The First Class (1)

After taking the room key from Johan, I climbed to the third floor of the dormitory.

The middle floor of a building that ran six stories in all. Students with upper-mid grades stayed here, and the interior was clean and pleasantly unremarkable.

Not bad at all.

I passed down a hallway neat enough to remind me of a modern apartment complex and stepped into the room. It was a little larger than an ordinary studio—similar to the place I'd lived in my previous life, with one drawback. There wasn't a single appliance.

"At least the water works. That's enough."

I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. A blue light flared, and water sprayed out. Astonishingly, the showerhead had no hose at all. It was a cordless "Bluetooth" shower, running on a magic stone and a water magic circle.

The room held other conveniences too: a flame magic circle for cooking, a light magic circle that would burn semi-permanently, and more besides.

Anything C-rank and below doesn't even get this, does it.

I thought back to playing Academy Life in the real world. Mostly in my first and second runs I'd bounced between F and C class, and the rooms in F class hadn't had a single one of these magic circles. Cooking was a dream you didn't bother having, and for the bathroom you had to use the shared toilets on the first floor.

...I'd better hold my grades, no matter what.

I hadn't come to the academy to chase good marks, but I still had a modern person's sensibilities, and I had no desire to end up in an F-rank room. B class at the minimum. I was keeping it.

I settled on that, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lay down on the bed, and let a little time pass. A nap later, quite a while had gone by, and the sky outside the window was beginning to darken.

Time to get ready.

Confirming that, I got straight up and started preparing to loot the dormitory.

The first thing to check was the day of the week. A look at the calendar told me it was Wednesday—the day Johan patrolled from the sixth floor down to the first.

About ten minutes a floor. That gives me thirty minutes.

The floor I had business on was the second. Dodging Johan's patrol entirely was an option, but pulling that off on the very first day of enrollment was more risk than I wanted. Better to just knock it out before the patrol arrived.

I decided on that, checked the plan for holes, and waited.

It's started.

The twelve o'clock bell rang, and the dormitory doors shut. From here on, coming and going—and moving between floors—was strictly forbidden. Johan would be making his rounds to confirm the students were properly in their rooms, and that nothing had gone wrong inside the building.

Five minutes had passed, so he'd be covering the sixth floor about now.

"Well then, shall we~"

Heart pounding, I opened the door. I crossed the empty hallway, went down the stairs, and made it all the way to my target on the second floor without a single interruption.

But the real start was from here.

I didn't turn left, toward the students' rooms. I walked right, toward the side sealed off behind a fence.

Creepy, I'll give it that.

Unlike the left-hand building, where the lights were on, the right one was pitch dark. And that chilly wind, gusting in fits and starts, kept stirring curtains and branches, manufacturing something that felt an awful lot like a presence. Some of those presences, I knew, would be the real thing—ghosts, wraiths.

If I remember right, it should be around here.

I wasn't particularly scared, though. You think people ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠say humans are scarier than ghosts for no reason? Call up Sylvia and Estelle, who were probably out looking for me even now, and a wraith didn't seem frightening at all.

Anyway, I walked the corridor without hesitation and at last reached my destination.

"Found it."

I'd arrived at the men's restroom tucked into a corner of the academy's second floor. The access was terrible, so people rarely came, and once the right-hand building had been sealed off the place had been neglected even more thoroughly.

I stepped inside without pausing and got ready to claim the hidden piece.

So the order goes...

First, into the fourth ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stall at the very back, and lock the door. Then I popped into my mouth the welcome candy I'd brought from my room.

Thunk!

Something unidentified dropped from the ceiling. I'd been expecting it, so I caught it without so much as a flinch.

What I'd caught was none other than a pair of glasses. Astonishingly, they were an artifact left behind by a hero who had already graduated.

"Now that's some ridiculous performance."

I let out a small cheer as I looked the artifact over.

A legendary assassin who had graduated from the academy—an outsider who had turned his back on the world. The glasses he'd left behind were famous for being easy to obtain and absurdly effective all the same.

