“Should we go take a look for now?”
Sinhyeok ran over with an excited face.
“Hyung!”
“Ajusshi! What about keeping watch?!”
At the shout from behind, Sinhyeok tapped his head.
“I’m scanning the surroundings with Mapping!”
“Then why are you going, Ajusshi!”
Sinhyeok cackled and shouted.
“To mess with them!”
Ten meters from the Ant Hell, he witnessed another squad of trainees still floundering about.
The trainees trapped in the sand swamp shouted urgently.
“Save us!”
“Huh? You talking to me?”
At Sinhyeok’s obnoxious words, they trembled and nodded helplessly.
“Yes! Hyungnim!”
Sinhyeok cackled and plopped down right then and there.
At that, the trainees seemed to choke up and thrashed about.
“Huh? You’ll sink deeper if you do that.”
And indeed, as they sank further, they hurriedly stopped moving.
Arin, who arrived right after, sighed and spoke.
“Send them off already.”
Their faces crumpled at the even more ruthless words.
“Hey, we shouldn’t do that to fellow 99th Regiment trainees.”
Baek Arin and Hong Ichan looked at Sinhyeok at the sudden words.
“You guys got anything on you?”
The two looked at him with eyes asking if he was serious at the absurd words.
“Nothing?”
The trainees shouted urgently.
“Potions! We have low-grade potions!”
“Me too!”
Sinhyeok smiled in satisfaction and said.
“Don’t need ’em. I’m an Alchemist.”
“Huh!? You?!”
He choked up slightly at the words denying his Awakening.
“Damn it.”
Then, upon hearing the word Alchemist, one trainee urgently shouted.
“O-over here! We have a lot of mana herbs! Red and blue ones! All of them! Totally fresh!”
Sinhyeok welcomed the news that they had many mana herbs.
He gestured behind him immediately.
“Hey, we brought that rope, right?”
“Ugh, Ajusshi. Seriously?”
Ichan silently pulled it out from his inventory.
“This is how you build give-and-take, man.”
Sinhyeok took the rope and flung it.
Baek Arin used her strength to pull up those holding onto the rope.
The pulled-out trainees stood up with awkward faces.
Sinhyeok gestured at them.
“Yeah, be careful from now on.”
“Huh? Y-yes.”
Just as they tried to leave, Sinhyeok urgently spoke.
“The mana herbs?”
“Ah! Yes… H-here.”
A female trainee scurried over and handed over the mana herbs.
“Yeah, thanks, take care!”
The rescued trainees looked at Sinhyeok’s squad with blank gazes.
“He’s kind.”
“S-sort of?”
Sinhyeok shouted at their backs as they left.
“Come buy lunchboxes if you need ’em! We have water too!”
Arin smacked Sinhyeok’s back hard.
“Ack!”
“Is this why you brought those?!”
“Kind of! Ow! Why does it sting so much!”
Sinhyeok rubbed his back against the sand and glared at Arin.
“That’s a deadly weapon!”
“So what do we do now? Just wait?”
“We gotta gather intel.”
There was information that needed to be secured since this was a Gate search.
“But I can cover it all.”
In other words, Baek Arin and Hong Ichan had nothing to do except stand watch.
“This skill has a maintainable range, so we need to move in one to two kilometer intervals.”
“Yes!”
The two nodded.
Sinhyeok got up and finished preparing to train diligently.
“Now, take out your terminals and input the data as I call it out.”
It had been six hours since they started roaming the desert, scanning the surroundings with Mapping.
Everyone was exhausted.
“Phew, it’s hot.”
Sinhyeok grimaced at the relentless heat.
“Guys, someone fell into the swamp over there again.”
“Ah, come on!”
“Hyung! Are we a rescue squad or what!”
Baek Arin and Hong Ichan, who were walking behind, grumbled and went down with potions and rope.
“Kekep. Hey, save us anyway!”
“That’s why we’re going!”
Sinhyeok firmly closed his eyes for a moment, pausing Mapping.
“Ugh, it’s been a while since I ran Mapping properly, so my eyes hurt and my head hurts too.”
He sat on the ground, watching Baek Arin returning from rescuing people down there again.
“Here!”
Baek Arin tossed the received mana herbs again.
