As the Crown Prince, His Highness Mita was beaten up right inside the Royal Academy!
The students had never heard of such a rare and bizarre event. For a moment, nobody listened to lectures, nobody went to the library, and everyone gathered in groups to gossip about the sensational news.
Cynthia was still searching through the library bookshelves for ancient texts when she saw her close friend hurry over with an excited expression on her face: “Cynthia! Good news!”
“What is it?”
Antcana blurted out the moment she opened her mouth: “Did you know? Mita has been struck by the divine wrath!”
Cynthia was genuinely and utterly bewildered for a moment: “Mita? What happened to him?”
“He got beaten up! Right here on campus!” Antcana said with extreme excitement. “Word has it that he flirted with another girl from the Department of Magic Mechanics, and then he got beaten up on his way to a secret tryst!”
This news dropping out of nowhere was simply too delightful. Cynthia couldn’t help but smile: “He serves him right. Someone definitely couldn’t stand watching that girl get deceived by him.”
“It might even be someone venting their anger on your behalf. They say the attacker had incredible combat skills, and Mita didn’t even get a clear look at what the person looked like.” Antcana laughed heartily. “If you ask me, it was divine wrath. They just desecrated the gods and the Saintess, so didn’t the gods punish them right away?”
“Wasn’t Carlo following him? Oh right, Carlo went to drop off Lilica.” Cynthia answered her own question. “It seems Lilica really is my lucky star. Ever since she arrived, everything I do has gone smoothly.”
“That child truly admires you,” Antcana said. “If it weren’t for her poor health, I reckon she would have gone to beat up Mita herself.”
“How could that be? Lilica is a good child.” Cynthia turned Antcana around and pushed her outward. “Alright, stop talking about this and go help me find my books.”
After leaving the library, Cynthia headed straight to Lilica’s dormitory.
Before she even stepped through the door, Carlo was still lecturing Lilica: “He is the Crown Prince! Do you know what kind of serious consequences there will be if you attack him?!”
Lilica had originally been lying horizontally across the sofa listening to Carlo’s nagging with a completely nonchalant expression. Her greatsword was propped up right next to her, and her boots were still stained with mud.
However, the moment she heard that Cynthia was coming, she leaped up instantly, hastily kicked her boots away, and scrambled onto the bed to apply lead powder to her face and put on her hat.
Tina, with seamless teamwork, quickly picked up the boots and tucked them away. Since she couldn’t lift Lilica’s two-handed greatsword, she turned to Carlo with a plea: “Lord Carlo, can we say this sword is yours later?”
Carlo, standing nearby, thought to himself: Is it still not too late to cut ties with her right now?
After entering the room, Cynthia was very satisfied to find that Carlo was still there. Recalling Betty’s affectionate attitude toward Carlo earlier that day, she felt all the more convinced that bringing Lilica over was the wisest choice she could have made: “Carlo, how is Lilica doing?”
“She’s doing just fine,” Carlo said with a displeased tone. “She’s nowhere near dying.”
“I’ll take that as your own unique way of blessing her.” Being in a great mood, Cynthia didn’t bother to argue with him. “You should spend more time keeping Lilica company from now on. Her illness will definitely get better.”
Carlo had no desire to stay here endlessly helping Lilica cover up her lies, so he stood up and headed for the exit: “Since you’re here, I’ll be leaving first. I still need to go check on how badly Mita is injured.”
Cynthia looked at him in confusion: “Didn’t you just drop Lilica off and come straight back? How do you know Mita is injured?”
Carlo thought to himself: Fantastic, should I just say that I watched the assailant swing a greatsword and charge out?
Lilica quickly chimed in: “We ran into one of his friends on our way back and heard about it.”
Cynthia didn’t grow suspicious anymore: “So that’s how it is.”
Carlo hurriedly seized the opportunity to slip away, terrified that if he stayed a second longer, another flaw in their story would be caught.
Facts proved that Carlo’s choice was entirely correct. Not long after he left, Cynthia caught sight of the two-handed greatsword in the room: “What is that?”
“That is Lord Carlo’s sword,” Tina replied in a steady tone, without showing the slightest trace of panic. “He left in a hurry and might have forgotten it.”
However, Cynthia’s understanding of Carlo exceeded their expectations: “But Carlo’s most frequently used weapon is a single-handed rapier.”
Tina said dryly: “Perhaps he wanted to try something new.”
“That indeed isn’t his weapon of choice,” Lilica took over the conversation. “He said this belongs to a friend of his and is temporarily stored here at the academy. Since he couldn’t find a suitable place to keep it, he temporarily entrusted it to my care.”
This excuse added a bit more plausibility. Unwilling to damage Carlo’s image too much in front of Lilica’s eyes, Cynthia changed her perspective and said: “Having such a thing displayed in a room is certainly no easy task for a lady. Lilica, you are truly gentle and considerate. It is such great fortune for Carlo to have you by his side.”
Lilica felt a bit bashful from the praise, and a blush could be seen blooming through the layer of lead powder on her face.
“For the next period of time, I’m afraid I won’t be able to visit you very often,” Cynthia said to Lilica with a touch of apology. “After all, the evaluation for the Head Student is about to begin, and I need to make some preparations for it.”
