I got into school for nothing - 163
I got into school for nothing (163)
Lesson 33. Jade Star - 3
It was fortunate, perhaps, that they were already gathered for the banquet.
The troops were mobilized and dispatched incredibly quickly.
"It's the west! Those stinking invaders are coming from the west!"
"Kill them all! Smash them!"
"How dare they covet our sanctuary, especially with esteemed guests present...?"
Not only the beast-kin with fierce and strong Wildness, like wolves, tigers, and gorillas, but also those seemingly docile ones originating from animals like woodpeckers, rabbits, and squirrels, were burning with fury.
A great migration of beast-kin filled the sky like a flock of migratory birds.
"Let's go wipe them all out! The banquet can wait!"
"Awoooooooo!"
"Grrrrooooaar!"
Leading the charge, of course, was Chieftain Kanid.
Ban Yuwon had been momentarily lost in awe at the swift advance of tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of warriors, but he soon realized something.
"Huh."
All the beast-kin racing west, following the chieftain, were male.
Considering Slothy, who was in charge of the forest barrier, or Lucia, who had moved at a speed beyond Ban Yuwon's perception just now, it didn't seem like female beast-kin were any less capable...
Perhaps sensing Ban Yuwon's unspoken question, Slothy explained.
"Males defend against external threats, and females protect the village. It's beast-kin tradition."
"Of course, protecting their home is important, but the number of troops left behind seems excessive..."
Could that be why Rucell, who was dragged off by Lucia earlier, hasn't returned?
...Or is something happening right now that prevents her from returning?
"...Hm? Wait a minute."
Forcing back the delusions about the 'preparatory education' Lucia had discussed, he suddenly noticed a change in Slothy.
"Why are you speaking so fast?"
"A sloth speeds up twice. First, when it has to fight. Like right now."
Ban Yuwon looked at her again after hearing that, and indeed, he could see two flowing concepts, 'Activation' and 'Rampage,' intricately linked and coursing through her entire body.
It seemed she possessed an ability to accumulate certain concepts in exchange for her usual sluggish movements, which she could then unleash in an emergency to gain powers beyond her inherent capabilities.
If that were the case, perhaps her usual slowness and excessive sleep could be forgiven?
...No, still, something felt off.
Even as she spoke quickly now, she showed no intention of running. Ban Yuwon watched Slothy, who was pulling nearby branches to create what looked like a ride, with a subtle expression when suddenly...
"Are you already flirting with another beast-kin, Ban Yuwon, right after one disappeared from your sight?"
Dokgo Yeon, who had approached him from behind at some point, spoke in a voice colder than dry ice.
Ban Yuwon flinched for a moment but replied with a forced air of composure.
"Flirting? Who's flirting with whom...? You've been a little strange since earlier, what's up? If something's bothering you, just say it honestly."
He had merely grumbled lightly at Dokgo Yeon's prickly attitude, but...
"Gah!"
Suddenly, she turned to him and frowned.
But as he didn't want to keep being verbally abused by Dokgo Yeon for no fault of his own, Ban Yuwon didn't back down this time.
Perhaps sensing this, Dokgo Yeon uncharacteristically faltered, unable to continue speaking, before...
"Ah."
"...?"
She noticed Slothy, who had by now finished creating her ride (it looked like a swing big enough for four or five people) and was looking back at them as if asking them to come along. She then let out a light sigh and replied in a small voice.
"It's nothing. Let's go."
"...Alright. Slothy, you mean for us to ride this?"
"Yes."
He had considered moving with Lilyth, but honestly, he also felt like trying out that wooden swing, so the two decided to simply follow Slothy's suggestion.
Surprisingly, the wooden seat began to move, following the layered movements of the branches, even faster than the other beast-kin.
"So, it's moving through the trees using branches... Ah."
Ban Yuwon, indirectly experiencing the feeling of Spider-Man swinging between buildings with webs, suddenly remembered something as he watched Slothy, who sat beside him, blankly gazing forward, her long, flowing golden hair blowing freely in the wind.
"You said females protect the village, but are you an exception?"
"Female... Ah. If there were a male Nataehu, I could rest."
It seemed that a Nataehu was too much of an elite force to be excluded from combat.
Ban Yuwon, nodding in understanding, noticed Slothy's gaze had not left him.
"...What is it?"
