Ch.8484 – The Difference Between Real and Fake

<84 – The Difference Between Real and Fake>

I managed to hide under the principal and escape the students’ pursuit, but now I feel an even more enormous gaze upon me.

-You impudent young one from the Wiheomhae Foundation. What are you doing under my nostrils?

“Could I just hide a little longer…?”

-I won’t stop you if you wish to be crisply roasted when I breathe fire from my nose while sneezing. You’d make a perfect snack before dinner.

Tsk. Seems like the principal’s tolerance only lasts about a minute.

I understand though.

It would be annoying if students kept running to hide around your face.

I reluctantly crawled out from under the principal’s nostrils.

…But in that short time, the situation had changed strangely.

“Oknodie is gone!”

“That’s because you were lazy!”

“We moved according to Princess Massgakki’s orders! Are you insulting the princess by calling her lazy?”

“You’re not the only ones with a princess! We have Princess Yayoi too!”

“Ha. Using a fallen princess who’s lower in the succession order as a shield? You should be ashamed.”

“Are you done talking?”

“Yes, what are you going to do about it!”

“You’re all dead today. I’ll fill your baskets with nothing but fake flags!”

The students who lost their target started fighting among themselves, and the situation descended into chaos.

Well, um.

Not my fault, I guess!

I stripped the jacket off a fallen student nearby and slipped inside it.

‘Phew, got lucky.’

Just as I was planning to wait it out until the 30 minutes were up, someone picked up the jacket.

Oh no, I’ve been caught!

“Oknodie is here…!”

Zhang was about to call out loudly to gather the students.

I quickly stuffed a flag into her mouth.

“?!”

“I’ll give you two more if you don’t tell!”

Zhang narrowed her eyes like a flounder and held up three fingers.

“Fine, three!”

After putting four flags in her mouth and covering me back up with the jacket as if about to leave, Zhang suddenly stuck her head inside the jacket.

“Was what you said last time true? Have you really never taken the adventurer’s night action lecture?”

An unavoidable situation.

In the cramped jacket.

Eye to eye, close enough to feel each other’s breath on my face, with my wrist firmly grasped.

Pupils, breathing, pulse.

Zhang was using every detection method, determined to catch any lie.

Assassins are skilled at detecting lies because they need to read their target’s psychology and set up ambushes or situations.

“Actually, that was a lie.”

“I thought something was off.”

I gave up on deceiving her.

Zhang made no effort to hide her resentment.

“Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t want Hestia to find out I was taking night lectures.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you the reason.”

“You don’t want to be disliked? You want to be friends with that gorilla-like muscular woman?”

Nod, nod.

I carefully nodded my head so the jacket wouldn’t move from the outside, and a mischievous look appeared on Zhang’s face.

“First Son Ocheon, now Hestia… Oknodie likes muscular people regardless of gender, huh?”

“That’s not it at all!”

“Strong denial is an expression of affirmation!”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“See? You admitted it!”

Are you a child, seriously?

I glared at her in annoyance, and Zhang giggled.

“Alright. I’ll keep it a secret.”

“Really?”

“Since Oknodie showed me something good at dawn.”

As an assassin with fundamentally evil tendencies, Zhang rarely shows kindness.

If I hadn’t shown her the double-sided tape room, I definitely would have failed to silence her, right?

“Are you going to keep hiding?”

“I’m confident in my hiding skills!”

“True. I came to hide in the jacket too because I was tired, but I didn’t expect someone to be hiding here already!”

I think I know why~.

After me, the shortest person in the academy, and Princess Massgakki who’s done growing, Zhang is the next shortest person!

It makes sense that we’d pick the same hiding spot given our similar height and build.

“How’s it outside? Has the hero’s team lost many flags?”

“Not at all?”

“Then what is the hero’s team doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Just watching?”

“Yes.”

That’s not good.

They wouldn’t show such composure unless they were very confident.

It seems my hunch was right—the hero team’s flags might all be real.

“Then I need to break this game.”

I didn’t want to play this dirty against newbies who only live once, but there’s nothing more embarrassing than losing first place because you were too nice!

* *

The hero felt disappointed.

He had been willing to help Oknodie if she had asked for his assistance.

But she ran away without looking back and hid, giving him no chance to help.

“That person really fights well.”

“Yeah. Just looking at her strength alone, I’d want to recruit her as a warrior.”

Compared to Zigoku who was frantically running away after running out of bullets, or Lotta who was being dragged around by her hair, Hestia was performing surprisingly well.

Bang! Bang!

She rammed her shoulders with all her might and gripped her opponent’s hands tightly with both of hers. In this fierce test of strength, Reph CharcoalBBQ was losing.

Instead of the clichéd exclamation like ‘This brutish gorilla woman has this much strength without mana cultivation?’, Reph activated his mana cultivation technique.

Pshhhhh!

Hissssss-

Hot steam erupted from Reph’s armor, and the temperature of the armor in their grip rose frighteningly.

“My iron plate armor and gauntlets start at 50 degrees Celsius and can go up to 150 degrees. If you keep holding on, those large hands of yours will be roasted red!”

