Chapter 40

Where’s the Fun in That?

“I heard you won the training simulation again.”

“Yes.”

“And not one member of your team was eliminated, while the entire opposing team was wiped out.”

A satisfied smile rested on the Commander’s lips.

“I like your guiding principle. You always try to inflict the greatest damage while suffering the fewest losses. I heard you also intend to use a highly efficient strategy in the subjugation operation.”

So Meursault had already reported the details of the subjugation plan.

When I nodded, the Commander continued.

“What kind of strategy did you use in this exercise?”

‘This time, he’s asking me directly.’

Previously, instead of asking me, I heard he had sent Meursault to question the cadets.

Was he trying to understand my strategic style in advance because he planned to appoint me as an operations officer for the upcoming subjugation?

Well, if that was the case, there was no reason not to tell him.

“It was simple. I created the situation those cadets expected to see.”

“You created the situation they expected?”

“Anyone lowers their guard when events unfold exactly as they expect.”

“Interesting.”

The Commander began listening intently, silently urging me to continue.

“The enemy was a ten-year-old child and a group of cadets who had already lost to that child. They expected that a team formed under those circumstances wouldn’t function properly, so I fulfilled that expectation. Excluding Plato, the most capable cadet, was part of the same plan. They believed the team would be easy to defeat without him.”

“I received a report that your relationship with Plato had deteriorated. Was that also part of the operation?”

What?

He knew about that too?

Just how many informants had he planted?

Then again, I had openly ordered Plato to go around speaking badly about me.

I nodded.

“A strategy should already be complete before entering the battlefield.”

“You are correct.”

The Commander smiled.

“Then the condition that your team would lose if even one person died must also have been part of the scheme.”

“Yes. The moment they heard that killing one person would secure victory, they stopped paying attention to our numerical strength. If the opposing team had eight members, they no longer saw eight enemies. They saw eight separate opportunities to win.”

“Interesting.”

“So the moment the exercise began, I ordered my teammates to tie me up and abandon me in front of the opposing camp.”

“...Hmm?”

“There were still seven other opportunities remaining. I assumed they wouldn’t choose the one that made them most uncomfortable.”

In truth, that part had been close to a gamble.

But even if they had eagerly taken the opportunity, it wouldn’t have mattered.

There was no honor in winning by shooting a bound child.

“After that, everything was easy. While Team B took pity on me and carried me back to their camp, Team A followed them and hid nearby. They first eliminated those who remained behind to guard me. Then my teammates carried the eliminated cadets behind the flag, covered themselves with blankets, and lay down while I buried them under snow.”

“So your teammates never actually left Team B’s camp.”

“That’s right. After disguising them as snowdrifts, I smeared Team A’s paint over myself to make it look as though I had resisted my own team to defend the flag. Then we fired a signal flare and waited for Team B to return. From that point onward, we simply repeated the process.”

“You only needed to eliminate whoever remained behind each time. Once you had gained the numerical advantage, victory was effectively guaranteed.”

“Yes. Eliminating Lucas after he was left alone was so easy it was almost boring. After killing him, I disappeared as well to provoke internal conflict. What happened afterward was actually outside my expectations. I thought they would split into groups of at least two and three. Apparently, they weren’t quite that stupid, because only one person left on his own.”

I continued matter-of-factly.

“Even so, it was eight against four. Since we already held the numerical advantage, we ambushed the four at camp, immediately disguised ourselves as snowdrifts again, and eliminated Bones when he came rushing back. That concluded the exercise.”

“You thoroughly toyed with them by exploiting both the circumstances and their psychology.”

The Commander seemed satisfied overall, but one thing appeared to concern him.

“However, both this strategy and the previous one relied too heavily on you being a child. They are not universally applicable. On a real battlefield, I have no intention of placing you in that kind of danger.”

So he was concerned that the strategy couldn’t be applied in actual combat.

Now that I was to serve as an operations officer, did he think I should have demonstrated a strategy we could really use?

But there was something the Commander didn’t know.

This strategy would be particularly effective on the battlefields to come.

