Oneself (1)
In this Faction War, Sirach was unequivocally the weakest province.
Even though it was classified as a province—the grandest administrative division carved out along the Principality's borders—Sirach's actual political and martial influence was virtually nonexistent. People lived there. A lord school stood there. Lectures were held within its walls. Yet those who were unprepared were merely crushed beneath the sheer weight of the strong, scattering like minnows before a leviathan.
The midterm evaluation flashed by in the blink of an eye.
By the time two hours had ticked past their arrival in Algenib Province, students were streaming out of the arena all at once. Even without checking the scoreboard, the outcome was glaringly obvious.
A total, humiliating rout for Sirach Lord School.
One look at their faces told the whole story. They had failed to secure an advantage anywhere, suffering crushing defeats across the board. In a way, it was only natural. Compared to the other three factions who had undergone rigorous, structured training, the students of Sirach Lord School had barely even found their footing at the starting line.
Though that isn't the only problem.
Junon glanced toward the students idling casually to one side—the ones who had forfeited right from the start, sneering that participating in something like a Faction War was utterly pointless. There were many reasons for their defeat, but to name just one glaring factor, they were completely outmatched in sheer numbers. From the Ace Match to the main event's team battles, a faction starved of numbers could never hope to pull ahead in squad-based competitions.
Even in individual duels, morale dictated the flow. If a regional representative managed to climb into the upper ranks, a small seed of optimism would blossom in everyone's chests—a quiet whisper of Maybe we can do this too! Hadn't it been the exact same back at Levrant? When John and Noel unlocked their Mirage-type Magic Armament, an achievement no one else had managed, the other students found the courage to believe they could do it as well.
Yet the faces surrounding him now reflected an entirely different reality. There was no one here who could serve as that kind of symbol.
"Teach..."
Lana's voice trembled, barely above a murmur.
"It's not over yet," Junon said softly, resting a hand on both her and Ethan's shoulders to anchor their spiraling composure. "We still have time before the second week."
The two nodded. They offered weak, reassuring smiles, insisting they hadn't given up and would see this through to the very end. Their mental fortitude was holding, but the bitterness tugging at the corners of their mouths was impossible to miss.
Lana and Ethan are holding it together, but... they're still burning with frustration.
What about the others, then? Junon shifted his gaze toward the rest of the student body.
If Lana and Ethan were merely wearing expressions of wounded pride, he had hoped the rest would stop at mild disappointment. But the atmosphere brewing on the other side was far beyond sour—it was on the verge of boiling over into outright hostility. The grim pall hanging over the entire cohort, including those who had tossed away their participation ballots, boded nothing but trouble.
"Um... everyone? You all worked hard," an instructor tried to appease them with a strained smile. "We'll be stepping in to participate alongside you in the second week, so until then—"
"Don't make me laugh! Shove it!!"
"You bragged about being members of the Tembris Party, but nothing's changed at all!"
This defeat was by no means the fault of their instructors. In their current state, no one—not even an elite from Levrant—could have overturned the outcome.
"What happened out there?" Junon asked quietly, turning back to his two pupils.
"...They got utterly crushed," Lana muttered.
"Crushed...?"
"Yeah... There were three of them from the Mirpark faction, I think? They charged in cloaked in magical energy just like you, Teach, and no one could put up the slightest resistance before getting tossed aside."
"We lost to them as well," Ethan admitted with a scowl, chiming in. "We didn't get blown away in a single hit like the rest of these guys, but still..."
"I hate to ask, but I need to know," Junon pressed. "Where did the two of you place in the individual matches? In terms of rank."
"Around the middle... I think," Lana answered hesitantly. "Ethan placed slightly higher than me."
The middle of the pack. That was a result Junon hadn't anticipated at all. Given how little time they had to prepare, he had expected them to land near the bottom; he hadn't imagined they would fight hard enough to claw their way to the center. Looking at their achievement, it should have been more than enough to inspire a glimmer of hope that success was within reach.
Which meant only one thing: every other student from Sirach had landed squarely at the absolute bottom.
A defeat born of an overwhelming, unbridgeable chasm, laid bare for everyone to see.
That stark reality was what fueled their boiling rage. They were thrashing violently, desperate to insist that they weren't the bottom of the barrel.
"Guys, please...!"
