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"I heard that you used a sword before coming here... but Benjamin, you're now a member of the Magic Department. If you become a bit more mage-like, I'm sure the other Magic Department students would appreciate it. Anyway, please go back to your seat."
But how did he even know I used a sword?
Was this something Professor Elin had told him too?
No, wait, more importantly, how had Professor Elin even known about that in the first place?
"Ah, yes."
But since there wasn't really anything else worth saying at the moment, I just gave a vague reply and returned to my seat.
Thanks to him casually changing the subject, the atmosphere had calmed down quite a bit, but I could still feel plenty of eyes glancing my way here and there, unable to shake off the memory of that ghost's aura.
Right now, everyone was clearly trying to figure out exactly what kind of person I was.
Whether I was someone worth messing with, or not.
Since I hadn't been fully sorted out yet, no one had come to pick a fight with me directly, but I figured things would change once Wednesday rolled around.
The "Practical Application of Magic" class.
Quite literally, a class that taught how to use magic in actual combat situations.
Unlike other Magic Department classes, this one had an overwhelming split: 20% theory, 80% practical training.
The main content of the class was sparring, and since I'd shown weakness back before the regression, the other students had pounced on me like a pack of wolves, and I'd been bullied endlessly.
'Now then...'
How exactly should I go about crushing anyone who dared come at me without knowing their place, in a way that would properly get the word out about how thoroughly they'd been crushed?
I bent my knuckles at some odd angles and swept my gaze around the room.
"...Benjamin?"
"Yes, Professor."
"Go back to your seat now. Today, we'll be covering theory."
"..."
Damn it, it seemed the future had shifted again without me even realizing it.
After sitting through "Practical Application of Magic," I was completely drained, but there was still one more class left.
None other than Mana Theory, and no matter how desperately I tried to stay focused, I simply couldn't hold back the wave of drowsiness that washed over me.
Even while dozing, I took notes trying to keep up with the material, but in the end, I gave up entirely since I couldn't understand any of it.
"I'll help you. Benjamin, don't worry too much!"
After class ended, Aria came by, apologizing for having told on me to the professor earlier, and when I told her how dismal my situation currently was, she made a show of rolling up her sleeves, insisting she'd help.
"Yeah... let's just avoid failing, at least..."
Listening to her encouragement, I decided to stay positive.
Whatever happened if I failed to rank in the top 100 was, after all, something that would only matter in the future.
'I'm counting on you, future me!'
Anyway, with classes over, I planned to go see Professor Marey.
She'd specifically told me to come by her office, and I also needed to figure out the reason behind the change in professors.
"Who's there?"
"It's Benjamin. Big sis."
Her office was fairly close by, so I got there quickly.
Greeting Professor Marey's warm welcome with a slight bow of my head, I stepped inside, sat down in the guest chair, and looked at her.
"Ho ho, I did set you a deadline... but I was already planning to come drag you here myself if you didn't show up, so it's nice to see you're already smart enough to come on your own."
"..."
"You look like you've got something you want to ask me, don't you? Go ahead and ask freely. I've got a few things I want to ask you too."
"Then I'll get straight to the point. Was there recently a situation where you nearly weren't assigned to teach a class?"
At my question, she tilted her head and sank into thought for a moment.
But soon she let out a gasp and clapped her hands together lightly as she began speaking.
"Ah, you know I was placed under restrictions, right?"
Since it was fairly common knowledge that she'd been restricted by the Tower Master and made a professor at the academy as a result, I nodded.
"You remember the recent Kraken attack on Laverin, right? Because of the contract between the city and the academy, the other professors and I had no choice but to head to the port to stop it."
"Yes."
"I knew Krakens always appeared alongside mermen, so I tried to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and return to the academy, but..."
She seemed to run dry, whatever she was about to say next catching in her throat, and took a sip of water before finally continuing.
"The restrictions were stronger than I expected. So it took much longer than it should have to take down the Kraken. If it weren't for those restrictions..."
With those words, a brief silence followed.
Knowing what kind of emotion her silence carried, I could do nothing but sit there quietly, watching her.
"Anyway, so after all that, I went to the Tower Master and asked him to lift my restrictions, but I was refused. Because of something he said to me."
"What did he say?"
"He said this."
Professor Marey cleared her throat, then spoke solemnly, imitating the Tower Master's voice.
'Lifting your restrictions means you can no longer stay at the academy. What is it you truly want right now? To remain by those children's side... or to leave them behind, even if it means getting your revenge?'
Once she'd finished, Professor Marey let out a hoarse sound, as if her throat had started to hurt, and took another sip of water.
Then, her expression heavy with lingering regret, she continued.
"In the end, I chose to stay by your side. Of course... if even a few more students had died, I might have chosen revenge instead, but more than half the children survived, and I decided it was the more rational choice to help them grow strong enough that they'd never be at the mercy of something like a Kraken again."
"..."
"What do you think of my choice?"
I looked into her wavering eyes.
Marey Beatrice.
She was a hero who had endured the war against the Northern continent.
Just as I had my own way of coping with other people's deaths, she surely had her own way of coping with them too.
