Week 9 Midterms (10)
This habit of Seo Ye-in's—gutting a sentence front and back and tossing out nothing but the key words—was nothing new. So I kept my cool and asked again.
"You want to sleep together?"
"Yeah."
"Come to think of it, you slept pressed up against me yesterday, too."
"I sleep better."
Assembling Seo Ye-in's words into a full interpretation, the meaning ran something like this: Sleeping next to you helps me sleep, so tonight I'm sleeping next to you again.
Seo Ye-in edged a little closer and added one more thing.
"Take responsibility."
"Responsibility? For what?"
"Tiger plushie."
Interpretation: You left the tiger plushie behind, and without it I can't sleep well. Therefore, tonight you will take responsibility and become the tiger plushie.
'A perfectly valid argument.'
Making her bring the Transparent Ghillie Suit into the midterm in place of the tiger plushie had been a judgment call made purely in the name of efficiency, and the ghillie suit had indeed proven its worth over the past two days. That said, the price was that the sloth could no longer get a decent night's sleep—and that, admittedly, was on me. So I decided to accept her terms.
"Just this once. And no climbing on top of me. It gets a bit stuffy."
"Okay."
Seo Ye-in gave a small nod, pressed her sleeping bag flush against mine, and leaned her head against me. Less than five seconds later, she was fast asleep, breathing soft and even.
"...You really do sleep well."
Since when did my body come with medicinal properties? I had discovered in myself a genuine talent for being a pillow.
Meanwhile, as for Hong Yeon-hwa—
"Sleep... together...? Sleeps... better...? Take responsibility...? On top... of you...?"
She was covering her mouth with both hands, replaying our conversation in a dazed murmur. She looked like a machine that had short-circuited outright, unable to withstand the raging torrent of incoming information.
It was a night stacked with misunderstandings upon misunderstandings, but we all slept soundly regardless. We'd been moving hard all day and the fatigue had piled up to the brim—and Hong Yeon-hwa hadn't slept properly on the first night, either.
I'd been locked in a staring contest with a gray-furred cat in my dream, and when I opened my eyes, light was already seeping in from outside the cave. The final day of the midterm—day three.
We needed to get an early start, so I gave Seo Ye-in's sleeping bag a gentle shake.
"Young miss, time to wake up. It's morning."
"Five more minutes..."
The exact same reaction as yesterday. In that case, the waking method should be the same as yesterday's, too. I quietly began to put distance between my sleeping bag and hers.
Sure enough, a pale hand slipped out of the sleeping bag and slowly dragged mine back toward her.
"You can't leave..."
"Time to get up. Today's the last day."
You can sleep your fill this weekend, once the midterm's over. For now—no resting.
Leading Seo Ye-in—eyes a mere 0.3 percent open—out in front of the cave, I found Hong Yeon-hwa and Baek Jun-seok preparing grilled fish.
"Y-you're up...?"
"Yeah. Good morning."
"..."
Hong Yeon-hwa, still apparently harboring a whole catalog of misunderstandings, couldn't quite bring herself to meet my eyes. Deciding there was no need to launch into a lengthy explanation, I simply accepted her greeting and let it be.
Then Baek Jun-seok met my gaze and handed me a perfectly grilled fish.
"I heard the gist of it from Hong Yeon-hwa. First, I wanted to say thank you."
While he'd been standing watch outside the dungeon, I had readily provided food and shelter for Hong Yeon-hwa when she was left on her own. Not only that—I'd even gone so far as to trade pieces so she could complete a full Crystal set. As her childhood friend and her teammate, it was only right that he voice his gratitude.
I gave a calm nod.
"It wasn't much of a burden on our end anyway. No harm in helping each other out. Any objections to traveling together as one group?"
"None at all. It was my proposal to begin with."
This was Baek Jun-seok, who had felt the limits of his own strength in yesterday's two-against-four battle. Hong Yeon-hwa's firepower was more than a match for four opponents—or even more—but his own defense, he admitted, was a touch insufficient to shield her from four at once. In short, they needed more vanguard, so from Hong Yeon-hwa's team's standpoint, my proposal couldn't have been more welcome.
And so it was decided: our four, plus Go Hyeon-woo's team, would move as a single group of six.
After a simple breakfast, we descended from the rock garden and set off on foot. Hong Yeon-hwa shot me a look that seemed to ask where we were headed next, so I lifted my gaze to the sky.
"We've got a supply drop to catch. The jet'll be along any minute."
"Yeah, but... couldn't we just skip this one?"
We'd completed two of our three days and nights on the island, which meant the survival portion was effectively over. At the very least, we no longer had to worry about food or shelter. So one might well wonder, as Hong Yeon-hwa did, whether there was any real need to collect the drop.
"The last one is the most important."
Naturally, the academy was aware of that fact too, and the final supply drop carried somewhat different items—things that would affect the midterm directly or indirectly, rather than pure survival gear. The [Goblin Whistle] I'd obtained yesterday was a prime example.
"So let's split off just for the drop, then regroup."
"Got it."
I gave them a rough idea of where the boxes would fall, then parted ways with Hong Yeon-hwa's team. We had time to spare, so Seo Ye-in and I strolled along at a leisurely pace and arrived at the supply point precisely on schedule.
The moment we set foot on the wide flat rock where we'd received the first day's supplies—
Vreeeeeng—!
