“We will now begin the 148th Entrance Ceremony of Eternoah Academy.”
Headmaster Koklak’s voice, amplified by magic, resounded through the entire amphitheater.
The murmuring commotion died down all at once, like a receding wave.
The headmaster stood at the center of the dais and slowly looked down over the new students from beyond his half-white beard.
“First, I offer my congratulations to every new student standing here today.”
A solemn silence followed.
The headmaster’s gaze swept slowly from the head of the line to the very end.
In other words, all the way to the special admissions section where we were standing.
“Each of you, in your own way and in your own place, has endured a fierce process to arrive here. Whether you entered as the top student or through special admissions, the weight of that achievement is no different.”
The headmaster paused for a moment.
In the spectator seats, the parents nodded.
“Eternoah does not discriminate. Origin, bloodline, the height or depth of one’s mana—none of these can serve as a measure of your worth here. Eternoah asks only one thing of you: growth. Have you become even a handspan better today than you were yesterday? That is the only question this academy asks.”
There was sincerity in the headmaster’s voice.
At the very least, it was a speech designed to sound that way.
“Eternoah is a place that aids those who seek to become the best. If you believe in yourselves and do not neglect your development, and if you do not waste the time you will spend here, I am certain that one day you will become the foundation stones of the Empire.”
Applause burst out from the spectator seats.
Does not discriminate, huh.
I bitterly repeated the words to myself.
They had lined us up in order of entrance scores and isolated the special admissions students at the very back. The regular admissions students who had snickered as they cut across in front of us had done so only a few minutes before this fine speech began.
As if there’s no discrimination.
What a joke.
The fighting world was more honest, if anything.
At least it wasn’t hypocritical like this.
If you were weak, you lost. If you were strong, you won.
It showed that clearly through the title called ranking.
Those numbers were a person’s worth, and no one dressed that up in pretty words.
Compared to this kind of hypocritical talk, that cruelty was cleaner.
“……Next, we will proceed with the new student representative’s oath. Top entrant, please come to the dais.”
At the headmaster’s direction, the male student standing at the very front of the line went up onto the dais.
A straight back. An easy stride.
While everyone’s eyes were drawn to his back as he climbed onto the stage, I glanced quietly to the side.
Yustia was staring straight ahead.
***
The final applause of the entrance ceremony scattered between the stone pillars, and the new students dispersed like a surging tide to receive their class assignments.
“New students, please proceed to your assigned lecture buildings. Class assignments and orientation will be conducted in each classroom.”
The amplified announcement crossed the plaza.
And immediately after that, a familiar line followed.
“Attention, new students accompanied by summoned beasts. Until class assignments have been completed, summoned beasts will be gathered in the summoned beast waiting area on the first basement floor of the main building. Summoners of the corresponding summoned beasts, please confirm your registration bracelets and leave them at the waiting area.”
Here we go again.
It was the same method as during the intelligence test.
The summoner took the exam, and the summoned beast was thrown behind bars.
The memory from that time came rushing back in full.
That humiliating stretch of time when I sat among beasts and was treated like a lunatic by the patrol guard.
“Taesan, I’m sorry, but again……”
Yustia looked up at me with a troubled expression.
Her lips moved, then in the end, her words trailed off.
“I know. Go.”
“I’ll finish quickly and come back. I really will.”
Yustia looked back again and again before disappearing toward the lecture building.
I watched her back for a moment, then patted Whisper’s head as it let out an anxious “Boo” from my shoulder.
“Let’s go. You and I are in the same boat.”
The first basement floor of the main building.
The summoned beast waiting area.
The moment I opened the door, a familiar smell washed over me.
A stuffy, damp air in which the distinct body odor of beasts and mana were tangled together.
The spacious area was divided densely into grid-like compartments, and in each one, all kinds of summoned beasts were crouching or pacing about.
A lizard-shaped creature with gleaming scales, a wolf-type summoned beast whose red eyes alone flashed in the darkness, even something like a bat hanging upside down from the ceiling with its wings folded.
The only thing that had changed was the scale.
It was wider, there were more of them, and it was louder.
“Ah. You must be the humanoid summoned beast I’ve only heard rumors about.”
The attendant guarding the entrance took my wrist and scanned the bracelet.
He raised his head and looked up at me.
When our eyes met, his pupils shook.
“I heard about you. We prepared a place for you in the far compartment over there, so you can go ahead.”
