10
Late evening on a day when the sun had completely sunk below the horizon.
*Crash!*
From an office in the Academy’s Swordsmanship Department faculty building, a loud sound like something shattering echoed out.
“Haa, haa, haa….”
Professor Oliver Pin, both the culprit behind the noise and the owner of the office, was breathing roughly, his face flushed completely red as if excited. The whiskey glass that had been in his hand was already smashed against the office wall, shattered beyond recognition.
Amidst the thick smell of alcohol filling the room, Professor Oliver Pin read through the contents of the letter in his hand once more.
*‘Until the guidance of Luke Raesion, the eldest son of the historic Raesion family, is properly carried out, we shall temporarily suspend our sponsorship of Professor Oliver Pin. Our family expects appropriate measures from the professor, and if this is not properly carried out, we demand that the assigned professor be reassigned…’*
“Goddamn son of a bitch!”
Checking the letter’s contents that refused to change no matter how many times he read them, Professor Oliver spat out curses brimming with rage.
The eldest son of Count Raesion’s family, Luke Raesion.
Before the new semester began, he had been the student whom Conrad Perdallos had burned with Flame Fortress and sent to the church.
“If only that damned brat hadn’t done such dog-like bullshit…!!”
The brown letter paper in his hand was ruthlessly torn to shreds and scattered across the office floor.
Already around Professor Oliver, there were not only the letters that had arrived from the Raesion family, but also scraps of letter paper in different colors presumably sent from other families strewn about. Those haphazardly torn scraps indirectly showed just how furious he was.
“Damn Magic Department brat….”
Professor Oliver stared blankly out the window as if in a daze, recalling someone’s face.
Academy Magic Department second-year, Conrad Perdallos.
The eldest son of the Perdallos family, and a name that was synonymous with the dunce of the Magic Department. He had heard that until last year, the boy could barely use 1st-circle magic.
Already, the mere fact that a Magic Department student had taken down his disciples was enough to twist his insides. But the fact that the target wasn’t an upperclassman on the verge of graduation, or a genius who transcended the era, or even from a high-ranking family that would cover for his actions—this point twisted his stomach several times over. If the bastard had qualified as even one of those three, he could have used that as an excuse to skillfully reply to the letters questioning his responsibility. But the matter of seven Swordsmanship Department students being taken down by the Magic Department’s dunce was absolutely not a problem that could be glossed over with an excuse.
“Impudent brat. Why did he have to mess with my disciples for no reason….”
The story that the students under Oliver Pin’s charge had been taken down by a single Magic Department student was already spreading quietly within the Academy. Although the parties involved, Conrad Perdallos and Stella Arwen, had not opened their mouths, it was impossible to silence the church officials who had taken charge of their treatment as well. Especially since Professor Oliver’s assigned students were a group of problem children who had drawn much talk even in normal times, their downfall was a choice topic of gossip among the good students. Naturally, the honor of Professor Oliver, who was in charge of them, plummeted to the bottom in one fell swoop.
“Because of that bastard’s damn meddling, the reputation I built up over so long has crashed to the ground, and the individual patronage funds that came in from the families have all been cut off at once….”
Professor Oliver had several criteria when selecting the students he was in charge of. First, he would secure students from good noble families or wealthy households as much as possible, receiving individual sponsorship funds under the guise of guidance fees. He would leave those students be to cause problems or accidents as they pleased, then receive good evaluations from the students in his charge. And to ensure that retribution didn’t befall his recklessly acting disciples, he made sure to attach other skilled students to them as guards. Thus Professor Oliver had been quietly lining his own pockets under his perfectly laid plans, but the scraps of letters from various families scattered on the floor served as proof that his plans had completely fallen apart. Because letters stating they would discontinue individual sponsorship support had come not only from the Raesion family. Letters with similar contents had already arrived from the families of his other assigned students as well, not just the group of Luke Raesion who had caused the trouble.
