Episode 581

Whiiiiii—

The wind picked up and the snowstorm raged even more, narrowing their field of vision.

“Sharkan. I’m counting on you.”

Lee Han summoned the jade leopard to scout ahead.

He needed to be more cautious as the familiar terrain markers had disappeared.

Fortunately, Lee Han and his friends were already well-equipped with cold-weather gear.

“Thanks to Professor Garcia.”

“We made them during Professor Verdus’ lecture, didn’t we?”

At Deorgyu’s question, Lee Han turned his gaze away as if he hadn’t heard.

Just then, Sharkan returned. The leopard nodded as if to say it was safe to proceed.

“Wait. We still have quite a distance to walk. We can’t carry these guys the whole way.”

“Wardanaz. Even if it’s annoying, we can’t just toss them off a cliff.”

Giselle, intending to tease Wardanaz for once, started speaking.

But Lee Han and Deorgyu reacted differently than Giselle expected.

“No…”

“That’s a bit much…”

“…It was a joke.”

“I, I see.”

“A j-joke. I thought so too.”

“Hey. Both of you, just shut up.”

Giselle resolved never to joke with these two again.

“So, Lee Han? Got a good idea?”

“Rise, warriors made of bone.”

Lee Han swung his staff and chanted a spell. Three skeleton warriors sluggishly carried the apprentice knights on their backs.

“This should do the trick.”

“Yeah. But Lee Han.”

“What is it?”

“What if the knights wake up?”

“…Can you give me some blindfolds?”

Not content just to tie up the apprentice knights, Lee Han even put blindfolds on them.

Only then did he look satisfied.

“Now it should be fine, right?”

“……”

“……”

Giselle and Deorgyu had mixed expressions as they watched.

Putting the knights to sleep, tying them up, and having skeletons carry them…

‘He really looks evil.’

‘He’s like a black mage out of an old tale.’

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I-I was just admiring your skeleton handling skills.”

“It’s nothing, really.”

Lee Han blushed a bit at Deorgyu’s praise.

• * *

“Ugh.”

Labda woke up in pain.

He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened.

He was sure he’d been in a carriage, and then there was a sharp pain in his solar plexus…

“Gasp!”

Labda and the apprentice knights opened their eyes.

They were in an unfamiliar cabin.

Fierce winds battered the outside, but a rough fireplace was blazing, driving out the cold…

The cupboard was well-stocked—with canned lamb, a few eggs, peas, marmalade, sugar, salt, tea leaves, coffee powder, and more.

‘Where am I??’

“You’ve woken up!”

Lee Han hurried over with a ladle, having been checking the pot.

“I was worried. You all collapsed!”

“W-what happened, Wardanaz? Where are we?”

Lee Han paused, as if exchanging glances with Giselle.

“Don’t you remember? The carriage was attacked! A monster attacked the carriage!”

“D-did it?”

“Yeah. I barely managed to escape with you all.”

Lee Han and Giselle enthusiastically explained how deadly, bizarre monsters from the mountains had attacked the carriage and tried to swallow the apprentice knights.

Deorgyu quietly chopped onions.

He just couldn’t bring himself to spin such a tale.

“Th-thank you. I’m embarrassed. We should have protected you, not be saved…”

“It was an unexpected ambush, nothing you could do. The mountains are dangerous places.”

“Were there giants too? I heard there are giants up here.”

“…Well, maybe there were giants, too…”

Lee Han raised the monster stakes as high as the knights wanted.

If it made them feel better!

“Then what is this place?”

“Probably a hunter’s cabin.”

“There are hunters up here too?!”

‘Looks like it worked.’

Lee Han exchanged a meaningful glance with his friends.

Fortunately, they had overcome their biggest hurdle.

We just happened to bump into this lodge by accident!

‘We just need to stay here for one day.’

The apprentice knights whispered among themselves.

“Hmm. Is it all right to use someone else’s place?”

“It can’t be helped. We should just prepare to face monsters at this point. The professor said he’d come check on us, too.”

“?”

Lee Han paused.

“What did the professor say?”

“Hm? Said to prepare well in case we run into monsters in the mountains.”

“Didn’t you just say he’d come check?”

“Oh, right. He did say monsters would come. But that’s to be expected in a dangerous region, right?”

“……”

Of course, Labda wasn’t wrong.

In a dangerous area, monsters coming would be no exaggeration.

But Lee Han, trained at Einrogard, sensed something else in those words.

‘That’s odd?’

Thud thud thud—

At that moment, someone knocked on the lodge’s door. Deorgyu raised a board from the window and peered outside.

“!”

Amazingly, it was other White Tiger Tower students.

Half-buried in the snow and shivering, the White Tiger Tower students knocked on the door and called out.

“H-help!”

“Open the… door! We’re going to freeze to death!”

“Bartrek, Cltran?! How did you—?!”

“A-a surprise attack! S-so cold, let us in!”

Deorgyu hurriedly opened the door.

The White Tiger Tower students outside began to come in.

“Be paralyzed!”

Lee Han whipped his staff and cast a paralysis curse.

It was a curse-type spell with the quickest casting and widest area of effect, and it struck the White Tiger Tower students directly.

“Ugh…!”

“!?”

Deorgyu looked at Lee Han in shock. He couldn’t understand why Lee Han cast a paralysis curse.

Ssslurp—

The bodies of the White Tiger Tower students collapsed like slime. Then, wriggling, they transformed into monstrous shapes.

“Shape-shifter!”

