Top Instructor of a Third-Rate Academy

056

Teachers Quantai and Gwen were furious, boasting that they would produce more Class A students.

“So you’re saying all the people who were supposed to plan the strategy together disappeared, and you’re left alone?”

“They probably thought there was no need for further discussion since the draft was out.”

“Those grown adults are so pathetic~ Cassian’s going to win anyway.”

“……?”

Rozalin giggled as she looked at me.

“You’ve won every single bet so far, sir. You can just win this time, too.”

“I’m just not too keen on betting on the students' achievements.”

“Aw, you don’t have to be so rigid. You should show those new idiots, ‘No matter how hard you try, you’ll never even reach my toes, so go ahead and do as you please, you fools high on your Imperial pride.’”

“Me?”

For the first time, I looked directly into Rozalin’s eyes.

There was a madness in them.

Her eyes rarely blinked, and her pupils, which seemed to be looking at me, were slightly turned somewhere else.

“Rozalin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop that and come here to help with the strategy.”

At my words, Rozalin just giggled without another word and sat down in front of me.

The reason I had sought out Rozalin was to ask for her strategic advice.

Dealing with monsters, especially resident-type monsters with their own habitats, was usually done at the knightly order or army level.

Typically, companies or battalions of soldiers would form a line and exterminate the fiends.

I thought Rozalin, who had been a mercenary for a long time and even rose to the rank of Grand General, would be able to fully solve these parts.

That's what I thought, but.

“Hmm, I don't really know.”

Rozalin smiled sweetly.

It was the brightest face in the world.

“Huh? You used to explain strategies and various things well.”

“Aw, that’s true, but that all came from my subordinate's head, not mine.”

It was an uncharacteristic answer from Rozalin.

Just a few days ago, Rozalin hadn't spared any advice, telling me to do this and that based on various plans.

Even in the case of the orcs, she had helped me pull myself together when I was confused or my head was spinning.

She was a mature, and therefore reliable, disciple.

As if interpreting my gaze, Rozalin waved her hand dismissively.

“Aw, that’s not what I mean. There’s a student I really want to recommend to you, sir.”

“Recommend?”

“Fufufufufufufu. Do you remember when I tooooooold you that a punk named Ssak-tung-ba-ga-ji would be enrolling this year?”

I remember.

In the very early days, when she claimed to have returned to the past.

She had listed several key figures while wandering around Akarind Academy.

Though she had never mentioned the name directly.

“There’s a student named Zelta among the newly enrolled students.”

“Zelta, I know. He’s in our class.”

I remember Zelta because he was a rather unique student.

Like Elibes and Bridget, his presence was faint, and he was a student who often rested his chin on his hand and looked out the window during class.

When asked a question during class, he would only give a near-monosyllabic answer, a student with a low level of enthusiasm for the class as a whole.

Even when Pan and Bridget had demonstrated their skills to the students before, he had barely swung his sword and just laid down on the spot.

‘He deliberately dropped his sword.’

For a student with such a listless image, who was unmotivated in everything, to have the nickname Ssak-tung-ba-ga-ji didn't quite fit the image.

“He was originally my adjutant, you know?”

“Adjutant, in the military?”

“Yes. He’s amazing. Uh, there’s a demonic side to him, which is why I thought he knew how to fight demons. Just a moment!”

Hearing my words, Rozalin boasted as if to say ‘believe me,’ and then disappeared.

And soon, Zelta, with an unwilling expression, was dragged in, held by her hand.

“……Sir?”

“Alright, from now on, I’ll explain the situation we’re in.”

It seems she brought him without even explaining the situation.

“Listen up, Zelta! I am the Grand General, and you are the strategic commander who will assist me from now on! We are now going to strike the harpies that inhabit the ravines! The troops are clumsy. Most of them are novice swordsmen who can only use swords. In this situation, what kind of strategy do we need to catch the harpies?”

It was a tone as if she were forcing the other person to role-play.

Zelta, who had been looking at the refreshed-looking Rozalin, glanced at me once again.

There was a hint of reproach in his eyes, as if to ask what this was all about.

But Rozalin, as if that wasn't enough, continued to pour out information.

The harpies’ habits, which had been discussed with Quantai and Gwen, and the bow and shield strategy.

‘He’s reading.’

I focused on Zelta’s flustered eyes.

Despite the listless, flustered, and confusing situation, his eyes were moving minutely along with Rozalin's voice, as if reading a book.

It was as if he were writing down everything she said on a virtual document, and constantly checking and reading it.

A demonic strategy, what on earth?

“Alright. This is the situation. So what kind of strategy would you devise?”

“……Monsters instinctively avoid fire, so it would be right to shoot fire arrows to drive the harpies to one side, set up a defense there, and then capture and kill them using snares or nets.”

It was a textbook strategy.

It was also the strategy Quantai had come up with, and it was a tactic primarily used by the military when dealing with flying monsters.

What was best about that strategy was that it didn't matter if the students couldn't shoot the bow properly.

‘It’s not for hitting, but for driving them.’

It would be good if they hit the harpies, but even if they didn't, it would be a success as long as the arrows flew in a specific direction.

But in other words, it was a common and unoriginal strategy.

