A Guide for Background Characters to Survive in a Manga - Chapter 329 : Chapter 329

Translator: AkazaTL

Proofreader/Editor: JWyck

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Chapter 329

Let alone him, even Su Bei was very suspicious. Si Zhaohua’s strength was indeed not to be underestimated, but this was the Nightmare Beast world. Those who would voluntarily come here to train, and were even selected for the official patrol team, shouldn’t they be very strong ability users?

To be defeated so easily gave one the feeling that the good guys were about to be finished.

“You’ve misunderstood.” Not wanting outsiders to misunderstand the Three Academies Base, a teammate who was watching quickly explained, “Our team is only responsible for patrolling the camp during the day. This is the safest of all the patrol teams, and naturally also the… ahem, weakest team. You can understand us as the connections who came here to gild ourselves, as he said.”

Everyone: “…”

So that’s how it was. It was a case of the thief crying “thief.” Because he himself was a connection, he was unhappy when he saw new connections coming, and wanted to use the little power he had.

But he didn’t expect that although the new connection was indeed a connection, he was not a soft persimmon like him, but a rose with thorns. One touch and his hand was bleeding.

Having been exposed completely, the red-haired captain’s face flushed with anger and he shouted in frustration, “How can you attack a teammate? I will report this to my superiors and have them send you back to the academy!”

“You don’t think these people around are dead, do you? You provoked us first. No matter how you think about it, we are not the ones at fault,” Zhao Xiaoyu was speechless. “Even if we can’t testify, these onlookers can.”

“They can testify? What did they see?” the red-haired captain said arrogantly. “They only came over to join the fun after we started fighting. And you guys are the troublemakers who disobeyed the captain’s orders and even fought with the captain.”

Under the suppression of identity, if they fought for no clear reason, it would definitely be judged as the team members’ fault in the end. After all, the captain did have some right to dispose of team members.

And looking at the red-haired captain’s appearance, it was clear he was very sure that the other team members who had seen the whole thing would not expose him.

If there was no evidence, they might really have to suffer in silence.

But unfortunately, they had evidence. Su Bei took out a recording pen under Si Zhaohua’s trusting gaze and said with a faint smile, “What if I have evidence to prove that you were the one who started it?”

The next second, the red-haired captain’s voice came from the recording pen, “I know you are here to gild yourselves…”

This recording undoubtedly proved that the captain was the one who started the trouble, and it was premeditated.

How could someone record at a time like this!?

This time, the red-haired captain couldn’t be arrogant anymore. He didn’t want to lose this job at all, so he was very capable of adapting and immediately begged for mercy, “I’m sorry, I was blinded by greed just now. If you are willing to let me go, I can give you…”

He had to admit, this kind of face-changing skill was quite impressive. It had a powerful feeling of not having any self-esteem at all. If it were a soft-hearted person, or a greedy person, perhaps they would have agreed.

But unfortunately, he was facing the young master of the Si family who was not short of money at all. Before he could finish his words, Si Zhaohua interrupted him without hesitation, “No need.”

He turned and walked away with Su Bei and the others. The other team members gave the captain a look of helplessness and no longer paid him any attention. After all, although they had some interests entangled, it was only a little, and there was no need to take risks for him.

Si Zhaohua went all the way to the 7th floor office area, quickly found Jiang Yan, and handed her the recording.

After listening to the recording, Jiang Yan’s face was serious, “Don’t worry, the base will definitely handle this matter.”

“Then what about our task today?” Zhao Xiaoyu was naturally most concerned about this question.

The existence of the red-haired captain was the base’s mistake, so Jiang Yan directly relaxed the task, “You can continue to patrol with the team in the afternoon. I’ll arrange a new captain for you.”

Being able to get a morning of rest for free, both Su Bei and Zhao Xiaoyu were very satisfied. Wu Jin’s mood also seemed to be good. After saying goodbye to Jiang Yan, he curiously asked Su Bei, “Is your recording always on? Or did you predict something in advance?”

Every time, Su Bei seemed to be able to accurately get a useful recording. It was one thing to record after disappearing, but this time, he was with the team the whole time, yet he was able to start the recording in advance.

