This Universe Needs Old People - Chapter 88



Only Noblemtl

Apocalypse Needs Old People Episode 088

63. Entrance Exam (2)

“The Hunter Exam begins now.”

“Don’t bother me and get out of the way.”

After kicking out the girl in the corner who was talking nonsense while holding onto weight for no reason, down from the stage.

… No, seriously, what is that kid?

Anyway, I stood up on the stage and looked down at the examinees.

There are a total of 309 applicants for this entrance exam.

Among them, 30% are sponsored by high-ranking officials, 70% are former child soldiers, and 1 applicant comes from another district.

‘There are 3 players among these.’

Bang Gu-seok, a former child soldier, and Shin Eun-jo, an applicant from another district.

For your information, Taejeong is supported by a high-ranking official.

On paper, Taejeong’s guardian is listed as Meursault.

Of course, I am the real guardian.

‘Come to think of it, Taejung didn’t seem to know anything about the Miyeonsi.’

Shin Jo and Bang Gu Seok Yeo Bo vaguely knew what Tae Jeong did before he was possessed, but they never had a chance to talk to him about what kind of person he was before he was possessed.

In order to become closer to the other employees, I intentionally kept my distance from them and never called them to talk to them separately, so I knew less than the girl in the corner of the room, whom I didn’t see that often.

‘Once the entrance exam is over, I should talk to Taejung too.’

anyway.

Banggu Seok Yeo-bo, Tae-jeong, Shin Eun-jo, they all have different origins.

The supervisor cadets seem to think that I suggested this test because I favored the child soldiers and excluded the sponsored children, but in fact, I have no prejudice against sponsored children, child soldiers, or those from other districts.

‘After all, to me they’re all just the same NPCs.’

There is no special care given to players.

Surely, there’s no way that an eleven-year-old would fail the entrance exam.

That means this is a fair test for everyone.

That’s understandable, because the content of the entrance exam is ‘tag’, which is something that every child has probably played at least once.

“You call it tag?”

“Wasn’t it monster hunting?”

When I declared that the entrance exam was a game of tag, the supervisory students looked at me with a look of disappointment.

Behind those guys, there was a pile of luggage.

These guys and the applicants for sponsorship, when they said they were going to hunt monsters, it seems like the executives gave them a lot of things.

I was wondering what the point of bringing all that stuff was since I was going to be using all the military supplies anyway when I enlisted.

‘I guess it’s safe to say that there are few executives who have ever been on a punitive expedition.’

In fact, the candidates who were sponsored by officers with actual experience in subjugation carried only simple luggage.

But even more perfect than that are the boy soldiers.

All those kids had in the first place were military supplies.

I don’t know how on earth Shin Jo is wearing the uniform of a boy soldier from our area.

Even the boy soldiers seemed disappointed at the mention of tag instead of hunting.

The boy soldiers weren’t stupid, so they probably knew that hunting monsters was a test that was beneficial to someone.

At that moment, Bang Gu-seok, who was looking up at me from the front row, raised her hand and asked.

“If you play tag, what should you catch?”

“Ahem.”

Because Banggu Seok-yeo’s words were short, one of the supervisors standing next to me coughed in vain and glared at Banggu Seok-yeo.

Banggu Seok-yeo added with a very displeased expression.

“What should I catch… this?”

Other people also looked at me, as if they were curious about what the heck tag meant.

I answered briefly.

“me.”

“yes?”

“The target of your subjugation is me.”

When I asked Meursault, he said that the commander was very worried about this game of tag.

‘When you left the entrance exam to me, you didn’t expect me to just quietly hand out the test papers.’

Above all, I thought it would be better for the applicants to catch me rather than monsters.

Everyone’s expression wasn’t very good.

“It’s the Hunter Exam, isn’t it?”

The lady in the corner was still talking nonsense.

Shin Eun-jo, who was standing in the middle, raised his hand and asked a question.

