“Not today, at least.”
Mel thought as he waited for work.
With his balance now scraped clean to the bottom, he needed to earn a large sum of money if he wanted to refill it quickly.
But not today, at least.
“The nobles’ examination grounds are absolutely out. If possible, I have to avoid getting involved with nobles at all.”
The Seronis family, a prestigious house of the Empire’s north.
Having fled from that place three years ago, Mel knew all too well the majesty of the Seronis family he had once belonged to.
That was precisely why it had taken him three years just to settle down here.
A full ten years.
A career as deputy head butler of a prestigious family was enough to be recognized in any noble household.
To compare it to a company, would it be like a high-ranking manager from a major corporation?
If someone like that became a free agent, it was similar to how various places would try to headhunt them.
After all, among the nobles of prestigious families, even the servants were often nobles themselves, or otherwise far from ordinary.
Of course, it wasn’t as if Mel, immediately after fleeing the family, had never considered entering another noble household as a servant.
“If I’d done that, the family would have come to capture me at once.”
Stealing a noble family’s knights or servants was something that would be condemned even in noble society.
But the Seronis family possessed the fame and power to lightly ignore such condemnation and do it anyway.
The house of the Northern Grand Duke was one that other nobles—even the royal families of other kingdoms—could never take lightly.
In fact, there was a far higher chance that the noble family he newly entered would sell him off to the Seronis family.
Then, if work in the light was difficult, what about work in the shadows—the so-called underworld?
“…I’d have been caught all the same. Old Man Vincent, the head butler, would have sent people out long ago.”
The head butler who oversaw all the servants of the Seronis family.
Thinking of the elderly butler who had also been his superior, Mel shook his head.
Nobles of prestigious families often had servants who were far from ordinary.
And Vincent was someone who was known as a legend in the underworld.
Recalling how he had once approached the underworld without knowing that at first, only to nearly land himself in trouble, Mel shook his head.
The Seronis family was famous both in the light and in the shadows.
In the end, what remained were small jobs that drew as little attention as possible. Even if they took a long time, he chose the safest route, slowly and steadily saving money by doing only those small jobs that, for that very reason, did not earn much.
That was why, even after fleeing, it had taken him three years to get here.
“Phew… This is a little bitter.”
Perhaps it couldn’t be helped that recalling the past left him feeling bitter, and Mel let out a deep sigh.
Well, what could he do?
Even so, he would rather die than be swept up and slaughtered together with a family that would disappear without a trace in a few years.
He would have to grit his teeth and endure through sheer spite.
“Hey.”
At that moment, an unfamiliar voice sounded.
When Mel turned his head and looked in the direction the voice had come from, there stood a young man.
“You’re Mel Zerna, right?”
“That’s right.”
The man’s speech was a bit rude, which grated on him slightly, but Mel answered obediently.
“I got word from Mr. Huton. Something came up, so you need to head out with me.”
“Ah, is that so? Then we should go. Um, so…”
“I’m Lewis Mileno. Whoa, what the?”
The man who introduced himself as Lewis Mileno looked up at Mel as he rose from his seat and became flustered.
The ash-gray-haired young man named Mel Zerna was a full head taller than him and sturdily built, and as he looked down at him with purple eyes, Lewis felt an indescribable pressure.
“Ugh! Hey, how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three? Pfft!”
Lewis, who had been momentarily flustered while looking at Mel just a moment ago, suddenly burst into laughter.
What’s more, there was unmistakable mockery in that laugh.
“What the hell. So you failed to get in right up to the very end? Heh heh!”
Mel could tell the meaning behind Lewis’s laughter.
“He probably thinks I’m a leftover failure who dropped out of the exam.”
The age limit for admission to Sigrian Academy was twenty-three. If one failed to enter by the age of twenty-three, then one could never enter thereafter.
Every world was much the same in that it was cruel to failures.
“Then how old are you, Mr. Lewis?”
“Hmph. I’m twenty-two.”
“Then, since you’re here working with me, does that mean this year too…?”
“T-this time I was just unlucky! Besides, I still have next year!”
Even from that brief exchange, Mel could grasp the situation.
That young man named Lewis Mileno must have failed this year’s entrance exam.
That was why he had come here to work.
At twenty-two years old, he had failed to enter despite his late age, and because of that, he must have been ruled by unpleasant emotions.
In the midst of that, looking at Mel, who was twenty-three and had failed until the very end, he was probably enjoying a thin sense of superiority.
To be honest, it was not a pleasant feeling.
“This little brat…”
Adding together the thirty years of his previous life, his reincarnation into the body of a ten-year-old, and the thirteen years that had passed since, Mel should have been over forty. The impure thoughts of someone far younger than him made him feel slightly displeased, but
he had no intention of grappling with him over that.
“Yes, yes~ Do your best next year too. So, you said we need to leave? Then we should go right away. Where are we headed?”
Mel’s tone carried a faint hint of sarcasm, but Lewis couldn’t call him out on it.
“Wh-where else? The commoners’ examination grounds. The commoner exam grounds, which are far lower level than the noble exams. Follow me. I know the way.”
“Looks like this guy took the nobles’ exam and failed. Seems he’d rather die than go back there again.”
Seeing how he unnecessarily added that it was low level when mentioning the commoners’ examination grounds, Mel could roughly guess.
He must have taken a high-level exam without understanding his own capabilities and been soundly rejected, but because he had a noble surname, his pride would never allow him to take the commoners’ exam.
Following behind Lewis, who strode forward without hesitation as if he had already been there several times, Mel thought to himself.
Had they walked about thirty minutes? The commoners’ examination grounds were not as far as he had expected.
“G-gah! I failed?!”
