Rabbit Hunting
The day of the third practical exam dawned.
Leaving the hotel on time, we headed for the bus stop.
The bus pulled up in front of us.
“Whoa… There are way too many people. Can we even get on?”
“Should we have come out ten minutes earlier?”
“Not ten minutes. I think we should’ve come out an hour earlier.”
“Well, what can we do? We have to get on.”
The bus entering the academy grounds was bursting with applicants taking the third practical exam.
Unable to find seats, we had to squeeze in among the other examinees.
Fortunately, there was one strap nearby that I could grab.
I took hold of it so I wouldn’t be swept away by inertia.
“Ugh…”
The problem was that Yeon Haneul had no strap nearby she could hold on to.
She was getting jostled this way and that by the crowd, unable to keep her balance properly.
I said to her,
“Haneul, lean on me.”
“Huh?”
“It’s dangerous if you stay like that. I’ll support you from behind, so just lean on me comfortably.”
“But… then it’ll be hard on you.”
“It’s not like I’m an ordinary person. I’m a swordsman, so what’s hard about it? Your weight is something I can easily handle even without using mana—”
“You could’ve stopped after the first verse. Did you really have to go into the second? I’m not heavy at all, okay?”
“Who said you were heavy?”
“That’s exactly what you were saying.”
“That is not what I was saying.”
“Anyway! Then… I’ll be in your care.”
Yeon Haneul carefully pressed herself against me.
She lightly placed one hand between my chest and stomach, then soon grasped my lapel.
At that moment, the bus braked hard.
Screeech!
“Kyaa!”
Our bodies tried to pitch forward.
I hurriedly gripped the strap tightly and braced myself so my feet wouldn’t leave the floor.
With my other hand, I caught Yeon Haneul so she wouldn’t fall.
As she staggered, my hand pulled her into my arms.
“Haneul, are you okay?”
“Y-yeah… Thanks…”
Unlike a moment ago,
startled by the bus’s sudden stop, Yeon Haneul was clutching my chest tightly with both hands.
Because she was pressed so close, I couldn’t check on her condition.
All I could see in front of me were long rabbit ears swaying, and the top of her head when I looked down.
“Did something happen up front? We almost got hurt.”
“Y-yeah…”
“Why have you only been saying ‘y-yeah…’ since earlier? You really are okay, right?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay, so…”
“What?”
“Stop talking right into my ears… Your breath keeps touching them, so it tickles, and it sounds like you’re whispering.”
“Hey, your ears are right in front of me. What do you expect me to do?”
“My ears… are sensitive, so stooop…”
“Fine, fine.”
“Mmh…”
Yeon Haneul’s ears twitched.
As she pressed herself even closer, she practically buried her face in my chest.
‘But I’m ticklish too, you know?’
Yeon Haneul wasn’t the only one whose breath was landing nearby.
Her breath brushed around my neck, tickling me as if playing a prank.
It wasn’t unbearable, but it felt strange.
‘Is it because it’s my neck?’
For any animal, the neck is a vital point.
If your neck is bitten, you can’t move, and if your neck breaks, you die.
The same goes for people.
So perhaps I was instinctively wary of exposing such a vital point.
Though my Evasion Instinct wasn’t reacting at all.
‘The reason Evasion Instinct isn’t activating… is probably because it knows Haneul has no intention of harming me.’
That was my guess.
To shake off the odd feeling, I looked out the window.
‘Hm?’
It was then that I heard the examinees on the bus grumbling.
“Damn it, making us watch this crap first thing in the morning…”
“If they’re going to date, they should do it somewhere out of sight…”
“I’m definitely going to make those bastards fail.”
“Did they come here to take an exam, or to date?”
“Students shouldn’t be dating…”
“But we’re students too.”
“Let’s pass. If we pass, we’ll get someone too…”
I heard sounds of people lamenting their lives, cursing someone, and sorrowfully holding back tears.
Judging from their whispers, it seemed someone was engaging in public displays of affection on the bus.
‘I don’t know who it is, but I hope they fail.’
Kids like that were never good at studying.
Good grief, tsk tsk.
Instead of saying it out loud, I silently shared a sense of kinship with them.
* * *
The bus entered the academy grounds.
After getting off at the last stop, we decided to head for the Dimensional Hall, where the third practical exam would be held.
