Ch.6363 – How to Eat Flags as Easily as Cake

<63 – How to Eat Flags as Easily as Cake>

Lotta, Hestia, and Zigoku, who had planned to meet at dinner time to share how many flags they had collected, were lined up with shocked faces in despair.

“H-how many did everyone collect…?”

“Five. I hiked all over the mountains until I was dead tired…”

“Four. I extorted as many easy targets as I could…”

“I got three. I ran errands diligently for the instructors…”

That level of effort wasn’t nearly enough.

No matter how they thought about it, they all came to the same conclusion.

“We’ll have to steal flags from others.”

“My reputation can’t get any worse anyway. For Oknodie’s sake, I won’t hesitate to get my hands dirty.”

“Are we doing this together? Then we can extort from stronger ones too!”

Just working hard wasn’t enough.

Now they needed a solution beyond that.

“Let’s go. We need 16 each, so we just need to extort one flag from 16 people.”

The time for legitimate effort was over.

The three-person flag robbery team was formed.

* *

After school, Academy students can enjoy additional content by joining clubs.

Newbies struggling to survive tend to have surprisingly high club participation rates, mainly because they fall for the underhanded tactics of senior club members who lure them with food.

“Lift your rake with more strength!”

“Yaap!”

“Till the field!”

“Iyaap!”

The freshmen who were diligently turning over and digging up the frozen fields asked their seniors:

“Seniors, how long do we just till fields?”

“Yeah, wasn’t this supposed to be a hunting club?”

“Ha, look at these kids.”

The kind seniors who had grilled meat and offered free tastings during recruitment had completely changed their expressions and were now yelling at the poor new members.

“Hey. Did you eat meat or not?”

“Y-yes, we did…”

“What?”

“We did, sir!”

“Then you need to pay for the meat you ate.”

“If this is a hunting club, why are we farming instead of hunting…”

“What if hunting fails?”

“Huh?”

“What if our hunt fails and we come back empty-handed. What do we eat then?”

“The cafeteria food…?”

“Listen to yourself. Do points come from digging the ground? We need to be self-sufficient by farming!”

The freshmen realized.

The kind seniors were all acting, pretense, non-existent beings like kind, nice, and conscientious professors.

From the beginning, the seniors had tricked them into a fraudulent contract to secure labor!

“I-I didn’t join the hunting club to farm like this. Let me leave!”

“Sure? Then pay the penalty fee.”

“W-what is this ridiculous amount of points?!”

“What do you mean? You signed it.”

“This is fraud!”

“No, it’s not fraud. It’s a contract certified by the Academy administration and you signed it. If you want to leave, either owe this many points and start repaying your debt…”

“Ugh!”

“Or bring two friends to work in your place.”

“F-friends! If I bring friends, I can escape without working?!”

The senior smiled kindly.

“Yes. You just need to bring exactly two friends who will sign the contract. If they write your name as their referrer, you can escape without paying a single point.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll definitely find them!”

“But finding them is one thing, you still need to finish today’s club activities. If you don’t, you know you’ll get fined for poor participation, right?”

They would definitely quit somehow because it was so disgusting.

The eyes of students trapped in clubs filled with resentment.

“Seniors are truly devils. How can they make us do such horrible things without any compassion?”

“Right. If they suffered the same from their seniors, they shouldn’t do this to us.”

Morb and Zaku.

The two freshmen who had fallen for the temptation of meat smell and juices were genuinely full of complaints.

“And they just gave us a bunch of weird flags. What are we supposed to do with these?”

Morb grumbled, holding the flags the seniors had given him, saying they would be useful somewhere.

“Hey, look over there. There’s someone carrying a ton of flags on their back.”

“I know them. That’s Oknodie, the top student in Group A.”

“The half-Orc who’s the youngest and shortest freshman?”

The two rushed over to Oknodie.

Seeing them, Oknodie started running away even faster.

“Hey, hey! Stop for a moment!”

“Huff, huff! Damn, how is this kid so fast!”

“No! I won’t! Stop it!”

Morb felt wronged.

“What did we do?! We just wanted to ask why you’re carrying flags and what they’re used for!”

“Really?”