“Waaah! Father, Mother! I passed!”
It was a scene that suggested the exam had already progressed considerably.
All manner of joy and sorrow crossed the faces of the young men and women.
“Pfft! To fail even a commoners’ exam like that.”
Lewis was looking at that scene with a crooked smile.
“He’s in the same boat anyway…”
Mel muttered quietly as he watched Lewis.
How should he put it? It was to the point that he looked a little pitiful.
“Are you the people Mr. Huton sent?”
As they went a little farther into the examination grounds, someone who appeared to be an academy staff member saw Mel and Lewis and spoke to them.
“Hehe… That’s right.”
“Lewis, you… You came again this year? Then this year too, as expected…”
“Ehehe…”
At the words of the academy staff member, who seemed to know Lewis, Lewis answered with a silly grin.
Hearing him say “this year too,” Mel instinctively realized that Lewis had indeed come here more than once or twice.
“You’re a new face. If only Lewis had come, there’d be no need to explain, but you…”
“My name is Mel Zerna.”
“Right, Mel. I’ll explain. Do you see the dummies over there?”
The staff member pointed in a certain direction.
There, dummies shaped like people were piled up.
Each and every one of them had one or two parts damaged somewhere.
Pointing at the mountain of test dummies that had been used up during the entrance exam, the staff member continued.
“You just have to clean those up. Simple, isn’t it? Then get started right away.”
At the extremely simple contents of the job, Mel nodded.
“Ugh…! Heavy…!”
Lewis groaned as he lifted one of the test dummies.
Because they were made of fairly sturdy wood in order to withstand countless attacks from the examinees, the dummies were heavier than expected.
“He’s weak.”
Mel thought as he hoisted four or five dummies onto each shoulder.
There was a certain amount of weight to them, but not to the point that he couldn’t lift them at all.
At first, seeing Lewis sweat buckets while carrying one, he had worried that he might need to circulate mana or something, but for this much, basic muscular strength was more than enough.
Was it just about the level of a moderate strength workout?
It wasn’t so much exercise that it put much stress on him either.
Simple repetitive labor done without thinking.
He had already done more than five times the amount of work Lewis had, but Mel’s breathing was utterly calm.
If anything, he was so bored he was on the verge of yawning.
“The angle of the sword is completely wrong.”
“He just stupidly brought it down with brute force. No precision, no technique. If you swing a sword down this crudely, the one who swung it could actually get hurt…”
Each time he moved a new dummy, he looked at the extent of the damage and inferred what kind of attack that dummy had received.
“Is the level lower than I expected because it’s the commoners’ exam? No, that protagonist guy must just be special, right?”
Even if it was a log dummy like this, various things were needed to cut through it cleanly.
Sufficient muscular strength, precise technique, and on top of that, mana.
As befitting a world tagged as romance fantasy and fantasy, mana existed in this world as well.
It was the source of power that allowed beings like mages to display supernatural abilities such as magic.
Knights were the same.
They did not simply swing swords with strength and technique alone.
By circulating the mana within their bodies, they could cloak their swords in mana: Aura Blade.
It was a world where that Aura Blade, which would feel disappointing if it didn’t appear in a fantasy, existed.
If one could make aura form on a sword, they were known as an aura user, and even becoming an aura user was enough to slice through wooden dummies like these as if cutting tofu.
The same was true even if the dummies were made not of wood, but of steel.
And if one became skilled at handling aura, they would be called a sword master, a realm of superhumans, and receive generous treatment anywhere.
Of course, such sword masters were not produced easily.
Only by possessing outstanding talent, receiving all sorts of education and training from childhood, putting in extraordinary effort on top of that, and accumulating skill over many long years could one barely reach such a realm.
For commoners who struggled just to make a living, handling aura or mana was difficult, let alone becoming a sword master.
If someone from a commoner background could handle mana or aura, then it would be fair to say they possessed truly innate talent.
“That protagonist guy would be a case like that, wouldn’t he?”
Thinking so, Mel moved his body without pause.
“Huff, huff!”
“Give it here.”
“Huh?!”
Mel snatched the dummy Lewis was carrying as he panted roughly, then threw it with one hand.
Thud!
Seeing the test dummy, which looked like it weighed several dozen kilograms, fly away so lightly, Lewis’s eyes went wide.
“That’s everything.”
At Mel’s words as he dusted off his hands, Lewis turned around.
Until a short while ago, looking at the mountain-like pile of dummies, he had thought to himself, Should I just give up and run away? But I don’t even have money for bread tomorrow. I’m going to die today.
And yet, he was puzzled that it was already finished.
He wondered if a lot of time had passed without him realizing it, but when he checked the time, only about two hours had gone by.
This should have been absolutely impossible work for just two men to finish in two hours.
“Wh-what? You finished all this already?”
The academy staff member who had first assigned the work, though no one knew when he had arrived, couldn’t hide his surprise either.
That was because even he, the one who had given them the work, had expected that two people would not be able to deal with that much in a single day.
Especially if one of them was Lewis.
From the beginning, he had planned to have them take care of the dummies over several days.
He had come to check on the progress of the work and tell the laborers to go eat lunch, but now the sight of everything cleanly cleared away lay before his eyes.
“You. You said your name was Mel Zerna, yes? I’m called Rex. I’m a fourth-rank professor at Sigrian Academy, and I’m in charge of managing the commoners’ examination grounds.”
The man who introduced himself as Rex looked at the young man before him named Mel Zerna.
Although he was only a fourth-rank professor, for someone of commoner status, holding a position like this could be considered a success in its own right.
And for that reason, he had a discerning eye.
To Rex, there was one question.
“Why are you not taking the entrance exam?”