Hero or Villain, Both

"Thank you for saving us."

Our classmates clearly seemed to be in rough shape, but there were strange looks on their faces when they looked at the green shards that had dropped on the ground.

That was because the monsters that had caused them so much trouble had been taken care of with just a single arrow to the head for each of them.

After diverting them with the flame wall and then stopping them with the water tendrils, it was easy for me to shoot them in the head with my bow.

It only took a single arrow for me to take down these monsters.

Even if they were stronger, their cores were still in their heads and all it took was a single shot to take them down.

With the increased penetrating power of my shots that came from my increased stats, it was easy for me to do this.

Nimue and Rania just treated this as a natural thing since they had been hanging around me for a long time now.

Though Fae had a surprised look on her face as well when she saw this.

I just waved my hand before saying, "It's only natural that we would help each other. Only I have to ask, where did you encounter these monsters?"

Nimue, Rania, and Fae all focused on the response of these classmates since they knew how important their answers were.

But there were strange looks that appeared on their faces, almost as if they were hesitant about answering.

"If you don't want to tell us, that's fine." I said when I saw this, but that made them finally break their silence.

They quickly shook their heads before saying, "It's not that we don't want to tell you, it's just that it's very strange and hard to believe. Even if we did tell you, you might not believe us."

I narrowed my eyes a bit when I heard this, but then I said, "No matter what you say, I'll believe you. After all, that monster was already strange enough that I'm ready to believe anything at this point. It was nothing like the monsters that we faced until now."

Those classmates couldn't help looking at me with what seemed to be a look of gratitude when they heard this.

But when they said what they had been hesitating to say, I understood their reason for it.

It was simply because what they said didn't make sense.

It wasn't that the words that came out of their mouths didn't make sense, it was just what these words meant didn't make sense.

"We don't know. It just appeared all of a sudden and started attacking us."

"Are you sure that you didn't do anything? Did it really just appear out of nowhere?" I couldn't help asking after hearing this.

They all nodded to show that this was indeed the case.

But even then, I couldn't help looking at them with a trace of doubt in my eyes.

"See, we told you that it would be hard to believe." They said with sighs after seeing the way that I looked at them.

A smile crept onto my face before I said, "Well, even you admitted that it was hard to believe earlier, right?"

All of us just shook our heads with smiles that had traces of bitterness in them.

After a while, I said, "Go back and report this matter to the teachers. I'm sure that they will want to know about this and might even have a way to deal with it."

When they heard this, it seemed like they wanted to say something.

However, I cut them off by saying, "If you stay here, there might be more of those monsters that appear. So even if you stay here, it isn't as if you'll be able to do anything to help."

More bitterness filled their smiles when they heard this, but it wasn't as if there was anything that they could say to refute this.

They were aware of the difference in strength between us, what happened with the monsters from earlier was more than enough to show this.

So in the end, they said, "We'll go report this to the teachers. You have to take care of yourselves."

With that, they headed back in the direction of the main camp that the teachers set up.

When they were gone, Nimue couldn't help saying, "I don't know how I missed them. I was watching everything around us the entire time, so I should have spotted them…"

I couldn't help shaking my head with a faint smile when I saw this before pointing up to say, "It's the leaves from the trees. The cover created by them here is special enough that it blocks the view from certain angles."

I pointed in the direction that we came from earlier and said, "You were in one of those angles earlier."

Nimue couldn't help looking at me with a surprised look, but she didn't question it as she went to one of the trees in the distance.

After climbing up and down, she looked at me with admiration as she said, "How did you know that? You figured that out with just a single look?"

I didn't say anything as I looked around the area, but there was a smile that appeared on my face.

After a while, I finally started moving in a certain direction.

I walked for a bit before coming to a stop and leaned down to look at something, After looking for a bit, I picked up something from the ground and brought it closer to my face.

"This shows that it came from nearby. Let's see if we can find more traces of those monsters and see where they came from."

Nimue and Rania nodded in agreement, but Fae seemed hesitant about something.

She held back until she finally said, "Are you sure about this? Won't it be dangerous following them to where they came from?"

I just said with a reassuring smile, "It's not as if we're going to pick a fight, we're just going to see if we can find anything. We'll run away as soon as it seems dangerous."

Seeing that Nimue and Rania agreed to this as well, Fae had no choice but to accept it in the end.