Midterms (3)
The morning of the seventh day since the midterm exams began dawned bright.
“Haaaam…” Even with my eyes closed, the glaring light filtered through my eyelids, making me toss and turn until I finally gave up and dragged myself upright. “So sleepy…”
“Are you awake, Plea? I already drew some wash water, so start with a quick rinse.”
“Yeah…” I answered, but my brain was still half-lost in dreamland. When I just stood there after saying I understood, Aria let out a long sigh and walked over.
“Up we go. No more laziness—wake up properly.”
“Mmm…” Aria grabbed me under the arms, hoisted me clean off the ground, and cradled me against her. I wriggled my own arms around her neck, instinctively seeking stability. Once she decided the position was secure, she carried me over to the basin and splashed cold water across my face with her free hand.
“Eek! It’s freezing!”
“There, now you’re awake. Hold still while I finish washing you.”
Aria pinned my thrashing head in place and rapidly splashed water over me—splash, splash, splash. There wasn’t any soap, so the whole process took less than a minute. The moment she set me back down on the ground, I finally snapped back to reality and shook my face like a wet dog.
“Ugh… I’m actually awake now. I told you before, you don’t have to wash me, Aria.”
“You wouldn’t get up on your own. Remember what happened on the third day? Siwoo tried shaking you awake and you punched him unconscious.”
“That was…” My mouth clamped shut. Yeah, day three. Siwoo kept bothering me while I was sleeping, so I’d swung at him half-conscious… Good thing I hadn’t channeled any real mana into it. If I had, I’d probably be standing trial for murder right about now.
“A-anyway! I must be heavy, so you really don’t have to carry me around just to wash my face…”
“You’re not heavy at all. You’re barely 150 centimeters, Plea.”
“That’s not the point!”
Legally I was an adult, but after several years spent in a coma-like state, my height and weight were stuck at middle-school levels. By esper standards I probably wasn’t heavy, but that wasn’t what I meant. I used to be a man in his thirties, damn it. Now I was being princess-carried by a girl who had just become an adult so she could wash my face? I wanted to die of embarrassment.
“Hehe, I understand. I won’t do it starting tomorrow, so will you forgive me?”
“Tomorrow’s the last day of the exams…” I pressed a hand to my forehead. Aria giggled as if that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard and dumped the used wash water onto the ground.
“Then we should get moving. Breakfast first, then the final hunt?”
“Yeah. Today really is the last day.”
I followed Aria back to base camp. Siwoo had taken over cooking duty and was setting out the food.
“Is Plea all washed up?”
“Yes, nice and clean. No need to worry, Siwoo.”
“Are you two her parents? Stop talking about whether I got washed or not.”
I grumbled as I sat at the makeshift table. Siwoo brought over perfectly warmed instant rice and a few side dishes. One spoonful was enough to fill my mouth with the familiar, comforting taste of ordinary packaged food. It was nothing special, but it was good.
While we ate, I remembered the promise I’d made with Camilla earlier. I snapped my fingers to get their attention and told them about it.
“If Camilla fires a flare into the sky, we head straight there? Why?”
“She said she’d only shoot it if she was in danger. So if we see that signal, it means Camilla’s in trouble. She could get seriously hurt—we should check on her, right?”
“That makes sense, but… someone as skilled as Camilla would feel threatened by a midterm illusion demon?”
Siwoo had fought alongside Camilla during the entrance exam, so he seemed skeptical that she could possibly be in danger from something like this. Still, when I insisted, he reluctantly nodded.
“Well… it’s not like it’s hard to do.”
“Perfect! We’ve finished eating, so let’s get going. We still need to rack up points, don’t we?”
After cleaning up, our party set out again to hunt more illusion demons.
“There’s one over here!”
Siwoo tapped both our shoulders and pointed. A lone illusion demon was shambling around the area.
“Why does it feel like there are way more of them now…?”
“It’s the seventh day.”
The illusion demons in this exam didn’t replace each other daily. Instead, the existing ones stayed while new ones were added on top. The further the exam went, the more students dropped out—yet the number of demons kept growing. Fewer hunters, more prey.