At that moment, someone called us from behind.
“Haneul! Gyeonu!”
“Oh, it’s Eunbi.”
It was Go Eunbi.
She seemed to have just gotten off at the bus stop and was waving her arm widely.
Her face was bright despite the early morning hour.
“…Are you interested in her?”
“Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”
“Just… You seem to think of her as close. Even though you’ve only seen her a few times… You usually don’t pay much attention to other people.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah, you did. That’s why it’s kind of surprising.”
Yeon Haneul looked at me suspiciously.
Since she didn’t know about the existence of the game, it must have seemed strange to her that I was acting friendly toward Go Eunbi, whom I had barely met.
But I couldn’t tell her the truth, so I decided to vaguely gloss over it.
“She just looks like a good person at a glance. So I thought it’d be fine to get close to her. Don’t you think so?”
“…I don’t think she’s a bad person. Since she knows I’m shy around strangers, it seems like she’s being considerate when she talks to me.”
“Right?”
Though her face still looked unconvinced,
Yeon Haneul seemed to agree to some extent and halfheartedly went along with it.
She didn’t try to press further and turned her gaze away from me.
By then, Go Eunbi had come over.
“Hi! If you two are here too, that means you did well on yesterday’s exam, right? Are you going to take the third exam?”
It wasn’t even nine in the morning yet, and she should have been tired from taking an exam the day before.
But Go Eunbi, looking lively, chattered away as she spoke to us.
“Hi…”
Perhaps she found it difficult to deal with someone like her.
Yeon Haneul, who had quietly hidden behind my back, returned the greeting in an awkward voice.
Having suddenly become her screen, I smiled wryly.
“Hi. Looks like you’re going to take the exam too. We’re taking it in the Dimensional Hall. Where are you taking yours?”
“I’m in the Dimensional Hall too. From what I found out, everyone who applied for the combat track seems to be taking it there. What room are you in?”
“We’re in Room 206.”
“Oh, really? I’m in Room 206 too!”
“Looks like we’ll be taking the exam together.”
“Yeah, that’s great! If things get rough, help me out a lot.”
“Aren’t you pretty good yourself?”
“Come on, I can’t compare to you two with your black admission tickets. Oh, now that I think about it, it looked like you were talking about something while looking at me earlier. Was it about me?”
“Yeah, we were talking about you. We were saying you look like a good person. Haneul agreed too. Right?”
“Why would you say that…”
“Hm? Really? Thanks for the compliment! You two look like a handsome man and a beautiful woman too!”
“You also look like you’d have a lot of friends.”
“Me? Come on, what are you talking about? I don’t have many friends!”
Go Eunbi waved her hands as if that were absurd.
Having expected her reaction, I lightly shrugged.
As expected, Go Eunbi was definitely a deceiver.
Talking like that, we made our way to the third practical exam site.
“Examinees, confirm your exam numbers, then enter the gate.”
Dimensional Hall, Room 206.
Following the assistants’ instructions, we completed the procedure to participate in the exam.
Then we stood before the artificial gate.
The dimension filling the artificial gate shone yellow.
“Let’s go in.”
“Okay.”
“…Yeah.”
I stepped into the gate.
Yeon Haneul followed behind me, and Go Eunbi came in last.
My vision was dyed yellow.
[You have entered the gate.]
[Yellow: Phantasmal Hotel IV]
* * *
[The clear conditions will be delivered.]
[This gate has already been cleared.]
When that message appeared,
I was standing in the middle of a forest, and the area around me was crowded with examinees.
‘Phantasmal Hotel?’
After dismissing the message that had appeared, I tried to look for Yeon Haneul and Go Eunbi, who should have entered after me.
The area was bustling with examinees, but finding Yeon Haneul wasn’t difficult.
Her rabbit ears stood out.
‘There she is.’
Just then, near where I was standing, I spotted rabbit ears poking up above the examinees’ heads.
I pushed through the examinees.
“Haneul, Eunbi.”
“Ah, Gyeonu.”
“We were just looking for you. You found us quickly.”
“Haneul stood out.”
The two welcomed me.
Yeon Haneul, in particular, looked relieved the moment she saw me.
As if determined not to be swept away and separated by the crowd, she carefully grabbed my lapel.
At that moment, Go Eunbi spoke.
