Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint - Chapter 218

WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Chapter 218: A Story of the Past, Pied Piper of Hameln - 4

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The graduation field exercise was a practical evaluation designed to uncover talents that written exams and sparring matches could not easily identify.

Put differently, it was the last opportunity offered to children who could not advance to an officer academy.

Desperate students volunteered for the dangerous exercise, which resembled a real operation.

The exercise had gone smoothly.

The graduation field exercise was a comprehensive evaluation. The students had to work together on their own to build rafts, travel down the river, receive an evaluation from instructors at the downstream garrison, collect supplies, and return.

It was designed to assess a wide range of abilities: alchemy, crafting, physical strength, endurance, map reading, organization, negotiation, and more. Various crises arose, but the students overcame them by demonstrating their talents where they mattered most.

"Cento. You studied meteorology while studying ballistics, didn't you? It's a little different, but what do you think? Would it be better to put up a sail?"

The boy called Cento clicked his tongue as though I had struck a nerve and turned away.

"...Tch. How would I know? I quit halfway through."

"Still, no one here knows more about it than you."

"Ha. Are you making fun of me? There's you, Hui. The top student in the whole school."

"I'm only good at studying from books. You've actually thrown things, fired things, and observed them. You have experience I don't."

"...Hmph. It was just childish fooling around. Something anyone could do."

Cento grumbled, but he examined the direction of the wind and the mast's material before fiddling with something. Once the wind picked up, the raft began moving a little more easily.

Only slightly, but certainly.

"That helped."

"...Not really."

Cento lowered his head miserably. It was not the reaction one would expect from someone who had accomplished something, but I understood his circumstances and did not say anything.

Praising something someone had already given up on would only make the regret worse.

The raft fleet drifted slowly onward. The Hamelin River, which stretched southward, was not particularly large, but it wound through the land and flowed slowly. All sorts of debris floated along it, and birds and beasts prowled around it in search of prey. Whenever a dark shadow following the river scraped against the underside of the logs, everyone trembled in fear.

We had been traveling for quite some time when an emergency arose. An instructor monitoring us for the evaluation had briefly left to move to the next point.

The river had been blocked by debris covering the water's surface. The current was already slow, and now logs, leaves, and other drifting matter filled the river so completely that the rafts could not move at all.

The children were thrown into confusion by the sudden obstacle.

"It must be a point where the current slows down, so debris piled up and blocked the river."

"What do we do...? At this rate, night will come! We have to reach the downstream garrison today."

Then, naturally, everyone's eyes turned to me. They depended on me, hoping I would solve it somehow.

At the beginning of the school year, when all the children had entered the middle military school as blank slates, each of them had held dreams and hopes in their hearts.

Most of them had pictured themselves in fine uniforms. Level 3. A special position unlike that of ordinary military-state citizens, one where they could truly achieve something. The most important step toward moving forward.

Yet special things were constrained by numbers. They were special because there were few of them, and everyone wanted them because they were special.

Not everyone could have them.

I called over someone who had once hoped to become a mage officer.

"Keropald. Can't we solve this with magic?"

"With the amount of mana we have, we couldn't do it with formal magic even if we took forever. If it were Lankart... maybe, but."

It was an uncomfortable answer, but it was clearly true. I nodded and turned toward someone else.

"Siati. It would be difficult to clear that from the raft, right?"

"...With footing like this, it would take all day. We have nowhere to put what we clear away either."

Siati stomped her feet, and cries broke out nearby.

Siati had once been considered a promising martial artist, but her growth had stopped, and she lacked the talent to surpass her physical limits. Backed into a corner, she wanted to turn her evaluation around during this graduation field exercise.

Siati sharply turned and snapped at me.

"More importantly, shouldn't you be giving orders, Hui?"

"Me? Why?"

"Why else? This graduation field exercise was really prepared for you, wasn't it?"

She did not know about Gluttony. If Siaati knew, she would not have stopped at simply stomping her feet.

Siati narrowed her eyes, testing me.

