I Became the Academy’s War Hero Chapter 45

I tilted my head as I looked at the suddenly appearing beasts.

“…I’ve never seen beasts like these before.”

According to the records, there were easily over two thousand known species of beasts, and more than half of them had fewer than ten individuals in existence. So, encountering an unfamiliar species wasn’t something that should’ve surprised me.

But the longer I looked at them, the stronger a strange sense of incongruity I felt.

‘They certainly look like beasts, but something’s off.’

With the appearance of this new enemy, I returned to the other two first.

“Eugene!”

“You alright?”

“Yeah.”

While we gathered together, the beasts just stood there, staring blankly at one another without showing any particular reaction.

“…No matter how I look at it, something’s strange.”

They looked so harmless that it was hard to believe they were the same beasts that had blocked my earlier strike.

Walter scratched his head awkwardly at their sudden intrusion.

“Where the hell did these things even come from?”

Rubia cautiously looked around once and asked,

“Could it be that the commotion on our side drew their attention?”

“That’s not it.”

I firmly shook my head.

“Remember, Walter, before we decided on the training site, I dug through all the beast-related reports.”

“Reports from two years ago, right? The local ecosystem could’ve changed a lot since then.”

“Maybe. But they’re all the same species, moving in a pack of just four. I don’t see any signs of a nearby nest, either. The evidence is too weak to say they appeared because of an ecological shift.”

“No, but if that’s not it….”

Walter’s expression twisted as if he’d finally realized what I was implying.

“…Wait, are you saying those things are tamed beasts?”

“Not exactly…”

“You mean… created beasts, don’t you?”

I gave Rubia a subtle nod of agreement.

“It’s just a hypothesis for now, though.”

“I think I’ve read about that somewhere. There were factions trying to create beasts artificially. Around ten years ago, the Imperial Court even gathered Inquisitors to launch a massive purge operation against them.”

Even as she said it, disbelief clouded Rubia’s face. She muttered, her tone heavy,

“Don’t tell me those people… are still around?”

“We’ll have to find out.”

Gripping my sword again, I fixed my eyes on the still-motionless beasts.

Not long after, their movements suddenly began to change.

Krurk!

Kyaaaaaak!!

Their blood-red eyes glowed as they shrieked, clawing and tearing up the ground wildly.

Then, as if unable to suppress their rage, they began to scratch at nearby trees and bite chunks out of them, screaming the whole time.

It was as if they’d been cursed into madness.

After a few minutes of frenzied rampage—

Their eyes finally turned toward us.

Kieeeek!!

All four beasts roared in unison and charged straight at us.

To those who worked in the shadows of the Empire, the word beastification wasn’t anything surprising.

Until the Third Princess, Edel Ribenia, began to involve herself directly in Imperial administration, the Imperial Court had turned a blind eye to such practices.

No, rather than just turning a blind eye—at one point, they’d even encouraged it. That was how obsessed the Empire had been with the beastification of living beings.

In the early stages, they had experimented using non-human creatures, but not a single notable result came of it.

As the failures piled up, their impatience grew.

About a hundred years after the experiments began, their sense of ethics had already become severely eroded.

Led by the Bernhardt Family—who volunteered to “take responsibility” if anything went wrong—the Empire officially began human experimentation.

At first, they used only the worst kinds of criminals, those whose actions left no room for leniency.

But apparently, that wasn’t enough for Bernhardt. Eventually, they extended their experiments to slaves and vagrants—people with no chance of social mobility or protection.

Abattoir took charge of supplying those human test subjects to Bernhardt on a regular basis, and through that process, they rose dramatically in influence.

To the Abattoir executives, human beastification was seen as a high-risk, high-return type of technology—something to be used carefully.

But when word of this began to leak to the public… that was a completely different story.

“……”

Overlooking the battlefield where the fight had now begun, Maledic wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Thanks to his steel-like body and a secret technique that could nullify magic for a limited time, he had managed to defend himself so far—but the situation was still grim.

Evelin, who looked the most intact among the three, clutched her head and muttered in frustration,

“If I’d known it’d turn out like this, I should’ve brought more people. Damn it.”

“…Numbers wouldn’t have changed much. Unless all the executives came together, we’d still be in trouble.”

“Could it be that his incurable curse has been lifted? Otherwise…”

“I doubt it.”

“Then what, are you telling me that’s the movement of a human who can only use ten percent of his Mana Heart?”

Evelin glared at Eugene Carter, disbelief burning in her eyes.

“Now’s not the time to be impressed, Evelin.”

“W–Who said I was impressed?!”

Maledic pulled out the hidden weapons he had stored inside an artifact and began equipping them all over his body.

“If we don’t at least take them down with us, even the Captain will be affected.”

“…Your loyalty is really something else. You really think the Captain will even acknowledge that?”

“He won’t.”

“Then why—”

“If someone gives you grace, it’s only right to return it.”