“Ah, they’re moving!”
The examinees around us had begun walking somewhere.
From the look of it, the assistants at the front were guiding the way.
“Let’s follow them.”
We decided to join the procession.
After we had walked along the path through the forest for quite some time,
‘What’s that?’
A certain roof came into view beyond the forest.
The building that had been hidden beneath the roof slowly revealed itself.
It seemed the assistants were leading us to that building.
Soon, after leaving the forest, we were able to look up at the fully revealed building.
‘A hotel?’
It was a building that naturally made such a thought come to mind, one that looked as if it had been built quite a long time ago.
The evaluators were waiting in front of a dried-up fountain installed before the building.
Among them, the evaluator standing at the front checked the time and said,
“As the appointed time has arrived, we will now explain the third exam.”
At those words, the murmuring examinees closed their mouths and listened closely to the evaluator’s explanation.
“In the forest surrounding the Phantasmal Hotel, monsters ranging from at least Rank 1 to at most Rank 2 reside. Among them is a monster called the Ghost Rabbit. Instructors, please show the examinees the Ghost Rabbits.”
“Yes.”
“…”
One evaluator took a brown rabbit out of a cage on the ground.
The rabbit, dangling limply in the air by its ears, had a long horn growing from the center of its forehead.
Then the other evaluators each lifted up rabbits of different colors.
At that moment, as my eyes took them in, a message appeared before me.
[You have encountered monsters.]
[Ghost Rabbit (Rank. 01) x 1]
[Red Ghost Rabbit (Rank. 01) x 1]
[Yellow Ghost Rabbit (Rank. 01) x 1]
[Blue Ghost Rabbit (Rank. 01) x 1]
[…]
“These creatures are Ghost Rabbits. As you can see now, aside from the horns, they look like ordinary rabbits, but…”
The evaluator explaining gave a signal.
Then the evaluators holding the Ghost Rabbits by the ears let go.
As soon as their ears were freed, the Ghost Rabbits’ bodies turned translucent, and they vanished from sight.
“Like this…”
“…”
“They can use camouflage at a level that makes them difficult to confirm with the naked eye. In that state, ‘ordinary’ attacks will not work on them. When they are not using camouflage, ‘other’ attacks will no longer work.”
Rank 1 monster, Ghost Rabbit.
It was a monster I was thoroughly familiar with.
‘I’ve faced them both in the game and in the Divine Sword Do Clan’s evaluation match.’
Naturally, I also knew that depending on the rabbits’ state, only either physical attacks or magical attacks would work.
I could also understand what the evaluator meant by “ordinary” and “other” in his explanation.
Ordinary attacks meant physical attacks, and other attacks meant magical attacks.
By the way…
‘Si-eun noona’s prediction was right.’
It was a test to see whether we could freely switch the manifestation state of the mana within our bodies.
But judging from the evaluator’s explanation, it didn’t seem like that was all they were testing.
“Examinees, you will hunt the Ghost Rabbits living in the forest and bring their mana stones to the front of the fountain. We will then take those mana stones…”
The evaluator walked over to a large scale.
It was an artifact that measured the energy contained in mana stones.
The evaluator placed a mana stone on it.
The scale detected the mana within the stone, and a number appeared.
“Like this.”
[3Gg]
“We will measure their value by converting several criteria, such as the mana stone’s weight, size, damage ratio, and energy. In the case of the mana stone I just measured, it has been measured at 3Gg according to our standards. For reference, Gg is the initialism for ‘Geumgang.’”
“…”
“Examinees, you will be able to obtain one chip for every 10Gg.”
The evaluator showed us a chip.
It was the sort of chip one might see in a casino.
“The third practical exam and the fourth practical exam will be conducted in the same gate. The location of the fourth practical exam is the Phantasmal Hotel behind me.”
“…”
“Tonight at seven, there will be a banquet for all of you at the Phantasmal Hotel. Until then, you must gather a certain number of chips and secure a room to stay in for the day.”
The room grades according to the number of chips are as follows.
Saying that, the evaluator sent a message to the Gate Watches we were wearing.
[Phantasmal Hotel Room Grades]
—Standard: 10 chips
—Superior: 20 chips
—Deluxe: 30 chips
—Premier: 40 chips
—Suite: 50 chips
I Became the Childhood Friend of the Mid-Boss