Conquering the Academy with Just a Sashimi Knife (Novel) - Chapter 91 - Finals (1)

Chapter 91 – Finals (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Before the final exam.

“…It tastes even worse than I expected.”

I was chewing on a piece of bread drier than dry.

One bite, and the inside of my mouth dried out completely, so I wet my lips with water. Then I repeated the whole process again.

It was so tough that my jawbone felt like it might start aching. Even as I frowned, I didn’t stop working my jaw.

“You have to eat to live.”

I muttered that to myself, but this bread was truly a hardship to eat.

I had bought it to fill my stomach before the exam. There was a lot of it, but it tasted like absolute shit.

Cheap things were cheap for a reason, sure, but I never thought that saying would apply to bread too. After yesterday’s grocery shopping, blinded by the low price and buying it without thinking, I couldn’t help feeling resentful toward myself.

To be honest, my wallet wasn’t in such desperate shape right now.

The kimchi jjigae booth had been such a huge success that enough money came in to erase any immediate worries about meals.

After ingredient costs, and after settling accounts with the club members, the amount that fell to me alone was a whopping.

‘Five million won.’

Seeing the number 5 with six zeros lined up after it gave me a satisfaction beyond words. Of course, I still had some of the money I had skimmed from the blacksmith before, but when it came to storehouses and hair, more was always better for peace of mind.

The reason I was having such a pitiful breakfast even now was also to keep the amount leaking out of my account to an absolute minimum. There was no harm in being frugal.

With the parents of this world absent, the excuses for money coming in were narrower than a knot hole. Whatever could be saved had to be saved, and whatever could be scraped together had to be scraped together clean.

If I lived like that, maybe I could somehow hold out until before second year? Once then came, part-time work would become possible, and I’d had a steady income.

‘Damn it.’

Living like this made me think of the old days for no reason. It felt like I had been living exactly like this back then too, at just about this age in my previous life… Because of that gloomy feeling, my molars bit down on the bread even harder.

I kept working my jaw while staring at my phone. Almost as if I were chewing over the words on the screen at the same time.

== ==

[Announcement for the 2034 First Semester Final Practical Exam]

Due to certain circumstances, we were informing you that the contents of the previously scheduled practical final exam had been changed as follows.

◉ Change: External dungeon raid ▶ Team competition.

Test period: 2034. 06. 02. (Tue) ~ 06. 06. (Wed)

Test location: Hoakin Academy Special Hall.

Team composition: one second-year cadet, two first-year cadets. (Randomly selected.)

[※ Team assignments will be sent by text message the day before the exam.]

[※ The exact details of the exam will be announced orally immediately beforehand.]

== ==

It was a setup every bit as sparse as my breakfast.

It didn’t even say how the exam itself would be conducted. Weapon had grumbled that if they were going to do this, they might as well had just sent out a blank sheet of paper.

‘Seriously.’

But thanks to my experience from my player days, even from something this fragmentary, there were things I could infer.

The one phrase that stood out in these short lines above all else. The Special Hall of Hoakin Academy, the place where the exam would be held.

My mind had almost been too numb from seeing Rachel’s name to realize it, but the exam location was just as shocking in its own way.

Unless something had changed in the setting, that was a place originally used only by third-year cadets.

A massive gathering hall located at the northernmost edge of the Academy’s vast grounds. It was the building that symbolized Hoakin Academy’s philosophy of practical training above all else.

Calling it a building was all well and good, but it was a place more ominous than a dungeon, no, worse.

‘…Special Hall, my ass.’

A low groan escaped me. After all, Hoakin Academy’s Special Hall was a compressed recreation of Gehenna, the realm of demons.

They said the founder, Balor Hoakin, had recreated it based on twenty years spent living in the demonic realm, and he had poured so much effort into it that he had even gathered stones, pebbles, and grass straight out of Gehenna and planted them there, so inside the Special Hall an independent ecosystem had formed.

Apparently, they had even copied Gehenna’s peculiar trait of making one lose all sense of direction. That alone was enough to make one understand the founder’s obsessive dedication.

A labyrinth created in the Academy grounds under the noble name of an educational facility. That was probably the most accurate description.

To build something more dungeon-like than a dungeon itself inside Academy grounds… I was all for bash-your-head-through practical education, but even this felt a bit excessive.

If I compared it to my old line of work, it was like opening a full aquarium inside a sashimi restaurant under the excuse of needing to handle many different fish. And bringing in the seawater and sand directly from the ocean too.

