52. Field Training (5)
At dawn, just as daybreak was rising,
thirty airships rose into the sky above Stella Academy.
Having all those airships take off at once would have been impossible because of air traffic, but even so, the sight of those great airships ascending one after another in sequence was still quite the spectacle.
Ban Diyeon and Ryuderik led ten first-year cadets and, in order to head for the Pung Empire, had to change airships three times, take two trains, and even use a warp wheel.
Large nations and institutions such as the Adolevit Kingdom, the Scarlven Empire, Alchemy Castle, and Arcanium were mostly located on the Central Continent, but the Pung Empire lay in the Southern Plains.
Since the continent was so vast, getting used to long-distance travel was simply part of life by default.
After a long journey lasting nearly three or four hours, they were finally able to arrive in the Pung Empire.
South, Hawol Plains.
The country of wind, the Pung Empire.
With seven great rivers cutting across the continent, this place also served as the hub of southern trade—a land where numerous races gathered together in harmony.
Adventurers who traveled with the wind and drifted with the clouds could rest at any time in the Lotus Inn that remained beneath the moonlight.
The beastfolk always welcomed wandering merchants, eagerly embracing new goods and new things.
And those who longed for freedom and wished to pause for a brief rest could cast a fishing line at Freshwater Lake and enjoy a moment of leisure.
Even the style of dress in the Pung Empire felt different from that of the nations on the Central Continent. Looking at the people who favored airy cloth garments that let the wind pass freely through them, Baek Yuseol felt a strange sense of familiarity for the first time in a while.
‘That’s basically just hanbok.’
Baek Yuseol slowly looked over Taeyusan, the capital of the Pung Empire.
He had come to the Hawol Plains often enough for various reasons, but this was his first time actually coming to the Pung Empire.
The culture felt rather unfamiliar.
“Oh…… the architectural style here is interesting.”
“It’s pretty.”
“The buildings look like they’re wearing gat hats.”
Contrary to the impression one might get from hearing it was a nation founded by travelers, the Pung Empire boasted a grandeur no less impressive than any other nation.
And on top of that, unlike the Central Continent of Aither World, which showed off a European atmosphere like that of Earth, the eastern-style architecture of the Pung Empire was apparently quite unfamiliar even to Stella’s students, and they looked around at the scenery in fascination.
“All right, is everyone here?”
Ban Diyeon lined up the ten students in a row and spoke.
“We’re not here on a trip, are we? Right? The Pung Empire is a beautiful place with lots to show, so I’m disappointed too, but we have to head straight to the mission site.”
And that place was, unexpectedly, very close by.
Ban Diyeon unfolded a map in midair with telekinesis, then pointed at a location with her staff:
a western alley in Taeyusan, the capital.
“Persona Gates usually don’t appear inside cities. Investigators are apparently still researching why this one did…… but anyway, what matters is that this is our mission.”
“There are some among you who are from the Pung Empire and some who aren’t, but you all studied the culture beforehand, right?”
When Ryuderik asked, all the students nodded.
Because of the nature of their work, magic warriors were often dispatched to foreign countries, and as a result, a magic warrior license functioned almost like a passport that worked in any nation.
There were times when a nation would refuse entry depending on the magic warrior’s origin, but for the most part, it meant one could go almost anywhere.
Because of that, magic warriors had to study not only the history and culture of each nation, but even their languages as well.
“Most mages, including Stella students, use the Kameln language, but the locals do not.”
Just like English on Earth, Aither World also had one language used commonly across nations.
That language was Kameln.
It originated in Kameln, the land called the homeland of magic, and because it was said to be the language used by the First Mage, it had by now become fully established as the common tongue among mages.
All magical systems—including the language of magic and rune language—were built on Kameln as the standard, so for a mage, mastering this language completely was absolutely essential.
In other words, every mage had to know at least two languages:
their native language, and Kameln.
“Is there anyone here who can use the Pungryeong language? It might come up inside the Persona Gate. You’ll need to keep that in mind.”
Most of the students could not raise a hand.
Unlike other languages, most of which shared fairly similar structures, the Pungryeong language had a rather unfamiliar framework.
But there were two students,
two who did raise their hands.
Hong Biyeon and Baek Yuseol.
