Troll.
The monster also called the 'Man-Eating Demon (食人鬼)' is said to have been born when a guardian spirit of the forest that once existed fell to corruption.
The tale of the forest's guardian spirit, betrayed by humans, becoming one with the rocks to take revenge and transforming into a man-eating monster was famous even as a fairy tale and a comedy.
And the fact that such oral traditions were created also meant that even children should know the violence and threat that trolls possessed.
Thus, the content of the representative troll folklore goes like this:
- 'Its entire body is covered in hard rock, yet its agility and intelligence are like the innate cunning of a wolf.'
- 'It possesses regenerative power like an unextinguishable fire, and holds the strength to shake mountains, a slaughterer that kills all.'
- 'It is a rock demon that feeds on people.'
Truly a nightmare.
It was the folklore of a monster that would disturb the sleep of children, regardless of their status.
As such, the power of trolls conveyed through folklore was truly terror itself.
It was to the point that a knight order had to mobilize to defeat a troll, and even if a knight order mobilized, sacrifices might follow.
Therefore, trolls reigned as the nightmare of warriors.
However, the efficacy possessed by a troll's heart and blood had such an immense 'value' that made one forget even such nightmares.
If you consume the blood, not only would most diseases be cured, but all wounds would recover as well.
It was revealed that consuming the heart had numerous effects, including the augmentation of lifespan.
Well, if you ate it without refining it, you'd die, of course.
Anyway, if a troll appeared in a forest or mountain near a territory, it was like a treasure that had to be caught somehow.
Even if sacrifices followed, if the hunt was successful, there would be no greater windfall than that.
So countless mercenaries and seekers tried to find trolls, but sadly, trolls had now become rare creatures.
Due to indiscriminate capture and hunting, they were no longer seen in ordinary forests or mountains, and one could barely encounter them only by going to areas called Demonic Realms (魔境).
Therefore.
"-Someone said today, asking if we'd get to see a real troll fight in the Swordsmanship Department exam. What a stupid question, right? If you think about it just a little, there's no way a 'real troll' would be in the capital."
Those who ask if the 'artificial (人工) product' that appears in department exams is a real troll must certainly have quite empty heads.
It was the cold remark of the girl resembling a beautiful deep-purple violet, Karin Guinevere, and the boy, held captive by the girl like an attachment doll having his hair stroked, responded with a flushed face to the girl's words.
"K-Karin Young Lady, if you could please step back a bit…."
"Isn't it funny? How could they procure a monster like a troll, the only thing they can procure is the [Rock Troll] made with alchemy."
"…Umm."
Her bewitching fragrance was distressing.
His still-fresh young body seemed like it would react.
Derek, innately introverted, bowed his body and showed effort to somehow get away from her.
Slap.
"Where are you keep going?"
"……."
Though it was meaningless.
"Honestly, calling that a troll is funny too. They're just pebbles smeared with troll blood. Ah, was even that blood replicated?"
"Still, it is a threatening existence, isn't it."
"Well, for ordinary people, I suppose."
The artificial lifeform called the artificial man-eating demon, or Rock Troll, was actually something like a golem that couldn't even be called a living creature.
As it became so difficult to discover trolls, it was one of the products born from the efforts of alchemists trying to replicate a troll's heart and blood.
However, the replicated product could barely mimic at most 2 out of 10 parts of the performance of a troll's blood, and because of this, many were disappointed, but still, 2 out of 10 performance was nothing to scoff at.
Thanks to that, many products were developed, and one of them was the [Rock Troll].
…It was created just by having rocks absorb replicated troll blood.
So there were still many who didn't know the principle of Rock Troll generation.
But its combat power didn't even amount to half compared to the original, so it was sometimes used this frequently for training or evaluating someone's skill.
The Swordsmanship Department exam was such a case.
"I've seen it once. Sometimes the family purchases them and has new knights fight them. It was utterly pathetic. For a monster called the demon of the forest or a man-eating demon, it was incredibly feeble."
"…It can't be helped since it's merely a replica."
Derek had already given up on shaking off her hand and accepted the fate of having his hair stroked.
Even so, he steadily answered her questions, though a subtle hue lingered somewhere about him.
"Hm? Was there something strange about what I said? Why the sudden reaction?"
"Ah, no, I just had something to think about for a moment."
"Hmm, to have the leisure to think of other things while with a wonderful woman like me… How disappointing."
"!?"