Count Graybeard’s family, the Sepia Company, Margrave Rosewin’s family.
The detailed contents written in each letter differed slightly, but the content stating they would suspend sponsorship of Professor Oliver for the time being, or not send education support funds, was invariably included in common. Having read letters with the same contents several times, Professor Oliver Pin was being consumed by an uncontrollably intense rage.
“He should’ve just stood by and watched like always. Instead he shows up acting like some apostle of justice, running his mouth and getting knocked flat on his ass—damn it!”
As a result of deducing and organizing the testimony obtained from his fallen disciples, Conrad Perdallos had first taken down three of the seven with a surprise preemptive attack. They had merely been flustered by the means of magic, and the answer that came back was that if they had actually come to their senses and fought properly, they wouldn’t have been defeated like this. Therefore, even though a mere dunce from the Magic Department had taken down as many as seven students, Professor Oliver concluded that it had simply been due to luck. He immediately prepared a very special revenge plan for Conrad Perdallos, who had ruined his plans to shambles.
“That damned brat. I’ll make sure he pays the price for ruining my life so thoughtlessly.”
Imagining Conrad collapsing as a mangled wreck before countless students because of his plan, Professor Oliver formed a quiet, sinister smile.
* * *
That day was one where I had a meal with Ruru after a long time. There had been overlapping matters that kept me from going to see Ruru, and Ruru had seemed to have her own busy affairs, as there had been no contact whatsoever. Including the time before the regression, it was the first meal I’d shared with her in almost a year and a half.
“It’s hard to even grab a meal together.”
“…Tell me about it.”
At my remark, Ruru offered a plain sentiment and bit into the chicken cutlet sandwich before her.
“I was busy at the start of the semester too, so I couldn’t contact you, but why haven’t you reached out even once all this time?”
“Are you asking because you don’t know?”
“I’m asking because I don’t know.”
The girl with the black cat ears seemed to make an expression of disbelief at my question, then quietly confessed the reason she hadn’t contacted me first for a while.
“No matter how much we’re friends, if you and I meet and hang out alone together, your fiancée wouldn’t like it, would she?”
“Huh?”
“That’s why I was keeping my distance. I didn’t want to be caught up in some weird misunderstanding. If you get tangled up in nobles’ jealous quarrels, commoners like me are the first ones thrown out.”
Hm.
I couldn’t understand what she was talking about from beginning to end. What fiancée, and what jealous quarrel?
“I have a fiancée?”
“That blonde freshman you’ve been going around with all the time lately. Professor MacDowell’s daughter.”
“Stella?”
“I thought we were pretty close, so it’s a little hurtful that you kept something like having a fiancée a secret.”
Just where did this misunderstanding start?
Since facts that needed correcting had to be corrected, I spouted excuses that weren’t excuses to the girl sitting across from me.
“Let me tell you first, Stella and I aren’t anything like fiancés.”
“Then what? Just lovers?”
“We’re nothing more than ordinary seniors and juniors. These days we happened to run into each other a lot by chance, so we ended up going around together frequently, but it’s not a relationship you need to worry about, so don’t get any strange ideas.”
I was disappointed that she was misunderstanding it as such, since we truly had just been meeting by chance often.
“Senior Conrad, what a coincidence! Are you going to get a meal?”
“Senior Conrad, what a coincidence! Have your classes ended?”
“Senior Conrad, what a coincidence! Were you working out today as well?”
…Come to think of it, I did have the feeling that I’d been running into Stella a bit too often lately. At this frequency, one could say there had been plenty of room for misunderstanding.
“Really just a simple senior-junior relationship? You’re in different departments too, and you’re incredibly shy around strangers.”
“We got close quickly from running into each other over one thing or another. You know that too. Once I let my guard down, I get close quickly after that.”
“Hmm, well, that was true.”
