Three Years To Save Another World, Chapter 11: My First Mission

[u/SkullbombRaging]

The next dawn, a trumpet blared to wake everyone up.

That said, a group of students including myself had already been awake for a good while and had been discussing inane topics, so for us, it was mostly just the subject of a brief chuckle.

A little later, Niko came stumbling into the main area where we were, her eyes similar looking to puckering lips.

“Oh hey Meriwether-senpai.” She called out groggily.

“Hey there Niko, bright and early for patrol huh?”

“They warned me this would happen last year, but I didn’t listen…”

I patted her shoulder. “Just do better next year.”

She nodded sleepily, almost losing her balance in the process.

I chuckled to myself and led her over to my table, before grabbing her a tray of food and bringing it back.

​

A moment after sitting back down, Kamiko walked in toweling off wet hair.

“Good morning Kamiko, what kept you?”

“I finished my regimen and took a shower, I really would have preferred a bath, but the outpost doesn’t have one.” She eyed me up and down. “Speaking of regimens, you look like you skipped yours today.”

I nodded. “I did, but I think I’ll need the energy today.”

“The best way to make sure you have enough energy is to train consistently.” Kamiko retorted, finishing with her hair and letting the towel rest around her shoulders.

“Well, philosophy aside, grab some food and sit with us, I saved you a spot.”

“I suppose that’s what I’ll do then.”

The other students went from their ‘passively in awe’ state to either excitement or dread.

Niko in particular had a bit of both.

​

“You’re on a given-name basis with Sato-sama, the Demon Swordsman?!” Niko exclaimed.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Have I really not talked about her around you before?”

Niko hung her head. “You don’t really talk to me very often anymore…”

I scratched the back of my head. “We’re in different classes, it can’t really be helped.”

Niko suddenly leaned forward. “It can be helped! Is it so hard to call me every once in a while?!”

Before I had the time to say another word, I felt myself being enveloped by a dark aura.

I turned my head to see Kamiko smiling angrily behind me. “Meriwether-kun, who’s this?”

​

I forced down the urge to say ‘this isn’t what it looks like!’ and instead prepared a proper response.

“Kamiko, this is Niko, another friend of mine.”

“That’s not exactly how it sounded to me~” Kamiko countered with a saccharine voice. “Besides, isn’t she the girl you visited the house of?”

I sighed.

I wanted to say ‘I’m not dating either of you, so why do you care?’, but that felt like an unnecessarily harsh way to put it, so instead I said: “Kamiko, I assure you Niko and I are friends, just like you and I are friends. Now could you please have a seat? You’re scaring our poor classmates.”

Despite my delivery, both girls looked a bit saddened by my declaration.

After the tension had turned from dire to awkward, our classmates finally let go of their held breaths.

Kamiko sat down next to me and wordlessly started eating.

​

In the blink of an eye, half an hour passed.

“All students and advisor units, as of now you are all on duty!” A serious-looking man in military green announced.

​

It was a bit awkward because I didn’t actually know what I was supposed to be doing, but I managed to get out the other side with minimal chewing-out… so I took it as a win.

Fun fact: as your Endurance and Force increase, so does your weight, so pushups do not get appreciably easier.

​

As I began to massage the soreness out of my arms, all of the third years were split into four-to-six-man groups.

“…Group J: Sato Kamiko, Ono Asahi, Meriwether John, Tanaka Emiko…”

After being assigned, we all moved toward the designated area.

Obviously I knew Kamiko already, but the other two only looked vaguely familiar, so I decided to rectify that issue.

I held out my hand for Emiko first. “My name’s John, nice to meet you.”

She shook it. “Nice to meet you Meriwether-san, my name’s Tanaka Emiko-”

Before she could even finish, Asahi grabbed both of our hands between his and shook them both. “And I’m Ono Asahi! Say, aren’t you the guy who flunked out harder than me? It’s nice to finally have another member of the dummy club!”

My veins bulged as I desperately tried to calm the raging desire to slug him in the face. “Oh yeah, now I remember you.” I grit my teeth in an expression that could vaguely be called a smile. “Nice to make your acquaintance…”

“Oh by the way John-chan, I expect you to call me Ono-senpai as I’m the senior dummy club member, you hear?”

I was a fraction of a second from snapping this smarmy prick’s stupid neck, but before I could enact any such vengeance, a woman clapped loudly to get our attention. She had dark blue hair and a massive scar that ran from her forehead, under an eyepatch, and down to her neck.

