Academy Admission Welcome Ceremony
The sudden news that my former fiancée had come looking for me was startling even to someone who had lived through every hardship imaginable, right up to the moment the world itself ended.
And the first words out of her mouth when she found me only made it worse.
“What are you scheming?”
That was what she said the moment she showed up—asking what I was scheming.
I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how I looked at it, so I asked back.
“Scheming about what?”
“What scheme made you accept it?”
The follow-up drew a hollow laugh out of me before I could stop it.
It was bewildering on every level.
“I proposed the breakup, and you agreed. Where’s the scheme in that?”
“There’s no way you’d accept something like that so easily.”
Raviell glared at me, her eyes swimming with betrayal.
In the previous cycle I had refused the breakup and everything had spiraled into ruin. Now I had accepted it, and she still showed up out of nowhere.
A woman’s heart was something I could never quite grasp, no matter how hard I tried.
Bewildering or not, I answered her question calmly.
“There’s no scheme. I simply accepted the breakup. Once a proposal is made and accepted, what scheme could there even be?”
The only side that lost anything from this breakup was my family.
It had happened because of my own disgraceful behavior, after all.
Raviell, on the other hand, could walk away as the pitiful woman freed from a good-for-nothing fiancé, then engage someone with a better reputation and far greater ability than me.
In this situation, the only one who suffered by accepting the breakup was me.
“You were the one who wanted to break off the engagement with me in the first place. Isn’t it ridiculous to come at me like this over it? If anything, you should be happy.”
My quiet, steady rebuttal seemed to leave her with nothing to say.
Raviell pressed her lips tightly shut.
“…Have you come to hate me now?”
It was a question full of contradictions, coming from the very person who had proposed the breakup.
“Who knows.”
Whether I said yes or no, my answer wouldn’t change anything.
“If anything, I’m the one who wants to ask.”
When I had refused the breakup in the previous cycle, she had flown into a furious rage.
“You hate me, don’t you? So why show up out of the blue and say something like that? Were you about to claim you still have feelings for me or some nonsense?”
“…”
“Raviell. Don’t tell me you never expected things to turn out this way the moment you proposed the breakup. You’re a smart, capable woman.”
Objectively speaking, Raviell was far too good for the original Revan, the one everyone called a good-for-nothing.
She possessed outstanding ability and considerable magical talent, not to mention striking beauty and a natural gift for dealing with people.
Her character was solid as well.
Whether as the head of a family or as a mage, she was exceptional.
For someone like her to pull a stunt like this was laughable.
Especially when it was Raviell of all people.
So she does still have feelings for me, then.
Perhaps she had truly hoped I would refuse the breakup.
Clutching at straws, she might have thought there was still something she could believe in.
Why our relationship had soured so completely in the previous cycle, I still didn’t know—but her reaction now made it clear that some feelings for me remained.
But it was already far too late to turn back.
The breakup had been accepted. We were strangers now.
Of course, given our families, we would still have dealings of some kind.
But it would never again be the intimate relationship of fiancés.
I rose from my seat.
Raviell didn’t answer, but she must have known herself how forced this whole situation was.
“Take care. I mean that.”
Leaving the silent Raviell behind, I stepped out of the reception room.
Unexpected things had happened, but it wasn’t worth fretting over.
Even if I had refused the breakup now, I was destined to break off with her eventually anyway.
And it would be because of Livian—her most beloved father.
The unexpected meeting with my former fiancée aside, the days that followed passed without incident.
My father said nothing about it, so Raviell must have accepted the situation quickly as well.
Of course she would.
She was the heir of a prestigious house, destined to walk the path of a hero.
In the ruined future, she had always stood on the front lines, slaughtering countless demonkin and demons.
This momentary fragility wouldn’t last.
“More importantly, it’s right around the corner now.”
I had finished preparing to leave for the academy.
It was truly upon us.
Only one day remained until academy admission.
This was a medieval world, yet magic was highly advanced, so convenient means of travel were plentiful.
One of them was the teleportation magic circle, and I planned to use it to enter the city where the academy stood.
In truth I could have gone straight there without any circle at all.
But the current me was not the archmage who had survived to the very end—I was a talentless good-for-nothing.
The academy I would be entering, Vendabell Academy, was large enough that calling it city-sized was only a mild exaggeration.
