WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 96: 15. Real Combat Is Standard for Academy Summer Vacation Events (1)

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Even if he gathered everything in the principal's office, Ivan did not have enough luggage to fill a single bag. His weapons were already at headquarters, leaving only daily necessities. Even those could be supplied by headquarters.

So, for the first time in a while, Ivan took out the notebook from beneath his desk.

"...."

It was packed with scribbles he had hastily written when he first believed this world was the prologue to an academy story. The academy's so-called common sense.

Although only a few months had passed, Ivan felt a strange nostalgia as he flipped through the pages. Surprisingly, many of the rules he had written down back then had already been dealt with.

Wait.

Dealt with?

Ivan sat down, trying to drag up a vague memory drifting through his mind.

He stared silently at the notebook. He had heard something like this somewhere. What was it? It had left quite an impression on him....

Ah.

-Title: What Sucks About Academy Stories, Seriously

-No, the protagonist hogs every growth event, quest reward, hidden piece, and heroine rescue arc, then whenever a problem comes up, they go, "Do I have to step in again?" What the hell.

-Yeah, true. LOL.

"Oh...."

Ivan quietly set down the notebook as he finally organized his thoughts.

The academy's first Tutorial, the train attack. I handled it.

The field exercise attack, I... handled that too.

The academy's Chamber of Secrets. I handled that as well.

The tournament, the flower of every academy story. I... No, that had nothing to do with the academy in the first place.

Dealing with nobles plotting against the princess, who was also the headmistress. From a broader perspective, that was close to an academy-story cliché too. Death Eaters and all. Right. I handled that too.

At that point, Ivan put down his notebook and thought for a moment.

Wasn't the protagonist's party getting far too weak?

He did oversee their training from time to time, but in an academy story, training was nothing more than ordinary slice-of-life narration mentioned in passing. It was common sense that protagonists did not become strong through training.

Studying at school was not an academy story. It was a documentary. An academy was not a place where people were taught things. It should follow the mother-lion method of education, throwing students before horrifying adversity and making them grow.

A protagonist generally awakened through real combat, hardship, adversity, friendship, and love. No protagonist in this world became stronger through physical conditioning and technical drills.

This was not such a diligent, gentle world. That was what academy stories were like. Even Naruto did not become strong through training. It was easy enough to understand if one remembered the fate of that young martial artist who dared to become stronger through effort. That village was so serious about real combat that it used elementary school students as child soldiers.

Then wasn't this a serious problem?

At this rate, Ivan might have to defeat the final boss, probably the Demon King or someone comparable, all by himself. Whether that was even possible was one issue. Whether it could still count as an ending was another.

Enrika had told him to turn his own page, but considering everything happening now, wasn't it painfully clear that this story's genre was academy fiction?

"They need real combat experience, not training."

Ivan finally reached his conclusion. He even felt a sense of crisis at the thought of leaving the Hero Party's children to diligently focus on their studies.

Even literary fiction did not involve studying at school. Literary fiction had murders and tangled affairs between men instead. School was never a place for studying. It was not.

Real combat, huh.

With dry eyes, Ivan looked at one wall of the principal's office.

Countless weapons, meticulously maintained every day, rested cleanly on their racks.

He remembered the days when he had wielded them, using every last bit of strength he had.

The snow-covered northern front.

Ah, right.

"Summer vacation is coming soon."

It was common sense for academy students to attend some kind of training camp during vacation. Ivan quietly nodded in the darkness.

Late at night, with no trace of light in the room, Ivan sat at the principal's office table with his fingers interlaced. His eyes alone glowed blue.

The protagonists needed real combat.

And to him, real combat meant killing.

Ep. 15. Real Combat Is Standard for Academy Summer Vacation Events

Saint Yansk University was always lively. That was only natural. Considering the enormous tuition fees, students who could afford to attend did not need to worry much about credits or life after graduation.

It was easier to understand by thinking of art colleges on Earth. Parents who could send their children to an arts college and pay for four years of art education were wealthy by default. In that atmosphere, art colleges were bound to be lively most of the time.

Even at their worst, noble children would inherit their families after graduation. That meant they were already guaranteed to become owners of vast estates. It helped to remember that studying was not an essential virtue for the child of a factory owner.

So, with final exams having just ended, Saint Yansk University had been enjoying a festival-like atmosphere every day.

"Bella! What are you doing after school? Want to go to a café together?"

"No, I'm busy."

Isabelle trudged along with a gloomy expression, looking around. Of course, she was not looking for other students. She was looking for a man who had been missing for days.

Could he be hurt again? She had definitely seen him collapse, but she had heard that the princess was personally caring for him. The hospital had been sealed off immediately afterward, so she had not been able to visit.

Nothing had changed since then. The orphanage was still under repair, and Counterintelligence Command was cut off from the outside world for some reason, busy as ever. Intelligence agencies were supposed to be cut off from the outside world.

So....

-Mister, I heard your marriage fell through! Oh, how sad. Doesn't that mean someone really has to take you in now? Do you even know a single woman?

-Hmm. I suppose it can't be helped. Fine, then wait two years. If you're still alone when I graduate, I'll take you in out of the goodness of my heart.

-Don't be so touched. Hehe, I'm still in my prime too, you know? Who knows? Maybe I'll meet someone else before then.

-No, no, no! Don't look so hurt! There isn't anyone! There won't be! I don't even plan to!

Something like that.

