Chapter 57

* * *

Nain was busy trying hard to follow Ash, who walked without hesitation. Though the forest floor was rough, for him anywhere his feet touched was as good as a path.

While walking, they sometimes encountered Espers wearing red bracelets. A girl who looked a little younger than Nain had her red hair tied up high. She was a member of Ched's team. He knew this was her first training too.

But where were all the other team members, leaving her wandering alone? Just as Nain was thinking this, her head turned and their eyes met.

"..."

"Eek!"

She was alone, and as soon as she saw Ash standing behind Nain, her face turned pale and she ran away.

"Ahhhhh! Save me!"

Running away while making such a loud noise would be heard by other people nearby too. Nain looked to the side and asked.

"Aren't you going to catch her?"

"Leave her be. She's asking to be saved."

Ash muttered leisurely. The man's long eyes narrowed. The tied hair of the desperately fleeing Esper swayed gently like a red fox's tail. Watching this, Nain thought that compared to that person, Ash was like a hunter who had come out for a stroll.

"That kid's ability enhances other Espers' abilities by about half a grade. When she's alone, it's useless, so she's just avoiding everyone blindly."

"..."

But this side was even more lacking in something. Neither Ash nor himself had a proper weapon... Nain muttered inwardly.

"Nain."

"...?"

Nain stopped walking while watching his footing and looked back at Ash. He suddenly posed a riddle-like question.

"If this place were inside a gate and what we encountered was a mutated monster, what should we do?"

"We should run away without looking back."

Isn't that obvious? At Nain's answer, Ash slowly shook his head.

"It's better not to encounter them in the first place."

"..."

If that's the case, why ask the question like that? He had assumed they had already encountered one, but the model answer completely negated the question.

Easy to say. If that were possible... Nain thought that if it were possible to avoid encounters just by deciding to, he wouldn't have gotten entangled with Ash either.

"The monsters distributed inside gates also have a kind of territory."

"Why are we suddenly talking about gates?"

"I told you, this is survival training."

Did he? Nain tilted his head and focused on Ash's words.

"Gates aren't much different from here either. The conditions are never equal. Whether you run away like that kid earlier or endure on top of a tree waiting for the situation to pass. It's a fight where whoever survives by any means wins unconditionally."

Ash explained at length, then picked up a long tree branch and poked it into the ground. Drawing a large circle, he returned to his earlier story.

"This is the inside of a gate, and the small circles inside the gate are the territories of various monsters."

He drew six small circles of different sizes inside the large circle. The circles sometimes overlapped with each other, and sometimes were completely separate. Ash wrote numbers in the small circles in order, adding that there was something called an ecosystem inside gates too.

Emission-type gates were fragments of worlds. There were places where monsters' territories overlapped, and they often fought among themselves over territorial disputes.

"I've been going in and out of gates for over ten years, but the monsters that appear each time aren't identical. Just last year, an emission-type gate full of creatures I'd never seen before was discovered."

Then Ash struck the center of the large circle hard and said.

"This is the core. It's like a heart for humans. You have to find and destroy this to get out."

When you found and destroyed the gate's core, a door to escape from the gate would open. The core sometimes appeared in the form of objects, and in gates where monster wave phenomena occurred, the boss monster was the gate's core itself.

Special terrain, the scale of the gate, and various other variables existed, but the core principle was one.

"In other words, you just need to destroy the core. It's best to minimize contact with all other factors."

Only then did Nain realize the true meaning of this training. According to Ash's words, the most important thing was survival. Fighting meaninglessly with dangerous elements had no great significance.

And the signal device held by the other teams represented the gate's 'core.'

The idea that it's better not to encounter them... seemed to mean that not being noticed by the 'variables' inside the gate could minimize conquest time.

'That makes sense.'

When Nain seemed to properly understand, Ash smiled with satisfaction and said.

"Want me to teach you in more detail if you'd like? About gates, survival methods, this and that."

"It wouldn't hurt to learn."

"It's not free. I'll charge tuition."

"I didn't bring any money."

You might as well fleece a flea. At Nain's reluctant reaction, Ash chuckled a bit then answered firmly.

"If you don't have money, you'll pay with your body."

Though he had suspected it was just fancy talk, being an Esper with actual combat experience, Ash was surprisingly useful.

He was very good at finding traces that others had failed to hide completely. He could identify the owner of footprints just by lightly touching faint footprints left on rocks, and deduce the time the footprints were left from how dry the soil was.

And Ash guessed that someone would be in this vicinity, and his words proved correct. Nain was able to watch some Espers engage in close combat very nearby before scattering.

He said it was important to know your opponents well and gave rough explanations about the Espers on each team. Though he remembered the names of only a few Espers, so he had to recall faces through descriptions like 'that guy with small eyes' or 'that baldy.'

Ash taught several survival rules that even Nain, who didn't have outstanding senses like an Esper, could utilize. But it was true that they sounded too vague.

"Easy to say, but how is it possible to follow others' traces while not leaving your own? Is that even possible? We're human."

When Nain complained, Ash said nonchalantly.

"You'll get used to it. Other dimension wanderers complained at first too, but they did it when push came to shove."

"Did you train with those people too?"

"They weren't awakeners, so I couldn't make time to train together. Instead, they learned by getting hit every time they couldn't understand in gates..."

"...?"

Getting hit? When Nain visibly flinched at those words, Ash changed what he was saying.

"That was a figurative expression. I don't hit people."

"..."

Nain quietly shut his mouth. He decided to just accept Ash's teachings without objecting.

Crackle, crackle.

Static sounds came from speakers installed throughout the forest. Soon after, a broadcast flowed out in an emotionless voice.

—Protective barrier temporary deactivation in progress. ...Deactivation complete. Captured monsters will be deployed shortly. Danger level D-grade. Except in emergency situations, the barrier will not be deactivated before all clear.

"Monsters..."

"You don't need to be scared."

Ash added that hiding from people was just practice, and the real things they should avoid were monsters, so they would be able to learn in an environment similar to actual combat. After all, this main training was a simulation for gate conquest.

"But what's the standard for dividing danger levels?"

Nain asked. Awakeners' grades were divided according to numerical values by combining several items from center measurement results, but he thought monster grades wouldn't be determined that way. Surely they wouldn't interview monsters one by one... Thinking of someone interviewing a monster asking 'Hello, are you dangerous by any chance?', Nain twitched the corners of his mouth and held back laughter.

"From D-grade onwards, they're entities equipped with aggression."

"Aggression?"

Ash nodded.

"F-grade monsters, the lowest grade, can be thought of as rabbits or birds if compared to animals. Unless there's a special reason, they avoid outsiders and have no aggression at all."

He explained the criteria for danger grades step by step, starting from the most harmless entities and working his way up.

In the case of danger level E-grade, like F-grade, they had no aggression, but the creatures themselves weren't small in size.

And from D-grade onwards, they showed aggression toward everything that invaded their territory. B to D grades were divided according to how threatening they were.

Finally, when there were actual casualties caused by them inside gates, they were upgraded to danger level A-grade.

"There is S-grade too, but such gates don't open very often these days."

"What's that?"

Nain tilted his head. They classified monsters that caused casualties as A-grade, but there was something even worse than that?

"When conquest isn't completed and all awakeners die inside the gate, resulting in total annihilation, if this is repeated twice or more, the grade of the gate and internal monsters changes. That's S-grade, Nain."

"..."

Nain didn't bother to respond. Hearing those words made his thought that gates were dangerous places even more solid. If he treated it like a game, he'd really get hurt.