After lunch, we moved on to the ten-kilometer run, followed by a solid round of bodyweight training. And then, 3:00 p.m. Time for the close-quarters combat exercise.
Arthur and I stood across from each other in the gymnasium, paired up as scheduled. Everyone in the room knew exactly what had gone down between us that morning. You could feel it in the air: the tension, the expectation. All eyes were on us.
According to the briefing, the class had been split into over twenty pairs, each of which would spar at full strength when the instructor gave the signal. Normally, students would dial it back to avoid injuries, but in our case, it was different. Arthur and I had already agreed to hold nothing back. No complaints, no mercy. We were treating this like a personal duel.
Which was exactly why everyone, including the instructors, was watching us like hawks, waiting to see what would happen the moment the match began.
Arthur stood opposite me in the center of the gym, holding his practice sword with theatrical flair and wearing a grin that screamed overconfidence. He looked like he thought this was already over before it began.
“Hey, Villager,” he said, his voice loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. “Do you know what it means to understand your place?”
I let out a slow, tired sigh as I raised my own sword and settled into a stance. “And you,” I replied, calm and measured, “do you know what it means to underestimate someone?”
Arthur tilted his head slightly, a puzzled frown crossing his face. He didn’t get it. In his eyes, he was the lion, the apex predator on the savannah. I was the rabbit, the gazelle, something that should be running. That was the story playing in his head.
But he had it all wrong. If he was a lion, I was something else entirely. Something no lion in his right mind would want to face. If this were a monster movie, I’d be the kind of creature that made the villain monsters flee off-screen, a towering kaiju so terrifying even the final boss wouldn’t stick around for the end credits.
Then, clear and sharp, the instructor’s voice cut through the charged silence of the gym.
“Begin!”
What followed wasn’t dramatic. There was no flurry of blows, no clash of swords, no extended battle.
Just a soft thud.
Arthur collapsed on the spot, like a marionette whose strings had been severed. The entire fight had lasted maybe a second.
All I’d done was slip behind him the moment the signal was given and tap the side of his neck with the flat of my sword. A clean strike to the cervical nerves. Enough to rattle his brain and short-circuit his senses. One moment, he was standing, full of himself, chest puffed out, and the next, he was gone, sliding into unconsciousness before he even realized he’d lost.
Silence fell over the gym like a dropped curtain. Then came the murmurs. First a whisper, then a wave of stunned reactions swelling through the room. The tension snapped all at once.
Brian broke from the crowd, sprinting up to me with wild eyes and a half-panicked look on his face, his voice rising to something that sounded suspiciously like a scream.
Brian was pale now, staring at me as I’d just transformed into something unrecognizable. His voice quivered, caught somewhere between disbelief and calculation. “What… What was that? A D-rank adventurer…? No, that’s too much, even for a joke. But still, at our age, to be considered a proper adventurer, you’d need to be at least E-rank. Otherwise, what just happened to Arthur wouldn’t make any sense. It doesn’t add up.”
He took a step closer, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Are you saying you have the strength to match an E-rank adventurer?”
“E-rank, huh?” I scratched the back of my neck, honestly not sure how to respond. “Well… maybe? I guess?”
The truth was, I wasn’t exactly thinking in terms of official rankings. But judging by Brian’s face, that answer had done nothing to calm him. Meanwhile, off to the side, Lilith was clearly struggling to hold back her laughter, one hand clamped over her mouth.
She had reason to be amused. After all, she’d been admitted to the academy as a scholarship student, rated at the equivalent of a C+ rank adventurer. That status came from her absurd ability to spam mid-tier magic like it was nothing. Thank god she hadn’t shown them any of her high-tier spells or the secret techniques from the dragon clans. If she had, things would’ve gotten very complicated, very fast.
Then there was Cordelia. The word was that her evaluation had placed her at B-rank level. But from what I’d seen, especially when she was controlling her mana overflow, she was easily in the upper A-rank tier, maybe even higher. If she fought seriously now, she could probably solo that monstrous Evil Dragon Amanta without breaking a sweat.
