The Sword Demon Tears People Apart

After Pingcheng’s explanation, the students busily gathered into their groups.
Zeron waited for the students to form groups and then headed towards the group with the kid.
There was another familiar face there.
Flone, was it?
She was the kid’s friend he had seen on the day the kid was completely drunk.
“Ah, Instructor Zeron!”
She greeted Zeron with a strange smile.
She even elbowed the kid’s side.
The kid just slightly blushed, without showing any particular reaction.
This bastard, surely she’s not the one spreading rumors around?
Zeron scratched his chin and stood with one leg bent.
The kid’s group had a total of 8 members.
It seemed like it would be quite a headache to control each and every one of them.
“Well, there might be some people I’m seeing for the first time and some I’m not, but I’m Zeron.”
He glanced around.
Other groups seemed to be slowly heading towards the forest.
“Let’s go for now. We can explain or do whatever once we get there.”
*
Zeron led the students towards the forest.
They didn’t go too deep inside.
That would make it difficult to return, and who knows what might happen deeper inside.
“For the first day, you’ll be moving around with me. Just catch a few and get a feel for it.”
From the second day, they could move around in student groups, as long as they don’t stray too far from me.
That was the instruction I received originally.
“Shall we go then?”
Zeron took the lead.
Since the group members were freely chosen by the students, most of them were commoners.
6 out of 8 were commoners, the remaining two were nobles who didn’t seem to be of very high rank.
Perhaps because of that, fortunately, there was no one showing defiance.
Mainly from the student’s perspective.
“Hmm…”

Zeron expanded his ki sense.
Due to his poor growth environment, despite being a Master, his mana quantity was severely lacking, but even so, the range was considerable.
“Found it. Goblins?”
He led the students towards that location.
The students held their breath, seemingly appropriately tense.
The kid was the same.
She tugged on Zeron’s sleeve and asked,
“Oppa, when we find them, do we handle it?”
“Yeah, that would be better.”
At those words, the kid nodded and switched the rifle’s selector from safe to semi-auto.
It wasn’t Academy-issued, but a top-grade rifle procured by David.
The bullets were also custom-made.
For goblins, even firing the gun raw would blow their heads off.
“Stop for a moment.”
Zeron halted the students.
A group of goblins was a short distance away.
About twenty in number.
Honestly, if the kid just opened fire, they’d be reduced to a bloody mess.
“Normally in this situation, an ambush would be natural. It gives you an advantage from the start. But this isn’t a real battle, right? It’s your practice time.”
As he spoke, Zeron picked up a stone from the ground.
He threw it casually, and the stone flew in an arc, hitting a goblin’s head with a thud and bouncing off.

Keuruk?
The goblin scratched its head, looking around.
Zeron pushed the back of a nearby student.
“Whoa…!?”
The eyes of the student, standing awkwardly, met with those of the goblins.
‘Haha…’ The student laughed awkwardly.
And the goblins,

Keururung-!
With a strange roar, they raised their crude weapons like stone axes and spears.
“Now, kill each other!”
Zeron chuckled and sat on a nearby rock.
The students’ faces turned pale.

