Chapter 8
‘.. My mana is far too low.’
With a faint sense of misery, I cut open the tennis ball.
Well, I admit it.
That I was the incompetent person I'd chosen to be.
But the expedition event triggered far too early.
If I'd attended just two or three more classes, I probably could have used basic Magic Missile and Energy Bolt.
‘No.. how can my mana be this low?’
Normally, even an ordinary person's mana is enough to fire something like Magic Missile.
I don't know why it won't come out for me.
‘It really only takes a tiny amount of mana..’
But what did that matter?
I couldn't use it right now.
‘I didn't make these tennis balls for this.’
I tried drawing out the mana in my body.
It wasn't even enough mana to use Energy Bolt properly.
‘Can't be helped.’
I raised my head.
And.. I put my hand in my pocket.
‘They'll take care of it themselves.’
The fighting power of this team made no sense.
It was a strong team that could handle even ten monsters without my help.
It would only be more of a problem if I needlessly got involved.
‘I'll sync.. or rather, I should gather mana into my body.’
- Boom! Boom!
I watched the other team members fight in a daze.
Hmm.. As expected, they fought well.
‘As expected, having lots of monsters makes this easy.’
In a group project, I don't need to be good at it.
There are three people here who can serve as group leaders.
If I make a show of myself for no reason, I'll only get in the way.
“Done!! Killed it.”
Kanghan's sword and Mizha's arrows each pierced a monster's heart.
The monsters collapsed without even managing to scream.
“We'll just cut off their ears and take them with us.”
“Good. At this rate.. we'll reach the destination without any trouble.”
The party's mood wasn't bad.
No matter how much of a burden I was.
There were three students with top-tier abilities.
Of course.. we'd ended up with the bizarre structure of a ten-person team.
It wasn't all that bad.
“Hmm..”
But a small groan escaped Ena's lips.
She approached me.
“Are you unable to use magic right now?”
Ena whispered into my ear in an almost inaudible voice.
I shook my head.
It wasn't that I couldn't use magic.
Yesterday, shooting star-shaped mana turned it into Magic Missile.
If I shot round mana, it became Energy Bolt.
Hadn't I clearly learned that?
I could use those two.
But that wasn't the problem.
“I don't have any mana.”
Ena blinked at my words.
“What did you use it on?”
“I didn't have any to begin with..?”
I drew up the mana inside my body.
Blue mana leaked out with a faint hiss.
But it ended after only two or three finger-widths of mana.
That wasn't enough to fire even Magic Missile.
“.. Wait.”
Ena furrowed her brow and looked at me.
“Can I open your bag?”
“Sure. But there's nothing in it except tennis balls.”
Ena opened my bag.
Well, even if she rummaged through it, she wouldn't find anything.
I'd been concentrating mana into the tennis balls for later use.
Other than that, there really was nothing.
“.. Is all the mana gathered in this tennis ball?”
Ena asked as she looked at me.
I nodded.
“.. When did you make this?”
“Last night.”
Ena slapped a hand to her forehead.
As if something had given her a headache.
“Hey, why didn't you tell me about this?”
“This? Did I need to mention it?”
“Of course! You must have gotten mana exhaustion, right?!”
“Huh? Why would I get that? And it was only yesterday.”
Mana exhaustion? Why would I get that?
In the game, mana exhaustion only occurred when using skills commonly called [Overdrive].
When you gathered and used more mana than your normal mana capacity.
Only then did the system inflict mana exhaustion.
Could.. the game and reality be different?
“Not yesterday.. It was 12 hours.. no, wasn't it less than 10 hours ago?”
“.. Right?”
Ena looked at me as if I were ridiculous.
“Then do you think all of that would have recovered?”
Hearing Ena's words, I suddenly remembered something important.
In the game, mana usually replenished once a day had passed.
‘Ah.. does mana only replenish after a full night's sleep?’
But that was different if there was only a class between them.
After morning classes ended and I went into afternoon classes, my mana usually hadn't recovered.
That's why I'd thought this.
‘I thought mana would fill up after I slept and woke up.’
The game never showed what happened after dinner, so I hadn't known.
So mana didn't fill up when you slept and woke up?
‘.. I learned something important. It would have been a disaster if I hadn't known.’
“.. Didn't it recover?”
“You idiot. Drink this.”
Ena took a small bottle from her pocket.
She tossed it to me.
It was a mana potion.
“Holy shit. This is pretty expensive. Is it really okay for me to drink it?”
I looked at Ena.
This was quite expensive.
It was the sort of thing even a noble family couldn't provide freely.
But she was willingly handing it over to me.
As expected.. she was the daughter of a wealthy family.
Even though, technically, I was also a noble family's scion in terms of the setting..
Didn't they have potions like this for me too?
“Just drink a little. It's too strong a medicine for your body.”
“Got it! Wow.. This is crazy. Thanks!”
I drank the mana potion immediately.
In an instant, I felt mana flowing through my body.
The academy provided them once students reached the upper years.
But at the beginning, they were one of the things students almost never used because of the price.
I never thought I'd end up drinking one.
“.. I'm only giving it to you because we can't afford to waste time.”
Saying that, Ena took the potion back.
And Mizha had been watching us.
‘The two of them are close..?’
Mizha knew a little about Ena.