She had been expecting something like that, so she had gone to the training grounds every day, sat blankly in the courtyard at night waiting for him, and wandered the campus during lunch looking for suspicious gardeners.

Yet he was nowhere to be found. She could not find Ivan anywhere. And that made anxiety suddenly rise within her.

Mister was an intelligence agent, and an exceptionally capable one at that. He was important enough that the princess personally gave him orders for operations.

On top of that, he had entered the princess's marriage tournament himself and fought with everything he had against an old man (not.) said to be the strongest of the elves. He clearly took marriage seriously.

Could the princess be interested in Mister too?

"Ugh!"

That could not be it. Sure, his eyes were pretty, but look at that beard. It was always long, annoyingly silky, and his hair was forever a complete mess. Who would want a man who only ever wore shabby work clothes?

Right. He was a pitiful old man (not.) with no one but me to take him in.

Then was he really badly hurt? Hurt so badly he could not even move?

Isabelle grumbled to herself as she walked. Today, she would try making that fermented vegetable stew again. This time, she planned to pickle the salt-cured meat he liked in it.

If Ivan had seen it, he would have cried and exclaimed, "To think the day would come when I could wrap Spam in kimchi and eat it."

* * *

"Miss Einarsdottir, if you don't have anything planned after school today, perhaps we could...."

"Oh, sorry. My fiancé doesn't like it."

"Fi...?! You're engaged...?"

"Yes, hee hee. Father kept urging me to. We're planning to marry as soon as I graduate."

Aesidis was enjoying life in the conducting department.

The aristocrats who did not play instruments themselves, the future unemployed by default, were among the most sociable students at the arts college. Their field of study had greatly dulled the sharp edge distinctive of artists.

Questions like how cheap or expensive another person's instrument was, or how they had acquired it, were distant concerns in the conducting department.

There were plenty of expensive batons, but even one carved from gold was, to an aristocrat, no more than an expensive stick. It could not compare to a costly instrument at all.

Besides, Aesidis's baton was an iron rod. Bang-Bang, Second Generation: Two Months, the goddess who sang rage, was closer in shape to a mace than a conductor's baton.

A foreign princess, pretty, gentle-natured, and even frugal in her habits. Before the boiling youth of first-year university students, Aesidis could never be lonely.

"Miss Einarsdottir is engaged...?"

"No... No way...!"

"This can't be real. What did I even attend this university for...."

The male conducting students scattered like a disorganized mob, screaming at this bolt from the blue. They could understand it, at least. Engagements were a normal way of arranging marriages.

"Esi! Um, who is your fiancé? Is he handsome?"

"Mm. I only found out recently that he's some provincial noble.... He's handsome. He's Father's friend, too...."

"Eh."

Engaged to her father's friend...? Then how old was he?

Cracks spread across the faces of the students who had been thrilled by the romance of the century.

Esi's father was Great King Einar, the Slayer of Droan....

If the Slayer liked him, then he must have been around the same age as his friend... which meant they probably had similar tastes too....

An image flashed through the students' minds, of a muscular middle-aged man bursting into laughter with beer foam all over his beard.

"Miss Einarsdottir! M-marriage requires more careful consideration...! No matter how important political matters are, they are not more important than Miss Einarsdottir's life! Do you understand? I, I will definitely save you, Miss Einarsdottir!!"

A son of some count's family from Tilles ran off crying. Aesidis watched his back coldly, then shook her head.

"Where is he now? If he's in Pritchenkaya, I really want to meet him!"

Aesidis's expression stiffened at the words of a classmate she had grown fairly close to.

Yes, where was he?

He had gotten engaged, then joined a tournament to marry another woman. He fought until he fainted, was carried away, and had not sent any word since.

It was behavior that would never be tolerated in Droan. Droan was a civilized society where monogamy was a firmly established tradition. Such barbaric concubinage would earn someone a traditional Droan punishment. Usually, that meant castration.

The parents of both families had only approved an engagement, so it would not come to that... but for the sake of their future marriage, she still needed to establish discipline early.

Aesidis quietly stroked Bang-Bang, the steel conductor's baton, and sank into thought.

* * *

At that very moment, Ivan sat in headquarters' operations room with a military map of Krasilov spread before him.

"What about supply lines?"

"We can secure them from nearby territories. Yelavinsk is nearby, after all. Duke Sheletif, who has only recently succeeded to the title, will certainly look favorably upon a headquarters operation."

"Excellent. How many personnel can we deploy?"

"Excluding agents operating in Pritchenkaya and personnel dispatched to the north and west... we have about sixty-three people in the southern Krasilov region."

"How many armed personnel remain after we exclude essential staff from the Internal Intelligence Division?"

"That leaves forty-seven."

"Enough."

The agents currently deployed on operations could not be touched, so they would be set aside. If he called up personnel on standby for training, he would have just under fifty people.

That was enough to form a strike team capable of serving as a rear-area disruption unit in a small theater of operations.

More than enough to control five or six people.

Ivan nodded in satisfaction. The operations officer asked cautiously.

"We are about to announce the training. Will you submit an operation plan?"

"I'll handle it myself. The operation name will be...."

Operation Summer Getaway.

It was one of the essential elements of academy summer vacation.

He would designate an operational area covering both coast and mountains, then conduct real-combat training that incorporated every bit of his own experience.

So the operation would be called Operation Summer Getaway. That was enough.

Ivan nodded and rose from his seat.

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Footnotes:

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