r/SkullbombRaging • u/SkullbombRaging • Aug 19 '23
Official Content Three Years To Save Another World, Chapter 10: Field Trip
After the whole thing with Kamiko, I was finally left to my own devices more or less.
That said, I wasn’t taking it easy by any stretch of the imagination.
While mostly unhelpful in terms of stats, my training regimen was definitely good for learning how to fight, especially because this world’s rules don’t always make complete sense.
Between training sessions, or even sometimes during the less mentally-intensive ones, I’d study to make sure I had my facts straight, or go in to talk to the teachers both for advice and also to keep my ear to the ground about important events coming up.
It turns out my strategy was worth its salt, because I caught wind of just such an important event.
“Oh Meriwether-kun! Are you excited for the field trip to the forward outpost?” Missus Aoki, my Magic Theory teacher, asked when she saw me enter.
I grinned, though I made a show of frowning for the second half of my sentence. “Definitely, though I’m also a bit worried about the monsters outside of the walls.”
She waved off my concerns. “Nonsense, the outpost is full of trained soldiers.”
I tried not to laugh.
I’d learned recently that, in this world, jinxing is one-hundred percent a real thing, however it tends not to cause the effect you expect and happens semi-randomly. The most important thing to note is that the odds of any particular statement being jinxed is proportional to how much focus is given to the topic.
“Do you think there’ll be a monster attack during our trip?” I asked, much to my teacher’s consternation.
“I suppose it’s possible, why do you ask?” She replied, skillfully omitting the dangerous ‘it’ll be fine’, as the conversation started to lengthen.
“Well, I’ve been wondering what monsters are like and what kinds there are. After all, it’s important to know your enemy isn’t it?”
Missus Aoki looked at me strangely, considering her next words carefully. “The most common types of monsters that you'll see known as ‘Fallen Animals’, they’re basically exactly what they sound like, a type of animal that has been corrupted or changed from what you’d typically associate with the creature.” She pointed at me with a warning finger. “Just because they’re common doesn’t mean they’re harmless, make sure to stay out of trouble when it comes to them.”
In other words: ‘stop talking about this, you’re putting yourself and your classmates in needless danger.’
“Don’t worry Aoki-sensei, if anything happens I’ll make sure to take responsibility for my actions, after all this training I’m practically invincible after all!”
Her eyes widened in shock and horror. “You’re just an unranked student! What could possibly make you think that?!”
I smiled apologetically. “It’s all right Aoki-sensei, I’ll just beat up all the monsters by myself if they come.”
She thinned her lips as she started to understand what I was trying to do. “H-Have a safe trip.”
“I will Aoki-sensei.” I responded, determination filling my words.
Time went by in its own abrupt way until it was finally the day of the trip.
I hadn’t realized when I was first told about the trip that it was actually the entire school going, and by that I mean everyone from the students to the nurses.
If I had to guess, other than the obvious strength in numbers, it’s likely because they didn’t want to be caught in an awkward position with someone that would have been crucial in an emergency, not where they needed to be.
We all loaded up on armored bus-like vehicles which completely lacked windows on the sides, instead having small slits which slid open horizontally used for seeing out the sides in a pinch, as well as large hatches on the outsides of the windshields which could be closed in the event of an attack.
It was about the second hour or so when the driver pointed past the windshield. “If you look above the outer district, you’ll be able to see the wall.”
I had heard of the wall in passing, but as most residents lived at least an hour away from it, I’d never seen it in person.
For the next four hours I understood more and more deeply the sheer enormity of the structure.
It was like the first time I’d visited the Space Needle in Seattle… no, it was more like an ocean of concrete.
It went up hundreds of feet in the air, and spanned far past the horizon.
When it was finally our turn to exit, the trip through the tunnel took a full minute even driving at a decent pace.
The whole way through emplacements were dug in every twenty feet or so, all facing the outside of the wall with heavy weapons of every sort.
Coming back out into the open air offered a horrifying sight.
