This afternoon's class is Dungeon Studies.
Figuratively speaking, it's a survival manual for dungeons, but literally, it's Dungeon Meshi.
"Hello everyone!"
The teacher for Dungeon Studies has the appearance of a lion with tiger legs, a snake tail, and wings—in other words, a standing Chimera.
'A beastmen?' everyone in the class was surprised.
After all, the relationship between humans and other races isn't very friendly, especially with beastmen.
A thousand years of history forcing beastmen into slavery has made them hate humans to the bone, even after the war with the Demon King's army ended.
And of course, among all the races that decided to live in peace, beastmen are the most wary. Luckily, someone convinced the beastmen and guaranteed their safety, so they can now walk normally in human countries without issues.
But no matter what, beastmen still don't like humans. At best, the ones they're close to are those who fought alongside them in the war and shared hardships.
Naturally, the surprise didn't stop there. The person in front of them was a Chimera.
Not an artificial Chimera, but a natural one.
To have a natural Chimera means beastmen have intermarried across species quite a lot (Beastmen is a general term used by humans; there are many different types of beastmen).
Looking at her, the person in front was a mix of lion, tiger, snake, and bird tribes.
"I'm Erista. This is my first time teaching at the academy as an official instructor. I hope you all can help me out!" She smiled innocently and greeted everyone.
...A girl?
"Wow, you all seem surprised by the appearance of a beastman chimera like me, huh? I understand, I understand." She nodded as if she understood something.
No, miss... Your voice sounds like a young schoolgirl...
She must be young too, probably around 20 years old at most.
"And since this is the first session, you can ask me questions. I'll try my best to answer them well."
She was very friendly and patiently waited for the young students' questions.
'I already know everything, so I don't have anything to ask.' I scratched my head.
Remember when I mentioned this game earlier? You can romance anyone, boys or girls, regardless of race or gender. You can even romance gods, so why not.
There are a few characters you can't romance, and Erista is not one of them (lmao).
Because of her chimera appearance, no one has ever loved her, so she's quite self-conscious about her looks.
Put it all together and what do you get? She's very easy to romance! She's the easiest character to romance in the game!
However, she doesn't want to date kids (of course, she's not a pedophile), so at this stage you can't reach the romance level yet.
...But motherly affection is okay.
Just kidding.
Why am I saying this? Basically, she has a very useful deck and is quite strong in combat. Being friendly with her at this stage is beneficial for me.
In short, she's a dedicated newbie-friendly character for making friends!
One hand shot up, and the whole class turned their attention to it.
It was Tryo!
...Why is it always this guy?
"Miss, I have a question. Don't you find it... um... sensitive?"
This time everyone raised their eyebrows, including me.
Hey kid, what's your intention? Are you a furry or something?
I won't judge furries, just stay away from me a bit.
"Go ahead and ask." Erista said.
"I remember beastmen have a rather special trait: the boys look like animals but walk on two legs, while the girls look mostly human except for a few beastman details." Tryo said, pointing at a girl with green hair and golden eyes sitting at the back desk.
She just glanced at Tryo, as if wondering what he meant by pointing at her.
"Oh? You're a beastman too? What's your name?"
"...Vux. I'm a Lizard Beastman." She stood up and showed her tail.
Thud!
A large green lizard tail slammed onto the desk, making a loud sound.
"..." The whole class, mostly boys, stared at that tail.
"What? Is there a problem?" Vux looked at them with an unfriendly expression.
After all, she was a beastman who had heard a lot from her parents and other beastmen about humans.
Although she didn't like humans much, the excellent study conditions here and the powerful monster cards were too good to pass up, so she enrolled.
As a beastman, she had to hide her identity carefully, even though the academy had clearly stated that all races could attend.
Looking at her classmates of the same age, she was quite sure they were looking at her with contempt, thinking she was some lowly beastman or something.
Unfortunately... she guessed wrong.
"...Why do I find that tail so attractive?"
"Um... There's something strange that makes me want to get to know her."
"Why am I only noticing the tail— I mean noticing her now?"
The boys' murmuring voices were mostly different from what Vux had imagined.
She blinked, confused and stunned.
Huh? I thought you guys were humans? Why are you acting like beastmen in heat?
What she didn't know was that after the war with the Great Demon King Furnit ended, the population of all races had dropped drastically due to the war's effects. The leaders decided to send people to other races to mate and have children.
Due to the influence of the older generation, humans still looked down on beastmen in their hearts. So even though they didn't want to, they went for the sake of their country.
And well... they experienced heaven.
Beastmen are very easy to fall in love with. No matter how much they hate humans, as long as you treat them well, they can be easily won over (especially dog beastmen, for some reason they are the easiest to love and very passionate... They also quite like doggy style...).
Moreover, their appearances are all beautiful in their own way, no two are alike, but they share one special trait: their masterful bedroom skills that leave all the men dazed.
So after getting beastman wives and having children, following beastman tradition that wives follow their husbands, humans brought their wives back to their countries.
And they preached about the greatness of beastman women, especially those with rarer species being even better.
The more people experienced it, the more they shared the same thoughts, making the relationship that beastmen thought could never happen actually come from their side. Humans had fully accepted them long ago.
Beastman women were also treated very well, which surprised them about humans.
And when having children, if it's a boy, he looks exactly like a human but still has some animal details from the mother. If it's a girl, there's no need to say more.
