The Academy’s Ankle Reaper

After finishing up, I got up early the next morning and headed to the classroom.

I was there to help with the preparations for the opening of the tea house for Class 5.

Today was the last day of the Hunting Festival. I wanted to wait a bit and meet up with Amy or Rio, but time was just too short.

I had done all I could.

Before the Hunting Festival started, I had dealt with those plotting something nefarious, and just yesterday, I had subdued the most dangerous monsters in the Black Forest.

Yet, I still felt a nagging unease.

It’s always advantageous for the attackers rather than those on the defensive.

‘I hope the preparations will be helpful.’

Most had given gifts of equipment that would aid in survival, so as long as I didn’t take a hit from a Great Demon or Hydra venom, I probably wouldn’t die in one blow.

For the time being, I just wanted to enjoy the festival without overthinking it.

Unless some major incident occurs, there’s no way for me to keep up with the progress of the Hunting Festival.

Currently, there was no live broadcast of the hunting situation for the students outside.

In the past, it was reportedly broadcasted simply enough to get a sense of the situation, but after one of the seniors achieved great results while watching it and moving around, they banned the broadcasts the following year.

With the most exciting hunting updates gone, students who weren’t participating began to grow bored, leading them to open booths for each other to hang out, which eventually became the original framework of the Hunting Festival.

“Okay, today’s the last day. Let’s give it our all and have no regrets!”

Woodville was enthusiastic from the morning.

They probably did much better in sales than Class 3.

‘Could they have really reported that in sales?’

They likely pocketed the profits since they were essentially selling opportunities for themselves to shine.

There were quite a lot of people waiting in front of Class 5, though not as many as yesterday.

That was to be expected.

Many students would be inside the Black Forest today for the Hunting Festival.

“So you really didn’t participate in this Hunting Festival.”

A sharply dressed man sat in the front row.

It was Count Dunmore, the head of the Academy’s Newspaper Club, with whom I had previously had a bad run-in.

With his hair slicked back and wearing a suit, he still looked quite dapper.

Ah, damn, I must be looking like a joke myself right now.

“Newspaper Club President? What brings you here? Here for some tea?”

Since there was no need for formalities, I casually struck up a conversation, but his shadow-like guard next to Malcolm snapped and yelled.

“What the hell! What kind of talking is this to the Count…!”

Before his words even finished, my fist slammed into his abdomen.

-BAM!

“Guh?!”

The guard’s body bent sharply as he clutched his side and staggered.

“I’m not in a good mood, so don’t start anything.”

“You’ve already… hit me…!”

I was about to drag him outside for more when the Newspaper Club President raised his hand to stop me.

“I told you not to react so sensitively, so this is on you… Sorry, just continue to speak freely.”

“Ugh…”

“Seriously, just eat something and get lost.”

The Newspaper Club President said this without changing his expression.

“Come on, sit down. I’ve never been to Ben’s bakery, so I’m pretty excited to be here.”

He chuckled, “Yeah, I’m glad I came today, my prediction of fewer crowds than yesterday was spot on.”

Ignoring the chatty Newspaper Club President, I suddenly caught sight of the hallway.

“…Professor?”

“What are you staring at?”

Even though I wasn’t in class, I knew who he was.

He was the professor responsible for the Department of Magical Engineering who researched Golems.

Looking around, he was hurriedly rushing off somewhere.

It was a gesture that felt very out of place during a festival.

It seemed like an incident had occurred.

I was compelled to stand up and hurriedly followed the professor.

“Professor, is something wrong?”

“Ah?! No… nothing at all! Enjoy the Hunting Festival!”

Even though it was blatantly obvious several faculty members were hurriedly rushing somewhere, attempting to hide something, it was very suspicious.

“… Woodville, I need to step out for a bit.”

“Wait?? Right now?”

—

I dashed out of the classroom in my tuxedo and high shoes, looking absurd, trailing after the professor.

Looking around, I noticed about five faculty members moving hurriedly.

They discretely separated so the students wouldn’t notice, but their unusual movements made it easy to sense something was off.

As they exited the Academy building with the students, they started moving quickly by their means.

I stealthily began to follow behind them.

We moved away from the Academy grounds, passing the dormitory until we reached the cliff on the opposite coast.

On the cliff, a student was trembling violently.

It wasn’t a very long distance, but it wasn’t close enough to hear well, so I lay flat, straining to hear the conversation.

“Pro… Professor…?!!”