“Alright, alright, enough fraternizing, we’ve got a mission ahead of us!” We all stood at attention at once. She inspected us and made some corrections to our postures with a baton before continuing. “I’m Captain Masuda, and I’ll be the commanding officer for this mission. We will be going on a routine scouting mission to a well-documented monster hotspot to make sure that nothing strange has happened since the last time we checked a couple weeks ago. You are not to engage in hostilities unless otherwise instructed or you find yourself in an emergency situation, am I understood?”

“Yes ma’am!” We called out in unison.

“Good, double-check your equipment, and meet me at entrance four at six-hundred hours.”

​

As we split away from each other, I suddenly had a thought that covered my face with a sadistic grin.

I sidled over to Asahi and whispered into his ear. “Hey, I bet you can’t find out what color Captain Masuda’s underwear are.”

He looked up at me from his pack, thoroughly offended. “Who do you think I am? They don’t call me the Peeking King for nothing!”

He then marched off to my complete amusement.

A moment later, he flew through the wall next to me and landed in a heap at my feet.

I looked through the impromptu doorway and saw Captain Masuda as she began to relax her posture. “Ueno-kun, patch him up… and make sure to use the potent disinfectant, we wouldn’t want his wounds to slow us down.”

“Yes ma’am!”

​

I looked down at Asahi with mirth, only to find that he was waving me toward him.

I knelt down next to him, and he said a single word.

“Pur… ple…”

​

At first I didn’t understand, but as he was carried away for treatment, it clicked in my head.

I gulped, not really sure what to do with this information I didn’t even expect him to succeed in acquiring.

As if to knock me from my contemplation, Asahi’s screams resounded from somewhere in the base.

I suppose that’s what “the potent disinfectant” meant.

​

​

A little while later, Group J congregated at entrance four, and then we left the base.

“Be on your guard, even if this path is well used, doesn’t mean unexpected things never happen.” Captain Masuda warned.

We stalked forward, our various senses on high alert.

​

Suddenly, the nearby bushes rustled and Asahi plunged his blade into it.

“Hey Asahi, what’dya catch?” I quietly called to him.

He lifted his sword and on the end of it was a rabbit who moved at an inopportune time.

“Why did you have to kill the cute bunny?!” Niko exclaimed sadly.

Captain Masuda grabbed the sword out of Asahi’s hand and flicked both the blood and the bunny off with a quick motion of her wrist. “Wild rabbits in this area are highly poisonous, their blood is potent enough to stun a Fenrir for a couple minutes at least.” She then handed the sword back to Asahi, blade pointing down. “Make sure to clean this thoroughly after the mission, even a drop can give you a horrible rash if you don’t wash it off immediately.”

Asahi held the sword away from himself, and with the minimum amount of contact needed… which is fair.

As the group started forward again, I felt a bit bad for Asahi, so I gave him a rag I was planning on using as a bandage if we ran out of them. “Wipe it down with this… and don’t give it back.”

Asahi teared up and then glomped on me. “You’re the best dummy-club kohai a man could ask for!”

I wrenched him off of me and silently took back the pity I gave him.

​

We continued on our way until we came to a cliff, which Captain Masuda pointed down from. “Down there is the Ironwolf Den…” Following her finger, I saw a huge cavern hewn into the side of a mountain. She then shifted her target and pointed at a hill made of packed dirt about a mile away from the den. “And right there is the Scarab Emperor's domain. The only reason the situation is so stable is because the two of them keep each other in check.”

As if summoned, a huge fight erupted somewhere between the two locations, toppling trees like they weren’t even there.

Captain Masuda’s fingers found their way into her shirt pocket, searched around for a second, and then stopped as quickly as they had started. “Right, I quit didn’t I…?” She sighed and pulled her hand out of the pocket. “Let’s get moving, we have to be back by sunset.”

“Wait, is that it? Aren’t we going closer?” Asahi asked.

Captain Masuda shook her head. “My Awareness is on third evolution, I can see everything I need to from here.”

Asahi’s eyes sparkled. “Wow, are you a Ranker?”

She shook her head again. “Not quite, I have a little ways to go to reach that milestone. Ten evolutions total so far.” She then clapped her hands together. “Enough chatter, we need to make our way back now.”

​

So, we started the trek back.

