I Thought Your Friend's Sibling Wasn't a Girl? - Chapter 30

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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 30
The people who should have appeared were not appearing. It was genuinely a danger signal.
This was a Practical Exam. If it was the students’ duty to approach it as though it were “reality,” then it followed that the Academy and the instructors bore the duty to protect those students from mortal threats within that constructed world.
Yet no one came. The other students, too, seemed to sense that something had gone wrong, their expressions darkening.
“……We’re all going to die.”
Gillion’s voice trembled with dread.
Olivia usually disliked pessimistic talk, but this once… she found herself wondering if perhaps he might be right.
“He’s already spouting ill-omened nonsense.”
“Can you still fight? They said those students need more time to recover their mana.”
“These scratches are nothing. I’m fine. But… hey, Olivia.”
The wounds they’d hastily treated while fleeing still bled through the bandages. Bennett tightened the wrappings a little more firmly, his tone deliberately casual as he spoke, affecting an ease he clearly didn’t feel.
“If—and I mean if—we were to die here, could we at least receive an Honorary Knight Title?”
Even as he spoke, Bennett’s arms trembled visibly.
“I have siblings and a mother at home. Would they at least receive some monthly stipend or something?”
“Bennett. Stop talking nonsense. Why would you die?”
Olivia rejected his words flatly. She swallowed the creeping dread, insisting firmly that it couldn’t be. And in truth, she was speaking as much to herself as to him.
“We won’t die. Did you forget what the instructor told us?”
“What did he say? He lectured us so much I can’t remember.”
At Bennett’s glib remark, Olivia let out a small, surprised laugh. The ability to make jokes even in a crisis was one of Bennett’s greatest strengths.
In any case, what surfaced in Olivia’s mind at that moment was a lesson Aiden had given them not long ago after pushing the students relentlessly through their paces.
“There will be times when you face danger. Dangers you can’t overcome alone. When that happens, there are only two things you can do.”
“What, sir?”
“Run, or endure.”
Aiden’s blue eyes had been extraordinarily deep as he said it.
“Choose a stubborn life over an honorable death.”
“But running doesn’t solve anything, does it, sir?”
“Does dying solve it, then? That’s cowardice. Your death only shifts the burden onto those around you.”
“But still……”
Just then, it was Olivia who cut off the student’s protest. Rather than argue the point, she asked something else.
“Then, sir—what should we do after we run?”
After running, after fleeing and leaving both the immediate threat and the danger itself behind in order to save one’s own life—what then?
At that question, Aiden had held Olivia’s gaze steadily for a long moment. Then he’d answered, very slowly, very deliberately.
“Wait for your comrades.”
“Sir?”
“Someone will surely have recognized the danger you’re in.”
“What if my comrades don’t come?”
“……No. They will. Which is why you must survive—so your comrade doesn’t have to carry your body back.”
He’d told them their comrades would come searching, and they must survive for that reason. It was only a lesson from that single moment, but that lesson had become counsel for Olivia now.
So they had run. Abandoning the path, driving deeper into the forest, fleeing as far as they could. But this was their limit. If they could run no further, there was only one thing left for them to do.
“We have to endure.”
“What?”
The situation spiraled further and further from their favor.
“Bennett. We have to endure.”
“Until when?”
“Until the instructor finds us.”
“……You believe he’ll come? I don’t sense anyone but us nearby right now.”
Olivia’s gaze turned toward the Magic School students sprawled behind them. The sight of them forcing Potions down their throats to recover their mana burned so vividly in her mind she felt she could never forget it.
The monsters looked ready to attack at any moment. Having chosen not to flee any further, Olivia’s only remaining choice was to survive and hold her ground until her comrades came searching for them.
Olivia clenched her jaw hard and answered.
“I believe it.”
Bennett said nothing, simply watching her for a moment, then nodded lightly.
Then, leaving the rest of the group behind them, he took position a short distance from Olivia.
“……They’re coming.”
The instant Bennett’s brief words ended, the monsters surged forward in a wave, as if they’d been waiting.
It was Aiden’s task to recognize Olivia’s peril and come to find her.
Then Olivia had to survive until he arrived. That was all she needed to do in this moment.
* * *
Olivia felt powerlessness for the first time.
Slash!
Screech!
Cut, cut, cut again—yet still the wave of monsters came without end. Despair washed over her at the sight of no terminus, while her own limits made themselves felt, and terror crept in alongside.
Yet she couldn’t lower her blade. Because she was alive, because she had to survive, and because…….
“Daisy. Stay with me!”
“Cough! Hack. Ugh……. Here’s a—Potion. Give it to Bennett and Olivia.”
“Mm… mmh……”
Because she had to protect them.
Why was she doing this? A question suddenly surfaced. What, in the end, was she fighting to protect them for, staking her own life?
Yet whenever such a question arose, a voice echoed back.
“Survive. Then your comrades will surely come looking for you.”
Aiden’s voice. And—
“Only those who have truly been protected understand how to truly protect others.”
The conversation with Eugene in the Consultation Room.
Olivia had always stood in the position of being protected. But how long must she remain in that place?
Could someone who abandons their comrades in a dangerous situation and hides away somewhere, praying only to save their own life, ever truly protect anyone?
Olivia was protecting her comrades now. And her comrades were protecting her in turn.
Olivia had no thought of abandoning this and slipping away alone.
Though the edge of her blade dulled as she moved in a State of Trance, she overcame it all through sheer desperation.
Without the support of the Magic School students drawing out their mana again and again, she surely would have fallen to the monsters long ago.
Olivia felled another monster. With a crack, she heard the Magic Stone embedded in it shatter.
‘Wait… the color……’
A red Magic Stone.
The Magic Stone she’d taken from Sirius was now appearing in the monsters attacking them indiscriminately.
Was all of this truly coincidence? What in the world was happening here? Olivia gritted her teeth and gripped her sword tighter.
Blood streamed ceaselessly from the wound on her arm and from her abdomen. A cut had opened on her cheek as well, and she felt sweat—or blood, she couldn’t tell which—dripping down beneath her jaw.
Her senses were both dull and unnaturally acute. The pain in her body and the atmosphere of this place seemed distant and blurred, yet the breathing and movements of distant things reached her with unbearable clarity.
That was why. She sensed immediately that something, the very atmosphere itself, had shifted.
“Wait… a second……”
“Gasp… hgh……”
Bennett, too, seemed to have reached his limit, barely able to stand. Olivia’s condition was little better.
Thump-thump, thud.
Was that the sound of her heart, or something approaching?
“M… mana……?”
Then, someone behind them murmured something. Their voice trembled so violently they could scarcely believe what they were seeing.

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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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