Professor Clayton, who had told Lowell the night before that she would look for a way to let him focus solely on his studies, was moving busily from early morning.
Yet even in her absence, Lowell’s day flowed on with the same density as always.
His footsteps, cutting through the dawn air as he ran across Asteria Island, felt far lighter than they had yesterday.
The feeling that someone believed in his worth and was supporting him from behind proved to be a greater motivation than he had expected.
Even the cold gazes and mocking whispers that poured over him in the morning lecture hall felt, just for today, like noise drifting in from far away.
The scene in the laboratory after class was unchanged as well.
Mediating the subtle battle of nerves that flowed between Chloe and Celestia inside and outside the lab, Lowell silently handled Professor Clayton’s miscellaneous tasks.
But as time passed, Lowell’s gaze kept drifting toward the laboratory door.
He tried not to expect anything, but unconsciously, he kept harboring a small hope.
At last, when the sun had completely set and darkness had fallen, the laboratory door opened and Professor Clayton entered.
Her shoulders were slightly more slumped than usual, and the document bag in her hand looked especially heavy.
Lowell set down his quill, rose from his seat, and asked carefully.
“Professor. How did it go?”
Clayton placed the bag on the desk and let out a long sigh.
Instead of immediately looking over documents as she usually did, she took off her glasses, set them on the desk, and pressed the space between her brows with a weary look.
“I’m sorry... Lowell. Things didn’t go as well as I thought they would.”
Her voice was thick with apology.
Unable to bring herself to meet Lowell’s eyes for fear he would be disappointed, Clayton began calmly explaining what had happened at the administrative office.
“First, I was informed that selecting you for a special scholarship would be impossible. Your recent achievements are unrivaled, but your previous record of severe disciplinary action held you back. Their position is firm: they cannot award a scholarship that represents the department to a student whose conduct is considered improper.”
“I see...”
“I also proposed allocating an additional departmental budget to pay you an allowance under the pretext of a research assistant position, but... the administrative office rejected it the moment they saw your name. They said allocating funds for a specific student could become an audit issue on grounds of fairness. The stigma the higher-ups have placed on you was far more solid than I expected.”
Clayton adjusted her glasses again and looked at Lowell.
In academics, logical answers existed, but the administration of a vast organization called the Academy was like an enormous wall that could not be overcome by logic alone.
Even though she had spent the entire day running around and persuading even the department head and the director of administration, it was not enough to remove the label of the Academy’s delinquent and problem child.
“Professor. The fact that you cared is enough.”
Lowell, instead, gave a plain bow of his head as if comforting Clayton.
It was not that he felt no disappointment at all, but as someone who was not inclined to cling to others, he accepted that this, too, was a reality he had to bear.
Professor Clayton, however, seemed to have no intention of stopping there.
She stared intently at Lowell, as if trying to read the desperation hidden beneath his indifferent reaction, then soon seemed to make up her mind, her gaze hardening.
Clayton spread an old parchment map across the desk and pointed with her finger to the edge of the most rugged cliff on the outskirts of Asteria Island, where the Academy was located.
Even on the map, it was a region depicted indistinctly, as if veiled in thick fog.
“Lowell. Official funding and administrative support have been blocked, but our department still has one practical training ground left. It is the dedicated training ground designed and used personally by Professor Bartholomew Eterna, the first head of the Department of Elemental Studies.”
Professor Bartholomew Eterna.
The name that emerged was that of a legendary figure who had laid the foundations of elemental studies and magical engineering, but had been called a heretic in academic circles for his excessively radical research.
“It’s abandoned now, practically no different from ruins. The Academy’s Office of Academic Affairs strictly prohibits students from entering for reasons of safety and security. However, official authority over its management still belongs to me, passed down through the generations as head of the Department of Elemental Studies. In other words, as long as I grant permission, you, as a student of the Department of Elemental Studies, may legally set foot there without interference from anyone.”
Clayton paused for a moment and looked straight at Lowell.
In her eyes, a teacher’s concern intersected with an academic expectation for what kind of variable this strange student might create there.
“However, it has been neglected for decades, so even I cannot guarantee what might be happening inside or how the environment itself may have deteriorated. That is why, truthfully, it is not a place I can easily suggest to a student.”
Despite the worrisome content of her words, Clayton’s voice was already filled with expectation toward the student who had astonished her.
