Academy Delinquent in Charge: Episode 4
“So this was how it was done…….”
A move his grandfather had used a week ago when dealing with monsters that appeared in the skies above the Blue Leaf.
He had tried to recreate that method exactly, but perhaps because it was his first time, controlling his internal energy didn’t go as well as he’d thought.
“They all ended up dead.”
It couldn’t be helped. He hadn’t killed them on purpose.
Baek Il-jin shook out his hands and walked past Hairin toward the campfire that had already gone out. Then he took out an artifact and lit a fire.
Unlike Baek Il-jin, who showed no sign of anything, Hairin’s pupils were quite dilated. Her heart felt like it would burst from shock.
“Ahh, I didn’t sense anything at all.”
As a race sensitive to the flow of mana, even she had sensed nothing. There was only one being capable of showing such an overwhelming sight.
“D-dragon?”
The moment she recognized the situation, her body naturally began to tremble. The instant she thought of it, she quickly fell to her knees and prostrated herself to express gratitude.
“G-great being. Th-thank you.”
“……What?”
Baek Il-jin, who had been adding firewood to revive the embers, suddenly lifted Hairin, who had flopped down in a bow.
“It’s not that.”
“Huh?”
“I’m not a dragon or whatever.”
Hairin thought of the adage, *There is no dragon that reveals its true identity,* and forced a smile.
“Haha…… Yes.”
Seeing her prostrate herself again despite being lifted up, Baek Il-jin let out a small sigh.
“What happened earlier was my grandfather’s doing.”
Since it seemed things would only become uncomfortable at this rate, Baek Il-jin, who had glossed it over by saying his grandfather did it, got up from his spot first.
“Ah, your grandfather…….”
Their conversation ended there. Afterward, they maintained silence and spent their own time.
Lying down to sleep, Baek Il-jin closed his eyes and was pondering the existence called dragon.
He suddenly opened his eyes and stretched out a hand filled with internal energy toward a giant zelkova tree far in the distance.
In an instant, the tree fell with a thunderous crash.
Though Hairin made a fuss as if lightning had struck, Baek Il-jin, who did not reply, finished his thought.
“Is grandfather really a dragon? And if being able to do this makes one a dragon, does that make me a dragon too?”
He had never had that kind of conversation before.
But no matter how much he thought about it, neither Baek Myeong-hak nor himself were dragons. They were far too different from the dragons in the fairy tale books that Stone Golem Max used to read to him.
And if she thought that way because of the move he had shown earlier, he thought that was even more incorrect.
“Of course, it would be hard to become like grandfather.”
Because to this degree, it seemed like anyone could do it as long as they had internal energy, even without being a dragon.
* * *
Before dawn, they rose quickly, finished preparing to descend the mountain, and walked as they had until now without saying a word.
Hairin, who could not shake her suspicion that Baek Il-jin was a dragon, confirmed it three more times in the morning as well.
“He definitely said he’s human……?”
She glanced at him walking silently beside her and gulped.
“What should I do? If I want to get close to him, now’s the only chance…….”
Perhaps because of the fear of unknown abilities etched deep into her bones, it was hard to turn around a relationship that had grown distant once.
“But what can I do, he’s scary.”
Before she knew it, they had arrived at the village while lost in useless thoughts. Blue leaves hanging from the straight, towering zelkova trees swayed as if to welcome them.
“Oh, Hairin. You arrived first.”
At the village entrance, Chieftain Habeseu stood waving his hand to greet them.
“Yes, the human kept up better than I thought…….”
She had been about to say, “He followed better than I thought,” but stopped when she gauged the expression of the one beside her.
“By the way, were you inconvenienced on the way here?”
“No.”
Hearing that short answer, Hairin grumbled inwardly.
“I was extremely inconvenienced!”
Habeseu, not minding his brief reply, asked many things.
Whether his grandfather had separately said anything, whether he was well, what his mood seemed like, and only after hearing all the answers did he let out a sigh of relief and invite them into his home.
“I’ve already sent word to the Hwangbo family. If you take this ‘Leaf Token’ to Count Hwangbo, he will issue you a recommendation letter for the academy.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Ah, I must have been out of sorts. I should have served food to a guest who traveled a long way first.”
The blue apple salad, meat made from tofu, and elven specialty fruit juice that Habeseu prepared were things he was eating for the first time, but they had a unique taste.
“Heheh, has it been a few days since you last ate?”
Baek Il-jin’s happy expression while eating was enough to make one wonder, *Is this the same child from before?*
“I wonder if it suits your palate.”
“It’s delicious.”
“Thank you for enjoying it.”
As they were eating, the door of the chieftain’s house burst open.
“Chieftain! I came in first, right?”
What came through the door was an elf girl with emerald short hair and eyes of the same color, her mischievously upturned lips standing out.
“Hello. Elia, you’re here now?”
“H-Hairin?”
Elia, seeing that Hairin had returned first and was even having a meal, jumped up and shouted indignantly.
“What? Hairin. How does it make sense that you arrived before me?!”
“Why doesn’t it make sense? You should blame your own lack of ability.”
Hairin shot back without losing an inch.
At Hairin’s words, Elia turned her head with a huff and shouted at Habeseu, who was setting the table.
“Chieftain! It makes no sense that Hairin, who got the hardest mission in the lottery, came back faster than me!”
Habeseu’s face showed clear bewilderment. Truthfully, he too had not expected Hairin to come down from those deep mountains so quickly while bringing a human child.
“Heheh, well now…….”
“There’s a problem here!”
