I Thought Your Friend's Sibling Wasn't a Girl? - Chapter 23

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 23
* * *
Olivia was a good friend who listened very well to what others had to say. Truly, she was.
“What? What is this? Isn’t this a hint about the Final Practical Training location?”
“Where? Hold on, Gilleon. Don’t touch that. That—”
“It’s definitely a hint! The moment I touch it, it just gets pulled out… Wait, huh?”
“Run! Get away!”
When Gilleon carelessly triggered a trap—as if he’d abandoned all the teachings about suspecting everything you see in a place like this and never recklessly touching unfamiliar things—the team members found themselves doing jumping jacks that weren’t in their fate.
“Hold on. Sirius, what about your pack?”
“My pack? What pack?”
“Your backpack.”
“Oh, that should be on my back— Wait, where is it?”
“Um, it looks like it’s over there.”
“Where?”
“Inside… inside the monster’s mouth.”
And when Sirius lost the shared supplies he’d been carrying during a brief standoff with the creature.
“Olivia. Fall back!”
“Ahhhhh! Please just leave Olivia alone!”
“I’ll handle this side!”
“Get out of the way, I said get out! Olivia, please, please just do something about these things!”
Even when the hapless pair of brothers never stopped making a fuss during every single fight, efficiently obstructing Olivia’s movements, she exerted herself to the limit to avoid actually incapacitating her team members.
And when the Defensor suddenly stopped obeying her commands on top of everything else, Olivia had no choice but to borrow a sword that Bennett had brought as a backup.
Olivia endured. She endured and endured again. She kept telling herself she could break them if she wanted to, but that time wasn’t now.
But there was always a limit to human patience. If her patience had been limitless, Olivia would have already reached adulthood by now and been revered across generations in the Temple.
Olivia’s patience snapped when her team encountered the third pack of monsters after entering the Field.
More precisely, at the moment Gilleon, who’d been tasked with covering the rear, abandoned his post and rashly charged forward out of greed.
“Olivia, move aside! I’ll handle this one!”
“…Gilleon? I distinctly told you to cover the rear. Where’s Daisy?”
“Kyaaahhh!”
“Daisy!”
At the cry that burst out, Olivia spun around in panic. The sight that met her eyes was horrific.
A massive wolf-type monster, a Bearwolf, was rushing at Daisy with its jaws wide open, drool dripping from its fangs.
There was no time to think. Her body moved first. Olivia blocked the Bearwolf charging at her with one arm while drawing the Defensor and hurling it with her other hand.
Her palm burned with a searing heat, and the violent twist of her body sent a sharp pain through her shoulder.
Unable to block it completely, the Bearwolf’s claws raked a long gash across Olivia’s forearm.
“Olivia!”
Even as Bennett rushed in to handle the monster, Olivia’s gaze remained fixed on Daisy and the Bearwolf before her.
The Bearwolf with its jaws wide open as if ready to swallow Daisy whole, and the Defensor flying through the air toward it. Olivia kept praying, desperately praying, that she hadn’t been too late.
Fate was decided in a single heartbeat.
Just before the Bearwolf’s jaws clamped shut, the Defensor pierced through its open maw.
Screeeeech!
“Good, that’s done! Wait, hold on. Olivia. Are you alright?”
“Bennett. Cover this position. I’m going over there.”
“You, your wound is too se—”
“Now!”
Bennett stared at Olivia’s bleeding arm, then bit his lip hard.
His face was thick with frustration, but seeing no alternative, he nodded grimly and seized Gilleon by the scruff of the neck.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let a single one through on that side.”
“One or two is fine. It’s not that bad of an injury.”
Yet even as she spoke, her arm was trembling with shock. Olivia gripped it with her other hand to stabilize it, then rushed toward the rear.
Fortunately, the fighting was winding down, so there weren’t many Bearwolves left targeting this position.
“Hah, ha… ugh, uh—”
“Daisy, are you alright?”
