings.

The terrain of the Mist Forest was generated at random the instant a challenger stepped through the portal.

But even randomness is, in the end, something a person built.

Broadly speaking, there were a handful of standardized patterns. Master those, and you could predict when, where, what kind of monster, and how many would be summoned — and act accordingly. Reading the layout of the brush, trees, weeds, and boulders that ringed me, along with the direction the mist was drifting...

Pattern C.

I settled into the open space near the boulders, gripped the Staff of Earth in both hands, and hoisted it high above my head. Holding that pose kicked off the countdown.

Black, filthy smoke came boiling up out of the empty air before me, and out of it popped a green monster the size of a young child — a goblin, the F-rank staple.

"Grrk, grruk-grrk."

The goblin's yellow eyes flashed the instant it materialized as it hunted for something to kill. But the first thing to enter its field of vision was a thick wooden staff plummeting straight down toward the crown of its head.

Crunch!

I pulverized the first goblin's skull, relieved it of its dagger, and a hard swing of the staff to the left burst a second head in the same motion. That goblin's dagger joined the collection, and I bolted for the brush, where three plumes of black smoke were rising. Before they could even finish taking goblin shape, the staff was already moving.

Crunch, crunch, crunch!

Three goblins converted into points the instant they were summoned — and in the very same spot, a good ten-odd clumps of black smoke came roiling up together. I readied the staff for another sweep.

Two orcs at seven o'clock. Three, two, one seconds out.

The moment I counted one, I snatched up two daggers and hurled them over my shoulder.

Thud, thud!

"Kgh." "Khhk."

Mid-sweep through the goblins in front of me, two wet impacts and two short, strangled last words sounded at my back. I stored the Staff of Earth in my inventory.

Weapons grow on trees now, anyway.

Arms full of the daggers the goblins had dropped, I sprinted for the corpses of the orcs I'd just put down, scattering the blades in every direction as I ran.

Thud-thud-thud-thud!

The goblins swarming in from all sides each took a dagger between the eyes and crumpled where they stood.

Next.

Between them, the two dead orcs had been carrying a short sword and an axe. One in each hand, I raced for the next summoning site. Between a pair of trees, one large plume of smoke and a cluster of smaller ones were rising.

Six goblins on the left, four on the right, two orcs, and a troll bringing up the rear. Three, two, one.

This time, too, the instant I hit one, I dove into the smoke and spun my body like a windmill.

Shrrk-krk-krk!

I wiped out the trash mobs in a single heartbeat and charged the freshly summoned troll. Before it could even think about resisting, I drove the short sword into its heart, twisted, kicked the hilt to bury it deeper, and finished by bringing the axe down on its forehead.

Crunch!

On to the next site, and the one after that. The monsters barely finished materializing before their heads went flying.

To any third-party observer, it would have looked like blatant cheating — as if someone were deliberately summoning monsters wherever I happened to be headed. But this wasn't cheating. It was the product of long experience compounded by meticulous analysis.

Good. That'll do for now.

Figuring the time had come, I halted mid-stride toward the next summoning site and checked the scoreboard.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The result was a touch disappointing.

683 points in three minutes, huh...

I really have gotten rusty. Back in the day, when I was busy setting new records, three minutes in the Mist Forest meant at least 800 ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠points.

Either way, my original objective had been accomplished.

The Placement Exam quest's objectives were at least one win in the PvP assessment and a top-50% finish in the dungeon clearance. Since the top-50% cutoff usually hovered somewhere between 400 and 500 points, 683 would seat me comfortably in the upper-middle ranks.

There were still seven minutes left on the clock, but I felt no need to pad the score. Granted, even coasting, first place in the clearance exam was a foregone conclusion — but if I drew that much attention to myself, my withdrawal, the one that had already earned me jeers of coward from the spectators, would have been for nothing.

"Huh? Kim Ho's ranked first?"

"Now that you look into it, isn't that guy actually crazy strong?"

"Then why did he sit out the PvP?"

"Maybe they just went easy on him?"

More or less that — I'd end up as the talk of the town, one way or another. Same as with the PvP assessment: until I'd built up skill enough to carry that kind of fame, I needed to keep my ability hidden. And so the Placement Exam ended here.

"I'm calling it."

Everything faded to gray and froze in place, and a message printed itself before my eyes. The remaining time, of course, kept ticking down.

"Yes."

"No."

An exit promptly yawned open, and I strolled out with all the leisure in the world.

Weaklings.

Lee Sudok scowled. A face that was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fierce on the best of days turned even more vicious, and the students passing by found their eyes dropping to the ground without their quite meaning to.

At the end of his gaze sat the weaklings in question — the failures. Long after the exam had begun, they still lay sprawled across the floor or sat slumped where they'd collapsed.

Still can't get up, huh.

It wasn't in Lee Sudok's nature to bring it up first, but by an instructor's discretion he was entitled to grant a retired student the chance to try again. Had even one of them pleaded for it, had one so much as asked whether there was any way to make up for the loss, he would have given them that chance. But not one of those beaten-down students showed the slightest sign of it. Their fighting spirit seemed to have snapped clean in two.

Over a little thing like this.

Lee Sudok had been a student at Dragon Slayer Academy once himself. The road he'd walked had been a bramble-choked path far harsher and more treacherous than this one — and even in that environment, he had clawed his way up from the very bottom, tenaciously, inch by inch. Small wonder, then, that watching them give up so easily left a sour taste in his mouth.

"......"

His eyes drifted sideways. One of the sealed portals split open, and a student slipped out. If he remembered right, the boy had gone in three or four minutes ago — which meant he hadn't lasted the full ten.

Retired again, I see.

He didn't know the name well, but the face had stuck with him: the one who'd withdrawn from the PvP placement exam, claiming he 'wasn't feeling well.' And sure enough, now he'd retired from the clearance exam too.

With guts rotted through like that, what dragon does he plan to slay?

Dragons aside, the boy would be lucky to hunt so much as a B-rank boss even after graduation. If one of his own underlings had pulled such a pathetic stunt, he'd have beaten him into a bloody pulp on the spot — but this was Dragon Slayer Academy, and that boy was a student of his homeroom class.

And I'm expected to teach a creature like that as if he were a student.

His head was already beginning to ache. Request from the Hero of a previous generation or not, he shouldn't have accepted so rashly — Lee Sudok regretted it, over and over.

But the next moment, he flinched and turned his head.

Hold on...

An inexplicable sense of wrongness had just brushed past him. He turned ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the feeling over in his mind, and only when his eyes passed over the faces of the failures did he understand it.

That boy walked out.

The safety systems of the artificial dungeons 'ejected' a student by forced teleportation magic the instant their safety came under threat during the clearance exam. That was why the failures came tumbling out of the dungeon and hit the floor rolling — with aftereffects that left them addled and out of their senses for a good while afterward, as a bonus. And yet that boy had walked out perfectly fine, without a care in the world, and was now checking the leaderboard. Whatever else it meant, at the very least he hadn't been 'ejected.'

Lee Sudok's gaze followed the boy's line of sight down the leaderboard.

Upper-middle ranks?

That score was absolutely not something a person could put up in three minutes. To exaggerate only slightly, even a polymorphed dragon showing up couldn't have managed it. Then had he stayed the full ten minutes before coming out? The boy had clearly been inside for barely three minutes — had he misread it?

A man who kept his composure cold and level at all times, Lee Sudok felt, just this once, a flicker of bewilderment.

Kim Ho, was it.

Lee Sudok committed the name to memory — with a vow to check the replay later, without fail.