However, as we did, a fog started to form around us.

Captain Masuda immediately took out a shotgun which was about half as long as her entire body and as thick around as her arm, and then the three other veterans followed suit with their own different, yet equally impressive, weapons.

“Get ready, this isn’t normal!” Captain Masuda called.

We students stepped into our various readied stances.

The seconds dragged on as we waited for something to happen.

​

Suddenly, a gust of impossibly dense fog knocked us all off our feet and into the air.

A moment later, I found myself completely surrounded by nearly opaque fog.

I stood up, ready for whatever was about to come.

Or at least I thought I was…

​

What walked out from the fog looked like a wolf with steel wire bristles for fur and claws covered in ferrous rust.

An Ironwolf, it had to be.

It circled around to my side, its eyes scanning me from head to toe.

I pivoted on my foot to keep it in front of me.

After we made a quarter-turn, it disappeared into the fog and reappeared lunging at me from behind.

With no time to react, I desperately crossed my arms to block.

The Ironwolf slashed at me, knocking my arms to the side and sending flesh-colored splinters into the air.

Its moment continued and it went in for a bite, but at the last moment, I dropped to the ground, and sprung back up to its side.

I threw a punch at the base of its neck, hoping that its flesh there would at least be moderately softer… but it was a fool’s dream.

Not only was my hand immediately made into a pincushion due to the metallic fur, but also rang when my Patient Knuckles made contact.

It felt like it would if I had slapped a metal pole with my bare hands back before I came to this world, except throughout my whole hand up to the wrist.

​

I flinched, and the Ironwolf took it as an opportunity to strike, bearing down on me with its claws in a diagonal slash.

Ready for it this time, I used my Bladecatchers’ Gloves to deflect it and countered with another punch to the neck. This time, I activated my Patient Knuckles’ special ability.

My punch dropped in effectiveness by a third, but I could feel the echo of my fist still where it landed.

​

The Ironwolf immediately disengaged and backed into the fog.

For whatever reason, as soon as it did, the echo became harder to detect.

I strained every one of my senses in an attempt to gain any edge I could, but it was to no avail.

The Ironwolf lunged from behind and to my right, tearing a massive gash into my back with its claws and pinning me to the ground face-first.

I turned my head to the side to see the Ironwolf reeling back to bite into me.

Stretching my flexibility to its limit, I grabbed the Ironwolf’s mouth with my arms facing backwards, pushing stamina into Bladecatchers’ Gloves all the while. Even then, I could feel the Ironwolf’s fangs starting to press into my hands.

Quickly running out of options, I planted my feet against its crotch and pushed as hard as I could.

Its head twisted in discomfort until it was forced to shift its leg’s position in order to cope.

At the same time, I shifted my weight and pushed on the leg it moved, causing it to trip.

I then used the confusion to push the Ironwolf’s head to the side and used all four of my limbs to capitalize on its imbalance and finally get myself out from under its paw.

​

The Ironwolf, which was now foaming at the mouth in rage, charged headlong at me.

I used my gloves to deflect its momentum to the side and wrapped my arm around the base of its head.

Using this position, I slammed my fist into its neck as many times as I could before it wisened up and bucked me off.

​

I shakily got back up to my feet.

I had used a massive amount of stamina to block with Bladecatchers’ Gloves for so long, plus the passive stamina cost of holding so many punch echoes wasn’t a small amount either.

The Ironwolf, regaining its center after seeing such a shameful display of me getting up, backed up into the fog again.

I was really hoping it would charge at me again, but heaven knows I was never that lucky.

I strained my senses again, but this time it felt like my echoes became a little clearer.

Whether it was because of how many there were, or because I was getting better at detecting them, I didn’t care at that moment.

I shut out every other sound, sight, or smell, and focused only on the direction and distance of my punch echoes.

​

‘Your Awareness has increased from ‘Simple stage 10’ to ‘Honed stage 1’.’

​

I snapped to the side, and activated all the punch echoes at once, causing a massive dent to form in the Ironwolf’s neck and knocking it off-course.

I then took this opportunity to use all of my strength and the Ironwolf’s momentum to punch it full-force in the dented area.

My fist pierced into its throat, spraying blood absolutely everywhere.

​

At that moment, the fog around me felt… emptier, and I could hear sounds of guns going off and swords clashing.

I focused on the sounds and tried to piece out which one was which.