That was precisely why I had repeatedly used my childlike appearance to toy with the cadets.

“I don’t intend to use myself as bait on the battlefield.”

“Then what was the purpose?”

“To prepare everyone for outside enemies who will approach while presenting themselves as ‘bait.’”

“Outside enemies...?”

“The most dangerous enemies on future battlefields will be children my age.”

The Commander’s brow twisted slightly.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m telling you this as a regressor.”

“...!”

“In the near future, people from other districts will use children as bait. We need to prepare for that.”

Well, it wasn’t a lie.

Most players were ten-year-old children, just like me.

Now that there was a high probability the barriers between districts had disappeared, we needed to prepare in advance for players from other districts approaching us.

After putting the cadets through this much, they probably wouldn’t be fooled even if another district’s player approached while pretending to be an innocent child.

“If you say so... then we must prepare.”

Fortunately, the Commander trusted me completely. He promised that the records of my training exercise would also be distributed among the other soldiers as instructional material.

“However... there is one thing I’m curious about.”

“What is it?”

“When your team launched the first ambush, you could have simply pulled out the flag instead of pretending to protect it. Wouldn’t that have ended the exercise immediately? Why didn’t you take the flag?”

Seriously?

Was he actually asking because he didn’t know?

I answered with an expression that suggested I couldn’t understand the question.

“Then where would the fun be?”

“...”

After the training simulation ended in Team A’s victory, the cadets who had restored their honor were beside themselves with joy.

This exercise had once again ended with the complete elimination of the opposing team.

Now no one would dare mock or look down on Haydam—

Or on the cadets who had lost to him.

There might once have been a time when they had harbored unpleasant feelings toward Haydam.

But now, all that remained was boundless respect for him and the fear that they never wanted to face him as an enemy.

In any case, happiness was happiness.

But there was something they absolutely had to do.

“I think I heard a hallucination before the exercise.”

“What kind of hallucination?”

“Someone said they were going to wipe out our entire team.”

“That must have been a real hallucination. A completely different team got wiped out!”

“Geh-heh-heh-heh!”

They had to mock the cadets of Team B.

“Those fucking bastards...”

Team B crouched together on one side, their tightly clenched fists trembling.

However, they couldn’t openly protest.

After all, they themselves had once hurled contempt and ridicule at Team A simply because they had lost to Haydam.

But Bones, who had the foulest temper in Team B, eventually fell for Team A’s provocation.

“Fuck, you only won by using a child...!”

Bones reacted in a burst of anger and immediately realized his mistake. He tried to leave before things escalated.

But having seized their opportunity, the cadets of Team A tore into him like a school of piranhas.

“Hey, did you hear that? When we lost, he called us idiots who couldn’t even beat a child. But now that he’s the one who lost, suddenly we only won because we used a child.”

“Hypocrite.”

“Lucas is staying quiet, so what’s his problem?”

“Leave him alone. Bones probably thinks he lost because the rest of his team dragged him down.”

Unable to suppress his boiling anger, Bones shouted,

“Fuck! Let’s fight again! Let’s have a rematch! This time, fair and square—”

“That’s enough!”

“Enough, all of you!”

Lucas and Plato rose at the same time.

They looked at each other and hesitated briefly before turning their heads and looking in opposite directions.

Lucas spoke first.

“Bones. I know you suspected Lord Haydam throughout the exercise, and that’s why this defeat feels unfair to you. But this wasn’t individual training. It was a team exercise. Are you going to act like this every time your team loses?”

“...”

Bones still wore a sullen expression, but he wasn’t stupid enough to misunderstand Lucas’s point, so he quietly closed his mouth.

Lucas turned toward Plato.

“I apologize.”

“For what?”

“For the disturbance caused by my teammate. And... for mocking your defeat.”

The cadets of Team A widened their eyes.

‘Lucas is apologizing personally?’

“Now that Lord Haydam defeated you himself, I suppose you finally understand how we felt?”

One of Team A’s cadets asked sarcastically, but Lucas nodded without resistance.

