The aftershock of the duel at Raiden Hall did not settle easily.
No—it was a boulder the size of a house thrown into the vast lake that was the Academy.
The air in the Academy faculty conference room had sunk several times heavier than usual.
The gazes of the professors seated around the round table were fixed on Glayton, who stood at the center.
“Professor Glayton, have you lost your mind? Approving a duel under the authority of a full professor?”
“It has been a full hundred years since an official duel took place in the Academy’s history. There was a reason no duels have happened all this time…”
Reproaches poured out from the conservative professors, Professor Calvi among them.
Glayton adjusted the frame of her glasses and silently endured the barrage of criticism.
In truth, even she could hardly believe that she was the one who had approved a vanished custom that could now only be found in the Academy’s records.
To be honest, excitement had gotten the better of her at the perfect opportunity to test the new idea her student had brought forward, and she had not made a proper judgment.
But before Glayton could even open her mouth, the door to the conference room was flung open, and heavy footsteps rang out.
“How noisy. How little must you have to do, gathering here to scheme like this?”
It was Vars Ehrenberg.
The moment the living legend of the Knight Department appeared, the temperature in the conference room plummeted below freezing.
Vars stood beside Glayton, arms crossed, and swept his gaze over the professors.
“The duel was legitimate. I confirmed it with my own eyes. In fact, if not for that duel, the top student of our department would have spent her whole life rotting away, blocked by the wall named Celestia.”
When Vars voiced his support for Glayton’s duel, the professors who had been denouncing her fell silent.
The fact that the professor in charge of the Knight Department had affirmed it was no different from officially acknowledging that this duel had not been a mere fight between students, but a field of proof with ample educational value.
“And besides.”
Vars added, twisting up one corner of his mouth.
“That fellow named Lowell. His skill at handling those strange weapons made through Elemental Studies was no ordinary thing. Glayton. You picked one hell of a student.”
Only then did Glayton let a faint smile appear.
“The results have already proven it. Following Celestia, who advanced to the Department of Elemental Studies, Lowell has now defeated Chloe, the top student of the Knight Department. Elemental Studies, too, has shown its potential to grow like the current Department of Magic and Department of Knights.”
In the end, the disciplinary committee disguised as a meeting dissolved without reaching any conclusion.
And so, the unprecedented duel after a hundred years became part of the Academy’s official records.
Outside the conference room, the Academy campus was truly on the verge of exploding.
Among the students, Lowell’s name had already become a myth.
“Hey, did you hear? They say Lowell breathed fire!”
“No, I heard he shot lightning out of a bamboo tube. Chloe’s Artemis got smashed in one blow!”
Absurd exaggerations were mixed in, but one fact remained unchanged.
Lowell von Adrian, once called the Academy’s good-for-nothing and a failing student, had defeated Chloe Zelin, the second-highest ranked student in the entire year and the idol of the knights.
In the dining hall, in the library, and even in the training grounds of the Knight Department, debates broke out over Lowell’s cowardly yet flawless tactics.
“Does chivalry put food on the table? Winning is all that matters. I heard Professor Vars acknowledged Lowell too?”
The conservative knight candidates were furious, but students who valued practical combat began to go wild over Lowell’s methods.
The Academy’s once-solid common sense was beginning to crack under the names of Elemental Studies and real battle.
As for Lowell, the very center of the disturbance, he was calm.
He was in Professor Glayton’s laboratory, examining the remains of the fuse he had used during the duel.
If Professor Vars had not intervened, things truly could have become dangerous.
The small bamboo tube he had hidden in his sleeve likely would not have possessed enough durability to withstand the explosive force of the elemental compound.
It had been a kind of final struggle, something to use if Chloe truly intended to thrust her sword in to kill him.
Most of all, Lowell himself could not deny that he had been somewhat excited as well.
In the original work, Chloe met her end immediately after her sword broke.
When he saw her sword shatter to pieces and the despairing look on Chloe’s face, if he had pushed through with the langxian and finished it there, he could have secured a definite victory—but after seeing her eyes, he simply could not bring himself to do so.
Vars’s intervention had been the best ending for both Lowell and Chloe.
At that moment, he sensed someone’s presence beyond the laboratory door.
Lowell could guess who it was without even lifting his head.
There were only a few in the Academy with mana this sharp and refined.
“…How does it feel to win the first duel in a hundred years?”
The door opened, and Celestia walked in.
At present, she was his only classmate in the Department of Elemental Studies, as well as one of this world’s main characters.
“I don’t feel anything special… It’s partly thanks to your help, too.”
Lowell set down the fragments of the bamboo tube and turned his head toward Celestia.
Her pale violet hair swayed softly with her movements, and beyond it, her deep purple eyes held a greater depth than usual.
