Not every arrogant person is an elite, but every elite is inevitably equipped with arrogance.
The environment that surrounds them, the path they have walked—it naturally layers pride with a coat of arrogance.
A commoner who passed through the needle’s-eye entrance of the Royal Central Military Academy—known as the military’s royal elite course—enrolled early, and graduated as valedictorian.
Immediately after graduation, she was assigned to the Intelligence Operations Department under the Imperial Army Intelligence Bureau, where her outstanding performance earned her an unprecedented promotion speed.
Chloe, the elite of elites, was no exception.
No matter how brutal the Northport Military Academy she was about to enter might be.
No matter how infamous it was, called the hell of hells, the empire’s worst cesspool of a cadet academy.
She believed that the basic military training every cadet had to go through before enrollment would be nothing more than a trivial hurdle to her.
“Basic military training begins now.”
A wind hotter than a midday desert and more desolate than ruins struck her face.
Chloe, clutching the worn backpack issued from the military vehicle, stared straight ahead. Before her eyes stretched a wasteland with no roads, no signs, nothing at all.
Behind her, the military vehicle’s engine roared once more. The new cadets who had arrived with her all wore blank, stunned expressions.
Standing before the freshmen who hadn’t even grasped the situation yet, the one-eyed instructor spoke in a hard, clipped voice.
“If you fail to return to Northport within 48 hours, you will be judged to have failed basic military training and will be placed on the exclusion list. Dream on if you think that means expulsion or discharge. This academy will do its utmost to make even those on the exclusion list adapt.”
It was no different from a warning that a very rough road awaited anyone excluded.
“And everything that happens during basic military training is your own responsibility…”
A cadet who kept interrupting the instructor, yelling about whose family he was from, suddenly found his body lifted into the air.
BAM—!
The cadet slammed into the ground amid a cloud of dust, groaning in pain. Silence fell like a blanket.
“There is no special treatment.”
The instructor calmly brushed the dust off his hands and finished his sentence as if nothing had happened. It was a sight that crushed even the will to resist.
“That is all. Good luck, gentlemen. I sincerely hope that this batch doesn’t produce any fools who, instead of giving up and returning to the academy to be excluded, stubbornly push on and end up losing their lives out here on the frontier.”
With that chilling warning, the military vehicle that had brought them picked up the instructor and drove away.
“Are you insane?! They’re really just abandoning us here?!”
“Stop! Stop, I said! Please stop!”
A few who still clung to hope chased after the vehicle, but it only sped farther and farther away.
When the military vehicle finally vanished into a distant speck, those who had run after it collapsed to the ground in despair.
Chloe blankly stared at the wasteland, then looked down at the damp backpack in her hands.
The basic military training she knew was a proper five-week, step-by-step course—not this 48-hour crash version.
Even the basic training she had gone through had been harsh, but at least there had been instructors and a proper training ground.
But this…
‘…They really just dumped us in the middle of nowhere on the frontier?’
Only then did Chloe realize.
Northport was a place where even ordinary standards didn’t apply—a place that laughed in the face of common sense.
All the experience she had gained on the elite course would be completely useless at Northport.
“Hey, there are tire tracks! If we just follow these tire tracks, we can get to Northport, right?”
“What the hell, this is easy!”
Unfortunately for the freshmen who had been suddenly thrown into the wasteland without any mental preparation, life was never that simple.
“W-What is that?!”
“Is that… all sand?!”
Even to the naked eye, the massive sandstorm looked enormous. Chloe hurriedly covered her mouth and nose with her clothes, squeezed her eyes shut, and crouched down.
“Cough!”
“Ughhh! Sand in my mouth—ptoo!”
“Aaaargh! My eyes!”
After the gigantic sandstorm swept over them, coughs, retching, and cries of eye pain echoed from every direction.
Having reacted quickly, Chloe was relatively unharmed. She shook the sand off her clothes and hair.
“The tire tracks are gone!”
At that horrified shout, everyone instinctively turned toward where they remembered the tracks had been.
The tracks that had just been there were now completely erased, buried under the sandstorm that had just passed. Their last hope of finding Northport had been swallowed by the sand.