So what was it that could still make her waver like this?
"Do you believe the students' deaths are... your responsibility, big sis?"
"Yeah... it's my responsibility."
"I see."
"...Hm?"
"If that's how you feel, then that's how it is."
"Hmm... you know, saying it like that just makes me want to smack you once, for some reason."
Maybe it was because of the memories of pain etched into my body.
I flinched slightly, but didn't stop talking.
"Everyone regrets something, at some point. The only difference lies in what emotion follows that regret afterward, whether it's a sense of loss, guilt, or emptiness."
"..."
"And whichever emotion someone ends up feeling, it inevitably ends up shaping whatever they do next."
"..."
"The choice to stay by the children's side, that was yours to make, wasn't it?"
"...Right."
"Then that's really all there is to it. You don't need to feel guilty for not lifting your restrictions to take revenge on that Kraken. And even if you did get your revenge, you, of all people, someone who's lived through war, know better than anyone that it wouldn't bring those children back."
She looked at me with wide, surprised eyes, as if my answer wasn't what she'd expected at all.
After some more time had passed, she finally spoke again.
"You're right... revenge is more like a drug that only pulls you into an even deeper emptiness... but even so, when it comes to young children, my resolve doesn't seem to firm up quite as easily as I'd like."
There are people like that.
The kind who can snuff out an enemy's life as easily as swatting a fly, yet refuse to kill women, or the old and sick, or, above all, absolutely refuse to ever kill children.
That was simply how people were: everyone had certain lines around death that they themselves felt were taboo to cross, and for her, it seemed young children fell into that category.
"You probably already know this, but time is the only real medicine for something like this."
"Yes, that's true. A wound like this can usually only be healed by time."
She smiled faintly and continued.
"Actually, I got a bit curious about you, so I looked into a few things..."
"...Like what?"
"Before you came here, you were apparently enslaved."
"..."
Her words dredged up memories from a past I'd nearly forgotten.
In the past, before joining the mercenary crew, I'd been a gloomy, dark, pessimistic person.
My life had been broken from the very start.
I was born having devoured my own mother in the womb, and I wasn't even my father's biological child to begin with.
'Lazda... why must you send me such trials... the woman I loved carried another man's child, and even she left this world in the end...'
My father seemed to have no memory of it, but as a child, I once overheard him mumbling drunkenly to himself, coming home late one night.
I hadn't understood what those words meant when I was that young, but as I grew older, year after year, I eventually came to understand.
I came to understand exactly what those words truly meant.
Betrayed by his wife, he became a man consumed with contempt toward humanity itself.
Unable to bear that contempt, he cut off every last tie to the world and moved up into the mountains, living off hunting alone.
'Benjamin, I'm off to hunt.'
But even so, my father never abandoned me. He kept me and let me live with him.
Though I never once, in my entire life, heard him call me his son, I was grateful enough simply that he never abandoned me, even though I wasn't his real child.
Then, one day.
As usual, my father had gone off hunting, and I was left alone, wandering around different parts of the mountain to pass the time.
As I'd grown older, I'd gradually adapted to the rugged terrain, so I'd started venturing further and further from the mountainside, and that particular day marked the first time I'd ever made it all the way down to the mountain's entrance.
'...Hello?'
A child around my age, out hiking with her attendant.
Seeing someone close to my own age for the first time in my life, that child, smiling and speaking to me, seemed unbelievably beautiful.
Beautiful enough that even though I repeated the trip down to the mountain's entrance every single day just to see her again, I never once grew tired of it.
'This is the hide from a deer my father caught a few days ago.'
'This is something called candy, sold in the city!'
Just as that child living in the city seemed fascinating to me, I seemed just as fascinating to her, living in the mountains.
We spent our time trading whatever objects each of us could get our hands on.
But as the amount of things we traded grew, piling up more and more, my father eventually found out.
'Don't go past the mountainside from now on.'
Our views diverged from that point on.
He had already lost all trust in humanity, and I, meanwhile, was entering my adolescent years.
Maybe because of that, my mind back then was completely filled with nothing but the desire to see that child again, and I never once considered how my father must have felt.
'I want to go see the city too!'
In the end, that day's conversation ended with my own outburst, and after that, he and I stopped talking to each other entirely.
I'm not sure how many days passed after that.
Eventually, unable to withstand my constant nagging, my father chose to make the trip into the city.
To gather money to spend in the city, my father brought along the hides he'd collected over his years of hunting, and since there were quite a lot of them, he managed to get 3 silver for them.
'Ah, Father...!'
And because of that 3 silver, I ended up losing the only family I had left.
A group loitering through the back alleys had watched my father sell the hides and receive the money, and my father, having no strength to defend himself, was attacked by them and killed, senselessly, just like that.
All they had taken his life for was a mere 3 silver.
The loss of my only guardian.
I could do nothing but weep endlessly, holding onto my father's body as it grew colder and colder in my arms.
And they dragged me away, still dazed and staring blankly down at my dead father's corpse, and sold me off to a slave trader.
Over the course of a single night, I became a slave at the age of twelve.