Enrollment (2)
“Ah….”
A dazed sigh escaped Seria's lips.
So it really happened.
It wasn't as if she hadn't anticipated this outcome. And yet, somehow, she'd never quite managed to imagine it becoming reality.
Father said that among my peers, the people who could surpass me could be counted on one hand….
Not just the same age — the same generation.
To a man who was already an adult, a three-year gap or a five-year gap would all look the same: whelps, barely out of the cradle.
Which meant that among those her own age, the ones capable of surpassing her numbered, at most, one or two.
And that one person…
Seria flicked her eyes sideways, stealing a glance at the boy beside her.
Is sitting right next to me….
It was, truly, an unbearable state of affairs.
She had come here swearing to take the top seat, carrying her family's expectations on her shoulders — and this was how things turned out.
“So this is Union Academy for you….”
A dazed murmur slipped out of her.
“Hmm? What was that?”
“…Just talking to myself.”
The boy — Lucian — had ears sharp enough to catch it, and pounced on the opening without hesitation.
“Haha, the great Seria talking to herself? That defeat must have hit you pretty hard.”
“…?!”
At the sudden use of her name, Seria flinched.
“Oh, did that bother you? My apologies. Admission's officially settled now, so I figured it was time to drop the formalities….”
“…No. Let's do it, then. Lucian.”
“Oh, really?”
“…….”
He had eyes sharp enough to stab a person to death, and yet here he was, asking with the guileless innocence of a puppy. The sight was something else entirely.
…Is he really a commoner? Wasted on him, being that handsome.
Maybe it was because the formality he'd maintained until now had vanished in an instant, but the thought surfaced unbidden.
“Lucian. The Duke of Levenstein's daughter does not lie.”
Seria shot back curtly, cheeks reddening for no good reason.
He caught that, too — a voice brimming with mischief came back at her.
“Man, that's awkward.”
“…You're teasing me right now, aren't you?”
“Meee? Maybeee?”
Lucian answered with a shrug.
Insufferable, as expected.
He'd say he isn't, of course, but…
He must have lived his whole life with people telling him he was insufferable.
“You do have the talent for it….”
“Hmm? What was that?”
“…Nothing. Let's go.”
Any further and she'd get dragged into his rhythm. Seria hastily changed the subject.
“It's just about lunchtime…. No, it is lunch. We should eat, right?”
“Yeah, I was actually getting hungry. Good timing. What are you having?”
“…I'm craving pasta today.”
“Isn't pasta a bit light?”
“We can order other things too.”
“Fair enough. So which dining hall this time?”
“Today…”
Forcing out the unfamiliar casual speech, Seria took an awkward step forward.
Chirp chirp chirp—
Pweeeeeeeee!!
“Mmmmgh….”
Waking at dawn to the sound of some bizarre birdsong, I stretched myself tall with a small groan.
“Status window.”
At once, blue characters materialized before my eyes.
Three weeks had slipped by since the admission results were announced, and in that time my status window had undergone quite a few changes.
Now this is what a game looks like.
The stat boosts were impressive enough on their own, but the biggest change had been to my skills.
Taking stock: first, 'Light Footwork' and 'Basic Magic Control' had both crossed the level-10 threshold and evolved into 'Agility' and 'Magic Control' respectively.
And then.
There was the new skill that had claimed a corner of my status window — Emotion Amplification.
I'd acquired it only recently. After playing around with Illusion to toy with monsters over and over, a notification had popped up one day and granted it to me.
It was probably the skill that best synergized with my ability, Illusion.
Having tried it out firsthand, I could confirm it was an active skill that drastically amplified a target's emotions.
It worked especially well when amplifying things like 'fear' or 'anxiety' — paired with Illusion, it let me drive an enemy straight into a panic state with minimal effort.
Originally I'd planned to play it safe and build down the swordsman tree early on….
Maybe because handling power I'd never possessed in my old life was still novel, but messing around with magic and abilities turned out to be absurdly fun.
I'd still keep using a sidearm, but I'd need to rework my build direction before long.
Truthfully, it seemed like it'd come out stronger than sticking with the sword anyway.
Click.
Finished organizing my thoughts, I washed up quickly, ate breakfast, and stepped out of the impeccably kept building.
The place I'd just left wasn't the five-star hotel room Seria had put me up in — it was one of the dormitories provided by the Academy.
