Chapter 40
Chapter 40
The day of the midterm exam dawned.
Back when I had been in my original world, whenever there was an exam or anything like that, I always got so nervous that my stomach burned, but ever since I possessed Leios’s body, that kind of thing had not happened.
Should I have been glad to have escaped such a frail body? Feeling slightly conflicted, I arrived at the designated location, where the party members were already waiting.
“Where did you go?”
Since I was a little later than planned, I raised a hand to apologize, and Alice asked with a curious expression.
“Just in case, I went and took out some insurance.”
The practical portion of the midterm exam took place outside the Academy.
Centered around the instructor assigned to each zone, we explored our designated dungeon, and our grades were calculated using the results as indicators.
Other parties had gathered up until the day before to train together and prepare for the exam, but we had not done anything in particular.
After all, we had two early-game Lu Bus right from the start.
And everyone else, too, each had solid skills of their own.
Leysias, the top student of the magic department.
Diark, from a prestigious spear-fighting family.
Maria, who possessed the talent of a berserker.
And even Yuria, my hidden piece.
Even the protagonist’s party in the original work had not been this dazzling.
Honestly, until the main episode progressed, just these people alone should have been more than enough to clear dungeons.
The exam itself was simple.
Things started to go wrong from the moment Diark, who had contracted with a demon race, began to move.
‘To be honest, my heart probably wasn’t all that comfortable.’
Upon reaching the deepest part of the dungeon, Diark would offer the sacrifice he had prepared in advance and summon the demon race.
In order to free itself, the demon race would devour its summoner, Diark, and he would inevitably meet his death.
We had lived together for a while and I had grown somewhat attached, but what could be done.
Someone who had contracted with the demon race was already beyond saving.
“Everyone ready?”
“I’m done.”
“Me too.”
“…Yeah.”
Alice, Diark, and Maria answered in that order.
Yuria, who still hadn’t adapted to the fact that she belonged to this party, fidgeted nervously with her eyes spinning, and Leysias kept glancing at me, watching my reaction.
“And you two?”
“…There’s no problem.”
“I, I’m fine too.”
When I deliberately gave them my gaze and asked, Leysias nodded cautiously.
Yuria didn’t look fine at all, but I had picked her in the first place because of her potential.
Even if she didn’t shine right away, she was more than worth it.
“All right, then let’s go.”
The dungeon our party was assigned to clear was called ‘Resting Place of the Dead’.
As the name suggested, it was a dungeon dominated by undead.
The entrance was just an ordinary cave, but once inside, a wide path opened up.
“It’s been handled a lot.”
Alice, moving at the front alongside me, muttered while touching the surrounding walls.
“It would have. It’s been used for Academy exams for generations.”
Even if it was a real dungeon, since it was used as an exam site for students, the Academy periodically carried out maintenance.
In places like dungeons, as time passed, energy accumulated and there was a high chance of strong monsters appearing, so it was a natural measure.
At the front of the party were Alice, who could detect traps, and me as the vanguard.
Behind us were Diark and Maria, and at the very rear, the two mages guarded the line.
“You said once we enter the deepest part, that’s when it starts, right?”
Alice’s gaze slid subtly toward Diark.
“Haha, don’t worry. If monsters show up, I’ll beat them all down.”
Walking while protecting three women, he looked like a fish in water.
He kept talking to them, telling them to look forward to his exploits, but the two with reserved personalities and the one with an indifferent expression didn’t respond much.
Even so, the conversation never stopped, which in itself might have been a kind of talent.
“Mages, start lighting the way.”
The light coming in through the entrance began to diminish.
If I activated mana, I could see in the darkness as if it were broad daylight, but with mages here, I didn’t want to waste mana.
“[Primordial Light, Light].”
With nothing fancy, Leysias created a fist-sized sphere of light with a simple incantation.
Seeing that, Yuria made an expression like she refused to lose, clasped both hands together, and laboriously recited her incantation.
“[O primordial light, bestow your grace upon the world and reveal its order, Light].”
An incantation twice as long as Leysias’s.
And yet, the sphere that appeared was less than half her size.
“Good work, both of you.”
Yuria was panting from casting just a single Light spell, and perhaps finding her pathetic, Leysias subtly furrowed her brow so it wouldn’t show.
Of course, I noticed.
‘I’ll have to knock that pride down a bit.’
Yuria’s talent was magic nullification.
A talent that might appear once every hundred years, an ability that had not yet manifested at this point in time.
Until she met the protagonist and realized her talent, she spent her days as a failing student at the Academy.
Later, she joined the protagonist’s party and grew under the nickname Silent Mage, becoming an indispensable existence as the antithesis of mages.
In contrast, Leysias was…….
what had she done again?
“Enemy spotted ahead.”
At Alice’s words, we stopped in place and prepared for battle.
“How many?”
At my question, she focused mana into her eyes.
Staring straight ahead with pupils shimmering in pure white light, she soon spoke.
“There are a little over thirty skeletons, and about ten more that look like ghouls and zombies combined.”
“So roughly close to fifty?”
“About fifty low-tier undead. That’s nothing.”
Diark stepped forward with a confident expression.
Skeletons, ghouls, and zombies were all classified as the weakest among undead monsters.
Unless they were higher variants, this was more than manageable even without me or Alice stepping in.
