Sword, Magic and Academic Society

Being similarly based in the Royal Capital, Dongo had known Drois for a while already. While they belonged to different branches, north and south respectively, the pool of C-rank explorers was small enough that many faces became familiar.

Among them, Dongo was particularly sociable and had a wide circle of acquaintances.

"Ah, Dongo-san. I was... well, thinking of taking a break after a while..."

Noticing Drois\' dull mumbling and his fixated gaze in Al\'s direction with a hint of grudge with a faint glimpse of awe, Dongo\'s expression shifted into a wry smile.

Drois was probably fatigued in more than one aspect. 

He could understand. With his age approaching 40, he already gauged his true caliber long ago. Nevertheless, he also felt a sense of hollowness whenever he gazed at Al. The boy was like a window showing the unfair reality.

......He didn\'t mean to be like that though. Dongo passed his gratitude to Allen Rovenne and Daniel Serdos mentally. Had he not seen those two in action, he would be swallowing the same bitterness as well, drowning in misery.

The talent for magic. A brutally stark divide between those who have it and those who don’t.

Ice mages, due to their rarity, were not accustomed to being compared to others from the same perspective.

Dongo understood Drois’ feelings as if they were his own.

"It\'s just now that I finally realized why that Academy was said to be a den of monsters… On top of that, he’s a first-year student in Class A, said to be among the best of this generation, and the leader of a group of magically gifted students gathered from all over the country as the president of the Magic Research Club.

You don’t need to belittle yourself. At your age, being a C-rank explorer is already quite impressive. Far more than me, at least. The worlds we inhabit are fundamentally different. We knew that from the start, didn’t we?"

Drois clenched his teeth and nodded slowly.

"Yeah... I knew. I knew it, but I just kept looking away."

He couldn’t bring himself to voice the reality that he was just one among the many, a mere ordinary person.

◆◆◆

Just before time was up, the tip of my rod bent slightly, informing me that the fish this time was something different. 

I wanted to set the hook immediately, but I held back.

According to Gramps, if you set the hook on the initial bite, the lake perch would escape more often than not.

I slowly reeled the line in, mimicking the movements of a fleeing heron.

After that, if I count to three before setting the hook, I’ll catch one out of three according to him.

I shifted all of my concentration to it and counted in my mind.

One—

…Had I ever been this serious in a competition before?

My head was unprecedentedly clear at this moment. It was as if time around me was in slow motion, much like what boxers in my previous life used to say they experienced.

Two—

The moment I counted to two, the tip of the rod bent sharply. I instinctively activated my Body Strengthening magic and pulled the rod back forcefully.

In that instant, the rod bent significantly, and a huge fish, presumably a lake perch, began thrashing around on the surface.

"Hyahaha! I can feel it, Dan!"

Dan\'s eyes went wide, but after a moment, he raised both his hands in surrender.

"...You know what, I give up. Your tenacity is something else."

Feeling pleased with his declaration of surrender, I got a bit carried away and said—

"Don\'t sweat it! I must say you truly are a man of the sea! No one has ever managed to get me this serious in fishing before! Hey, how about we start a fishing club together? Traveling all over the kingdom in search of the legendary fish—"

"Hm?"

Amid my speech, Dan made a strange noise as he looked up at the sky above the lake.

I traced Dan\'s gaze and saw a vividly colored, large blue flamingo gliding down— it was definitely the boss of the flock.

Then, with its massive beak, it snatched the lake perch I was carefully trying to reel in.

Caught completely off guard, and having neglected my surroundings, I could only stand there, dumbfounded, as I watched the scene unfold.

"...Pfft!"

The awkward silence that lasted about five seconds was broken by Cass-san. This triggered everyone to burst into laughter.

"S-sorry! Allen\'s dumbfounded face just hit me right in the funny bone! Pfft!"

"Gyahaha! Carelessness is often one\'s greatest enemy, kid!"

"Ahahaha! What was that about the legendary fish? Say it again, Allen!"

" "Gyahaha!!!" "

As tears flooded my eyes, I snapped.

"Unforgivable..."

The wind started to swirl quietly.

"...C-calm down, Allen! You win, alright?!"

"I will NEVER forgive it—!!!"

◆◆◆

Less than 30 minutes after Dongo fell asleep, he was jolted awake by the sound of the emergency whistle.

