Chapter 200

Chapter 200

I Became the Academy Mafia Chapter 200Before the sun had fully risen, I returned home and stared intently at the gem that, rather than reflecting light, seemed to be absorbing it.[Name: Essence of a High-Ranking Dark Spirit][Rank: Unique][Type: Material][Description: The essence of a dark spirit that should originally have been immortal, but returned to nothingness.

Just looking at it seems to evoke endless darkness.]

“At least I got it.”

A top-grade material item imbued with that bastard’s power.

The Essence of a High-Ranking Dark Spirit.

In the game, it was used as material for enhancing items.

Of course, I had also brought back quite a pile of other things from his hideout...‘Too bad most of them were things used for traps.’Aside from that, the only remotely useful things were items used to strengthen spirits and the sword he had used.

But.

“This is enough.”

It wasn’t an elixir or a weapon, but this ‘essence’ was an item that would bring me another opportunity.

I walked over to my desk and recalled the events remaining in the first semester.

The most urgent event was the Academy’s final exams.

Honestly, I wasn’t too worried about those.

A high-school-level exam was something I could cover well enough with the Smart Lens and my experience.

The truly important event was this.

“First-Half Club Midterm Evaluation.”

It was one of the larger events in the Academy route, checking what achievements each club had made over the past semester.

For production-oriented clubs, art clubs, or economy-related clubs like Haru’s, simply submitting their works or achievement reports was enough to pass this event... but the problem was that Familia was a ‘combat’ club.

And inevitably, combat clubs had to prove their achievements by demonstrating their strength.

And what was used for that was...

-Young Master. Are you awake?

Right on cue, with breakfast time approaching, Alessia came to my room to wake me.

“I’ll be out soon.”

Food first.

After chasing that bastard around since dawn, I was starving.

______________

“I did iiiit! I did it! See? You see it?! Nyaaaaaagh!”

Jin-woo had been roaring loudly since the afternoon.

Se-ah sighed and shook her head at the sight.

“I don’t understand why he’s so happy when he only barely avoided failing.”

“Still, Jin-woo worked pretty hard. He completed every bit of homework we gave him too.”

Young-je, meanwhile, smiled at him as though proud.

At that, Jin-woo looked even more delighted and began dancing some incomprehensible dance.

“Ha, this isn’t really the time to be that happy. You guys do know we have the club midterm evaluation next week, right?”

Se-ah was the first to bring up the club midterm evaluation.

“It’s true that our current level is enough to sweep through most Bronze Clubs... but we’re a Silver Club now, so we can’t let our guard down.”

She seemed to have thought about it quite a bit too, judging by her worried expression.

Jin-woo blinked as though wondering what there was to worry about.

“Come on, don’t be so scared. It’s just a club evaluation. I mean, it feels weird saying this myself... but we’re not exactly weak, are we?”

Just as Jin-woo said with a snicker, our club could already be considered a respectable mid-sized club.

Familia had gone beyond being a single club and reached the level of something closer to an alliance.

The problem was that among all those allied groups, ours was the only proper combat club.

And if I were Familia’s enemy, I would undoubtedly target that weakness and tighten the noose around us.‘There’s no way this proceeds normally.’Just as Se-ah said, lowering our guard was out of the question.

“First of all, everyone worked hard on finals. If it were up to me, I’d tell you all to rest properly... but like Se-ah said, we still have the club evaluation left, right? Let’s do our best for what little remains of the first semester. Vacation is coming soon anyway.”

Once vacation started, we should at least be able to catch our breath from Familia work.

With that thought, we arrived at the Familia club room and were about to prepare for the club midterm evaluation when.[A new message has arrived!][Senior Yuli: SD]

An emergency signal came from Yuli.

If I remembered correctly, that signal meant S-rank danger(Dangerous.)

.

And the fact that she had sent it in shorthand meant the situation had occurred suddenly and was difficult even for her to respond to.

And if there was someone capable of causing this...

“It’s about time it started.”

Ray Pendragon.

It also meant that bastard had made his move.

The moment I thought that.

“President Eugene! President Eugeneee! E-emergency! It’s an emergency!”

“Junior Eugene! Junior Eugeneee!! Please save us!”

Screams came from outside the club room.

At that, Jin-woo opened the door to see what was going on.

“Huh? Senior from the Board Game Club? And... President Se-ri Noona?”

I could see the two of them running toward us from far away, panting heavily.

And behind them came another crowd.

Most were faces I knew, people connected to Familia or clubs participating in the club support business through us.

“Boss, looks like this is an emergency.”...

Just as Jin-woo said.

Something was happening.

______________

“What did we even do wrong for this to happen?”

“Th-this is obviously because people are trying to keep us in check, right? W-what do we do?! We were finally about to keep riding the WeTube boom... th-this is bad.”

The reason Familia’s club room was packed with people was very simple.

The people who had entrusted their safety to us now felt that safety was threatened.

“So. Let me organize the situation. Every club represented here. You’re saying all of you have been challenged to club battles?”

Everyone nodded at the same time.

It wasn’t difficult to guess why this mess had happened.

“Ray Pendragon. The student council president made his move.”

Young-je was the first to say it.

