Familiarity Becomes Strength
It was a familiar sight.
The academy grounds he had walked countless times were packed shoulder to shoulder with students gathered for an assembly, listening to speeches and official announcements.
I wondered if there might be someone else, but… it really is just me.
As the students sat in orderly rows waiting for a single man—the Grand Duke of Ardelion—none among them appeared burdened by the same weight. Not a soul shared his plight.
He was the only regressor. The memories of the future belonged to him alone.
A stir rippled through the courtyard as the Grand Duke made his entrance. Every head turned in unison, and the gathered students rose to their feet.
"The Grand Duke of Ardelion has arrived. All students, attention and salute."
Following a brief, respectful bow, the chairman of the academy's board stepped up to the podium for the first time in months to begin his address.
"Greetings. Welcome, proud students of Lebrant Academy."
Junon looked out across the courtyard where the students now listened attentively. He remembered this vast expanse of ground as something else entirely: a grim, blood-soaked field turned into a desperate refugee camp.
"Upholding the noble vision of the Artena Empire, the Principality spares no effort in nurturing and advancing every one of you."
Yet Junon knew all too well that crises beyond the control of even the mighty Artena Empire would soon erupt throughout the Principality.
"You are seeds. Precious seeds bursting with boundless potential and endless room for growth, each capable of flourishing into a great, towering tree."
Yes, seeds, Junon thought. Merely seeds that have yet to strike root, whose cotyledons have not even begun to open.
"I offer you my deepest hopes for your success. May each of you grow tall and true, blossom magnificently, and take your proud place as a stalwart tree within our lush forest."
If someone stamped upon a sprouting seedling, its growth would be stifled. If denied water and nourishment, it would wither and die before ever becoming a tree.
Superimposing the grim ruins of the past over the restless courtyard before him, the regressor swore an oath within his heart, etching it into memory again and again.
This time, he would never allow that living hell to repeat itself.
Applause surged across the courtyard, thunderous clapping ringing out from every member of Lebrant Academy.
Yet the Grand Duke was not finished. He was about to deliver a stern, unyielding warning.
"I have a few more words to say today," the Grand Duke continued, his tone cooling. "A disgraceful tragedy recently took place within the walls of Lebrant Academy. I wonder how many of you still hold it in your memories."
The Grand Duke closed his eyes for a moment.
Among the faculty, some subtly narrowed their eyes in displeasure. Others merely held their breath, letting out long, silent sighs through their nostrils.
The professors' reactions were divided straight down the middle.
"A student jumped to her death. It was a truly heartbreaking tragedy. We could never fathom why a student who was always smiling and so devoted to her studies would choose to throw her life away. Alas, none of us understood in time."
It had happened a few months ago.
In the dead of night, a young woman had cast herself from the roof of Alios Hall.
"She was a first-year girl who seemed perfectly fine on the surface, always smiling as though nothing were wrong. In order to uncover the truth behind this incident, officials from the Principality searched her dormitory room and discovered a diary."
To all appearances, the first-year student from Class E had seemed completely ordinary. Yet she had chosen to end her own life, clutching a single scrap of paper to her chest.
[ It is too hard. ]
To claim it wasn't a suicide note seemed impossible given the manner of her death, yet calling it one felt equally hollow, for her behavior prior to that night had shown no warning signs whatsoever.
Those four words offered no explanation, leaving the truth entirely obscured. Her peers had done nothing but shake their heads in bewilderment.
No one knew whether she had suffered relentless torment, struggled with family strife, or battled a hidden illness.
Without the slightest shred of evidence, the case was on the verge of being shelved as an unsolvable mystery.
That is, until the Principality stepped in to investigate directly.
"After cross-referencing the handwriting in her diary, we verified beyond doubt that it was penned by her own hand. And within those pages, it was recorded time and again that she suffered relentless coercion and abuse here at Lebrant Academy."
The Grand Duke's voice strained, reaching the edge of its restraint.
The time had come to vent his fury.
Eyes blazing, his voice boomed with an overwhelming, oppressive authority as he fixed his glare directly upon a specific cluster of professors.
A biting chill swept through the gathering. The Grand Duke's wrath crashed into the professors' minds like a physical blow.
Why had his ferocious glare fallen upon the faculty?
Because this whole monstrous state of affairs was a Tower of Babel built out of their unchecked lust for power, rank ambition, and unbridled greed.
It has begun.
The signal flare had been fired.
To purge the festering rot clinging to Lebrant Academy, the Grand Duke had openly declared war from the podium, firing a broadside directly into the faculty's ranks.
The starting point was set; the course of events had to be bent in a new direction.
The first step was simple: utterly deface the corrupt masterpiece forged by those wicked professors and their noble benefactors.
Once the Grand Duke's fury had erupted, the assembly was brought to an abrupt conclusion, and the students dispersed.
The professors, claiming they were in no state to proceed, dismissed their classes and cancelled the remainder of the day's lectures.
Not every student, however, headed straight for their dormitories.
"Look at you, following along today without a peep."
