Chapter 81
"……."
This was the male dormitory.
Naturally, there was no chance whatsoever that my roommate would be a girl.
The man crawling out of bed had a scrawny build and looked somehow sickly.
If our eyes had met, he might have said something, but he simply bowed his head and got up to get ready to leave.
Then, only when it was time to go, he spoke.
"……Want to go eat?"
"Sure."
I left the dormitory with my roommate, whose dark circles looked like they were about to reach his chin.
"I'm Dekal. You?"
"……Aba. Aba Roun."
Is he from a noble family too?
No…… I need to think differently from the start. I should assume that people like Karen and me, who have no family at all, are the rare ones.
I followed Aba through the corridors connecting one building to another for about ten minutes. Then, gradually, female cadets began to appear, which was extremely pleasing.
Where did they pick out only girls this pretty? Their average looks were seriously high. What a feast for the eyes.
"Be careful."
Aba said as he walked ahead.
"Of what?"
"……If you stare at female cadets for more than three seconds without reason, you lose points."
"……."
I was about to ask what the hell that meant, but then I realized the male enforcers were watching me with hawk-like eyes and shrank back.
This is no joke, huh?
Aba continued in a lifeless voice.
"Here, points are everything. The enforcers are watching everywhere."
"Even so, just for looking……."
"Check the back of your notebook."
I did as he said and opened the back of my notebook.
Dekal
Total -1 pt
···Looked at female cadets outside of class hours. -1 pt
Are you serious?
The souls I worked so hard to earn as an adventurer are being used for things like this?
"Look over there."
"It's Lady Bale Noah."
Noah was striding proudly across the courtyard.
Did she see me?
Huh?
"……."
Noah exchanged a few words with an enforcer, and the deduction in my notebook was erased.
I'm back to a total of 0 points.
She said she would reach a position where she could suppress all the enforcers. Right. Noah's support had begun.
In a good mood, I entered the dining hall with Aba.
Many cadets were already sitting at tables and eating. It was not as if they had gathered only adolescents, and
because the enforcers were watching, there were almost no mixed-gender groups. Girls with girls. Boys with boys. It was very thorough.
Only now did Noah's words start to sink in.
The phrase I had seen when the deduction list briefly appeared in my notebook: outside of class hours.
Outside those hours, private contact with female cadets was difficult…… Why did they insist on such a stifling method?
In truth, it was only that they chose not to do so, but
if the school wanted to force reasons why men and women should not be together, there were countless excuses they could attach.
So I simply stopped thinking about it.
"What do you want to eat? Nothing too expensive."
Aba said.
"What's good?"
"Udon and inari sushi."
"Then I'll have that. How much do I give you?"
"Here, you pay for meals with points too. If you arrived today, you won't have any points, so I'll buy."
"You buy things with points?"
Sure enough, the menu hanging on the wall said Udon··· 1 pt.
I sat with Aba and ate.
"Thanks. I'll enjoy it."
"Everyone is surprised at first. Melbrit has a system you don't really see anywhere else."
"If you get points deducted, do you have to starve too?"
"If it gets really hard, you go outside and buy something to eat."
No one had said going out was forbidden.
"But if you miss class or aren't in the dormitory at bedtime, you automatically lose points…….
The more you wander outside, the harder it becomes to stay at Melbrit."
"……."
How vicious.
The fact that even outside class, your freedom was restricted and you were under surveillance.
I could avoid the enforcers' eyes to some extent, but the pressure the other cadets felt must have been no joke.
"Look over there."
The male cadets began to stir.
I instinctively knew Karen had appeared in the dining hall.
While everyone was looking, I slipped in and looked at Karen too.
Even with the threat of point deductions, Karen in uniform monopolized the men's gazes for an instant.
Isn't her top too small? The volume of her breasts is no joke. The healthy thighs showing beneath her skirt are hot too.
Perhaps she had gotten a good roommate, because Karen was already mixed in with a group of female cadets, including Stia.
It was about time for this to get dangerous. I withdrew my gaze and focused on eating.
"……Ugh."
Aba shuddered.
"What's wrong?"
"That red-haired cadet just now…… did you see her?"
"Mm. Those were some sexy tits."
"……No, I really can't stand that."
"You into slender girls?"
"Not exactly……. But when breasts are too big, they're scary. The size—once it looks like it would hurt if you got hit by them, it gets scary."
"……."
