This Instructor Really Knows How to Teach (4)
Maybe it was because I’d been stirring up trouble with every trick and loophole in the book for so long, but it felt like my Planetarium knowledge had barely been useful for quite a while now.
The fanatics had only set a single trap during their first appearance event, yet their entire pattern of behavior afterward had twisted beyond recognition. The imperial family’s power struggle, which should have been a rampaging wild boar by now, had already been eliminated. Sure, it’s common sense in this industry that someone who knows the future will suffer precisely because of the future they changed. But understanding it with your head and accepting it with your heart are two different things.
I wanted to squeeze out a little more juice from it, damn it.
In that sense, this class with the underclassmen was the perfect chance to put my original knowledge to use after a long time.
Although I’m a second-year at the Academy this year, this situation is actually quite unusual when measured against the original story. As I mentioned before, there’s almost no gap between the first-year Academy entrance event and the start of the game, so the player naturally has no time to strengthen the protagonist. On top of that, the difficulty is brutal. I had a much more generous preparation period compared to a normal playthrough and knew all sorts of cheats, so I managed to enroll safely. But the standard route is to enter in the second year after the Academy has already opened its doors.
What this means is that the kids bickering with me in the same grade are actually seniors from the perspective of a typical Planetarium player, while the underclassmen who just arrived are my true classmates.
And given that the original work is built around party play, there’s no way the people the player will frequently interact with wouldn’t include named characters.
One of them was the girl I was now in charge of—Iris Otreang.
In truth, until a proper strategy guide for her spread, players didn’t rate her very highly. Her default equipment was a rapier and light armor. All her skills were martial arts-related, and she had high base speed. Players who recruited Iris usually thought, “Oh, so I’m supposed to raise her as a physical fighter. With that speed, is she a crit dealer? Or an evasion tank?” and developed her as a warrior—only to be disappointed later.
She rampaged across the early game, but her growth rate dropped off sharply as time went on. She had almost no exclusive events to strengthen her, and her background wasn’t dramatic enough to make her particularly useful outside of combat. When you considered that Eisen Hartmann—the prized disciple of the King of Nacht and a physical dealer whose combat ability rivaled Chrome’s—was in the same year, Iris’s performance felt almost embarrassingly weak by comparison.
Of course, there were people who raised her simply because she was pretty (after all, stats include appearance), and others who kept her because they’d already invested too much to quit. But overall, they were the minority. The general consensus was that Iris Otreang was a temporary filler member used until you could recruit a proper high-tier talent, thanks to her easy recruitment conditions and decent starting specs.
That was the story when you raised her as a standard physical character.
But when raised as a hybrid magic-swordsman… the result unfolding before my eyes right now showed exactly how she could change.
Slice!
A clean, sharp sword line. The thick iron shield was cut apart like a sheet of paper. The knight who had been charging while hiding behind it broke into a cold sweat the moment he saw the blade pressed against his throat.
The referee announced the end of the match. The surrounding spectators murmured in admiration.
“Three straight wins. And all of them overwhelming victories.”
“I knew she was skilled, but was she really this good?”
“She might be the best among this year’s Spero entrants.”
All sorts of glowing praise poured from the students’ mouths. Some of it must have reached Iris herself. Looking both happy and flustered, she quickly slipped away. Once we were in a secluded spot, she asked me,
“Senior. Wh-what exactly did you do to me?”
“What do you mean, what did I do? I only taught you a few spells. That’s all.”
“But the opponent I just faced… there’s no way I should have been able to beat someone like that…”
She was so flustered that her usual neat, businesslike demeanor had completely vanished. She was babbling incoherently. The way she kept sneaking glances at me made it obvious she was imagining something like match-fixing. From my perspective, it was just ridiculous.
Come on, I really didn’t do much this time.
At most, I gave her some equipment and taught her two or three spells. The fact that she was able to crush upperclassmen who were considered quite strong among the first-years was entirely due to Iris’s own talent.