"The head instructor probably wanted to evaluate your command ability. That's why the top student in our year had to participate in this exercise."

Unfortunately, that was only the surface-level reason. Nicholas had spread that rumor among the instructors and some students to give me a reason I could not refuse.

It was reasonable enough that rejecting it outright would have been difficult, so I had come all the way here and ended up stranded.

At debris that had probably been arranged for me.

"...Go ahead and give us orders, General. I'll wait for your command."

Siati spoke mockingly.

Yet there was an inescapable loneliness in her voice. She said it like that, but she had accepted it too.

For her, waiting for an order, I gave one.

"Bring the rafts to the riverbank and clear the debris from land. It'll be much safer that way."

"Then we'd have to go into the forest..."

"These are rafts. We're already overloaded because we're packed on them like cargo. Let's move for now. If something happens, we can always come back."

In the end, we brought the rafts ashore nearby and set up a temporary camp. Going deep into the dangerous forest would have been a bad move, so we gathered in a clearing not far away and lit a bonfire.

Clearing the debris was extremely difficult. Even with around a hundred energetic children, dragging out waterlogged driftwood, tangled vines like nets, and all kinds of wreckage was exhausting work.

Just as we had begun to clear some of it, children looking up at the sky murmured.

"...Isn't this dangerous? At this rate, it'll be night soon."

"Night has practically already come. The sun will set in a few hours."

"Night is dangerous. How did this happen?"

None of them could even imagine that this situation might have been caused by someone's scheme.

After we pushed through the forest a little, we found a clearing. The children became happier when they saw traces that someone had stayed there before, saying it would make an excellent camp.

But I sensed the ominous fate beneath it and smiled bitterly.

Night came. It was the time of beasts. Frightened in the darkness, humans comforted themselves with small bonfires.

We had never planned to stay somewhere like this. We lacked drinking water, food, and clothing. It was fortunate that tents, blankets, and firewood had been left there. Without them, we might have had to spend the night on the swaying rafts.

"It's lucky there was a camp. We almost would have been completely..."

Unaware that all of this was part of the scenario, the children rejoiced at this stroke of luck amid their misfortune.

They huddled together around bonfires scattered throughout the camp. With time on their hands, anxiety began to grow in their hearts. The clear flames reflected off their young faces as they looked at one another and murmured.

"What do we do? Shouldn't we give up now?"

"Can't we do something? Let's make a big fire and call the instructors. Spending the night like this is dangerous..."

Making a large fire was practically a declaration of surrender. The instructors would come, but a poor evaluation would be unavoidable. Still, some thought they had no choice if they wanted safety right now.

Then Cento suddenly stood up and shouted.

"We can't call the instructors!"

The children nodded with grim expressions, as though they agreed with him. Siaati joined in as well.

"The graduation field exercise is extremely important! This is an unexpected situation, but if we overcome it well, we could receive an even better evaluation! Why did we come all this way in the first place? To become Level 3!"

"But..."

"If we give up here, we'll be Level 2 for the rest of our lives. We'll work and barely scrape by day after day, living the same life over and over like hamsters on a wheel! Are you all okay with that?"

There was a joke that people would rather live as Level 0 than become Level 2.

Level 2 citizens who graduated from middle military school were assigned labor in military facilities that required a secondary education. It was called labor, but it was practically service.

Naturally, it was more dangerous and troublesome than other labor. The pay was higher than ordinary labor, but it was property they could not pass down anyway.

"I have to become Level 3. Otherwise, there's no point! You all feel the same way!"

What could they gain by becoming a higher level? A petty sense of superiority. Even that remained purely emotional. A Level 2 citizen who used violence against a Level 1 or Level 0 citizen, or gave personal orders, would immediately be dragged off to a labor camp.

Only the military state could discriminate against other levels. Level 2 or Level 0, they were both slaves of this military state.

Things changed from Level 3 onward.

Remembering that fact, the children were swept up in renewed excitement.

"Right! This is an opportunity instead!"

"If we get through this, we might receive a better evaluation!"

"Set up a watch! Ah, and a password too!"

