To the Training Ground
The place Chloe led us to was the building next to the café — the Academy's main hall.
A tower that soared high enough to pierce the clouds. The headquarters of Purity Academy's administrative departments. We stepped inside, rode the elevator down, and descended into the basement.
A space with a capacity of twenty, and we were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder inside it. Academy students packed the elevator to bursting, desperate to wedge their bodies in just to catch the single lift that ran down.
"Sosocrowded! Can't breathe!"
"Just hang in there. We'll be there soon."
Eva suffered, squeezed in among the crowd. As I'd noticed back during the entrance exam, he absolutely loathed crowded places like this. Being stuck in an enclosed space with girls he knew by face and nothing more had to feel like dying.
"It's cramped."
"Can't be helped. The elevator's the only way down to the basement."
The main hall had no staircases, so elevators were the only means of moving between floors. There were two lifts in the building, but one was reserved for instructors and Academy staff, leaving students with no alternative but this.
"I-I wanna get out of here already."
"Tell me about it!"
"Hik!"
It wasn't just Eva, either — Chloe and Marin were clearly struggling too. Crushed by the weight of so many bodies, everyone looked like they could barely breathe.
Me, on the other hand? I was bigger than the students here, so the pressure only hit me around the chest. Comfortable. The problem was that other places were getting compressed instead, and that was a real issue.
"Stop pushing!"
"I told you to knock it off!"
Bodies pressed flush against each other — and against me. In a space where there was barely room to stand, their soft skin pushed right up against mine.
Pretty damn stimulating, honestly. To compare it, it felt like humping the floor with my lower half. This was genuinely hard to endure.
Something surged up against my pants. My lower half had risen without my reason's permission.
"Uuuuh!"
"Eva? What's wrong?"
"Th-th-that's — something hard just touched my back, out of nowhere..."
"Behind you?"
Chloe's gaze traveled past Eva to land on me, pressed flush against her back. Within seconds, her expression turned suspicious — and then her face flared scarlet.
"Y-y-you, you bastard! Get away from Eva right now!"
"Hey, hey! You're drawing a blade in a space this cramped? Are you insane?!"
"Waaah! E-everyone calm down!"
"Whoa. Scary."
One person openly throwing a tantrum in an already tight space made the whole elevator lurch violently. It shook enough that I genuinely worried the machinery might break down and trap us all in here.
Ding!
Thankfully, the elevator arrived on time, and the doors slid open. Students poured out like a dam had burst.
We'd finally escaped the suffocating space — but I was still in a state of emergency.
"I'm going to castrate that filthy abomination of yours right now, the one that gets hard at the drop of a hat!"
"You're insane!"
Shing!
With the resolve to settle things in a single stroke, Chloe swung her blade in a wide arc. I barely managed to block the edge with my internal defenses, stopping it cold. Cold sweat broke out at the sheer force behind it — one slip and I'd have been cut cleanly in half.
"G-guys, calm down! Let's all just c-calm down..."
Eva interjected in a crawling voice, trying to break up our fight. The same old routine, played out as always. No difference from any other time — except that Chloe's bloodlust was burning even hotter than usual.
"But Eva! That bastard did something to you—!"
"W-why me? What about me?"
"He... ugh!"
She couldn't bring herself to finish. That I had been grinding my crotch slowly back and forth against Eva's back. If she said it out loud, Eva might be so shocked she'd hole up in her room for days.
I had zero intention of doing anything of the sort, but the result was the result, so I had no room to make excuses. This was on me. I had to apologize.
"What, you can't say it? That my dick touched Eva's back?"
"You— you absolute lunatic!"
But first, explaining what had actually happened came before all that. I owned up to my mistake myself.
"Don't panic. I'm trying to apologize here."
"Apologize my ass! You just made everything worse!"
"Hiiik! Gross! Disgusting!"
Eva scurried behind Chloe's back, then stared daggers at me. A face flushed with shame, tears beading at the corners of her eyes — plus a stream of insults hurled my way.
Huh. Am I maybe a masochist?
That was how I could tell just how deep the wound my presence had carved into her heart really went.
"I'm sorry. It wasn't on purpose. I don't know if you'll forgive me, but I'm bowing my head and apologizing all the same."
"Keep better track of what's poking out of your pants before you go saying stuff like that!"
