Chapter 3
Every genre has its own formula.
The thing people call clichés.
When you thought about it, that was only natural. For a collection to qualify as a specific genre, it needed to share certain common elements.
Take a classic Hero’s tale, for example. In Ivan’s opinion, the format of that stale old genre went something like this:
A Demon King, or some other great adversary, appears.
The Hero forms a party.
The Hero sets out on a journey to overthrow the Demon King.
The party defeats the Demon King’s officers one after another.
One of those officers becomes infatuated with the Hero.
At the end of the journey, the Demon King dies and peace returns to the world.
Based on that formula, Ivan had believed this world was a classic Hero’s tale.
Now, however, he was desperately dredging up Kim Sunwoo’s thirty-year-old memories and compiling a new list.
What was the formula for an academy story?
The Princess had talked about “winter coming” as though she belonged to House St—k or something, but she was wrong.
It was January.
Naturally, it was already the middle of winter, and they had even held a grand New Year’s party at the orphanage not long ago.
In other words, there was still some time before the university semester began.
“An academy story....”
Ivan sank into thought, longing for the reference materials he had impulsively burned thirty years earlier.
He was fairly certain there had been at least a few academy stories among them. He could no longer remember their titles, but they seemed to have been about the Heavenly Demon attending an academy, or someone practicing quick-draw swordsmanship there, or a Taoist disciple going there, or perhaps a sorcerer.
For now, he decided to write down whatever came to mind.
They were, in a sense, the established rules of academy stories.
Anything can come to an academy.
Literally anything, from cowboys to Heavenly Demons.
That meant the category naturally included assassins planning to stab the Hero party’s precious sons and daughters in the back.
An academy will inevitably be invaded.
Sadly, academies were attacked more frequently than strategic fortresses on the front line.
Demons will infiltrate the academy.
At this point, the Demon King was dead, all Seven Dragon Generals had either died or disappeared, and the demons had been enslaved or driven to the ends of the earth.
Even setting aside the question of how one could suddenly infiltrate a mere educational institution in the middle of the Allied Kingdoms—
An academy was guaranteed to contain either demon sympathizers or actual demons in hiding.
He could exclude demi-humans like goblins and orcs.
They did not exactly possess the sort of appearance one could conceal.
It was safer to assume that creatures capable of disguising themselves, such as succubi or demons, had infiltrated the school.
There will be a traitor among the students or faculty.
He needed to identify the faculty member who was strangely hostile toward the protagonist.
It was widely known that, statistically speaking, if the protagonist did not drop out, the chance of the academy being invaded approached ninety-eight percent.
That person was highly likely to be a demon collaborator.
There will be secret ruins or a hidden artifact inside the academy.
Yansk University was a newly established institution with less than ten years of history.
It was also an unmistakably state-run university built in the middle of the capital by direct order of the late king.
Even so, for some inexplicable reason, Ivan had to assume that it contained a “secret chamber” somewhere inside.
Academy students can be broadly divided into three categories: students, demon-related villains, and government agents.
Here, “students” did not mean diligent model pupils.
They were ticking time bombs in their own right.
They constantly became entangled in incidents and needed to be rescued, and naturally, the protagonist was always the only one capable of saving them.
The remaining students, meaning those who did not get caught up in incidents, could be divided into two groups:
Quiet students whose names were mentioned only in passing,
And students who were jealous of the protagonist.
Of course, all of that could still be treated as a harmless part of school life.
The real problem came next.
Students connected to demons.
In practice, they should be classified as demon collaborators, demon spies, or demon guerrillas.
Kill them in advance if they stand out.
The former Extermination Unit officer and current orphanage director narrowed his eyes and underlined the sentence.
The best way to protect one’s allies was to annihilate the enemy.
Up to that point, it was practically no different from an ordinary hobby.
Next are the government agents.
If the children of internationally renowned figures were enrolling in large numbers, their countries would naturally dispatch agents to protect them.
The problem was that agents rarely traveled abroad to carry out only a single mission.
In other words, the children’s bodyguards would spend their free time acting as highly capable spies for friendly nations.
He could not kill those people, either.
They did not belong to hostile states, so touching them would immediately trigger a diplomatic incident.
Their official status would most likely be that of students.
‘There’s no age restriction, so it wouldn’t be strange for active agents from the war to enroll....’
The former Extermination Unit officer stroked his chin, sinking into troubled thought.
It might actually be better if people he knew showed up.
At least they would understand one another.
Ivan stared at the hand axe decorating the wall beside the director’s office entrance and continued thinking.
During an academy exam, training session, or any other event, if an instructor says it is “safe,” a crisis will inevitably occur.
This was why corporations should abolish internal safety inspections and outsource every safety check.