Normally, a fair amount of information was available on people considered among the academy's top students.
Once they graduated, they would surely join some organization.
There would be various places seeking to recruit them, such as knight orders and magic towers.
For that reason, brokers sold information all over the place.
That was why Bin was even stranger.
Why was there no information about him at all?
‘There must be.. something going on that I don't know about.’
Mizha kept watch on her surroundings and sank into thought.
She had always been someone who liked to think.
“The river splits into two.”
Kanghan shouted from the front.
At his words, groans came from all around.
Expeditions were based on traveling along a river.
The first advantage was that it was easy to find water.
The second was that following the river upstream meant there was no danger of getting lost.
But.
Rivers were formed when numerous streams came together.
So encountering a fork was inevitable.
“One is a steep waterway leading straight to the mountain's peak.”
“The other flows more gently, relatively speaking.”
Considering speed, they should take the steeper route.
But speed wasn't always the answer.
Especially since this mission was an expedition, not a breakthrough.
“The gentler route seems better if we want to look for dangerous mana phenomena, monsters.. and food.”
Mizha said as she briefly slung her bow over her back.
Some seemed to agree, while others seemed not to.
“If we choose wrong, we might end up going in circles. Let's just go.”
Kanghan wanted to break through quickly.
Probably because he had the most say among them.
His opinion carried a little more weight.
But in terms of sheer numbers, more people agreed with Mizha.
In the end, the debate remained evenly divided.
When it showed no sign of reaching a conclusion, one student turned to the only person who hadn't participated.
It was Bin.
“Bin, what do you think?”
Bin was staring blankly at the sky when
the sudden question startled him.
“Hmm.. Me?”
“Yeah, you seem like you might have something to say.”
Bin shook his head at that.
He hadn't given it much thought.
In fact, there were three categories for scoring this expedition.
[Teamwork],[Individual Ability],[Self-Evaluation]
Of these, the last one was evaluated entirely however the professor felt like evaluating it.
A crazy bastard who ate a suspicious fruit during the expedition and collapsed would get zero points,
while the professor could give someone like me a perfect score for no reason at all.
But the [Teamwork] category didn't really matter either.
The teamwork score wouldn't change just because they went fast or slow.
The important thing was.
If they decided to go quickly, everyone had to move quickly together,
and if they decided to go slowly, everyone had to explore carefully together.
In that sense.
This expedition assignment was quite difficult.
Because it was an assignment that hadn't presented a clear goal properly.
So.
There was only one thing I could say.
“I don't think it matters much.”
Whether they went quickly or slowly wasn't important.
What mattered was that once they decided on a team goal,
the entire team moved together in accordance with it.
“Or we could just go straight into the forest.”
So I tossed out the words casually.
It didn't matter if we went into the forest, as long as our teamwork was good.
But.
Maybe those words sounded appealing again.
“What kind of nonsense…”
Kanghan was about to say something to me when he suddenly stopped.
Then he stared fixedly at the sky.
- Whoooosh..
The rain had been falling quite heavily since we set out.
The reason people usually avoided entering forests on expeditions was
that it was difficult to find the way, and you had to keep watch in every direction.
If you stayed alongside the river, you didn't have to be quite as vigilant toward that side.
But..
This time was different.
“The rain is too heavy.. Is the river dangerous?”
“And there are ten of us.. We could move through the forest. It wouldn't be impossible..”
Ten people was enough to travel while keeping watch on the surroundings.
On top of that, the river's current didn't look right.
It had rained far too much.
It looked as though a flood could occur if things went wrong.
“I suppose you're not among the top students for nothing.”
Mizha said that and stretched.
“Hmm.. I guess so.”
Kanghan nodded as well.
Certainly, with the rain coming down this hard right now,
Bin's suggestion was worth considering.
It was just that.
The person who had made the suggestion was dumbfounded.
‘.. I was just saying it.’
—-
The mountaintop.
The destination of the expedition.
The professors were there.
And..
The very person who had forcibly created the [Expedition] event on this rainy day was there too.
“Ahaha!! No, there are students heading into the forest already?”
“Wow~ I thought they'd wait until night to head into the forest.. They're pretty smart, aren't they? Did this bastard come here after working as a mercenary?”
It was the chairwoman.
She had dozens of holograms floating in front of her and was watching them with Naia right beside her.
As though she were watching an Internet broadcast.
“Chairwoman, you need to maintain your dignity. A little quieter..”
“Ehh~ There are only professors here, so what's the problem? Naia! Professor Naia, you relax too! You've been so repressed lately!”
“.. What do you mean, repressed..?”
“Puhaha! Professor Naia, don't you remember who was in charge of you when you were at the academy?”
“..”
At her words, Naia lowered her head deeply.
Her eyes were cloudy and mysterious,
and she had always maintained an aloof dignity that made her difficult to approach.
But the chairwoman knew what she was really like.
The truth was, she was an absurd tomboy.
“Eit~ This is boring. By the way, Professor Naia, you've been given some pretty interesting students, haven't you?”
“.. I'm keeping a close eye on them too.”
“Really~ My, this is the first time I've seen someone combine teams and go into the forest in Week 1~”
The chairwoman floated around in midair, watching the holograms as if she were amused.
But.
Her gaze was not playful in the slightest.
‘..’
It was the gaze of a beast that had found its prey.