"Now that you mention it, it's the first time I've been treated like a woman."
Slothy gazed at him intently, replying indifferently.
But Ban Yuwon was horrified by her words.
He glanced at Dokgo Yeon, and sure enough, she didn't seem too pleased.
"Could you stop saying that? It really makes it sound like I was flirting with you."
"Courting? Was that courting just now? I don't understand human courting rituals."
"I just said it's not."
At the end of a conversation where it was impossible to tell who was the bigger fool, the wooden swing carrying the group stopped mid-air.
Ban Yuwon, who had been puzzled by the sudden wide-open view, soon realized the reason.
"Stop them! Don't let them cut down the trees!"
"Today, we'll completely break the Wolf's Fang! Finish them off!"
It was because the groups of apparent invaders were moving low, cutting down and felling trees.
The beast-kin of the Wolf Fang Tribe were desperately trying to stop them.
Watching that, Ban Yuwon thought.
The beast-kin's domain of activity was in the trees.
So, perhaps the beast-kin's territorial disputes began with the felling of trees?
Ban Yuwon voiced his conjecture, and it turned out to be true.
"Pulling up the trees under my jurisdiction, and planting the trees under the jurisdiction of that tribe's Nataehu. That's how territories are taken."
"In other words, it's a game of Baduk played with trees as the pieces."
No, 'Othello' might be a more fitting description.
However, how should I describe this method? It's extremely...
Shoddy.
"You're making that unpleasant expression again."
Dokgo Yeon let out a small chuckle, as if she'd realized Ban Yuwon had come up with an idea.
"If you keep insulting me like that, I'll get annoyed, you know? How do you plan to handle that?"
"But you're going to do something dirty, aren't you?"
"Yeah, that's true."
If it wasn't an unreasonable insult but a fair assessment, he had no choice but to accept it.
Ban Yuwon leaped from the wooden swing and landed on a branch that had grown out of a nearby tree.
The trees were so dense that large mechanical familiars like Livi couldn't move here, at least for now.
There were so many obstacles impeding movement that it wasn't a particularly good environment for maneuvering the Stormrain Sword either.
Smaller familiars like Tikke, Lilyth, and Eve could certainly be active here... but deploying them wouldn't drastically change the tide of battle.
"For now, can you protect me? If there are any dangerous ones, ram into them."
[Understood, Master!]
Lilyth valiantly replied on behalf of everyone, then transformed into a form similar to Tikke.
Even though it was natural for her to transform, having been imbued with countless transformations like Eve, the quality of her transformation was quite astonishingly superior to Eve's.
[I receive perfect calibration for all mechanical transformations! And... attack power too!]
Lilyth extended a thick, cylindrical barrel-like muzzle, positioned somewhere between a rifle barrel and a cannon barrel, then instantly fired a long, streaking laser... no, a lightning bolt, sniping a group of beast-kin who were approaching them.
[How's that!]
"Perfect."
It's easy to forget due to the huge impact of the spaceship revealed during her evolution, but she had absorbed all elements of Room 95, making all the overflowing lightning power in that space her own.
As a result, her magic had already evolved into 'Yo-nwe-ryeok,' a superior concept encompassing both 'Yo-ryeok' and 'lightning power,' and the destructive power it held was distinctly above Eve's 'Yo-ryeok' or Tikke's Sevenfold Magic Cannon.
"Heheheh..."
―Squeak, squeak―
Seeing Lilyth flaunt her firepower, Eve and Tikke bristled with annoyance.
It was as if they were saying, 'What's there to show off, you only got strong because Ban Yuwon fed you all sorts of things!'
Perhaps driven by surging competitiveness, Eve also transformed like Tikke, and soon all three began firing vigorously.
―Boom!
―Bang! Bang bang!
―CRASH!
While Lilyth's superior strength was undeniable, Eve and Tikke's sniping skills were also more than enough to take down regular beast-kin soldiers.
As the beast-kin swarming towards Ban Yuwon's party were instantly annihilated, the warriors of the Wolf Fang Tribe couldn't help but take notice.
"What in the world are those? Could they be Relics?"
"Whatever they are, they're incredible! We can't let our guests do all the work, push forward! Don't let those bastards set foot on our Wolf Fang land!"
"Those bastards... Ha! Union! They're from Union Academy!"
Around that time, the enemies also realized Ban Yuwon's identity.