Right on cue, the jet appeared over the island. Just like the previous two times, it scattered a whole shower of parachute-laden boxes and vanished. Before long, a tiny supply box the size of a palm touched down in front of us.
Inside was a triangular pillar crafted from a material as clear as glass.
◈ A triangular pillar of glass-clear material.
◈ Held up to a Sanctuary, it splits the light into two beams.
In other words, an item that let you charge two Crystals at once. Charging two at a time meant half the time spent at the Sanctuary—and that much less exposure to the other teams' interference. Naturally, it was extremely useful, and Hong Yeon-hwa's team and Go Hyeon-woo's team had likely each pulled one as well.
I turned to Seo Ye-in.
"Shall we go rejoin the others?"
"Let's."
With our supplies secured, the smart play was to link up with Hong Yeon-hwa's and Go Hyeon-woo's teams as quickly as possible. Wandering around as a pair was asking for a bad encounter with a larger group. So we picked up the pace and made for the rendezvous point.
But just as we were drawing near—
Thud. Thud.
Heavy footsteps rolled through the air. Instead of avoiding them, we walked straight toward the sound.
On day three of the midterm, the caliber of the monsters that spawned stepped up another notch. And among them, naturally—
"Guuooooh..."
—was the Ogre. A massive frame, reflexes far too quick for its size, tremendous strength, and a hide so thick that most attacks couldn't punch through it. The most powerful species to appear in the practical evaluations so far.
Of course, to Seo Ye-in and me, it hardly registered as a threat. Just a week ago, in the crystal battle, we'd come through without so much as a graze and posted a perfect game. If anything, Seo Ye-in had been disappointed back then that she hadn't managed to fell an Ogre herself, and had even put in extra practice with Ahn Jungmi afterward.
Clack.
And so Seo Ye-in loaded her mana gun as though she'd been waiting for this very moment. But I stopped her.
"Hold on."
"...?"
Something unusual was visible on the Ogre. Around its ankle sat something like an anklet of iron chain, and at its center hung something ominous and red. I had a very strong suspicion what it was—
'Still, I'd better confirm it.'
So I gave Seo Ye-in her orders.
"This time, just dodge."
"Okay."
"Guuooooh..."
The Ogre finally spotted us. The instant I darted sideways, it fixed on Seo Ye-in, now standing alone, and charged.
Pew! Pew!
Seo Ye-in fired just two short shots from her mana gun. Naturally, that wasn't nearly enough to so much as scratch its hide—all it did was stoke its temper.
"Guuoooh—!"
Of course, drawing its aggro was exactly her intent. She lightly evaded its swinging club and gave ground, and the club snapped two innocent trees in half instead. Next, the Ogre thrust out the hand that wasn't gripping the club—but Seo Ye-in slipped smoothly aside with Featherwalk.
While Seo Ye-in flitted this way and that, holding its attention, I closed in stealthily from its blind spot. Then I drove my index finger into its thigh.
A lethal demonic finger technique that drives persistent extreme yin frost deep into the victim's meridians.
Shunk. My index finger turned into a razor-sharp ice awl and bored through the Ogre's thick hide with almost absurd ease. The next instant, a numbing cold invaded its flesh.
Crrrack-crunch.
From deep within the Ogre's body came the sound of something freezing solid at a terrifying rate. For once, the creature panicked, whipping its head around—and only then spotted me, the one who'd planted the Demon Finger in its thigh.
"Guuoh...?"
But it was far too late to react. By now, the cold spreading through its body had surely already reached its heart.
"..."
Thud.
In the end, the Ogre looked at me one final time—and crumpled where it stood. Even with its life spent, the frost kept crackling on, as if intent on freezing whatever scraps of it remained.
When Seo Ye-in drew near, I pointed at the iron chain wound around the Ogre's ankle.
"Shoot this."
Pewpewpewpew!
Seo Ye-in concentrated her fire, and the chain snapped under the barrage of magic bullets—thanks to which I could cleanly strip away only what hung from the ankle. Looking it over closely, I found a red liquid sealed inside a syringe-like container.
'Figures.'
Just as I'd suspected, they had tampered with the midterm. And one of their tricks was strapping this syringe to an Ogre.
Just then, two presences came rushing toward us. I had a good idea who they were, so we simply looked over without bothering to go on guard. Sure enough, it was Hong Yeon-hwa and Baek Jun-seok, returning with their supply boxes in hand. The moment they spotted the fallen Ogre, they both flinched.
"You two... took it down?"
"Yeah."
"..."
Judging by the astonishment written across Hong Yeon-hwa's face, I could roughly guess what was going through her head. Something along the lines of, That monster of a human being has gone and done another monstrous thing.
Just like Seo Ye-in, the duo of Hong Yeon-hwa and Song Cheon-hye had also failed to bring down an Ogre in the crystal battle. And yet—how long had it been since we'd split up and regrouped? And in that sliver of time, we'd killed one?
But there was something more important at hand. Letting my expression turn grave, I pointed in turn at the broken chain near the Ogre's ankle and at the syringe.
"This was attached to the Ogre's ankle."
"...!"
Hong Yeon-hwa and Baek Jun-seok stared at the red liquid inside the syringe with equally serious eyes. Baek Jun-seok asked,
"One look is enough to tell it's no ordinary item. Do you know what it is?"
"I have one guess."
"What is it?"
I let the moment hang for a few seconds, then answered.