Giselle shouted in horror.

Shape-shifter-type monsters had the powerful ability to freely change their form.

The most famous was the doppelgänger, but it wasn’t the only creature to possess this power.

The present shifting slime was also one of the infamous shape-shifter monsters.

And a rather advanced one at that!

“Be careful, don’t let it get in close! If a shape-shifter mingles in the ranks, it gets tricky!”

Giselle drew her dual swords and created space. If the slime infiltrated and used its transformation, things would get complicated.

Confused, the slime rapidly shifted forms. It copied the White Tiger Tower students a few times, glanced at Lee Han, then transformed into Lee Han.

“Don’t attack! I’m your friend!”

“Sure!”

Giselle cheerfully drove her sword through the face of the slime that had transformed into Lee Han. It was the most elegant and cleanest sword strike she’d ever shown.

Chak!

Struck by paralysis and a sword imbued with magic, even the slime took a solid hit. It panicked, fled out the door, and flung itself into the piled snow.

‘If we lose track, it’ll be a headache!’

“Sharkan. Go!”

The leopard leaped forward with a snarl. Sharkan, who tracked by scent, was especially effective against shape-shifter monsters like this.

Not stopping there, Lee Han summoned skeleton warriors to stand guard at the door, just in case of another attack.

Crunch!

Sharkan sank his teeth into the ankle of the shifting slime trying to burrow into the snow.

The slime abandoned its ankle and tried to change form again. With so much snow, it was tough to pin it down.

“Let snow turn to sand!”

Lee Han chanted an urgent spell.

He’d practiced turning sand to rock or rock to sand many times, but never snow to sand.

He quickly recalled the traits of snow and sand and completed the spell on the spot.

The piled snow scattered, transforming into sand.

‘Got it!’

“Lightning Spear!”

Lee Han summoned lightning to his staff and fixed it in shape. Thanks to Professor Voladi’s brutal training, he no longer needed lengthy chants.

Crackle!

The lightning spear pierced the slime precisely, and the slime could no longer hold its form and melted away.

Slimes were essentially very simple-structured monsters, so with enough damage, the core couldn’t withstand it and it died like this.

In ordinary circumstances, this would not have been alarming or tense.

But these were not ordinary circumstances!

“…You’ve really become an Einrogard professor!”

Lee Han murmured in exasperation.

Where on earth had this shifting slime come from?

It was surely Professor Ingeldel who had asked other professors to help and got it. Such a rare slime couldn’t have been made without their help.

‘Fighting magic bulls back in the day was better than this.’

Lee Han felt like he understood Professor Ingeldel’s fiendish plot behind the final exam.

Scatter the students throughout the mountain range, then release pre-trained shifting slimes to attack them.

Students, thinking it was just a winter survival exam, would let their guards down when confronted by a slime disguised as a friend and get sorely punished.

“Un-unbelievable.”

Deorgyu was still stunned.

“It was talking exactly like Bartrek, though? How could it copy him so perfectly?”

“The professor probably had them secretly learn. They likely had us observed while we weren’t looking.”

Lee Han, who had learned about shifting slimes from Professor Lightningstep, had some information.

Slimes couldn’t truly think in an intelligent way—they acted more like primitive collectives.

They observed and mimicked, rather than thinking with reason.

Deorgyu was aghast.

“To that extent!?”

“I was shocked too. But any Einrogard professor could do something like this.”

Lee Han cleaned up the remains of the slime.

The remains felt like the last fragments of trust he had for Professor Ingeldel.

‘From now on, I’ll just think of Professor Ingeldel as a true Einrogard professor.’

While that was a rather disrespectful thought, Labda was genuinely impressed.

“Everyone, you’re amazing. We came here to help, but we’re just embarrassed now.”

“Haha, don’t mention it.”

Lee Han was a bit grateful to the shifting slime for thawing the mood.

If Labda had asked why his head felt like he’d drunk a sleeping potion, things would’ve gotten complicated. Thanks to the slime, they got to move on.

“Wardanaz, I’m truly amazed you saw through the slime right away.”

“Yeah, it was barely visible and you still picked up on the difference.”

“Because we’re usually together, it just felt off naturally.”

Deorgyu was deeply moved by Lee Han’s words.

‘And yet I didn’t even notice!’

Deorgyu vowed again to pay more attention to his friends from now on.

‘It was really a shifting slime, huh?’

Lee Han was surprised internally.

He’d thought other White Tiger Tower students had just come to interfere and planned to subdue them—but they’d turned out to be full-on monsters.

Truly, one could not lower their guard in Einrogard.

‘I’ll have to take an even more aggressive approach from now on.’

“The eastern slope.”

Giselle, who hadn’t been part of the conversation and had been observing outside, spoke gravely.

“Approaching this way. Over ten people.”

“…!”

Lee Han opened the cabin door and looked down.

Amazingly, over ten students and apprentice knights were approaching from below.

“Let’s stop them from getting here.”

“Agreed.”

The two were in perfect accord.

No matter what those people’s intentions were, there was no way to fit them all in the lodge, nor could they deal with the aftermath.

If a shifting slime was among them, even more so…

“……”

“……”

However, as the group drew closer, Lee Han and Giselle’s faces turned to stone.

In that crowd, Lee Han, Giselle, and Deorgyu were present.

Fake Lee Han pointed at real Lee Han and shouted.

“Those are the fakes!”

“What the actual…!”

Lee Han was appalled.

Slimes were only supposed to be able to learn by observing—how were they this good at inciting others??