‘That Balor Hoakin guy wasn’t normal either.’

The fortunate part was that they hadn’t gone so far as to bring monsters in and throw them inside too. The fact that I wasn’t even sure whether I should feel relieved about that was laughably sad.

Anyway.

A team competition was to be held in such a Special Hall. That point, to me, was truly meaningful.

‘If I remember right, the Special Hall is one place where the subspace barrier doesn’t deploy…’

The subspace barrier was something used over a wide range, but the Special Hall was the sole place outside its influence.

Subspace and the demonic realm were like light and darkness, water and oil, natures so opposed that they could never mix.

If I gathered the circumstances and guessed from them, there was a high probability that bloodshed between cadets would be prohibited. In subspace, reality itself wasn’t being affected, so there would be no actual physical wounds. But the Special Hall, which lay outside that domain, was different.

If so, then what would be used as the standard for determining victory and defeat in this tournament? That was the one thing that still bothered me, though I would find out soon enough.

‘…Not knowing the format of the exam or the reward feels really unfamiliar.’

Up until now, I had always had the framework of my memories from my player days. But now I didn’t.

Maybe because of that, the unfamiliar future felt especially strange to me.

Then again, when you thought about it, wasn’t this what a normal life was supposed to be? I wasn’t some shaman. How could it make sense for me to see the future clearly?

In genre novels or webtoons, if you got dropped into another world, everything would click together like a lie. But at least for me, it didn’t seem to work that way.

Then again, the moment a guy like me, who hadn’t even been a core gamer, dropped into the world of a game, the whole situation had already been of a different grain. Since I didn’t even know the latter half of the story anyway, there was nothing for it but to treat this as practice.

…That aside.

I spat the crumbs in my mouth into the bag. Then I immediately poured bottled water down my throat to rinse my mouth. My gums were throbbing.

“I seriously can’t eat this.”

I gathered my things and my wallet. If I was going to eat this kind of dry-ass bread, I’d rather just go kill the meal with cup ramen at the convenience store. Muttering that to myself, I stepped out of the room.

* * *

After dealing with a meal from the convenience store with a King Lid Cup, I arrived in front of the Special Hall.

The first thing I saw, naturally, was the Special Hall itself.

A rough exterior utterly different from the Academy’s other elegant buildings, without even a trace of ornamentation. The human-shaped stone carvings plastered all over the outer wall made it seem as though the building were openly advertising itself as an abnormal place.

Still, one thing was certain: it gave off an oppressive force that naturally made whoever looked at it shrink back.

“…It feels really different from how it did in the game.”

Back then, I had thought it was pretty atmospheric. Surrounded by all the modern-style buildings in the Academy, I had liked the fantasy-like feel of it… but facing the real thing, just looking at it sent a chill through me.

‘Well, it’s modeled after the demonic realm…’

I looked around. The area was crowded with cadets murmuring among themselves and joining up with their teammates.

The slightly strange thing was that the number of instructors was also high in proportion to the cadets. It felt like there had to be at least a hundred of them.

“Geoom-maa!”

A bright, ringing voice pierced my ears from the side. It was so loud that even if I’d been deaf, I felt like I still would’ve heard it clearly. Turning my head, I saw two women walking toward me.

Rachel, who was on the same finals team as me, and Hana senpai. Since the photos of team members had also been sent out, it looked like they had found me easily.

“Geom-ma! I missed youuu!”

The moment Rachel’s eyes met mine, she kicked off the ground and lunged toward me.

With the shaft of her Fangtian halberd resting on her shoulder. The force of it was like a rhinoceros charging with its horn lowered.

I put my hand into my pocket.

“……!”

Rachel came to an abrupt halt right in front of me. The aftermath of her stop left the stone paving cracked in the shape of her feet. Inwardly, I admired the leg strength that defied the physical law of inertia itself.

“W-wait! Pulling a knife first thing is cheating!”

“……”

Rachel was quicker on the uptake than I had expected.

“Still, that bad-boy side of yours is exactly what makes you so attractive, Geoom-ma.”

I put my hand into my pocket again.

“I’m joking, joking! Really, you’re just as serious now as you were at midterms!?”

“…Haah.”

Even when I sighed, Rachel only let out a cheerful laugh. I ignored her and turned my gaze toward Hana senpai instead.

Even after the commotion a moment ago, her face still held an easy calm.

‘…More importantly.’

