Why Did I Have to Enroll

Why Did I Have to Enroll - Chapter 163

Lesson 33: The Star of Jade - 3

Was it fortunate that everyone had gathered for the banquet? The troops were mobilized and dispatched with remarkable speed.

“They’re coming from the west! Those filthy intruders are heading our way!”

“Kill them all! Smash them to pieces!”

“How dare they covet our sanctuary while we have esteemed guests…?”

The Beastmen, fierce and strong like wolves, tigers, and gorillas, as well as those who appeared gentle, like woodpeckers, rabbits, and squirrels, were all ablaze with anger. It was like a massive migration of birds filling the sky. They raced swiftly from one towering tree to another, moving along the branches.

“Let’s sweep them all away! The banquet comes after!”

“Awooooooo!”

Leading the charge was, of course, the chieftain, Canid. Ban Yu-won, momentarily stunned by the sight of tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of warriors charging forward, soon realized something.

“Huh.”

All the Beastmen following the chieftain to the west were male. Considering Slothia, who managed the forest’s barrier, and Lucia, who moved at a speed beyond Ban Yu-won’s perception, it didn’t seem like female Beastmen lacked ability…

Perhaps reading Ban Yu-won’s curiosity, Slothia explained.

“The males fend off external threats, and the females protect the village. It’s the Beastmen’s tradition.”

“Sure, protecting the home is important, but isn’t leaving such a large force behind excessive…?”

Was that why Luciel, who had been dragged away by Lucia, hadn’t returned yet? Or was something happening that prevented her from coming back right away?

“Wait a minute.”

Ban Yu-won, trying to push away Lucia’s speculative talk about preliminary education from his mind, finally noticed a change in Slothia.

“Why are you speaking so fast?”

“There are two times when a slothia speeds up. First, when it’s time to fight. Like now.”

Upon hearing this, Ban Yu-won observed her again. Indeed, he saw the concepts of ‘Activation’ and ‘Rampage’ flowing through her entire body, intricately connected. It seemed she had the ability to accumulate certain concepts by moving slowly and sleeping a lot, which she could release in emergencies to gain abilities beyond her normal self.

Thinking about it this way, her usual slow pace and frequent naps made sense. Or maybe not, it still felt off.

While Ban Yu-won was pondering this, Slothia, who was pulling nearby branches to craft something that looked like a vehicle, caught his attention with a peculiar expression.

“Are you flirting with another beast as soon as the previous one disappears, Ban Yu-won?”

Dokgo Yeon, who had approached him unnoticed, spoke in a voice colder than dry ice. Ban Yu-won flinched for a moment but replied with a forced calm.

“Who’s flirting with whom… You’ve been acting strange since earlier. What’s wrong? If something’s bothering you, just say it.”

He was merely lamenting Dokgo Yeon’s prickly attitude.

“Ugh!”

Suddenly, she turned to him with a frown. However, Ban Yu-won, unwilling to endure unjust scolding from Dokgo Yeon, didn’t back down this time. Sensing this, Dokgo Yeon hesitated, unusually at a loss for words.

“Ah.”

“…?”

Noticing Slothia, who had finished crafting a swing-like vehicle that could seat four or five people, she sighed lightly and replied in a small voice.

“It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

“…Alright. Slothia, you want us to ride this?”

“Yes.”

Although he considered moving with Lilith, the allure of trying out the wooden swing was too tempting, so the two decided to follow Slothia’s suggestion. Surprisingly, the wooden seat, following the movements of interconnected branches, began moving faster than the other Beastmen.

“Moving along the branches with a wooden seat… Oh.”

Experiencing a feeling akin to Spider-Man swinging between buildings, Ban Yu-won suddenly remembered something as he watched Slothia, who sat beside him, her long golden hair fluttering in the wind as she stared blankly ahead.

“You said females protect the village, but you’re an exception?”

“Female… Ah. If there were a lazy male, I could rest.”

It seemed that a lazy male was too elite to be excluded from battle. Nodding in understanding, Ban Yu-won noticed that Slothia’s gaze hadn’t left him.

“…What is it?”

“Come to think of it, it’s the first time I’ve been treated as a female.”

Slothia replied nonchalantly, gazing at him. Ban Yu-won was startled by her words. He glanced at Dokgo Yeon, who didn’t seem pleased.

“Please stop saying things that make it sound like I’m flirting with you.”

“Flirting? Was that flirting? I don’t understand human courtship.”

“I said it wasn’t.”

In the midst of this baffling conversation, the wooden swing they rode came to a halt in mid-air. Ban Yu-won, puzzled by the sudden open view, soon realized the reason.

“Stop them! Don’t let them cut down the trees!”

“Today, we break the wolf’s fangs completely! Finish them off!”

The intruders were moving low, cutting down and toppling trees. The Wolf Fang Tribe’s Beastmen were desperately trying to stop them. Watching this, Ban Yu-won thought. The Beastmen’s domain was in the trees. Could it be that their territorial disputes began with cutting down trees? Ban Yu-won voiced his guess, and it turned out to be true.

“Uprooting trees under my jurisdiction and planting trees under the jurisdiction of another tribe’s lazy male. That’s how they seize territory.”

“So it’s like a game of Go with trees as the stones.”

Or perhaps Othello would be a more fitting analogy. However, this method seemed… quite sloppy.

“You have a nasty expression again.”

Dokgo Yeon, noticing Ban Yu-won’s realization, chuckled.

“If you keep insulting me, I’ll get upset, you know? How do you plan to handle that?”

“But you’re going to do something dirty, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

If it was a fair assessment rather than an unjust insult, he had no choice but to accept it. Ban Yu-won leaped from the wooden swing, landing on a branch that sprouted from a nearby tree. The trees were so densely packed that it was impossible for the large Livi and mechanical servants to move. The environment wasn’t ideal for wielding the Rain Sword either. While smaller servants like Tike and Lilith could be effective, deploying them wouldn’t dramatically change the battle.

