Luke Richter (2)
"The damage is severe, Dean."
Eris, the Academy’s chief of finance, shook his head as he looked at Selena with a grim expression.
"...Can’t we just bill the entire thing to the Richter family?"
"Do you really need to ask? We have no grounds for that. Besides, it’s practically an unwritten rule that the Academy covers the damage caused during entrance exams."
At Eris’s reply, Selena frowned.
He wasn’t wrong, not in the slightest, but that didn’t make it any less infuriating.
When she first read his paper, she had laughed. To be honest, she hadn’t expected anything at all; she had dismissed it as nonsense, empty and absurd.
The exam task itself had been ridiculous enough—solve a drought, of all things—so the very idea that someone would dare try to manipulate the climate had seemed laughable.
And yet he had actually done it.
He had artificially altered the weather and brought rain.
Ever since I became Dean of the Academy, this has never happened before.
No—this may be the first time in the Academy’s entire history.
Where on earth did he even get the budget for this?
He had brought five of those precious mana stones with him. On top of that, there were resonance stones for spellwork, and even rare artifacts she had never seen before.
No matter how noble his birth, this was not the kind of thing a student could prepare on his own.
And wasn’t he an illegitimate son, to begin with?
How had he possibly prepared all of this...?
"He says he borrowed it from the family."
"What? That makes no sense. They’re giving that kind of support to a bastard son? Did you check with the Marquis House of Richter?"
"I did."
"And?"
"They refused to answer. They just kept repeating that no one was to contact them about Luke Richter, under any circumstances."
"???"
The Marquis House of Richter was that furious?
Just what had he done after leaving the estate?
As Eris continued his explanation, he pushed his glasses up and said, "The entrance exam, Dean."
"......"
"You were there, so I’m sure you saw it yourself."
"I did. I’m not blind."
He had actually made it rain.
It was unprecedented.
She didn’t know what method he had used, but artificially manipulating the climate was the kind of discovery that deserved to be called continental in scale.
"Wasn’t that supposed to be impossible even with magic?"
"Impossible, yes. Of course, you can force rain by deploying a spell formation in the sky. But in the end, that’s just dropping water made from mana, isn’t it? It’s a fake, nothing more than an imitation."
"The difference is that large?"
"Large? It’s the difference between heaven and earth. That wasn’t simply copying a phenomenon. He manipulated the climate itself. You could say he defied the laws of nature."
At her answer, Eris tilted his head.
"Then what are you planning to do about the entrance exam? By your own logic, he satisfied the conditions the exam required, didn’t he?"
"He did. Even if he trashed the entire exam site in the process."
"Then this year’s top ranker is..."
"Tch."
Selena clicked her tongue irritably and muttered, "Who else would it be but that bastard?"
She snapped shut the documents spread across her desk.
They were the entrance exam paper Luke Richter had submitted.
At her reaction, Eris looked puzzled.
"Even you can’t make sense of it? Aren’t you, by title, the deputy master of the Red Magic Tower?"
"Hey! Bring the old Tower Lord himself here and he still wouldn’t understand this! It’s not that I’m stupid and can’t read it!"
"......Is it really that bad?"
"Yes! What in the world is this nonsense about entropy and nuclear fusion? How is anyone supposed to understand words like that?"
"Then how does Luke Richter know all that?"
"Exactly! That’s why I’m losing my mind!"
Every line of the paper was shocking, each more radical than the last.
She could roughly follow the overall flow, but the detailed theories, the principles, and the incomprehensible formulas scattered everywhere left her utterly unable to make sense of it.
Even the vocabulary used in the paper was, without exaggeration, alien.
"What the hell is that kid, really? Did he come from some other world or something?"
"Please say something that makes sense."
"No, seriously! Then does this make sense to you?"
"Never mind that. What are you going to do about the entrance exam? By your own logic, he satisfied the conditions the exam required, didn’t he?"
Eris was right.
The requirements of the entrance exam had already been exceeded by a ridiculous margin.
The drought threatening the entire continent was indeed a disaster of vast proportions, but in the end, it was still just a weather phenomenon.
However small the scale, Luke Richter had truly manipulated the climate.
He had provided the closest possible answer to the essence of the problem.
After making sense of this absurd situation, the two of them could only look at each other and laugh in disbelief.
"Then this year’s top ranker is decided."