Though in Baek Yuseol’s case, he started to raise his hand, then stopped halfway, making Ban Diyeon tilt her head.
“Why are you only raising it halfway? What, do you know the language but can’t actually speak it?”
“No, it’s not that…… I think I can speak it? But I can’t really tell what level I’m at……”
“Hey. Are you messing around with words? Either you can or you can’t. Pick one.”
Since to anyone else it would have sounded like wordplay too, Baek Yuseol had nothing in particular to say in his own defense, so he simply stayed quiet instead of answering, and Ban Diyeon stepped in to mediate.
“It’s fine. As long as you can understand it, it won’t be a major problem.”
“……Fine.”
Ryuderik could not understand that insolent sort of verbal game from a junior, but Ban Diyeon let even that slide generously.
“The rest of you should at least learn enough for basic everyday conversation too.”
“Yes.”
“Before we depart, we need to stop briefly by the Pung Empire branch of the Mage Association. You all know the procedures for foreign magic warriors carrying out missions, right? I’ll be showing you now, so pay attention and take note.”
With that, Ban Diyeon took the lead, and the students followed along while frantically taking in the sights of Taeyusan.
Baek Yuseol was trailing along lazily at the very back, and after glancing over to confirm that, Hong Biyeon deliberately slowed her own pace to match his.
Then, as if speaking in passing, she asked:
“Commoner. Can you really speak the Pungryeong language?”
She knew better than anyone how maddening it was to learn the Pungryeong language.
Even Hong Biyeon, who had a memory-related trait and was more confident than most in subjects that required memorization, had nearly gotten headaches from learning it.
So that said it all.
“Yeah. More or less.”
“……Figures.”
If there were a language Baek Yuseol did not know, that would be strange in its own way too.
Fwoooosh……
A soft breeze blew through.
The clear, pure air unique to the Pung Empire.
Even while enjoying that freshness that seemed cool enough to pass straight through the soul itself, Hong Biyeon could not organize her thoughts.
To be honest, the situation itself displeased her quite a bit.
Why, exactly, was it impossible for the two of them to carry out a mission alone?
She was confident she could easily clear something on the level of a mere 3-Risk Persona Gate and come right back out.
At this point, she even found herself thinking they should have applied instead for a mission like monster hunting or dungeon exploration, where a team of only two members was allowed.
Just as Hong Biyeon was thinking she wanted to sweep away the other members walking ahead of them, Baek Yuseol fished around in his pocket and took out a piece of chocolate, popping it into his mouth.
“……?”
To her, it looked like an utterly random action, but for Baek Yuseol and the other students, it was nothing special at all.
Hong Biyeon stared at him with wide round eyes, and finding that rather cute, Baek Yuseol pulled out another chocolate bar from his pocket and held it out to her.
“Here. Want one too?”
But the moment he said that, he remembered that her sense of taste probably had not fully returned yet.
“Well, if you don’t want it, forget it.”
Feeling a sudden twinge of guilt, he started to pull the chocolate back—but before he could, she grabbed it.
“……I’ll eat it.”
“You will?”
Then she stared at the chocolate as if she were trying to pierce it through with her gaze alone.
“What, is this your first time with commoner food?”
“I eat chocolate as dessert fairly often too.”
“That’s because yours is real expensive chocolate made by melting chocolate fruit. This one’s made from melted cacao.”
Surprisingly enough, in Aither World, the fantasy plant known as chocolate fruit genuinely existed.
Unfortunately, it was so rare that only the rich could afford to eat it.
“I don’t care.”
With that, Hong Biyeon shoved the cheap Baek Yuseol-brand chocolate into her mouth with all her might.
And then her eyes widened.
‘……It isn’t disgusting.’
As recently as just a week ago, she had tried to eat something sweet and failed.
Far from tasting sweet, it had been revolting—an awful sensation that churned through her mouth and hammered at her head.
But now it was different.
The sweetness itself was still only faint, but strangely enough, there was no disgusting flavor at all. It simply melted quite naturally over her tongue.
One bite, then two.
As Hong Biyeon swallowed down the chocolate with her small mouth, Baek Yuseol watched her with a genuinely surprised expression.
‘Did her sense of taste come back?’
Those few players who had tried to restore Hong Biyeon’s sense of taste.
