The Challenges would not take long.
What Oracle had said became reality.
“Sparring Ground No. 3. Unconsciousness confirmed.”
“Damn it…… I surrender……!”
Before lunchtime had even come, all one hundred fifty Challenges were over.
It was thanks to Oracle's magic, which watched a whopping fifteen matches at once.
Thump.
“Phew!”
“I…… I think I'm going to die.”
Almost all of the students sank to the ground in exhaustion.
Some even had their arms and legs planted in the ground, dry-heaving.
Since most of the Challenges had been fought at similar levels, bloody, close fights had unfolded.
The desperate struggles of mages with no fighting experience who had only just reached 1st Circle.
Winners and losers alike had to use every last bit of strength they had possessed since nursing at the breast.
“Ugh. I'm about to croak.”
Walther Franken groaned as he got up.
Although he had won relatively easily compared to the other students, he, too, was suffering from exhaustion.
“Are you guys…… monsters?”
Walther's dumbfounded gaze turned to one side.
After the Challenges, only two students were standing unharmed.
Top entrant Frasel Illuma.
And last entrant Kawin Anper.
The cat-masked Imperial Princess had, at some point, come to stand beside Kawin.
The reason was that everyone was sprawled out, so there was no proper space to sit.
Kawin did not particularly stop her.
At Walther's question, Kawin shrugged as if it were nothing.
“We finished first.”
“You did. And the kids who went at the same time as you are all passed out over there.”
Walther's finger pointed behind him.
One trying to force himself up on trembling limbs.
One who had then planted his face in the dirt.
One sunk into deep sleep with his mouth wide open.
All of them were lower-ranked students whose Challenges had run at the same time as Kawin's.
“Just going first isn't a reason.”
Necromancers instinctively loved research and analysis.
That tendency stirred Walther's curiosity.
“Did you, by any chance, enter in last place on purpose? Aiming for the points?”
Kawin thought hard.
About how he could answer to avoid this annoying situation.
His choice was ‘agreement.’
“You caught me.”
“Hah! You calculating asshole! How far ahead are you planning, anyway?”
Walther's mouth fell wide open in admiration.
Then he quickly sidled up to Kawin and whispered,
“But don't worry. I won't tell anyone that you hid your skills when you enrolled. That's what friends are for, right?”
“Thanks, really.”
“Haha. Don't mention it!”
Kawin thought.
No matter how he looked at it, Walther was nothing like a Necromancer.
His personality was cheerful, and he basically had very little suspicion in him.
“Frasel. You're just as fine as Kawin, though?”
Perhaps this time Frasel was thinking the same thing Kawin had.
She gave a simple, concise answer.
“I'm imperial, remember?”
“Hmm. That's right!”
Kawin chuckled and returned to where they had first lined up.
With the Challenges all over, they just had to bow and head back.
But Oracle seemed to still have business left.
“Everyone, gather back in your places.”
After announcing it to the staggering students, Oracle soon approached Kawin.
“Kawin Anper.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“What do you think of detection-type magic? Magic that sees what has been hidden far away, and uncovers what has been concealed.”
At that, the students following behind all widened their eyes.
They had caught on to what Oracle's question meant.
“Hmm…….”
Kawin recalled Oracle's magic from earlier.
Magic that could ‘see’ many things at once, and draw out what someone had ‘hidden.’
To Kawin, that held a special meaning.
So he answered with a bright smile.
“I think it's truly wonderful magic.”
“Oho! Is that so!”
At that answer, Oracle's cheekbones rose for a moment.
It was a pure smile that had not been seen once during the Challenges.
“Kawin Anper. From now on, whenever you have a question, you may come to my laboratory at any time. I mean that I am granting you a standing access permit.”
“Pardon?”
Kawin blinked his clear blue eyes a couple of times.
It was a somewhat sudden favor.
“The Challenges end here. Spend the remaining time as you see fit, and head to the cafeteria on time.”
With those words, Oracle quickly disappeared.
As soon as the professor was gone, Walther came over and asked, spraying spit,
“K-Kawin! Did I just hear that right? He gave you a standing access permit?”
“……Seems like it.”
“Whoa. How could this happen!”
At Kawin's answer, Walther clutched his head with both hands.
“Looks like Professor Oracle's totally hooked on you.”
“Really?”
“Of course! Today's only the first day of Challenges, right? Handing out an access permit after seeing one fight is a first since Tesca was founded!”
As Walther said, going in and out of a professor's laboratory was a very tricky thing.
More than Kawin had thought.
“The procedure's damn complicated, and even if you go through it, approval isn't guaranteed. Above all…….”
As if even saying it made him nervous, Walther swallowed once.
“Professors pick their Protégé from among the students who have access permits.”
Protégé.
Kawin had heard of it, too.
A student whom each Academy professor could designate, only one.
Some called them a direct disciple, others a chief disciple.
Someone who enjoyed not only the professor's favor, but practically every right an Academy student could enjoy.
At Tesca Academy, which was already extremely hard to graduate from, having a professor's backing held limitless value.
“They say third-years about to graduate wait at lab doors twenty-four hours a day. Not even to become a Protégé, just to get an access permit!”
And that great access permit had just been granted to Kawin.
It seemed there was a good reason for Walther's spit-spraying excitement.
“A freshman getting an access permit! An access permit on the first day of Challenges!”
“Walther.”
“Hm?”
“Say it just one more time and I think the entire Academy's going to hear your voice.”
“Oops!”
Only then did Walther look around and scratch his head.
The other students' expressions were not much different from Walther's.
From their point of view, he had achieved on the first day of Challenges a right they might or might not get even after three years of struggling.