Originally, Celestia had not been part of Lowell’s plan.
In the original work, she had been destined to stand at the peak of the Department of Magic and become the final boss who dyed the Academy’s first act in blood.
But she had suddenly chosen the Department of Elemental Studies instead of the Department of Magic, and that choice had shaken every future like falling dominoes.
“If you hadn’t helped me, the langxian wouldn’t have been able to deflect Chloe’s sword. And when we refined the elemental compound, your mana control was decisive.”
“…You said you’d help Chloe come back out.”
Celestia perched on one side of Lowell’s desk, a faint smile on her lips.
It was a face quite different from the always-shadowed figure she had been in the original—a face that somehow looked alive.
Lowell quietly gazed into her violet eyes.
Just as the protagonist had been completely different from what he knew when he first entered this world, perhaps she, too, had escaped the fixed trajectory of ruin.
If the Celestia of the original had fallen into corruption while clinging to the extremes of magic as a lonely genius, the Celestia before him now was together with him.
At the very least, what he felt from her now was far more intellectual curiosity toward the new than hatred toward the world.
A strange hypothesis flashed through Lowell’s mind.
If she was no longer the final boss, then this world’s first act would flow in an entirely different direction.
“It’s a little troubling when you keep staring like that… Is something wrong…?”
Celestia asked, tilting her head slightly.
Her deep purple eyes sparkled as they met Lowell’s gaze head-on.
“Nothing. I was just thinking that you coming to the Department of Elemental Studies was fortunate for both of us.”
At Lowell’s sincere answer, Celestia’s eyes wavered widely for a moment.
She turned her gaze away as if nothing had happened and looked out the window.
For some reason, the side of her face, visible between strands of pale violet hair, looked soft.
“I don’t really know what you mean…”
The tips of her ears reflected in the window had turned slightly red.
“By the way, what happened to Chloe?”
Lowell asked casually as he gathered up the scattered powder of the compound.
As far as Lowell knew, Chloe was one of Celestia’s few close friends.
From Celestia’s perspective, she must have been desperate enough to ask Lowell for help.
Although Chloe had suffered from an inferiority complex due to Celestia’s overwhelming talent and wandered for a time, the bond between the two of them had been depicted as quite deep even in the original.
Celestia answered without taking her gaze from the window.
“I asked the spirits in the school building too… but they said they don’t know where she is. They said she wasn’t in the dorm room she usually shut herself up in, either.”
“Really? Maybe Professor Vars gave her an earful, and she went off somewhere to train alone.”
“I don’t know… She’s not that simple… I’m a little worried.”
It was just as Celestia’s words trailed off.
Rumble—
The heavy door of the laboratory opened without a sound.
Lowell and Celestia’s gazes turned toward the doorway at the same time.
There stood Chloe Zelin, her disheveled blonde hair roughly tied back, dressed in training clothes still covered in dust from the duel.
In her hands, she held something wrapped in cloth, and there was no trace of her usual imposing presence as the top student of the Knight Department. Her shoulders trembled faintly.
“Chloe? Where were you today?”
Celestia rose from her seat in delight, but Chloe could not answer her question and only moved her lips soundlessly.
Her gaze was fixed solely on Lowell, who sat before the desk.
“Did you come for a rematch? Looks like you trained hard.”
Lowell tossed out a light joke, but Chloe’s expression was exceedingly serious.
No, beyond seriousness, there was even something desperate about it.
She stopped before the door and hesitated for a long while, then, as if she had made some enormous decision, squeezed her eyes shut and bowed at a perfect ninety degrees.
“……My lord.”
Silence flowed through the laboratory.
Celestia’s violet eyes widened, and Lowell nearly dropped the tool in his hand.
“Wait… Chloe… What did you just say?”
When Celestia asked back in confusion, Chloe lifted her head, her face red enough to burst.
In her eyes were both shame and determination.
“Before the duel… you said it. If I lost, I was to become your personal knight and attend upon you for the rest of my life… Now that victory and defeat have been decided, I have come to keep that promise.”
Chloe carefully placed the broken blade of Artemis, wrapped in a towel, on Lowell’s desk.
“From today onward… Chloe Zelin has become the sword of you, Lowell von Adrian.”
Lowell stared at her with an expression of utter disbelief.
The provocation just before the duel had merely been something he said to deliberately irritate her in case she refused the duel.
But it seemed this inflexible young lady knight had taken those words as though they were a contract of the soul.
The expression of Celestia, who had been watching from the side, twisted in a peculiar way.
“……Hold on, Chloe… My lord? Lowell…? What is going on here…???”
A chilling cold began to gather in her violet eyes.
Lowell felt cold sweat run down his back.
A premonition flashed through his mind—that perhaps this situation was more dangerous than the boss fight in the original.