Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Can't Let Talent Go to Waste

The Head Instructor focused on the three distant dots.

White.

"Mago."

And black.

"Kinzo Shua."

He kept muttering to himself.

"Those two are leading the pack. And is that Majo in the middle? That black-and-white pair really stands out."

Then there was the gray hair — like a blend of the two.

"Hmph. Oscar Sitta, too. Looks like the black is slowly washing out..."

He clasped his hands behind his back and waited.

The moment the three trainees reached his feet, they dropped to the ground.

"Huuuugh..."

Kinzo let out a particularly pitiful groan.

The Head Instructor suppressed the urge to yank them up and line them straight. Instead, he calmly scribbled on his scoring sheet.

"Mago, Kinzo Shua."

"Yes... sir..."

"First place. Perfect score — 100 points."

Mago and Kinzo weakly high-fived. Even the clap sounded limp.

"Second place: Oscar Sitta. Your teammate, Louise Murphy, will get 99 points if she makes it back on time."

"Th-thank you, sir. Louise should be able to get back on her own... probably."

Two hours passed.

'I thought this whole batch was high-caliber, but turns out it's just these weirdos. And one of them probably just got lucky,' the Head Instructor thought to himself.

A little later, four more trainees arrived. The top four were now decided.

Then came two more, lagging behind.

"Bell Red."

He muttered.

"And Amon Coster."

Bell collapsed the moment she passed the Instructor.

"Bell Red, Amon Coster. Fifth place."

"Good work, Bell."

The moment those words left his mouth, Amon also dropped flat.

Soon after, Louise appeared.

"Next up... Louise Murphy. Managed to hold onto second place."

"Oscar! You did it!"

She greeted Oscar, who had arrived earlier.

"Louise...! We're second."

"Well done. Well done."

Louise high-fived him.

Then she bowed to the Instructor.

After that, she walked straight up to Mago and slapped him across the face.

The sharp crack echoed through the air.

Mago stared blankly for a moment, then touched his own cheek.

"Thanks, Louise. For doing my share of the hitting."

Bell, still sprawled on the ground, spent what little strength she had left on a weak, "Thanks."

Amon's reaction was different. 'I wish Louise would hit me too.'

The Instructor cut in. "What's going on?"

"I'm sorry," Louise said, bowing again.

"Hmph... Mago, come here."

Mago hurried over.

"What the hell did you do up there?"

"We held the checkpoint, sir."

"Held it? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Can I tell you later, sir? Right now... I think I lost a tooth."

"Fine. Get inside."

After that, the other trainees arrived one by one. Half of them couldn't speak—too busy catching their breath. The other half spent that breath cursing Mago.

Everyone made it back within the twenty-four-hour limit.

"Not a single dropout. Anyone injured, raise your hand."

Most of them raised their hands.

The Head Instructor only found out later that most of those injuries were Mago's fault.

"Everyone. Good work."

The words barely registered. They found no comfort in them.

But the Instructor had dealt with recruits for years. He knew the mood.

So he said, "Meat for dinner."

Their eyes popped open reflexively. They snapped to attention and waited for nothing else.

After a short rest came a late dinner.

"Bell! Either eat or sleep—pick one!" Mago said, worried, watching Bell whose eyes were half shut.

"Shut up, you traitor!" she snarled back.

Mago made peace with his peers' hatred by grilling meat alone.

---

At the same time, on the front lines.

Imperial Army Special Mission 1st Unit.

The man swept his black hair back from his forehead. Half the strands were already gray.

He was the Captain of the 1st Unit, and also the Special Forces Captain.

"New blood's coming in a few months. Know anyone?" he asked the woman behind him.

"Marjelo."

Marjelo shook her head slowly. Her jet-black bob brushed the nape of her neck.

"I was hoping a lot of the top ten would apply for the Special Forces. Given it's wartime."

"Given it's wartime, sir... won't they go to the Knight Order instead? The Knight Order will be assigned to the Emperor, who fled to the southern castle. They'll probably want a cushy rear position under the pretense of protecting him."

"Then I won't feel a loss. I don't need guys who want to run."

The Special Forces Captain stared at the two distant wolves.

"How the hell are those things built? I wish someone could see right through them."

Massive, restless beasts.

The Demon King's Moving Castle.

Steam belched from their backs, flames from their mouths.

"You know, sometimes I think back to my trainee days. What about you, Marjelo?"

"I remember them."

"Ever wish you could go back?"

"No, sir."

"Marjelo, you need to develop some sentiment."

"Sentiment, Captain?"

"Yes. Sentiment."

"......"

"It's no fun."

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could turn back time before the war? If I could go back five years, I might have been able to stop it. Of course, that's meaningless to say now."

"Maybe. But it would be painful, sir."

"Painful?"

"Even if you knew the future, there would still be limits. It would be painful and lonely."

"Hmm..."

"Going back to the past isn't all good. At least, I wouldn't want it."

"I suppose you're right."

"All we can do is our best with what we have now."

Marjelo gripped her spear tightly.

"And right now, sir... you have me."

The Special Forces Captain burst into a hearty laugh.

"That's reassuring."

---

'He blocked other teams from passing the checkpoint... alone. I've been an Instructor at the First Training Center for twenty years, but I've never seen anything like this. Not even Marjelo Arnis did something like that alone.'

The Head Instructor was studying Mago's report.

"He said he'd write a report... but he brought me a novel. Mago, do you think a novel is a joke?"

"Sir? A joke... no, sir. I think it's quite serious."

The Head Instructor stumbled over his words in his confusion.

"Ah, no. I meant the report. Does it look like a joke to you?"

Next to the report lay the score sheet from the first exam.

Mago and Kinzo were tied for Top Student.

