BXBX NOVEL Chapter 42: Freedom
It was horrible.
The students considered their odds of taking revenge on Jarron or otherwise expressing their outrage with what they had learned these past weeks.
However, like a sage, Zach stepped forward and faced his classmates with a ray of sunlight reaching through the canopy and bathing him in radiance.
"Fellow students, I can sense your discontent. I feel your anger. Your hurt. Your exhaustion. But—and I'm not saying this half-heartedly—consider this: If we do it on our own, we do not need to rely on Instructor Jarron for food."
Zach put his hands together with a benevolent expression and almost-closed eyes.
Slowly, his words sank into the hearts of his classmates.
Jarron was unreliable. In just the span of an hour, he had already shown as much several times over.
The need to continue hunting monsters for survival wasn't a burden Jarron placed on them. It was freedom. Freedom from the restraints of food handed to them by another. Freedom from the oversight and control Jarron would have, intentionally or unintentionally, over them.
Freedom from Jarron's influence.
It wasn't a continuation of their suffering. It was an opportunity.
One by one, the other students stood up properly and saluted Zach with one clenched fist on their chest and the other to their sides. They ignored Jarron completely.
Zach felt a twisted sense of satisfaction. It was revenge for the unjust detention.
After they had saluted Zach, the students didn't waste time. They prepared the tents, fire pits, and sleeping areas. After all, everything they needed other than food was already in place. Well, they didn't need anything else, technically speaking.
But a place to grill the food without worrying about starting a forest fire and tents to sleep in was a blessing to their weary bones.
The students split up and focused on their various tasks.
The main fighting force of the students, namely Zach, Anerias, Violina, and Dukiel, gathered in one place. They also brought a couple of others with them to help carry the haul.
Anerias was the first to speak, and he did it when looking at Dukiel.
"You were chased by something before you found the camp, right?"
Dukiel nodded.
"Yeah. It's strange. After…Well, after we got separated from Zach, we didn't encounter anything. It was like the forest was empty. But when we got close to here, all kinds of monsters surrounded the camp. We almost made it all the way without being discovered.
But this, I think it was a tiger, discovered us."
The others nodded in sympathy as Dukiel remembered the threat to his life. Then, they all looked at Zach.
"...It's just a coincidence…" Zach's murmured attempt at expressing his innocence was ignored.
Instead, Anerias, Violina, Dukiel, the green-haired student, Rierdan Loret, and a student whose familiar was a large millipede, Nessa Koche, started talking about the tiger Dukiel and Julius ran from.
Dukiel's Sentinel was strong and sturdy. Dukiel didn't bother mentioning it, but it was even stronger after absorbing its half of the polished dirt orb from the Giupusta Locale.
They could have decided to flee because they weren't confident the Sentinel could protect them against the tiger—that the tiger would be too quick and kill one or both of them before the Sentinel could stop it.
That was what Anerias and the others thought when they heard Dukiel, one of the class' three A-ranks said they had to run.
It could have also been because there were other monsters around, which would have made it even harder for the Sentinel to protect both Dukiel and Julius, Mannequin included.
That was not it.
Dukiel hadn't chosen to run because he was worried the Sentinel couldn't protect them both.
He and Julius ran because the Sentinel expressed some kind of feeling that it couldn't protect even one of them against the tiger. It wasn't even confident it could protect itself.
The other students weren't shocked to hear that the Sentinel had expressed its feelings or warned Dukiel since their familiars had done similar things, especially during the field trip. The only surprising thing was that the Sentinel did so when looking like a floating, emotionless stone.
What was surprising, however, was the fact that the Sentinel, rumored to be one of the strongest familiars in the A-rank and one of the four strongest familiars in the class, wasn't capable of standing up to this tiger.
Zach narrowed his eyes slightly.
'How did they escape?'
But Zach didn't voice his doubt. It would do no good since it was clear what they were doing. The fact that Dukiel and Julius had escaped with their lives intact meant that the tiger wasn't invincible.
It was just strong.
It didn't change the fact that they needed to take it down if they wanted to get food during their stay in the forest.
Jarron hadn't said anything about how long they were staying in the forest. But based on the tents, the camps, and the supplies that were supposed to be on their way, the field trip wasn't over yet.
Jarron had also made it clear they couldn't rely on him.
So, even if only to secure a route back or make it possible to gather berries, leaves, or meat without worrying about never making it back, they had to kill the tiger.
It wasn't like they would get any stronger by waiting, either, other than resting and recovering to their peaks.
Besides, with Zach, Yanael, Anerias, the Blackflame Hound, Violina, the Ice Spirit, Dukiel, the Sentinel, Rierdan, the Runic Moss Butterfly, Nessa, and the Snakelong Millipede, what was a single tiger going to do? Even if it was strong, there was no way it could eat them all without getting a stomach ache.