Given the nature of academies, where spies, assassins, demons, and traitors outnumbered ordinary students, the principal’s office was probably the only truly safe place.
Even Dumbled—re had not died in the headmaster’s office, after all.
Ordinarily, the position of principal or university president was an important administrative post that should have been filled by a bureaucrat.
Yet strangely enough, in academy stories, it was considered “common sense” for the principal to be the strongest person in the entire setting....
Next came the most important point.
What were the ending conditions of an academy story?
The ending conditions of an academy story are “survival” and “world peace”.... Wait. Hold on.
If this world truly was an academy story, and everything that had happened so far was nothing more than a series of background events—
He needed to organize his thoughts.
The Demon King had appeared.
The Hero had killed the Demon King.
The world had regained peace.
Yet only four years after the war ended, the Allied Kingdoms were on the verge of falling apart.
Every nation was currently focused on rebuilding, but competition over resources and colonies was becoming fiercer by the day.
Meanwhile, the various occupied territories that had once belonged to the demons were still under military rule, with each nation exploiting demon slaves.
At a time like this, what could possibly serve as the main story?
A world war? No, that can’t be it.
Academy stories usually featured protagonists somewhere between high-school and university age.
If a war grand enough to be called a world war broke out rather than a simple regional conflict, there would be an obvious limit to what students that young could accomplish.
In that case—
The Demon King’s resurrection...?
Ivan took a sip of coffee and stared grimly at his notes.
No matter how he looked at it, that was the most reasonable possibility.
A story in which the descendants of the Hero’s party fought the resurrected Demon King and restored peace to the world.
Assuming that the Demon King’s resurrection was inevitable, that the students would drop out around their second year, and that the academy invasion would happen at least a year from now—
What did he need to do immediately?
He added one more sentence to his notes, grabbed his coat, and rose from his seat.
A terrorist attack will inevitably occur on the train—or other means of transportation—used to enter the academy.
Ever since Harry P—tter, whenever trains existed in a setting, students invariably used one to travel to the academy.
If there were no trains, they used carriages instead.
The common factor was that both trains and carriages were vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
In truth, every form of transportation was vulnerable to terrorism.
Traveling on foot was no different.
The Allied Kingdoms were using the military railways that had been laid extensively during the war as civilian transportation lines.
Of course, even military trains were vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Ivan’s eighteen years of military service could attest to that.
Demons had also frequently used trains to transport military supplies inland, so Ivan had prevented train attacks and carried them out himself more times than he cared to remember.
That was simply the kind of work the Extermination Unit had always done.
Ivan missed South Korea again that day.
That peaceful world where the greatest threats one faced on a train were baked eggs and tuna kimbap, rather than terrorists or mounted bandits.
Baked eggs and tuna kimbap were added to Ivan’s list of “Things to Eat When I Return to Earth.”
“Just you wait!! Seriously, just wait and see! All of you, watch closely!! I’ll show you—I’ll show you just how successful I become!!”
Standing on the train platform with an instrument case and suitcase in tow, Eshidis sniffled as she glared at the crowd.
The crowd was holding up an enormous banner to see her off.
[The Eldest Daughter of Great King Einar! Admitted to Saint Yansk University as the Top Student!!]
She had not placed first.
She had not even placed second.
Even so, Eshidis did not correct them.
They had written it that way deliberately because they enjoyed watching her react.
[We’re proud of you! The Greatest Beauty in the Kingdom of Droan!]
[Inheriting the blood of Great King Einar, the Great Conqueror—now she challenges the conquest of orchestral music!!]
“What’s wrong with orchestral music?!”
Eshidis shrieked, turned around, and boarded the train.
A burst of roaring laughter erupted behind her.
Bad people.
They were all terrible people.
The least they could do was support her...!
As the train departed, she buried her face in her sleeves and sobbed while the platform gradually receded into the distance.
The crowd watched her through the train windows before murmuring among themselves and dispersing.
“You think the young lady will be able to stay strong?”
“Of course. Whose daughter do you think she is?”
“Those pale-looking people from the Krasilov Kingdom don’t exactly inspire much confidence....”
“Still, the old master didn’t send her alone. Don’t worry. She’ll manage just fine.”
The crowd that had teased Eshidis—the retainers of Great King Einar—departed while quietly voicing their concerns.
The eldest daughter of Einar Ulriksson, the Hero party’s berserker known as “the Slaughterer.”
Eshidis Einarsdottir.
Accepted into the Orchestral Music Department of Saint Yansk University’s College of Music!
The very train that had received such a grand send-off from the retainers of Einar, High King of Droan, derailed two days later near the border of the Krasilov Kingdom.
Naturally, it was “common sense” for an academy entrance train to become caught up in a terrorist attack.
Ivan was therefore not surprised.
Instead, he picked up his pistol and axe.