"WHAT?!" Zach's outburst made all the other students and Jarron gawk at him. Jarron understood where Zach was coming from, especially now that he had heard about the Great Ugor in more detail.
But the rest of the class didn't know much about the Underworld at all. They were first confused at Jarron's announcement and then at Zach's outburst. What was this Great Ugor character they needed to kill, and why was Zach so shocked about it?
Jarron took a deep breath.
"Calm down, Zach. The principal isn't giving you all an impossible task. He believes you can fulfill the graduation requirements. So do I. It's just going to be difficult."
Zach sat back down, mouth agape from shock. He wasn't listening to Jarron.
Anerias raised his hand.
"...Excuse me, but what is going on?"
"Do you need me to repeat?" Jarron asked.
"Not so much as repeat as clarify. What is the Underworld? Why are we at war with them? Why did you make it sound like we are the ones who need to kill their king when we're only students?"
Jarron clasped his hands together and smiled brightly.
"Great! I don't even need to tell you the questions for this year's final exam!"
"What…?"
"It's just as I said. Questions like those will be part of the theoretical portion of the final exam. As the curriculum and homework have changed, following your classmates' discovery of the Underworld, it's only fitting the final exam does as well. Although I said it has changed, it's not very different from before.
"Where you would have combined practical learning in the field with practical and theoretical learning on campus before, now Underworld discovery is part of the field practice. You'll be asked to investigate potential Underworld hideouts and bring back proof of extermination, resources, or information. It's much how you would have been asked and will be asked to bring back the same for monsters."
The students gradually processed Jarron's annoyingly cheerful words and slowly turned to look at Zach, Dukiel, and Juluius, but mainly Zach. They weren't sure what was going on. But they weren't stupid most of them. They had also built up a keen sense of danger.
Even if they didn't understand, they could tell, based on Jarron's words and Zach's reaction, that their school life had suddenly become a lot more difficult and dangerous. Worst of all, it was Zach's fault.
This time, unlike the continuous monster assault during the field trip, it wasn't a matter of pure luck or misfortune, either. They knew the three troublemakers well enough to know that Zach was their leader. Even without knowing the details, the other students knew without a shred of doubt that it was Zach who had led the other two to find the Underworld.
If he hadn't done that—If he hadn't discovered the Underworld, they could have gone their entire school life without knowing about it.
As students, their mission was to learn. But there were some things, such as the discovery of a foreign civilization at war with the surface, that could wait. Conspiracies and discoveries like that were much better as ghost stories to tell late at night during sleepovers.
No one was grateful to Zach for bringing the Underworld to light. No, it was the opposite.
"H-hey! There's no way you're blaming me again!" Zach felt the buildup of angry gazes pointed in his direction and angrily glared back. He couldn't stand this injustice!
"First the monsters and now the Underworld. Are you saying it's not your fault?" Anerias stood up and took Zach's gaze upon himself. His resolve not to blame Zach in the future had faded pretty quickly at the mention of a new threat, one that didn't seem related to Zach's luck, but his decisions instead.
"Tch. Yeah. Who's the one deciding all this? The principal. I didn't ask him to set the Underworld as a subject just because I discovered it. And, to make things perfectly clear, I didn't discover shit. It was the Underworld that kidnapped me first, okay?"
"Are you seriously shifting blame to the principal, you shameless runt?"
"Alright, stop, stop, stop!" Jarron waved his hands and walked in between Zach and Anerias, pushing them apart before things could escalate further. It didn't look like they would fight since they were too busy posturing and flexing their muscles, but Jarron had duties to uphold as their homeroom instructor.
"That's enough you two! That's enough all of you. Zach is right. The only one you can try and hold responsible for this is the principal. If it hadn't been the Underworld, he would have found something else for the first years to do. He does it every year. You guys just got hit a little harder since you have an S-rank and three A-ranks. The principal has high hopes for you. All of you."
Jarron pushed Zach and Anerias back to their seats while speaking to and chastising the students who had gotten a little heated at the news and its meaning. He couldn't honestly claim he didn't understand the students as they blamed Zach.
But this time, it actually wasn't his fault. That was unless one could attribute the entire class' misfortune of catching the principal's ambitious eye to Zach's reputation as a misfortune magnet.
Once the students had calmed down and were willing to listen to him again, Jarron continued. He talked about the details and what it would mean for the rest of the school year. Since the students were supposed to find a lot of information on their own to earn credit and scores, there wasn't much Jarron could say about the Underworld itself.
But he could tell them that their first year would be filled with a lot of practical learning. There would be open assignments regularly posted in the classroom about information and goals that the students could provide or complete in exchange for extra credit. There would be days set aside for tasks like this.
The students could apply for permission to venture outside the campus and into the forest in search of monsters or traces of the Underworld. They had to work in teams. They had to go where they said they were going, and they had to go to places where they might find what they were looking for.
The students couldn't just go home and take a vacation before coming back with monster parts their families picked up for them.
Zach despaired.