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Complete 19
Screams burst out loudly, jolting the 87th class cadets awake one by one from their wandering dreams.
“Ugh, why the hell is someone screeching this early in the morning? Let me sleep, you brat!”
“What’s going on—huh?!”
What the newly awakened 87th class saw was—
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Right in the center of the dormitory grounds, a fellow cadet hung tied to a tall wooden cross, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, arms spread wide.
A wooden sign around his neck that read “THIEF” swung wildly as he struggled in desperate attempts to lower his head even slightly, drawing even more attention.
Though he looked like some ascetic calmly enduring holy suffering, the reality was…
“…He got caught trying to rob a shop and ended up like that?”
It was such a laughably pathetic reason.
The sight of their classmate sagging on the cross in nothing but underwear was engraved onto the minds of all the 87th class cadets, never to be forgotten.
Compared to this, even Roselyn—who had once beaten a rat who tried to steal from her shop into a pulp—suddenly seemed rather gentlemanly.
So who, after just four days of sharing the same filthy ground, had turned their fellow cadet into such a gruesome and miserable spectacle?
“Have you reflected enough?”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward the owner of the gentle, sing-song voice.
Pink curly hair, innocent looks that screamed “easy target,” yet this girl had shocked more people in four days than anyone else—Chloe.
The thief nodded wildly like an excited dog offered a treat. Chloe tapped the top of his head with the sharp wooden shard in her hand, twice, three times, almost like she was patting him. Then she began cutting the rope that bound his limbs.
His wrists were marked red from how desperately he had struggled. The knot had been one designed to tighten the more one fought it.
The moment the rope came undone, the thief collapsed miserably onto the ground. Chloe ignored him and looked around at the rest of her peers with a kind smile, eyes gently curved.
“Guys, if any of you want to experience hanging from a cross in your underwear, feel free to sneak out at night like this friend here and try robbing someone’s shop.”
That much should nail it into these thugs’ thick skulls. Chloe was satisfied; she had calibrated the warning to their average delinquency level.
“Lloyd! Are you okay?! Why the hell would you try stealing from that crazy person’s shop?!”
“I just… I just wanted to try eating a proper meal… even once….”
Shaking in the hands of the friend who’d rushed over with his uniform pants, the thief muttered with a dying voice.
He peeled off the sign around his neck. Chloe had carved it out of some wooden scrap she’d found.
Even the cadet who had previously been beaten to a pulp by Roselyn for attempting theft shuddered in horror. She had once compared Roselyn and Chloe and decided Roselyn was the safer choice.
Had she chosen Chloe instead, she might have woken up hanging on a cross greeting the morning sun.
Just imagining it made her shiver violently. The thought of stealing again evaporated long ago.
And just like that, without even realizing it herself, Chloe had established herself among her peers as a bloodless, tearless, deranged executioner—one who gave them nightmares, not just fear.
As always, the 87th class started the day with collective punishment for being late to morning roll call.
Since they were late every day regardless of circumstances, they couldn’t even blame the morning uproar on Chloe.
Of course, for Chloe’s group, this time it really was the uproar’s fault—they’d spent the whole night sentencing the thief to his crucifixion.
Dragging her unusually exhausted body to the cafeteria, Chloe noticed something strange. Lucian was eating slop—the “dog porridge”—for breakfast.
When she asked why someone who had a shop was voluntarily eating dog porridge, Lucian answered proudly:
“A lady said she couldn’t eat because she didn’t have a shop, so she asked me for mine. So I gave it to her. For a lady’s meal, my shop is a small price.”
A short distance away, the female cadet in question shoved a piece of shriveled meat into her mouth and blew Lucian a dry “hand kiss.”
It looked less like a hand kiss and more like someone flicking a cigarette.
But Lucian received that gesture with blissful satisfaction and continued shoveling down dog porridge. After one or two bites he gagged violently, claiming it was inedible.
“Knew it. You looked like the type to get stripped of your shop.”
“At least it wasn’t taken violently.”
Everyone accepted Lucian’s behavior without question. It was perfectly in character.
‘So the only walking shop vending machine left is Marielle, huh?’
Now that Lucian’s shop had flown away, the lazy grasshoppers who didn’t want to work would surely target Marielle next.