Once my admission was finalized, a notice had come through instructing me to move into the dorms.
First time living in a dorm, actually.
In high school I'd walked to school, and in university I'd lived on my own in a rented room.
I'd been curious what dorm life was like, though reading the horror stories about roommates posted online had made me think dodging it was a blessing — and here I was, living in one anyway.
Well, whatever.
Maybe because this was a world inside a game, the dorm here wasn't some survival arena where you squeezed in shoulder-to-shoulder with roommates. It took the form of private single rooms within the residential halls on campus.
Actually, thinking about it — even for an institution obsessed with equality, cramming the honored children of rival nations into a single room would be the bigger problem.
Anyway. That meant daily life here was hardly different from living on my own.
And I already had a robust track record of independent living, so it posed no trouble whatsoever.
The nobles must have had a rougher time of it, though.
No servants to order around, and their living conditions had taken a nosedive too.
Doesn't apply to me, of course.
The Academy dangled a variety of perks in front of its top performers as motivation — excellence bred excellence, or so the theory went.
The same went for the dormitory I'd just left, a place so absurdly luxurious that 'mind-blowing' was the only honest way to describe it. Top seat privileges.
Thanks to that, even after giving up the lovely room Seria had provided, I'd lived the past few weeks without a single complaint.
“Feeling great.”
Maybe it was the quality of the bed, but despite nodding off late from needless nerves, my body felt fresh and springy as I set off.
My destination: the grand auditorium of Union Academy.
A building purpose-built for ceremonies — speeches, festivals, the entrance ceremony, and the like.
Yes. The entrance ceremony.
Today, at long last, was the day of Union Academy's matriculation.
“Haaah… maybe I shouldn't have taken the top seat after all.”
Just like in the game, snagging the top rank meant delivering a speech at the entrance ceremony.
It was supposedly such a tremendous honor that no one ever refused it, but I couldn't have cared less about that — all I knew was that preparing a speech nobody else had to give was a colossal pain in the ass.
Not that I had the suicidal nerve to actually say 'no, thanks, I'll pass,' of course.
“Even before the possession, mornings and I never got along….”
Because of the rehearsal, I had to show up a full hour early on the day itself, too.
And so here I was, strolling down a road completely devoid of people.
“Is that the place?”
I'd jogged lightly to shake off the last of my drowsiness, and since the dormitory wasn't far from the auditorium anyway, I arrived in no time.
Slipping carefully through the open doors into the hall, I spotted a handful of instructors gathered in the distance, chatting. As a bonus, the rows of chairs that hadn't been there on my last visit now filled the space in dense ranks.
“Good morning.”
“Ah, he's here!”
“Welcome, Cadet Lucian.”
I bowed my head lightly, and the instructors greeted me warmly.
“There's clearly something out of the ordinary about him.”
“Lucky you, Instructor Bronson. Both the top seat and the runner-up came out of the Swordsmanship Department.”
“Haha! Of course I'm pleased. Though it hasn't been the Magic or Healing Departments claiming the top seat these past few years, has it?”
Having glanced my way, the instructors went back to chattering amongst themselves.
Sliding into their midst with the most natural smile I could manage, I asked carefully, checking the time.
“The rehearsal — when does it start?”
The current time was 6:47 a.m. The ceremony began at eight, so I had about an hour and ten minutes to spare.
I was told to arrive an hour early, but cutting it exactly to the minute felt too conspicuous, so I'd left a little early.
“Hmm, rest a bit first, and… let's say we start at the fifty. Get it done quick, then take a breather.”
Instructor Bronson answered my question obligingly.
The fact that 'taking a breather' even came up told you the rehearsal itself didn't take long.
Union Academy was, whatever anyone said, a game — and so its real-world counterpart leaned hard toward the martial over the scholarly.
That meant plenty of things ran on a rough-and-ready, fist-first logic, but the upside was that speeches and headmaster's addresses wrapped up with remarkable speed.
“…And with that, I conclude the address on behalf of the incoming class.”
Clap clap clap—
“Bravo! Splendid, quite splendid!”
“So Cadet Lucian has a talent for the cerebral as well?”
“Heh, what does flexing your brain have to do with giving a speech? Well, I'll grant he's got a way with words.”
Incidentally, my past self had been something of a model student, and I'd rather enjoyed presenting in class.