He hurriedly jumped out of the tent and saw people rushing toward the area where Drois had been working earlier.

With a sense of dread swirling in his chest, Dongo forced his tired body to run in the same direction— and gasped.

He saw Drois who had collapsed on the spot. He must have lost consciousness from completely exhausting his mana. And much to his horror, the eggs under him were squashed by his fall. Hatched Hellrowcasts were jumping out, attaching themselves to the nearby eggs and tearing apart their transparent membranes. 

A mere moment later, Chief Commander Hugo rushed over to the scene and smashed down the bitten eggs with a hammer.

*Bang!*

“Giii!”

However, as the eggs hadn’t been frozen, several Hellrowcasts made attempts to jump, even as they lacked legs.

Hugo turned toward those Hellrowcasts and swung his hammer down again, even crushing one of them with his bare hand while bellowing.

“What are you standing around for?! The bitten Hellrowcast eggs are done for! Just focus on suppressing the chain hatching! Don’t use any magic other than ice! If you use magic, the hatching will accelerate exponentially! Ravel!”

“I’ve already summoned the entire Ice Mage team!”

“Anyone with detection magic should focus on searching for any stray Hellrowcast! Don’t let any of them get away! It’ll be over if the chain-hatching spreads any further! Also, gather everyone from the security perimeter one to five and spread them out! If we can’t stop this, we’ll crush as many as we can before they all hatch!”

“Understood!”

“I… I should have known this would happen… I understood his feelings… Why, why the hell didn\'t I comfort him?!"

Overwhelmed by a swirl of intense regret, Dongo stood there frozen in place.

Around then, Caprine, with her silver hair tied back, also arrived and immediately raised her baton, swiftly freezing up three eggs.

However, given that she barely recovered her mana, her technique was rather rough in freezing the eggs, leaving her panting.

Still gritting her teeth, she continued to contain the situation as best as she could, while carefully spinning her words for Dongo.

"Can you move, Dongo-san? I know you feel strongly responsible for this, but no one can blame you or Drois, who has been putting in effort for days. But we need to focus on what\'s before us right now, alright? We’ll tackle it one step at a time, starting with what’s nearby. You can do that, right?”

With his face pale, Dongo barely managed a nod, and turned his wand toward an egg, holding it with both hands. However, gripped in his sweaty hands, the weight of his wand felt more pronounced due to exhaustion, and it slipped from his grasp, striking the egg directly.

Dongo\'s head went blank and he immediately scurried to pick it up, channeling his mana in it with full force.

“Dongo-san!!”

Caprine sensed the abnormality and hurriedly tried to stop him, but she was a step late.

The mana stone affixed to the wand released a dazzling white radiance in channeling his pure, unaltered mana, and then it turned it into a large quantity of ice. 

Seeing this, Caprine couldn\'t maintain her usual composure and shouted with a pale face.

"M-Mana explosion inbound! It\'s unstoppable!!!"

After a moment of silence, Hugo shouted.

“W-What the hell!! Dongo! What about the safety mechanism?!”

Dongo moved his mouth in a daze, his voice unfocused.

“I was… trying to be more efficient… to process as many eggs as possible… Why now?... How did I fail to transform attributes now?!”

Tears streamed down Dongo’s face as he desperately tried to control the rampaging wand.

“I failed… The resistance is too great.”

The moment he let go, the wand would explode. And even if he didn’t let go, once Dongo’s mana ran dry—

Hugo briefly shut his eyes tight, gritting his teeth to the point of bleeding, then calmly announced in a flat voice.

“...Everyone, fall back for now. We’re raising the subjugation operation to phase 3!”

Despair ran across Dongo’s face as he shook his head vigorously.

“No... I don’t want to die... I don’t want to die! My wife is pregnant. How long... how long had we waited for this blessing!!!"

Nevertheless, Hugo didn\'t look back at Dongo again, and gave another shout for everyone to escape in a merciless tone, but—

—In a split moment, a blue-haired young boy rushed past Hugo, beelining for the Dongo.

T/N - So… onion cutting ninjas incoming I guess.

E/N - Dang, lots of stuff going wrong in this chapter. Though I doubt Al will die given that spoilers from the end of volume one gave us his future title already. 

And lol at Allen, he does have the habit of counting his chickens before they hatch