“I’m, I’m fine. I’m fine—”
Daisy was gripping the emergency short sword with both hands, holding it up before her. Her hands shook violently.
“Daisy. I’ll cover for you, so steady yourself.”
“O, Olivia—”
“Can you keep fighting?”
Her face streaked with tears, Daisy nodded.
“Then just cover from behind. I’ll handle the rest.”
Arooooh!
The moment those words left her mouth, the Bearwolves attacked as if they’d been waiting—
“B, be careful, Olivia!”
Olivia raised her blade once more.
* * *
The battle was over.
Despite it being only the first day of the exercise, she felt far too much had happened.
No, this was no illusion. Olivia had endured and endured so very much up until now.
Olivia’s plan had been simple: to wait until Sirius or Gilleon made “appropriate mistakes” so she could break their spirit.
But risking a team member’s life was never part of that arrangement.
Even knowing this was practice, and knowing that if Daisy had truly been in mortal danger, the assigned instructor watching them from somewhere here would have intervened… Olivia couldn’t suppress the anger boiling up inside her.
Was this overprotectiveness? A hypersensitive reaction from personal experience?
But what was she supposed to do about it?
Practice training simulates real combat. Even if this Field was under the Academy’s supervision, a kind of “training ground,” the students participating in this exercise had to treat it as real battle, as reality.
That was the entire point of the training.
“Olivia, you, you need medical treatment!”
“Wait.”
“Your wound is too serious—”
But could mere pride or ambition really justify putting a teammate in danger? Were such trivial things worth the price of a comrade’s life?
Olivia didn’t think so. And that was precisely why her fury burned hotter.
“I have something to do first.”
Olivia retrieved the Defensor and gripped it firmly in her hand again. The hilt still radiated a searing warmth against her palm, but she didn’t care.
Screeeee—click.
Where moments before had raged a fierce and deafening battle, now there was absolute silence. Only the sound of Olivia’s blade dragging across the dark ground cut through the quiet.
Drops of blood trickled down her arm, beading against the black earth below.
Screee—thud.
“O, Olivia—”
Screeee—thud.
“Olivia, p, please listen to me. I thought the situation in the rear was completely finished— Ugh.”
“Shut your mouth.”
Olivia had believed she’d met a fair cross-section of humanity.
But now she knew the truth. She was nothing but a frog in a well.
I’ve been living as if the world were a flower garden, she thought. The world held far too many irresponsible people.
She’d forgotten that during her time at the Knight Academy. Only now did reality come into focus.
“Gilleon, if we had truly been on a real monster subjugation, you’d be arrested right here. Do you understand? You nearly got a teammate killed with your careless judgment and selfish greed.”
“Gugh, l, let this go—”
“All your stupid talk, all your useless interference with our strategy, constantly stepping in when you can’t even defend properly, let alone provide support… I’ve tolerated it all until now.”
“But, what—”
“Then you should never have crossed the line.”
No one dared speak.
Olivia’s face held nothing but cold contempt. Her words came out like blades, and her eyes held not a trace of warmth as they fixed on Gilleon.
But it wasn’t her expression or aura that silenced them.
“How could you throw a teammate’s life away like that? And here I am, still holding it together—”
Her forearm was split open, weeping blood, and her hand had turned a vivid crimson as if burned, the flesh already blistering.
Though her hand gripping the sword hid it halfway, her palm glowed such a fiery red that the heat radiating from it was visible to all.
A gaze fixed on only one person, as if immune to the searing pain she must be feeling. That alone was what truly silenced them.
“This is your final warning.”
Olivia left a chilling caution in her ice-cold eyes.
“Stop playing games now. Understood?”
Gilleon could do nothing but nod stiffly, offering no reply.
* * *
And, at a distance from them.
“Aiden, stay calm.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you’re an instructor…”
A man dressed in dark clothes, concealing himself among the trees, stared down at the scene with something close to panic in his eyes.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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