You Yard-Pound Bastards (1)
“Look over there! It’s the Evergarden siblings!”
“That’s Professor Felix…! I heard he solved the Artificial Dungeon crisis all by himself!”
“And Lady Rosaria charged that thug the upperclassmen couldn’t handle and took him down single-handedly!”
“What an incredible pair of siblings…!”
“They’re amazing…”
The moment the two of them stepped into the once-peaceful cafeteria, the atmosphere erupted into a restless buzz.
After all, they were currently the hottest names in the entire Academy—the Evergarden siblings.
From the very first curriculum, Felix had displayed a level of magical prowess completely different from anything he’d shown before, and as if that weren’t enough, he’d become the hero who resolved the recent Artificial Dungeon assault. Rosaria, for her part, had abruptly transferred into the combat department mid-semester, conquered it in record time, and during the same attack had single-handedly (well, with a little help from Rachel) defeated the thug who’d charged them, saving the other students and becoming a hero in her own right.
Naturally, rumors about the two of them had spread across the entire Academy.
“Honestly… every place we go, people stare like this. Being popular is such a pain!! Hahaha!”
“Ugh.”
Rosaria’s shoulders rose as she noticed the distant gazes of students watching them while they filled their trays. She flashed a bright smile and laughed cheerfully.
“Not a fan. A little attention’s fine, but every time we walk by and they do that, it’s just embarrassing. If they were crowding around with magic questions, I’d welcome it with open arms.”
Felix, on the other hand, looked thoroughly put out by the excessive interest.
And on top of that… this whole incident has been so suspicious I can’t even relax properly.
The event itself had been completely unexpected for him, leaving a lingering unease in one corner of his mind.
A development utterly different from the original story.
The reason Felix had been able to stay relatively calm until now was precisely because he knew how the original plot was supposed to unfold. But the moment another transmigrator appeared—someone outside his own family—that advantage of knowing the original story became less than half of what it once was. A half-baked edge at best.
“That so? Oh, right, speaking of…”
“Hm?”
“Uh… never mind! Let’s just eat!”
“What was that about…”
Watching Felix’s expression, Rosaria suddenly thought of someone and nearly brought it up, only to change her mind at the last second.
If I introduce him to that girl… who knows what kind of disaster might happen.
Rachel.
They’d been on the same team during the joint exam, and she’d helped deliver the finishing blow. The girl herself seemed decent enough, but when it came to magic she was missing a screw in exactly the same way Felix was.
Two of that little brother of mine? Nope. Absolutely not.
Imagining the chaos that would ensue if those two ever met, Rosaria decided then and there to keep Rachel’s existence under wraps.
Trays in hand, Rosaria and Felix looked for a place to sit.
“Hey, over here—come this way…!”
“Please sit with us…!”
“Here! We’ve got seats!”
Students throughout the cafeteria spotted them and actually stood up from their tables, noisily competing to claim them.
“Oh? Then maybe over th—”
“We’re going to the corner.”
“…Tch. You’re no fun.”
Rosaria had been casually angling toward a table full of pretty girls when Felix’s firm grip dragged her off toward a quiet corner seat instead.
“Fine, fine. Let’s just eat. Whoa…! The fish looks incredible today. I’m diggin’ i—”
“Oppa.”
“…What now. Let me eat.”
They’d barely sat down and Rosaria was ready to dig in when Felix looked at her and spoke, forcing her to set down her utensils.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“About what.”
“Doesn’t the Academy feel… kind of ‘empty’ right now?”
“Empty? What’s empty?”
“Look. The protagonist is supposed to enter the Academy next year—a little under half a year from now.”
“Yeah… so?”
“So why haven’t we heard a single thing about the supporting cast the protagonist is supposed to meet here?”
“Supporting cast?”
“Alright, let me explain.”
Sensing the conversation was going to run long, Felix pulled a notebook from his coat and began scribbling as he talked.
“First, among the major supporting characters the protagonist meets at the Academy, there are a few with especially high importance.”
The northern heir. Jin Bores.
The Empire’s Saintess. Airen von Graciess.
Master of alchemy and toxins. Liselotte.
The prodigy of the magic world, Griffin Bill Stuart.
The Second Princess of the Elves, Celebrian Assir.