“It’s obvious he’s trying to weaken our club’s strength before the club midterm evaluation. Otherwise, there’s no way he would have selectively challenged only the clubs that have contracts with us.”

It was probably just as Young-je said.

There was no choice but to call it malicious.

“This is amusing. I gave him one jab last time, and he’s taking revenge like this?”

At least I’d given him a commendation.

I never imagined he’d throw a bomb made of work back at me.

“For now, everyone, please calm down. As stipulated in our contracts, we’ll participate in your club battles as representatives.”

While calming the troubled club presidents, I stood up and counted the number of clubs that had come here.

“Five clubs in total, huh.”‘Recipe Development Club’‘Board Game Club’‘Indoor Fishing Club’‘Tarot Club’‘Pâtissier Club’Every one of them was a club with practically no combat power.

The important part was that we couldn’t fight for all five of them.

Some of the scheduled times had been cleverly made to overlap.

But that didn’t mean we had no method at all.

“If they challenged you to club battles, then the challengers’ ranks should be fairly low. Se-ah, quickly go to the café and ask Ratte for information on these guys. Tell her it’s my order and she’ll prepare it immediately.”

“Ah, yes!”

If my prediction was right, then this little scheme was probably not intended to beat us, but to drain our strength.

In other words, while us defeating the other clubs would be the natural outcome, doing so could make us fall cleanly into another trap he had prepared.

A short while later.

Se-ah hurried back into the club room and handed me a stack of papers filled with writing.

“Ratte told me to give you this.”

“Thanks.”

As expected of Familia’s intelligence agent.

Everything we needed right now was organized in here.

And the contents were...

“Just as expected.”

All the opposing clubs involved in this were classified as weaker clubs.

Of course, compared to the production and hobby clubs gathered here, they were stronger in combat, but compared to students seriously training to become active heroes, they were considerably weak.

As expected, they hadn’t challenged us with the intention of winning.

Which meant the student council had offered them compensation greater than the loss from losing a club battle.

“This might be easier than I thought.”

Apparently, the current student council didn’t have enough information about us.

Well, the only recent activities our club had done were gathering to drink tea and doing muscle training, so I wondered what there even was to investigate... but in the first place, the kids in our club grew more through their mentor classes than through club activities.

Most importantly, the degree of growth among our club members had been beyond imagination.

“For now, could everyone please return to your clubs for a bit? I’d like to discuss an alternative plan for this situation with the members of ‘Familia.’ I ask for your understanding since this is for security.”

Even so, it would have been a little difficult to discuss our plan in front of this many people, so I sent most of them back to their respective club rooms.

That left the four of us in ‘Familia.’

“Hi. I’m late.”

No, with Choi Yeon, who had just arrived, all five were finally gathered.

“So, Boss. What kind of good plan did you come up with that you sent everyone else away?”

Jin-woo was the first among the kids gathered in the president’s office to speak.

“Judging by the information Boss showed us, it really just looks like a bunch of nobodies came swarming in. What do you want to do, sink them one by one in club battles?”

“You think the student council will just sit there and watch us do that? Obviously they’ll use it as an excuse and hit us with all kinds of restrictions afterward.”

Young-je nodded at Se-ah’s words.

“Se-ah’s right. If we do something unnecessary here, it’s no different from exposing a weakness. We need some unusual orthodox approach.”

An unusual orthodox approach.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to say. An unusual orthodox approach. I just thought of one.”

At my words, everyone’s eyes turned toward me.

“What is it? Just crush each of them overwhelmingly?”

“Would Mr. Eugene really do something like that? Maybe he’ll just bury them in money and bring them back over to our side.”

“Even so, I don’t think the President would do that. If anything, I could see him going around alone and smashing all of them.”...

What exactly do these kids think I am?

“Since Eugene could do all of those. Maybe that’s why he’s thinking.”

Even Choi Yeon joined in.

Honestly, it wasn’t like I hadn’t considered the methods the kids mentioned... but that didn’t mean I was actually planning to do them.

Seriously.

“First, I’ll say this outright. This is an opportunity for us.”

“An opportunity?”

Everyone looked at me with puzzled expressions.

I grinned at them and continued.

“We haven’t had any achievements since making the club.”

“Uh...? Aren’t we doing the support business? Isn’t that basically the best in the school?”

“That’s internal and financial. More precisely, I’m talking about our rank.”

“Ah! Come to think of it, we haven’t done a ranking battle since the all-out war!”

Se-ah clapped her hands in surprise as though she had just made a new discovery.

That’s right.

A system tied to combat clubs.

The school ranking.

“It couldn’t be helped. We rose to Silver as soon as we started, went through several major incidents, and got busy running multiple businesses. But it’s still true that we need achievements.”

That was what we lacked.

Whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

“This thing that looks like a crisis is actually an opportunity. We have to face five clubs at once. It’s probably an operation you guys will like too.”

“...

An operation we’ll like?”

Choi Yeon tilted her head.

I looked at the others, including Choi Yeon, and decided to tell them what that ‘unusual orthodox approach’ was.

“One person each. Let’s each take one club and sweep them away.”

“I love it.”

See?

I told you they’d like it.

In other words.

Operation ‘Five Lu Bus.’