"This is strictly a biological phenomenon. It has nothing to do with my will."
Contrary to my sincerely contrite heart, my body was in the prime of its hot-blooded youth and was still riled up from all that stimulation earlier. No matter how hard I tried to calm myself, it refused to settle down.
Strange, though. I'd gotten out of that cramped space, but the stimulation didn't seem to be fading at all.
"It's big."
"What — why are you touching it?"
Turns out it was Marin. This girl was rubbing my cock with her hand.
So that's why it wasn't going down.
"Solis's body seems sick. Something weird is attached, different from everyone else."
"Well, it does kind of ache."
The tiny hand that slipped under my uniform grasped my cock and stroked it up and down. An untainted, spotless innocence with not a shred of sexual knowledge to its name.
Unlike Yupi, who at least understood the relationship between men and women, this one was completely ignorant of the very concept of sex. Marin was hard to classify even as a living creature, let alone human. Of course she wouldn't know unless someone taught her.
But whereas Yupi's technique had been so clumsy you could tell it was her first time, Marin worked my cock with practiced ease. She traced every spot, zeroing in on the most sensitive areas — the prostate, the glans — attacking them with a skill no beginner should possess.
Most men wouldn't last a minute against this, would they?
"You two! Doing something this shameless in a crowded public place!"
"Hawawawa..."
A woman giving a man a hand job, right out in the open. For these fresh girls barely past adulthood, it had to be quite the shock.
Excited, Chloe was puffing out steam like a locomotive. The turmoil already swirling in Eva's eyes picked up a violent spin on top of it. And beyond that, the stares of the crowd carried from far away — some students had even stopped mid-stride to watch Marin and me in silent awe.
All eyes on us. So this was how every male protagonist at an all-girls school in anime and manga felt, huh.
"Marin, that's enough."
"Not continuing? Solis looked like he was suffering."
"I'm fine. I'll handle the rest myself."
If this went on, I risked disgracing myself by finishing right in front of everyone, so I gently pushed Marin's hand away.
"Anyway, let's get moving. We didn't ride down to the basement to stand around chatting."
"You. See me later. After this."
Chloe took Eva by the hand and led the way. Marin and I followed behind.
Off the elevator, we passed down a long corridor lit by overhead lamps, and then a vast expanse unfolded before our eyes. Centered on the sparring rings lining the edges, the space was filled with a firing range where targets stood in neat rows, a gym lined with sandbags — facilities steeped in a heavy atmosphere and the smell of sweat.
"S-s-so many people!"
"Everyone's working hard — it's the first skill evaluation season, after all."
Students in gym uniforms were each striving to develop their strengths — hand-to-hand combat, magic, weapon forging, and so on.
"See those people over there?"
Chloe pointed at the ones mid-training.
"They're all pushing to score high on this exam. Score above average and you get bonus points, but slack off and you'll be in serious trouble."
She was right — this was Purity Academy. The elite of the elite, an institution where geniuses gathered. Here, "average" meant you were outstanding even among the gifted.
"So don't let your guard down, and give it your all right up until exam day. Fighting!"
"Orah."
"F-f-fighting!"
At Chloe's rallying cry, Marin and Eva echoed her, shouting along. I raised a fist in a half-hearted salute, giving her words a token response of my own.
"Today's training focus is practical skills and sparring. First, let's warm up with a simple mock match among ourselves."
"Who's fighting who?"
At my question, Chloe rested her chin on her hand and fell into thought for a moment. Then her gaze — heavy with displeasure — swung toward me.
"You. Promise me one thing."
"Out of nowhere? What?"
"Swear you'll never do anything strange to Eva. Put your hand on your chest and vow it."
"Well, if that's all it takes."
I went along with her demand, placing a hand over my chest and declaring loudly:
"I solemnly swear not to do anything strange to Eva for the duration of this sparring match. Good enough?"
"Doesn't sound sincere at all."
"So what? You calling off the match then?"
No — you can't, can you? Her grand ambitions hung on this skill evaluation, and I knew she'd see her carefully laid plan through to the end, dead serious as she was.
Chloe clicked her tongue. Looked like, whether she liked it or not, she intended to proceed exactly as planned.
"Fine. First match: Eva versus Solis. You two."