Chapter 6

◈ Episode 6 – Imperial Army, First Training Center

"What's this one supposed to be?"

The Head Instructor flipped the page as if demanding an explanation.

"No family name. Unknown origins. Why are there so many blanks? You sure this isn't a spy?"

"You mean Mago?"

"You know him?"

"His reputation spread through the capital—even children have heard of it. You didn't know?"

"What reputation."

He took a drag of his cigarette.

"They say he wiped out the capital's thieves in two weeks. By the time he was about to take over as their leader, he walked into the training center."

"Trying to play hero, is he? That's a joke."

"Alone, sir. Him and Kinzo. They're called Majo together."

"That's a repulsive nickname."

He turned to the next page with a grunt.

"Kinzo... the eldest son of the Shua family."

"You know him, sir?"

"The Shua family? I know them well. A wealthy household that failed miserably at raising children. Heard the eldest caused so much trouble they sent him abroad to study. Watermelon Magic Academy, if I recall..."

He turned another page and added,

"One's a fake hero, the other's a hastily trained mage. Guess the misfits stick together."

He exhaled smoke.

"Maybe he isn't fake, sir."

"What do you mean?"

"I've seen Mago fight firsthand."

"And?"

"Marjelo Arnis. The genius from the Special Forces."

"Huh?"

"He looks very similar to her."

"Is that true?"

"I saw it clearly."

"It's cheating to have two like that in a single generation."

"If cheating helps us win, I'd take it."

"Yeah. Let's just pray these two aren't defective."

Back in the inn, Mago and Kinzo, who were eating, sneezed at the same time.

---

The 66th Class—myself included—learned the position of attention first.

We held that posture for six hours.

By the time it was over, the sun had climbed to its peak.

The light hammering down on my head was so harsh it hurt.

Up north, there wouldn't be this kind of scorching heat.

I let my mind wander for a second, and nearly lost my form.

I straightened both my posture and my focus.

The sweat-soaked collar of my uniform felt stiff.

Putting on this navy uniform made it real.

I really did re-enlist.

What a crazy thing to do.

The Head Instructor, who had been leafing through a book in the shade, closed it.

His short-cropped black hair and angular face were exactly as I remembered.

I never thought I'd see that man again.

He uncrossed his legs, slid up from his chair, and—

—just as one of my comrades flinched, expecting the order to stand down—

—he sat back down and reopened the book.

"One more hour."

No sooner had he finished speaking than another trainee toppled over, still locked in that rigid attention stance.

The relentless heat had simply fried his brain.

Instructors standing by dragged him out.

That made six.

The 66th Class of the Imperial Army's First Training Center had started with 150 recruits.

Six dropouts already.

Then I heard another body hit the ground.

Correction.

Seven.

"Morons," the Instructor muttered under his breath.

Another hour crawled by.

Seven hours total.

The Instructor closed his book.

He picked up the wooden baton he'd laid on the ground.

No one else collapsed anymore.

He swept his gaze over the remaining trainees, then finally rested the baton across his shoulder.

"Name?" he barked, starting the real process.

"Bell Red, sir!"

She was a girl with hair as red as her family name implied. A messy fringe of bangs was the first thing I noticed.

Seeing Bell's face sent a wave crashing through my chest.

My heart pounded the same way it had when I'd run into Kinzo again.

But this time, it was excitement—the thought that I could save her this time.

"And what do you have?" the Instructor asked.

"Huh? I... I..."

Bell couldn't answer right away.

The result was obvious.

She hit the dirt flat on her face.

Next.

The Instructor jerked his chin toward the next person.

One guy didn't understand that was a signal for his name.

He dropped just the same.

Next.

At another chin jerk, the next trainee spat out his name like he was emptying his guts.

"Amon Coster, sir!"

"And what do you have?"

"The glory of my family, sir!"

"Right..." The Instructor waved it off and moved on. "Keep it all."

Look, I've been through this before.

So let me tell you.

What he's doing right now?

It's completely.

Absolutely.

Meaningless.

He's just putting on a little intimidation show, doing a lap to memorize faces and names.

That question—"what do you have?"—is just to make it feel like there's some deep purpose behind it.

Back then, I was stupid enough to get nervous, thinking I had to answer something impressive.

But my comrades here? They had no idea.

They gave it everything they had.

Just like I used to, back then.

So, next.

The guy next to Amon Coster was quick on his feet.

"Kinzo Shua, sir...!"

"Louder!"

"Kinzo!"

He took a breath.

"Shua, sir!"

"What do you have?"

"I can use magic!"

Every trainee's head snapped toward him.

A mage—one of those rare breeds—in our very own class.

That alone was enough to crank up everyone's tension.

And so we moved to the second row, passed a few more names.

"Mago, sir!"

"No family name?"

"No, sir!"

"Parents dead? Or were you a slave?"

Both answers were true.

- N-no, sir!

That's what I would've said before. But this time, he was different.

"Yes, sir! That's correct!"

He probably didn't expect Mago to just own it.

The Instructor rushed to cover his own surprise.

"What do you have?"

Mago sucked in a breath and spat it out in one go.

"I've got the ability to make it into the Special Forces as Top Student!"

That earned him way more stares than Kinzo did.

The Special Forces only took the top ten—starting with the Top Student.

All you had to do was get inside that bracket, but he wasn't planning to coast.

---

06:30.

In military time, zero-six-thirty.

