"Haah, haah......."
I had only drawn the sword down, and yet my limbs trembled. It felt as though my whole body's stamina had been spent.
"Agh......"
On top of that my arms hurt tremendously. My fingers were visibly trembling, and I could not control it.
The sword I had been holding dropped to the ground, and my legs folded forward.
❝F-fuck.......❞
Even so I had to see what had happened. Bracing the ground with barely trembling arms, I raised my head.
The monster came into view, standing perfectly fine but looking anything but fine in the head, and behind it, ground that somehow seemed to have opened up bright.
'......If I hadn't changed the direction at the end, I really would have killed a Phantasm.'
It looks like every tree in a straight line has vanished; please let it be my imagination. Though it does not seem to be.
I barely lifted my upper body by putting strength into my waist.
My head seemed to spin a bit, but that itself was familiar so it was fine. It was something you experience now and then living in a hospital.
"On purpose."
I spat out a voice close to a cough.
"I missed on purpose, sir."
It was hard, but what had to be said had to be said.
I gripped the dropped White Fang. The already weighty sword now felt heavy enough to be hard even to lift.
"So...... please count it as having knocked you down."
Still I had to go on. I looked for the scabbard and Black Fang, which I had all but thrown to the ground for lack of any strength to spare. The two were diagonally behind me.
Stagger. My body, twisting that way and rising, lost its balance. It was a good thing I had not been properly up, or I would really have taken a heavy fall.
❝......Counting it as being knocked down isn't hard. But what are you going to do going in that sorry state?❞
"Wouldn't it be better than not going, sir."
Ah, but seriously, how am I going to walk there.
Slumped where I sat, I merely gripped the innocent scabbard and Black Fang. I know that high-Grade Phantasms also raise the Phantasm Master's physical specs, so why am I not receiving that benefit? Such a petty grievance was a bonus.
"Ugh, tough son of a bitch."
"......?"
The voice had changed a little. I looked back toward where the monster was. The 2.5m build was melting down.
"Huh?"
Inside the body melting down into a black liquid form was someone. A person of a build that, if not quite 2.5m, was still unchanged in being huge.
"......Instructor?"
"That's right."
No wonder the way of speaking was a bit like that.
I scratched the back of my head over an identity I had predicted if you call it predicting, and had not if you don't.
Honestly what I had imagined was a Phantasm firmly connected to the instructor relaying words on her behalf. I had not once thought the instructor was inside the Phantasm.
"I lost, I lost. What kind of son of a bitch is this."
The instructor, having shed part of the Phantasm she had been wearing, walked over. The upper body human and the lower body monster, a sorry sight, but the instructor looked quite used to it.
"Congratulations. You're the first son of a bitch to survive."
"Hgk."
The instructor's hand was laid on the crown of my head and went so far as to stroke it as if pressing down. It was treatment I had received for the first time since becoming 'Ya-hwi.'
Usually, if only because of a height well over 180cm, people did not readily stroke my head. All the less with a hand this rough.
The feeling was strange.
"I'll take you to the kids, so get up slowly."
"Th-thank you, ma'am. But is that all right?"
"What's the harm? I had to go pick the kids up anyway. Everyone but you was eliminated."
"I see...... What???"
What? All the kids were eliminated??
How much time has even passed???
"You think those bastards would hold out with the cheat key that is you gone?"
"B-but......"
Seong-gwon's there, isn't she? All eliminated even with Seong-gwon there? Does that make sense?
Or could it really be my constitution......?
"C-could it be because of me?"
"Hmm? Ah, no. It's not because of you. I may live for the fun of tormenting you lot, but I wouldn't have them ambushed in a state where they couldn't even resist. At the very least I sent them in when the Phantasms could move."
"Is that so......."
That was truly a relief. Although it was unexpected that Seong-gwon had been eliminated even though the ambush occurred at a distance where the Phantasms could operate.
"Was our squad leader, Cadet Seong-gwon, eliminated too, ma'am?"
"Seong-gwon, yeah. If the other kids hadn't caught her by the ankles she'd have been the one to survive. A shame."
......I have absolutely no idea what happened, and yet somehow I think I know.
I grasped the hand the instructor stretched out and got up. Having caught my breath a moment, the strength had returned to my legs. Running would be absolutely impossible, but anyway.
I put White Fang in its scabbard and then gathered up the remaining Black Fang. Since most of the cloth that had served as the Twin Dragon Swords' storage wrap had been torn away, carrying them on my back was no longer possible.