Even granting that they noticed he was an outsider because he wasn't a beast-kin, how could they have guessed he was from Union Academy so quickly?
The answer was probably...
'As expected, they're in cahoots with Lyu Cheolmyeong. Moreover, the fact that they attacked right now... suggests they might even be communicating in real-time.'
Ha, Ban Yuwon scoffed.
If he had moved directly to attack Ban Yuwon himself, it might have been intimidating.
But if he believed he could deal with Ban Yuwon by mobilizing 'weak' 'multitudes' who were burdened by the 'environment' as a penalty, then Lyu Cheolmyeong's foresight could only be described as garbage.
"Alright, now the distinction between friend and foe is complete."
"Were you still making the distinction between friend and foe until now? You?"
Dokgo Yeon, who had flown and landed on the branch where Ban Yuwon was, tilted her head in puzzlement upon hearing his mumbled words.
"Ah, not that kind of friend or foe."
Distinguishing between the Wolf Fang Tribe and the invaders wasn't difficult.
However, to distinguish between the trees belonging to the Wolf Fang Tribe's territory and those belonging to the invaders' territory, he needed to examine the concept of 'tree' in more detail.
"Ah—I understand what you're trying to do, but is that possible? If I recall that woman's words, aren't trees dominated by the Nataehu?"
"What is he doing?"
By now, even Slothy had approached his side.
However, contrary to her leisurely demeanor, her hands were moving quite swiftly, and each time, branches that had sprouted from nearby trees would extend to ensnare invaders or pierce through their bodies, revealing how formidable her abilities truly were.
"Watch."
He opened his eyes wide and manifested his Authority.
Ever since he completed the Giwon Sword, he could feel finely controlled golden Mana flowing each time he invoked his Authority.
A portion of it concentrated in his eyes and mouth, the points of his Authority's manifestation, making him appear sacred.
"What, are you doing?"
Slothy asked again.
However, her voice contained surprise and even a hint of fear.
Perhaps because she was a Nataehu, she intuitively grasped what he was about to do?
"I'm going to pull out the trees."
Ban Yuwon stretched both hands into the air.
The distinction was already perfectly complete.
The boundary line between the two tribes.
As he felt the Wildness of the beast-kin fiercely exchanging blows with fangs and claws, desperately trying to protect their own tribe's trees and fell those of the other tribe.
Ban Yuwon extracted the concept from 'all' the trees of the invading tribes located in the border zone.
At that moment, everything on the battlefield froze.
"――――?!"
A silent scream, one that made no sound, shook the entire forest.
No matter how much a Nataehu could communicate with and control trees, unless they could turn trees into monsters, they were still just trees.
There was no reason Ban Yuwon, who could even conceptualize and absorb bullets flying at him, couldn't eliminate mere trees rooted in the ground.
Couldn't he have done this much ever since he awakened his Authority?
"No, that's not right. If the range of the 'Mandongan' hadn't widened, it would have been difficult to simultaneously retrieve concepts from trees spread out so widely."
Ban Yuwon mumbled, calmly retrieving the golden strings of characters that surged towards him from all directions like waves.
Regardless of friend or foe, the sight of the astonished beast-kin turning to Ban Yuwon, their fur bristling all over, was rather amusing.
"W-What in the..."
"The trees. Our trees..."
Most of the invaders lost their footing and fell to the ground.
The beast-kin of the Wolf Fang Tribe were equally dumbfounded, but noticing that only the invaders' trees were disappearing, they quickly returned to defend their own tribe's trees.
The beast-kin who detested touching the ground, shouting and howling as they tried to climb onto the Wolf Fang Tribe's trees, couldn't break through the combined defense of the Wolf Fang Tribe and had to hastily retreat.
"It's him! He's the one who took our trees—!"
"Call Urek! Without Urek, then..."
"You, you. Youuuuuuu—!"
"Know your enemy and know yourself, and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
Feeling all the battlefield's hatred converge on him, Ban Yuwon calmly mumbled, a corner of his mouth curving upwards.
In his hands, the concepts of trees, ripped root and all from enemy territory, were still gathering in real-time.
"If you wanted to defeat me, Lyu Cheolmyeong, you should have prepared a proper stage."
The war hadn't even truly begun yet.
Perhaps after everything ends, the Jade Star might have to change its name.
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