Lately, Lowell had been moving only through the deepest parts of the library or along the back paths behind abandoned practice rooms no one ever visited.
He had never dreamed that the concealment and cover techniques he had learned after investing in the stealth tree before entering the game would be used here at the academy—and to avoid his own allies(?), no less.
But no matter how much he tried to keep out of sight, shaking off Chloe Jellin’s pursuit was close to impossible.
“My lord! So this is where you were. Freshly baked rye bread and a special soup to restore your strength. You seemed to be skipping lunch, so I brought them.”
A clear, cheerful voice—one that carried all the farther for it—rang through the quiet corridor.
Lowell stopped in his tracks, pressing a hand to his forehead.
When he turned around, Chloe stood there in a neat knight’s uniform without a single crease out of place, holding a carefully wrapped basket.
“Chloe… please, can’t you do something about calling me ‘my lord’?”
“What do you mean? A knight regards words once spoken as heavier than life itself. The one who took all authority over me as the price of our duel was you. It is only common sense for the defeated to obey the victor’s orders.”
In truth, on the day Chloe had first declared him her lord, Lowell had separately explained the matter to Cerestia in full.
That night.
To Cerestia, whose eyes had been bristling with thorns, Lowell had reassured her that it had only been a provocation thrown out to draw Chloe out of her room, and that the master-servant contract was nothing more than a formal pretext.
At the time, Cerestia had nodded and seemed to accept it, saying, “I suppose you would’ve had to go that far to get Chloe out…”
But Lowell had overlooked something.
What Cerestia had accepted was Lowell’s intention, not Chloe’s sincerity.
After a few days passed, Chloe’s way of addressing him became as smooth as if it had been oiled, and now she had reached the point of memorizing Lowell’s timetable and waiting in advance along each of his routes.
Thanks to that, all sorts of filthy rumors had already spread across the academy.
They ranged from conspiracy theories claiming that Lowell the failure had brainwashed the top student of the Department of Chivalry with ancient forbidden arts, to vulgar slander saying the Adrian family had purchased the top knight as a maid in exchange for forgiving the Jellin family’s massive debt.
There was even a sensational story of unknown origin circulating, claiming that Lowell brutally trained her every night and broke down her chivalry.
What truly embarrassed Lowell, even more than those rumors, was Cerestia’s gaze—sharper and colder than any of them.
Every time Chloe encountered Lowell, Cerestia would unfailingly appear around the corner of the corridor.
Rather than approach and speak to them directly, she merely maintained a fixed distance and watched the scene of the two of them together like a background image.
The moment Lowell received the lunch basket, a wisp of violet hair swayed from behind a pillar at the end of the hallway.
Whenever Lowell turned his head in distress, Cerestia was inevitably there, leaning against the wall reading a book or staring into empty space.
The explanation was certainly over, and she must have understood it in her head.
But every time the sight of Chloe devoting herself to Lowell unfolded vividly before her eyes, an inexplicable sense of crisis welled up in Cerestia’s heart.
Chloe, who had been her only friend, and Lowell, who had been her own secret partner.
The sight of those two becoming bound together in the firm framework of lord and knight, excluding her, gave her an unbearable sense of deprivation.
“My lord? Are you feeling unwell?”
Chloe stepped closer, studying Lowell’s complexion with concern.
At the instant the metallic sound of her armor chimed and the distance between them narrowed, Lowell felt the gaze piercing into his back drop to absolute zero.
Not far away, behind a marble statue, Cerestia was watching them with an expressionless face.
That gaze was not so much anger as it was a childlike look mixed with hurt that the two people she cherished seemed to be having fun without her, and jealousy that something precious might be taken from her.
‘I’m sure she said she understood…’
Breaking into a cold sweat, Lowell took the basket as though pushing Chloe away.
Cerestia’s surveillance continued persistently until Lowell entered the laboratory.
She did not say a word, but that chilly presence seemed to shoot at him, “You said it was just a provocation, yet you look like you’re enjoying yourself quite a bit.”
Even amid this strange current, however, Lowell never once lazed about.
If anything, his life at the academy became even more fierce and dense.
Every morning, at dawn before the mist had fully lifted, Lowell began his physical training by running around Asteria Island.
He had continued it without rest ever since he first entered the game, and now he could circle the entire island before classes began.
Of course, he also attended all of the academy’s mandatory major courses without fail.
It was not so much to shake off the disgrace of being a failure as because, in order to secure the enormous amount of tuition money he needed, he would have to become the top student of his department or achieve outstanding grades among the entire student body.
After school, he headed straight to Professor Glayton’s laboratory.
Cerestia would already be there, seated at the desk and leafing through ancient documents.
That was when the two of them began their research in earnest.
“Lowell. About the elemental combination we discussed yesterday. If we compress the fire spirit’s mana to this degree, the explosion stability drops.”
“Cerestia. That’s not a problem of mana density, but of circulation. If we twist the knot in this mana circuit here just a little…”
Lowell lifted his quill and pointed out the necessary sections.
Cerestia watched Lowell’s fingertips for a moment, then, as if convinced, gathered the power of the spirits.
Pale violet mana brushed over the back of Lowell’s hand and intertwined with delicate precision.
The laboratory was filled with the intellectual heat the two of them exuded and the faint resonance of mana.
To Cerestia, this time was a domain where she was connected to Lowell most deeply, a place no one else could intrude upon, belonging only to the two of them.
But outside the laboratory door, the situation was different.
Because Cerestia and Chloe were irreplaceable friends, they did not openly bare their fangs at each other, but a subtle and exhausting courtesy flowed between them.