Having finished his preparations, he stepped out from between the trees.

Watching the battle unfold from above made it even clearer how overwhelming the difference in power between them was.

‘…We wouldn’t have been able to break through on our own anyway.’

The Bernhardt Family’s beastification drug was the most advanced of its kind in the current era.

Its effectiveness was so great that it could turn even a dying old man into a beast of roughly C-rank level — and it worked regardless of the subject’s internal mana capacity.

Judging by the beasts they were currently facing, their strength was around B-rank. But their bloodlust and tenacity easily reached the level of A-rank beasts.

If these four had appeared in the territory of a lesser noble house, they would’ve reduced it to rubble.

And yet, even against such monsters, those three showed not a single opening.

“…No way.”

For a brief moment, Maledic wondered if all of this had been part of Bernhardt’s plan from the start.

If this mission had been assigned to them merely to test the effectiveness of the drug they’d developed—

The thought made him let out a dry chuckle.

‘So, we never really had a choice to begin with.’

If that was the case, there was no reason to hesitate any longer.

Clenching his teeth, he charged once more into the heart of the battlefield.

Tiiing! Ting!

The longer the battle went on, the more I was overwhelmed by a strange sensation.

It was as if time itself around me began to slow down.

A sensation completely unfamiliar to the me of this life—but Eugene Carter’s body accepted it as though it had experienced it countless times before.

After that, I lost myself completely, focusing only on the situation unfolding before my eyes.

Kwoooaang! Kwoooaang!

One of the beasts rammed its shoulder roughly into Rubia’s barrier, slamming its head over and over in an attempt to break through.

Apparently realizing that brute force alone wouldn’t work, two more beasts flanked us from both sides.

In response, Walter chose a far more effective counter than reinforcing the barrier.

“Thorns Vine!”

From between the dense trees, thick thorny vines sprang up, blocking their sight.

The two beasts trying to charge through screamed in pain as the hooked thorns pierced their bodies, rolling across the ground.

Watching the scene, I muttered to Walter quietly,

“…Looks like our guess was right after all.”

“Yeah.”

At first, I’d only felt a vague sense of wrongness and assumed they were just some unfamiliar humanoid-type beasts.

But as the fight continued, that feeling of wrongness hardened into certainty.

The way those beasts writhed in agony was proof enough.

Yeah.

Those things were once human.

And not long ago, at that.

“……”

No matter how bizarre or horrific an incident might be, nothing ever truly shocked the Mage Studies Hall.

Even the act of turning ordinary humans into beasts could be seen as part of the same twisted pattern.

But still—

Even if my head understood it, my heart clearly didn’t.

Something boiled up from deep inside me, spreading through every corner of my body.

The heat that surged within me crossed the threshold in an instant.

That emotion was rage.

“…You really are much more trash than I thought, aren’t you?”

Turning my killing intent toward the assassins who had been firing their hidden weapons at us from earlier, I lunged forward.

As the beasts staggered from their wounds and momentarily broke formation, I used the gap to instantly close the distance to the enemy’s front line.

Judging by the sudden increase in my speed, Rubia must’ve boosted me with support magic from behind.

‘She’s got excellent combat sense, that one.’

The enemy captain, who was facing me for the second time, hurriedly pulled out the round shield strapped to his back.

Creak, screeek!

He barely managed to block the first strike of my Illusion Swordsmanship.

But of course, there was no way he could defend against the second.

The downward slash was followed immediately by a thrust from a completely different trajectory, piercing clean through the gap between his abdomen and chest.

“Gaaaahhh!”

No matter how sturdy your defense is—if you’re already exhausted and take another hit in the same spot, you’re done for.

He twisted his body instinctively to avoid a full impalement, but the wound was fatal nonetheless.

Blood gushed out violently as the cut tore open far too wide.

Even then, he refused to give up and shot a poisoned needle from his mouth.

But to my eyes, that tiny dart moved painfully slow.

I caught the needle cleanly between my index and middle fingers.

Seeing that, the man shook his head, as if acknowledging that he couldn’t win.

That was his last movement.

I quietly watched as his consciousness faded and his body collapsed to the ground.

“Kh…!”

The female assassin, reading the situation ahead of time, barely managed to intercept him before he fell.

But I had no intention of showing them pity or mercy.

Landing lightly using a simple fall-breaking technique, I raised my sword again and aimed it at her.

“Who said you could leave?”

“……”

She stayed silent and quickly scanned her surroundings.

It seemed she was desperately looking for an escape route.

Not that it mattered—any attempt to run would still be within the palm of my hand.

And there was no need to give her time to act.

With that thought, I glanced briefly over my shoulder before charging at her.

Right then—

“No… There’s no need for that, Evelin.”

A weary voice reached my ear.

“……”

It was the man who had been the first to fall earlier under Lukezax’s slash.

He looked at his comrades with resolute eyes and spoke quietly.

“You’ll die here, Eugene Carter.”