“Thanks.”
He caught the mana herbs and took out a water bottle.
The two clicked their tongues as they watched him stuff red mana herbs into the bottled water.
“Does that really turn into a potion?”
“Right? That’s totally a scam, isn’t it?”
Sinhyeok laughed and shook two bottles of water excitedly.
“Hahahat! What’s so hard about potions! This makes it a potion!”
Tadadadak.
[Due to the trait’s influence, the Potion transcends its grade.]
Sinhyeok shouted with a laugh.
“Now! Supreme grade, come on in!”
[You have crafted 2 Supreme-grade Red Potions.]
He stored all the finished potions directly into his inventory.
Baek Arin plopped down beside Sinhyeok and reached out her hand.
“Ajusshi, give me some water. I’m dying of heat.”
“Red or blue?”
Baek Arin snickered at the luxury that even a chaebol would struggle to afford.
“Blue. It’s a bit cooler.”
She received the Supreme-grade Blue Potion, exasperated.
“I couldn’t drink potions like water even when I was young.”
Hong Ichan asked Sinhyeok, who was taking a short break.
“But what are you making potions for? You can’t even sell them at full price.”
Sinhyeok smirked and tossed Ichan a bottle of red potion water.
“We gotta survive together, man. You think it’s okay to survive alone?”
At the almost sacred words coming from his mouth, both Hong Ichan and Baek Arin spat out their potions.
Puaaak.
“Kekek!”
“Keup.”
Sinhyeok’s mood soured at the two streams of water spewed into the air.
“Hey, hey. What the hell?”
Baek Arin wiped the potion from the corners of her mouth and said.
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
Sinhyeok replied calmly.
“They never said this survival was a competition in the first place. And in a Gate, you save your comrades first. No matter how trashy they are or how much they act like jerks or piss you off.”
Baek Arin and Hong Ichan’s expressions grew serious at the textbook advice coming from his mouth.
“And you’re the one who goes around messing with people like that?”
“You mess with them like that every morning drill?”
“Kekep, hey, but thanks to me, the kids’ stamina has gone up, hasn’t it?”
Baek Arin was stunned by those words.
“You did that on purpose? Wow, Ajusshi, you’re pure evil.”
“Keup, stamina is national power, man. I did a good thing.”
Ichan shook his head.
“Keung. Let’s just eat. I’ve roughly scanned this area. No dangerous entities, and there seems to be some gold and iron underground.”
Sinhyeok looked around and said.
“Let’s set up a tent somewhere.”
“Hyung, isn’t there any shade?”
He pointed in one direction at Ichan, who asked about shade.
“Over there?”
“If you go about seven to eight kilometers, there’s something like a village.”
Baek Arin and Ichan immediately welcomed the news that there was something.
“Then, why don’t we go there? Why?”
Sinhyeok calmly took out a combat ration from his inventory and said.
“It’s dangerous. It looks like a perfect place to hide and ambush. Think about it, it’s way too quiet here.”
Click.
He broke his chopsticks and opened the combat ration.
Sinhyeok chewed his rice nonchalantly and said.
“I bet my wrist that if we go there, the instructors are having a blast beating up trainees.”
* * *
“Eliminated.”
The masked man said sinisterly, having tied up the trainees.
“F-foul play.”
Thwack.
He struck the back of their neck immediately, knocking them out.
The instructors laughed slyly and said.
“Where’s the foul play in a Gate? Trainees, keuheuheup.”
Soon after, a junior instructor dragged the trainees away.
“Yongchan! Lock them up in there!”
“Yes, sir!”
The junior instructor took them to the temporary prison and flung them in.
There were already trainees packed inside.
“Save us!”
“Huh?”
The trainees flinched at the masked man’s tone reacting to the honorific.
They hurriedly corrected their answer.
“S-save us, sir!”
“That’s better. But no.”
Swish!
He shoved the caught personnel in and said darkly.
“The crime of daring to enter the most dangerous urban area without scouting or keeping watch—you’ll pay for it dearly! Keuhahaha!”
“Please!”
He came out of the prison and asked the senior.
“But are we really eliminating them?”
“Hmm~ if no one rescues them by midnight today, we’ll have to.”
