Chapter 37
An Academy Field Exercise Is Guaranteed to Be Attacked (1)
“May is so green, and we are growing strong…”
“Kids these days don’t even know that song, you know?”
“Look at you pretending you’re one of the kids. Mr. Ivan is the youngest among us, remember? He was the youngest when he got transmigrated.”
“…?!”
Pain and sorrow hung heavily in the air of the bizarre transmigrators’ clubroom, which still did not have an official name.
The three transmigrators lay sprawled over piles of books with vacant expressions.
“I’m in the Department of Knighthood, so why do I even have written exams…?”
“I have a status window, but it doesn’t have a memo function…”
“I hate magic…”
May was not Family Month in this premodern fantasy world.
However, if there was one thing Earth and this other world had in common, it was that universities had exams.
“I’m jealous of you, Mr. Ivan. You don’t have assignments or exams, and you’re a rich adult.”
“If you say that to our big brother, you might be found dead under mysterious circumstances the next morning, Miss Yuri.”
“That sounds like a great opportunity to reunite with my parents.”
“Wow. Now that you’re making orphan jokes about yourself, I can’t even argue back.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant going back to Earth.”
Unfortunately, Yansk University was prestigious.
It was prestigious enough to shatter the natural assumption that freshmen were supposed to spend their first midterms drinking.
Faced with a murderous exam syllabus and horrifying piles of assignments, the transmigrators were steadily being worn down.
While every transmigrator at the university trembled in disgust at this coldhearted premodern society, Ivan was currently—
“Aaaaaaargh!”
“Shh. Quiet.”
—pouring a healing potion over a student’s wounds.
“S-Save me…! Urgh!”
“That isn’t what you’re supposed to say.”
“…”
“I-I am the son of a viscount…!”
“Shh. Choose your next words carefully.”
Ivan sat beside the frothing, sobbing student and spoke calmly.
“Say it.”
“I’ll never… never throw cigarette butts… on the ground again…!”
“And?”
“I won’t… damage the roadside trees…!”
“Excellent.”
Throwing a cigarette butt beneath a roadside tree in front of a gardener was, under international law, an atrocious crime equivalent to deserving the death penalty.
Taking into consideration that his opponents were still young students, Ivan was graciously providing a free smoking-cessation clinic to a total of thirteen of them.
“Hey! Mister!”
This was after Ivan had finished destroying the thirteen environmental destroyers.
Peace had returned to the campus, and Ivan was closing the cap of his healing potion.
He turned toward the voice and saw Isabel running toward him from afar, waving her hand.
“Mm.”
“Greetings are normally made up of words like ‘hello,’ ‘good morning,’ ‘have you eaten,’ or ‘how have you been lately’!”
Isabel approached with a lively smile and looked around.
After glancing at the shrubbery smeared with blood and healing potion, she made an uncomfortable expression.
“Uh… Did demons attack?”
“Something similar.”
“You must have had a hard time! I heard someone screaming during exam season, so I came to see whether you’d killed someone again!”
“I am deeply concerned about the image you have of me.”
Isabel laughed awkwardly and turned her head slightly away.
That was answer enough.
“Oh, right. Please help me! I need your assistance with something…”
“Assistance?”
“I have a practical assessment, but it’s ridiculously difficult. Seriously, is it normal for a first-semester midterm practical to be like this?”
“Mm.”
Ivan wondered what help he could possibly offer with a midterm exam in the Department of Knighthood.
Surely they did not teach prisoner interrogation, intelligence concealment, or sabotage.
Perhaps it was related to tactical command?
Fortunately, he had experience commanding troops in the field, so he could probably give her a few pointers in that area.
While Ivan was lost in thought, Isabel smiled and said,
“It’s about responding to ambushes!”
“…Mm.”
That was a rather… unusual subject to teach university freshmen.
Ivan once again contemplated the usefulness of this university.
Was such a school truly necessary?
In any case, it was within the range of things he could help with. Both ambushes and counter-ambush operations fell under his military specialization.
“It must be Enrique’s class.”
“Yes. Seriously, where are we ever supposed to use something like that?”
“I am curious about that myself.”
Ivan readily nodded and began walking ahead.
Pritchenkaya was considered an extremely developed metropolis, even within the Allied Kingdoms.
In this primitive premodern era, however, the term metropolis referred to an enormous, interconnected living region.
In other words, sufficient agricultural land, plains, forests, rivers, and other essential resources had to exist nearby.
Pritchenkaya was no exception.
A forest stretched eastward beyond Pritchenkaya’s outer walls.
Ivan arrived at the entrance to the forest with Isabel and briefly warmed up.
“Coming here reminds me of that day. Wow, I seriously thought I was going to die.”
“Mm.”
The triangle of conscience inside Ivan’s heart lightly scratched at him.
Ivan really had used Isabel as part of an experiment.
It had been an experiment along the lines of:
Would the protagonist actually die during the tutorial?
Strictly speaking, it had been necessary.
However, Ivan was an honest man, so he still felt guilty about it.
“Mister, you have an incredibly irritating look on your face right now.”
“I naturally have a cheerful face.”
“I seriously want to punch you.”
Isabel narrowed her eyes and grumbled.