With these alone, I could dodge Sylvia and Estelle's pursuit to some degree.

Of course, this is only a stopgap.

Sword Manipulation, honestly speaking, was a technique that stood out far too much. So long as I trained in it, rumors were inevitable, and once that happened, wearing these glasses wouldn't stop Sylvia and Estelle from coming after me.

So in the meantime I had to get as strong as I could, as fast as I could—or come up with some other plan. Finding a backer, for instance. Or getting my hands on the two of them's weaknesses.

"For now, I should head back."

The trip here alone had eaten more than ten minutes, so counting the return I was cutting it very close. I slipped straight out of the restroom and broke into a run for the third floor.

By a stroke of pure luck, Johan was still patrolling the fourth, and I managed—barely—not to get caught.

"Haaah. Thought I was a dead man."

I'd snuck out past curfew a few times back in college, in my previous life, but the thrill then had been in a completely different league. Get caught by Johan and you were in for an extremely, extremely long lecture. Going by the game's depiction, that ran three hours at a minimum, which was more terrifying than most corporal punishment.

"..."

Anyway, I'd secured the hidden piece without getting nabbed. All that was left was to sleep soundly and head off to class.

But the worry I'd turned over in that restroom kept tangling my thoughts, and in the end I fretted about the future until I watched the sun come up.

The academy had three kinds of classes in all: departmental classes, common classes, and special classes.

Departmental classes were conducted differently by each department, and students from the others naturally couldn't take them. Common classes, by contrast, were mandatory for every student regardless of department. Monster Studies, Emergency Medicine, and Survival Studies were the representative examples filed under that heading.

Special classes only happen once in a long while, so I don't need to worry about those for now.

Anyway.

Today I was heading for the education hall to attend my Swordsmanship Department class. I'd been up all night and I was thoroughly exhausted, but what could I do? If I wanted to get stronger, I had to show up and take the lessons properly.

Let's see. Which way am I supposed to go.

I followed the maps posted here and there, boarded a train at the station, and after about ten minutes of travel the education hall came into view.

The Swordsmanship Department—one of Arbel Academy's top two. My impression on seeing its education hall was very simple.

"Barren."

I'd felt it for a while now, but the Swordsmanship education hall was far too plain. The building where theory classes were held was a black rectangle that looked like a block of yokan, that dense rectangular sweet, and the training ground was nothing but a mindlessly vast field of sand. They'd built the practice hall—where students trained on their own—perfectly well, so why had they made the education hall like this? It was a completely different picture from the magic education hall, practically a sci-fi tower, and the divinity education hall, grand and holy.

Still, the teaching's good, right~

You weren't supposed to judge worth by appearances alone. It was true the sword hall looked a bit barren next to the others, but that design was efficiency and nothing more. Unlike the Magic Department, where equipment mattered, or the Divinity Department, which had to be decorated to resemble heaven as closely as possible, the Swordsmanship Department could run the finest classes imaginable so long as it had a body, pure and simple, and a good teacher.

"To think we get to take Sword Empress Lucilla's class!"

"I was so nervous I didn't sleep a wink."

"I'm going to listen hard in Lady Lucilla's class and become an incredible swordsman!"

Anyway, I got off the train and arrived at the training ground. I must have been the last one there; the place was already packed with first-years. I wiped my presence from among them and let out a quiet sigh.

Ah, I really don't want to take this class.

It wasn't simply that I was an adult who hated being dragged back into school. The reason I disliked it this much was the academy's culture around the first class. An ordinary school would hold an orientation on day one, or hand out free time. Arbel Academy was the exact opposite. They started cutting the students loose from the second week on—but during the first week after the freshmen enrolled...

"Good to meet you, my students! I am Supervising Professor Lucilla, the one who will be showing you hell today!"

"I'm Assistant Professor Helena! Keheheh!"

"..."

They grind you hard, they say, to wring the civilian right out of you.

This isn't the damn army. What the fuck is this.