Lilica said, “Sister Cynthia, you are already the most formidable person out there. Are you still afraid of that Saintess?”
“I am certainly formidable, but I’m not the absolute most formidable,” Cynthia said with a chuckle. She placed her staff aside and grasped Lilica’s hands. “Lilica, mortals can never defy the gods.”
“If you truly believed that, you wouldn’t be telling me right now that you’re going to fight for yourself,” Lilica said bluntly. “Right now, you should just be glad you didn’t say anything too harsh during the ceremony, so even if you really do get defeated, it won’t be too embarrassing.”
Cynthia was stunned for a moment. She hadn’t expected that even though Lilica hadn’t spent much time with her, she understood her thoughts so well. Recalling that Lilica had only just entered the academy yet was able to raise objections regarding the selection of the Head Student during the ceremony, she asked: “How did you know about this? I mean, regarding the matter of the Head Student.”
“You wrote about it in the letters you sent me before,” Lilica said with a hint of pride. “I remember everything you’ve ever told me.”
Cynthia was deeply touched, but she also assumed that because Lilica had previously been confined to her home to recover, she must have been too lonely and lacked friends. She said: “Lilica, having a friend like you is truly my greatest fortune. I believe others will surely discover how wonderful you are as well.”
Hearing this, Lilica could only chuckle awkwardly: “Well, that won’t be necessary.”
Although Cynthia still felt that Lilica was blindly confident in her, she had to admit that she genuinely felt encouraged. As a result, she threw herself into the preparations for the evaluation with even more drive and confidence.
The evaluation for the Head Student was mainly divided into two parts: theory and actual combat.
Cynthia was extremely confident in her own reserve of knowledge. Even in her past life, Betty had never been able to surpass her by even a fraction of a point in the written exams.
The problem lay in actual combat. Participants in the evaluation were not only required to strike fixed training targets to test their magic’s destructive power, but they also had to engage in a magic offense-and-defense battle.
Because Betty only had an affinity for the light element and possessed almost no lethal offensive power, Prince Eisen had simply waved his hand, exempting her even from the fixed-target test and pushing her straight into the offense-and-defense battle.
At the time, Cynthia hadn’t raised any objections to this. Even when Prince Eisen uttered words like, “Both sides are mages, why not give each of them one minute of preparation time,” she had only frowned.
Yet, she never expected that Betty’s defensive magic would be so sturdy that even after exhausting all of her own magic power, she could only shatter a tiny fraction of it.
Recalling the disheveled and miserable state she was in during her past life, Cynthia raised her staff high and unleashed a rapid succession of fireballs at the training target, forcefully cracking the sturdy and durable training target clean through.
Antcana, who was accompanying her training, clicked her tongue in amazement: “You’ve got quite a fiery temper.”
Cynthia hadn’t expected her magic to pack this kind of destructive power either. This was her first time back at the training grounds since her rebirth, and even she hadn’t anticipated that her magical might had already surpassed the results of her cultivation from her previous life without lagging behind in the slightest.
Standing beside her, Antcana raised a hand and cast a mood-stabilizing buff spell on Cynthia: “Calm down, calm down. It would be terrible if an accident happened.”
A wave of coolness swept over her. Cynthia felt the restlessness that had vaguely hung over her heart ever since her rebirth being completely swept away, making her feel like a tree calming down amidst the disturbances of the wind.
She raised the staff in her hand once more and began to chant.
Following her incantation, a massive fire serpent gradually condensed out of the air. The intense heat brought on by the high temperature made Antcana instinctively cast a quick, basic protective shield on herself first.
As the incantation reached its end, under Cynthia’s control, the fire serpent erupted with an even more terrifying temperature, violently slamming into the training target.
That training target had already sustained fractures from Cynthia’s previous barrage, and under the impact of this new magic, it emitted a groaning sound before finally bursting into a roaring explosion. After the blinding flash of fire subsided, everyone around could see that the training target previously standing there had been completely pulverized, with only fragments scorched black by flames scattered across the ground.
Antcana was immensely astonished. She walked over to the debris and tried to pick up a piece, but her fingers were immediately scalded into bright red and swollen blisters by the lingering high heat.
She instantly cast a healing spell on herself, then looked with shock at Cynthia, who had just lowered her staff.
Cynthia smiled gently: “This isn’t a fiery temper; this is pure strength.”
Antcana looked at her as if she were looking at a monster: “It’s only been a single vacation, how on earth did you pull this off? Even Professor Andrew couldn’t possibly do any better than this, right?”
“It’s a secret,” Cynthia corrected. “And I am still far from matching the professor.”
“Alright, a considerate friend shouldn’t pry into secrets,” Antcana straightened her body up, and then said with absolute conviction, “If that Saintess manages to win against you, then I think His Majesty should award her a princely title right now, because she would completely spare Kogoles the trouble of fighting a war with the Demon Realm.”
“That is an absolute impossibility, Antcana.”
“Right, it’s also impossible for her to win against you, unless she herself is a deity descending to the mortal world,” Antcana said, unable to hold back her laughter. “I am now extremely looking forward to seeing just how awful Mita’s expression is going to be when the time comes, Cynthia.”