Aba trembled as if he were truly frightened.
People's tastes in women differ a little from person to person, but that's a pretty unique way to put it.
Scary once it looks like it would hurt to get hit by them, huh.
I imagined myself being hit by Karen's tits.
Hmm…… I'll have to ask her to do that next time.
"For me, the blonde cadet beside her was just right……."
Aba bashfully revealed his taste and laughed hehe.
"You mean Stia."
"You know her?"
"We were together during the exam.
I like any woman. As long as she's pretty, it doesn't matter whether she's small or big."
"The face is important."
As expected, among topics men discuss, there are few that bring them closer as quickly as talk about women.
Even with the threat of deductions, the male instinct to scan attractive females was alive and well.
It seemed like it would be fine as long as we didn't openly stare while walking around like earlier.
Because many people had looked at Karen and Stia, we were able to naturally avoid being penalized.
But I had no intention of being satisfied with that much.
Aside from class time, the dining hall was likely the only place where this many female cadets gathered.
Yet I couldn't even look at the cadets during that precious time. It was maddening.
After finishing my meal and returning to the room, I asked Aba a question.
"Aba. How are Melbrit's school years divided?"
"There aren't separate school years."
"Then does everyone take classes together?"
"They're divided by points and ranked into classes. From 0 to 500 points is Rabbit Class. Up to 1,000 points is Wolf Class. Up to 1,500 points is Bear Class. Above that is Dragon Class, and they take classes separately."
It's similar to adventurer ranks.
If adventurers divided ranks by precious metals with value, like silver, gold, and diamond, Melbrit divided them by beasts.
Stia, Karen, and I, who had just enrolled today, belonged to Rabbit Class.
"……So points really are everything."
"You get it now? If you want to graduate from Melbrit safely, it's best to keep quiet. People who do things that stand out or cast greedy eyes at pretty cadets don't last long."
"Hmm."
"I'm not saying you're like that, Dekal. It's just that I've already seen off four roommates……."
No wonder. There was weight behind his advice.
I did not think Aba said that just to scare me, who knew nothing of the place.
He bought me food and kindly told me about Melbrit's system. To be honest, I felt grateful to Aba.
"I understand. Thanks."
"……I'm going to take a nap. Afternoon classes start at 15:00."
Aba took off his clothes and stealthily crawled into his bed.
I lay down on my bed too and organized my thoughts.
It had been a short time, but it was enough to grasp Melbrit's characteristics.
Outside of class hours, interaction between the sexes was strictly forbidden.
To what extent? To the point that if you looked at female cadets for more than three seconds, you lost points.
Naturally, publicly dating someone or walking while holding hands could not happen.
The moment you did anything suspicious at night, an enforcer would smash your head open.
If any male cadet had impure intentions, he had probably already given up.
But I was different.
Melbrit's security was no big deal to me.
But going around hypnotizing every enforcer spread across the campus one by one while searching for women to target was far too inefficient.
If I did something like that, even Noah would not be able to save me.
However, obediently pretending to be a diligent student on the surface while raising my evaluation score was extremely easy for me.
Looking at the targets within Melbrit I had met so far,
at 0 points, there would be Stia and Karen, and we were in the same position, rising together.
It would be extremely easy to hypnotize Stia and corrupt her. We were in the same point range.
But the women clearly positioned in higher point ranges than me.
Would Diana be somewhere in the middle? Tilia would be in the upper ranks. And above them, in the very top Dragon Class, would be first-ranked Herka Philiote and second-ranked Neris Rike.
And above them, there was Sia, trusted as the student council president.
I would smoothly raise my points and, in the end, hypnotize the women at the very top.
Until then, outside of class time, I would not do anything that stood out.
……Good.
I calmly organized my thoughts and waited for the right time.
A cheerful birdcall rang out from the panel behind the bed.
15:00–18:00. Afternoon class time.
Melbrit cadets, please proceed to the main building.
0–500 points···
As Aba had said, the spaces where classes were held were divided by score.
Even if they were separated, I’d held a faint hope that if we used the same building, I might run into the top-ranking girls—but the moment I saw the map, that hope betrayed me.
Those with 0 to 500 points weren’t even allowed to use the main building. The instructions said to go to another building some distance away.
In other words, you had to be at least Wolf-rank to enter the main building.
“Aba. I’ll go on ahead.”
As I opened the door and stepped out, a sound came from my notebook.