In the end, every player had failed to save her life, but an extremely tiny number of them had succeeded in opening the heart of the villainess named Hong Biyeon and restoring her ability to taste.
As befitted a dating simulation game, one of the conditions for her sense of taste returning was, absurdly enough, falling in love.
Why such a condition would restore the sense of taste that had been lost due to flame was impossible to know.
But the important thing was that, at present, she seemed to be regaining at least some of it.
‘Did something happen for her to fall in love?’
As he stared fixedly at Hong Biyeon with eyes full of questions, she finally finished the chocolate and, startled, cleared her throat awkwardly.
“Even if it isn’t chocolate made from chocolate fruit, the taste is similar. It’s only a commoner’s misconception that chocolate fruit tastes better.”
“Really? But have you ever actually eaten the real thing?”
“……Yes. I spat it all out, though.”
“So in the end, you’re like me—you’re better suited to commoner food than fancy food. Want to go eat dwaeji gukbap together?”
In an instant, Hong Biyeon’s expression turned icy.
Dwaeji gukbap.
It had gained some word-of-mouth among a few students because it was a restaurant Baek Yuseol often visited on his own during outings, and according to the students who had tried it after hearing about it from him, it was extremely foul, unusually stinky, and the appearance of the food itself was unbelievably crude.
Unfortunately, that was just the reality of it.
Dwaeji gukbap was simply too foreign a dish to be accepted by the students of Arcanium.
Even students with perfectly normal senses of taste complained that it was disgusting and smelled bad, so for Hong Biyeon, how much worse would it be?
Normally, she would have immediately cursed him out and asked if he had lost his mind.
And yet, for some reason, those words got caught at the tip of her throat and never came out.
Instead, before she even realized it, she found herself nodding.
“Commoner or royal, the food we eat in everyday life is the same. It’s just your fixed prejudice that I only ever eat precious delicacies. I can eat dwaeji gukbap too.”
“Oh…… really?”
Would she still say that while actually sitting in front of a bowl of gukbap?
He was already looking forward to the sight of Hong Biyeon sitting there with a spoon in front of a bowl of soup, but unfortunately, it seemed there were no dwaeji gukbap restaurants in the eastern-style Pung Empire, so that would have to wait for next time.
After that, Hong Biyeon kept walking while chatting with Baek Yuseol about all sorts of trivial things.
Starting with chocolate and dwaeji gukbap, they moved on to onions, garlic, spices, what truly delicious cooking was like and the hobby of cooking itself, what sorts of hobbies they usually spent their time with, and even Baek Yuseol’s grumbling confession that, while he really hated reading spellbooks, history books were actually quite fun.
Hong Biyeon hated pointless conversation more than anything else, and yet somehow, whenever she talked with Baek Yuseol, no matter how unproductive the subject was, she ended up listening without even noticing time pass.
And then—
she realized something.
Until now, Hong Biyeon had thought of Baek Yuseol as a being on an entirely different plane of existence.
Having regressed thousands upon thousands of times, traveling through both the past and the future, he had felt like someone impossibly distant—someone she could never draw close to.
But that was not true.
“Commoner, you……”
“Hm?”
“You’ve lived a…… more ordinary life than I thought.”
“Uh…… well, obviously?”
To him, it was such an out-of-nowhere comment that he merely laughed and brushed it off as a joke.
But to Hong Biyeon, it was not a joke at all.
He, too, was simply an ordinary boy.
To Hong Biyeon, that was a very light realization, and yet at the same time, a rather great shock.
Could a soul worn down by thousands of deaths and thousands of defeats truly live an ordinary daily life?
Or perhaps……
had all he ever really been doing was longing for such an ordinary life?
“All right. We’re here. Miss Ban Diyeon and the assistant will handle most of the procedures, but you all need to watch and learn too. Starting from second year onward, no one will be doing it for you.”
It seemed they had reached their destination before she knew it, because Ban Diyeon’s voice snapped Hong Biyeon out of her wandering thoughts.
“Once we finish registration, we’ll head straight into the Persona Gate.”
“Everyone ready?”
At the question from Ban Diyeon and Ryuderik, all the students nodded.
“Then let’s give it our best.”
— Read only on MugenCodex —