The reveille bugle blared.

The moment I heard that first note, my face scrunched up on its own.

Noise, more often than not.

"Wake up!"

The Head Instructor's voice punched through the door of our four-man room.

"Wake up!"

My comrades, facing their second day at the training center, opened their eyes.

Just their eyes.

They couldn't process the sudden change in wake-up time.

A lot of them had probably slept badly.

Groaning, they staggered out of bed.

The door flew open and the Instructor stormed in.

"Engrave the wake-up time into your bodies!"

He smacked the ones still in bed with his baton.

And just like he said—he made sure their bodies remembered.

A two-tier bunk didn't stop his reach.

Kinzo jolted awake with a yelp of pain.

"You think you'll catch a single goblin moving this slow?!"

The Instructor scanned left and right for his next target.

Then his eyes locked with mine.

I had my blanket folded and was sitting up straight.

Wake-up time.

It'd been a long time since my body started waking up on its own, five minutes early.

I'd thought that would earn me some points with the Head Instructor.

"Hey, Mago..."

I thought I'd get off easy.

He glared at me like he wanted to kill me.

"If you're up first, shouldn't you be waking your comrades...?"

I didn't escape the baton either.

Mornings were bad. Evenings were worse.

By the second day, night watch duty rotations started.

Luckily, I got paired with Kinzo.

"Mago. Are you even human?"

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why? Aren't you tired?"

"I actually can't sleep at this hour."

"Yaaawn. Must be nice."

"Kinzo."

"What?"

"Got any interesting stories?"

The Imperial Army's First Training Center spent the first week in drills that involved standing still.

Standing still in attention position.

Standing still in a squat.

Lying face-down and staying that way.

The 66th Class, which started with 150 people, was down to 100.

It was during dinner.

The moment I got my tray, I shoveled in a spoonful.

I was sitting at a table with my comrades.

Kinzo, as usual, was right next to me.

"You're Kinzo Shua, right?"

The speaker was a guy with pale blond hair and blue eyes, just like Kinzo's.

"Yeah. You're... Amon. Amon Coster, right?"

"That's right. Kinzo, where are you from? You were a noble, weren't you?"

"I lived in the capital's central district, then my father got a territory up north, so we moved. After that, I went abroad to study."

"Oh, I lived in the northern part of the capital too! We might've been neighbors."

"I actually knew you, Amon. We were neighbors."

"Really? Sorry, I was too busy training to pay attention to the outside world. The Shua family—I had no idea."

Amon casually dropped a mildly insulting remark.

"It's fine. I heard the Costers are a prestigious house of monster-hunting experts... but you've been quiet lately. Didn't even join the war. If you weren't going to fight, I wonder why you bothered training all that time."

Kinzo shot back even harder, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

An awkward chill settled between them.

I just chewed on my bread and watched.

Amon Coster.

One of the Empire's three great noble families.

Coster's second son.

In my past life, he'd graduated from the training center as Top Student.

One of the talents I had to protect from death.

"So that's why I'm here now."

Amon straightened his back proudly, as if boasting.

Kinzo's jabs hadn't landed at all.

The thicker-skinned one had won.

"But why's this one just eating?"

Amon jerked his chin at me.

"Oh, Mago is..."

"You guys. You'd better eat fast today."

I cut Kinzo off.

"As you can see, he's a friend who really likes his food."

Amon looked annoyed, and Kinzo was clearly just making something up.

No sooner had he finished than the mess hall door slammed open.

"Emergency! Assemble on the parade ground NOW!"

Of course—the Head Instructor.

I knew the "emergency" was a lie, just a spur-of-the-moment drill to test the trainees' reflexes.

But I was out the door like a shot.

The others scrambled out after me, still chewing.

"Whether you're wolfing down your meal or taking a shit in the latrine—when I say emergency, you drop everything and haul ass. If this had been real, everyone except Mago here would be dead. Got it?"

The slower you were, the harder the punishment.

No matter how talented my comrades were, they were still teenagers.

Clumsy. Soft.

Me? I'd lived longer.

I'd been through all this before. None of it was hard.

So naturally—

"This is too easy."

Knowledge really is power.

---

Red hair.

Red eyes, too.

Bell Red picked up the longsword lying on the ground.

Then she charged straight at a single orc.

She stabbed wildly at the creature, which was twice her size.

Her eyes had lost all reason.

The orc's body exploded in places.

Not sliced—exploded.

Yellow sand poured out instead of dark red blood.

Finally realizing what was happening, Bell froze in place.

"That's a model, Bell Red."

The Head Instructor gestured for her to hand the sword back.

Meanwhile, another instructor replaced the orc model.

"I'm—I'm so sorry, sir!"

Bell bent at the waist and held out the sword with both hands.

Her cheeks were just as red as her hair and eyes.

"Mago. Bell seems like us."

Kinzo muttered under his breath.

"I know."

"You know?"

"Blinded by revenge."

"There was a commotion, but in the end, all you have to do is what Bell Red did."

The Instructor pointed at Bell, who was still face-down on the ground.

"Hit the orc model with your weapon. But since you can't go around shredding them again, use the flat of the blade, not the edge. I need to see just how pathetic your skills are."

He tossed the swords onto the ground.

Three types in total: sword, spear, and bow with arrows.

All of them sharp and pointy.

Firearms weren't in wide use yet, so that option wasn't on the table.