Just as I was thinking that, the instructor stormed over to me, practically frothing at the mouth. “You… What the hell did you do?! What did you do to him?!”
I shrugged. “Just neutralized him without causing injury. That’s it.”
His voice cracked as he gestured wildly. “Arthur Markham is no pushover! He’s got the skills of a rookie adventurer! And you… You took him out without him even reacting! That kind of thing would require, at the very least, a D-rank adventurer’s level of skill!”
So that’s how he sees it. Interesting. Apparently, he’d interpreted my move as something on par with a D-rank melee fighter. Not that I disagreed.
“Like I said,” I repeated with a casual shrug, “I just made sure he didn’t get hurt while taking him out. Nothing more.”
The instructor stared at me for a moment, then asked the question that had clearly been building up inside him. “Just… who are you? How is someone like you in a place like this?!”
“Me?” I gave him a dry smile. “Got dropped into the bottom-tier class based on my entrance exam. I’m just a Villager, remember?”
I rolled my shoulders, relaxed as could be.
“Anyway, I’ll be out of here soon enough once I pass the next advancement exam. Until then…” I gave him a nod, half-grinning. “I’ll be counting on you to keep up the muscle training, Instructor.”
The next morning, I woke up with a heavy sense of dread clinging to my chest. Apparently, the spectacle I’d caused yesterday had left more of a mark than I’d intended.
Brian, for one, had gone right back to giving me the silent treatment. But it wasn’t the smug, mocking kind of silence he used before. No, this was different. The kind of silence born from unease, maybe even fear.
Arthur, on the other hand, had adopted this strange, stiff politeness. Every time our eyes met, he’d offer a small, wordless bow, like I was someone to be respected or carefully avoided. It was awkward, to say the least.
Now, picture this: Arthur, Brian, and me—same age, same dorm room. Living under the same roof during a high-intensity training period. Our room, supposedly the one place we could relax in during what little free time we had, had become an emotional landmine. Normally, this was where we’d joke around, share some cafeteria desserts, talk about girls we liked, just your average teenage bonding.
But not us. We didn’t talk at all.
When I finally sat up and glanced around, Arthur was already awake, perched on the edge of his bed. The moment I moved, he dipped his head again, formal and silent. Brian was awake too. He shot me a panicked glance, like he wasn’t sure how to react, then promptly dove under his blanket and buried himself like he hoped I’d disappear.
Yeah. Real warm and cozy atmosphere.
I let out a long sigh and stared up at the ceiling. So this is how it’s gonna be, huh?
Still, we all knew what time it was. By six, without a word exchanged between us, we stepped out onto the training field together for the morning run.
Normally, this part of the day was reserved for warmups followed by a ten-kilometer jog. But today, our ever-reliable instructor had something far more unpleasant in store.
“We’re changing the routine today,” he announced coldly.
Laid out on the ground in front of us were several heavy-duty mountain backpacks, clearly not empty. Nearby, a group of armed and armored adventurers stood waiting, making it clear they weren’t just there for decoration.
“The plan for today,” the instructor announced, his voice crisp and merciless, “is a one-hundred-kilometer trek through the Forest of Confusion. Everyone will be wearing the Shackles of Golgotha, and you’ll be relying solely on raw muscle power to carry yourselves through. Your mountaineering packs contain five kilos of water and fifteen kilos of sand.”
He paused, drew a slow breath, and added the real punchline. “Anyone who fails… will be expected to voluntarily withdraw from the Academy.”
I nodded to myself, not surprised in the least. The other day, the instructor had mentioned consulting higher-ups about Koharu’s abysmal performance in physical assessments—numbers so bad they were practically statistical anomalies. This must’ve been the result of that meeting. Rather than address her directly, they’d designed an impossible challenge tailored to single her out.
We were issued the gear without ceremony. The backpacks were stuffed to capacity and shoved into our arms one after the other. When I saw Koharu struggling to lift hers, I stepped closer.