From deep inside a desk drawer, she took out a silver key covered in blue moss, from which a weighty magical power flowed, and placed it in front of Lowell.
It was old, but its very form carried an overwhelming dignity.
“This is Professor Bartholomew’s legacy and the pride of the Department of Elemental Studies. I will entrust you with full authority over this training ground. Whether that place breathes again depends entirely on your ability. There will be danger, but you cannot simply rely on the Academy, can you?”
Lowell looked down at the cold metal key lying on the desk.
When the entire Academy pushed him away and pointed fingers at him, Clayton had handed him an independent territory that no one else could touch.
To be honest, his reason for choosing the Department of Elemental Studies at first had been that, while he did not know everything that would happen, he roughly knew the larger framework, and had entered because of the status the Department of Elemental Studies would hold in the future.
Of course, there was also the fact that there were not many departments he could enter with his current grades...
But Professor Clayton was a teacher who wanted to give a chance to a student who trusted her and wished to learn, regardless of what kind of person that student was.
That was why Lowell knew that the opportunity Professor Clayton was offering him would be difficult and arduous, but that could not become a reason to give up.
“Bartholomew’s training ground... For an abandoned place, its name carries far too much weight.”
Lowell picked up the key and answered plainly.
His expression looked as indifferent as always, but a faint strength had entered the tips of the fingers gripping the key.
Only after confirming that did Clayton finally nod, a faint but warm smile appearing as if in relief.
“He was a great teacher.”
###
Chloe Zelin.
The first sword she had ever held in her hands was lighter than a feather.
But the weight of the trajectory drawn by that sword was never light.
Those around her called her a blessed genius.
Winning in a duel against someone, and climbing the steps toward a higher place.
To her, those things were principles as natural and obvious as breathing throughout her life.
As a knight who had inherited the blue blood of House Zelin, Chloe had never once doubted that the tip of her sword would point anywhere other than the summit.
The ideal she held when she entered the Academy’s Knight Department was not simple personal glory.
Chloe had been able to visit the Academy on a field trip when she was young.
The sight of the knights she had seen in the main building plaza during that visit was still vivid before her eyes.
Their backs as they crossed the center of the Academy with dignified, majestic bearing, clad in silver armor that shone dazzlingly under the sunlight.
That was the true form of the Knight Department Chloe had admired.
She wanted to restore the department to those days, when it was the sharpest spear and sturdiest shield of the Academy through skill and honor alone, not the current state of being pushed aside by other departments and stuck in a corner of the island.
To uphold that ideal, Chloe willingly issued a challenge to Celestia, who was called a monster.
If she could not surpass her, the reconstruction of the Knight Department would be nothing more than a daydream.
Celestia was a genius with absurd talent.
Her magic mocked common sense, and the chill waves of her mana gave one a shuddering thrill that seemed to freeze the soul just by looking at them.
But Chloe, too, was called a genius.
Her sword, armed with chivalry, mercilessly cut down Celestia’s magical barriers, and the two fought a truly evenly matched bloody battle worthy of being recorded in the Academy’s history.
The marble of the training hall was carved away by mana, and each moment my sword aura tore through her protective barrier, the clash was so tense that not even the audience’s breathing could be heard.
The result was a paper-thin difference.
A single breath, a momentary hesitation, or a prank under the name of fate divided victory and defeat.
In the end, I knelt before her, and the radiant glory of being the top student of the entire year became hers.
Second place.
To someone else, it might have been a dream position they could never reach even if they devoted their entire life to it, but to Chloe, it was the proof and brand of the bitter defeat she had tasted for the first time in her life.
What pressed down on her more deeply than the shame of having scratched the honor of House Zelin was the despair that the ideal she had so desperately longed for—the restoration of a proud Knight Department—had run up against its limits because of a mere paper-thin lack of ability.
On the day victory, which she had always taken for granted like the air, slipped emptily through her fingers.
Dragging out a body that had not yet fully recovered, Chloe sat collapsed on the cold floor of the training hall, breathing in air mixed with the fishy smell of blood, and realized.
That her ideal could bloom only upon perfect victory.
And that the price she would have to pay to reach that perfection, and the thirst she would have to endure from now on, would be far more desperate than she had imagined.
Chloe could not bear that truth.