The Entrance Ceremony (1)
Three days had passed since I slipped free of Sylvia's clutches.
I had spent them drilling sword manipulation with everything I had, and the results, regrettably, were nothing to boast about. It wasn't that I lacked talent. My base stats were simply too miserable for the training to go anywhere.
"I'm actually gonna die."
The lodging the academy had provided came with a training yard out back, and I was sprawled there now, taking what could only generously be called a rest. Sweat soaked me through. I didn't have the strength to twitch so much as a finger. Anyone glancing over would have assumed I'd been drilling from dawn to dusk. The catch was that I hadn't even been at it for an hour.
This body is in genuinely awful shape. Every stat I have is F-rank—a physique on par with a slime whose only talent is jiggling. Set aside the fact that I can use mana, and I'm frailer than I was in my past life.
Move even a little and I collapse, so there's nothing I can actually do. It was a flaw I hadn't noticed on my first day in this body. Fair enough. Back then all I'd done was walk around and throw a sword once in the sparring hall. Sylvia had ambushed me after the duel, but even that had amounted to dodging a single blade. Training worthy of the name wasn't going to be possible until I pushed every stat to at least D-rank.
A little more and I think I'd have the knack of it. What a shame.
For three days I had practiced sword manipulation in earnest. Twenty demonstrations was the grand total, but those few attempts had been enough for me to catch the feel of it. The trick of throwing the sword, of course—and the threads of mana, once only a blur, had grown clearer to my eye. I had the sense that moving the blade twice in midair would be within reach before long.
"No! I failed?!"
"Heavenly God, thank you for letting me pass! I'll come make a donation later!"
I was still running through the motions of sword manipulation in my head when a racket spilled out of the inn. Right—today was the day they announced who had passed the academy exam. I hauled my spent body upright and put the only question that mattered to myself.
Did I actually pass?
As far as I could tell, it was a coin flip. I might have failed for botching the written test, or I might have passed by winning the duel. Whichever was the truth, the list of names would tell me.
"Let's see... where are you, Philip..."
The list of successful applicants was posted on the bulletin board on the first floor. Wedged in among the examinees, I started hunting for my name. There was no chance I'd landed in the upper ranks, or even the middle. If I'd passed at all, it would be by the skin of my teeth...
"Huh?"
Something was off. I had gone through every name in the bottom tier of those who passed, and mine wasn't among them. I was just about to fold and accept that I'd failed when a familiar name caught my eye halfway down the list.
The number after the name meant I was the fifth Philip among five. The seventy-three meant my exam score ranked seventy-third among everyone who had passed.
I'm upper-middle? Is this actually real?
Every year, well over a few thousand examinees applied to the swordsmanship faculty. Only a sliver of them passed, and getting into the academy meant you were, at the very least, gifted. I had shoved those people aside and landed in the upper-middle of the entrance rankings? Me, on my fourth day in this body?
"...I have no idea what I'm looking at."
I was bewildered, but the feeling wasn't a bad one. If anything, I was happy enough to drop to my knees and bawl. I had spent the last few days pretending none of it mattered, but the truth was I had been sick with worry over what would happen if I failed to get in.
I am not letting some evil god rip my soul out and ragdoll me...!
Passing like this was an enormous relief, and an upper-middle ranking on top of it was spectacular news. Seventy-third place would land me in roughly Class B or Class C, and life there was far more comfortable than in Class F. The lodging was about twice as spacious, and the living stipend came in fat. Of course, all of that support got yanked the moment you bombed an exam—but that was a problem I could solve by simply doing well.
A day like this deserves a drink.
Once I had confirmed the result, I trailed after the examinees heading for the dining hall. The place was one seat short of packed. I claimed one and looked around. Gloomy faces made up most of the room, with a bright one showing here and there. And not a single person had failed to order a drink.
"Hey, proprietor! Today's a happy day, so bring every bottle you've got!"
"Huuuugh... the strongest stuff you've got, please..."
"Coming right up~ Just a moment, everyone~"
I ordered two beers of my own and started pouring them down my throat. Once you became an academy student, drink and tobacco were strictly forbidden, so this was my last taste out in the world. The quality was worse than the beer I'd had back on Earth, and yet, for some reason, it tasted nothing but good.