“Damn Northport! They just abandon people in a place like this?!”
“Damn it, I should’ve lived a good life…”
Someone roared in indignation into the empty air, immediately followed by self-mocking regret.
Just the words “sent to Northport” were enough to silence crying noble children and make stubborn ones obey instantly. That forbidden name.
Northport Military Academy, located on the frontier of the Drakenia Empire, was no ordinary cadet academy.
Its other nickname was…
The Scoundrel Containment Camp.
A place of iron discipline, extreme training, and insane military rigor—it was little different from an isolated frontier prison where noble status and family background meant nothing.
The uncontrollably wild noble scions whom their families could no longer handle, the noble children who lost family power struggles and became eyesores, the illegitimate children that the higher-ups found too troublesome to deal with—they were all disposed of here.
That was Northport Military Academy.
So what kind of human specimens would be gathered here now?
“Do you even know who I am?! Do you know who I am?! Send a telegram to my family right now…!”
“Damn it! If I die here, do you think my parents will let this cursed school and its instructors get away with it?!”
They would let them get away with it. If the child had truly been precious, the parents would never have sent them to Northport in the first place.
The ones shouting about their families and parents were only the beginning.
There were those demanding alcohol, those stomping on their backpacks in rage, those lying down declaring their noble bodies should be carried, and those already starting fistfights—it was a complete scoundrel circus.
Amid the chaos, Chloe calmly checked the supplies in her backpack.
A canteen of water, a military knife, a map, jerky, rope.
It wasn’t much, but it was the bare minimum needed to survive 48 hours in the frontier wasteland.
She unfolded the map, confirmed Northport’s marked location and their current position, then stabbed the military knife into the ground to check the shadow.
Judging direction from the shadow’s movement, Chloe pulled the knife out and spoke.
“Northeast.”
Since they had all been dumped here together, she was willing to share at least this much information.
At Chloe’s short declaration, the rowdy scoundrels all turned to look at her at once.
“Northport, our final destination, is northeast. Anyone who wants to come with me, follow.”
“Hey, who the hell elected a little shrimp like you as leader?”
One of the scoundrels swaggered over and picked a fight.
Light pink hair, an overall soft pastel color scheme.
Petite frame and a harmless, fragile-looking impression.
Her lovely appearance would make her look easier to bully than anyone in this den of scoundrels.
But Chloe knew better than anyone.
The moment she was branded as weak here, the next four years would be anything but smooth.
‘I’ve enforced military discipline plenty of times, but I’ve never once acted like a scoundrel.’
This wasn’t part of the plan from the very start. Clicking her tongue inwardly, Chloe skillfully spun the military knife once in her hand.
“I clearly said only those who want to follow should follow. Are your ears clogged? Want me to clear them out for you?”
She raised the knife—now gripped in perfect form—and growled with the menace of someone ready to dig the blade straight into the guy’s ear. The scoundrel who had started the fight flinched and stepped back.
‘That wasn’t too obviously elite, was it?’
Contrary to Chloe’s worry, the Northport freshman scoundrels didn’t sense even a hint of “elite” from her.
‘Looks easy, but still a scoundrel worthy of being dragged to Northport.’
Instead, they silently upgraded their evaluation of Chloe from “easy mark” to “pain-in-the-ass scoundrel you shouldn’t mess with.”
After neatly finishing with the most scoundrel-like act she knew—spitting on the ground—Chloe tossed the military knife back into her bag and turned sharply.
“If you’re not coming, get lost. I have to get back to Northport within 48 hours.”
Amid the surrounding chaos, that single thread of reason surprisingly resonated strongly with a few who had good instincts.
Those few lit up with realization and instinctively began following her. In the end, out of thirty-five, roughly four classmates started trailing behind Chloe.
“Those are exactly the kind of idiots who wander around and barely make it at the last second.”
“If they even make it at all. They might suffer like dogs and still wash out. Pfft!”
She could hear the blatant mockery from those still clueless behind her, but Chloe didn’t look back. She simply raised her middle finger. Those stupid small fry were never worth her attention in the first place.