“What does it mean that Heydam is the target of subjugation?”

Unlike Banggu Seok-yeo-bo, the imitation of a quiet child is plausible.

Shin Jo asked with a serious face.

“Does this mean we should attack Haydam?”

“Of course I’m not asking you to really punish them.”

“sure?”

“It’s literally tag. Just catch me by any means necessary.”

Despite being told that they did not have to be picky about the means and methods, the test takers looked visibly perplexed.

Since stories similar to my birth story were already widely spread within the district, the supervisor cadets were all looking at me with an expression that said, ‘Do you think that’s possible for an eleven-year-old?’

Shin Jo glanced at the supervisors and asked me again.

“Is there a reason why you are doing it this way?”

“It’s fun.”

Both the examinees and the supervisor looked dumbfounded at my extremely frivolous answer.

Only Shin Jo continued to ask indifferently.

“What if… no one catches it?”

“I’m fickle and self-willed, you know. If they like what I do, they can ‘catch me.’”

“You think I might get caught?”

“And I like people who don’t care about the means and methods.”

“What does that mean… that it’s okay to harm Heydam?”

“Judge for yourself.”

Shin Jo’s brow furrowed, and it seemed as if the questions were coming from the supervisory cadets rather than the examinees, so I raised my hand to show them to the cadets and continued speaking.

“The search area is limited to the area marked with a red line. If you leave the search area, you will be immediately disqualified, so keep that in mind. Leaving the search area is not included in ‘doing whatever it takes.’ Do you understand?”

The examinees and supervisors seemed relieved to hear that the search area had been set.

If you run away using this vast snowfield, it’s impossible to catch you.

“The tag game… starts when the sun goes down. During that time, you can form teams, devise strategies, and make plans. Submit those plans to the supervisors before the sun goes down.”

“Are you saying it starts after the sun sets? Then what about the time limit… … .”

“The time limit is until the sun rises tomorrow morning.”

I smiled faintly.

“At least until you catch me, I hope there won’t be any dropouts.”

* * *

Of course, playing tag and other games as entrance exams isn’t just for fun.

First of all, starting next year, we plan to go back to the boring written exam.

The reason I am giving this type of test to this year’s incoming students is simple.

Now that we know there are no boundaries between zones, we’ll start having friction with players from other zones starting now, not 10 years later when the Second Apocalypse occurs.

I don’t know how many players there are in other areas, but we all look like our peers.

‘Except for the Unicorn Zone players, that is.’

But what if, children of the same age in our district… … .

What if all eleven-year-old children, the players’ age, behaved similarly to the players?

There is no mistaking this for players who have opened up the system.

If there are players who can’t view the characters, wouldn’t they be mistaken?

There are a lot of players in the cola area… … .

‘So to speak, it’s a body swell.’

Shin Jo also didn’t seem to believe that there would only be three players in our area: me, Bang Gu Seok Yeo Bo, and Tae Jeong.

Actually, I was a bit nervous because I couldn’t figure out how Daphne could be a player.

Maybe that’s why he asked to take the military academy entrance exam.

Maybe by now they’re opening up each of their status windows to check if they’re players or not.

Not even realizing that it was all in vain.

‘The original number of students admitted to the military academy was about 30.’

But as I promised in my commencement speech, I plan to select 100 Haydams.

You might say that for the future, it would be better to accept and teach all applicants, but that is not the case.

Because not everyone can become an officer.

Just because you failed to get into the military academy doesn’t mean you can’t become a soldier.

There is no army without soldiers.

So in this test, I plan to pick out the child who will be an ‘officer’, the child who will be a ‘soldier’, and the child who will be a ‘player’.

We plan to select children who stand out in this entrance exam and educate them separately as ‘players’.

‘Well, I guess I can’t be a real player.’

I guess we can make the way of thinking similar.

When Shin Jo answered that I do this because it’s fun, he looked dumbfounded, but he probably doesn’t really think that I do this just for fun.

