Chapter 37
The Toying Begins
“Lord Haydam! Why did you impose such conditions?!”
Since I planned to stay at the academy for the time being, I had been assigned a private room and was in the middle of unpacking.
And sure enough, the cadets who had lost to me came rushing over the moment morning assembly ended.
Behind the desperate-looking cadets, Plato gave me a polite bow, but he was quickly obscured by the others.
“Lord Haydam, you said we lose if even one person dies!”
“You wiped all of us out by yourself, and now you’ve imposed a condition like that! What are we supposed to do?!”
“We never agreed to do this in the first place!”
“If we lose again, we’ll seriously have to drop out.”
“You have no idea how much everyone has been pointing fingers at us because we lost to you, Lord Haydam.”
“...”
I looked at them in disbelief.
“So that’s why Lucas was acting so aggressively.”
“Pardon?”
“I suppose none of you learned anything from the conversation I had with Cadet Lucas earlier.”
I set down the box I was carrying and spoke with a sigh.
“If the other cadets are criticizing you, that is all the more reason for you to accept this exercise.”
“What do you mean by that...?”
“Don’t you think a cadet who assumes defeat before even fighting deserves to be criticized?”
“Th-That’s...”
They had come to me in a panic, but they seemed to realize how disgraceful their behavior was. Their faces reddened, and their voices gradually died down.
‘They may look like idiots right now, but they were high-stat NPCs in the game.’
The very reason I had chosen them for the training simulation was because they were NPCs who would distinguish themselves after graduating from the academy.
They had only become somewhat pathetic because of the shock of losing to a ten-year-old.
They needed to graduate safely and become my subordinates.
Officers of their caliber wouldn’t be easy to find elsewhere.
So now, I intended to placate them with the carrot.
I put on a gentle expression.
“Do you know why I specifically chose you for the training simulation?”
The cadets looked at me, unable to understand the intent behind my question.
The answer came from Plato, who stood at the very back.
“Because we were the academy’s most outstanding cadets.”
Thanks to Plato’s perfectly timed assist, I nodded and continued.
“I still believe that you are the finest cadets in this academy. And I want the other cadets to realize that as well.”
“Are you saying you’re forming a team with us for the training simulation so that we can prove it?”
One of the cadets cautiously spoke up.
“But... we lost so miserably to you, Lord Haydam. Do you truly believe we can win after you imposed such an unreasonable condition...?”
“The enemy knows the condition is unreasonable too. You also believed it was impossible for me to face all of you alone, didn’t you?”
The cadets’ faces reddened again, apparently remembering how much they had underestimated Haydam during their first training simulation.
“Why do you think I was able to defeat you?”
“Uh...”
While no one could readily answer, one cadet finally replied hesitantly.
“Because we were deceived by your acting...”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted, so I asked another question.
“Why were you deceived by me?”
“Because we naturally assumed your performance was genuine.”
“And you assumed it was genuine because you underestimated me.”
“We’re truly sorry for underestimating—Ah!”
After being led through the chain of questions, the cadets stared at me with realization.
“You were so easily deceived because you believed that no matter what I did, you could defeat someone like me. The enemy will unconsciously think the same thing. ‘We only need to kill one person to win.’ We can turn that assumption against them.”
“Turn it against them?”
“First of all, we’re going to throw fairness and honor to the dogs.”
“How can you say something like that so proudly...?”
“Fortunately, I heard you were all too embarrassed about losing to me to tell them how it happened.”
“No, it wasn’t because we were embarrassed. Major General Meursault ordered us not to speak about it—”
“Excellent.”
“Pardon?”
“Let’s do exactly what I did to you, except this time, we’ll do it to them.”
“...Why are we taking revenge on them for something you did to us?”
They hadn’t understood a word of my explanation about being underhanded.
But that was fine.
After all, cowardice was something every human being naturally carried somewhere in their heart.
“All you need to think about is winning. No matter what it takes.”
***
Since the cadets offered to help me arrange the room while they were here, moving my belongings was finished in no time.
The problem was that although all the other cadets had left, Plato was still standing there.
“Aren’t you leaving, Plato?”
What was this?
Did he have something to say?
Judging by how he had waited until the other cadets were gone, it seemed important.
After a long silence, Plato finally opened his mouth.
“Actually, I heard about it from my father.”
“About what?”
“That you went outside the district and were injured...”
‘So he knows I was hurt.’
The Commander must have issued a gag order about the incident.
It seemed Anton had planted more informants than the Commander realized.
Then again, I had been hospitalized after causing such a commotion. Anyone could have deduced that someone from the group that went outside had been injured.
And since I hadn’t shown my face for several days afterward, it wouldn’t have been difficult to identify me.
It didn’t matter whether Anton knew about my injury.
It was an injury I could heal whenever I wanted.
I had deliberately left it partially untreated because Meursault might find it suspicious if the wound healed too quickly. But if the wound ever became a problem, I could simply use my ability to heal it immediately.
There was something else I wanted to know.
“Do you know how I was injured?”
I was curious whether he knew about ‘that guy’ as well, but Plato immediately shook his head.
“No. Not that much... It seems Father only guessed after learning that you had been hospitalized.”
So, just as I expected, he had pieced it together from my hospitalization records.
It seemed he didn’t know I had been attacked by someone from another district.
