Chapter 13. Departmental Exam (6)
Just as the rumors claimed, the questions for the Department of Command were remarkably difficult.
‘They present situations that could occur in dungeons and use them to test the cadets’ judgment.’
The difficulty, however, lay in the fact that the situations described in the questions were anything but ordinary.
Shane now understood why the department permitted access to the library.
There was little chance that any cadet could produce a proper answer to questions like these on the spot.
That was why they had been given access to the library and an entire week to complete the exam.
The final question in particular required them to propose a method for clearing an entire dungeon from beginning to end. If they wasted even a little time, there was a real possibility that they would fail to answer all five questions.
“What should I do……?”
For Shane himself, however, none of the questions were particularly difficult.
The characteristics of every dungeon mentioned in the five questions, along with methods for clearing them, immediately surfaced in his mind.
There was only one problem.
How far did the knowledge inside Shane’s head diverge from what humanity currently knew about dungeons?
He needed to compare the two and verify the difference.
If he carelessly wrote down knowledge humanity had yet to discover, he could easily become entangled in troublesome matters.
That was not the outcome Shane wanted.
For now, all he needed was enough recognition that no one could question whether he was worthy of standing beside Klein.
He had little desire for attention beyond that.
“I suppose there is no helping it.”
Shane rose from his seat and headed for the library.
Investigating the subjects covered by the questions would take a fair amount of time.
Of course, that did not mean he intended to hold back too much.
He needed to remain within a certain boundary—enough to stir some controversy, but not enough for that controversy to become a genuine nuisance.
And there was also someone he intended to meet at the library.
When Shane arrived, several other cadets applying to the Department of Command were already there.
The moment he entered, they cast sharp glances in his direction.
They had all grown accustomed to being called elites in their original departments. To them, Shane’s ability to clear the dungeon at a speed none of them had even imagined naturally seemed suspicious.
Shane ignored their gazes entirely, sat at a desk, and opened an Archive Tome.
Its pages were completely blank.
Shane wrote several keywords related to the books he wanted to find.
Titles of relevant books immediately began appearing across the formerly blank page, and Shane selected one of them.
When he turned to the next page, the opening passage of the book he had chosen appeared before him.
It was a convenient system that allowed users to search through most of the books registered within the Academy using nothing more than an Archive Tome.
Shane quietly focused on his work.
How long had he been reading?
By the time most of the cadets had already left and only a few remained, it was deep into the night.
Deciding that he had done enough for the day, Shane closed the Archive Tome, rose from his seat, and spoke quietly.
“Is there something you want to say?”
“……You knew?”
Auston, who had been sitting behind Shane, stammered as he likewise closed his Archive Tome and stood.
“You have been looking at me at regular intervals from behind. How could I not notice? What is it?”
“C-Could we…… talk for a moment?”
That was the second reason Shane had come to the library.
He had been waiting for Auston to approach him.
Shane quietly nodded.
“Then let us go somewhere else.”
—
In his previous life, Shane had met Auston only once after falling to Corruption.
And for both of them, that single encounter had probably been worth more than dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of ordinary meetings.
At the time, the war between the Organization and humanity was raging.
No.
From the outside, it had looked more like the Organization was simply massacring humanity.
After Klein helped the Imperial Princess escape from a city surrounded by the Organization, humanity began rallying together once more.
It was around then that humans contacted Shane, the First Legion Commander of the Organization.
They proposed a meeting.
Shane had never accepted such an offer before, but for the first time, he agreed and went alone to the human camp.
There was a reason.
Ever since the Imperial Princess had been rescued, the Organization’s advance had begun to encounter difficulties.
In truth, there had been signs of the problem even before that.
No matter how thoroughly the Organization investigated the cause, however, it had been unable to find an answer.
That was why Shane accepted the invitation.
He wanted to know how humans—creatures who, until then, had merely struggled briefly before being crushed to death—had begun affecting the Organization’s advance.
The first person Shane saw when he arrived for the meeting was Auston.
Behind Auston stood the Imperial Princess and Klein.
It was a wise arrangement.