"Damn, this stuff is sweet!"
I still hadn't mastered sword manipulation, and the road ahead was obscenely long. For this one day, though, I decided to forget all of it and enjoy myself. I had taken the first step, and that meant I was halfway there. Positive thinking.
And so, the next day.
I dragged myself out of the lodging under a vicious hangover. I had gotten carried away and gone too hard, completely forgetting that the entrance ceremony came right on the heels of the results.
"The whole world's spinning."
"I think I'm gonna hurl... urp!"
"Puke in your uniform and you won't even make the ceremony. Hold it a little longer."
The one mercy was that I wasn't the only one suffering. The other freshmen were in similarly wretched shape, and the train bound for the academy looked like nothing so much as a holding pen for zombies. Every time the carriage swayed, my stomach rolled, and I wanted to die.
"Magic Tower specialty hangover tonic for sale! A mere ten silver, and I'll see you right!"
This sort of thing must have happened every year, because some kid was hawking hangover cures—a highly effective potion brewed directly by the Magic Tower, or so the pitch went. My wallet was all but empty, but this was something I absolutely had to buy. Otherwise I was going to cause an incident by vomiting in the ceremony hall.
"Hey, kid. Isn't that normally a five-silver potion?"
"It's the market rate! Prices swing like crazy!"
"...What a brazen little brat. I'll take one."
I handed the kid ten silver, took the hangover cure, and drank it down. It tasted of grapes, and the effect was immediate. The medicine made one circuit of my body, pale smoke curled out of my nose, and the hangover vanished without a trace. Was the alcohol leaving as smoke? I was curious what the principle was.
At any rate, I was in the middle of shaking the hangover off when I realized the train had already reached its destination. Stepping off, I got my first look at the Main Auditorium—a building that felt like a marble colosseum with a roof set over it.
"Please state your name and examination number."
"Philip. Examination number 31942."
"Confirmed. Enjoy your time at the academy."
Once my identity was confirmed, I headed straight inside. It had looked large from the outside, but the interior of the Main Auditorium was enormous in its own right: a vast main hall, and corridors branching off in several directions. Only one of those corridors stood open. That would be where today's entrance ceremony was being held.
The closer I drew to the hall, the more freshmen there were, and the louder it grew—a restless murmur, a constant clamor. Some of them had already made friends and were clustered together, talking. I wasn't exactly gifted at getting along with people, so I decided to sit down quietly and leave it at that.
It's the exact scenery I saw in the tutorial.
The doors of the Main Auditorium stood wide open, and I walked straight in. What met me was a hall of staggering size. A heavy curtain hung over the stage, and the floor was lined with chairs set in precise rows and columns. About half the seats were empty for now, but they wouldn't stay that way for long.
If I remember right... we were allowed to sit anywhere?
By the ordinary rules, students were supposed to sit according to their faculty. This entrance ceremony, however, had made a special exception of that rule, and the staff made no effort to stop anyone who had planted themselves wherever they liked.
Somewhere in the middle.
Sit too far forward or too far back, and Sylvia might catch sight of me. An unremarkable seat around the center was the best option. I passed one seated examinee after another until I reached the middle of a row.
Nothing should happen for about thirty minutes. I might as well shut my eyes for a bit.
I dropped into an empty seat and closed my eyes. I had no particular intention of sleeping. I meant to sort through the game knowledge I still carried.
Ten minutes or so might have passed when someone sat down beside me. I cracked an eye to see who it was. Lucy would have been ideal. Failing that, some perfectly ordinary student. If it was Sylvia, or that problem bitch, things were about to become extremely annoying.
I'm screwed.
The moment I recognized who had taken the seat beside me, I had no choice but to squeeze my eyes shut again. Of all people, one of the worst possible opponents—that woman—had sat down right next to me.
Why, of every random seat in the hall, did the bitch who planted herself wherever she pleased have to pick the one beside mine...! My academy life was already going to be brutal enough. Now it was in danger of becoming a genuine ordeal.