The Company Commander has returned

Chapter 12 - Can't Let Talent Go to Waste

The head instructor focused on three distinct dots visible in the distance.

White.

"Mago."

Then, black.

"Kinjo Shua."

The instructor murmured to himself.

"Those two are in the lead, Majo. That black-and-white duo really stands out."

And then, a head of gray hair, as if mixing the two colors.

"Hm. Even Oscar Cita. It seems the black is gradually fading to gray…"

He clasped his hands behind his back and waited.

When the three trainees reached his feet, they immediately collapsed.

"Huff… ugh…"

Kinjo, in particular, let out a pitiful groan.

The instructor resisted the urge to pull them up and arrange them into formation. Instead, he simply wrote on his evaluation sheet.

"Mago, Kinjo Shua."

"Yes… sir…"

"You're in first place. Perfect score of 100."

Mago and Kinjo weakly high-fived each other, the sound of their hands meeting as sluggish as their movements.

"Second place, Oscar Shita. Your teammate, Louis Murphy, will receive 99 points if he arrives within the time limit."

"Th-thank you. Louis… he can make it on his own, I think…"

Two hours later.

'I thought this cohort was exceptional, but maybe it's just these guys. One of them just seems to have been lucky.'

The head instructor mused silently.

Shortly after, four more trainees arrived.

The top four were now confirmed.

A bit later, two more followed.

"Vel Red."

The instructor muttered again.

"And Amon Coster."

Vel collapsed the moment she passed the instructor.

"Vel Red, Amon Coster. Fifth place."

"Well done, Vel," Amon said before collapsing as well.

Soon after, Louis Murphy appeared.

"Next… Louis Murphy. You've secured second place."

"Oscar! We did it!"

He warmly greeted Oscar, who had arrived earlier.

"Louis…! We're in second place!"

"Well done. You did great."

Louis clapped hands with Oscar before bowing to the instructor. Then, without hesitation, he slapped Mago across the face.

The sharp sound echoed like a thunderclap.

Mago touched his cheek with a dazed expression.

"Thank you, Louis. You hit him for me too," Vel said weakly from where she lay sprawled.

Amon's reaction, however, was different.

'I wish Louis would hit me too.'

In the midst of it, the instructor asked, "What's going on here?"

"I'm sorry," Louis replied, bowing deeply again.

"Hm… Mago, come here."

Mago hurried over.

"What exactly were you doing up there?"

"I was guarding the checkpoint."

"Guarding it? What do you mean by that?"

"Could I explain later? I think… I may have lost a tooth."

"Fine… just go for now."

Afterward, trainees trickled in one after another.

Half of them couldn't utter a word as they tried to catch their breath. The other half hurled curses at Mago.

All of them arrived within 24 hours.

"Not a single one missing. Injured, raise your hand."

Most of them raised their hands.

It wasn't until later that the head instructor realized most of those injuries were Mago's fault.

"Everyone, well done."

The words fell on deaf ears.

They offered no comfort.

The instructor, accustomed to this annual ritual, knew exactly what to say next.

"Dinner will be meat."

The trainees' eyes lit up reflexively.

They quickly lined up, eagerly awaiting their evening meal.

After a brief rest, they were served a late dinner.

"Vel! Either eat or sleep—pick one!"

Mago spoke worriedly to Vel, whose eyes were half-closed.

"Shut up, you traitor!"

Vel shot back with venom.

Mago, as a compromise for the animosity of his peers, quietly grilled the meat on his own.

***

At the same time, at the frontline.

The Imperial Army's Special Ops Unit, 1st Team.

The man swept his black hair back from his forehead.

Half of the black hair was streaked with gray.

He was both the leader of the 1st Team and the Special Mission Unit.

"A few months from now, replacements will come in. Do you know anyone?"

He asked the woman behind him.

"Marcello."

Marcello slowly shook her head.

The ends of her jet-black bob grazed her neck.

"I wish more talents who made it into the top 10 would apply for the Special Ops Unit. Especially with the war going on."

"Given the war situation, they'll probably go to the knight order, right? The knight order will be assigned to the southern castle where the Emperor fled. They'd want to stay in the rear, living relatively comfortably under the pretext of protecting the Emperor."

"If that's the case, it's no loss. I don't need any cowardly ones who want to run away."

The Special Ops Unit leader stared at two wolf castles far in the distance.

"What's their structure like, I wonder? It would be nice to have someone who can see through them."

Large, disordered shapes.

The moving castles of the Demon King.

They emitted steam from their backs and flames from their mouths.

"Sometimes, I think back to when I was a recruit. Marcello, what about you?"

"I remember."

"Do you ever wish to go back to those times?"

"No."

"Marcello, try to make some connections."

"Connections, you mean?"

"Yes, really."

"…Not interested."

"Wouldn't it be nice if we could go back to before the war? If I could go back five years, I might've been able to stop the war. Though, it's all meaningless to think about."

"I don't know. It would probably be painful."

"Hmm? Painful?"

"Even if you knew the future, there would still be limitations. It would be painful and lonely."

"Hm…"

"Going back to the past wouldn't be all good. At least, I wouldn't want to."

"That could be true."

"We can only do our best with what we can do now."

Marcello gripped her spear tightly.

"Especially now, since I'm here."

The Special Ops Unit leader laughed heartily.

"That's reassuring."

***

"Blocking the checkpoint, preventing other teams from passing… alone? I've been the chief instructor at the 1st Training Camp for 20 years, but I've never seen anything like this. Even Marcello Arnis never did such a thing alone."

The chief instructor was looking over Mago's report.

"You said you'd bring me a report, and you've brought me a novel instead. Mago, do you think this is a joke?"