I followed the instructor with the Twin Dragon Swords held in my arms. Since the instructor matched her pace to mine, following was not hard.
"There they are. The kids."
"Oh...... What??"
Had it taken about ten minutes walking slowly?
The moment I spotted the kids sprawled out like a defeated army, I was flustered.
I had heard they were all eliminated, but I had not known that truly everyone was eliminated. Not only our squad but every kid around was dyed with fluorescent paint.
"Is everyone all right?"
The easiest to speak to were of course the kids from my own squad.
I dashed over to the kids sitting in one spot. Seeing the kids turned into a defeated army, strength came back to me of its own accord.
There seemed to be a sound of the instructor snorting a laugh behind me, but that was not important.
"......It's Hwi."
"You were alive?"
"Ya-hwi! Is your body all right?"
Kim To-eun made a tearful face and Yi Hoe-uk welcomed me with a dry face. Sa Seo-yeon too had a feeling of subtle gladness laid beneath her awkwardly smiling face.
"Once you left it was truly hell."
"Reeeally...... The hole you left was too big."
"Once the thing where they withdraw if you just buy time disappeared, holding out really did get hard."
Is that so. Was it that high in difficulty?
Listening to the kids' words, I looked at Seong-gwon. Leaning against her tiger's back, Seong-gwon wore her usual stolid face.
If not for the bright yellow fluorescent color staining her upper body, it was a face that would have made you wonder 'did she escape elimination?'
"Welcome back."
"Mm-hm."
This is how Seong-gwon should be. I felt relieved at the usual sight. If Seong-gwon had been making a fuss I would have been frightened instead.
"......"
And it would have been the same if that fellow Pyo Do-hyeok had welcomed me.
"Chick bastards, have you come to your senses?"
Meanwhile the instructor stood before us. The gazes of fourteen people including me — where the missing personnel had gone I do not know — gathered on the instructor.
"Cars will come soon. Take them and move to the infirmary."
Vrrrm.
"Speak of the tiger and it appears, and here they are. Six to a car. Get on however."
The jeeps that had been used to tear us apart in the forest arrived one by one. The kids began boarding one by one.
"Can I ask how things went after I dropped out?"
Six was the same as our squad's complement. Thanks to that I could easily ask what I wanted to ask.
"......Haah."
From the start Yi Hoe-uk let out a deep sigh.
"The composition of what came in was the same as before. It's just that once the withdrawing partway stopped happening, well. It fell apart just like that."
"Even apart from that, having one person hold the very front or not makes a big difference. I swung my flail hard too, but close combat isn't that easy a thing."
"The band of thugs got their summons dispelled too. The structure is that once damage accumulates past a certain figure the summoning comes undone."
The explanations all ran separately. But if you combined them all there was a rough picture that emerged.
"Gwon really was a shame. I think she'd have survived if she'd abandoned us and gone alone."
"Th-that's right. She could have survived to the end, but luck didn't follow......"
Even so, Kim To-eun and Sa Seo-yeon brought up a comparatively positive subject to clear the sinking mood. In the end it was worse than not doing it.
"You should speak straight. It's not that luck didn't follow, it's that she was eliminated because some moron trolled."
Yi Hoe-uk, who had been nothing but dry until a moment ago, made a quietly furious face.
And while doing so he glared with his eyes at one side, which at first I thought was at Pyo Do-hyeok. Because the direction happened to be that way.
But the gaze I examined closely was not on Pyo Do-hyeok. It was outside the jeep we were in — another jeep advancing and rattling at a distance.
Second Squad, gathered with Pyo Do-seok at its head, was visible.
"......Glancing over earlier, three people were missing. Did they drop out from injuries?"
"No. They bolted off on their own to save their skins."
I had changed the subject to lessen Yi Hoe-uk's anger, but failed. Realizing the sad truth, I ended up shutting my mouth.
"Um, what happened with Ya-hwi? Since your pack is intact, does that mean you held out?"
"That's right! I've been really curious since earlier!"
Still, this subject made the mood quite a bit brighter. Even Seong-gwon stared at me, apparently curious.
"It's nothing much......"
I briefly explained the fight with the instructor. Since it was practically all down to the Phantasms, I felt a bit sheepish talking about it.
"Hwi, you're the best!!"
"Then that shaking earlier like an earthquake was you?"
"What. Aren't you just on too different a level from us?"
Perhaps the kids would take a dislike to it, I thought. Even now there's a strong sense of my being set apart by my peculiarity.
But the squad members I have now, that is, the squad members apart from Pyo Do-hyeok, were truly good fellows.
