Chapter 41 - Academy Field Trips Always Come Under Attack (5)

"Miss Isabelle, are you really going alone?"

"Yes! Don't worry. I have something to prove. Hehe."

"Something to prove...?"

"You'd better steel yourself. Even you could fail if you let your guard down for a moment, Miss Yuri...!"

With a frightening smile, Isabelle dashed off into the forest. She had effectively been the first to make a move. Most of the students were still standing in the clearing, watching one another, and her actions caught everyone's attention.

She'd run into the forest alone as soon as the exam began?

No one would do that without something to give them confidence. There were unknown attackers waiting in the forest, and traveling alone meant having to watch out for fellow students as well.

After exchanging wary glances, the students soon gathered in small groups and slowly headed deeper into the forest. Ivan, who had been watching them from above, also began to move.

"Ivan, where are you going?"

"There's something I need to see for myself."

"Hmm...? Very suspicious. Who is it? What scamp has caught our 'Little' Ivan's attention?"

Enrique chuckled and shrugged. As Ivan turned to leave without answering, she spoke again.

"Don't interfere with the children's exam. I'm sure you know what you're doing, but you're rather heavily armed."

"I'm preparing for contingencies."

"When you talk about preparing for contingencies in Prizhenkaya, it sounds as though there's about to be a coup. Relax, my disciple. That's paranoia."

"We'll see."

Ivan had no intention of bothering to persuade this stubborn old woman stuck in the premodern age. The three academy events most likely to come under attack were as follows:

Entrance ceremonies, field training, and festivals.

The reason they could remain so carefree after designing an exam that practically begged for a terrorist attack was their lack of common sense. Ivan was an eminently practical man, so he attempted only the possible. Teaching common sense to someone over a century old did not fall within his capabilities.

Without another word, Ivan leaped into the trees and vanished into the forest.

"He's gotten a little... irritating lately, hasn't he...?"

Enrique bristled as she recalled the look on his face.

* * *

"Seriously, what does that man actually do?"

Isabelle muttered as she ran through the forest. Everything she had learned in Ivan's lessons stood out clearly before her eyes.

["There are no straight lines in nature. Anything that gleams in a straight line when the daylight catches it is a trap."]

He was right. Isabelle had already dismantled her sixth booby trap and was still running without hesitation.

And there was another lesson.

["Given enough time, a well-trained agent never leaves a trap standing alone. So imagine it. Where would you go to avoid the trap?"]

Traps that channeled their prey. The cleanest escape route from a concealed trap would always hold a second one. That lesson had proved apt as well. These agents Enrique had trained were apparently well trained even by Ivan's standards. Whenever Isabelle dismantled a trap and pictured an escape route, she invariably found a second trap there.

She had been running for some time when a rustling reached her ears.

"Is someone there?"

A student. Isabelle crouched in the undergrowth and quietly gripped her sword. Soon, a student emerged with more rustling. What was his name again? Alain? She thought he was a freshman from Thilles, like her. And he had a fairly solid circle of connections.

Yet he'd appeared alone? No chance.

Smiling coldly, Isabelle surveyed her surroundings. Sure enough, a shadow shifted some distance behind Alain. Someone was apparently hiding behind a tree, but concealment that clumsy was worse than not hiding at all. It only put people further on their guard.

She couldn't help chuckling. Seeing a display like that reminded her just how impressive Ivan was. This was why she couldn't date little boys.

The unwitting thought startled her. Wait, date? Who said anything about dating?

'It's just gratitude. Nothing more!'

At the very least, a confession was something she received, not made. However much the world had progressed, there was a long history to back that up. According to Thilles court etiquette, there was only one circumstance in which the woman's side made the first overture: when her father approached the other party to arrange a political marriage.

Unfortunately, Isabelle had no father around. Maximilien had already been missing for four years. So she had no choice but to follow the history and traditions of Thilles. If Ivan confessed first, she would give it some thought. She was certainly willing to look favorably on the idea, but...

'Confess first? I don't think so. Even if it is him, I'm clearly the better catch. I'm the hero's daughter, I'm a noble, I'm pretty, and I'm young.'

Normally, Esidisi or Yuri would have stepped in to put a stop to Isabelle's nonsense, but unfortunately, neither was beside her now...

"Hey, looks like no one's here."

"That's weird. I definitely heard something."

As Alain grumbled, a group of students emerged from behind the trees. Familiar faces—his crowd. Five. Too many to take on head-on without getting hurt. Nevertheless, Isabelle gripped her sword and quietly climbed a tree.

Training to counter sneak attacks was, seen another way, training to carry them out. To counter a sneak attack, you first had to be thoroughly versed in making one. In other words, after receiving hands-on combat training from Krasilof's finest field agent, Isabelle had become more than university freshmen could handle.

'One to start with.'