"Hmph!"
"T-That is…, K-Karin Young Lady…?"
"Hmph-!"
"……."
…How on earth do you soothe a woman's mood at times like this?
Derek had no choice but to fall into deep distress like someone facing the world's greatest conundrum.
'More than that, I slowly need to actually do something about this….'
Even while trying to soothe the delicate girl's mood, Derek's mind was exceedingly complicated.
He had slipped into the academy exam 'chapter' haphazardly.
Originally, the previous chapter should have occurred, but strangely, the chapter didn't occur.
'Illegal mages were supposed to commit terrorism, but there's no such incident either.'
He was in the middle of preparing to report the illegal mages disguised as academy staff to the knight order, but they disappeared overnight.
Although he was bewildered, he was relieved that the terrorism didn't happen,
'What happens to the Oddwall corruption route?'
Even the main story wasn't occurring, so Derek slowly felt a sense of crisis.
It felt like all the information he knew was getting so tangled up that it was becoming useless.
Therefore, Derek couldn't say for certain what would happen in this chapter either, which made him all the more worried.
'I can't do anything about the exam chapter, which makes me even more anxious….'
He couldn't predict at all what kind of butterfly effect might have occurred.
The 'Exam Period Chapter' had too much uncertainty.
Setting aside the information not working, this was like a 'mandatory event.'
Also, Derek had neither the justification nor the authority to stop the exam.
All he had was the status of a mere cadet.
'I'm powerless.'
What good was having information when he couldn't do anything on his own?
"…Why are you making that expression?"
"Pardon?"
"I'm asking why you're suddenly making such a sad expression."
"Ah, no, well…"
"I'm not angry. I'm just asking because I can see you're holding something back, Derek."
"……."
"Come here."
"I, I…"
"Hurry, are you going to refuse the courage a woman mustered first?"
"……."
…Hug.
At the girl's reproach that pierced right through his heart, Derek unknowingly found himself embraced in the girl's arms.
She was clearly a girl younger than him, yet to be embraced in such a girl's arms and receive comfort—how embarrassing.
…Still.
'My mood is easing up.'
It seemed that even if her mental age was certainly higher, she couldn't ignore her physical age.
An age dominated by hormones.
Derek was comforted thus, and Karin gently stroked the boy's gray hair.
Hoping that the eyes of this scarred boy might soften even a little.
……Well, unlike their noble hearts.
"They're doing that again."
"Lucky bastard."
"…I want to date too."
To others' eyes, it could only look like them rubbing it in.
It was summer.
* * *
Kwung!
"Ah, so this is that Rock Troll?"
Ihan, with the status of a Swordsmanship Department instructor, was able to meet the troll the cadets would fight in advance.
[Gru…a…a…ah…!]
"…Looks like a doll with a speaker attached too."
The original form of a troll boasted a size of roughly 6 meters, a level no different from a large excavator transforming into a robot.
Despite that, its entire body was covered in rock, and it was so ferocious and brutal that it was like a beast that could never be tamed.
But this one.
Hwoong!
"Slow, small, and weak."
A 3-meter troll—no, 'that thing' which was nothing more than a rock-formed monster, moved.
To someone, it would seem endlessly threatening, but for Ihan, it lacked any great impression.
"This thing isn't a troll."
Ihan reached a conclusion.
This wasn't a troll.
It was merely a low-grade imitation that had copied a troll's form, nothing more.
Therefore.
"Not interesting."
Kwajik!
Ihan's palm struck the rock monster without hesitation.
It was no different from a slap, but the shockwave created by that slap was enormous.
Peeong!
Explosive collapse.
The rock monster's back burst open and it crumbled just like that.
"Hmm, I'm using this quite often."
Fa Jin.
His strike, containing destructive power that couldn't even be compared to the blow Levi Volt had shown the previous day, shattered the monster to pieces.
A technique created based on Baltar's Internal Weight Heavy Hand Method.
However, because it was such a convenient method, it was rather bothersome.
It felt like he would end up relying on it too much.
'I should research a different technique next.'
A convenient method was good, but to become stronger, how could he just chase after shortcuts forever?
Tingle.
"…Still, its endurance is decent."
The tingling at his fingertips felt during his observation.
It wasn't painfully sore, but his hand was a bit numb.
This imitation, while its power was weak and full of openings so there were many places to attack, in exchange, its defensive power was not to be taken lightly.
Also.
Squirm…. Squirm….