“It was a pre-judgment,” Su Bei answered without hiding anything. “After all, they are people we just met. Isn’t it normal to be a little more cautious when you don’t know their temperament?”

It was normal to be a little more cautious, but it was not very normal to be so cautious as to have the recording on at all times. Wu Jin showed a hard-to-describe expression, “As long as you’re happy.”

Slacking off in the morning, patrolling at a safe spot in the afternoon. Su Bei just felt that it was great not to be with the protagonist group. It was rare to have such a comfortable time during an event.

However, he was also very clear that this was mainly because this event lasted for a long time, a full month. With such a long time, there was naturally no need to rush to do anything on the first or second day.

In the evening, everyone gathered together and talked about their experiences with their tasks that day. There was nothing much to say on Su Bei’s side. Except for the matter with the red-haired captain, it was truly uneventful.

As for the others, Jiang Tianming and Wu Mingbai’s group encountered Nightmare Beasts, a kind of rat-like Nightmare Beast. They had encountered quite a few rat-like Nightmare Beasts and were very familiar with their effects. This kind of Nightmare Beast generally had only two uses: digging tunnels and spreading viruses.

Of course, the premise was that they appeared in groups. If there were only one or two, it was not a problem. After all, although rat-like Nightmare Beasts did not reproduce like ordinary rats, their numbers were indeed the largest. In addition, they were small in size, so it was normal for them to appear in a crowd.

Lan Subing’s group encountered students from the “Houde Ability Academy” who were sent for research and study. They had a conflict with them because of the distribution of tasks.

“I don’t know what they were thinking,” Ai Baozhu complained speechlessly. “Instead of finding trouble with the academy that decided all this, they came to find trouble with us. They really have the art of bullying the weak and fearing the strong down pat.”

Patting her on the shoulder, Lan Subing calmly soothed her, “After all, in their eyes, we are the vested interests. Although it’s not very smart, it’s understandable.”

Although one person’s meat is another person’s poison, they didn’t need special treatment at all. But who told them not to communicate well in advance? In the eyes of others, they had taken advantage, so it was to be expected that they would be retaliated against.

Ai Baozhu was a little confused, “This doesn’t sound like something you would say?”

Although she was kind-hearted, Lan Subing was not the kind of person who would morally kidnap herself.

Wu Mingbai, who was next to her, sneered, “Did you win the fight?”

“Of course,” Ai Baozhu said proudly and slightly lowered her chin. How could they fail when they were the ones who took action?

Wu Mingbai spread his hands, “That’s the reason.”

Jiang Tianming, who also understood Lan Subing, nodded, “If she had lost, she wouldn’t have said that.”

Completely seen through, Lan Subing smiled shyly, not thinking there was anything wrong with her thoughts. They had taken advantage of the other party’s feelings and won the fight. The other side could be said to have lost both the lady and the soldiers. She was naturally willing to be merciful with her words.

But if they had lost, then there would be no need to talk about being merciful. She would immediately report their series of behaviors, such as bullying the weak and fearing the strong, disrespecting the teacher’s arrangements, and bullying classmates in the Nightmare Beast world, to the teacher and ask the academy to decide.

Of course, it would be in written form. If she really had to say these words to the unfamiliar Teacher Jiang, she would die on the spot.

If this were in the outside world, she would probably be laughing by now. But now they were in the Nightmare Beast world, which suppressed happy emotions, so she couldn’t laugh, but her mood had improved a lot.

The next few days were all about adapting to life. Their coming here was already a bit like pulling up seedlings to help them grow. Jiang Yan naturally would not arrange any particularly difficult tasks for them.

The plot did not advance for a long time, and Su Bei was not in a hurry. With the author controlling the rhythm behind the scenes, a crisis was only a matter of time.

At the end of the first week, Su Bei and the others finally welcomed their first independent task. Their class, except for Feng Lan, was divided into two groups, one of six and one of seven, to complete the task.