The mere presence of Klein was enough to prevent Shane from acting recklessly, even more effectively than an army of tens of thousands.
“It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Auston.”
“I am Nameless.”
Nameless.
It was not Shane’s name at the time, but the name of the Organization.
A name that literally meant having no name.
It was ironic, but no one there cared.
The meeting involved no declarations of peace or surrender.
It was simply a struggle by both sides to discern the other’s true intentions.
When the meeting, which lasted an hour—brief in one sense and long in another—came to an end, Shane had gained a complete understanding of Auston.
A conversation between two people.
The history contained within a name.
The path a person had walked.
The darkness Shane possessed reacted sensitively to human emotions, and in that regard, his perception had been overwhelmingly superior to that of every other Legion Commander.
Because of that, the regressed Shane could say one thing with certainty.
No one in this world understood the stuttering man before him better than Shane did.
Not even Auston himself.
—
“You want to know how I came up with the method I used to clear the dungeon?”
At Shane’s question, Auston nodded with his usual awkward expression.
“Y-Yes. If it would not be too rude, I-I would like to hear it.”
Shane saw no reason to conceal the answer.
“I learned it from someone.”
“Y-You learned it……?”
“I learned from someone whose mind was second to none.”
“S-Someone whose mind was second to none……? M-May I ask who that was?”
Shane shook his head.
Just as he had in Shane’s previous life, Auston’s intellect would undoubtedly become the sharpest sword Shane could use to strike at the Organization.
But not yet.
Auston’s senses were exceptionally sharp, and his wariness was equally keen.
Still—
Unlike in his previous life, Shane could no longer wield the power of Corruption perfectly, so it was impossible for him to read Auston’s emotions in their entirety.
But he could distinguish them to some extent.
A measured degree of caution.
And a curiosity that was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.
Whatever his reasons, Auston was currently going so far as to conceal himself behind this foolish demeanor.
Giving him too much information too suddenly would only confuse him.
Slowly.
But not so slowly that Auston became unnecessarily suspicious.
Shane gave the answer most suited to that balance.
“I do not think we know each other well enough to exchange information like that.”
“Ah, I-I’m s-sorry…….”
“There is no need to apologize. Instead, let me propose a game.”
“A g-game?”
“Yes. We see who receives the higher score on this Written Exam. It is simple and childish, but straightforward.”
“D-Does the winner receive a r-reward?”
“I told you. It is a game, not a wager.”
Auston seemed to consider Shane’s words for a moment.
Then his eyes lit up, and he nodded.
“I-I would like that.”
—
When Auston returned to his room, the vacant expression he normally wore disappeared.
A cold, cynical look took its place.
“A game…….”
Clayton R. Shane.
After the Practical Exam, Auston had quietly investigated him.
Most of what he found was information Auston had already known.
Shane envied his younger brother and had made numerous reckless decisions because of that envy.
He was habitually arrogant and treated those around him coldly.
There was, however, one relatively recent piece of information.
The Dungeon Wave that had occurred near a village on the outskirts.
The reports said that the Knight Order centered around Klein had subjugated the Dungeon Wave and saved the village.
Most of the story merely served to spread Klein’s fame throughout the Academy once again.
But Auston found Shane’s role far more astonishing.
A Rotten Tree Spirit had appeared.
A Twin-Head Ogre possessed by a Dark Spirit had been killed by Shane in a single strike.
Most cadets dismissed the story as a ridiculous rumor.
Auston did not believe it could be discarded so easily.
The current world was a meritocracy.
A Twin-Head Ogre was a monster that even experienced knights had to face with resolve, while veteran mercenaries had to accept casualties if they wished to hunt one.
And Shane had supposedly killed one possessed by a Dark Spirit with a single blow?
The Academy of the Allied Nations gathered countless talented individuals. If one searched hard enough, there were undoubtedly people capable of producing similar results.
Auston himself could think of more than a dozen cadets.
But until only last year, Shane had been nowhere near that level.
Forget a Twin-Head Ogre.
He would not even have been capable of clearing out a goblin settlement by himself.
‘Can a person really change this much overnight?’
And that was not the only change.