"Does it have some regenerative power too?"
So that was why it could use the name troll.
Its broken body was struggling to stick back together.
It seemed it didn't only have drawbacks.
He firmly stomped on its head and severed its breath, and at that moment, he was certain.
……This was not an 'opponent' that cadets at their level could beat.
'That regressor bastard and those three will win easily, and that instructor guy will be on the edge, but the rest can't.'
This wasn't only the case for the Teddy Bear series; the Young Master series was the same.
If they trained for about another year, he wouldn't know, but fighting at their current level?
Certain defeat.
The reason?
'There's no destructive power.'
Because he had taught them, he knew even better.
For those feeble guys to face this Rock Troll, they had a long way to go.
Therefore, Ihan learned that this exam wasn't necessarily structured to pass only by defeating the monster.
'They said the examiners are elders of the military, right? For those gentlemen, they'll look at combat power too, but they'll look more at how the warrior responds intelligently.'
Not a bad method.
He could feel the intention to drive them to their limits to assess their strengths and weaknesses, and through this, confirm their potential.
It was an appropriate method of evaluation, and even if they hadn't learned combat techniques, it meant they just needed to show 'excellence' and 'the mindset of fighting bravely,' so it wasn't an unreasonably unfair exam.
However.
"…I can see why the Teddy Bears' seniors only lasted until their 2nd year."
The Teddy Bears' seniors.
In other words, the commoner cadets from the previous year were weak, but they would have surpassed the standard Ihan had recalled.
Because they would have made it up to their 2nd year.
But probably, the moment they became 2nd years, they felt it.
That the capabilities they possessed were those of excellent soldiers or strategists, not of knights.
Because they intuitively sensed such limits, dropouts must have been occurring one after another.
Truly.
"-It's a foolish practice. With such excellent individuals, they should keep them on even if it means opening up advanced combat techniques, yet they discard talents over that meager specialness."
"……."
"Isn't that right, friend?"
"…It's off-limits to outsiders, though?"
"Haha, don't worry. I came in secretly."
"…That's quite brazen."
Even at the sudden appearance of an outsider, Ihan let it slide.
He had caught the unfamiliar—no, the bothersome presence long ago, but deliberately didn't touch it.
Because there was neither murderous intent nor hostility.
However, the attitude of coming up out of nowhere and reading his thoughts was quite irksome.
Did he learn telepathy or something?
"It's not telepathy but a skill for reading others' thoughts well. It's not my intention. It's just a clumsy skill I happened to pick up, that's all."
"…Isn't that telepathy?"
"Haha, you could call it that, but when you see the real telepathy that our eldest brother possesses, then you call it telepathy. This meager ability doesn't even qualify to be counted as telepathy."
"I don't want to experience it."
"Haha, you'll change your mind if you meet him. Unlike the rumors spreading in the capital, our eldest brother is quite the real deal."
"Stop. What would I even do if I met that gentleman?"
"Hm? Did I say who our eldest brother was?"
"If I didn't know, I'd be an idiot."
"?"
"……."
He was a strange guy.
Despite reading others' thoughts to the level of telepathy, he actually had no tact.
With the [Mark] of a 'Winged Lion' drawn boldly on his forearm, did he think his identity wouldn't be discovered?
More than the mark itself, though.
"Hide your hair and eye shape a bit when you go around."
"Ah, did it stand out?"
The pitch-black hair characteristic of northerners was one thing, but the beast-like eyes resembling a lion were a symbol that only a certain bloodline, said to have inherited the heart of a lion, could possess.
And those with lion eyes generally.
"Hmm, I was going to hide my identity, what a shame."
"It doesn't look like you had any intention of hiding at all."
"Haha, I originally intended to hide it, but as I watched quietly, my blood boiled and I couldn't even afford the leisure to hide it…!"
"……."
"I'm not an unreasonable person, really…! It's just that this is like our family's characteristic, so I can't help it…!"
Grin.
"-Do you have any intention of fighting me until one of us dies?"
A mad [Berserker] who loved slaughter battles.
A knight who inherited the bloodline of Lionel confessed a slaughter battle proposal to Ihan as if it were a confession.
"…Crazy bastard."
Of all people, why did it have to be someone from the Demonic Cult—no, someone like a [Northern Sea Demon Cultist (北海魔敎徒)]?
'Why do only these kinds of bastards approach me so affectionately?'
Ihan couldn't understand it at all.