‘What in the world was that guy...?’
Even while hospitalized, I had continued thinking about him.
‘I still have no idea.’
He looked exactly like my Unicorn starting-character customization.
But unlike the other players, he appeared as an adult.
It was difficult to dismiss him as an impersonator when the six characters spelling ‘Dopamine Addict’ had been clearly written in his character information.
On top of that, he possessed a title I had never seen before—‘Dopamine Addict.’
And his district, Unicorn, had originally been my home base.
Didn’t that make him seem more authentic than the real thing?
‘Can I even call that impersonation?’
In the case of Safe Zone 8, which had previously tried to impersonate me, the person had merely ‘introduced’ themselves as Dopamine Addict.
But this guy had ‘proven’ that he was Dopamine Addict.
‘But if he isn’t an impersonator, then what the hell is he?’
Just as Daphne and Lunamoon were both players and NPCs...
Had I, the player who had cleared every district, also been fixed into this world as an NPC?
Or was he some remnant of a player AI?
For now, nothing was certain.
The only fortunate point was that, unless the system itself was lying, he was favorably disposed toward me.
‘At the very least, he doesn’t seem to think I’m the one impersonating Dopamine Addict...’
I didn’t know.
Honestly, I wanted to message T-Bastard and hear every detail of his conversation with that guy from beginning to end.
However, I couldn’t reveal to T-Bastard that I had already encountered him.
It had only been a few days since everyone discovered that there were two Dopamine Addicts in the public chatroom.
If I claimed I had met the other one at a time like this, who would readily believe me?
They would be more likely to think it was a stunt I had orchestrated myself.
Everyone seemed to think I was an attention seeker, after all.
‘More importantly, Plato...’
Anton had apparently told his son because he trusted him, yet Plato had come straight to me and revealed it.
Anton must also have told him that the Commander had ordered everyone to remain silent.
Had my offer to make him my adjutant really been that attractive?
“Lord Haydam?”
When I remained silent, Plato cautiously called out to me with a worried expression.
“Are you all right? I heard you were only recently discharged. Perhaps you should postpone the training simulation for a while...”
“...”
Even the Commander didn’t worry about me this much after learning I possessed a healing ability.
Since the opportunity had presented itself, perhaps I should leave Plato with an even better impression.
“Thank you for worrying about me.”
A slight hesitation here.
“I kept it a secret from everyone else... but I’ll be honest with you, Plato. My injury hasn’t completely healed yet.”
“It still hasn’t healed?!”
Only because I had deliberately prevented it from doing so.
I faintly furrowed my brow and formed a helpless smile.
“The truth is... while I was hospitalized, I heard about all of you.”
“About us?”
“I heard that the other cadets were mocking you because you lost to me. That’s why I spoke to Father and returned.”
“You returned because of us?”
“If I can restore your honor, then my injury is nothing.”
Plato looked somewhat stunned.
“Why would you go that far...?”
“I trust you’ll keep this a secret from the others. They wouldn’t want to feel indebted to me.”
“Lord Haydam...”
That’s right.
Now it was time for the words I wanted to hear to come out of your mouth, Plato.
“I will also give this exercise everything I have. For your sake, Lord Haydam, I will do anything.”
I answered immediately, as though I had been waiting for him to say exactly that.
“Ah. I forgot to mention something. You’re excluded from this exercise, Plato.”
“Pardon? I’m excluded?”
“It’s eight against eight. We have to balance the numbers, don’t we?”
“B-But I...”
He couldn’t bring himself to say that he was superior to the other seven cadets, so his voice trailed off.
“However, there is something else I would like to ask you to do.”
“Ah! So you had another mission for me. Please tell me. What should I do?”
I smiled brightly.
“Are you any good at talking behind people’s backs?”
***
On the day of the training simulation, Lucas of Team B spotted Team A—Haydam’s team—waiting not far away and clicked his tongue.
“I thought those seven would run away, but they actually showed up at the training grounds.”
At Lucas’s words, another Team B cadet shook his head.
“What good does showing up do? I saw them earlier, and they wouldn’t even look in Lord Haydam’s direction.”
“What? The exercise is about to begin, and they’re still sulking because they lost to Lord Haydam?”
“They kept complaining that none of this was what they wanted.”
A slightly younger cadet who had been listening cautiously asked,
“By the way, why isn’t Senior Plato on their team? Isn’t Senior Plato the most capable one among them?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Plato gave up on that team. He said they were hopeless.”
The cadet who had asked looked shocked.
Plato was famous for always ensuring that no one was left behind during training.
“Senior Plato gave up on them...?”
“I’ve never seen Plato criticize anyone that harshly before.”
“They really are pathetic.”
“What was Lord Haydam thinking when he imposed such conditions...?”
As the murmuring Team B cadets gradually began to pity Haydam, Lucas stamped his foot to get their attention.
“Listen carefully. For Lord Haydam’s sake, I’d like to tell you to take it easy. However, as you all know, those bastards lost because they underestimated him. So we will not let our guard down. We will give this everything we have. Understood?”
“Yes, Senior Lucas!”
However, the first thing Team B’s reconnaissance squad discovered after strengthening their resolve was a sight so shocking that their determination not to let their guard down seemed almost absurd.
Haydam was lying there, bound tightly with rope.