“Those five. Each one is a main character in their own right—packed with talent and skill. In the original, their screen time just falls a little short of the protagonist’s, but any one of them could carry a media mix or a side story without breaking a sweat.”
“Huh… huh.”
“And yet, in all the time I’ve been at this Academy, I haven’t run into a single one of them.”
“…Wait. You said the protagonist meets them after enrolling next year, right? So shouldn’t they already be students here?”
“That’s the problem. Liselotte is a commoner who enrolls at the same time as the protagonist, and the Second Princess also enters around the same period—but the other three are already enrolled at this school.”
“And when I looked into it… all three of them have taken leaves of absence for reasons I can’t figure out.”
“Leaves of absence?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t that seem weird…?”
“Hmm… well, even if it came from a novel, that novel still follows the protagonist’s point of view, right? They’re on leave now, but they could always come back before the protagonist enrolls…”
“Still—three of the most important characters all taking leave at the same time? That’s more than a little suspicious.”
It was true that the original story barely described what those three had been doing before the protagonist’s enrollment, so nothing could be confirmed. But the fact that three people who played such critical roles in the original were all simultaneously on leave set off every alarm in Felix’s head.
“I think… it might be connected to that ‘person’ the thug mentioned.”
“That person?”
“Right. If this ‘person’ is a transmigrator like us, and they’re plotting something big enough to attack the Academy… they might have decided these three would get in the way.”
“So… those three already got… snipped?”
“Haa… I don’t know that far. It’s just a hypothesis.”
“Ugh… my head hurts. Why is there so much to worry about…?”
The Academy assault.
That person.
The disappearance of key figures.
Sudden chaos piled on top of chaos. The two of them groaned and put their heads together, but no clear answer emerged.
Then—
“That’s a gun, right?”
“Huh?”
“Who…?”
Someone had approached without either of them noticing and pointed at the gun holstered at Rosaria’s back.
Soft pink hair like cherry blossoms in bloom, roughly gathered and tied back in a tomboyish style as if it were just getting in the way. Clear goggles covering a slightly broad forehead. A rag stained with something greasy was wrapped around her neck like a scarf. Despite the bitter cold, she wore a sleeveless top that left her aggressively full chest on full display. A jacket with the sleeves roughly tied hung at her waist, and the belt beneath it bristled with every kind of tool imaginable. She stood about 158 centimeters—shorter than Rosaria—and her entire body was streaked with sweat and grime.
“Man… I’ve always wanted to build one of these myself. Didn’t think there was anyone else out there who’d even think of making one.”
“Wait—did you just say gun?”
“How do you know what that is…?!”
The mismatched beauty—dressed like someone who lived on construction sites and tool benches, yet with a face that didn’t match the look at all—delivered the line with perfect nonchalance, and both of them froze.
Gun.
The people of this world had no concept of firearms. Neither of them had ever called it a “gun” out loud, and any ordinary person who saw it would simply think it was a strangely shaped staff. For someone to look at it, call it a gun with absolute certainty, and speak as if they knew exactly what it was… that person could only be one thing.
Not someone from this world—someone from the modern one.
“Who made this, by the way?”
“Uh? Uh… that’d be me…?”
“Is that so…! Then what materials did you use? What’s the firing mechanism? Gunpowder? No… it can’t be gunpowder. I snuck a look and there’s no rifling inside the barrel. So you must’ve adapted magic formulas, right? Then what about the ammunition? Are the magic circuits inscribed on the gun itself, or carved into the bullets too? Man… this is getting really interesting!”
“…You actually noticed all that?”
“Hold on! You—who the hell are you?!”
“Whoops…!”
The instant she realized Felix was the one who’d built the gun, she shoved her face right into his and unleashed a torrential flood of questions. Her eyes sparkled at a distance so close their faces nearly touched, and Felix’s magic-obsessed side nearly slipped free—until Rosaria shot to her feet and physically yanked the two of them apart.
“Aigoo, I forgot to introduce myself.”
“I’m Louis Gramore, first-year in the Magic Tools Department. Just call me Louis.”
“And I’m in the same boat as you two.”
Louis straightened her posture for a moment, pushed her goggles up onto her forehead, and flashed a wide, sharp grin.