“Chloe… you’re working hard again today assisting your lord. But the mana density inside the laboratory is high, so it must be harmful to a knight. Why don’t you rest in the lounge?”
“Thank you for your concern, Cerestia. But when my lord is conducting research so fiercely, I cannot look only after my own safety. It is a knight’s duty to stand by on guard outside, so don’t worry about me.”
They were smiling, yet there was something cold in their exchanges.
Caught in the taut war of nerves between them, Lowell desperately immersed himself in research while even handling Professor Glayton’s miscellaneous tasks.
After repeating this game of reading the room and doing research chores, the view beyond the window would already be dyed a deep black before he knew it.
As this life repeated for several days, the nighttime scenery of the laboratory became strangely fixed.
Professor Glayton was so mad about research that sleeping on the cot in the laboratory had always been part of her daily life, and since Lowell was banned from the dormitory and had no money to find proper lodgings, he too had somehow begun falling asleep in Glayton’s laboratory.
It was already past midnight.
Professor Glayton, rubbing her bloodshot eyes, was about to throw herself onto the cot when she saw Lowell already lying familiarly on the sofa, with a blanket pulled up to his neck.
“Lowell. You worked hard today as well. Thanks to the elemental substitution formulas you organized, this research will be advanced by half a year.”
“Ah… yes, Professor. Good night to you too…”
Lowell mumbled as if talking in his sleep, his eyes closed.
Glayton replied, “Yes, sleep well,” and was about to turn off the lamp out of habit when her hand suddenly stopped.
The quiet laboratory.
Beneath the soft moonlight, her student and herself sleeping side by side.
The scene felt so natural that she almost let it pass without thinking, but a cold flash of reason suddenly crossed Glayton’s mind.
“…But Lowell? Why are you sleeping here as if it’s the most natural thing in the world?”
Instead of answering, Lowell stared blankly at Professor Glayton with his mouth half open.
His brain, which had been wandering through dreamland until moments ago, froze like a paused screen.
The thought belatedly traveled through his circuits: ‘Uh… so… was I not supposed to be sleeping here right now?’
Professor Glayton was just as flustered.
She pushed up her glasses and blinked, looking back and forth between Lowell, the sofa, and the blanket.
“Uh… huh? Lowell?”
“……”
“Lowell? Are you listening?”
A strange silence flowed between the two of them.
Perhaps more embarrassed by her frozen student’s reaction than anything else, Glayton gave a feigned cough and lowered her voice.
In her voice, instead of her usual coolheadedness, there was the cautious concern of a teacher.
“No… it’s not that I don’t know your passion, Lowell, but still, isn’t it far past the dormitory curfew? By now, the dormitory matron must be making her rounds… Are you really all right not going back? If you accumulate penalty points, it could cause serious trouble with your academic schedule.”
“Professor… have you truly not heard a single rumor about me?”
“Rumor? What rumor do you mean?”
Glayton tilted her head as if she really did not know.
Lowell stared blankly at Professor Glayton, and then, belatedly, a thought flashed through his mind. He felt as though he finally understood why this professor had been so unusually lenient only toward him, and why, amid all those vicious rumors, she had brought him into her laboratory without any prejudice.
She truly had not known.
Even in the original work, she was not a character with much presence, so he did not know much about her personality or actions. But one thing was certain.
She was someone who completely shut her eyes and ears to the noise around her and focused only on the work she loved.
“Professor, the truth is that I’m in no position to enter the dormitory. Because of the commotion I caused after enrollment, I’ve been banned from most facilities, and I can’t enter the dormitory either.”
“Hm? Even the dormitory?”
“Yes. My family’s support has also been cut off, so I have nowhere to return to for the moment. That’s why I ended up imposing on this place against my will. I apologize for the trouble.”
There was not the slightest sign of him seeking sympathy or clinging to her.
It was merely an attitude of dryly reporting his circumstances, but Professor Glayton’s expression hardened in a subtle way.
Only now did the pieces begin to fit together: why Lowell had clung to the laboratory’s odd jobs to such an excessive degree, why he trained his stamina by running around the entire island at the crack of dawn, and why he dug through ancient documents with Cerestia until late at night.
“My goodness… I thought you were simply a student passionate about research. I had no idea you had such circumstances.”
Glayton fiddled with her glasses, seeming a little flustered by her own indifference.
“Professor. Even after hearing what I just told you… do you still not think anything in particular about me? They say I’m the academy’s scoundrel and a bastard abandoned by his family.”
Lowell asked nonchalantly, but inside, he was a little tense.
Glayton was the first adult he had met after entering this game who had watched him without prejudice.
If even her gaze changed after hearing the rumors, then this laboratory could no longer be a refuge for him.
But unlike the others, Glayton looked at Lowell with warm eyes and shook her head.
“Lowell. For someone who wishes to learn, there is nothing more important than that will. The possibilities you organized tell me far more than whether you are a scoundrel or not.”
She tapped the desk and continued.
“Very well. Starting tomorrow, I’ll find a way for you to devote yourself to academy life. Whether I suspend the punishment by the authority of the department head or have special lodging assigned to you under the pretext of being a research assistant, there are many options. So for today, sleep on that sofa. Instead, starting tomorrow, let’s work on more important matters together.”
Lowell gave a short bow of his head.
He felt warmth spread through one corner of his chest, but instead of revealing that emotion in a clinging way, he answered by pulling the blanket all the way up over his head.
“Thank you, Professor. Good night.”
The voice that came from beneath the blanket was a little lower than usual.
There is no one who does not live earnestly.
Yet perhaps the reason most people give up even while living earnestly is because no one recognizes them.
There would undoubtedly be many things to do tomorrow as well, but for the first time since coming here, Lowell was able to fall asleep in peace.