“Yes! And also to tell you that if you join the hunting club you can eat meat, and to write Zaku as your referrer!”

Oknodie, who had been slowing down at Morb’s words, immediately sped up again at Zaku’s comment and ran away without looking back.

“Hey, you idiot! Keep your mouth shut!”

“Aack!”

An angry Morb pushed Zaku down and chased after Oknodie, earnestly persuading that he had nothing to do with it, and finally managed to stop Oknodie.

“Huff, huff, huff…”

“So why?”

“J-just a moment, huff, huff…”

“Can I just go?”

What kind of kid has such strong stamina? Morb glared at Oknodie resentfully before speaking.

“These are flags we got from club activities at our hunting club, and the seniors said they’d be useful somewhere. Since you have so many flags, I thought you might know.”

“Ah. So they were at the hunting club this time.”

“This time? So you do know how to use the flags! Please tell me!”

Oknodie held out a hand.

“Give me just five of them.”

“Me? Why?”

“Then I’ll tell you.”

“Fine. But I’ll hold onto you so you can’t run away.”

“Do as you please.”

Morb firmly grabbed Oknodie and handed over the flags with trembling hands from all the running.

“So what are these used for?”

“They’re for advanced class assignments. Upper-class students collect flags to submit as course assignments.”

“That’s pretty good?”

“As you can see, since there are so many, they’re not that valuable.”

Indeed, even Oknodie was carrying a ton of flags like a merchant.

“Still, it’s annoying to collect them, so I’ll buy them with points. A meal costs 5 points, so would you trade all of those for 5 points?”

“No way. 5 points only gets you basic rations.”

“How much do you want for flags that even a kid like me can collect this many in half a day?”

“I just want to recruit upper-class freshmen with these. I want to offer these to get them to join my club.”

Oknodie clicked his tongue.

Morb smiled at the sight of the child who quickly became sulky when things didn’t go his way.

He had imagined the Academy’s youngest valedictorian would be some legendary genius or a stamina monster due to his Orc blood, but in reality, he was just like any child you’d see in a hometown village.

“Forget the points. If you can get two friends to join the hunting club using my name, I’ll give you all my flags.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I don’t go back on my word.”

How many friends could a kid possibly bring? Is it right to trick a child like this?

Morb felt like he was becoming a terrible adult, but when Zaku, who had caught up, said “Whatever he promised, I want the same deal!” his guilt completely disappeared.

Escaping from the devilish club was more important than conscience.

But that was underestimating Oknodie too much.

Just 30 minutes later.

Four students were trailing behind Oknodie.

* *

While wandering around clubs and checking which seniors belonged to which clubs, an unexpected stroke of luck came walking right up to me.

The identity of this luck was <Flags Collected by Seniors>, which is rarely given to new club members and has an even rarer chance of being released.

“Heheh. Easy pickings!”

I already had plenty of flags, but the more I collect, the more uses I’ll find for them.

After luring four gullible Imperial students and selling them to the hunting club, I gave each of them one flag to hold.

“Here’s your promised reward.”

“Wow! Getting a free flag just for joining a club, I’m so happy!”

“Thanks, Oknodie. You’re actually a pretty nice kid, huh?”

I feel no guilt for selling out these poor students.

That whole nice act? It’s all fake.

Do they think I don’t know they were talking behind my back about how nobles and commoners from the frontier have no class, or how Oknodie is an Orc-like kid with a cute face but monstrous stamina?

Even now, how long has it been since they received the flags? They’re snickering behind my back like I’m some foolish child.

‘Next time, be kinder at heart. That’s how you avoid getting tricked by bad kids like me.’

I packed up all the flags I had stored in my bag that I had set aside earlier and happily headed back.

Thanks to this, my flag count doubled overnight.

I must have nearly 40 now.

“Thank you, Oknodie!”

“You saved us!”

Despite giving away 4 flags, I received over twenty from Morb and Zaku.

Trading 4 flags for twenty is clearly a massive profit by anyone’s standards.

The two who handed over all their flags and escaped from the club waved goodbye cheerfully.

Poor suckers.

I won’t tell them the shocking fact that the price of a single flag will eventually rise to 100 points.

You brought this on yourselves.

You made fun of me for being half-Orc!