My Desertion Would Be Faster Than Heros’ Obsession

The color of the aura surrounding my sword was coral, similar to the color of Salvia’s hair.

Of course, my aura didn’t have any attributes.

‘Clearly, I’m nothing like the heroine…’

Normally, when a woman reincarnates as an extra in a romance fantasy novel, she becomes the new female lead. But this Salvia I’ve reincarnated into, aside from being somewhat pretty, didn’t have any special abilities.

The humans with attributes were the special people, like the original protagonists. In fact, none of my fellow recruits had any attributes either.

...Except for the original male lead, Aquila.

"What’s this? One of the new recruits has an attribute?"

"What was his name?"

"It’s Aquila. By the way, a fire attribute, long time no see…"

The seniors were all murmuring, their attention fixed on Aquila.

Around his sword, bright red flames blazed, almost as if they would burn everything around them to ash. The heat radiating from it was enough to melt everything nearby.

‘It’s amazing that his sword doesn’t melt… I mean, this is aura, so it’s a bit different from real fire.’

Even with the flames surrounding his sword, Aquila remained expressionless, as though nothing was happening, and didn’t acknowledge anyone.

For a moment, Aquila’s eyes met mine, but as expected, he immediately looked away, uninterested.

‘Yeah, I’m jealous because you have power, damn it…’

Is this what all male leads in romance novels are like? Aquila always had that unreadable expression.

But when I thought about it, it was a bit different. While most romance male leads have a “cold expression,” Aquila’s face wasn’t cold at all—it was just completely devoid of expression…

‘But then again, the cold role is played by someone else in the original.’

The second male lead in NemiJip, the one most opposed to Aquila, was also the most popular character among readers.

Out of the four male leads, he was the only one besides Aquila who could use aura with attributes.

He was always distant and indifferent to everyone, but in front of the heroine, he was passionate and fiery.

Although his rank and abilities were higher than Aquila’s, he lost out in love and couldn’t end up with the heroine.

"You. Fire attribute?"

A man with black hair and pale gray eyes walked out from behind the seniors.

It was Winter, the second male lead in the original, staring at Aquila’s red sword with his blue eyes. An icy aura swirled around the sword Winter was holding.

Aquila lifted his head and silently stared at Winter’s sword with an unreadable expression.

A standoff between the ice attribute user and the fire attribute user. Tension filled the training field for a moment.

‘Was this when their rivalry began?’

Perhaps there was a long history behind the rivalry between Male Lead 1 and Male Lead 2 in the original story.

Watching their confrontation, I found it strangely exciting, my eyes shining as I alternated my gaze between Winter and Aquila. And then…

"Hey, who let the new recruit talk out of turn?"

"Keep praising them and they think they can cross the line."

The seniors began berating Winter, and I quickly lowered my eyes.

They looked at Winter in disbelief and muttered their complaints, while Winter, realizing his mistake, quickly backed off and returned to his spot…

Soon, Leon, glaring angrily, gestured for Winter to get on the ground, and he obeyed the command.

Well… Even if Winter had been a perfect, cold perfectionist commander in the original, right now, he was just a first-class private, one rank above us.

‘I don’t see any traces of the original male lead’s coolness...’

I sighed inwardly as I watched Winter start doing push-ups in front of the seniors.

Even if the obsession started just like in a typical romance fantasy…

The male leads in the original were probably more concerned with their egos than taking care of me.

D-2913 to discharge.

After surviving a hellish week of boot camp, the training finally eased up to a level I could somewhat handle.

We woke up to a morning jog, followed by breakfast. After breakfast, we did various physical and strength exercises, then had lunch. After lunch, we did laundry and miscellaneous chores, followed by weapon training, then dinner. After dinner, we memorized monster information and practiced strategies, then cleaned and went to bed.

The atmosphere that had us working non-stop with not even a minute of rest started to loosen up, and by now, we knew a bit about each other.

"Salvia, we need to clean up the training field now."

"Ah, got it!"

Among my seven fellow recruits, I had become friends with Cal and Linia.

Cal was an extremely ordinary-looking guy with brown hair, while Linia had a long scar on one eye and a rough speech pattern.

At first, I was worried that, being a girl, I wouldn’t be able to hang out with the other recruits, but it seemed like they didn’t really care about that.

