"W-What!"
The magic bullet gun was a weapon treated as special even by the state, precisely because it allowed even commoners with no aptitude for magic to launch magical attacks.
Of course, experts such as high-ranking mages or Swordmasters with superhuman physical abilities were not entirely without means to counter it, but
even they could end up dead with one wrong move.
And yet she had openly fired such a dangerous weapon at an unconscious ordinary person.
"Good heavens. What a wicked sight...! A finishing shot!"
Rex could not hide his shock at the atrocious deed committed by the beautiful young girl.
"Um, Professor? I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding."
Elsia spoke to the flustered Rex, then pointed the muzzle of the magic bullet gun in a certain direction.
"Louis?"
Louis, whom he had thought would have either gained a nice ventilation hole in his head from the magic bullet or a round hole in his belly and become a human doughnut, was completely fine.
Surely, when a magic bullet rang out, common sense dictated that a hole would appear somewhere?
"Tch! She fires something ridiculously expensive without hesitation. But she won’t do it for me even if I die."
Cisne, who had been standing behind them, knew what Elsia had done and pouted.
"I use up an entire day’s worth of my mana, and if you include refining it into a bullet, it takes a full week just to make one healing magic bullet. I can’t use that just to recover the fatigue you build up after sword training, can I? You can solve that by using your family’s secret mana cultivation technique."
"I can’t train with the sword while I’m circulating the technique, can I? With one shot of that, I could save that much rest time and pour it all into training."
"No, thanks. You idiot. I’m absolutely not shooting you. If you want to be shot that badly, apologize properly first."
Watching Cisne and Elsia bicker, Rex and Andre looked up at Lufasto.
"Is it not astonishing? A reversal of thinking with magic bullets, weapons optimized for killing enemies. To think one could load healing magic into a magic bullet and fire it."
Lufasto, deeply versed in magic, expressed his admiration without reserve.
Loading a spell into a magic bullet, rather than simply infusing it with mana, was quite a difficult task.
And the higher the tier of the spell, the harder it became to load that spell into a magic bullet.
On top of that, healing magic was among the most difficult categories of magic.
Even mages who had reached higher tiers sometimes could not use healing magic, and compared to spells of the same tier, it consumed far more mana. Its efficacy, too, left much to be desired when compared to the healing arts of priests who used divine power.
In a word, a mage’s healing magic could be called the pinnacle of inefficiency.
"But if she hones her skills and reaches a level where she can mass-produce magic like that... the Empire’s future will be bright indeed."
He had overseen entrance examinations for many years, but it had truly been a long time since so many talented applicants had gathered as they had this year.
"Now, he should wake up soon, so apologize properly."
"I don’t even know why I have to apologize to some commoner in the first place. And to begin with, that commoner’s mana storm was a bigger factor than my mana. Hey, you there, commoner. Isn’t that right?"
But Cisne still looked unconvinced as she argued back at Elsia and pointed at Azelan.
"If he’d been injured because I sent that flimsy rock flying, he’d be an unrecognizable lump of meat by now. But he’s completely fine. If anything, the direct cause of his fainting was the mana storm. Yes, your absurdly brute-force mana discharge. Am I wrong?"
Cisne insisted that the cause of Louis’s fainting had been mana, not physical force, and proved her own innocence.
"...Apologize."
"Hm?"
"I said apologize. Noble young lady."
Azelan, whom Cisne had singled out, answered again, clearly and distinctly.
"Yes, it is true that I was inexperienced and caused an accident. But you also sent that rock flying out of nowhere, and that is why I discharged my mana. This is the shared responsibility of both you and me. So apologize."
"Ha? Ahaha... A mere commoner is awfully insolent, isn’t he?"
Cisne let out a hollow laugh as if dumbfounded, then her expression stiffened.
An ominous force rose from her crimson eyes.
But Azelan did not shrink at all beneath Cisne’s chilling gaze and met her eyes directly.
Just as it seemed the force emanating from the red and blue eyes of the two applicants might blend together and give birth to a violet aura—
"Enough!"
Once again, a powerful wave of mana spread in all directions.
Lufasto, a high-ranking mage officially known to have reached the seventh tier, mediated between Cisne and Azelan in a dignified voice.
No matter how overflowing with talent the two of them were, before Lufasto Higris, a First-Class Professor of Sigrian Academy, they were still nothing more than young fledglings.
"Both of your arguments have some merit. However, Lady Seronis, such an attitude is an act that tarnishes the reputation of His Excellency the Sword Duke. The same goes for you, Azelan. It is an unfortunate reality, but a great noble house such as hers cannot perform the act of apology lightly. If it were a clear fault, that would be one thing, but in ambiguous matters all the more so."
At Lufasto’s logical explanation to both Cisne and Azelan, the ominous force around the two gradually subsided.
"Therefore, I shall make one proposal. Once the entrance examination is over, an entrance ceremony will be held for those who have passed. And as part of the ceremony, the noble students and commoner students who achieved the highest scores will stand as representatives of the new students and pit their abilities against each other. The one who loses there will grant the demand of the one who wins."