The far end. Of course, the very corner.
Unlike the lattice cages for the other summoned beasts, the assigned space was an open area separated by low partitions instead of bars.
Should I call it progress that they hadn’t thrown me into an animal cage like during the intelligence test?
There was one wooden bench and one water bowl.
“I put in the chair I was using. If you need anything, please feel free to let me know.”
“Thank you for your consideration.”
I silently sat down on the bench.
Whisper flew up from my shoulder and landed on the backrest of the bench, blinking its round eyes as it looked up at me.
It didn’t seem to have any particular complaints about the situation.
Of course it wouldn’t.
For this little guy, this was where it belonged in the first place.
I was the only exception.
I leaned back against the bench and looked up at the ceiling.
Maybe because it was underground, the magically created lighting spread softly over the room, but even that light felt damp and clammy.
“Um.”
When I turned my head, the attendant from earlier was peeking over the partition.
He had a clipboard in his hand, but his gaze was fixed entirely on me.
His expression said he had tried to suppress his curiosity and finally lost.
“But… are you really a summoned beast?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really.”
The attendant tucked the clipboard against his chest and came one step closer.
His voice dropped by a tone.
“I mean, I know it’s rude of me to say this, but there are some rumors going around the waiting area these days.”
“Rumors?”
“How did you end up becoming a summoned beast? There’s talk that you were really kidnapped and forcibly bound to a summoning circle. That the Rosenhart family secretly revived a forbidden human-summoning ritual and created an artificial summoned beast by offering a person as a sacrifice……”
The attendant’s eyes sparkled.
For someone telling a ghost story, he himself seemed the most excited.
“What? What kind of rumor is that?”
I was so dumbfounded that a laugh slipped out.
An artificial summoned beast?
Reality was far more empty and simple than that.
“No. It’s not like that. I really was summoned. I wasn’t originally a person from this world.”
“……Pardon?”
The attendant’s eyes grew at least a handspan wider.
“I mean, I originally lived in another world, and the summoning circle dragged me here. It’s not anything grand like being artificial or whatever.”
“Wait, wait a second. Then you came from another world? Not a monster, not a spirit, but just a person?”
“Yes. Just a person.”
The attendant set the clipboard down entirely.
His face said he had completely forgotten about work and everything else.
“That’s incredible… Then what did you do over there? Were you a knight? Or maybe a mage?”
“I fought as a mixed martial arts fighter.”
“Mixed martial arts? Fighting? In that world, people do battle? Why?”
“Good question. Why did people like watching that, I wonder.”
The attendant tilted his head.
It seemed the concept of fighting barehanded, without magic or weapons, didn’t easily register in this world.
“But then how did you manage to enroll in the academy without any mana? Getting in here is no joke.”
“Well. I guess you could say the gravity in this world is weak.”
I chose my words for a moment, then explained it as simply as I could.
“The world I came from had much stronger gravity than here. So after coming here, even when I use the same amount of strength, the results are different. My body feels lighter, and my power hits harder.”
“Ah…… So you were ordinary in your original world, but after coming here, your body became stronger?”
“Something like that.”
“Wow…… Then you got through special admissions purely with your body, without mana? So the rumor that the professors passed you unanimously was true.”
“I don’t know whether it was unanimous, but, well, I did get in somehow.”
“Come on, you’re being modest.”
The attendant clicked his tongue in admiration.
Then, as if something had suddenly occurred to him, he lowered his voice by a tone and leaned in.
It was the posture particular to chatterboxes when the story was finally getting to the main point.
“But you know, I heard a lot of bizarre kids got into this special admissions class.”
“Bizarre how?”
“They say even the faculty’s been talking a lot. When you work at the summoned beast waiting area, all sorts of rumors reach your ears.”
The attendant glanced around once, then lowered his voice even further, as if he were leaking state secrets.
“First, there’s supposedly one kid with an all-time high mana value. Higher than the top regular admissions student, but they completely bombed the intelligence test and got pushed into special admissions. And then there’s some lunatic who engraved a summoning contract onto his own body without a summoned beast and registered himself as a summoned beast……”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“How would I know! Rumors are rumors. Oh, and apparently there’s a noble student who came from the Kingdom to study abroad, but their family is on bad terms with the Empire, so regular admission was blocked.”
The attendant counted them off on his fingers, then suddenly looked up at me and grinned.
“Well, even so, no matter what anyone says, the human summoned beast is still the most special one.”