She clamped a hand over the rearmost boy's mouth and immediately pressed her sword to his neck.

"Mmph... mmph?!"

"Shh. This blade is sharp."

"M-Miss Isabelle...?!"

"Now, now. If you don't keep quiet, you might get hurt."

She took the orb from inside her nameless classmate's clothes and promptly struck the back of his neck.

"Gah!!"

"Huh. He knocks people out doing that."

"An attack...! We're under attack!! She took my orb!!"

"Oh, that's cheating. You're supposed to keep quiet once you're out."

Grumbling, Isabelle raised her sword. The classmate she'd struck in the neck writhed in pain, but his outburst had brought the other four charging at her.

"Isabelle...! You ran off alone, and now you attack us first! Are you brave or just stupid?"

"Oh, Alain. Are we on such familiar terms now?"

Isabelle grinned and raised her sword. Well, four was better than five. She decided to look on the bright side. She'd never liked the way every last one of them forced beaming smiles whenever they saw her, anyway.

And on top of that...

'What is that stance?'

Their attacking stances, the momentum of their charge, their clumsy, utterly uncoordinated paths—every bit of it was laughable. Compared with fighting terrorists for her life on the train to the entrance ceremony, or Ivan attacking her as though he meant it over the past week, this was downright boring.

She smirked. Honestly. Every comparison brought her back to that man. This was getting serious.

"I wonder if five orbs will make me the top student? I really want first place this time."

Still grinning, Isabelle charged to meet them.

* * *

Around two hours into the exam, by the time half the students had received failing grades and were being escorted out of the forest—when the attacks were growing fiercer because Enrique's disciples each had fewer students to contend with—

RRRRUMBLE...

A tremor began deep underground.

"Aah?!"

Yuri lost her balance mid-run and fell. She immediately sprang up, gripping her sword and scanning her surroundings. But no one was there. She sensed no sign of an attack.

"What was that?"

* * *

RRRRUMBLE...!!

The tremors grow stronger. Heavier and heavier, they send the forest's trees swaying, shaking loose their leaves in a rustling shower. Enrique frowned and immediately leaped into a tree.

"... What is this?"

* * *

RRRRUMBLE...!!

The moment the ground began to shake, Ivan kicked off from his tree. He leaped to the top of the tallest tree and scanned his surroundings. The entire vast forest was shaking.

"Where?"

The sudden earthquake did not surprise him. An attack was a given, and he was not so delicate that every development unfolding according to common sense would startle him.

Where was the target?

Ivan surveyed his surroundings with cold eyes. The affected area was too broad. He already knew where Isabelle and Oscar were, but the earthquake was not confined to their locations. The entire forest was trembling.

"Ha. This..."

He soon chuckled. A familiar pattern had come into view. It was Dwarves after all. Just as expected.

Ivan swiftly scanned the forest. There were things you could see if you weren't flustered by the sudden earthquake, if you took in the entire battlefield with a broad view. An earthquake was, ultimately, a wave. The place you could call its epicenter would shake the hardest.

Thus, following that reasoning, the swaying trees themselves made excellent markers. If he could gauge how much they shook, he could locate the epicenter.

As he had once reflected, a forest was essentially a chaotic maze: an intricate mechanism formed by randomly growing trees intertwining as they matured. If he looked past that form without being misled by it, if he could analyze each swaying tree individually...

"A spiderweb."

He could see a long, sprawling epicenter, extending in circles like a spiderweb. The signature attack pattern of the Fifth Dragon General's combat engineers, the 'Web Makers.'

It had been a long time. Ivan felt almost nostalgic. It was an utterly textbook attack, reminiscent of the old 'Tunnel War.' Though the scale was much smaller than in those days, at any rate.

CRRRASH!!

With a roar like a landslide, the entire forest subsided. Trees tangle and topple, and the earth overturns, exposing deep caverns. Everything on the surface is caught in the sliding soil and swept down, while dust and shattered timber burst upward with a great reverberating crash.

Through the haze shrouding the battlefield, Ivan heard the screams of numerous students.

'Leave rescuing the students to Enrique.'

She would understand the situation the moment she saw it. Dwarf attacks would be familiar to her, too. Besides, most of the students carried 'location-tracking magic items.' That meant there was a good prospect of rescuing them within the critical window.

This was off-campus field training—and a 'Countering Sneak Attacks' exam that closely resembled real combat, at that—so priests would be on standby. All but the most serious injuries could be healed. Ivan immediately leaped from the tree.

'So Oscar is closer.'

Assuming either Isabelle or Oscar was their target, he would go to the closer one first. Mapping a route in his mind, Ivan hurled himself into a gap leading down into a cavern whose bottom he could not see.

The battlefield was close, the objective clear, and his armaments sufficient. An officer of the Extermination Unit needed no further premise.