My Desertion Would Be Faster Than Heros’ Obsession

Damien paused for a moment, staring blankly and scratching his ear.
“Did I hear that right? What did you say?”

“It’s guerrilla training, sir,” the recruit responded.
"...What?" Damien said, as he raised his hand and slapped his cheek, trying to confirm if this was reality.
Meanwhile, I was too stunned to move.

"Salvia, are you okay?"
Aquila was so shocked, he didn't even have time to react.
"Salvia, look at me, okay?"

It took a while for us to calm down.
...But why is there guerrilla training in a romance fantasy world?
‘Is this a joke? Seriously?’

Yeah, this is a romance fantasy world, but it feels like romance is already out the window, so let's just think of it as a fantasy world.
...But even in a fantasy world, I never imagined the protagonist would undergo guerrilla training.
This isn’t an apocalypse world either. In apocalypse worlds, they fight monsters to level up or close gates, not enlist in the military to undergo guerrilla training.

I thought I was already used to the army life with the constant marches and hazing, but the moment I heard the words "guerrilla training," I couldn’t hold onto my sanity.
We hadn’t done guerrilla training before. I’d heard that other branches outside of the Border Defense Army did it, but that wasn’t our case. Our focus was on hunting monsters.
The training we had been doing mostly involved conditioning our bodies and learning combat formations for fighting monsters.

But guerrilla training focuses on fighting people, not monsters. It’s about overcoming obstacles set up by humans and practicing various tactics for mission execution.
So, why are we doing guerrilla training...?
Wait a second.

“National situation!”
“Huh?”
“We’re doing guerrilla training in preparation for war, aren’t we?!”
The way this plot is being set up, how is my life even going like this?!

Are we seriously going to war with the Pelloni Empire?
But war was never mentioned in the original! I really hope this whole conflict is just some kind of provocation and nothing more.
“Aagh, damn…”

I thought I had cut back on my cursing since I almost stopped managing the recruits, but suddenly, the anger bubbled up, and I couldn’t hold it in.
I had planned to go back to the dorm and inform the recruits about the guerrilla training and prepare them, but the thought of it made my head spin. How was I going to take care of the recruits when I could barely manage myself?
But I have a responsibility to lead them… So, in the end, I had no choice but to head to the dorm to deliver this ridiculous news.

***
“Alright, perfect.”
At that moment, Dalin nodded as she looked at the now clean female dormitory. It had been a while since she enlisted, and now even Dalin, who used to be full of mistakes, had no problem with dorm cleaning.

She glanced at Benny, who was carefully inspecting every corner of the dorm.
"Hmm, there’s dust in the floor cracks."
"Eh? How do we clean that?"

"Actually, it’s not really necessary to clean there. But sometimes, if Salvia’s in a bad mood, she’ll inspect even that."
“Salvia is usually in a bad mood, right?”
“No, no. You don’t know Salvia well yet, Dalin, but usually, she’s not that bad. But there are days when she’s truly in a terrible mood.”

Benny recalled how Salvia used to curse alone while staring at empty space when Angel was still alive.
‘The atmosphere in the dorm back then was really tense.’
Feeling a bit nostalgic, Benny wiped under her nose.

As Dalin and Jenny shuddered, realizing Salvia wasn’t always in a bad mood, the new recruit, Tia, was staring wide-eyed. She had no idea what they were talking about.
“Oh, Tia. You don’t really know Salvia, do you?”
Dalin, noticing Tia’s confused expression, proudly began to explain.

Tia, the recruit from Class 453, had curly blue hair and sky-blue eyes. With a gentle and pure personality, she was under the care of Dalin and Jenny.
“Salvia… she’s a bit crazy.”
“Right.”

Jenny nodded from the side.
“But she’s a good person.”
This time, Jenny looked at Dalin with a strange gaze.

“Ah, really…”
Tia awkwardly responded as Dalin and Jenny spoke, when suddenly—
BANG!

The loud sound of the dorm door slamming open filled the air.
The moment they saw Salvia entering through the door, Benny’s face turned pale.
‘Why does she look like that again?’

‘...That’s it.’
Dalin, Jenny, and Tia immediately realized what Benny meant by “Salvia’s bad days” the moment they saw her expression.
‘One shepherd assigned. One shepherd assigned!’

Benny quickly warned the others with her eyes, but unfortunately, her efforts were in vain.
“Damn it, I’m already pissed off about guerrilla training! Why are these kids slacking off?”
Because Salvia’s anger had already started.

"Kids! There’s dust in the floor cracks!"
Benny, feeling more grateful than ever to be a senior, silently mourned for her recruits.
***

Still in disbelief, we packed our gear and headed to the guerrilla training grounds.
Guerrilla training was usually done on a brigade level, and it seemed that even the brigade commander had received the news suddenly. He was visibly confused but did his best to encourage us.
But whether he encouraged us or not, we packed our bags with faces that looked like we were ready to desert.