"Finally learning to behave, are we? Though maybe you should wipe that arrogant look off your face."
Vesta and Pallas. The two male students who made a habit of tormenting Junon had cornered him in a blind spot on the academy grounds.
Between the Principality's two fiercely divided political factions, both belonged to the aristocratic faction—a clique convinced that the naturally superior nobility ought to discipline commoners as a lesson in humility.
In practice, the modern noble faction cared for little more than trampling the weak to elevate themselves. The two of them had clearly dragged Junon here to assert their dominance.
They targeted him because they were noble and he was common. They targeted him because he was stuck in Class E.
As always, they intended to crush him through a blatant display of power, reveling in their supremacy while demanding his groveling submission.
Junon, however, simply let his eyes sweep over their surroundings, calmly assessing the terrain.
Just the two of them… I can handle this.
Given the location, there wasn't an ounce of cover to be found.
Both Vesta and Pallas were elemental sorcerers who fought from range, putting a vanguard like Junon at a severe disadvantage.
If they opened fire with spells, Junon possessed no ranged firepower to match them and would end up taking a one-sided beating.
Had he been armed, he could have fought back, but academy regulations strictly forbade carrying weapons or armor except under special authorization. For now, he had to take them on bare-handed.
While the enchanted fabric of the academy uniform absorbed a portion of incoming magic damage and converted the rest into kinetic force, his opponents were still two elemental sorcerers.
It would be a grueling exchange under normal circumstances.
Except this was no regulated duel.
"Look at this bastard. Still doesn't get it, does he?"
"What else do you expect from a lowborn wretch? Good grief."
"Hey, you should be grateful. Having people like us pay this much attention to you is—"
Thwack!
"…!"
As Vesta tapped Junon's shoulder, completely off his guard, a lightning-fast fist buried itself deep into his solar plexus.
Unprepared for a sudden ambush, Vesta couldn't even manage a whimper before his eyes rolled back and he crumpled into unconsciousness.
There was a limit to how much nonsense Junon was willing to tolerate.
These arrogant bastards never learned their lesson until they took a beating.
"You crazy son of a bitch! We tried to be nice, and you pull this?!"
Seeing his partner go down, Pallas immediately leaped backward to create distance, drawing a glowing magic circle in midair to launch a fireball.
Even with the uniform's defensive runes mitigating the blast, a direct hit would knock Junon back at least ten to fifteen paces.
Yet Junon charged straight into the path of the incoming flame.
"Haha! What an utter moron!"
Pallas sneered, watching Junon rush forward like a moth diving straight into an open fire.
As the roaring fireball swallowed the boy, Pallas felt certain he had secured a safe distance. A smug grin tugged at his lips.
Once a sorcerer opened a gap against a frontline vanguard, defeat was virtually impossible. Victory was already his.
Yet that smirk froze on Pallas's face the moment he caught sight of the figure breaking through the lower right edge of the blaze, deflecting the fireball with a Mana Shield wrapped tightly around the back of his hand.
"Th-That won't save you from this!"
Sorcerers poured everything into raw destructive power, meaning they could never afford to let an enemy get close.
Standard doctrine called for preparing a secondary magic circle ahead of time to maintain multi-casting pressure.
Yet Pallas had spent the opening seconds gloating over what he assumed was a finished fight. A slacker like him possessed no such foresight.
His frantically scribed magic circle would fire far too late.
Wub—!
The shimmering barrier on the back of Junon's hand struck true, slamming directly into the incomplete circle Pallas was trying to cast. Raw mana clashed violently against raw mana.
Before the circle could stabilize, Junon's unique magic barrier pierced the formation, halting its completion in its tracks.
He had driven his own mana into the spell matrix in reverse, disrupting the flow and shattering the incomplete design.
Pallas was left completely dumbfounded.
"Wh-What…? How did you…?"
The mana circulating through his body froze solid.
When a spell interrupted in this manner, it triggered a violent state of Mana Panic, severing internal circuits and leaving the caster unable to gather energy.
In short, he couldn't cast a single thing.
Junon had read the circle's alignment with pinpoint precision, extended the mana barrier around his arm into a razor-thin wedge, plunged it straight into the formation, and injected mana in the opposite direction to rupture the spell from within. It was an ingenious, unorthodox tactic.
His unique magic wasn't merely a shield to block impacts; it was a lethal weapon designed to suppress an opponent's magical circuits entirely.
For a caster relying on spell formations, losing control of their mana was tantamount to instant defeat.
The Anti-Cast technique Junon had painstakingly perfected through blood and sweat in his previous life remained just as devastating against conventional mages in this one.
"Whew…"
With a dull crack, Pallas's eyes widened in dazed terror before his world went dark, following in Vesta's footsteps.
At the end of the short, brutal clash, it wasn't Junon who lay sprawled on the ground, but the two bullies who had terrorized him day in and day out.
Having claimed a flawless victory against two opponents, Junon let out a quiet breath and murmured to himself.
"All that's left is Sylvia."
Sylvia. It was the name of the one opponent Junon had never managed to beat.