Both tasks were to explore the map, but the directions were different, one in the east and one in the west. To ensure their safety, Jiang Yan also gave each of them a teleportation ball. Crushing it would return them to the base and at the same time grant them a healing spell.

According to Jiang Yan, the teleportation ball was given by Lei Ze’en, but the healing spell in the teleportation ball should be from Ye Lin’s ability.

Just looking at the natural way she said this name, everyone guessed that Jiang Yan probably didn’t know about Ye Lin’s defection. However, they did not spoil the mood by mentioning this matter, but instead asked curiously, “Teacher, are you very familiar with Teacher Lei and the others?”

The person who asked was Lan Subing. After a week of getting along, she could already speak naturally in front of the other party.

“Didn’t your teacher tell you?” Jiang Yan was a little surprised. Seeing them all shake their heads, she finally answered helplessly, “We were in the same year, and I was the class monitor of our class.”

So she was the class monitor. Then she would indeed take care of them. After all, she must have been used to taking care of Teacher Meng and the other two back then, so taking care of their students would also be a piece of cake.

Su Bei thought rather mischievously, the position of class monitor really had to be filled by someone with a motherly personality.

After the gossip, it was time to talk about the task again. Su Bei, along with Jiang Tianming, Wu Mingbai, Ling You, Zhao Xiaoyu, and Si Zhaohua, were to go to the coordinate east of the base and continue to explore eastward with that coordinate as the center.

As for the rest of them, it was the same task, but the coordinate was in the west.

There were many such coordinates around the entire base. In the vast and boundless Nightmare Beast world, the people of the Three Academies Base relied on these coordinates to determine their direction and draw maps.

After accepting the task, Su Bei and the others immediately went to the person who had said before that they could help draw the map for points. Because they had not yet learned this knowledge, no one in their class could professionally draw a map, so they could only rely on others for help.

After paying the points, the person immediately handed them a blank sheepskin scroll, “This is my ability [World Map]. As long as you carry it and unfold it every hour, you can automatically draw a map of the route you have traveled.”

It was truly a business with no capital and huge profits. An ability that seemed useless could play a big role at times. Indeed, there are no useless abilities, only useless ability users. After everyone sighed in their hearts, they unhesitatingly paid the points and took the item away.

The so-called exploration of the Nightmare Beast world was to find effective natural coordinates or create one artificially. Then, they would investigate or clear the nearby Nightmare Beast groups.

Investigation was the basic task, while clearing could earn extra points and bonuses. If it couldn’t be cleared, the Three Academies Base would release the relevant task after getting definite intelligence from here, and let other ability users complete it.

Because there were two members of the protagonist group here, Su Bei already had a feeling that there would be a problem with this task. The team’s configuration was Jiang Tianming walking at the very front, with Si Zhaohua and Wu Mingbai on his left and right. The two girls with weak self-protection abilities walked in the middle, and Su Bei followed at the back of the team unhurriedly, cautiously releasing his Mental Energy to probe the surroundings.

With his current Mental Energy level, it was enough for him to not let others notice his probing when he was prepared. Of course, the premise was that he would immediately withdraw his Mental Energy as soon as he sensed another Mental Energy. If he let it out for a moment longer, he would be noticed.

But this was already enough. At least he didn’t have to worry about bumping into other people’s Mental Energy and thus alerting the enemy.

The whole morning passed without any problems. Everyone was just normally exploring the map and clearing Nightmare Beasts.

Probably because they knew there was a human base nearby, even if they expanded outwards like this, no Nightmare Beasts gathered here to target them. After all, as long as they held on for a while, reinforcements would arrive.

This was also the reason why Jiang Yan dared to arrange this task for them.

“How about I just activate my ability directly?” Looking at the gray-black wilderness with no trace of a Nightmare Beast, Si Zhaohua said with a frown.

The hidden characteristic of the [Angel] ability was that it was extremely attractive to Nightmare Beasts. Once it was really used, a large number of Nightmare Beasts would immediately come looking for the smell, and they would no longer have to search around so troublesomely.

“Young master, are you serious?” Zhao Xiaoyu tilted her head and asked with a helpless tone.