“Anyway, the actual testing site hasn’t been revealed yet. We don’t know where it’ll take place or anything… So why did we come here?”
“Because Enrique lacks imagination.”
“…What?”
“If Enrique conducts ambush training, she will choose one of two places: Pritchenkaya’s underground waterways or this forest. If she has to choose the more difficult of the two, she will hold it here.”
Enrique was an extraordinarily stubborn, self-righteous lunatic.
Ivan nodded as he recalled Enrique from the old days.
Like most people who had lived for a very long time, Enrique was not free from her own prejudices.
That was why Ivan was certain.
If she had deliberately created an exam called “Ambush Response,” then given her personality, she would most likely conduct it throughout the entire forest.
“Understanding the examiner’s intentions is a basic skill for any test-taker.”
“Wow. Were you good at studying, Mister?”
“I wasn’t bad.”
The students of this fantasy world could never imagine it, but examinees in the Republic of Korea received twelve years of compulsory education beginning at the age of seven.
“I’m pretty good at written exams too, you know? I’m confident I can get an A on almost every practical as well, but Professor Enrique’s class is strangely difficult. She gives practical assessments all the time, and she’s completely merciless.”
“Enrique has always been like that.”
“Wow, did you graduate from Yansk University too? Are you my senior?”
“No. I never went to university.”
Kim Sunwoo had never earned a university diploma either.
He had been transmigrated into this world during his third year of university after completing his military service, only to spend another twenty-odd years living as a soldier.
For a moment, the Kim Sunwoo inside him coughed up blood and screamed.
Ivan continued walking in silence.
“Anyway! Right, um… Well, anyone taught by Professor Enrique counts as a senior, right? Yes, definitely…”
“You do not need to comfort me.”
How dare this premodern native pity him?
“Riiight… Mr. Well-Educated-But-Uneducated. So how do we begin preparing for Professor Enrique’s exam?”
“Begin?”
Ivan smirked and reached inside his coat.
His fingers closed around a small metal sphere.
He took it out, rolled it across the ground, and spoke.
“We already have.”
“What? Huh?”
Boom!
The metal sphere exploded immediately, releasing a cloud of thick smoke.
Isabel hurriedly stumbled backward, coughing.
A smoke bomb…?
No, this was…!
“You crazy old man! You set off a chemical weapon next to a student?!”
Ivan crouched within the smoke without answering.
Tap, tap.
He kicked off the ground twice, leaped into a tree, and disappeared into the forest’s shadows.
From behind the darkness, he whispered quietly.
“I will adjust it to your level.”
“When I catch you, you’re dead! I’m going to shave you bald!”
“…I will train you as though this were a real battle.”
A field exercise conducted by an officer of the Annihilation Unit had begun!
Ivan raced through the forest, occasionally firing at Isabel to keep his distance.
There was no need for him to use his full strength.
Isabel’s ability to detect lines of fire had nearly finished developing, so even a single warning shot was enough to intimidate her.
Naturally, he used live ammunition.
After all, directly threatening her life was the most effective way to fully awaken her ability to sense lines of fire.
“You lunatic! Are you actually insane?! Y-You’re shooting a gun at me!”
Bang!
Whenever she shouted, Ivan aimed directly between her eyebrows, fired once, and retreated.
She should have learned a lesson from this.
When someone became the target of an ambush, they had to move even more quietly than their attacker.
An ambush was fundamentally similar to hunting.
Both hunter and prey needed to blend into their surroundings to avoid each other’s gaze.
Therefore, Isabel, dressed in a needlessly fluttery outfit, already deserved a failing grade before the exam had even begun.
Ivan smeared mud beneath his eyes to eliminate reflected light and nodded.
Click. Bang.
He delayed each gunshot by half a beat to confuse Isabel about his position, then moved elsewhere.
‘An outdoor field exercise, huh?’
Ivan surveyed the surroundings with sharp eyes.
As he had noted before, this forest was close to the encampment of Pritchenkaya’s capital defense forces.
In other words, it was a highly secure safe zone.
That was presumably why Enrique could use it as an examination site without much concern.
However, Ivan knew the truth.
‘It is common sense for an enemy attack to occur during an outdoor field exercise…’
Ivan was an exceptionally reasonable man.
Therefore, he decided to conduct Isabel’s training while simultaneously searching for signs of an impending attack.
***
Isabel trembled as she clutched the torn hem of her skirt.
“Seriously… what is this…?!”
Why was he taking it so seriously?!
Common sense dictated that if a girl ten years younger than him invited him to train casually in the forest, his first thought should have been a picnic.
Even if it was not exactly… a date.
It did not have to involve affection or romantic interest.
She had simply wanted to thank him for saving her back then.
With his blunt, bizarre personality, it was obvious he did not have a single friend.
That was why she had planned to act as his friend for a little while.
Isabel stared blankly at the picnic basket that had been swept through by chemical gas and clouds of dirt.
When she noticed the ruined sandwiches inside its open lid, her entire body began to shake.
“Mister.”
She pulled her disheveled hair tightly back and tied it up, then gave a crooked smile.
“I’m seriously going to kill you.”
She would teach that deranged secret agent, who clearly lacked all common sense, exactly what “common sense” meant.
The Hero awakened.