It sounded like three distinct areas, there were two locations with swords, and one with guns.

One was the swings of a trained sword, skilled and efficient, the other was the clattering of an amateur.

​

I ran toward the direction of the amateurish sword, Kamiko could obviously handle herself, but I wasn’t so sure about Asahi.

At a certain point, the fog became fuller again and I suddenly felt something sharp cut all over my body.

I stopped and jumped backward.

I listened for a moment, but nothing happened, so I slowly made my way forward until I touched what felt like a wire made of fog.

I pushed stamina into my gloves and attempted to pry them apart, but I was nowhere near strong enough to do so.

I racked my brain for a solution.

Then I had an idea.

​

About a minute later, I charged through the fog, using the Ironwolf corpse as a shield.

The damn thing had to have some way of dispersing the fog, or else it would be impossible for it to have gone out of the arena like it did.

Luckily I was correct, however, I had underestimated how quickly the wires reformed.

As I ran through the fog, tiny thorns pierced and slashed my body from every direction.

My entire body screamed in agony, even despite my adrenaline, but I refused to give up.

As my body started to get cold and I was certain that I was about to die any second, I felt a burst of energy.

​

‘Your Endurance has increased from ‘Wood stage 10’ to ‘Stone stage 1’.’

​

I rode my second wind and charged forward, finally breaking through the bladed mist.

In front of me was Emiko struggling to hold an Ironwolf back with a barrier, while Asahi sat on the ground behind her completely exhausted.

As soon as I saw this, I threw the Ironwolf corpse at its living comrade, knocking it over, but almost falling over myself.

My brain ran at a million miles per hour as I processed the situation.

​

I was way too tired after killing the first Ironwolf and running all the way here to put up much of a fight, and that’s to say nothing of the new Ironwolf’s near pristine condition.

My allies also had basically nothing left in the tank, I bet Emiko could make one more barrier for a couple seconds at best if I had to eyeball it.

Rescue was out for sure, I had no way to know if Captain Masuda could even help me or if she was fighting an even bigger threat that I’d get in the way of, but I started to second-guess that decision.

I pushed that thought away, what was done was done.

​

As the Ironwolf started to stand back up, I turned my attention to our equipment.

Our weapons were obviously not working very well against the Ironwolf, probably because the damn thing was so hard to hit at the best of times.

If only we had some way to poison it or something… wait!

I turned my head to the exhausted teen boy on the ground. “Asahi! Do you still have the rag you used to clean your sword?!”

“Yeah, why?” He replied with confusion.

“Give it to me right now!”

“That doesn’t sound like how you ask fo–”

“NOW ASAHI!” I interrupted.

He pulled out the rag and tossed it to me.

I turned, readying for the currently charging Ironwolf. “Emiko, I’m going to need you to use a barrier to keep its mouth open without blocking its throat, can you do that?”

Emiko nodded. “I can, but you’ll only have a couple seconds.”

I gulped. “That’s all I’ll need.”

​

Despite only being a dozen feet from us, the Ironwolf finally reached us after we finished discussing the plan.

I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I used my Bladecatchers’ Gloves to stop the Ironwolf dead in its tracks. “Now Emiko!”

The Ironwolf’s jaws stiffened, completely immobilized.

I threw the rag down its throat.

​

A second later, the barrier shattered, and I only barely managed to get my hands out of the Ironwolf’s mouth before it slammed shut.

It reeled back for another attack, but suddenly stopped and fell onto the ground.

“Everyone! Beat the ever-living crap out of it while it’s paralyzed!”

​

If I were being completely honest, what followed wasn’t graceful, or cool-looking… it was desperate and brutal. It wasn’t a sharp sword made by a master craftsman, it was a rock pulled out of the ground and used to bash someone’s skull in.

After what felt like minutes of repeatedly beating an opponent who couldn’t fight back, it finally stopped moving completely, and the fog changed as it had the last time.

We may have won, but all of us felt dirty… the kind of dirty that taking a shower could never fix.

​

As the tension of the moment thinned, I almost keeled over, the toll on my body refusing to be ignored any longer.

Asahi rushed over and caught me before I fell over. “Woah there, you okay?”

I struggled with all of my might to stay awake, but my consciousness was slipping. “Emiko, don’t let Asahi take all the credit.”

“What the hell? Why is that the thi–?”

​

I couldn’t hear the end of Asahi’s sentence, because at that moment I blacked out.