Throughout Auston’s years at the Academy, he had never once seen Shane exchange so much as a word with his younger brother, Klein.
Yet recently, the two were often seen together.
There were even rumors that, on very rare occasions, Shane smiled at Klein.
This was far beyond something that could simply be dismissed as a change in personality.
Auston’s exceptionally keen intellect was telling him something.
There was definitely something behind Shane’s transformation.
Still, that was merely a matter of curiosity, and Auston was not someone who acted on curiosity alone.
He possessed more than enough caution to restrain himself.
But his conversation with Shane had been fascinating enough to put cracks even in that wall of caution.
‘A game?’
Shane’s abrupt proposal.
Auston had immediately understood why he made it.
Shane had noticed Auston’s wariness.
And so, instead of forcing anything, he had effectively suggested that they grow closer gradually.
That they learn about each other through something as simple as competing over who would score higher on the Written Exam.
At first glance, it might have seemed strange.
If two people wanted to become friends, could they not simply exchange a few words and grow closer naturally?
There were plenty of cadets at the Academy who made friends and formed factions in the classroom almost immediately.
Was there truly any need to go through something this troublesome merely to learn about one another?
For Auston, there was.
His intellect was far too keen for him to approach others as thoughtlessly as most people did.
As the son of a marquis family, he had encountered countless kinds of people, and his exceptional discernment allowed him to see through their character.
People who trembled over a single coin.
People who derived superiority from their wealth.
People who flattered those wealthy people from beside them.
People who tried to lord over the world with the slightest scrap of authority.
People who possessed enormous power yet continued hungering for more.
To Auston, the human world revolved around a single thing.
‘Greed.’
Greed gave birth to envy, and envy could become nourishment for growth.
Yet such emotions were dangerous.
If one allowed them to run unchecked, they could strip away one’s humanity.
Of course, the world was filled with people who lived perfectly comfortable lives despite lacking anything that could be called humanity.
But in Auston’s view, a minimum degree of humanity was essential.
Once a person lost that, they could no longer control themselves.
And after that, only ruin remained.
Auston possessed no power called mana.
He had no desire to remain beside people like that.
If someone wished to command him, they needed to possess the qualifications to do so.
That was why he pretended to be a fool.
And there was a reason he chose to act foolish rather than merely ordinary.
It made other people easier to observe.
People naturally lowered their emotional barriers around those they considered inferior and revealed more of their true selves.
Naturally, pretending to be ordinary would have spared him much of the contempt and inconvenience he endured.
But in exchange, Auston had rarely struggled to understand the people around him.
At least, that had been true until a few days ago.
Until he met Shane, a man from whom he could sense virtually no emotion at all.
During his five years at the Academy, Auston had seen Shane numerous times and had already believed he understood him.
But ever since the Academy’s vacation ended and the new term began, Shane had returned as someone Auston could not understand in the slightest.
Auston had encountered people who were difficult to read from the very beginning.
But he had never seen someone become unreadable like this.
Auston sat at his desk and looked down at the examination questions.
“A game like this is always welcome.”
He picked up his pen and began answering the exam.
At the same time, Shane sat at his own desk, quietly lost in thought.
“This is difficult.”
At first, Shane had intended to answer the questions only to the extent that they roughly matched the level of knowledge possessed by humanity in the current era.
Was that not why he had gone to the library?
But after meeting Auston and proposing their little game, his thoughts had changed.
Originally, Shane had not intended to make such a proposal.
His first priority had been to understand the Auston of this era.
But unlike the Auston of the future, the current Auston still possessed an immature form of caution.
Immature caution.
If Auston had been openly suspicious, Shane could have at least negotiated with him.
But the present Auston was still far removed from the man Shane had known in the future.
That was why Shane had proposed a childish competition over their Written Exam scores.
And Auston had shown interest.
If Shane knew anything about Auston’s curiosity, it was that he would never be satisfied with a half-hearted effort.
Unnecessary attention was troublesome and could occasionally invite danger.
But when Shane considered the potential Auston possessed in the future—
That degree of inconvenience and risk was nothing he could not endure.