What caught my eye was the red metal pry bar strapped at her waist. What had people on Earth called that again? A crowbar? Anyway, why was she carrying something that looked like it belonged at a construction site?

“Is that your weapon, senpai?”

“Yep! What do you think?”

Hana senpai nodded brightly with a clear smile.

“…It’s cool.”

“Right!? Even if it doesn’t look like it, it’s a B-rank weapon.”

B-rank, huh. Between that and Weapon’s recorder, it seemed that in this world, the look of a weapon and its performance were separate things.

While I was stopping Rachel from casually trying to sidle up to me just with my glare.

“All right, it looks like everyone is gathered. I’ll now explain the format of the exam.”

A middle-aged instructor who looked like the senior-most one stepped forward and spoke.

“For this first-year final exam, you will, unusually enough, be taking the test in the Special Hall. As was stated in the text message, the event is a team competition. But the concept of competition here is somewhat different from what you’re imagining.”

At a jerk of his chin, the row of instructors standing in front all stepped forward at once. The middle-aged instructor turned his gaze back toward the cadets and spoke in a low voice.

“In this first-year final exam, the use of weapons is prohibited. Each of you will hand over your weapons to the instructors in front.”

At that stern announcement, the cadets’ faces filled not merely with shock, but with outright horror. Mine did too, though at the same time I could understand it.

Come to think of it, there had never been any notice telling us to bring our weapons. The reason they hadn’t bothered to explicitly say not to was probably because they wanted to keep us from inferring the exam format and to throw us off.

‘It’s much fairer than the class placement exam was.’

As the mood began to grow unsettled, the instructor, as though he had expected that reaction, continued his explanation in an even tone.

“The interior of the Special Hall is a space with an ecosystem almost identical to the demonic realm. In other words, it lies outside the domain of the subspace barrier. Maybe if you were battle-hardened third-years, it would be different, but if idiotic first-years like you started running around with weapons, we’d have more than a few casualties on our hands.”

That explanation calmed the commotion somewhat. It was sound reasoning.

If these kids, still little more than lumps of flesh, started swinging blades at each other, the result would be disastrous. After checking their reactions, the instructor continued.

“The exam format is simple. You will enter the Special Hall and, within the one-hour time limit, reach the designated checkpoint for each stage. Teams that arrive within the limit advance to the next stage. Teams that fail to do so are disqualified.”

‘…Hmm, so it’s roughly like a group race.’

Reach the checkpoint within the one-hour time limit, then advance to the next stage. Judging from the words alone, it sounded easy, but the problem was the location.

The Special Hall, built in imitation of the demonic realm, was essentially a wall-less labyrinth. Monsters and demons were one thing, but humans, in an environment where magic power was constantly scattered through the air, were prone to losing their way.

‘The format itself isn’t bad.’

I could also understand the idea of it being a team competition. A test that required both stamina and coordination.

To put it simply, it was roughly similar to a group marathon unfolding inside a labyrinth.

If it was this, there would be less bloodshed, and aside from the place itself that had to be traversed, it wouldn’t be especially dangerous either.

Still, one question arose. Without subspace, how were they planning to grade us? Just as that question occurred to me, the middle-aged instructor gave an additional explanation about that point.

“Each team will be assigned one instructor, who will evaluate you and prevent any unfortunate accidents that might arise. Any halfwits who want to give up halfway through may say so to their assigned instructor. That’s all. I wish you bad luck.”

At the end of that crisp curse from the instructor, the roughly hundred instructors surged forward as though they had been waiting.

They collected the weapons into subspace pouches slung over their shoulders like bags. I didn’t know the details, but unlike Media’s little clasp purse-shaped one, these looked like the mass-produced sort.

“Aah, what the hell? This final is way too boring… At this age, people are supposed to be hitting and fighting each other~”

Rachel clicked her tongue in disappointment. Hana senpai only smiled faintly in silence. Unlike Rachel, she didn’t seem to have any complaints. Then again, she wasn’t someone who showed her opinions much in the first place.

And then, the instructors approaching from the far front drew close enough to reach us.

“Cadets, hand over your weapons, pleasee-!”

An all-too-familiar female voice rang out. A deliberately cute nasal tone mixed into it.

The moment I turned my head, my eyes met those of the female instructor assigned to our team.

“U-uh! G-Geom-ma… sir!?”

Villain Choi Seol-ah. Her complexion turned deathly pale.

…You?