At Lufasto’s proposal, Cisne and Azelan nodded at the same time.
"That sounds amusing. There’s no chance a mere commoner could defeat me, but if by some chance I lose, I’ll grant any demand you make. But if you lose, you’ll smash your head at my feet and shout loudly, ‘I’m sorry a commoner dared to act out of line.’"
"...Very well. But if I win, I ask that you fulfill the demand I stated."
"Ah, yes, yes. I’ll apologize or beg forgiveness or whatever. Though, of course, that will never happen."
"Now then, the entrance examination is not yet over, so let us wrap up the remaining schedule. When that young man regains consciousness, send him to me. Then I shall take my leave."
Saying so, Lufasto took Cisne and Elsia with him and flew off in the direction of the noble examination grounds.
And so it seemed the incident had come to a close.
"W-Wait! Where is Zerna? There was one more person, wasn’t there?"
Rex recalled Mel, who had come with Louis. Because of Louis collapsed right before his eyes, he had momentarily forgotten Mel, who had vanished without a trace.
It was at that moment.
"I stepped out to the restroom for a moment. Did something happen? What is this chaos...?"
"Ooh?! Zerna? Goddess! Thank you!"
Seeing Mel appear unobtrusively, Rex’s face brightened, and he offered a prayer of thanks to the goddess in the sky.
.
.
.
Three days had passed since then.
The entrance examination for Sigrian Academy had all come to an end.
Rex explained what had happened and, along with an apology for getting him caught up in an unexpected accident, showed his sincerity by paying him five times the originally promised fee instead of three.
Mel, too, had watched everything from nearby and had merely slipped back out once the situation had settled down.
But there was no need for him to go out of his way to refuse an unexpected bonus.
Thanks to that, his empty balance had been filled a little, so depending on how one looked at it, it could be called good fortune.
"Hey, you’re here?"
"Yes, I’m here. Why did you suddenly say you’d buy me a meal?"
Mel voiced his question as he looked at Louis, who stood before him with a triumphant air.
"Take a look at this."
Looking quite pleased, Louis showed Mel a small card.
"A Sigrian Academy student ID?"
It was an academy student ID with the name Louis Mileno stamped on it.
Which meant...
"Don’t tell me?"
"That’s right! Exactly what you’re thinking! I finally passed! On the day we worked together, First-Class Professor Lufasto told me that since it was his responsibility or whatever, he’d grant me one request. I don’t know what responsibility he meant, but they say you should seize an opportunity when you get one, so I asked for one more chance to take the exam."
"And you passed in the end?"
"That’s right! Look at the radiant majesty of this student ID!"
Even if he had gained an extra chance to take the Academy entrance exam that could only be taken once a year, there was no way Louis, whose ability to control mana was no different from a commoner’s, should have been able to pass.
And someone like Lufasto, who took pride in the Academy, would not have simply passed a dullard like Louis unconditionally as an apology, either, would he?
"Ah, so that’s what happened."
"Hm? What did you say?"
"Nothing. That’s good. Congratulations."
Mel immediately resolved his own doubt.
He had been swept up in a powerful mana storm, and on top of that, a high-ranking mage had personally controlled his mana.
It was a rather excessively rough method, but it seemed the channels through which mana flowed within his body had been opened.
Of course, since only the channels had been opened, he would have to use a mana cultivation technique to build up the mana within his body, but the mana contained in the healing magic bullet fired by Elsia, Cisne’s close friend, must have remained in his body and become the mana he needed to pass the Academy entrance examination.
It was a situation where various strokes of luck overlapped, but it was not something impossible.
Of course, he had only just managed to enter the Academy, and life at the Academy was another matter entirely, so he would have to put in a great deal of effort there as well in order to endure. But that was a matter that depended on Louis’s future course.
"It’s a shame. If you’d been there too, you might’ve gotten an extra chance to take the exam like I did. Of course, even if not in the noble class like me, you’d be in the commoner class, but still, that’s something, isn’t it?"
‘So this guy does have some loyalty after all?’
At their first meeting, he had been rather annoying, but to show this sort of thoughtfulness was quite admirable.
"So after the entrance ceremony is over, I’ll treat you to a meal. Oh, while you’re waiting, you can watch the entrance ceremony too. Parents and acquaintances of those who passed are allowed to attend. To begin with, I don’t have any parents to watch me."
He made the invitation with a slightly gloomy expression.
Realizing that Louis had ended up coming all the way to him because he did not even have the bare minimum number of people with whom to share his joy, Mel looked down at him.
He could hardly bring himself to refuse.
After all, for Mel himself, Louis was the first connection he had made after moving to the Academy territory, was he not?
Mel was not so coldhearted as to cruelly reject such an invitation from him.
"I’ll gladly accept. Then shall we meet at the restaurant where we ate while working last time?"
"Yeah. Sure. Let’s meet there, then! Ah, it’s almost time. I’ll be going now."
At Mel’s acceptance, Louis’s expression brightened. He nodded, then ran off to attend the entrance ceremony.