The Villain is Too Good at Sniping - Chapter 124



Only Noblemtl

Episode 124. Uninhabited Island (3)

Unlike the last training, this time the watch doesn’t work. There’s no map display, and the cadets can’t check each other’s location or communicate with each other.

So I had to find Kyle with only a few clues that Esili had recited in a crawling voice.

-Somewhere on that mountain… … .

-Where is that mountain?

-There was a slightly reddish rock with a turquoise orchid on it, so it might have been there.

Even if it is a scene that was seen in the original, seeing it in real life is a different matter. If there was a mountain in the background, finding that mountain exactly and even finding a cave that might be there is a difficult task even for someone like me who has [Clairvoyance].

Moreover, the sky is full of dark clouds and it is pouring rain.

If you bring a dog, you won’t know. This way, even the most skilled hunters will have a hard time finding traces.

So, it ended up being harder than I thought. I had to dodge the demons, wander through the mountains, and chase after the faint flow of magic power that remained.

If it weren’t for the enhanced [Watcher’s Eye] vision effect, I would have had to search every cave I could see.

-Anyway, it’s a secret. Keep it a secret. Keep it a secret between you and me.

-I can keep your secret… but what happens if you break it?

Fortunately, Kyle and Elin survived the original incident and created a secret of their own. They waited until the two of them finished talking and then moved forward at the right time.

“Zion… How did you get here?”

While Kyle asked cautiously, Elin looked at me with a blank expression. Her wet hair stretched out like well-soaked kelp. I couldn’t tell from the silhouette, but she hadn’t fixed her hair yet.

I ignored Elin, who was hastily starting to tie up her hair, and approached Kyle. What was important now was not Elin’s gender, but uniting the original protagonist party.

“Let’s get down from here for now.”

“Going down, where?”

“Esili is waiting.”

The explanation could have been given once we arrived at the camp.

***

It felt like it took another hour to get back to camp.

The makeshift shelters set up on the beach can accommodate three people per unit. Last night, three people were barely able to squeeze in, but fortunately that is no longer necessary.

After working on the construction from morning to afternoon, there are now two more makeshift shelters on the beach. They are shabby compared to the first ones, but they are enough to accommodate Kyle, Elin, and Ashili.

If more people gather, we will have to expand the camp, but now that it is the third day, it is likely that each person has found a like-minded companion. They will probably stay in the trees or in the caves.

“When did you make all this?”

“I made it as soon as I got here. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying on this island, so I thought I should make a place to sleep first.”

Kyle and Lara sat huddled together in the dorm. Ashley was shivering as well.

Although you can maintain a bonfire by creating a barrier, maintaining the barrier at all times is a lot of work and consumes a lot of magic power. That’s why Lara created several orbs of light that resemble fireflies and placed them in each of her quarters.

“Ms. Lara, what is this?”

“It will be warm.”

“wow…….”

I’ve seen this technique before when I stayed at the inn with Lara, but this will be a first for Airi.

Thanks to the fireflies that emit a gentle warmth, there is no need to sleep in the cold. As the group grows, the food that was stored up is almost all gone, but since the number of people has increased, it is not a bad business.

With the gentle rain in the background, Kyle and I put our heads together inside the camp.

“… I looked all over the mountain. I saw a few cadets coming down, but there weren’t many.”

“You didn’t see where it was going, did you?”

“It would have been good to know that, but it just so happened that I ran into that bear back then.”

“It’s not a bear, it’s an owl bear.”

“Oh, right. That’s right. Right. Owlbear… … .”

Esili, who had been making noises in the accommodation across the street, lay down, groaning. Unfortunately, the only thing she could use as a blanket was her uniform. If Lara hadn’t been there, she would have caught a cold long ago.

“Then, you haven’t seen Serene Annette?”

“Since the first time we met, I don’t know where it went. I haven’t felt its presence, so it might be on the other side of the island.”

“It’s on the other side of the island… … .”

To help you understand, I drew a simple picture. It was a simple map that summarized the terrain examined with [Cheonlian] and Kyle and Ashley’s eyewitness accounts.

“First, the area we are in is this side, for convenience, let’s call it the southern coast.”

I touched the lower edge of the island.

“Kyle and Elin, the mountain you two saw Owlbear on is the one in the middle here.”

“It would be slightly to the left rather than the exact center. The peak was on the left end of the island, and the rest seemed to continue along a ridge… … .”

Elin kept looking at me. Perhaps it was because I saw something that was supposed to be a secret between Kyle and Elin.

“Yes, then. The mountain is on this side. Beyond this mountain, to the north, is now an unknown territory.”

But I ignored it calmly. It must have been an important issue for Elin, but I pretended not to care because I had more important things to do right now.

“Zion, what do you think happened to the other cadets?”

“Well, they would have each gone their own way or banded together.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve been through survival training, so the other cadets will probably be surviving and holding on somewhere on the island.

There will be those who are stuck together, like Kyle, Elin, and Ashili, and there will also be Serin Annette, who rarely shows her traces.

“Not all the first-year cadets would have been dropped on the same island. This training isn’t as large-scale as the last entrance exam.”

“Sure… If over 200 kids were dropped on the same island, there’s no way they wouldn’t run into each other. No matter how big this island is, it’s not like it’s going to be as big as Mount Dave.”

“Compared to that time, the number of students who dropped out is also smaller.”

Probably at most 40 to 50 cadets landed on this island. As in the original, the rest of the cadets were likely sent to different areas.