"We're done taking your damn lectures, so consider this our resignation! Anyone who actually sat through your classes is a complete moron!"
"What did you just spew out of your mouth, you bastard? A moron?!"
"Am I wrong?! None of you are any different! A Faction War like this was never worth joining in the first place. Not when the people teaching us are absolute garbage!"
"Take that back, you son of a bitch! What the hell did the teachers do wrong?!"
The snowball had begun to roll. And given the momentum it had already gathered, it would take a great deal of time and effort to bring it to a halt.
Where there were many losers, there was an equal measure of triumphant victors.
Three young men strutted into the Grand Duchy Temple, their chests puffed out with brazen swagger. Having tasted uncontested victory, they carried themselves with triumphant arrogance.
"Well now. How does it feel to awaken to the new strength I offered you?"
"It's incredible," Demian sneered.
"It feels like standing in a realm no ordinary trash could ever hope to reach," Leon added with a smirk.
"It is entirely thanks to Your Holiness's righteous guidance," Miki chimed in obsequiously. "We were reborn that day."
"Heh heh. Is that so?"
The Holy Emperor offered a benevolent, close-eyed smile, his voice dripping with gentle indulgence.
"Miki, Leon, and Demian. Even so, you must never neglect the weekly baptism, understood?"
"Of course," Demian replied smoothly. "Why else would we have come right on time?"
"Heh heh. Diligent students are truly a delight. Come now... let us pray once more. Let us receive the baptism of this new blessing."
Demian's clique trailed after the Holy Emperor like loyal hounds. Upon arriving in the inner sanctum, they took their designated seats before a small, ornate altar, pouring their magical energy into its intricate grooves. Then, bowing their heads, they closed their eyes in accordance with the Holy Emperor's chanting prayer.
"Splendid. Truly splendid."
An eerie, chilling aura slithered across the floor, and the activated ritual abruptly flooded the chamber with a sickening crimson radiance. Only after that morbid glow seeped into the bodies of the three students did the light finally recede.
"Our deepest thanks, Your Holiness."
"Think nothing of it. You must be weary from your trials, so pray, take your leave and rest."
"Yes. We shall return next week."
Once the heavy doors closed behind them, the Holy Emperor unlatched the lid of the miniature altar and retrieved its contents.
"My word... to think you sucked it bone-dry without leaving a single drop behind. Your appetites are quite insatiable, are they not? Heh heh."
Resting in his palm was a shriveled, utterly bloodless lump of fibrous muscle.
Until only recently, it had been a pulsing fountain of vibrant life.
The Legion of Incompetents.
A gathering of half-wits.
A parade of pathetic rabble.
These were the contemptuous slurs spat by the sneering onlookers who pointed fingers at the students of Sirach Lord School.
Had those insults been directed solely at the students who participated in the Faction War, those who had slacked off and forfeited wouldn't have cared in the slightest. But because the jeers lumped everyone together under a single miserable label, innocent bystanders found themselves scorched by the fallout—and those who had come completely unprepared were met with a wretched, agonizing slaughter.
The ones who dragged the province down to rock bottom were the slackers. Yet none of them possessed the clarity to distinguish fault.
"It's obviously your damn fault!" a non-attending student snarled, shoving forward. "You bastards claimed to be learning so much, yet you couldn't do a single thing right and got swept like dust! How does that make any sense?!"
"What did you just bark at us?!" another yelled back, stepping up chest-to-chest. "Say that again to my face!"
"Oh, you want an encore? Fine! Fine! Because of you worthless hacks who attended lectures and still achieved nothing, the rest of us got dragged through the mud with you! Happy now?!"
"You shameless piece of shit!! You're the ones who stood around doing jack-shit during the team match! Who the hell are you calling worthless?!"
During the individual duels, they had swallowed their tongues because everyone was getting beaten equally. But in the team battles, a crucial element far more vital than individual skill was glaringly absent, leading to Sirach's catastrophic collapse.
Yet even now, their ignorance reigned supreme.
Having refused to study properly or prepare in the slightest, the only weapon remaining in their arsenal was laying blame on others. They remained utterly blind to the fact that their petty division into two hostile camps was the very catalyst that sealed their doom.
"Will you all SHUT UP?!"
"Whoa—?!"
"Aaargh!!"