Choked by the address “young master,” Si Zhaohua touched his nose, “Don’t call me that. Is there any problem with this method?”

Seeing that he still hadn’t noticed the problem, Zhao Xiaoyu also said sarcastically, “I vaguely remember that our task is to explore the map, not to eliminate… no, to actively find trouble with Nightmare Beasts?”

It was of course good to complete the task ahead of schedule, but actively looking for trouble was a bad idea. Zhao Xiaoyu hadn’t enjoyed the peaceful task enough and didn’t want the task to suddenly turn into a higher difficulty.

Regarding her thoughts, Su Bei expressed his full support with both hands and feet, “Exactly, don’t look for trouble when there’s none, okay? Trouble already loves to find you, and you still want a two-way rush, huh?”

“Pfft!” Zhao Xiaoyu couldn’t help but laugh out loud, and Ling You next to her also had a smile in her eyes.

But the other three couldn’t laugh. They all felt that they had been implicated.

When it was lunchtime, Zhao Xiaoyu took out the picnic blanket, grill, Nightmare Beast meat… that she had prepared in her storage ring in advance, and had a DIY barbecue in the Nightmare Beast world.

Among Class S, the best cook was Mo Xiaotian, who turned out to be the Saint of the “Black Flash” organization. The second best, surprisingly, was Si Zhaohua. The young master was indeed good at cooking. The others didn’t have much camaraderie and decisively gave the barbecue position to him.

Forced to become a temporary chef, Si Zhaohua first tied his ponytail high, then while flipping the cut meat on the grill, he glared at Su Bei, who was adding green peppers he had prepared at some point to his grill.

However, Su Bei was unrepentant and calmly took out a string of enoki mushrooms and placed them on top.

This time, Si Zhaohua was really so angry that he laughed, “Are you kidding me? Why do you have these things in your storage ring? And you put in the least effort just now, right? You’re not holding back when it comes to eating?”

Four consecutive questions, each more forceful than the last. Unfortunately, this kind of forcefulness had no effect on Su Bei at all. He patiently answered one question at a time, “I’m fine. It’s always good to be prepared. I put in a lot of effort just now. Using my Mental Energy to be alert to the surroundings is also part of my role. You can’t ignore my contribution just because you can’t see it and haven’t encountered any danger. Food is the most important thing for the people, so you can’t be careless when eating. Are you even capable? Why do you have so many questions?”

The reasoning was clear and the logic was sound. If he weren’t the one being retorted, Si Zhaohua would have applauded him.

“Is he deliberately trying to annoy people?” Even the most indifferent Ling You could see that something was wrong. After all, under normal circumstances, because one’s mouth is soft when eating others’ food, Su Bei would usually not retort when eating food made by others. He wouldn’t do something like eat from a bowl and then curse the mother.

Zhao Xiaoyu gave her a knowing look, “Did you forget? When Zhaohua urged Su Bei to walk faster just now, he asked him if he was incapable.”

A trace of confusion flashed in Ling You’s eyes. She of course remembered this little episode, but she didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.

Understanding her confusion, Zhao Xiaoyu saw it through to the end and continued to explain, “You can’t say a man is incapable.”

Ling You continued to be confused and turned to look at Jiang Tianming and Wu Mingbai. The two of them nodded seriously, indicating that Zhao Xiaoyu was right.

Ling You was confused, but she accepted it.

Having looked at the Destiny Compass once in the morning, after lunch, Su Bei activated his ability and looked at it again. With just one glance, he raised an eyebrow, realizing that something was going to happen in the afternoon.

At this moment, the large pointers above everyone’s heads were all pointing to the “Go Out” position.

“Going out” in a place with no houses at all either meant leaving the Nightmare Beast world or finding a new territory.

Su Bei had to say that the “Go Out” point was very practical in his opinion. It appeared much more frequently than points like “Injured,” “Eating,” and “Studying.”

After finishing lunch on the spot, everyone continued to explore outwards.

“Stop, something seems wrong.” Walking to an empty space, Jiang Tianming, who was walking at the very front, suddenly raised his hand to stop the others following behind him, his brows slightly furrowed. “We haven’t encountered any Nightmare Beasts for a while.”