“And the later it gets, the stronger the new demons are. So the number you can hunt in a single day naturally drops.”
“I see… Plea, does that one look strong?”
“That guy? From the face, I’d say it’s one that’s been around since day four. You could probably take it alone.”
“Huh? On day four, didn’t Aria and I have to team up to beat even one?”
“That’s because you’ve gotten a lot stronger since then.”
Siwoo’s growth was absurd. Yesterday’s Siwoo couldn’t hold a candle to today’s. Watching it made even me feel proud.
“Anyway, I’ll soften it up with the minigun like usual, then you two finish it together. Sound good?”
They both nodded. I unslung the minigun from my back and opened fire. The rattling roar echoed across the area. The demon’s body bloomed with bruises and puncture wounds as several rounds punched clean through it. Before I could kill it outright, I stopped shooting and gave Aria and Siwoo the signal. They were already coiled like springs.
“Hah!”
With a sharp shout, the two of them charged in, swords drawn. The illusion demon was already half-crippled by my barrage. It couldn’t put up any real resistance before it was sliced to pieces.
“That was way too easy. Throw in Aria’s buffs and it feels less like a test and more like farming points.”
“My buffs are pretty excellent, if I do say so myself.”
“You two with your buff and disruption combo really are something else.”
When Aria and Siwoo started laughing smugly, it was so annoying I grumbled. Aria just smiled with her eyes and ruffled my hair wildly.
“Hey! What the heck!”
“You’re just too cute.”
“Whatever…”
I batted her hand away and tried to fix my messy hair. Siwoo was smirking like he’d just watched the best show of his life, so I kicked him in the shin and kept walking. Ignoring his hopping and groaning, Aria and I continued searching. Before long we spotted another demon to the northwest.
“Found one.”
“Where?”
I pointed. Both of them stared hard, then rubbed their eyes as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
“Is that really it?”
“No way… why did the difficulty spike so hard on the last day?”
“Yeah, that one definitely looks nasty.”
Just from a glance it had the classic look of something that would appear on the final day—ferocious face, blades running down its arms. Normally I’d think, Wow, that looks strong, and leave it at that. But the reason they were rubbing their eyes was something else.
“That thing’s clearly over four meters.”
“I’d say closer to six.”
The overwhelming size. Siwoo had guessed roughly, but I knew the exact measurements.
The very first seventh-day demon I run into is an elite monster… Is this good luck or bad luck?
These giant illusion demons only appeared on the seventh day. They looked vaguely like Pokémon and possessed power that matched their ridiculous size. That meant this thing had a natural advantage against both Siwoo and Aria.
Siwoo’s ability—Disruption—sealed an opponent’s powers. Aria’s Blessing strengthened allies. Together they could beat enemies two ranks above them if those enemies relied on abilities. But against something that fought with raw size and overwhelming physical strength, their powers weren’t nearly as effective.
Still… if those two manage to take it down, Siwoo would grow massively…
While I was hesitating over what to do with the giant, Siwoo tapped my shoulder and pointed at the sky.
“What… huh?”
A red sphere of flame was rising into the air. In this entire uninhabited island, there was only one person who could pull that off.
Camilla’s magic bullet. She had used the signal I’d told her about.
“Then there’s no need to hesitate.”
I quickly pulled out my minigun, took aim at the giant demon, and fired. I had originally planned to use it as practice for Siwoo’s growth, but something more important had come up. The six-meter behemoth let out a piercing shriek as my barrage hit it, then collapsed into a perforated corpse that crumbled into dust.
“Aria, Siwoo. You remember what I said earlier, right?”
“Yeah. Let’s hurry.”
“No. You two go by yourselves.”
“What?”
“Go! Now!”
I shouted sharply. They looked startled, but after seeing my serious expression they nodded and ran off to support Camilla.
“Those two should be enough.”
Normally I would have gone with them, but Camilla’s power had been ridiculously boosted. There was no way three of them couldn’t handle a single C-rank demon. Which meant there was only one thing left for me to do.
“Time to go see the face of the bastard behind all this.”
It was time to pay a visit to the mastermind who had released that C-rank demon.