The senior instructor smirked, looking at the trapped kids.
“It’s funny. We never told them to compete.”
“Exactly. Why would they operate separately in a Gate they know nothing about? If they get scattered, they should regroup quickly.”
The senior leaned against a stone wall and looked at the desert.
“But our experienced ones are quiet. They must have seen right through us.”
He looked at the Gate’s scenery as the sun slowly set.
“Dang, the sunset sure is pretty.”
The senior discovered a small blue crystal passing quickly through the sunset.
“Hm? What’s that?”
The blue crystal slowly looked around before vanishing in a flash.
“A firefly?”
“First Squad Leader! Don’t eat now!”
“Oh! Put the water on!”
Seeing the junior pouring water into cup ramyeon, he suddenly remembered someone and asked urgently.
“Right, Yongchan! Did you give Urka his food?”
“Ah…!”
“Hey, you. That orc bastard gets angry if you don’t feed him. Hurry up and take him some ramyeon later.”
“Yes, sir! I got it.”
* * *
“Ah, I’m full.”
Ichan grimaced at Sinhyeok, who had polished off three combat rations by himself.
“That stuff is seriously nasty.”
“I know. But after not having it for a while, it’s surprisingly okay.”
Sinhyeok cancelled Mapping and spoke to the two.
“There are some kids trapped in that city over there.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“It’s probably the instructors pulling their usual tricks.”
He got up, stretched lightly, and looked around.
“Arin.”
Sinhyeok called to her as she wetted her throat with a red potion.
“What is it?”
“Since we’re getting paid for this, we should give them a choice.”
Baek Arin leaned back comfortably and listened.
“Ideal perfect score, realistic perfect score. Which way?”
She asked Sinhyeok, who presented ideal and reality, with a sulky expression.
“The ideal way is rescuing them and enduring together, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The realistic way is ignoring them and just surviving on our own.”
Sinhyeok smiled and nodded.
He had given her a choice, but her decision seemed already made.
“I hate the sight of them, but ignoring them feels wrong too. Let’s go, Ajusshi.”
Ichan shook his head.
“You know there’s never been a full-score pass since the Awakened Army Warrant Officer Training Center was founded, right?”
Sinhyeok grinned.
“Then we’ll be the first. First, start a fire. Let’s put on a big show and make ourselves look bigger.”
She got up and flicked away the trash.
She took out a lighter and dropped it.
“We need to finish this overwhelmingly.”
The blazing flames lit up the dark desert sky.
Sinhyeok raised his gun to the sky and pulled the trigger.
Bam!
The gunshot rang out loudly.
Sinhyeok cackled and pulled the trigger like a madman.
Bang bang bang bang!
Baek Arin and Hong Ichan covered their ears in disgust.
“Why is he like that!”
“You only need to shoot once!”
“Keuhahap! The most fun thing in the world is a chaotic mess!”
At the loudly spreading gunshots, those who had already owed debts of gratitude to Sinhyeok gradually gathered.
“Come! You foolish mortals!”
Baek Arin and Hong Ichan shook their heads at the rampaging Sinhyeok.
“Seriously, why is he like that.”
* * *
Slurp.
“Keugeuk, Yongchan, don’t we have any kimchi?”
“I brought it!”
“As expected of Yongchan.”
The junior instructor immediately got up to fetch the kimchi but paused.
He saw white smoke in the sky.
“Huh? First Squad Leader?”
“Yeah. I see it too.”
Soon, gunshots rang out.
Bam!
The instructors jumped up at the loud noise.
Then came a burst of automatic fire.
“Well, well.”
The senior instructor laughed and spoke to the junior.
“Yongchan. Call in everyone playing around. Our experienced trainee is doing something cute.”
It was funny yet satisfying.
He smiled and gathered all the instructors.
“Our babies are defying expectations.”
Soon, instructors lying in ambush gathered from everywhere.
They all spoke while looking at the gunshots and white smoke.
“Is that the experienced one?”
“Seems like it. This is why they say experienced~ experienced~.”
“Keup, this will be fun.”
Everyone was excited at the first-ever occurrence since the founding of the Warrant Officer Training Center.
“Alright then, let’s get ready too.”
“Yes, sir!”