“What about your hands?”

“They’re protected by my mana cultivation technique.”

“That’s cowardly.”

“Why don’t you just give up?”

“I don’t care.”

Even among fellow apprentice knights of the same age, it was rare to find an opponent with such endurance.

“Don’t be stubborn. Your main weapons were two-handed, right? How will you fight if you lose both hands? With that disgustingly oversized body?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“If it were me, I’d definitely abandon a warrior who can’t hold weapons. Charcoal that has burned out its embers and served its purpose is just trash. In this state, Oknodie will abandon you, you know?”

Hestia snorted.

“Despite all the scandals surrounding me, Oknodie has never once shown dislike. That honest and kind child trusted me and had me face you.”

“150 degrees Celsius? The power of the Empire’s three great meritorious families? I’m not curious, and I don’t want to know.”

“There’s only one thing I’m curious about and want to know.”

Her muscles swelled greatly.

“That’s the sound of your screams!!!”

Her two fists squeezed with all their might, ignoring the hot heat.

“?!?!”

Crack! Crunch!

The steel gauntlets shattered with a crack, and the hand bones crumbled with a crunch.

If he persisted just a bit more, his entire hands might be crushed next.

<Empire’s Three Great Meritorious Families – CharcoalBBQ Duke Family>

<Life-saving Special Technique – Fire Shield Heat Pressure Bullet>

Click!

Whirrrr- Bang!

A launch port emerged from the armor at Reph’s wrists, releasing massive heat.

Steam comparable to a cannon blast erupted at once, and the superheated air bullet forcibly separated Hestia with explosive power.

Throb.

If he had been even slightly late in using his family’s inherited mana cultivation life-saving special technique, both his fists would have been pulverized.

“Honer FriedChicken. What are you playing at? Didn’t we agree to fight together?”

“I clearly said it? We have a truce.”

“What?”

“You must have been too busy fighting to hear, but Oknodie made a proposal to everyone.”

Both Reph CharcoalBBQ, who had been fighting with gritted teeth, and Hestia, who had been buying time by fleeing diligently, were stunned by the unexpected news.

“We agreed to gather all teams’ flags in one place and let everyone pick out the real flags as they see fit.”

“Then why did we fight?”

“Um… for your entertainment?”

Realizing the gazes of the students gathered around watching, shame washed over him.

If he had at least won, it might have been different, but after struggling and barely escaping by using his life-saving special technique, it was humiliating.

“That Hestia woman is no joke.”

“She faced two of the three great meritorious families’ heirs alone.”

“More than that, that woman is a berserker.”

“So?”

“Don’t berserkers get stronger when they bleed?”

Honer, who received the divine spear’s teachings, and Reph, who displayed formidable iron plate charging techniques.

Even against these two skilled fighters, Hestia didn’t get a single scratch.

If she was this strong without bleeding, it was terrifying to imagine how powerful she’d be if she started bleeding and got faster.

“Good job, Hestia!”

“Sorry. I could only hold down two of them, so Lotta got beaten badly by the rest.”

“It couldn’t be helped. Those two were already strong opponents!”

“Was I… helpful?”

“Very much so. Thanks to you holding them off, I was able to convince the other teams to reset the game.”

After threatening that teams who didn’t agree to reset the flags would face Hestia together, everyone reluctantly followed Oknodie’s proposal.

All the flags from the baskets were dumped on the ground, and everyone would simultaneously choose and collect the real flags.

For students who couldn’t gather many real flags and had baskets full of fakes, this was the last chance for a comeback, a final opportunity for a reversal.

“Oknodie’s collected flags were among that pile over there. I remember clearly.”

“Damn, everyone will be going for those. I wonder how many we can grab.”

Unlike the anxious nearby students, Hero Ishtar calmly unbuttoned his wrist and rolled up his sleeves.

Most first-year students were distinguishing real flags by making their own “marks”—freezing the flags slightly or bending the flagpoles.

However, there was another way to identify real flags without such post-processing marking.

‘The fake flags made by Giselle look quite sophisticated on the outside, but there’s actually a 13g weight difference.’

The weight difference from the materials used in the flags!

“Mix in all our team’s flags too. We can pick them all back up anyway. Plus some from other teams as a bonus.”

After collecting all the flags and securing first place, he would extend a hand to Oknodie.

Oknodie’s collecting ability that gathered the most flags.

His own observational skills that could identify real flags.

Combined, they could overcome any future lectures.

If his persuasion worked, Oknodie would become his ally.

If she wanted, he could even accept Hestia, whom Oknodie cherished, as an ally.

‘Smart people advance faster than others even when starting under the same conditions.’

With three minutes remaining, as the flag collection began leisurely and he was calmly gathering real flags, the hero saw someone else picking up the real flag he had been aiming for.

Nimble hand movements for such small, white hands.

A competitor who giggled mischievously and boldly grabbed other flags without hesitation.

‘Could you distinguish them too?!’

Oknodie.

She was also able to identify the real flags mixed among the fake ones.

And she was doing it much faster than him, without even weighing them in her hands.