“There’s no need for the mages to get involved. The four of us in the vanguard will each take ten.”
The mana of mages was limited, so using it on this kind of trash mob wasn’t a very good judgment.
That was why I ordered them to provide support from the rear, while the four of us in the vanguard, myself included, stepped forward.
“Want to make a bet on who kills the most?”
Diark said boldly as he swung his spear around.
“Not a bad idea. Loser buys dinner tonight!”
Replying to him, Alice suddenly kicked off the ground.
A flustered Diark shouted that it was a foul and chased after her, and Maria, who glanced at me briefly, was the last to dash forward.
‘Buying dinner tonight, huh.’
Diark was fated to die today.
Making a bet like that felt a bit like bad taste.
“But I can’t just give up the match.”
I, too, gripped my sword and hurled myself toward the skeletons.
Leysias looked down at the tiny girl beside her with displeased eyes.
Short silver hair that fell to her shoulders.
Her looks weren’t lacking, but they were nothing compared to her own.
‘Just what about this child is so special.’
Hadn’t she struggled just to cast the simplest Light spell?
Appearance, talent, skill, family background.
There wasn’t a single thing she could find that was superior to herself.
‘Could it be…….’
Some time ago, Leysias had heard rumors about men with particular sexual preferences.
Among them, there were said to be quite a few who preferred small, delicate women like Yuria, so her suspicion went in that direction.
‘That Alice girl who sticks close to him looks similar too.’
Her face was pretty enough, but her build, like Yuria’s, couldn’t compare to her own.
Still, judging by the way she stepped forward to identify traps and her movements when taking down skeletons, she didn’t seem incompetent.
‘Hoo…….’
With a complicated heart, a sigh escaped Leysias on its own.
Ability or anything else didn’t matter.
Originally, she had intended to dominate the party with her background and skills.
She dreamed of forming a party composed solely of obedient, loyal subordinates, and reigning over them like a queen, but there had been an unexpected obstacle.
‘Leios von Ribera.’
The third prince of the Ribera Empire, using the alias Ostia at the Academy.
The rumors about him were extravagant.
The child of an unknown woman with whom the Emperor had spent a single night on a whim.
A symbol of incompetence who could do nothing, a thug who tyrannized those beneath him.
To think that the top entrant of this year’s Bayern Academy was him.
‘But to call him an incompetent thug…….’
Of course, his attitude was no less than that of a thug.
It hadn’t even been long since the semester started when he got into trouble with seniors and even fought them.
But he wasn’t incompetent.
The momentum he had shown when he came into the classroom back then was unmistakably that of a strong person who possessed power.
‘Did he hide his strength.’
That was why Leysias obediently joined his party and set out to grasp Ostia.
Though the Sheffield family was a prestigious magic house, its standing had been shrinking recently due to the sudden emergence of many outstanding mages.
To restore its original massive influence, this was a time when a breakthrough was needed.
Leysias thought she might find that in Ostia.
“L, Leysias.”
As she waited for the party members who were smashing skeletons with gusto, she had fallen briefly into thought, but her focus broke at the voice calling her.
“…What is it.”
The girl who was so far beneath her that they normally wouldn’t even make eye contact, Yuria, clenched her small fists and spoke.
“I’ll do my best. I won’t get in the way……!”
‘Tsk.’
She herself must have been keenly aware of how out of place she was, shamelessly wedged into such an excellent party.
Leysias didn’t like that either.
If she stayed with people at her own level, there would be nothing to get hurt over.
“Let’s go.”
At Ostia’s call, after he had completely shattered the skeleton horde, the girls moved their feet without a word.
“Man, I never thought Maria would sweep them all.”
After several battles, Diark scratched his cheek with an awkward expression.
Having lost the first fight by a huge margin, he tried to recover the gap in the subsequent battles, but there hadn’t been any opening thanks to Maria, who annihilated enemies in an instant with blood-red eyes.
Her performance was certainly impressive.
Perhaps due to the nature of a berserker, the gap between her and weaker monsters manifested as absolute power, and she smashed their skulls even more refreshingly than we did.
Honestly, if you just compared raw strength, she might even be stronger than Diark.
“What about the report?”
The exam didn’t end with defeating monsters.
Since the main objective was dungeon exploration, we had to record the contents of the dungeon and our exploration.
“I’m writing everything down without leaving anything out!”
“You’re doing well. Keep it up.”
Unlike before, Yuria replied with a bright attitude, clenching her fist tightly.
Finding that sight commendable, I nodded, and she blushed and bowed her head.
Is she shy? Cute.
“…Lolicon.”
“Hey.”
When she twisted the feeling of finding a younger sister cute into warped sexual desire, I glared at Alice.
She pretended not to notice, whistled, and turned her head away.
“There’s a three-way fork up ahead. The middle path is the deepest part where this dungeon’s boss monster lives, and the other two seem like passages similar to the one we came through.”
“I see.”
Since we had been moving nonstop for two hours since entering the dungeon, we decided to take a short rest.
Each of us ate the preserved food we had brought to build up stamina, and we checked our weapons and armor, preparing for the coming fight.
“…Someone’s coming.”
Then, from far away, we sensed a presence.
At the same time, Alice also lifted her head, and our gazes fixed on the darkness beyond.
“Oh my.”
Vivid red hair fluttered in the darkness.
The ones who revealed themselves before us were Elysia’s party.