'But looking at the results, maybe his story isn't entirely wrong. And Kinzo Shua was injured... if Mago hadn't blocked that narrow checkpoint bottleneck, Kinzo wouldn't have come in first.'

The Instructor tapped his wooden desk with his index finger.

A steady rhythm.

He let Mago wait and continued his train of thought.

'But especially, the fact that he can see even with his eyes closed...'

His index finger moved faster.

'Why not just open his eyes and look? What's the point?'

Tap, tap.

'I've heard of magic that reads mana to enhance perception. But isn't that a Mage's domain?'

Tap.

'It's not something I can teach. But if it's all true...'

Tap.

With the final tap, silence filled the room.

'I can't let this talent go to waste.'

The Head Instructor yanked open his drawer.

He rifled through a stack of papers and pulled out a dusty letter.

"You can go now. I'll call you when the time comes."

---

One month after the first exam.

The day before the second exam.

The Instructor began the briefing indoors, just like before.

He swept his gaze over the trainees lined up in rows.

"The second exam will be a written test."

There was an immediate reaction from one trainee.

"I-I'm sorry, what did you say?"

Bell pretended she hadn't heard.

Oscar was just amazed that her reaction was exactly the same as in her previous life, word for word.

"Second exam. Written. A written test."

The Instructor drove the word written directly into Bell's ears.

"What do you think all those theory lessons were for?"

"Hah... hah...!"

Kinzo's voice rang out. He started laughing maniacally.

"I'm confident when it comes to written tests!"

He spread his arms wide as if welcoming the exam.

The 66th Class was caught off guard. After weeks of nothing but beating each other up, this was the perfect time to spring a written test on them. Announcing the exam subject the day before was precisely meant to exploit that complacency.

Everyone except me probably felt that way.

---

After the second exam.

"What the hell, Mago?"

Kinzo glared at me, clutching his graded test paper.

"I thought you put all your cells into your muscles?"

His face was full of displeasure.

"That wouldn't make me human anymore. I'd just be a lump of protein," I replied with a smirk.

"Then why did you get a perfect score? Something's wrong here."

"Beats me."

This exam made me the sole Top Student.

First place, clear and uncontested.

Kinzo came in right below me.

"AAAAAAAAAGH!"

A sudden high-pitched scream tore through the air.

Bell was eating her test paper.

Bell Red. Dropped from 5th to 30th place.

A complete freefall.

She had no hope for the Special Forces now.

"B-Bell! Have you lost your mind?"

Amon slapped her on the back.

"Spit it out! What are you, a goat?"

Amon Coster. Rose from 5th to 4th place.

"Your rank got multiplied by six, Bell. Higher is better, you know."

"Louise, are you making fun of me too?"

"Even so... getting question one wrong is a bit... you know?"

"I thought the Knight Order was 'Knight and Order.' I had no idea it meant the 8th Division..."

"That's why I told you to memorize it as 'seven-ups, eight-falls division.' The 7th Division, the Combat Division, the 8th Division, the Knight Order. The Imperial Army Command is divided into those four divisions, plus the Special Forces as an independent unit."

"Thanks for telling me now, but it's a little late."

"I told you before the test too..."

Louise Murphy. Dropped from 2nd to 5th place.

"Th-thank goodness... I'm still in the top ten...! At this rate, I can definitely get into the Knight Order!"

Meanwhile, Oscar held his test paper with tears in his eyes.

Oscar Sitta. Dropped from 2nd to 9th place.

But he seemed satisfied with his current rank.

"Now... we're all here."

The 66th Class of the First Training Center — they were like family to me.

The five who remained in this theory classroom felt especially close.

Kinzo, Bell, Amon, Louise, and Oscar.

Seeing them gathered like this, I felt so moved I wanted to hug each one of them. But it also meant their deaths were not far off.

It was warm and painful at the same time.

Watching their faces kept bringing back the memories of their fading eyes.

One by one.

I could almost feel the blood slipping through my fingers.

"Mago, what's with the face? You look like you're in a bad mood."

"Because today's the second exam results."

"Are you kidding me? You got a perfect score. Don't be such a downer."

"We've got less than two months until the final exam — the Fourth."

"Isn't that a good thing? Getting it over with faster?"

I looked away from him.

I closed my eyes quietly and thought.

Two months until the Demon King Army's second invasion.

That was the day of the Fourth Exam.

Half of the six people in this room would die.

I couldn't let the same result happen again.

What I needed to do first —

Or what I could do —

Was at least to stop the second invasion during training.

"If it ends fast, and ends well... then that's a good thing."

The real plan would start after that.

"No mistakes. Done well."

Everything depended on me climbing the ranks.

Even if I knew the future —

If I couldn't move the army myself, that information was worthless.

Following orders like a puppet made me useless.

There was a long road ahead.

And a long road still to go, yet I'd only used the Lake ability twice.

During the first exam, if the weapons my comrades had carried had been real swords instead of wooden ones, I would have exhausted the Lake's limits immediately.

Kinzo had said that if he had a teacher, he could break those limits.

"Kinzo, now that Akuella's been destroyed, the Mages are either dead or in hiding, right? Most Mages lived in Akuella. That's why Mages are so rare in the Empire."

"Yeah, that's true. But I said most. There are still quite a few Mages left in the Empire. Like the Imperial Army's Mages. I'm here, aren't I? And if you think about it, you're a Mage too."

"Sure, they exist. But there's no way they'd care about a trainee like me. Besides, they're probably already on the front lines."

The second invasion would hit in two months. I wouldn't meet a useful Mage until after that.

But I needed one now.

That was when the theory classroom door slammed open.

I already knew it was the Head Instructor just from the sound.

My chattering comrades fell silent on their own.

As I was about to straighten my posture, the Instructor spoke.

"Mago. Follow me."