To get to the guerrilla grounds, we had to move to a different location where the National Defense Command's soldiers had used it. And of course, we had to walk there. The empty guard posts were going to be covered by soldiers from another unit.
“This is really ridiculous.”
I said this to Karon as we marched. It wasn’t as tough as the last march, but still, marching is never comfortable.

At least I was glad I was now a senior.
"Sanchez, I trust you."
"Yes, don’t worry."

Sanchez took care of all the recruits perfectly without making any mistakes, so I could focus on my own march.
‘But what exactly is included in guerrilla training?’
I had no idea what guerrilla training involved. Well, I tried to imagine what I had seen on TV in military-themed entertainment shows...

‘...Rolling around in the dirt?’
Damn it, I really wanted to desert again.
At that moment, the guerrilla training grounds came into view. We had finally arrived at our destination.

"Hey, don’t lose focus, we’re almost there!"
I shouted from the front, but when I looked beyond the training grounds, I muttered—
"Damn."

It seemed like I was the one losing focus faster than my recruits.
Because right in front of me was...
"R...Repel*...?"

(*Repel: A device used to descend from a high position with a rope.)
Inside the guerrilla training grounds, I saw three repels attached to a pole... Of course, I knew exactly what they were for. We were supposed to climb up them, damn it.
In a romance fantasy, when someone uses a rope to climb down, it's usually for something like—

‘A noble lady trapped in a tower, making a rope out of curtains to escape.’
But why can’t my rope experience be romantic?
Once again, I had to accept the non-romantic adversity that faced me, tears streaming down my face.

***
Now that I think about it, guerrilla training did appear in the original.
But in NemiJip, the term "guerrilla training" was never used. Of course, it’s not romantic.

In the original, there was mention of brigade-level training, where Dalin got her hands scraped while doing repel training. However, the detailed process of her repel training was never shown. Probably because it wasn’t romantic.
Anyway, Aquila was quite upset when he saw Dalin’s scraped palms, and he personally applied medicine to them. He also helped her recover quickly by taking over her duties.
...Suddenly, I felt angry again.

But I decided not to look for the reason for my anger anymore. Hasn’t it been this way ever since I came here?
"Hey, Aquila."
"Yeah."

"If any of the recruits get injured, what do you think we should do?"
"Well... check their condition, hand them over to the medic, and report to the platoon leader."
"Right. That’s as far as it goes. Got it?"

"Got it..."
Aquila, not fully understanding, seemed like he just needed to be told what to do.
While others were nervously anticipating the upcoming training, I was the only one who was lost in thought about the developments in NemiJip.

In fact, the key thing in the original’s "training" part wasn’t the training itself. The real issue came after the training, during an incident.
After guerrilla training finished, the soldiers were on their way back to the dorms when, due to an accident, the border's wire fence was damaged, and the monsters beyond it rushed toward the mountains. Exhausted from the training, the soldiers struggled to fight off the monsters.
Meanwhile, Dalin used her abilities successfully and began to grow stronger... Well, that’s basically Dalin’s awakening arc.

‘So no matter how hard the training is, you can’t lose focus.’
If you use up all your energy during training, you might be in danger during the monster hunting afterward.
So, the key to guerrilla training was to leave just enough stamina for the monster hunting.

...But as always, things weren’t going to go the way I wanted.
The training was hell.
We rolled. And I don’t mean metaphorically. We literally rolled on the ground.

After that, we did a thousand push-ups...
"1,000!"
"1,000!"

"Last cheer! Last cheer, you crazy bastards! I’ll really kill you all this time!"
If Aquila hadn’t stopped me, I would’ve almost killed Patty and Matty, but anyway, the training kept going...
"Now, we’ll do Border Defense Army exercises from number 1 to 18."

‘Damn.’
Why is it that soldiers in the Border Defense Army die either from monsters or gunfire accidents, but none of them ever die from doing exercises?
"Move your ears and shoulders further!"

"Use your hip joints! Your hip joints!"
"Close your ribs in order!"
...How do you close your ribs? And why do I feel like I’ve heard these phrases before in a past life? Probably just a feeling.

Even amid all of this, I had to take care of my body and the bodies of my recruits.
"Tia! Focus! The new recruit is slacking off already!"
Especially while making sure to manage new recruit Tia, we were going crazy with exercises until it was time for meals. My limbs felt like they were going to snap off.

"This is the worst..."
As I collapsed onto the ground, covered in dirt, I muttered, and Aquila silently wiped the dirt off my cheek.
"Look at your hair color."

I grimaced as I looked at my hair, which had turned brown at the ends, and Aquila responded in his usual calm voice.
"It’s okay. It’s cute."
"Yeah..."

But right now, I couldn’t care less about how dirty I was. Because even after the meal, more training was waiting for us.
After the meal, we gathered in the training yard, exhausted, and the brigade commander looked at us and smiled.
"Everyone looks a mess. Was it that tough?"

"No, sir!"
"Of course, it must have been tough. I understand. Then let’s do this..."
The brigade commander smiled kindly.

"From now on, for every training session, we’ll pick one outstanding soldier every day. And they’ll get a wish."