“Can you protect me for now? If there are any dangerous ones, charge at them.”

[Understood, Master!]

Lilith, representing everyone, responded energetically and transformed into a form similar to Tike. Given that she possessed Ever-changing like Eve, transformation was expected, but the quality surpassing Eve’s was quite impressive.

[I receive perfect bonuses for all mechanical transformations! And… my attack power too!]

Lilith extended a cylindrical launcher located between the barrel and muzzle, firing a long laser… no, a thunderbolt, sniping the approaching Beastmen.

[How’s that!]

“Perfect.”

The impact of the spaceship revealed during her evolution was so overwhelming that it was easy to forget, but she had absorbed all the elements of Room 95, including the overflowing electrical energy. As a result, her Magic Power had evolved into the higher concept of Electric Magic Power, surpassing Eve’s Magic Power and Tike’s Sevenfold Magic Cannon in destructive power.

“Sssss…”

―Screech, screech

Seeing Lilith flaunt her firepower, Eve and Tike were visibly annoyed. It felt like they were thinking, ‘What are you bragging about after Ban Yu-won fed you all those enhancements?’ Driven by competition, Eve transformed into a form similar to Tike and soon joined in the shooting.

―Boom!

―Bang! Bang bang!

―KABOOM!

Though Lilith was stronger, Eve and Tike’s sniping skills were more than enough to take down the ordinary Beastmen soldiers. As the Beastmen rushing towards Ban Yu-won’s group were annihilated in an instant, the Wolf Fang Tribe warriors couldn’t help but take notice.

“What on earth is that? Could it be a relic?”

“Whatever it is, it’s incredible! We can’t let the guests do all the work; push them back! Don’t let them set foot on our Wolf Fang land!”

“Those guys… Hah, they’re from the Union! They’re from the Union!”

By then, the enemies had realized Ban Yu-won’s identity. While they could tell he wasn’t a Beastman just by looking at him, how did they guess he was from the Union Academy so quickly? The answer was probably…

“So, you’re in cahoots with Ryu Cheol-myeong. And the fact that you’re attacking now… there’s even a possibility you’re communicating in real-time.”

Ha, Ban Yu-won scoffed. If Ryu Cheol-myeong had personally moved to attack Ban Yu-won, it would have been intimidating. But believing he could handle Ban Yu-won by moving ‘weak’ ‘many’ who bore the penalty of ‘environment’ was laughable.

“Alright, now that we’ve sorted out the friend from foe.”

“You mean you were still figuring that out? You?”

Dokgo Yeon, who had leapt onto the branch where Ban Yu-won stood, listened to his muttering and tilted her head in curiosity.

“Oh, not that kind of sorting.”

Distinguishing between the Wolf Fang Tribe and the intruders wasn’t difficult. However, identifying the trees belonging to the Wolf Fang Tribe and those of the intruders required a more detailed examination of the tree concepts.

“Oh—I understand what you’re trying to do, but is it possible? According to that woman’s words, aren’t the trees controlled by the sloths?”

“What are you doing?”

By then, even Slothia had approached him. Despite her leisurely demeanor, her hands moved swiftly, and each time they did, branches sprouted from nearby trees, grabbing or piercing the intruders, demonstrating her formidable ability.

“Just watch.”

He opened his eyes wide, activating his authority. Since completing the Origin Blade, he could feel the meticulously controlled golden mana flowing whenever he used his authority. A portion of it concentrated on his eyes and mouth, making him appear divine.

“What are you doing?”

Slothia asked again, her voice tinged with surprise and a hint of fear. Perhaps, as a lazy male, she instinctively understood what he intended to do.

“I’m going to uproot the trees.”

Ban Yu-won extended his hands into the air. The distinction was already perfectly made. The boundary between the two tribes. Feeling the wildness of the Beastmen fiercely defending their trees and trying to topple the opposing tribe’s trees, Ban Yu-won extracted the concept from ‘all’ the intruder tribe’s trees located at the border.

In that moment, everything on the battlefield froze.

“――――?!”

A silent scream shook the entire forest. No matter how much a lazy male could communicate with and control trees, unless they could turn them into monsters, they were just trees. There was no reason Ban Yu-won, who could absorb even bullets flying at him by conceptualizing them, couldn’t eliminate trees merely rooted in the ground. From the moment he awakened his authority, this was possible.

“No, without the expanded range of the All-Reading Eyes, it would have been difficult to simultaneously retrieve concepts from such widely spread trees.”

Calmly collecting the golden strings of text surging from all directions, Ban Yu-won murmured. The sight of the Beastmen, friend and foe alike, looking at him with their fur bristling in shock was quite amusing.

“W-What is this…?”

“The trees. Our trees…”

Most of the intruders lost their footing and fell to the ground. While the Wolf Fang Tribe’s Beastmen were equally stunned, they quickly regrouped, realizing only the intruder tribe’s trees were disappearing, and protected their own trees. The Beastmen, who loathed touching the ground, screamed and howled, desperately trying to climb onto the Wolf Fang Tribe’s trees, but couldn’t break through their united defense and had to retreat hastily.

“That guy, he’s the one who…!”

“Bring Urek, without Urek…”

“You, you! Youuuuuuu—!”

“Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.”

Feeling all the battlefield’s animosity directed at him, Ban Yu-won murmured calmly, curling his lips. Even now, the concept of trees uprooted from the enemy’s territory was gathering in his hands in real-time.

“If you wanted to defeat me, you should have prepared a proper stage, Ryu Cheol-myeong.”

The war hadn’t even properly begun yet. Perhaps after everything was over, the Jade Star might need a new name.