The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL] Chapter 1328: Absolute Nuts

No.

Clearly, in this situation, Sid was the only one suffering!

Was he seriously supposed to start describing exactly how his Master looked so Luca could personally assess whether Xavier had lost any muscle mass? Or would it be easier to simply quit his job entirely?

After all, D-29 seemed fully prepared and even hell-bent to take over every possible opening at a moment’s notice!

The guardian mecha was still entertaining such thoughts while desperately searching for an answer that wouldn’t result in an even more ridiculous follow-up question when an unfamiliar alarm suddenly rang throughout the room.

Initially grateful for the sudden interruption, Sid nearly sighed in sweet relief, thinking it was one of those extraction or decommissioning alerts.

That relief lasted all of two seconds.

Unlike the usual exercise announcements broadcast across the terrain through scrolling marquees and holographic projections, the accompanying prompt appeared strictly on the cadets’ personal terminals, immediately causing several supposedly sleeping students around Luca to stir in confusion.

[EMERGENCY NOTICE: THE EXERCISE HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY SUSPENDED.]

[UNIDENTIFIED INTRUDERS HAVE BEEN DETECTED WITHIN THE EXERCISE TERRAIN. ALL STUDENTS ARE ORDERED TO IMMEDIATELY CEASE ALL CONFRONTATIONS AND ASSUME DEFENSIVE POSITIONS UNTIL THE THREAT HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AND NEUTRALIZED BY THE APPROPRIATE AUTHORITIES.]

The room fell silent.

Then, as though that announcement hadn’t already been shocking enough, especially for those non-combatants who’d only just woken up and were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, another urgent prompt flashed across their screens.

[CRITICAL UPDATE: INTRUDERS ARE EQUIPPED WITH LETHAL WEAPONS AND ILLEGAL MECHAS. DO NOT ENGAGE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.]

Along with the warning came an active high-resolution map highlighting the sector where the unidentified intruders had most recently been detected, along with repeated instructions for all cadets to avoid the area at all costs and prepare for immediate evacuation.

Understandably, complete chaos erupted the moment everyone finished reading.

"What the hell?!"

"Illegal mechas?!"

"Are they serious?!"

A few cadets even stammered in disbelief, desperately hoping this was nothing more than another elaborate part of the exercise.

Seeing the panic rapidly spreading through the room, Theo immediately stepped forward.

"Wake anyone who’s still asleep," Theo instructed, his voice noticeably more serious than usual. "We need everyone ready."

That was enough to snap several cadets out of their mounting hysteria.

Whatever was happening, panicking wasn’t going to help anyone, and the reminder that some of their battalion members were still asleep gave them something useful to focus on. Within moments, they dispersed throughout the temporary base to wake the others and prepare for whatever orders came next.

Meanwhile, Theo hurried toward his friends, intending to ask what they planned to do next.

But the moment he drew close, he stopped.

Luca had gone unusually pale.

The golden-eyed cadet was staring fixedly at the map displayed on his terminal, his earlier softness completely gone beneath an expression of intense concentration.

"Hey..." Theo’s chest tightened. "What’s wrong?"

Luca didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he studied the highlighted sector for another few seconds as though desperately hoping he’d misunderstood something. Then he raised one hand, and with a subtle flick of his fingers, a shimmering opaque spiritual barrier snapped into existence around himself, Jax, and Theo, completely muffling their voices from the rest of the room.

"The zone where those intruders were spotted..." Luca finally murmured, his golden eyes widening as he looked up at them. "Apparently, that’s where Battalion 9 is."

"What?!"

Both Jax and Theo stared at him in horror.

Even though their voices couldn’t penetrate the spiritual barrier, the cadets outside could clearly see the sudden dread written across their faces.

Luca hadn’t expected to discover something like this either.

But the moment the exercise was officially placed on hold, D-29 had shamelessly decided that any lingering concern about maintaining competitive fairness could go straight into the trash.

As far as the dungeon system was concerned, this was no longer an exercise.

And if this was no longer an exercise, then there was absolutely no reason to keep withholding information from its Host.

Thus, D-29 had immediately begun feeding Luca everything it already knew while simultaneously accessing networks it was authorized to use and forcefully bypassing those it wasn’t, all in an effort to get a clearer picture of what had just happened.

One of the first things it could easily confirm was the current location of Battalion 9, especially since three of its members belonged to its Host’s closest circle.

And as luck would have it, they were right inside the danger zone.

Luca looked back down at the highlighted sector on his terminal, his hand slowly clenching.

With this horrifying reality laid bare before them, how could any of them even think of running away when their friends were right there in the line of fire?!

__

However, contrary to what Luca and the others were thinking while D-29 busily activated every camera it could access to obtain a live view of the affected sectors, the most immediate danger wasn’t actually underground, where most of Battalion 9 was currently stationed.

It was aboveground.

Because somewhere a bit too close to Battalion 9, Battalion 5 had just encountered something so horrifying that practically every spectator watching the feed was already demanding immediate military intervention.

Heavy, concussive explosions tore through the desert night, followed almost immediately by a torrent of terrified screams over the shared communications channel.

"Run! Get out of there! Those people are absolute nuts!" one cadet screamed into his terminal, his voice shaking with genuine horror.

"They can’t be the Caldris Hostiles!" another shouted as he dove behind a crumbling dune just as a streak of superheated plasma tore through the air above his head. "The Academy wouldn’t be insane enough to bring lethal weapons into the exercise! Run!"

Battalion 5 hadn’t realized what they were dealing with right away.

When the slightly unfamiliar mechas first appeared, they hadn’t looked all that different from the opponents the cadets had been fighting for the past few days. Between the poor visibility, the scarcity of materials forcing everyone to rely on haphazard repairs that clearly prioritized function over aesthetics, and the fact that the actual Caldris Hostiles had already proven remarkably good at appearing out of nowhere, the cadets naturally assumed they’d simply stumbled across another squad of them.

So they’d reacted accordingly.

Several cadets immediately began circling the unfamiliar mechas, intending to draw them out and force them into a less favorable formation, just as they’d learned to do against their other opponents. Knowing their pitiful odds of winning any actual head-on confrontation, they’d instead resorted to deliberately sacrificing one group as bait, luring the hostiles away from their hideout while the others slipped inside and made a grab for the main objective.

Except this time, their opponents didn’t take the bait or even attempt to whittle away at the battalion’s already limited energy reserves.

Instead, one of the suspicious enemy mechas suddenly reached behind its chassis, unholstered an enormous non-regulation cannon, and opened fire directly into the squad.

A blinding fireball erupted across the desert.

Two manual mechas were violently thrown backward from the force of the explosion, while chunks of twisted metal and shattered rock went flying through the air.

And if there was one thing military cadets who’d survived all sorts of tests and training exercises over the years could recognize almost immediately, it was the difference between a modified training weapon and something designed to actually kill.

That cannon was most definitely the latter.