Drawing on that experience, I recited the script I'd practiced until now with natural fluency, and the instructors' reactions were excellent.
“Good. Plenty of time left.”
“I'm going to catch a quick nap~”
“Overslept again, did you?”
“Beautiful women are naturally weak in the mornings, you see?”
“What a load of nonsense.”
By the time the rehearsal wrapped up, it was half past seven — roughly thirty minutes until the ceremony.
The instructors each drifted to a corner to gossip or catch up on lost sleep, and I picked a suitable seat and killed time.
“W-wow. The auditorium is huge….”
“Hm? People are already here…? Ah, the instructors, I see.”
“Hey, who's that? Doesn't look like an instructor.”
“Grey hair… one of the top-seat admits this year, no? I remember seeing him during the practical exam.”
After about ten minutes, the early birds began trickling into the auditorium one by one.
“Uuugh… cadets only need to be diligent about classes and assignments….”
“Quit spouting nonsense and wake yourself up, Rayna.”
As the hall grew noisier, the instructors, too, began rising from their seats one after another.
I was absently watching them scurry about when a voice came from just behind me.
“You're here early, Lucian.”
I turned to find Seria standing there, immaculately groomed despite the early hour — though perhaps still half asleep, she was mixing formal speech into her words.
“I had to prep for the speech. Hence the early arrival.”
“…Ah. Right. The top-seat admit.”
She muttered as though she'd forgotten, then promptly settled into the seat beside me with a slightly sour expression.
“You're one to talk, showing up early yourself. Hardly anyone's here yet.”
“…Consider it the due diligence of a noble.”
“Figures. Being a noble has its perks, I'll admit, but it does look like a hassle now and then.”
“…More than 'now and then.'”
“Really? Judging by moments like this, I sometimes think it's a blessing I'm not one.”
“Pfft. Well? Say that again once you've actually become one.”
“Fair point. I should try being a noble at some point — wonder when that'd be.”
“You? Stack up enough achievements later on, and you could pick up a barony just about anywhere.”
“Oh?”
While Seria and I traded idle chatter, the hands of the clock hurried along their way.
Tick.
The hour hand settled precisely on eight.
Thud, thud—
The moment I registered it, the sound of footsteps began echoing from across the hall.
“Oh.”
“Looks like it's starting.”
We both fell silent and turned our eyes forward.
Before I knew it, a woman stood upon the stage.
She of the violet hair, draped in an opulent robe, was surveying the cadets with an impassive expression.
Swooosh—
“…?”
“Hmm.”
Smirk.
Just as I got the feeling that she — who had somehow locked eyes with me — had curved her lips into a smile…
“Greetings.”
In an instant, a woman's voice, brimming with charisma, rang out across the vast auditorium.
Whether it carried magic or not, the voice cut cleanly into the ear despite passing through no apparatus whatsoever.
At the same time, for some reason, the air itself seemed to grow heavy — my body instinctively shrank beneath its weight.
“My name is Isabel Arcania. One of only two Archmages on this continent, and the fifth Headmaster of Union Academy. Henceforth, I declare the commencement of the 174th entrance ceremony of Union Academy.”
Clap clap clap clap clap clap—!!
The instant her introduction ended, the cadets broke into applause in unison, unprompted by anyone.
Clap clap—…
Just as the applause that had filled the auditorium began to die down, Headmaster Isabel opened her mouth again.
“Then first and foremost, we shall have the address from the representative of the incoming class.”
Here it comes.
In the instant I swallowed hard, her voice rang out.
“Top-seat admit, Lucian Peyote. Take the stage.”
Steadying my suddenly thundering heart, I mounted the stage with measured calm.
Snap!
With the sound of a snapped finger, a microphone-shaped magical device materialized before me.
I stepped into the spot Isabel had vacated, brought my lips to the device, and spoke a single line.
“A pleasure to meet you all. I am Lucian Peyote, representative of the incoming class.”
Every gaze in the hall converged in an instant.
Swallowing my nerves, I began to recite the script I had prepared —
“…And that concludes my address.”
Clap clap clap clap clap clap—!!
By sheer momentum, I'd managed to see the speech through to the end — and now thunderous applause was there to greet me.
Oh.
Clap clap clap!
Listening to the applause that didn't cease even as I descended the stage, I finally, truly grasped it.
At long last, the long, long journey toward my return home had begun.
