Professor Victor fixed me with a piercing stare, his blue eyes gleaming.
It was only a look, yet I felt a chill, as if my throat might be torn out at any moment.
I held back my body as it tried to react and met his eyes.
Seeing that, Victor’s eyes curved like crescent moons.
“As expected, you’re an interesting one.”
With a twisted smile, Professor Victor reached a hand toward me.
It was a slow gesture, containing no hint of threat.
And yet, the closer that hand came, the tighter my heart clenched.
Even as I felt pain from the invisible force pressing down on my entire body, strangely, what I felt was curiosity rather than fear.
‘He’s definitely not manipulating any energy at all.’
Then how was he making me feel this pressure?
When I looked at him with my eyes shining, the corner of Professor Victor’s mouth curled.
“Look at this one. You’re quite the find.”
Just before his hand touched my shoulder, pink mana blazed up violently and cut between me and Professor Victor.
Professor Louise looked at Victor with eyes that had sunk coldly.
She did not show it openly, but a faint anger lingered in her gaze.
“An evaluation? Professor Victor. It seems you’ve mistaken the classroom.”
“Mistaken, you say… I suppose it could look that way. But Professor Louise. You haven’t forgotten that the headmaster gave me the freedom to do this, have you?”
“‘You may do whatever you like freely.’ Yes, the headmaster certainly said that. But that promise was made on the premise that you would properly serve as an academy professor. Aren’t you supposed to be teaching the Justitia students martial demonstrations right now?”
“Ah, that class? I wrote on the blackboard that they should study on their own and left.”
“…It should be the first class of this semester.”
“Which makes self-study all the more fitting. The students can cultivate independence. I don’t think that much violates the contract I made with the headmaster, Professor Louise.”
At Victor’s answer, Professor Louise simply stared at him without saying a word.
She said nothing, but her trembling eyes and the mana behind her back showed how she felt.
Unlike Professor Louise, Victor looked back at her with an utterly composed expression.
I looked back and forth between the two of them.
The mana I felt from Professor Louise was undoubtedly tremendous.
If one considered only the magnitude of her power, it was about twice that of Ms. Eleonore.
Normally, it would have been enough to make me marvel, but now it felt completely different.
‘It’s definitely Professor Louise who released her mana.’
Then why did Professor Victor, standing there so calmly, look dozens of times more dangerous?
What would happen if the two of them fought? The answer came without any need for thought.
Victor’s complete victory.
Before Professor Louise could even chant a spell, her throat would be torn out.
Had she felt the same thing? Professor Louise, who had been glaring at Victor with blazing eyes, soon calmed her mana.
A heavy sigh flowed from Professor Louise’s lips as she wore a complicated expression.
“I respect the headmaster’s decision, but I don’t know if it was wise of him to tie you down here. Very well, Professor Victor. Let’s return to the point. An evaluation, you said. What exactly are you planning to do?”
“That’s simple.”
Victor smiled and grabbed the mana measuring device placed in front of Ashen.
At the same time, the orb, which had merely been glowing blue, began to melt outright.
He held out the melted mana measuring device to Professor Louise.
“As you know, there’s a limit to what can be measured with toys like these. The real thing can’t be measured that way.”
“I know that as well. But I still don’t know what you intend to do.”
“If the tool can’t function properly, there’s only one way, isn’t there? You measure it directly with your own body.”
The moment he finished speaking, Victor disappeared from sight and soon reappeared in front of the instructor’s desk.
Standing beside Professor Louise, Professor Victor looked at me with eyes that felt like blue flame.
“Attack me with everything you have.”
I looked at him in silence for a moment.
It was a good chance to avoid getting a zero in class, but I couldn’t understand his intention.
“What is your purpose?”
“Does a professor need some separate purpose to teach a student?”
He crooked a finger at me.
“Now, don’t hold back. Come at me. If it comes to it, I’ll exempt you from the practical portion related to mana manipulation entirely.”
He would exempt me from the mana manipulation practical.
‘Not a bad offer.’
If that happened, I could prevent things like today from happening in the first place.
‘The problem is whether Professor Louise agrees too…’
When I glanced at Professor Louise, she nodded.
“If Professor Victor judges you to be ‘outstanding,’ then you won’t need this class. So I agree as well.”
“…Understood.”
I rose from my seat and walked toward Victor.
The distance was about two steps.
It was close enough that I could attack immediately.
However, my battle instincts whispered to me.
‘If you attack from here, you won’t even reach him.’
It was a judgment based purely on instinct, without any basis at all, but I decided to trust my instincts.
One step remained.
Taking my stance there, I lowered my body and looked at Professor Victor.
He still took no defensive posture whatsoever and simply watched me with a calm attitude.
‘One chance.’
I steadied my breathing and rotated the Red Blood within my body.
The torrent of power, small at first, grew more forceful as the flow accelerated.
To unleash my full strength, the rotation would have to expand outside my body, but I forcibly confined it within me.
At this level, it was about eighty percent of my full power.
It was the maximum strength I could produce on the premise that I would not expose the Red Blood.