Chloe dipped her bread into her potato soup and glanced toward Marielle.
And there she saw—Marielle, eating dog porridge just like Lucian, not the 1-point shop meal package she should have.
“Marielle, did they take your shop too?”
At Phoebe’s cautious question, Marielle shook her head.
“No… I traded it for alcohol….”
“So did you receive the alcohol?”
“…No… they said they’ll give it someday…”
Her slow, infuriatingly relaxed voice cracked another spoonful of dog porridge into her mouth.
“Marielle, for your mental stability, just think of it as charity. Alcohol that will never reach your hands is not worth hoping for.”
Phoebe’s brutal truth hit again today.
Marielle’s parents had clearly thrown her into Northfort Academy to teach her how the world works.
“Is it edible? Lemme try a bite.”
Roselyn, who had never once tried dog porridge, seemed curious after seeing Marielle eat it so calmly.
She took one bite, gagged violently, then shoved her whole bowl of potato soup into her mouth to erase the taste.
Wiping her mouth, she asked:
“How the hell do you eat that like it’s good?”
“It tastes like fermented barley and overripe raisins… I think they used raisins and barley bread just before it spoiled… Wine is made from grapes and beer is made from fermented barley…”
But this mush was neither wine nor beer.
It was food made from ingredients on the verge of rotting—basically edible garbage.
And Marielle, who kept eating it while reminiscing about wine and beer, was insane in her own special way.
Chloe scanned the room quickly. She spotted a group of raiders sharing today’s special meal among themselves.
‘Even if they scraped together all leftover shop points, it wouldn’t be more than five… They must have used everything right after extorting Marielle.’
Meaning there would be no shop points to reclaim—only debts to collect later.
Planning a recovery operation, Chloe turned abruptly toward the sticky gaze clinging to her.
“If you’re going to stare holes into me, why don’t you go get your own food?”
Next to her, Altair sat with his chin propped on his hand, staring at her intently — with nothing on the table in front of him.
“Someone kept rustling and making a racket next to me in the middle of the night, so I couldn’t sleep.”
Altair smirked.
“What does losing sleep have to do with you not eating?”
Chloe glared and scooped soup, but Altair leaned closer, following her movements.
“It matters. I’m so tired I can’t force myself to eat that tasteless zero-point meal.”
His golden eyes curved slyly.
Before Chloe could react, Altair suddenly leaned in.
Just as the spoon was about to reach her mouth, his face slid in from the side, and he pulled her wrist toward him.
“Hey!”
Too late.
The spoon went straight into his mouth instead of hers.
He swallowed the potato soup without chewing, wiped the corner of his lips with his thumb, and casually licked it.
“Not bad.”
Chloe was too stunned to speak, while Altair just grinned shamelessly.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a spoon. So you’ll keep feeding me, right?”
Without a word, Chloe lifted her bowl.
Her lavender eyes shot him a murderous look as he sat next to her like a baby bird with its mouth open. Even comparing him to a baby bird felt insulting—to baby birds.
She upended the entire bowl into her mouth and downed it in one go.
She slammed the empty bowl down. All that remained was the lingering smell of soup and a pair of eyes sticking annoyingly close to her.
Altair’s golden eyes lingered regretfully on her lips before dropping to the empty bowl.
“Kind of heartless, aren’t you?”
Chloe raised a middle finger in his face and stood up, leaving the cafeteria.
After breakfast, classes began.
The first, Military Speech, was a hellish course meant to scrub the rough thug-like mannerisms out of their speech.
The second, Military Economics, was a class designed to hammer basic economic concepts into the skulls of rich brats who only knew how to spend money.
If the Military Speech professor tore them apart verbally, the Military Economics professor hurled questions like grenades, kicking out anyone who couldn’t answer properly.
Five more were expelled just during Military Economics. The rest learned fast: stay sharp or get thrown out.
The steadily shrinking number of cadets was terrifying.
Out of the original thirty who passed basic military training, ten were already expelled. Only twenty remained.
The worst part? No one knew where the expelled cadets were or what became of them. Even those expelled during basic training had vanished without a trace.
After the final physical training session, their day ended.
At last—time to earn shop points legally had come.