“First of all, there is a high probability that Serin Annette will be in the north of the island.”

Even with [Thousand Eyes], I couldn’t find Serin Annette. Of course, this is because I spent most of my magic power on [The Watcher’s Eye] to bring Kyle and Elin, so I couldn’t use my power to detect them.

After my last words, silence fell over the camp. The only sound was the sound of rain.

I waited for Kyle to gather his thoughts for a moment. The other cadets were probably thinking similar thoughts to Kyle.

“…Why do they do this kind of training at Arsene?”

Kyle once again answered the questions that Elin and Esili had. Of course, they had only questions, and had not yet found a proper solution.

“For now, you have to survive by holding out on the island. That’s one thing for sure. But if it were that easy, you would have added something like “how long do you have to hold out?”

The fact that you haven’t given a purpose is a clue in itself. If you think about it differently, the answer comes surprisingly easily.

The idea is to see the process of getting dropped onto an island and surviving.

I know what happens next, since I’ve seen this scene many times in the original. I already know the purpose of this training, which Arsene didn’t suggest, and how to escape this island.

When you are in danger of death or when you feel like it would be really dangerous if you didn’t take action, then a reverse summoning will be carried out. In more serious cases, it will even interfere with training.

However, if I were to say it out loud, this training would be meaningless. That’s why I kept my mouth shut. I only gave Kyle occasional advice so he could come to the right conclusion.

“All the training we do at Arsen has a purpose. Just as the last interpersonal training was designed to prepare for exchange combat, this training must also have a purpose.”

“But isn’t it a bit problematic to just throw them on the island without telling them anything? What if someone dies?”

“The faculty will probably not intervene directly, but they will definitely be watching this.”

At my words, Elin flinched and looked around. Perhaps she was worried that this whole scene might be broadcast publicly.

“Well, I don’t think I’m spying or anything like that in the way you think.”

“If that’s the case… that’s fortunate.”

“Anyway, to sum it up, that’s it. The fact that you didn’t tell me what to do is a clue in itself.”

I looked at Elin. I exchanged glances with Lara and Airi, who were taking care of Esili in the other inn.

“Arsen wants us to figure out the meaning of this training on our own. The training started the moment we landed, and it’s up to us to decide what to do from here.”

Finally, I saw Kyle. In the end, this guy was the one who had to play the most important role.

“So, starting tomorrow, I’ll be a bit busy. If I investigate the island, I’ll probably find something. If I was just going to leave it on a deserted island and observe it, there would be no reason to hide the information like this.”

“If, Zion.”

Then Kyle opened his mouth.

“If this training is designed to weed out underperforming cadets, just like the entrance exams were, what should we do?”

Urrrr… Kwaang!

Thunder struck. Lightning struck the mountaintop like a slash. Kyle and I looked at it at the same time.

A huge tree perched on top of a mountain was struck by lightning and was burning like a beacon.

The large tree that can be seen from anywhere on the island is a hint that Arsene sends to the cadets who landed on this island. I have already decided not to tell them the answer, so it is up to the main characters to figure out what it means.

“You’re kicking out a lot of cadets again in this training? From Arsen?”

“It’s not impossible. You said it was end-of-semester training and you didn’t suggest anything, so it’s possible.”

“No way… If that was true, you would have sent them all out before the first semester. Why are you coming now?”

Elin Bernhardt trembled and looked at me. It seemed as if she wanted me to give her the answer, but I wouldn’t say anything.

But, I guess I can give it a little boost.

“I don’t know what to do with the cadets who are below standard, but it’s not completely unreasonable.”

I simply drew a couple of mountains next to the green island map. One was Mount Daveran, where I had taken my entrance exam, and the other was Nylvania, a snow-covered mountain in the Forgotten Isles.

“I told you one thing for sure. This is called ‘survival training.’ Think about how you’ve been scoring survival training points so far. This one starts with Daveran.”

A battle royale took place on Mount Daveran, where cadets would take points from other cadets to climb to the top, until only one cadet was left standing.

In order to win the flag, all cadets climbed to the top of the mountain, and those who did not climb were swallowed up by the fog and eliminated. In the end, the last cadet left was Kyle Ivanstairs.

“This is the snow-capped Nilvania that fell last time.”

On the other hand, in Mount Nirvana, only the ‘survival ability’ was seen.

I survived until the end with Lara. I took first place in terms of survival score, but it was Kyle and Ashley who showed good performances.

Although they were ranked slightly lower, the training they did on Mount Nirvana was focused on ‘survival’.

And now I was thrown into a training session called end-of-semester survival training. Arsene offered me nothing, and only parroted the words, “Don’t give up.”

“The training we did last time all had a purpose. During the entrance exam, we mainly focused on combat, and during the cold weather training, we mainly focused on survival. And this training is the end of semester training, and it’s supposed to be a replacement for the final exams we were supposed to take.”

A glint flashed across Kyle and Elin’s eyes. It seemed as if they had realized something.

“This training will probably combine the two objectives we had before. It will be important to survive, but it will also be important to defeat the other cadets. So we will look at both of them at the same time.”

“Zion. That means, that is… … .”

“You’re right. I don’t think Serene Annette would have disappeared for no reason. Maybe those kids have already figured out what to do.”

As the rain continued to pour down with no sign of letting up, I drew a V shape on the northern coast of the island.

“Serine Annette is the enemy. Not only her, but all the other cadets who operate outside of this camp must be considered enemies.”

All the other cadets thrown onto this island were to be considered enemies. That was the first task.