The Cursed Extra-Chapter 123: [2.71] The Guy Who Eavesdrops Because He Doesn’t Have Anyone to Study With

Chapter 123: [2.71] The Guy Who Eavesdrops Because He Doesn’t Have Anyone to Study With

"Sometimes the best intelligence comes from conversations you weren’t supposed to hear."

Two days.

The assessment loomed just two days away. The words on the page might as well have been written in ancient Draconic for all the sense they made.

Rhys’s finger traced the worn grain of the wooden table. Following the pale lines that reminded him of the borderland maps his father used to spread across their kitchen table back in Blackwood Glade. Those maps had been covered in charcoal markings. Goblin sightings. Beast migration patterns. The locations of traps that needed checking before the winter snows came.

Focus. The command echoed in his mind. Spoken in his father’s gruff voice. A distracted mind gets you killed, boy.

But the letters kept swimming together. Rearranged themselves into meaningless shapes no matter how hard he tried to concentrate. Goblin behavioral patterns. Warren navigation techniques. Emergency extraction protocols. All of it felt like academic theory divorced from the brutal reality of actual combat.

The kind of knowledge that looked impressive on parchment but meant nothing when claws came out of the dark and the screaming started.

Rhys pressed his palms against his temples. Massaged the dull ache that had taken up permanent residence behind his eyes. His father’s spear leaned against his chair. Its familiar weight a constant reminder of what was at stake.

The leather wrapping on the grip had been worn smooth by generations of Blackwood hands. His grandfather’s. His father’s. And now his own.

Every copper piece of his stipend had already been sent home for Elara’s medicine. There was no room for failure. No safety net if he couldn’t prove himself worthy of staying at the academy.

One bad assessment. One moment of weakness. That’s all it would take to send him back to the border with nothing to show for his time here except debt and shame.

The scrape of chairs against stone broke through his spiraling thoughts. Dragged him back to the present.

Two students from House Onyx settled at a table three spaces away. Their voices low but carrying in the library’s oppressive hush. The Panopticon’s Bronze Tier stretched around them. Endless rows of shelves containing general textbooks and public records. The kind of knowledge freely accessible to everyone because it wasn’t valuable enough to restrict.

Rhys recognized them vaguely.

Marcus Vellum. The disgraced scribe’s son who took obsessive notes in every class and asked questions that made even Professor De Clare pause.

And a sharp-featured girl whose name escaped him. Her cutting remarks in combat theory sessions had earned her a reputation for being brilliant and insufferable in equal measure. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe braid that only emphasized the angular planes of her face.

Marcus spread several books across the table with frantic energy. His movements quick and nervous. Someone who’d had too much coffee and not enough sleep.

"The flanking maneuver is clearly superior. Look at this diagram. The Korvani formation allows for maximum coverage of enemy positions while maintaining unit cohesion."

"You’re reading it wrong." The girl’s voice carried dismissive edge. The tone of someone who’d never had to worry about where their next meal was coming from. "That formation works in open terrain, not underground. The spacing requirements alone make it impossible in confined passages."

"But the textbook specifically recommends—"

"The textbook assumes you have room to maneuver. Which you don’t. In a mine corridor." She leaned forward. Her dark hair fell across her face as she jabbed at the page with enough force to crinkle the parchment. "The standard passage width is what, eight feet at most? Try to spread a five-person team into proper flanking positions in that space and you’ll be tripping over each other’s weapons."

She paused. Her voice dropped lower.

"Use that tactic against goblin swarms in tight spaces and you’re begging for a pincer ambush."

Rhys’s head snapped up so fast his neck cracked.

The phrase hit him like a crossbow bolt between the ribs. Punched through his distracted haze with brutal force.

Pincer ambush in narrow mine corridors.

His hand moved instinctively to the warren schematics tucked between his textbook pages. The same maps every team had been given to study their assigned sections. He’d been staring at those maps for hours. Memorizing every junction and dead end.

But suddenly they felt different in his hands. Heavier. More dangerous.

"That’s ridiculous," Marcus protested. His voice rose slightly before he caught himself and glanced around the library at the other scattered students. The librarian’s desk sat near the entrance. The stern woman behind it already watched their table with narrowed eyes. "The Korvani Campaign proved the effectiveness of—"

"The Korvani Campaign was fought in natural caves with multiple exit routes and ceiling heights of twenty feet or more. These are mining tunnels. Artificial. Designed for extraction, not combat."

The girl’s tone suggested she was explaining something obvious to a particularly slow child. Each word dripped with barely concealed contempt.

"The goblins who infest these warrens have had generations to learn the terrain. They know every crack. Every unstable support beam. Every place where the rock is thin enough to break through. You try to flank in those narrow passages and they’ll just collapse both ends of the tunnel. Trap you in the middle while they come at you from above and below through passages too small for humans to use."

"Above and below?" Marcus’s quill scratched frantically as he took notes. Ink spattered across his fingers in his haste. "But the structural integrity reports don’t mention any secondary passages—"

"Of course they don’t. The reports assume normal usage patterns and standard mining operations. But goblins don’t follow our engineering assumptions. They dig. They burrow. They make their own doors."

She pulled out her own copy of the warren maps. Spread them beside the tactical manual.

"Look at these support beam spacings. See how they’re clustered around the main passages in irregular patterns? That’s not for load distribution. The engineering doesn’t support that interpretation. That’s because the original miners knew the rock was unstable there. They had to reinforce those sections specifically because the stone kept crumbling."

Rhys found himself leaning forward. Strained to catch every word despite the three tables between them.

His chair creaked beneath him as he shifted his weight. He froze. Terrified of drawing their attention.

The conversation felt too specific. Too relevant to his current situation to be mere coincidence.

His borderland instincts, honed by years of watching for goblin raids and listening to veterans’ warnings around campfires, screamed that this was important. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

That ignoring it could get him killed.

"So what would you recommend instead?" Marcus asked. His pen poised above his notebook like a weapon. "If the flanking maneuver is unsuitable, what’s the alternative?"

"Defensive positioning. Find a chokepoint where the ceiling is solid and the walls are stable. Establish overlapping fields of fire. Let them come to you." The girl’s finger traced paths on the map. Drew invisible lines between points. "Control the engagement on your terms instead of theirs. Don’t get clever with formations. Clever gets you killed in the dark when you can’t see your teammates and the enemy knows every shadow."

She paused. Her finger stopped on a specific section of the map.

"Especially in sections like the Collapsed Mine. All those unstable passages. Questionable structural integrity. Multiple points where previous cave-ins have weakened the surrounding rock." Her voice went flat. "One wrong move. One spell that hits a support beam instead of a goblin. And you’re not dealing with enemies anymore. You’re dealing with tons of falling stone."