The male student looked pale, as if he had seen something he shouldn’t have, and was breathing heavily.

One of the arriving faculty members pulled out a blanket and draped it over the student’s shoulders.

“First… can you explain the situation?”

“I… I normally jog quite a bit due to Basic Physical Training with Expert, but… today, since it’s the festival and I had extra time, I thought I’d go a bit further and ended up here… but there was a strange… smell.”

“I thought it was the corpse of a monster, but I didn’t see anything around, then looked down the cliff and…”

Upon hearing the student’s words, I focused intently to see if I could catch the strange smell.

‘…What is that smell?’

It smelled like something decaying.

“I see… It’s best to take a deep breath and calm down for now.”

After listening to his story, the professor patted the male student’s head.

“Sleep now?”

“Slip.”

With a flash of light from his hand, the student fell limp, and the faculty member caught him, gently laying him on the grass.

The faculty members stood on the cliff, gazing down.

There was undoubtedly something down there.

“What should we do…?”

“… First, we need to report this to the Principal.”

“We’ve got an intruder in the Academy; halting the Festival and finding this intruder should take priority.”

“We can’t do that. The Hunting Festival needs to proceed successfully. If things go wrong again… it would tarnish the Academy’s reputation.”

“But if an attack is coming from outside the Academy, it’s not really our fault, is it?”

“Others won’t see it that way.

Especially those scoundrels wanting to lay claim to the Academy’s unique position will pounce like hyenas. That’s politics for you.

For now… we need to pick a few tight-lipped faculty members to quickly preserve the scene and recover the remains for investigation.”

With that, the professors said and began heading back toward the Academy with the student in tow.

After confirming they had all left, I quietly stood up and headed down the cliff.

Then I frowned.

“What the hell is this?!”

At the bottom of the cliff, a naked corpse was wedged between the rocks and being washed by the waves.

But it wasn’t just any corpse.

Its head had been severed.

‘No head…?’

This wasn’t just a simple murder.

The absence of clothing and a head could be interpreted in different ways.

It could be an attempt to hinder identification of the corpse or… perhaps.

“That person is trying to become…”

There exists a horrific technique in this world where one could wear the clothing of a victim and attach their head skin to themselves, thereby transforming into that person completely.

Even though an artifact exists that can change one’s face to that of another, if someone were to go to those lengths… they definitely wouldn’t be your average emotionally stable person.

Coincidentally, right next to the cliff was the Black Forest.

“Damn it, I never expected something like this to blow up in my face.”

Someone had invaded the Academy.

—

Just as Amy predicted, as I approached the epicenter, several monsters burst out, startled by the explosion.

After crashing through the panicking monsters one by one, we also encountered teams targeting the same monsters.

“We’ve hunted over ten monsters, and took down about three teams, right?”

“Good results.”

Amy’s team was showing excellent results, just as she confidently claimed.

Most monsters could be dispatched in one hit, and meeting other students was not much of a burden either.

Positioned at the forefront, Amy and Rio were among the strongest of the new students.

Thanks to Atlas’s daily training, the two had grown immensely since they entered, easily defeating mid-tier opponents at the entry-level of Expert in no time.

“Should we push further inside? Or stop here and move elsewhere?”

“… Let’s just check out what that explosion was, then decide from there. If strong opponents were fighting, we could potentially benefit from their skirmish.”

“Alright, we don’t have much time left anyway.”

We decided to venture further inside for the time being.

“Wait a moment…”

We had walked only a little when suddenly, Amy signaled us to stop.

Being the one with the sharpest senses among us, we all froze at her gesture.

Amy quietly perked her ears up.

“Someone is coming.”

“Is it a person?”

“No, I think it’s a monster…?! The speed… is too fast.”

Hearing her tense reaction, Rio drew his wand.

“Is it coming from that direction? If it’s charging, this should do the trick.”

As Rio swung his wand in the direction Amy was sensing the vibrations, spikes made of stone shot up like a barricade.

With that size, even an ogre would suffer significant injuries upon crashing into it.

“Alright, let’s see what comes at us…!”

From behind the barricade, we all stood ready, swords drawn, tense for whatever monster would appear.

-THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP…

The footsteps drew nearer, and from beyond the dark Black Forest, a monster slowly revealed itself.

A gigantic two-headed dog with thick, bright red fur was charging toward us, drooling uncontrollably.

Amy recognized what kind of monster it was.

[Woof!!!]

“Orthos?!”

At that moment, flames shot from the two mouths of Orthos.