Chapter 106 - Midterms [10]
[Congratulations student rank 1550, Ren Dover —Time taken to complete dungeon 01H : 46M : 08S]
Exiting the dungeon, I soon heard the speaker on the side of the dungeon announce my result.
Glancing at the time, my mouth couldn't help but twitch.
To be honest, that was a lot faster than I had expected. Moreover, there was one teeny tiny problem regarding my score...
...and it was that I walked throughout the whole way out.
Yeah, I walked.
I never increased my pace once. My path was so unobstructed and unexciting that all I did was really just take a stroll.
I normally wouldn't have complained, but well...it just was so anticlimactic that I was at a loss for words.
...I guess not being Kevin really did make a difference. No unexpected events happened. I guess I was so used to things always happening to me that I had completely forgotten that I wasn't the protagonist.
Trouble wouldn't come knocking at my door unless I looked for it, unlike Kevin who was the opposite. He had trouble looking for him.
With regards to my timing, the only time I wasted was probably when I was 'educating' Arnold, but that barely took like 10 minutes.
As I got out of the dungeon, even though I probably scored amongst the highest of the first years, no one was paying attention to me.
Why?
"Quick get the healers!"
"Call for all <D> ranked members we can get, we've got a horde of goblins inside of the <D> ranked level!"
"We've received reports regarding multiple supervising students that are barely holding on"
...yeah.
Sort of forgot that was supposed to happen.
Somehow, I felt a bond akin to camaraderie towards the student that had triggered the goblin horde.
I too understood how it felt to be under the constant attacks of multiple enraged goblins at once...if I had to be honest, wasn't the greatest experience.
Glancing at the chaos that was ensuing, I shook my head and headed back to my dorm.
Since my score had been recorded by the school system, there was no need for me to stay behind. Moreover, I had a far more pressing issue at hand.
It was finally time I started planning for my future company...
...
A couple of hours after the goblin incident, Donna's office space.
"Haaaa..."
Having just come back from sorting out an incident that had just happened during the examination for the first years, Donna was exhausted.
"...who knew goblins had such a quirk"
Sitting on a large leather chair, in front of a large desk where multiple monitors were set up, Donna sighed.
*Sigh*
She had just come back from an hour-long meeting with the other faculty professors regarding a certain incident that happened in the <D> ranked difficulty dungeon.
A mass goblin horde of enraged goblins.
...In the end, after checking the body cams of the dungeon supervisors. They were able to find out two things.
One, what triggered the mass goblin horde, and two...the fact that the [Blood supremacy] faction had targeted Kevin.
In the end, although Donna wanted to do something with regards to the interference of the [Blood supremacy] faction, she couldn't do anything as there wasn't enough evidence.
At the end of the day, it was the student's word against theirs.
Unless they had concrete proof detailing their plan, the school board wouldn't move. Especially since the [Blood supremacy] group consisted of many powerful individuals.
Altough Kevin was important to them, as long as his life wasn't threatened, the academy wouldn't antagonize such a large faction.
"Dammit!"
...Just recalling the triumphant smirk Gilbert had on his face during the meeting, irked Donna to no end.
She was so close to sending him straight to the hospital.
But out of sheer willpower, she managed to hold back. More so because she remembered who his father was.
*Sigh*
Sighing once again, Donna turned on her laptop and replayed some of the camera footage she got from the supervising students inside of the dungeon.
Soon, a series of battles that were caught from the webcams of the second and third years in the dungeon trial was being played in front of the monitor before her.
The first footage she got was regarding Kevin.
Kevin's swordsmanship was just like what she had first seen back in the enrolment test.
Beautiful.
His every sword strike was light as a feather. However, beneath those gentle sword strikes laid a heavy destructive power that connected fluidly with his next move. Every time he hacked with his sword, the strike would appear and disappear constantly. Seemingly like a mirage.
Unless you were an expert in judging the mana flow in the air, his attack pattern would be completely unknown...making it especially hard to fight against.
Aside from that, whenever he fought without using his sword art, each of his movements was natural like flowing water. His swordsmanship was so well polished and sharpened that it seemed more suitable to call it a performance rather than swordsmanship.
It was evident that he had put blood sweat and tears in getting to where he was now.
...He wasn't ranked one for nothing. He was both talented and hardworking. The perfect student in Donna's book.