Though it seemed the person in question thought she hadn’t won because she was strong, but because her opponents had suddenly become weaker.
“Anyway, today’s matches are over. Make sure you get plenty of rest to prepare for the next fights. And don’t forget to drink the potion I gave you last time.”
“Senior? Wait, Senior!”
Ignoring the urgent voice calling from behind, I quickly left the area.
I had expected it to some degree, but her talent really is beyond imagination.
In truth, spells are an incredibly versatile type of technique. Using Lower Grade Wind Step lets you move as fast as a speed-type warrior, and something like Lower Grade Weapon Enhancement can turn even a blunt blade razor-sharp.
Yet despite the existence of so many different spells, there are almost no so-called magic-swordsman types who strengthen themselves with various buffs and then fight in close quarters.
You can understand why if you compare it to the body reinforcement used in martial arts. Body reinforcement pours mana into the user and raises everything—base stats, reflexes, the whole package. On the other hand, Lower Grade Wind Step literally only increases “movement speed.” The same goes for weapon enhancement. No matter how much you boost a weapon’s power, you still have to land the hits yourself.
In other words, to fight as a warrior while using spells, you need the sense and reflexes to instantly judge and deploy the right spell for attack, defense, movement, or disruption, plus the cold judgment and mana control to match.
Then why not just use a spell that raises all those abilities at once, or stack a bunch of buffs?
If you’re going to do that, you might as well just use martial arts. Why bother going through the magic route? Direct mana infusion through martial arts is far more efficient than magic, which has to pass through the filter of spells. And trying to maintain multiple spells on your own body while fighting in melee would make anyone’s head explode.
I had tried something similar as an experiment, but even limiting myself to just one spell—Lower Grade Mana Shield—and predicting the opponent’s movements in advance, that was my limit. And even then, I wouldn’t have managed it without the physical abilities boosted by medicine.
But the world is full of all kinds of geniuses.
Iris Otreang was one of the prime examples.
If raised as a pure physical fighter, her specs ended up mediocre at best. But if you let her fight while casting self-buffs through the magic route, she suddenly became insanely strong.
To be more specific, raising her purely physical left her at physical 2nd tier. Raising her through magic elevated her to physical 1.3 tier and magic 1.3 tier. It was an absurd situation where taking a detour to do a side job actually made her main job stronger too.
An Iris developed this way wouldn’t fall behind even against most 1st tier party members in overall performance. When you factored in the equipment I’d given her to supplement her specs and the fact that we’d thoroughly analyzed her opponents’ weaknesses, aiming for the individual tournament victory was entirely realistic.
The problem was the team event… but I wasn’t too worried about that either.
After all, the other two members besides Iris were also named characters from the original story. There was no way we’d lose.
Just to be clear, I absolutely did not rig the team selection. I was just as surprised as anyone when I first saw the list.
Riverhill was the kind of guy who showed a prickly attitude and wasn’t exactly pleasant to talk to if the protagonist was the Red and Blue Blood Successor or the Greedy Debauchee. He had plenty of antis because of it. But as a healer, his performance was top-class. He was living proof of the saying “In Planetarium, personality and ability are inversely proportional.” Of course, he was nowhere near Professor Istar’s level. There was nothing more I needed to do with him.
Unlike Iris, with whom I wanted to build a good relationship because of her unique abilities and her position as Frelia’s close aide, I already had Fiore and Akasha for the healer role. There was no need to invest extra time getting closer to him.
That left only one person.
“Sorry I’m late, Senior!”
“No, I only just arrived myself. Don’t worry about it, Cuella.”
The pink-haired woman smiled with an expression of deep emotion. I smiled back at her. When a beauty so stunning that random passersby on the street couldn’t help but stare was openly showing how happy she was to see me, there was no need to respond like a block of wood.
“Shall we get going, then?”
“Yes!”
Alright. Let’s have ourselves a pleasant little chat.
Miss Spider.