With the sheer amount of infrastructure built inside it, there was rarely any need to leave the grounds.
Even after three years of attendance, there would still be countless areas I never set foot in.
I myself still didn’t know half the places there.
Which makes it perfect for killing time alone.
I intended to live academy life, yes—but most of it would be spent quietly by myself.
I wasn’t going there to learn. I was going to cut off variables and witness with my own eyes how things would differ from before the regression.
“Beginning now.”
Three mages began chanting to activate the magic circle.
Blue mana unfurled from beneath my feet.
Watching them, I couldn’t help thinking:
They look so weak.
Objectively, the mages here were not low-level.
A 5th Tier mage was a rank only reached after considerable experience among practitioners.
Spatial teleportation magic could only be cast from the 7th Tier onward, and to leap through space freely required the 8th Tier—the realm of those called archmages.
Even with the circle already inscribed, activating it was still extremely difficult for a 5th Tier mage.
The problem was that, from my perspective, spatial magic was the kind of spell you could cast with a casual snap of the fingers. Watching them struggle left me with far too much to say.
Better to leave well enough alone.
That thought was only possible because I still retained my power.
If I had returned to the past with all my strength gone, I wouldn’t be standing here critiquing them—I’d be fretting over everything that was about to happen all over again.
In a way I ought to be grateful to the goddess, yet of course I still hated the one who had dumped me into this hell.
Even if I had returned to the past with my power intact, nothing I had endured simply vanished.
Still, gratitude was gratitude.
The moment I offered the God of Light a thank-you that contained not even a speck of sincerity, the magic circle activated.
My vision swayed. My body felt as if it were floating.
I didn’t resist; I simply let the phenomenon take me.
When every sensation stilled and I opened my eyes, I was somewhere completely different.
A throng of people, dense and noisy.
And a welcome banner large enough to hold them all.
Welcome to Vendabell Academy.
I had returned once more to the academy that, in my previous life, had felt like hell itself.
The academy’s entrance was disgustingly wide, and the crowd was disgustingly large.
Given the academy’s size, it wasn’t only students. Administrators who managed the place and merchants who bought and sold goods inside the grounds thronged everywhere as well.
Entering required a bit of procedure, but for students like me it was simple—just show the admission notice.
Once inside, the academy felt incredibly, overwhelmingly unfamiliar.
The last time I had seen it, everything had been burning.
For a fleeting moment I even felt a strange nostalgia—though considering everything that had happened here, “nostalgia” was the last word that should have come to mind. It had been pure hell.
Anyway.
I left my luggage in the private dormitory that had been assigned in advance, changed into the uniform, and headed for the auditorium where the entrance ceremony would begin.
I pulled a stick of candy from my pocket and put it in my mouth.
One of the habits from my previous life was this very candy.
Letting it dissolve slowly on my tongue brought a quiet sense of calm I found deeply comforting.
It was strawberry-flavored.
Rihel would love this.
I remembered how my little sister had clung to me, eyes brimming, before I left the family estate.
Honestly, for a second I had considered not enrolling at all.
But that wouldn’t have been right, so I soothed and coaxed her until she finally calmed down.
“I already miss her.”
If I had known it would feel like this, I might have tried to take things a little easier in my previous life. But now that I had returned, time was plentiful.
Even living at the academy didn’t mean I would never go home.
I decided that when I next returned to the family, I would bring back things Rihel would like, and with that thought I arrived at the building where the entrance ceremony was about to start.
Stepping inside, I was met by an interior that was disgustingly vast.
Spatial expansion magic had been applied; the inside was far larger than the exterior suggested.
I headed for the section marked First-Years, found a reasonable seat, and sat down.
Before long, whispers drifted over.
“…Isn’t that him?”
“The good-for-nothing from the prestigious house.”
“He looks more decent than the rumors.”
Well now.
Famous enough to be recognized on sight, apparently.
None of the comments were flattering, but I was used to it, so they barely registered.
There was no need to listen carefully to people who wouldn’t dare say it to my face.
I simply waited for the ceremony to start quickly.
Then, all at once, the air around us grew heavy.
The density of mana in the atmosphere rose.
I immediately recognized whose presence it was and couldn’t help a small snort of laughter.
“It’s starting.”
The words had barely left my mouth when a massive tremor rolled through the hall.
The official new-student welcome ceremony had begun.