"Huh? Joke... I don't think so. I actually think it's quite serious."

The chief instructor, flustered, made a mistake in his words.

"No, no. I meant, does the report read like a joke?"

Next to the report was the grade sheet from after the first exam.

Mago and Kinjo had tied for first place.

"Looking at the results, I don't think it's completely wrong. And Kinjo Shua had an injury… If it wasn't for blocking the narrow checkpoint on the way down, he wouldn't have made it in first."

The instructor tapped his finger on the wooden desk.

A steady rhythm.

He left Mago and continued his thoughts.

"But the fact that he can see even with his eyes closed…"

His finger moved faster.

"Why not just open your eyes? Why?"

Tap, tap.

"I've heard of magic that boosts detection by reading mana. But isn't that a mage's field?"

Tap.

"I can't teach that. But if all of it is true…"

Tap. With the final tap.

Silence fell in the room.

"I can't let talent go to waste."

The chief instructor roughly opened a drawer.

He rummaged through piles of paperwork and pulled out a dusty letter.

"For now, you can go. I'll call you back when the time comes."

***

One month after the first exam.

The day before the second exam.

Just like with the first exam, the instructor began the briefing indoors.

He glanced over the line of trainees.

"The second exam is a written test."

Immediately, one of the trainees reacted.

"What? Did I hear that wrong?"

Vel pretended she hadn't heard it.

I was surprised by how her reaction was exactly the same as in her past life, word for word.

"The second exam. Written. Written test."

The instructor hammered the word "written" into Vel's ears.

"Why do you think we've been having theory classes all this time?"

"Heh, heh…"

I could hear Kinjo's voice.

He started laughing manically.

"If it's a written test, I'm confident!"

He spread his arms wide, welcoming it.

For the 66th group, we had been caught up in fighting up to this point, so a written test was a surprise.

Telling us the test subject the day before was also a tactic to take advantage of our complacency.

Everyone, except me, was caught off guard.

After the second exam results.

"What's this, Mago?"

Kinjo glared at me as he picked up his graded test paper.

"Didn't you put all your cells into your muscles?"

He looked dissatisfied.

"If that was the case, I wouldn't be human. I'd be a lump of protein."

I responded with a smirk.

"Why did you get a perfect score? Something's wrong here."

"Well…"

I became the sole top scorer for this exam.

I proudly secured the first place.

Kinjo was right below me.

"Aaaargh!"

A sudden scream echoed.

Vel had eaten her test paper.

Vel Red.

She dropped from 5th to 30th place.

She was no longer a candidate for the special unit.

"Ve-Vel, are you ok?"

Amon patted Vel's back.

"Spit it out! What are you, a goat?"

Amon Coster.

He moved up from 5th to 4th place.

"No matter how you look at it, getting question one wrong is… just wrong, right?"

"The knight corps… I didn't know it was knight corps… I had no idea…"

"I told you to memorize it as 'Seven Stands Eight Corps.' The 7th Corps, the Knights Corps, the 8th Corps. The Imperial Army Command is divided into those four corps, and the special unit is a separate unit."

"Thanks for telling me, but it's too late."

"I told you before the exam…"

Louis Murphy.

He dropped from 2nd to 5th place.

"Phew… Thankfully, I'm still in the top 10… If I just stay here, I can still join the Knights."

Meanwhile, Oscar held his test paper triumphantly.

Oscar Cita.

He dropped from 2nd to 9th place.

But he seemed satisfied with his current ranking.

"Now… everyone's gathered."

The 66th group from the 1st training camp, who felt like family to me.

The five left in the theory classroom felt especially that way.

Kinjo, Bell, Amon, Louis, and Oscar.

Seeing them gathered here, I wanted to hug them, but I also knew that half of them would be dead soon.

It was warm yet painful.

As I watched their faces, I couldn't stop thinking of their fading gazes.

One by one, one by one.

I could almost feel the blood slipping through my fingers.

"Mago, what's wrong? You look like you're in a bad mood."

"The results from the second exam came out."

"You got a perfect score. What nonsense are you talking? Stop being so gloomy."

"The final, the 4th exam, is less than two months away."

"Well, isn't it good if it ends quickly?"

I turned my gaze away from him.

I closed my eyes slightly and thought.

Two months until the second invasion of the Demon Lord's army.

The day of the 4th exam.

Half of the six of us here would be dead.

I couldn't accept the same result.

What I needed to do first.

Or what I could do.

At the very least, I had to stop the second invasion while I was still in the training camp.

"If it ends quickly and well, it would be good."

My plans would begin after that.

"Without any mistakes, well."

Everything had to proceed after I changed my rank.

Even if I knew the future.

If I couldn't move the army myself, the information would be worthless.

Just following orders wouldn't be useful.

There was a long road ahead.

A long road, and I had only used the lake twice.

During the first exam.

If my peers had been wielding real swords instead of wooden swords, I would have used up the limits of the lake in no time.

Kinjo said that if you had a teacher, you could break through your limits.

"Kinjo, Aquella has fallen, so the mages must be dead or hiding, right? Most of the mages lived in Aquella. That's why mages are rare in the Empire."

"Well, yeah. But like I said, most of them are gone. There should still be some mages left in the Empire, like the ones in the Imperial Army. I'm here right now, too. You're technically a mage too."

"Yeah, there might be. But they wouldn't care about a trainee like me. And by now, they'd be on the battlefield."

Two months from now, the second invasion would come, but it would be after that when I could meet useful mages.

I needed them right now.

Just then, the door to the theory classroom suddenly opened.

At the sound of the door opening, I knew immediately it was the chief instructor.

The noisy trainees fell silent on their own.

When I was about to adjust my posture, the instructor spoke.

"Mago. Come with me."