Next was Jin. His attacks with the daggers were truly domineering and vicious. He stabbed directly at his opponent's heart and brutalized anyone who was constantly on the defensive. Using his speed to his advantage, he constantly cut, smacked, and stabbed every goblin that was before him.
Rather than a trial, it was more like a one-sided massacre.
After checking Jin, Donna then proceeded to check the logs of the more outstanding students. From Amanda, Emma, Melissa, Han Yufei, and many more.
...As she watched she scribbled down anything that she thought they could improve on. For example, Amanda tended to waste too much time replenishing her quiver whenever it ran out of arrows.
Donna thought that if she managed to reduce that time, she would become even more deadly for the opponents. Donna believed that the short time frame Amanda used to switch in between quivers could prove fatal for her...especially since it created an opening for the opponent to exploit.
She definitely needed to watch out for that.
Of course, Amanda wasn't the only one with flaws. Everyone had flaws. Kevin included.
...Therefore, for the next ten minutes or so, Donna wrote what she felt her students needed to work on.
However, as she was analysing the footage, she soon paused on a certain video.
"Him again?"
Appearing before the screen, was the image of a student leisurely walking down the dungeon.
He had jet black hair and deep blue eyes.
Though his looks weren't bad, he looked average in every way...but that wasn't the reason why Donna was paying close attention to him.
Aside from the suspicious things that she had caught him doing during the Hollberg incident, the reason why Donna was surprised by the video was because of the student's expression as he walked...
"He looks bored...?"
Bored?
Yeah...he truly did look bored. Just his posture alone made her think so, as it carried no hint of wariness towards his surroundings. His back was hunched, and his arms were drooping on the ground.
Exactly how a bored person would look like.
Scanning through the camera footage, the only thing Donna saw was just him walking around the dungeon unobstructed, completely bored out of his mind. Like that, for the next five minutes, that's all Donna saw.
"What is going on? is there any more footage?"
After the first clip ended, taking out another file belonging to another supervising student, Donna quickly replayed the file and checked the footage for any signs of the student of interest.
"Same thing...?"
In the end, after ten more minutes of scanning, she was once again presented with the same image of him just walking down the dungeon bored out of his mind.
"Just what's going on?"
Why were there only videos of him walking and not fighting?
Something didn't add up.
Checking more files, Donna was once again presented with the same scenario over and over again.
"...just what"
The problem with the videos that Donna was shown was that the student in question barely appeared in them. He only appeared for at most five minutes in each clip.
There really wasn't that much footage regarding him.
...and this was mostly due to the fact that he wasn't a student of interest according to some professors. Meaning that not many second and third years were monitoring him, unlike the higher ranked students.
Therefore, he only appeared sparingly. Only when the third years were already present in that location that footage of him appeared.
Other than that, everything else he did during the dungeon raid was a mystery...
"you could do that?"
In the end, after hours of footage, Donna was able to understand what had happened.
...and when she did, she was completely speechless.
Turns out that the student in question, because of the fact that he was walking, managed to avoid all of the monsters in his way. Each time he was surpassed by a student, they would immediately fight against the monsters that were ahead of him. They were pretty much clearing the path for him.
This way, throughout the whole time he was making his way out of the dungeon, he didn't have to fight a single monster.
"...but wait"
Stopping the footage midway, Donna soon noticed something.
-Tap! -Tap! -Tap!
Quickly typing at her keyboard, Donna furiously looked through the series of data that displayed the scores of some of the students. Soon her eyes paused on a student's profile.
===============
Student : Ren Dover
Dungeon clear time : 01H : 46M : 08S
Head count : 79
===============
"Head count 79?"
...Just when did he kill that many goblins?
Throughout all the footage she saw, she never saw him lift a finger once. How was it possible for him to have such a headcount.
Something wasn't right...
Quickly cross-referencing with the footage she got, she soon found out that from time 00H : 57M : 29S, student Ren Dover, had a headcount of 79. From that point onwards, it didn't move.
Lightly licking her lips, Donna's brows furrowed.
'79 goblins in less than one hour...that speed is comparable to the score of some of my best students...'
-Click!
After looking at the videos for a bit longer, closing down the tabs, Donna leaned back on her leather chair. Crossing her legs, she couldn't help but mutter to herself.
"Student Ren Dover, it seems that there really is something special about you...."