A streak of brilliant azure fire sliced through the air, violently sundering the two students who were seconds away from tearing at each other's throats.
"Before grabbing each other's collars and pointing fingers, why don't you reflect on what you actually did out there?" Michel demanded, her voice cutting through the courtyard like frost. "What right do you have to raise your voices when you failed to prove a single damn thing?!"
"..."
"..."
"Use that breath to figure out how to actually win," she continued, her piercing glare pinning them to the floor. "Stop making pathetic excuses about the instructors or the students who didn't attend."
Michel's razor-sharp rebuke brought an immediate halt to the brewing brawl. While it was impossible to completely mediate the deep-seated rift between them, she had successfully prevented a violent riot from spilling over.
As the hours passed, the Levrant students withdrew to their quarters, trusting that the locals would spend the night reflecting on their painful, bitter defeat.
Yet that very night, the two rival factions convened in secret.
"Well, well. You actually showed up on time. Guess you weren't too terrified after all."
"Look who's talking. I thought you cowards were going to call us out and run with your tails tucked between your legs."
On one side stood the non-attending faction, furious that they had been dragged into public ridicule despite skipping the lectures. On the other stood the attending faction, who detested the slackers for doing nothing yet daring to criticize those who had stepped into the ring.
The moment they locked eyes, low growls rumbled from their chests. The divide remained as stark as ever, without a single shred of mutual understanding.
Right on cue, a third party stepped out from the shadows, raising their hands in an apparent bid for peace.
"Calm down, all of you. I didn't send those letters just to watch you tear each other apart."
"Wait... that letter..."
"You were the one who sent that?!"
"Of course I did," the mediator sneered, their eyes glinting in the dark. "Because we can't just sit on our hands and take this lying down...!"
On the surface, the letters had contained nothing but venomous provocations aimed at both sides. But if the intent had been to lure them to this clearing, the ploy had worked masterfully.
What, then, was the real reason for summoning these two bitterly opposed factions?
"None of you want to stay quiet, do you? The Faction War was rigged against us from the very beginning."
"Well... that's certainly true..."
"Besides, did you know? Unlike us in Sirach, those filthy rich nobles stoop to bribing officials and rigging the matches."
"No way... Are you saying the nobles bought out the Faction War itself...?"
"C-Come to think of it, almost every bastard representing Mirpark was an aristocrat, wasn't he...? Don't tell me..."
There was no guarantee that it wasn't true.
With that single seed of doubt, the mutual hatred that had divided them was instantly redirected. The smoldering embers of their resentment fed on this new narrative, swelling into an even more dangerous inferno.
"That's why we shouldn't let some rigged Faction War judge our worth! Let's prove ourselves directly. In our own way."
"In our own way?"
"All we have to do is show them what we're capable of. Out there."
The instigator jerked their chin, gesturing toward the shadowy expanse of the Sirach Northern Forest.
The northern woods of Sirach were not a playground where mere students wandered. It was a perilous wilderness reserved strictly for licensed mercenary guilds and seasoned adventuring parties.
"I've already confirmed that the forest is crawling with Stumps. A demonstration of real strength is meant for times like this."
The students of Sirach—once fiercely fractured between attendees and absentees—exchanged glances before giving firm, collective nods. Not a single word needed to be spoken. For the first time, their sights were aligned toward a shared objective.
Bound solely by the reckless conviction to rewrite their humiliation and prove their worth with their own hands, the disparate rabble achieved a twisted, dangerous unity.
The first week drew to a close.
On the day following the midterm evaluations, classes had been suspended to allow the students time to collect their shattered pride and recuperate. Which meant today, of all days, the classroom should have been bustling.
There was supposed to be a crowd of students clamoring for their mandatory attendance stamps.
...What is this?
Inside the dusty lecture hall, only Lana and Ethan sat at their desks.
"Where did everyone else go?" Junon asked, glancing around the empty rows. "Normally, they'd be whining that every second was precious, begging and crying for me to sign off on their subsidy vouchers."
"We're not really sure..." Lana murmured, looking down.
"I haven't seen them either, Teach," Ethan added, scratching his cheek.
"Well, it's not like it's your fault... Tsk. Whatever. It just saves us time anyway, so let's get straight to the lec—"
Clack!
The moment Junon raised a piece of chalk toward the blackboard, the classroom doors were violently thrown open.