‘Well. Even without Walther, it's a rumor that would've spread fast anyway.’
It was not as if there had been no students around Kawin at all.
With this, one more rumor had been added, whether he meant it or not.
“Let's go. I'm hungry.”
“R-right. Frasel, aren't you coming?”
At Walther's sudden suggestion, Frasel's shoulders flinched.
“Ah. I…… eat separately.”
“Tch. So an Imperial Princess is an Imperial Princess, huh? I can feel an invisible wall.”
“It's not like that…….”
“Haha. Kidding. Let's eat together later. You're already skinny as a rail, so don't skip meals!”
With that, Walther walked on ahead.
Before turning his back, Kawin met the eyes of Frasel's mask.
Then he nodded ever so slightly, so that no one would notice.
It was his way of telling her to eat well.
‘It must be hard to eat with a mask on.’
Yet if she took the mask off, part of her face would have to be exposed.
Walther wore a mask, too, but what the two of them sought to hide differed quite a lot.
“Enjoy your meal.”
The cat mask's voice came from behind him.
As time passed, more and more sincerity was entering her voice.
***
Clink.
Kawin, possessed into [Swordmaster of the Heavenly Slaughter Star].
Now that he could see, there were sayings that finally made sense.
The saying that a rice cake that looks good also tastes good.
“It's true.”
Kawin's two hands ravaged the plates without pause.
Even a 9th Circle mage summoning a magic array would not be this nimble.
Whole-wheat bread and fresh milk, crisp salad, and even a steak full of the smell of open flame.
Kawin thought once more that he had done well to come to the Academy.
“Kawin. The world really is unfair.”
“What do you, munch munch, mean all of a sudden?”
“Fine, say Frasel's skinny because she doesn't eat. But how are you so slim when you eat three meals like that?”
“That's a misunderstanding. Before this, I was, munch munch, thin because I couldn't eat well, too.”
“Huh? You're a viscount's son, too. Even if…….”
Even if it was a Lightning house that had gone to the dogs.
Walther very nearly added the rest.
Kawin chuckled at Walther, who was hurriedly shoving his fist into his own mouth.
“If a mage noble can't use magic properly, it's hard to eat your fill every time.”
“Kawin. What I meant was….”
“No need to feel sorry. It's not wrong. So I should eat plenty now that I'm at the Academy. If only because the time I couldn't eat properly feels like such a waste.”
Walther would not know.
How long a stretch of years the ‘time I couldn't eat properly’ Kawin spoke of had been.
The life of a fallen noble was nothing.
In his past, there had been a life far more impoverished than that.
“At this rate, my weight might double soon.”
“Haha. Like Bane over there?”
Chomp chomp chomp chomp.
Where Walther was pointing sat a fat, long-haired man.
His butt was so big that he was eating with two chairs pushed together.
“Doesn't it look like it'd be hard for him to even go to the bathroom with a body like that? What's even more surprising is that guy's type is Mana Brawler……!”
“And he even won, didn't he? In today's Challenge.”
Cheers for the winners.
Consolation for the losers.
The students' reactions had mostly split that way.
But there was one winner who drew roaring laughter rather than cheers, and that was Bane.
“I bet whoever lost to Bane won't be able to sleep for a week. A mage losing to a waddling fatso Mana Brawler. Heh heh.”
“Probably.”
Walther kept snickering as he tore bread with his hands.
Kawin, on the other hand, suddenly put down his fork.
His indifferent eyes turned to Bane.
A fatso sweating like rain even as he kept emptying soup straight from the bowl.
Kawin raised his senses for a moment.
***
Night, as the moon overhead slowly tilted its head.
A nimble shadow appeared in the main building of Tesca Academy.
Slip.
It was clearly walking, yet no footsteps sounded.
A lethal killing technique said to be used only by first-rate assassins.
Phantom Walk.
A skill rarely seen at Tesca Academy, no, in the entire Illumina Empire.
Pause.
The black shadow searched the interior of the main building, looking this way and that.
Soon, its gaze settled on one spot.
A large painting of dozens of mages and Swordmasters locked in battle.
“…….”
The shadow gazed at the painting with burning eyes.
Soon, that fire spread even larger.
Because of a presence suddenly felt from behind.
“That painting is called Ragnarok.”
“!”
The man in black glared at the other, openly revealing his killing intent.
The one who had spoken to him, by contrast, wore an excessively calm expression.
“I didn't know either, but Frasel told me.”
Both of them were dressed in black, as if by prior arrangement.
The handsome, platinum-blond man wore Tesca Academy's uniform.
The man opposite wore attire suited to infiltration.
“How did you…… get in here? There should be detection magic active.”
“Well. Isn't it the same for both of us?”
The owner of the dreamy blue eyes, Kawin, answered breezily.
“We got in because we know how to get through. You, and me.”
“……!”
The man opposite said nothing more.
They had both entered a forbidden area, yet that bastard was somehow brimming with composure.
So he kept his mouth shut.
Blabbing information for no reason might expose his identity.
“You know who Frasel is, right? Since you're a freshman, too.”
At the word freshman, the man's temple twitched.
Did he already know his identity?
He thought that could not be.
He had taken out double and triple insurance.
But at Kawin's next words, the man in black bit his lip until it bled.
“To think you can change your voice and body type that much. I thought I'd been hit with an illusion. Bane.”
Bane.
That was the name the man had been ‘playing’ at the Academy.
“Enrolling under a false identity. I'd heard the Reapers of Steel had big, brazen hearts, but this is beyond what I imagined.”
GRRIND!
Bane ground his teeth hard enough to crush them.
He felt stripped bare from head to toe.
Reapers of Steel.
That was another name for Swordmasters.