‘By now, everyone is busy trying to figure out if there are any other players among the applicants, or if there are any special NPCs.’

The reason why I insisted on taking the entrance exam in a snowy field.

That’s because the place you want to check is in the snowfield.

The cave where I passed out after absorbing the Snow Giant’s Jewel.

I also wanted to know exactly what happened in that cave afterwards.

The lady in the corner said that she knew the cave and that she told me so that I could find it.

How on earth did you know I was in that cave and insisted on going to rescue me?

If you fall off a cliff, you usually look at the bottom and don’t think about the cave in the middle of the cliff.

‘And no matter how much I think about it, it’s strange that he knows something that I don’t.’

That’s why I thought I should check out that cave.

I also wondered why there was a cave in such a place.

So to speak, I used the game of tag as an excuse to buy some free time to move around.

I told the supervisors that I would hide from the examinees and that my location would be kept secret to prevent any possible cheating, and then I left the search area and headed straight for the crevasse.

It wasn’t hard to find the cave without being chased by the snow giant.

This is because traces of the various things that had been installed to rescue me in the past were still there.

The cave entrance, which we descended to by rope, was intact despite the chaos.

‘I was worried that it might have collapsed from the shock at that time or been closed after the rescue, but it turned out well.’

At that time, I felt like the path leading inside was very long because I was running in a hurry, but when I walked in without any danger, it was a cave that was not as deep as I thought.

As we entered the cave, the first thing we saw was a huge pile of icicles.

‘This is where the snow giant died.’

It wasn’t hard to see because the spot where the icicle had fallen from the ceiling was still there.

After recovering the snow giant’s body, it seems that the icicles were not cleaned up separately…

‘…What is that?’

There was a strange pattern carved into the inner wall.

A pattern I’ve never seen before.

At first glance, it looked like a magic circle, but here and there, there were marks of someone deliberately damaging it.

“ah.”

As I was walking towards the pattern, I suddenly realized something when I noticed a star candy hitting my foot.

‘Is this… the place where I passed out?’

I think this is where I got hit by the snow giant and fell after being blown away.

I roughly recalled my memory and went to the spot where I had fallen, and when I lay down, I found myself strangely positioned in the exact center of the pattern.

‘Then this pattern… did it appear after I passed out?’

I don’t remember seeing this pattern before I collapsed, so it was probably right after I passed out.

I guess it’s something that happened after I accepted the power of the snow giant.

I wonder if it was the aftereffect of absorbing the jewel.

There were parts that I didn’t understand more than the strange patterns I had never seen before.

‘Why has there been no mention of such strange traces until now?’

Did the commander or Meursault hear anything about this symbol?

Why didn’t you tell me even though you heard it?

‘I’ll have to ask when I get back.’

I can’t go ask questions anyway until the entrance exam is over.

Deciding to think about my headache later, I placed my hands on my stomach, folded my fingers, and closed my eyes for a moment.

I planned to wait here until the sun set and then return to the examinees.

‘I wonder if this pattern will still be there when I come back.’

Before you go back, you must memorize the pattern drawn here.

I closed my eyes for a moment with that thought in mind.

A sound like the flapping of wings of an insect was heard from somewhere.

Boohoo… … .

It was a very small sound, but I was alert and immediately realized that the sound was not normal.

‘what?’

The sound gradually came closer.

It was too loud to be the flapping wings of a small insect, and it was clear that something was entering the cave.

Boooooong-

And when the sound I heard became clearer.

I finally realized.

‘This is… … .’

It’s the sound of a hoverboard engine.

‘…no way.’

Open your eyes, sit up, and look towards the entrance.

A man with white hair who was so familiar to me appeared before me without a care in the world.

Still on the hoverboard, looking down at me with indifferent eyes.

The ‘dopamine addict’ said.

“I finally sent it back, and here it is again.”