“Huff…, huff…”
“Urgh…!”
After the not-so-long battle ended, the students rested, each showing their own reactions.
The battlefield was horrific.
Goblin corpses that were hacked to pieces because they couldn’t be cut cleanly.
Corpses with their heads blown off.
Organs spilling out, and the peculiar green blood staining the ground created quite an eerie atmosphere.
“Oppa…”
The kid was relatively better off.
It seemed that her previous experience with killing helped, as she grabbed Zeron’s sleeve with a slightly disgruntled look.
“How was it?”
“…I think I can do a bit better next time.”
“You should. In terms of combat power, you alone could have pulverized them in 2 minutes, right?”
“Yeah…, I understand why experience is important.”
The kid subtly rubbed her head against Zeron’s arm, then trotted over to take care of Flone.
Flone was catching her rough breath with a pale complexion.
Glancing aside, he saw her large greatsword, which didn’t seem to suit her, stained with green blood.
“Flone, are you okay?”
“Yeah…. Ugh, Medea, you’re fine?”
“Yeah, well…. I’ve had similar experiences.”
Medea looked around.
Except for a boy named Tohu, who was the son of a baronet, everyone else seemed a bit struggling.
She checked her gun, replacing the empty magazine, and glanced at Zeron.
He was leisurely smoking a cigarette, watching them.
Such composure must come from confidence in his skills.
Medea recalled his sword aura she had seen that day.
That red malevolent star.
It gave the impression that it could bite off the neck of even the mightiest being in an instant.
Her fist clenched tightly.
She felt impatient.
She hadn’t known that Oppa Zeron was such an amazing person.
At this rate, someone else might snatch him away.
If she had known, she would have hurried a bit more.
“Hey, hey, let’s get going now. How long are you going to rest?”
Watching Zeron crush out his cigarette butt on the ground, Medea swallowed hard.
Now there was really no choice.
She had to change her approach to be more stimulating and aggressive.
To capture him.
*
The first day of the field training ended without any particular incidents.
There was an incident where the kid visited in the middle of the night wearing shamelessly revealing clothes, but when he shoved her back into her room in shock, she seemed to realize her own embarrassment and stayed quiet that night.
And on the second day.
He let the students loose in the surrounding area.
One guy almost got screwed by panicking and just screaming, but the student with him managed to take care of the goblins without much trouble.
The guy who panicked got a flick on the forehead as punishment.
By the way, that night the kid came wearing normal clothes.
She suggested taking a walk, and while walking around the lodging, she suddenly hugged him.
When he patted her head and comforted her a bit, she pouted her lips and went back.
And on the third day.
Today.
Before leaving his room, Zeron leaned against the window frame and lit a cigarette.
He had a bit of a headache wondering what the kid would do today.
“Phew…”
Perhaps because the weather was getting warmer, the smoke seemed thinner.
He crushed out the cigarette butt in the ashtray and left the room.
Someone was waiting for him in front.
It was Pingcheng.
“Zeromon! Good morning!”
“Yeah, Amilaze, was it?”
“It’s Iris!”
“Ah, right.”
Pushing away her clinginess, he led the students towards the forest.
Today, like yesterday, he let the students loose in the forest and sat on a tree stump, killing time.
That’s when it happened.
He felt something strange.
A feeling hard to pinpoint.
At the oddly familiar sensation, he kicked off the ground.
It was where the kid was.
As he ran, something suddenly came to mind.
The wolf that tore through space and appeared on the day of the midterm exam.
The feeling was exactly like that.
‘Void…!’
Fortunately, it seemed he wouldn’t be too late.
He could see the kid and Flone up ahead.
“Kid!”
Zeron kicked off the ground and rushed in an instant.
And then, rip-
Space tore apart.
*
Ed wandered through the forest.
He rejected the invitation from other students to go together and searched alone for a specific place.
Finding that place wasn’t difficult.
Thanks to his particularly careful memory of where the two-way passages, later called dungeons, would open.
Due to their nature, dungeons allowed one to obtain things unavailable on the continent, and some of those were quite helpful for growth.
But he couldn’t know the exact time when the rift would open.
His estimate was the third day of the field training.
In other words, he only knew that the rift would open today.
When he arrived there, there were already visitors.
Medea and Flone.
One was like the ignition device of a time bomb, and the other would become quite a useful force in the future.
Ed pondered for a moment.
What should he do?
He didn’t know if they were here in previous cycles as well.
Even if he had regressed multiple times, he couldn’t accurately predict everything unless it was an event beyond human control, like earthquakes, tsunamis, or rifts with destroyed worlds.
Things could change due to Ed’s tiny actions or even a single word.
Which means they might or might not have been there in the previous cycle.
That’s when it happened.
Something strange caught his senses.
‘A rift…!’
The rift was about to open.
And the fact that Medea was here meant….
“Kid!”
As expected.
Zeron rushed towards Medea.
Just as he was about to grab Medea and Flone and kick off,
Rip-, space tore apart.
And their figures disappeared.
“Tsk, I’ll have to give up this time.”
Ed turned around.
In this situation, he needed to move quickly.
The opening of a rift isn’t a simple problem.
The monster wave that derives from it.
To gain even small benefits, it was better to put future useful individuals in his debt.
After all, once you enter the rift, you have to go through all sorts of hardships.
Maybe this is the better choice.
Consoling himself that this might be a blessing in disguise, Ed hurried his steps.