She crossed her arms, leaned back against the chair, and let out a sigh of relief. As she made an expression as if something she’d been worrying about had been resolved, the black tail extending from behind her back swayed gently.
“Ah, what the hell. I was scared for no reason.”
Ruru’s feelings were something I could fully understand. If I had actually been engaged to Stella, and Stella harbored ill feelings toward Ruru, my opposite-sex friend, then nine times out of ten, the one to suffer the most would be Ruru, a commoner caught between nobles. Of course Stella wouldn’t do that, but it was something entirely possible in a typical noble-commoner relationship. Because it was an Academy where nobles and commoners lived mixed together, she was not the only student who could be cited as an example of such tragedy.
“Ah, by the way, did you hear about that?”
“What?”
“Those Raesion punks from the Swordsmanship Department. I heard they got proper justice served to them not too long ago?”
…Could this be my story?
“I heard seven of them got taken down by one Magic Department student. I overheard church priests talking about it.”
So it was my story.
I had asked Stella to keep it strictly confidential because it would be bothersome if unfounded rumors spread, but it seemed impossible to stop rumors from leaking from the church side that had treated those guys.
“Come to think of it, you’re in the Magic Department too. Do you know who did it?”
“…….”
“Seeing you not answer, I guess you don’t really know.”
I was briefly contemplating how to explain this, but fortunately, before I could spit out an excuse, Ruru misunderstood on her own and reached a conclusion.
“Anyway, it feels so refreshing! I wanted to really beat the hell out of them someday!”
“Did they do something to you too?”
“Indirectly, a few times. Last year those bastards were smoking in front of the Engineering Department dorm and accidentally set fire to the flower beds and ran off.”
“Come to think of it, that did happen.”
All circumstantial evidence had pointed to the Luke Raesion group, yet for some reason it had been left as an unsolved case during the investigation and glossed over. Seeing him wrap up even such bothersome rumors without issue, Professor Oliver’s campus political abilities were indeed considerable. The problem was that he used that ability to coddle his students within the Academy above all else.
“Are you ready for the midterms?”
“Do I prepare, or does the professor prepare?”
“Well, that’s true.”
“Just thinking about what kind of headache-inducing traps and locks Professor Trea has made is really terrible.”
It was obvious, but the Academy had several departments aside from combat-related ones. Until the two midterm and final evaluation exams, there were somewhat common matters regardless of department. However, in the midterm comprehensive evaluation and final comprehensive evaluation, combat and non-combat departments had distinctly different evaluation criteria. You couldn’t exactly push Engineering Department or Alchemy Department students like Ruru into an arena and have them fistfight for evaluation. So they conducted somewhat special practical evaluations by department to use for assessment. Of course, even among combat departments, they didn’t all fight in the same way. In 1v1 duel evaluations, they were unconditionally paired with students from the same department. For example, what if a fast swordsman fought a mage with no stamina? If they were of similar skill levels, the mage would be overwhelmingly disadvantaged against the swordsman. The mage’s attacks would all fail to reach the swordsman, or even if they hit, wouldn’t inflict fatal wounds. And in the moment the distance closed, the mage would collapse from a single blow. Therefore, excluding special event matches that did not affect grades, it was reasonable to think that under ordinary circumstances, students from different departments would not be paired against each other in evaluation matches.
“Since we’ve eaten, why don’t we check the match-up chart? It should be posted on the Academy bulletin board around now.”
“Right. I should check once before going to my next class.”
Actually, I already knew my opponent. If the future flowed as scheduled, I would probably clash with a 4th-year Magic Department senior facing graduation. Of course, I had trained for the evaluation match under the assumption that I would fight that senior. Unlike my past life, I was confident I could win easily in this evaluation match.
Thinking so, I moved my steps toward the bulletin board where the evaluation match opponent was written, and the moment I checked the name of my matched opponent.
“Swordsmanship Department… Dyke Osman?”
A name that seemed to announce the future had changed was posted side by side with mine.