“You were probably defeated through similar methods. I withdraw what I said about you being idiots. However...”

The cadets of Team A were about to frown at the word “however,” but their expressions turned complicated when they heard what followed.

“I still cannot acknowledge Lord Haydam. That is not how a cadet should behave.”

“What kind of twisted reasoning is that?”

Plato asked coldly.

“Didn’t you agree that if you lost the exercise, you would acknowledge Lord Haydam as a cadet capable of pulling his own weight?”

“Lord Haydam is unquestionably talented. I admit that. In terms of individual skill, no one here could defeat him. However...”

Lucas spoke with a hint of contempt.

“A cadet who truly cares for his comrades would have pulled out the flag. Deliberately putting his comrades in danger merely to wipe out the entire enemy team is not the path of a proper officer.”

“...”

In truth, the cadets of Team A couldn’t say Lucas was wrong.

Haydam could have won simply by pulling out the flag, yet he had deliberately toyed with the opposing team and enjoyed the thrill.

What Haydam pursued seemed to be something other than victory.

Fun and stimulation themselves.

Because of that, the cadets of Team A couldn’t readily argue with Lucas.

Then Plato’s furious voice rang out, a vein bulging on his forehead.

“You people... Do you even know what condition Lord Haydam is in right now?”

“What are you talking about?”

Lucas frowned, thinking Plato was merely trying to defend Haydam.

But the moment he heard what came next, he froze.

“Lord Haydam has not yet recovered from the injuries he suffered recently!”

“...What?”

Lucas wasn’t the only one shaken.

The cadets of both Team A and Team B, as well as the other cadets watching their confrontation, all stared at Plato in surprise.

“Injuries...? Are you saying Lord Haydam was hurt?”

“Yes. He told me not to reveal it, but after hearing the way you people are talking, I can no longer remain silent.”

“But... how could someone who hasn’t even enlisted yet suffer injuries?”

“You apparently didn’t know. Lord Haydam often goes hunting outside the district.”

The cadets began murmuring among themselves.

“Hunting? What do you mean, hunting?”

“I heard rumors that he killed a hippo-boar...”

“Wasn’t that just a rumor?”

“Wait, so instead of going into the Tower, he actually goes outside and hunts monsters himself?”

Ignoring their murmurs, Plato continued.

“On the day he was injured, the carcass of a fur crocodile was brought back almost entirely intact. He must have been wounded after fighting it to the death.”

“A fur crocodile?”

“Isn’t that a large-class monster?”

“Does that mean Lord Haydam is strong enough to kill a large-class monster by himself?”

Of course, Haydam had never fought the fur crocodile.

He had simply picked up one that was already on the verge of death.

However, Plato had combined the fragments of information he had heard from his father, Anton, and accepted it as fact that Lord Haydam had successfully hunted a fur crocodile alone.

“He should still be resting because his injuries have not fully healed... Yet after hearing that we were being mocked by the other cadets, he came here. He did it to restore our honor!”

“Wait...”

The cadets of Team A, who had known nothing about any of this, were visibly flustered.

‘N-Now that I think about it, one of Lord Haydam’s shoulders did seem unusually stiff whenever he moved...’

‘Was that because of his injury?’

‘And he never once let us notice?’

While Team A was reeling from the revelation, Plato continued.

“Instead of showing gratitude to the person who came here while injured and restored your honor, you used his victory as an excuse to mock other cadets again.”

“Th-That’s...”

The cadets of Team A flushed with embarrassment.

Plato then turned his gaze toward Team B.

“And as for you. You couldn’t even handle a single injured child... yet now you claim you cannot acknowledge Lord Haydam as a cadet? Then could any of you march onto a battlefield while wounded for the sake of restoring your comrades’ honor? Could you offer yourselves as bait to do it?”

“...”

When the cadets of Team B could offer no answer either, Plato clicked his tongue loudly.

“You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”

Leaving only those words behind, he stormed away.

The incident quickly spread among the cadets.

And within the academy, Haydam’s status began rising to a height that no one else could hope to approach.