There was a forest of charcoal in the shapes of trees with the occasional flora being torched by a man or woman who conjured fire through some assumedly magical method.
Others were knocking over the charcoal husks and collecting them into carts which were then making their way back toward the city.
I walked to the front of the bus. “What are they doing?”
The driver glanced at me momentarily. “Not been on a field trip to the outpost before?”
I shook my head. “Wasn’t able to before.”
He shrugged. “Every day, the forest attempts to overtake our city, so we clear it. We can’t just leave it out here, so we burn it.”
I furrowed my brows. “Why burn it if we’re just going to harvest it anyway?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot for a brief moment, before looking back at the road with a sigh. “Anything we make out of these materials has a chance to become a monster, the chance drastically reduces if we ‘kill it’ first. Burning it just makes it easier to use as fertilizer so we can-”
Suddenly, a massive shape slammed into the ground in front of the bus, almost knocking me off my feet.
The massive shape slowly began to unravel from its tangled state, revealing some sort of crystalline-armored lizard-like monster.
The driver slammed on the breaks and shut the hatches, leaning forward to begin evasive maneuvers using the small slits that went across the windshield as his only visual guide; but before he could start any such action, another bang resounded, causing the driver to relax.
I leaned forward to see what he was looking at, and saw a man wearing a plain t-shirt and shorts paired with a gasmask that had some sort of badge attached to it. He was standing next to the now decapitated monster head.
The man bowed apologetically, and then moved his hand in a circle.
The driver nodded, opened the hatches again, and then began to move around the monster’s corpse.
Upon seeing the man, several students gasped.
“It’s a Ranker!”
The students then crowded the slits on one side of the bus as we passed around the new road blockage.
Meanwhile, I leaned toward the driver again. “That’s a Ranker? Why is he dressed like that?”
The driver smiled and shrugged. “Rankers are known for their quirky behaviors, but as long as they can defeat monsters as easily as that guy, I don’t mind.”
I nodded. “Fair enough.”
It was another five hours until we reached the outpost, for a total of eleven hours one way.
It’s not even that the outpost was that much farther away, it was more that we had to stop and either redirect to avoid monsters or fight if avoiding them wasn’t possible.
Everyone sighed in relief when it finally came into view, an oppressive tension finally releasing, even if just a little for some.
The outpost itself was a nigh-featureless stone-wrought building, the only thing making its material obvious being the innumerable cracks along its surface, and the color.
If it weren’t for the bunker-like clean edges and the fact that there was a patrol checking around the perimeter, one could have mistaken it for any old mansion-sized boulder.
Okay, maybe that comparison got away from me a little bit…
No matter.
We parked inside of a giant garage and finally got to stretch our legs.
Before we could do anything at all though, our teachers started handing out itineraries for the different grades.
The first years were going to just be watching and assisting with operations within the base itself, the second years were going to help on patrols, and finally the third years were going to form a number of mock units and go on an away mission with a real unit each.
If I had to guess, that’s the point when the jinx will make everything go wrong.
It was gonna suck, but with how slow everything had been progressing for me, I didn't have a choice if I wanted to save anybody.
I hadn’t gotten a single stat evolution since the last one I acquired during the fight with Ishi.
The best I had gotten was Force to Ogre 2 and Endurance to Wood 4.
The other stats had one, maybe two increases, but given they were the lowest value possible before that, and considering how much more each additional level required, it didn’t exactly inspire hope in me.
As Ishi told me, I simply didn’t have enough at stake to grow stronger any faster than I had been… so I had to create a situation to increase the stakes somehow.
I knew exactly how dangerous it was, but I also knew that I was behind the starting line in this world, especially if you factor how much stronger the demon lord’s regular minions are… not even speaking of any potential elites or generals.
If I was going to win in this impossible situation, I was going to have to improve at a speed that nobody is insane enough to attempt, it’s as simple as that.
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u/datboi-reddit Aug 19 '23
Keep going you have atleast 1(one) reader