My mood, which had been subtly on the decline from all sorts of thoughts, improved a little.
Vroom vroom.
The jeep slowly turned toward the bulkhead.
***
Sim Jae-gyeong watched the cadets being sucked on by the one nicknamed 'Slime.'
As if the nickname had not been attached for nothing, 'Slime' was a Phantasm with the appearance of the slime monsters that commonly appear in games.
'Though that doesn't mean its body is made of acid.'
It could digest what it swallowed, but they were not the sort that eat people.
If anything their staple food is the contaminants stuck to the outside of people and equipment, so they were invariably deployed to places where hygiene matters, such as hospitals. Thanks to being able to remove everything unclean without worsening injuries.
For the same reason they could be seen now and then at training grounds, which are prone to being covered in sweat and dust. It was a welfare measure for cadets who have no time to wash.
"Hm?"
Then one cadet came into Sim Jae-gyeong's eye. A cadet whose face was unusually pale.
'It was First Platoon's Pyo Do-hyeok, was it.'
Since it is a platoon that gathers only the finest talent, even people who are not the homeroom instructor mostly memorize First Platoon's members.
That Sim Jae-gyeong recognized that cadet at once was not unrelated to such a reason. Although even if he had not been in First Platoon, being a Pyo he would have been half-forcibly memorized anyway.
"Your expression isn't good."
"......!"
Is it because a talent you could call a calamity without it being strange is included in the same squad?
But for inferiority or deprivation, her feeling about it was not good at all. It was the feeling of a person who has worked as an instructor for several years.
"Loyalty."
"Was it that shocking, everything collapsing limply because one person was gone?"
Sim Jae-gyeong poked at Pyo Do-hyeok. Normally she is not the sort to pay this much attention to a cadet, but this year's class was too special to let it pass.
'It'd be a problem if talents that in ordinary times would have become the nation's mainstay collapse because of that fellow Ya-hwi.'
If she had to choose one between seventeen people and one person, she would choose the latter for this country's sake, but that did not mean she wanted to cast out the remaining seventeen.
Sim Jae-gyeong stared at the cadet who had been about to slip off into a corner that was neither a bathroom nor anything else.
"Hm. Judging by your reaction that doesn't seem to be it."
What was it. What had made this cadet, who by any look was strong-willed, go pale?
"Hm?"
Then something came into Sim Jae-gyeong's eye. It was the Ox-Head Mask the cadet had hung at his waist.
"Aha. Did you by any chance face Cadet Ya-hwi's presence head-on?"
"......!"
"So I'm right."
Once she found the answer she was convinced at once. That was not a level a mere cadet could withstand.
"Normally I'm not the sort to buy cadets anything, but......"
Sim Jae-gyeong grabbed Cadet Pyo Do-hyeok by the scruff and moved to a corridor where there was no chance of running into other cadets. There was a vending machine there.
"Drink."
"I-I'm fi......"
"Shut up and drink. That's an order."
Sim Jae-gyeong pulled out a hot can of hot chocolate, handed it over, and then tapped her own forearm. Cadet Pyo Do-hyeok sipped at the hot chocolate with his brow slightly furrowed.
"Your being frightened is normal."
"......!"
"I'm not saying you're a coward. I'm saying it's stranger for a mere cadet to withstand what frightened even me for a moment."
The only things that damned genius affects are Phantasms. Normally that is so. It is normal for humans not to feel that cadet's presence.
But what about those who wrap a Phantasm around their body, or whose flesh itself has been transformed by a Phantasm's ability? Are they too human?
Even if they are human in ordinary times, for the span in which their flesh is switched over using a Phantasm, might one not say they have grown closer to a Phantasm?
"It was a truly horrific presence. Was it not?"
The moment she faced that cadet while wearing a Phantasm, the thought that filled her head was one.
How is that a human? How can that be a human?
How can that hugeness, which fades heaven and earth by its mere existence, be dismissed as a mere human.
"If you truly find it hard to endure, request a unit change."
"......!"
"That isn't running away. Trying to endure that presence is the more foolish act."
Sim Jae-gyeong was an instructor. So she could not run away. She did not want to run away either. To be an instructor and be cowed by a cadet — what a disgrace that would be.
But a fellow cadet was different. There was no reason to endure stupidly as she did.
"......I will not run away."
"Is that so."
But if the person himself refused, Sim Jae-gyeong had no reason to step in further.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Do as you like."
At any rate, the Pyos are tough to a man.
It was a remark that had a touch of weariness in it for admiration, and was full of respect and reverence for an insult.
Tab 21