Just when I thought that even for an adjutant, a student’s imagination would be at this level.

“Not that one.”

Rozalin smiled sweetly and stared at Zelta.

Zelta responded with a look that seemed to ask what more she wanted, but Rozalin, just as she had looked at me before, barely blinked and stared at Zelta, almost glaring.

Zelta’s eyes trembled uncontrollably.

“W-what on earth……”

“Aw, you can do better, can't you? Give me a better opinion than this. Do you think I, uh, ditched my job as the chief of security and went to get you just to hear such obvious opinions? Do you think we can't come up with ideas like that? You, you seem to have taken us too lightly, man. Did I give you money for that?”

“No, when did I ever receive money, what?”

“It’s just a figure of speech, but if your mind is spinning enough to talk back and your brain is alive enough to nitpick, I think you can come up with a fresher idea than this. You know what I mean, right? Appropriately neat, yet new and outstanding. Huh?”

Is it necessary to torment him that much?

Rozalin’s face slowly drew closer to Zelta.

With each step she took, Zelta’s expression crumbled uncontrollably, and finally.

“Bait.”

A single strategy popped out of his mouth.

Zelta had his eyes squeezed shut, and he looked as if he didn't like the strategy he had just proposed.

No, it wasn't just that he didn't like it; he clearly hated it.

He couldn't help it.

His strategy was insane.

“The current strategy is focused on blocking the harpies from approaching and barely managing to attack through that gap. That’s why the movements are bound to be passive. So, we boldly give up on that part.”

“Letting people get caught?”

“More than that, we bring along explosion scrolls or flash scrolls. And the moment a harpy snatches him up, we use a large-scale explosion magic at the highest point.”

Once he started talking, a neatly organized strategy flowed out of his mouth as if he had been waiting for this question.

“The reason this strategy can be used is because we have a high-ranking priest on our side. The one with the purple eyes, she's a high priestess, right? I could tell from her unique holy power pattern. A person of that level can survive anything from having her shoulder torn off or eaten a bit by a harpy, or falling from a height of about 5 meters.”

“What else?”

“Uh, uh…… if not that, isn't Teacher Berlis a necromancer? Wouldn't it be good to bring an unclaimed corpse from nearby, revive it as a zombie, and then the moment a harpy grabs it, detonate it with a corpse explosion in the air?”

“What else?”

“No, wait, wait.”

I hurriedly stopped Rozalin and Zelta.

What kind of demonic strategies were these?

“I-if we use such a strategy, the damage will be huge! There’s also an ethical problem.”

“But you can score points. If the goal is to win, is there any reason to save the cards we can use? Besides, the high priestess is a card only we have, so others can't easily copy it……”

I looked at Rozalin with a dumbfounded and dismayed expression.

Rozalin was smiling at me with a proud expression.

“It’s amazing, right?”

My head ached.

“It’s ridiculous. A strategy like this, would Yuria even agree?”

She readily agreed.

“You said the person who devised this strategy was Zelta. It’s a strategy worthy of him.”

“Worthy of him, you mean?”

“The chief adjutant under the Grand General often used strategies that involved grinding people up like this. Still, this one is rather mild. He has a precedent of charging the army into a World Eater and then multi-self-destructing to solve the World Eater problem.”

“……”

“You may be worried about the ethical issues, but at the time, the chief adjutant, after devising that strategy, personally participated in the operation to boost the morale of the soldiers who would be going in with him.”

“The result?”

“All 148 soldiers who went in died, but the World Eater fell silent immediately after. We don't know what kind of battle took place inside, but in the end, the World Eater melted down with a huge explosion.”

What, that, such…….

The words wouldn't come out.

“Then I will go and charge my holy power in accordance with the chief adjutant's strategy.”

Yuria said so and returned to her room to pray.

I stared blankly at her retreating back, then shook my head.

No matter how I thought about it, I couldn't use a strategy like this.

‘Even if we do it this way, it’s impossible for individual students to get good scores in the grade evaluation.’

I don't know if this class is really a competition between classes, but since it's a contest to see the skills of individual students, a strategy that allows the students to stand out is important.

Besides, my conscience as a teacher wouldn't allow me to use that unethical strategy.

If I had only considered efficiency or effectiveness in education, I wouldn't have refused Avril’s proposal.

‘Let’s just take the strategic approach.’

Zelta's tactic was to seal the harpies’ flying ability and then induce a chaotic battle on the ground.

I'll take that and change it to my own style.

‘Seal their flying ability…….’

I close my eyes and lay out the cards I have on the dark floor.

The harpies’ habits, our class students’ personalities, swordsmanship, basic theory, mana, magic, Berlis, Zelta, Rozalin, Hati, and so on.

Countless pieces of information are scattered about chaotically.

I shuffled those pieces of information in my head and came up with numerous hypotheses.

And finally.

“Ah.”

One answer came to mind.

The reason it was difficult to deal with harpies was because they were flying monsters.

If so.

‘What if I induce a chaotic battle in a space where they can’t fly?’

I hurried to the security team's side and looked for Hati.

“Can you take me with you when you go to the canyon this weekend?”

It seemed I had to see it for myself to confirm whether it was possible or not.