Perhaps it was thanks to Siati's speech. The children began to encourage one another. Their excitement rose and danced like the bonfire before fading away.

As I watched them quietly, Keropald called me in a low voice.

"Hui. Come here."

Mind reading read everything. I immediately understood why Keropald had called me, then slowly nodded.

Keropald had once dreamed of becoming a mage officer and worshipped Lankart like a god. The day before, Lankart had summoned Keropald. Lankart had called over one of his usual followers and quietly told Keropald something.

There was a trap hidden in this examination.

That was why Keropald had noticed the strange detail first and approached me.

"I found something."

Keropald took me to the riverbank in the middle of the night. Near where the rafts were tied up, Keropald shone a light over the water with formal magic.

Beneath the surface, illuminated by Keropald's glowing fingers...

A long, sturdy rope had been tied underwater.

I raised my head. The light was too weak to see clearly, but in the moonlit water, a long line of debris stretched along the straight path connected to that rope.

Keropald said proudly.

"It's a net. All this debris stopped because it got caught in the net."

"You're right."

Just as expected.

This was a place where the current slowed and debris tended to gather, but for it to have piled up this conveniently...

Of course, someone had arranged it.

"It looks like you had a rough idea too. Heh. Right. The existence of this camp, which seems prepared in advance, was strange from the beginning. The surface-level test is traveling downstream, but the real test is... how we respond to a crisis. The real purpose of this test is to survive by wisely handling a disaster situation. Isn't that right?"

No.

The real purpose of this test was for the children to respond unwisely and all die, without even realizing it was a trap.

In that sense, Keropald was a reminder sent by Lankart.

Keropald had a personality that enjoyed digging things up. Someone who took pleasure in uncovering knowledge itself rather than using it. Keropald would probably keep wandering around, trying to uncover the hidden meaning behind this test. Left alone, Keropald might even uncover the secret hidden in this camp, the taboo formation.

No, Keropald would uncover it.

Keropald had vaguely heard even something like a taboo from Lankart.

Keropald was a literal ticking time bomb.

Someone I had to drive toward death first so I could devour all the children.

A person designed for that purpose.

Lankart.

You were not here right now. The wind reaching me now belonged only to Keropald.

That was why I could not listen to your will. No, you could not change me this way.

Instead, I smiled.

"Correct, Keropald. You noticed this already. You're pretty good."

Keropald's eyes sparkled with satisfied curiosity.

"As expected of the top student! I knew you would know too!"

'Even if he's washed up, he's still the top student.... I only figured it out because Lankart gave me a hint. Still! Here, I'm second place!'

The wind blew.

A desire to live. The joy of accomplishing something with knowledge one had learned. Friendship and camaraderie. Or hope that had finally arrived.

I could not trample on that just to gain a handful of mana or aura.

Instead...

"Keropald. Your prediction is right. There must be a secret hidden in this camp."

"What secret?"

"I don't know everything either. We have to find out. So, Keropald, won't you do it?"

The military state had abandoned you. Maybe it was because of me. Nicholas had forced this through because I was such an ideal candidate for Gluttony.

Still, I could not call that my responsibility. It was something plotted by the military state, or by Nicholas or Lankart. I did not want to kill you.

It was awkward to say, but you had already become more than enough sustenance for my heart.

Nicholas and Lankart wanted to change me, but that was all. Their emotions were calm. Regret and remorse only settled deep inside them like still water sinking to the bottom.

I had no interest in cold emotions that wanted to manipulate others without losing anything themselves.

Instead...

"I have a lot to do, so I'd like you to form a team and investigate."

"Really? I should do it? You'll report it properly later, right?"

"Of course. Why would I leave out what you did?"

When the plan came to light, when this problem came back and fell upon you, I was simply more curious about how you would react.

What emotions would you show?

You needed to risk your lives too. That was only fair, wasn't it?

"Only you, who noticed this first, have the right to do it. Keropald, how about starting by drawing a map of the camp?"

"Okay!"

Once you drew the map, you would find out.

What shape this camp formed.