Deal with The Devil!

"A first year?" Those were the first words that came out of the mouth of the man behind the counter. He looked at Jinn's uniform and then glanced at Evelyn standing behind him. 'Wait… is she… THE CURSED PRINCESS?'

His eyes widened in shock upon seeing her face. 'Are they teaming up? Wait, no. Even the girl famed for being the emotionless doll looks surprised… which means he wants to do all three alone…'

"Which missions do you want to take again?"

'Surely it must not be a wilderness mission. Surely, I must have been mistaken—'

"SW3696, SW4576, SW8473."

'Apparently not, it seems…' The silver of hope he had in mind that Jinn wanted to take three Harmless missions at once vanished with a single sentence from Jinn.

He looked at the boy and let out a long sigh: "Listen here, boy..."

The allowed time for a student to be away on a Wilderness mission was two days.

That was because the missions were quite demanding, and even a single one would leave an unprepared and inexperienced student exhausted.

"Even though there is no rule against taking three missions alone, I strongly suggest you take this slow for your first date. We don't want to increase our Mortality rate."

He shook his head, thinking Jinn was another hyper-enthusiastic fool who wanted to conquer the world now that he had awakened his powers.

"Even if you team up with someone, taking three missions is over the top."

The line behind Jinn had already started to grow. Seeing the long line, the man responsible for recording the mission details grew impatient but did not stop trying to change Jinn's mind.

"I understand your concerns, and I deem them to be valid." Hearing Jinn's calm tone, the man let out a sigh of relief, but his face soured since the boy was not done speaking.

"But, I am just trying to see which type of missions I am capable of handling with my power." Instead of giving a half-baked reason or outright bickering with the man, Jinn decided to use a well-thought-out excuse.

"If a mission is beyond my capabilities, I will return without wasting my time over it."

Jinn put his words in a way that even the man started to see the boy in a new light.

'Oh, he intends to access his abilities. Indeed, now that I look at the missions…'

The mission Jinn had stated required different skill sets to be completed efficiently.

The mission of Collecting The Dew of Moonless Night required Stealth.

The mission of saliva required high dodging abilities and poison resistance, as well as a very unshakable will capable of withstanding unimaginable psychological horror.

Just looking at the image of the spider on the small screen before him made the man shiver in fear and disgust.

And finally, the last mission of collecting Fangs of the Ironhide Wolves… that needed extreme combat ability and high battle IQ.

'Well, it was not a complete lie or the whole truth. If I find myself capable of completing the three, I will do them all.' While he was deep in thought, Jinn praised himself for coming up with such an excuse.

"New students are all the same."

"Guess there is nothing special about him besides his face."

"Why are we wasting our time here, there are four counters."

The students standing behind him shifted to another counter while looking at Jinn with pity.

Only the cursed princess was now standing behind him once more. Expressions had already left her face a while ago.

"Just so you know, for every mission you fail to complete after accepting, the fine is 5 points." The mission guide sighed and finally took the token Jinn had placed on top of his counter.

He placed the token on a small device, which then displayed the amount of points he had.

200 points!

'He is a First year student… wait….' The guide's eyes widened in realization. 'No wonder he is so analytic and also a calculative student. He is one of the hidden students.'

Every guide like him sitting behind the counter was sworn to secrecy by the academy, as it would be near impossible to hide students of the special class from them.

Since they cannot use the power to erase their memories every day, each guide was handpicked and sworn to be loyal to keep the academy's secret using a special blessed power called…

[ The Crusader's Oath! ]

After the realization struck him, the receptionist did not waste more of Jinn's time and noted down the task before passing the token back to him with a final warning. "Don't take unnecessary risks."

Finally Evelyn stepped forward and spoke. "AW2112, AW1223…"

As she continued to list the serial numbers of the two tasks she chose, the students who were trying to change back to this line stopped in their tracks and turned back.

This time, the mission guide did not say anything or try to stop her like he did with Jinn and simply took her token and repeated what he did with Jinn.

Once she was done, the line was flooded once more.

"You want to go leave together?" Evelyn walked out of the mission hall and walked to the south region of the building, where she saw Jinn standing all alone.

At the end of the building, they saw a wide stone road filled with carriages and guards leading to a huge wall in the distance.

Unlike the usual times when they would see a closed line of the pentagon boundary, the wall was split open in the middle.

The carriages were storming in and out of the vicinity, carrying the students to their missions.

"Sure." Jinn shrugged as he realized their missions were in the same forest area.

'Every student is to be guided by an overseer. If a student does not appear in the designated timeline without any proper reason, the academy is instantly alerted.'

Recalling the warning Miss Skinner gave them, Jinn picked the nearest carriage with Evelyn and climbed inside.

As the wheels of their chariot ran away, a pair of deep blue eyes watched their movements from the distance.

…

The carriage took Jinn and Evelyn straight out of the Nightingale City and led them to the nearest area consumed by the wild, The Redscale Forest.

They were not the only students who arrived at the entrance of this place of horrors. Most of the tasks were to be completed in this place since most of the treasured materials and herbs grew here.

"We shall part ways here, but don't forget, after completing these missions, we are taking that Demonic mission." Climbing down from the carriage, Evelyn bid farewell to Jinn and followed a specific path.

There was not even a shred of doubt in her voice. She truly believed both of them were capable of finishing their tasks.

'Don't decide everything on your own.' Jinn clicked his tongue inwardly. He wanted to refuse, but the girl seemed to have sensed his thoughts and ran away.

"Tch." No longer paying attention to the cursed princess, Jinn turned and took a different path.

In the outer regions of the forest, there were several boards that helped the students navigate through it.

Jinn, who had already memorized the map beforehand, did not take long before arriving at the location of his first mission.

[ The White Bride Queen Spider's Hideout. ]

In the deep woods of the Redscale forest's outer region, there was a cave with a wide entrance at the foot of a steep mountain.

From the information along with the mission, he was certain that this ominous-looking place giving out a dreadful aura was certainly the beast's hiding place.

Taking a deep breath, Jinn entered the den of the deadly monster that almost looked like an open mouth of a huge serpent.

The inside of the cave was wet and mossy. The walls were covered in a thick layer of dust and some slimy liquid.

Ever since coming to this world, Jinn had never encountered a beast in real life. He had only heard about them and read their information in the books in the library of the academy.

In those very books, it was briefly described the horrors of the person who encountered the White Bride Queen Spider.

But that alone was enough to tell him how disgusting the habits of the spider were. The way it liked to toy with its prey and the way it lived—everything about it painted a decent enough horrific picture for him.

But…

Knowing it in his mind and seeing it with his eyes were two different things.

The moment he entered the beast's hideout, Jinn noticed it all.

The pieces of bodies lying on his way to the deeper parts of the cave.

The armor and weapons are on the bodies of the dead. The marks on the wall. The broken skeletons of the lost.

But all of this was nothing compared to what he saw when he arrived at the resting chambers of the beast.

'I see dead people.'