Just from hearing about attending class in my room, I’d received 1 point.
If I hadn’t been there on time, that probably would have been a deduction.
I recalled the map I’d memorized by eye and headed to the Second Hall.
When I’d seen it through the soul graphics (temporary name), I’d thought it was a shabby building compared to the main building, but seeing it in person, that wasn’t really the case.
By otherworld standards, Melbrit was splendid no matter where you went.
I walked through the corridor connecting the buildings and entered the Second Main Hall, where I could already see several candidates.
Were the rooms divided again from here?
According to what I’d seen in A5, the lecture room I needed to go to was the one farthest to the right. Don’t tell me even that was assigned?
The lecture room was spacious enough to comfortably hold a hundred people, but there were only about thirty people inside, including me.
Why were they using the space like this?
Was it because the class content was different?
As time passed, my guess turned into certainty.
Stia and Karen weren’t coming.
They were the kind of two who wouldn’t have seemed out of place if they’d arrived first.
There weren’t any armed candidates either, and everyone was empty-handed like me.
“……”
Ten minutes before class began, my strength was already draining away.
No Karen, and no Stia. Is something like that even allowed?
Could the teacher be Isti?
It was a vain hope.
The one who entered was a well-built man with graying hair. He gave the impression of being terribly stubborn.
“Sit together wherever you like. Don’t sit off by yourselves. I am Ronwell, and I teach protective magic and theory.”
Ronwell continued speaking without even looking the candidates in the eye.
“Half of you probably have no points to your name. In my class, you should count yourselves lucky if you don’t receive deductions, so listen carefully.
Candidates whose points fall into the negatives are meant to be expelled within a few days.”
After snapping that out in a tone that made it hard to tell whether it was a threat or a warning, Ronwell’s class began.
To be honest, I couldn’t really understand what he was saying.
He went on about mana this and circulation that, but it was all content that had nothing to do with me, someone who had been handling magic naturally ever since the transmigration.
“Haa……”
A sigh came out on its own.
At that, Ronwell pointed at me and said,
“You there, the black-haired candidate. What is your name?”
……Me?
“I’m Dekal.”
“You sighed because you already know it all, I take it?”
Ugh. I’d stepped in it.
“If you can answer my question, you may sit. In fact, I’ll give you extra points. Tell me what magic belonged to Lady Ifle, the first archmage of the Kingdom of Daytun.”
“Urk…!”
Of all things, it had to be something I had no way of knowing.
When I couldn’t answer, Ronwell grinned and sneered.
“It is the most basic of basics. A candidate who became one through magic doesn’t even know that? I suppose your face won’t be here next class. Sit.”
“……”
Poor attitude -3pt, below standard -10pt, improper attire -2pt
My total became -14p.
Seeing my score drop made my stomach start to ache.
I didn’t even know the questions closest to common sense in this world. Because I’d lived in another world.
But what was improper attire?
The other male candidates all had every button of their blazer coats fastened. I was the only one who’d left mine open.
So that was why he’d been watching me as a person of interest.
Ronwell’s attitude was prickly, but he wasn’t nitpicking for no reason. He was simply being faithful to his duties.
I was just annoyed.
Because I’d naturally assumed I would meet Stia, but I hadn’t.
Thinking that I’d just sit here being criticized until class ended, then tamper with my score and go back, there was no way I could feel good.
So I swept my gaze over the other female candidates.
If there had been a girl as pretty as Stia, of course she would have caught my interest.
But there wasn’t.
Even someone on the level of the glasses girl would be fine. At this point, any girl would do…….
Just as I began thinking that, my eyes fell on a gloomy girl in the corner.
……What’s that?
She was so hunched over that I hadn’t even realized something like that was there.
But I had the feeling I’d seen that gloomy girl somewhere before.
Yesterday, at the main gate.
……Yeah. That’s right.
She was the girl who’d been wearing that creepy witch outfit, with black hair grown all the way down to her calves.
She was wearing the uniform now, but I remembered her because of that hair, which was far too long.
Like me, she was also a 0-point freshman and a mage.
My interest was piqued.
“You there!”
Ronwell pointed at me and said,
“If all you’re going to do is sightsee the other candidates, why don’t you leave?”
“……”
Perfect. Thanks to Ronwell’s thunderous scolding, the candidates’ attention gathered on me.
Snap.
I flicked my fingers.