I struggled a bit with strength training, so I ended up rolling on the ground as a penalty with my fellow recruits, but since the others also failed in physical and sword training, it wasn’t really an issue.

Plus, after a week of rolling around on the ground together, the gender of the person next to you didn’t really matter anymore.

Even though I had a noticeable face, no one felt anything beyond camaraderie toward me.

"Do we still have a lot of laundry?"

"I saw a lot of towels in the laundry basket earlier."

"Ah, I just want to desert..."@@novelbin@@

Linia muttered, as usual, and Cal and I, who were sitting next to him polishing our training armor, nodded.

"Have you memorized the names and attributes of the Grade 2 monsters? If you don’t have them memorized by tonight, we’ll really be in trouble."

"I’ve memorized them, but it’s driving me crazy. All the info’s mixing in my head, and if they ask, I won’t know the answers."

"Salvia, have you memorized them all?"

"Just about."

The one thing that reading the original novel helped with was that I could memorize monster information relatively easily.

The seniors would list off the monster details, and then we were expected to memorize them. If we didn’t know the weaknesses of the monsters in a real battle, we would die.

Of course, if we didn’t memorize all the information, the Alpha Squad's "Violence and Fear Will Save Us" training would apply.

By the way, our squad’s name was Alpha. The neighboring squads were Beta and Gamma. When I first heard that, I thought, ‘Of course the original male leads come from the coolest squad, Alpha,’ and it made me feel weird.

"What? You’ve memorized it all, Salvia?"

Johann, another recruit who was cleaning the training field, overheard our conversation and came over.

"Yeah, she’s memorized it all."

"Wow, that’s impressive. I guess I’m screwed because I still haven’t memorized anything."

"Don’t worry. If we fail, we’ll all fail together."

Starting with Johann, the other recruits began chiming in.

"What? You’ve memorized it all? I’m jealous!"

"Am I the only one who messed up? I really haven’t memorized anything at all."

"I’m excited to die... honestly."

As the recruits voiced their envy or gloom, Aquila, as usual, said nothing and continued silently polishing his armor.

He briefly made eye contact with me when I mentioned having memorized the monster attributes, but then quickly shifted his focus back to his armor.

‘I really can’t figure him out.’

Unlike using his blazing fire attribute aura, his temperature always seemed unchanged.

Even when praised for his excellent performance during training, or when rolling on the ground with us as a penalty.

He always stood there with the same expression, neither happy, resentful, fearful, pained, nor angry.

He wasn’t close to any of the recruits. Not just me, but to all of them.

He never initiated conversation, and when spoken to, he only responded with short answers.

‘Yep, just like in the novels, the male leads lack social skills.’

‘Northern Duke,’ ‘Tyrant Emperor,’ ‘Mad Tower Lord,’ ‘Arrogant Duke’…

When I thought about it, these male leads never seemed to get along well with anyone other than the heroine. Maybe the criteria for becoming a male lead are a great face, powerful abilities, and terrible social skills?

Tap-tap-tap—

At that moment, the sound of footsteps running toward the training field reached our ears.

We quickly shut our mouths. If someone overheard us chatting in private, we’d get the "Violence and Fear" treatment.

"Ah, you guys are here!"

"Isina!"

Fortunately, the person who entered the training field was our immediate senior, Isina, from the previous batch.

‘And the original Male Lead 3.’

While Aquila played the silent, fiery role and Winter took the cool, cold persona in the original, Isina’s character was "kind on the outside but a mastermind on the inside."

‘Hmm, yeah. The trend now is the kind but secretly manipulative male lead.’

Isina had soft khaki-colored hair and dark green eyes.

He was an exceptionally patient person who could smile kindly even when junior recruits made mistakes or acted arrogantly.

He always showed obedience to the seniors, did his assigned tasks, and spoke kindly and gently to everyone.

‘But the coldest of all is Isina.’

On the day I first joined this damn military, the senior had mentioned the "complete annihilation of the previous batch."

The sudden appearance of a Grade 2 monster had killed five out of the six recruits from the previous batch. The only survivor from that batch was Isina.

Isina didn’t have any particularly strong abilities.

But he had a mental fortitude as strong as steel, remaining unshaken even after witnessing the deaths of five of his fellow recruits.