Hairin, who had been listening, abruptly stood up and flicked her index finger.
“The problem is your attitude.”
“What?! You want to go at it?”
Hairin’s mission was a secret known only to the chieftain and a few village elders, so Elia, who did not know the details, felt wronged.
*The chieftain definitely gave that girl an easy mission.*
Grinding her teeth, Elia approached Habeseu and shouted.
“Chieftain! No matter how much you favor Hairin, this isn’t right!”
“What do you mean, it isn’t right?”
Despite the commotion, Elia pointed at Baek Il-jin, who continued picking up food with a happy expression, and said.
“Is bringing just one human with that weird hairstyle to the village a harder task than my mission to retrieve the Fire Spirit Stone?”
For an instant, Hairin and Habeseu gauged whether Baek Il-jin might have taken offense, but he didn’t pay any mind and simply kept chewing.
“Watch your mouth. Do you know where that person stands…….”
“Hairin.”
She had nearly blurted out the secret in her anger, but came to her senses at Habeseu’s warning. Then she clicked her tongue and turned her head away.
“Hmph, let’s see, maybe he’s some scion of the Five Great Families?”
“Elia. Stop getting angry and sit down to eat.”
At Habeseu’s persuasion, Elia moved to the table and discovered the blue leaf-shaped token placed beside Baek Il-jin’s dishes, her eyes widening.
“Chieftain. Why does that human have the ‘Leaf Token’?!”
“Heheh, there were circumstances…….”
The ‘Leaf Token’ was given only to benefactors or the village’s heroes.
She too had once begged to be given the token to receive a recommendation letter from the Hwangbo family, only to be refused.
Fortunately, she had been able to get the recommendation letter she wanted without using the token, but she couldn’t help feeling displeased.
“After saying you absolutely couldn’t give it to me…….”
Elia didn’t even touch the food and went out, slamming the door with a bang!
And then she opened the door again.
“I didn’t slam it hard, the wind closed it!”
Saying so, she left again.
Habeseu looked at the closed door, chuckled, and laughed softly.
“That girl too, when will a child who’s already had her coming-of-age ceremony grow up…….”
“It’s because you don’t scold her, Chieftain, that she acts so rudely. You need to give her a firm word.”
As he looked at her saying that, Habeseu let out another guffaw.
*You’re just the same, you rascal.*
* * *
After finishing his meal, Baek Il-jin went out into the village streets to take a walk and look around the village.
‘So this is ice cream? At the Lair, Max only gave me frozen persimmons.’
Though he had already been walking through the village streets for over an hour, things he was seeing for the first time kept appearing.
The residents of the Blue Leaf Village, which humans visited quite frequently, looked at him with curious eyes but showed no particular signs of wariness.
“To think there are so many humans and elves…… it’s fascinating.”
Having spent his entire life in a cave, everything about civilization was unfamiliar to him.
Picturesque houses made from a single tree, little children playing after summoning spirits. And an elf girl glaring at him with wide eyes.
“Hey! Human with the weird hairstyle!”
“…….”
“You should answer when you’re spoken to!”
Only then did Elia continue speaking as he finally turned his head toward her.
“You! Where are you planning to use the ‘Leaf Token’?”
“I’m going to get a recommendation letter for the academy.”
“What?”
Since it wasn’t something he needed to hide, Baek Il-jin answered simply and had already passed her by.
“Stop right there!”
“What now.”
“You’re entering the academy?”
“Yeah.”
Elia put on a mischievous expression, raised her chin, and crossed her arms. Her already upturned lips rose even higher.
“I’ll verify it. Whether you have the skills to enter the academy.”
She didn’t think this human was better than herself. Yet it was absurd that he was taking a token she hadn’t even received.
*Hmph! I’ll make sure the academy is nothing but a dream for you!*
The verification was an excuse. Truthfully, she was just irritated that he had gotten a recommendation letter she couldn’t, and wanted to mess with him.
“How do you plan to verify it?”
“We duel.”
“No.”
Seeing his expression as he answered, she flinched. Even looking at a roadside stone would involve more emotion than that gaze.
*What. What’s with that emotionless face?*
But that didn’t matter. What was important was teasing this human who only had a decent face.
“No, why not?”
“Just because.”
“You’re scared…….”
Seeing him cut her off again and walk past her, Elia jumped in front of him once more.
“What is with you, why do you keep ignoring me?”
“I told you, I’m not interested.”
Thinking he would ignore her again if she just spoke, Elia concentrated mana into her right hand.
“No? I absolutely must duel you!”
She then drew three red magic circles in the air simultaneously. The three magic circles soon linked together to become one.
“Fortia!”
In that instant, a wolf-shaped spirit wrapped in red flames was summoned from the united magic circle.
Its summoned body wasn’t large since there were only three summoning magic circles, but as befitting an intermediate fire spirit, a savage aura could be felt.
“What is that.”
“As expected, can you still act so stiff in front of an intermediate spirit?”
The valiant figure and beautiful form of the summoned intermediate spirit Fortia was enough to prove her confidence.
“I need to check just how great you are to be taking the token!”
After petting Fortia once, she gave the spirit magic command.
“Fortia! Flame Blast!”
The intermediate fire spirit Fortia, flames surging in its mouth, proudly stepped in front of Elia to use spirit magic.
And the moment it opened its mouth to shoot out an exploding ray of fire.
It met eyes with Baek Il-jin.
Tremble, tremble, tremble.
The fire spirit, which had been about to burst forth with flames at any moment, gulped them down and began to tremble all over.