Oh, I heard about a guy who fell in love with a spotted hyena woman. She played him until his pelvis was shattered. Spotted hyena women are alpha females with extremely high testosterone, so he still has to be the one working to earn money for her. In such a toxic relationship, surprisingly she still doesn't leave him despite many stronger males available. So he's both happy and sad, getting drained every night while having to earn money to support her and their quite fierce children.
God bless him.
"Wow! I didn't expect to meet a beastman here! If you have any problems, you can ask me!" Erista said clearly delighted.
"To answer that question, it's quite simple. Chimeras are a very special type of beastman, being a combination of many different species through family genes. So the genes fought against each other and created a result like this. Whether boy or girl, their appearance will be a creature combining many different details."
...?
The more I listened, the stranger it felt.
If the genes fought against each other... Then...
"And because she's a Chimera, she has details from both male and female."
The whole class, which had been a bit noisy, suddenly stopped and blinked repeatedly.
...What?
Looking at her innocent appearance, they were stunned silent.
"...So are you male or female?"
"Female of course! My reproductive organs are female, my emotions are female, and I still like boys!"
"Phew."
"However, I can still change back to male reproductive organs if I want, I just don't see the need."
"..."
'Damn, it's a futanari... The game creator has really strong tastes!' I gaped, not knowing what to say.
Tryo looked dazed, still not believing what he just heard. He kept sweating and sat down.
Vux slowly sat down, still wondering why the boys' eyes looked so different from what she imagined.
"Any more questions?"
"Uh... No, miss."
"Good! Now let's start the lesson." Erista said cheerfully, then took some things out of her bag and placed them on the desk.
Right in front of them was a plastic box containing something inside. Looking closely, it was clearly a small monster.
Whoa, right from the first session it's already hands-on practice instead of theory? The teacher really knows the students' personalities.
"As you all know, monsters are the most common creatures, with numbers surpassing even humans. There are many different types of monsters, and most of them look somewhat like animals. Their common trait is that they are very aggressive toward humans."
"However, thanks to them we have powerful weapons that helped all races develop to this day, so we must thank them for their wonderful existence." She clapped her hands with a kind smile.
After the brief explanation, she opened the box lid.
"However, I'm not here to teach about the history of monsters, but about ways to deal with dungeons, where monsters take shelter the most."
"Unlike monsters in the wild, dungeon monsters are very strange species. They don't need to reproduce but their numbers are still very large. Even if killed right in front of you, they will return completely intact a few minutes later. We call it the dungeon's reset mechanism."
"Since these monsters are created by the dungeon itself, they have some characteristics very different from wild monsters."
She then used one hand to grab the head of that monster, revealing it to be a winged snake.
"This is a winged snake, one of the most basic and common monsters in the forest. Many of you have probably seen it before, right?"
Everyone nodded. After all, everyone knows how weak winged snakes are since they can't even hunt a cockroach. Their numbers are also very high. Probably only people living in deserts or areas with long winters don't know them.
"If you're curious about how it differs from the others, here..." She opened her hand, revealing its head.
Blood-red eyes, mouth constantly open as if wanting to bite her, looking fiercely aggressive like it had rabies.
"O-oh..." The whole class was stunned.
Damn, so weak but acting so fierce like it's trying to collect a debt.
"See? If it were the winged snakes you know, they wouldn't be this aggressive. They usually choose to avoid unless cornered."
Teacher Erista brought her finger close to the snake. It immediately opened its mouth to bite her.
"Teacher, be careful!!!" Tryo reached out with a worried look.
However, as soon as the snake bit down, its fangs immediately shattered, leaving it with an extremely confused expression as it looked at her still intact finger.
"..."
Whoa, now I feel sorry for that snake.
"By the way, she hasn't even worried about herself yet and you're already worried about her. Does she have something to do with you?" Lucas asked Tryo with a slightly trolling face, making the whole class burst into laughter.
Actually, some people were worried earlier but not many. Tryo was the loudest one, so he became the center of attention.
"I don't know if you have family matters, but coming to the academy and being so overly concerned like that will easily cause misunderstandings." Someone said, making the whole class laugh loudly.
Tryo made a face and sat down, burying his face in the desk out of embarrassment.
I blinked at Tryo with a slightly incredulous look.
...Could it be you're trying to romance Teacher Erista? If so, your taste is even better than mine.
"Wow, thank you Tryo for worrying about me. Even though a winged snake's bite is strong enough to scar a normal person, I'm a Chimera so you don't need to worry!" She scratched her head, then put down the still dazed winged snake whose teeth had broken.
"But it can't be denied that winged snakes in dungeons are clearly stronger than normal winged snakes. Its bite force is so strong that it broke its own teeth~"
...Sounds pretty cruel.
"Alright, it seems you all roughly understand the first lesson I wanted to talk about, right? If anyone doesn't understand, let those who do explain it." She smiled and looked at everyone.
Unfortunately, no one understood except for a few people, including me of course.
Kaiser raised his hand. Erista pointed at him.
"Teacher, is the first lesson about how to deal with injuries caused by dungeon monsters?"
"Exactly!"
'What? That's it?' everyone thought to themselves.
"You must be surprised, right? But remember, the only purpose of this subject is to ensure your own survival when exploring dungeons. Everyone only has one life. Don't lose that one and only life because of greed."
She smiled, leaving behind a pretty good saying that made the inexperienced young people think.
Whether they listen or not doesn't matter, but one thing is certain: she is very enthusiastic about this.
'This subject is no different from learning survival skills.' I smiled inwardly, determined to study this subject seriously.