Be Angry, Leopin

Leopin did not fly into a rage.

Even as he was exposed to the schemes of those cruel, tyrannical men, he just kept running.

“I never liked marathons, but when you actually try running like this, it’s surprisingly fun.”

Saying things like that, he cut through the wind with a smile.

It was a truly refreshing sight—except behind him,

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!?!?”

The crushed-sounding screams never stopped.

The men were rolled along the ground, shrieking as they became coated head to toe in dust.

“S-stop, stop it! Stoooop! Please!”

“F-forgive us, Leopin-kuuun! N-no, Leopin-samaaa!”

“At this rate we’re gonna die! We’re gonna dieee!”

With real earplugs in, Leopin couldn’t hear them.

And the rope linking them had a “weight negation” effect, so no matter how violently they were dragged around, Leopin didn’t feel it.

The men braced themselves like dogs refusing to go home from a walk, or clawed at the ground like cats refusing to go to the vet.

But all of it was meaningless against Leopin’s stallion-like sprint.

Leopin ran on, having completely forgotten he was hauling classmates behind him like dried persimmons.

He crossed jagged badlands like a rasp, leapt over one stream after another, left footprints in sand, and lightly hopped across stepping stones in a marsh.

Then, after entering an unfamiliar forest, he finally felt a slight resistance at his waist.

Only then did Leopin slow down and look back.

When I finally looked behind me after hours, my heart jolted.

Because the scene was pure horror.

Nickbacca-san and the male students had turned into mud dolls.

They were stretching their hands out like they were trying to drag someone into a bog.

If one body hadn’t gotten accidentally wedged between trees, I never would have noticed.

As I removed my earplugs, I squatted beside the person who looked like a lump of mud.

“Are you okay, Nickbacca-san!?”

Nickbacca-san wheezed out his words.

“Ugh… ugh… m-meat… The Hell Marathon…

We’ll… end it… here…”

“Huh? But weren’t we supposed to keep going until the last person goes down…? I can still run just fine.”

Nickbacca-san flinched in terror.

As if I’d said an unspeakable word, he covered his face and burst into tears.

“U-ugh… n-niku…! D-don’t run…! P-please, stop running…!”

I felt like a marathon runner who’d just been told he had a fatal illness and would shorten his life if he kept running.

But if he was begging me that much, I couldn’t exactly keep going.

I removed the rope around my waist and tried to pull the mud dolls up by their hands—

But they immediately collapsed with a wet thud, like newborn fawns.

It seemed they had seriously injured their legs and lower backs.

The male students stayed sprawled on the ground, sobbing as they spoke.

“U… ugh…! Ugh…! I-if it were supposed to… supposed to… H-he should be the one like this…! Ugh!”

“Hic… sniff… Why… why are we the ones…!”

“Ugh… waaahhhhh!”

In the end, they all started crying, and I had no idea what to do.

“Uh… okay, then I’ll go for a quick run and call for help.”

But the mud dolls immediately clung to my legs, yelling, “Don’t go!”

“You’re planning to leave us and go back alone, aren’t you!?”

“That’s cruel! This happened because of you, Leopin!”

“Take responsibility! Get us home in one piece!”

“Yeah, yeah! If you don’t, we’ll tell the vice principal!”

United, the mud dolls piled the blame onto me.

I considered abandoning them and going home, but then something occurred to me.

“Right—the distress flare… If I use that, I can call for help.”

As I tried to reach into my pocket, I realized I wasn’t wearing my coat.

“Crap. My distress flare is with my coat—I left it behind.”

I asked everyone.

“Hey, does anyone have a distress flare?”

But the mud doll students shook their heads.

“No way. We’re in gym clothes.”

Then the big mud doll raised his hand.

“Niku! In that case, I have one!”

Nickbacca-san rummaged through his tracksuit pocket and pulled out a grimy red tube.

“My arm got hurt because of you, celebrity boy, so I can’t raise it. Take responsibility and launch it yourself.”

The wording annoyed me, but I obediently took the distress flare.

“Sigh, fine. There are trees overhead here and it might get caught, so I’ll launch it outside the forest.”

I moved away from the mud dolls and headed out of the forest.

I raised the red tube toward the dusk-darkening sky.

But then, a certain thing the vice principal had said flashed through my mind.

“For the record, launching someone else’s distress flare to lower their rank is pointless. To prevent cheating, the magic device checks not only the name in the fireworks, but also the appearance of the person who launched it. Only if it’s judged not to be a prank will help come. Also, the rescue team’s size and response speed depend on the rank of the student who launched it. If you want help quickly, use a high-ranked student’s distress flare.”

“Wait… if I, a Special Training Class student, launch it… won’t help just not come…?”

I muttered that and was about to return, when I saw the mud doll group sitting in a circle deep in the forest, whispering.

They kept glancing over at me.

Suspicious, I activated Jack-of-All-Trades’ Dexterous Body skill.

I boosted my Five Senses stat to sharpen my hearing and listened in.

“Nickbacca-san, you were really planning to drag that trash around until he was half-dead and then abandon him in this forest, right?”

“Niku! That was the plan. Once you get this deep, the Repulsion spell doesn’t reach at all.
And at night, monsters swarm out here.”

“Got it—so that’s why you picked a fight and made him take off his coat, since it probably had gear in it!”

“Niku! Exactly.And when we abandon him, we hand him only that distress flare and say goodbye…”

“Then it’s either monsters kill him or he quits the academy—two choices, right!?”

“Hyah! Either way, it’s hell for that trash!”

“Niku! The plan changed a bit, but now it’s certain he’ll quit this academy! Nikukukukukuku!”

Thinking, No way…, I switched to the Appraiser job.

Then I used the Appraisal skill on the red tube in my hand.

“So that’s what this was…!”

Everything clicked.

If I launched this, help would definitely come.

And then they’d use the message as leverage to pressure me into withdrawing voluntarily.

Once I thought it through, a hollow feeling settled over me.

“…Maybe I really can just leave them here and go home. After all that, I don’t owe them anything. But… I also don’t want them to die…”

After thinking for a while, a bright idea suddenly struck me.

“I never thought this would come in handy here…!”

Using Trick Firework Creation, I casually tweaked the gunpowder mixture inside the distress flare.

Then I returned to the mud dolls and tossed the red tube back to the mud-doll boss.

“I rewrote the distress flare’s name to Nickbacca-san. All right, I’m out.”

I raised a hand with a quick, crisp motion—

And jogged off again toward the outside of the forest.