Although because there was a Three Academies Base nearby, it was almost a dead end for Nightmare Beasts to find trouble with them here. But the ones who could realize this were all high-level Nightmare Beasts and some mid-level Nightmare Beasts. More Nightmare Beasts couldn’t realize this; they were just instinctively attracted by the human aura.

Therefore, they had actually encountered many Nightmare Beasts along the way, mostly low-level Nightmare Beasts that could be easily dealt with. They were the most useless but also the most numerous things in the entire Nightmare Beast world.

However, of these numerous low-level Nightmare Beasts, they hadn’t encountered a single one in the past half a day. This was obviously a problem.

After he said this, the others finally realized that something was wrong. Just now, because they were bored, they were listening to Zhao Xiaoyu talk about the gossip she had learned about their class teacher’s student days. Everyone was listening with relish and didn’t notice the abnormality for a moment.

It had to be Jiang Tianming, who could multitask, listening to gossip while not forgetting to observe the surroundings.

“Everyone, let’s look around and see if we can find anything wrong. Ling You, you go with Zhaohua, Xiaoyu, you go with Su Bei.” Jiang Tianming quickly made a decision. It was too inefficient for them to look for problems together, so it was better to split up.

Su Bei was using his Mental Energy to probe. Just now, because he was listening to gossip, he had also subconsciously ignored the abnormality. But now that he was paying attention, he immediately discovered what was wrong—there seemed to be something underground.

His Mental Energy couldn’t detect anything underground, which was one of the reasons why Su Bei hadn’t discovered the problem just now. But after coming back to his senses, he finally realized where the problem was.

How could there be nothing underground?

Soil, rubble… none of these were there, only a void that was easily swept over by Mental Energy.

Undoubtedly, there was something under this land that could block Mental Energy detection.

And this place below should be the place they would go after the “Go Out” in the destiny displayed above their heads.

At this time, Wu Mingbai also had a discovery, “Look here! Doesn’t it look like man-made traces?”

Everyone followed the sound and saw that the place he was pointing at had obvious tire tracks, like the marks left by a car staying here for a long time.

“It could also be because the car is very heavy that it left such obvious marks,” Si Zhaohua had a different opinion. “The size of the wheels can also explain this.”

Indeed, these wheels looked even bigger than those of off-road vehicles and trucks. The only vehicles that needed such large wheels that Jiang Tianming could think of were those on construction sites.

But the problem was that this was the Nightmare Beast world! Why would such a thing appear here?

“Could it be a certain site for the Three Academies Base that was later abandoned?” Zhao Xiaoyu guessed.

Su Bei was too lazy to watch them beat around the bush and directly gave the answer, “There’s something under this place.”

As soon as these words came out, everyone immediately looked at him. Jiang Tianming looked down at the flawless land under his feet. He didn’t doubt what Su Bei said and asked with some vigilance, “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Su Bei shook his head honestly. “But it should be something that can’t see the light of day.”

In the Nightmare Beast world, buried deep underground, and preventing Mental Energy from prying, wasn’t that something that couldn’t see the light of day?

This time, everyone became interested. As mentioned before, how could the protagonist group not cause trouble? With a blatant secret in front of them, it would be strange if they didn’t go to explore it. As for reporting it to the base and letting them explore, it was very reasonable and correct, but not very protagonist-group-like.

Obviously, the protagonist group members present had no such intention. Even Zhao Xiaoyu only proposed, “Let’s set up a delayed cry for help. If we don’t come out after two hours, we’ll automatically send a message to Teacher Jiang for help.”

With food in hand, there was no panic in the heart. They had the teleportation balls made by Lei Ze’en and could return to the base at any time. With safety guaranteed, Zhao Xiaoyu’s innate desire to explore was also stimulated.

Su Bei naturally had no intention of objecting. This was the inevitable process of the author’s plot. If he really persuaded everyone to report this matter to the base first, then a bunch of Nightmare Beasts would appear in the next second, forcing them to quickly pry open the underground space to hide.