The moment I judged that enough power had gathered, I thrust my spear toward him.
Boom—!
With the sound of air being torn apart, the spear shot out like an arrow, using the muscles of my entire body as a bowstring.
The target was the professor’s chest.
At this level, even if I couldn’t inflict great damage on him, I should at least be able to surprise him.
The moment I thought that, something blocked the tip of my spear.
Tap.
I widened my eyes as I looked at the spearhead stopped by Professor Victor’s index finger.
It had clearly been moving at tremendous speed just a moment ago, yet the instant it touched the tip of his finger, it stopped as if by a lie, without resistance.
As if it had been meant to stop there from the very beginning.
“Not bad. It doesn’t seem to be your true full power, but in terms of force alone, it’s on the level of a decent knight.”
Even after doing something so absurd, Professor Victor delivered his evaluation in a calm tone, as if it were nothing.
He flicked my spear away and turned his gaze to Professor Louise.
“Professor Louise. Exempt this one from the practical. He doesn’t need to learn that sort of thing. This is my ‘sincere’ evaluation. Understood?”
Was there some meaning in his word sincere? Professor Louise’s eyebrow twitched for an instant.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. This is my sincerity. I think you can grant at least this much.”
Professor Louise looked between me and Professor Victor with a thoughtful gaze for a moment, then finally nodded.
“Very well. If you put it that way, I have nothing more to say. Student Ashen. From now on, you do not have to take the mana manipulation practical.”
At her words, I withdrew my spear and bowed my head to Professor Victor.
It would not be wrong to say that I now owed him one.
It was when I thought that and was about to return to my seat.
“Wait a moment!”
With a bang, Cecilia struck her desk and rose from her seat.
“This is unfair! It isn’t a proper evaluation!”
Cecilia’s trembling voice was steeped in anger.
Professor Louise looked at Cecilia with a puzzled gaze.
“Student Cecilia. This is a matter Professor Victor and I agreed upon. Why are you objecting?”
“We were all evaluated under the same conditions, weren’t we? It’s unfair for only Ashen to have an entirely different evaluation standard! This is discrimination!”
As if agreeing with her words, murmurs rose among the students.
“That’s right, it’s unfair.”
“That’s not even a proper measurement.”
Just as Professor Louise was about to say something to them, Professor Victor stepped forward.
As if his smile from moments ago had been a lie, his expression had gone cold.
“Do you think it’s unfair?”
His eyes, glowing blue like those of a magical beast, swept over the students one by one.
At the sight of him, almost all the students shut their mouths. Only one, Cecilia, kept standing despite her trembling body.
‘I don’t know if that’s reckless or brave.’
Just as I was about to be impressed by her, Professor Victor opened his mouth.
“Certainly, this isn’t the sort of measuring method used by desk-bound scholars. So I can understand why you might be dissatisfied.”
“R-right?”
“But you see, young lady. Real combat is like this.”
His voice was eerie, as if a blade had been pressed to one’s throat.
Hearing it, Cecilia’s face turned deathly pale.
“Real combat is always unfair, unpredictable, and never goes the way you want. If you can’t get used to that, you won’t survive.”
“E-even so.”
“If you’re that dissatisfied, then you attack me too, young lady.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you to attack me. Then I’ll evaluate you.”
At the sight of Professor Victor crooking his index finger, Cecilia hesitated for a moment, then lifted her staff.
The moment blue mana flickered at the tip of her staff, Professor Victor’s little finger stabbed into the air.
It was a motion as if he were playing a prank.
And yet, the instant that motion was made, Cecilia’s magic scattered into the air.
“Not bad for a squire-class, young lady. But in real combat, you would have died before you could even recite a spell like that.”
“……Is that all?”
Cecilia muttered, her expression twisted by Professor Victor’s calm evaluation.
She stood there for a moment, then soon slumped back into her seat.
After glancing sidelong at Cecilia, Professor Victor walked past me toward the classroom door.
The instant he passed by me, Professor Victor’s quiet voice burrowed into my ear.
“Then keep hiding it well from now on, descendant of blood.”
The moment I heard those words, my heart began to pound like mad.
‘As expected, this man knows about the Red Blood!’
I hurriedly tried to grab him, but he had long since vanished from the classroom.
Even after he disappeared, a heavy silence still settled over the classroom.
Professor Louise looked at the students and continued in a composed tone.
“Let’s end today’s class here. I don’t think there would be any meaning in continuing the lesson.”
With those words, even Professor Louise disappeared beyond a magic circle, and the students began to rise from their seats one by one and head outside.
In the midst of that, only one student did not get up.
“Ashen, what’s wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
I looked for a moment at Cecilia, who was still sitting in her seat.
Her head was lowered, so I couldn’t see, but somehow it felt as though tears were flowing from her eyes.
‘Should I comfort her?’
The thought suddenly came to mind, but I shook my head.
Even if I spoke to her in this situation, it would have no meaning.
Rather, the moment I spoke, her anger might explode.
Leaving Cecilia in her seat, I left the classroom with Senior Lena.
The moment I stepped into the hallway, I heard a small sob from behind.