"Right. It can’t be helped."
"In that case, I’ll proceed on that assumption."
Eris gave a perfunctory nod and left the dean’s office.
Staring into the now-empty room, Selena went blank for a moment before letting out a dry laugh.
"...Ugh, what a headache."
She rubbed her throbbing forehead.
The immediate mess could still be cleaned up somehow. He had destroyed the exam site and even the surrounding buildings, but the Academy budget could cover that much.
But the real problem was still ahead.
...It’ll be fine, right?
Selena forced down the shock still fluttering in her chest, repeating the self-justification that there was no way he’d do anything that insane again.
****
And so, on the day of admission, Luke Richter entered the Academy exactly as planned, proudly taking first place among the freshmen.
Of course, Selena, who had to clean up after him, was in hell—but Luke had no reason to care about any of that.
He had no mana to speak of, and the only thing he possessed was the modern knowledge he had gained by grinding himself down like a slave in a research lab in his past life.
His goal was to become a civil servant.
But to become one, he absolutely had to graduate from the Academy.
For someone with no mana, this was the only way to endure until graduation, even if it meant taking the longer road and piling up credits in a rather excessive fashion.
To be honest, he even enjoyed it.
The chemical reactions born from the collision between another world’s abilities and the modern world’s knowledge were far greater than he had expected.
"Dean! Luke Richter caused trouble again!"
"What? Again? What kind of trouble?"
"You know he joined the student council not long ago, right? All of a sudden he started saying their paperwork methods were primitive and that he was going to revolutionize accounting or something—double-entry bookkeeping? cost accounting? Anyway, he made all sorts of bizarre things!"
"And?"
"Then a few days later, he supposedly uncovered embezzlement and improper spending in the student council’s books and filed a complaint with the Imperial Internal Affairs Bureau."
"...What?"
"The people he reported were... let’s see. Ayane Teliorian of House Teliorian and Rigon Winfred of House Winfred..."
Selena could only stare in shock.
It was one thing for him to go into the student council and perform all sorts of bizarre antics. That, after all, was him.
But what? Embezzlement? Improper spending?
And he’d reported it to Internal Affairs, with the accused being...
"What do we do? He didn’t even file the report under Luke Richter’s own name. He filed it under the Academy student council."
"A... ah... my head..."
Reporting misconduct in the student council to Internal Affairs was, admittedly, the proper procedure.
And the Imperial Family did encourage that, to be fair.
The current noble faction and the Imperial Family did not enjoy especially good relations, after all.
But... but...
The tradition had always been to resolve problems within the Academy internally—no, to bury them first and ask questions later.
And this wasn’t even the kind of matter one could just brush aside, not when the evidence was so airtight.
What’s more, by filing the complaint in the Academy’s name, he had cleanly dodged all responsibility.
The one left suffering in the middle was Selena, the Academy’s dean.
But Luke Richter’s antics had only just begun.
"Dean! We’re in trouble!"
"Wait. Hold on. Let me prepare myself first."
Now, a year after the boy had enrolled.
At the time when everyone advanced to the next academic year.
Selena’s instincts told her, without a doubt, that Luke Richter would cause trouble.
Every year, a new top ranker was chosen, and from second year onward, becoming top ranker came with a tremendous academic-credit advantage.
Even if a student’s practical scores were low, they would still have no problem advancing to the next year.
Of course, someone who became top ranker would naturally have high practical scores, which was why such outrageous benefits were granted in the first place.
But she now deeply regretted that decision.
Because some lunatic had decided that every single year, he was going to seize the top rank by doing one insane thing after another.
"All right. Fine. Go ahead."
"You know that paper you published in the academic journal last year? The one called... what was it again? The interaction between multiple magic circles..."
"The Effect of Interactions Among Multiple Magic Circles on Resonance Amplification."
"Ah! Right! That one."
"What about it?"
The deputy dean blinked.
Then he said, "He said you were wrong."
"What?"
"You get extra credits for publishing papers starting in second year, right? And more bonus points depending on how well the paper performs. Apparently because of that, Luke Richter published a paper in the academic journal, and the contents of that paper were apparently enough to refute everything in your paper..."
"What?!"
"The academic world called for you, Dean. They want you to come with Luke Richter..."
"Th-those damn..."
Selena let out a choking sound and flipped backward in her chair.