The Sword Saint's Successor
The Headmaster's Office I arrived at, guided by Vanessa, was unexpectedly spartan.
So much so that it hardly struck me as a space fitting for the head of the Academy.
A single flowerpot standing in one corner, and a painting whose meaning I — a man with no particular appreciation for art — couldn't begin to guess. That was the extent of the decorations.
Aside from the fact that the room was reasonably spacious, there was nothing remarkable about it at all.
Click.
When I mentioned I'd already eaten, Olberus immediately had Vanessa bring out tea.
I hadn't drunk black tea all that often, but I wasn't a child, and as the one being served it would be a bit rich of me to fuss. So I picked up the cup and took a sip straight away.
Slurp.
It wasn't bad, exactly.
Between the characteristically slightly astringent notes of black tea, I thought I caught a faint hint of fruit.
Still, I couldn't help feeling that coffee would have suited my palate better.
Professor Seras would have served coffee. A real shame, that.
"I apologize for calling you here so suddenly."
After we'd each taken a sip of tea, Olberus was the first to speak.
It wasn't without its inconveniences, of course, but since I was the one who'd caused the trouble in the first place, I figured I ought to bear it, so I didn't mind much.
"Not at all. I can more or less guess the reason."
"I appreciate you thinking that way. By the way, has your body recovered completely?"
"Thanks to your concern, yes."
A few rounds of polite pleasantries passed back and forth, and a deep hum escaped from within Olberus's thick white beard.
Come to think of it, I'd felt this before — the man was absurdly imposing.
I don't mean his physical size. I mean the aura that radiated from his entire being.
True to his status as one of the Five Heroes, his presence was unlike anyone else I had ever met.
On the surface he looked like a kindly old man, but perhaps that was precisely why he was a man you couldn't afford to underestimate.
Tap. Tap.
I was still composing my silent impressions of the old man seated before me when —
I heard Olberus tap the empty tabletop beside his teacup twice with his index finger.
At the same moment, a faint indigo ripple of mana spread out in every direction, filling the Headmaster's Office entirely before fading from sight.
Soundproofing magic, by the looks of it.
Only then did I narrow my eyes, realizing the real conversation was about to begin.
"For now, we are proceeding on the assumption that they were remnants of the Followers, exactly as you testified, and expanding our investigation accordingly. We've also deployed personnel skilled in divination magic to re-examine the Magician's Forest, though as of now it seems no meaningful evidence has been found."
"I see."
Well, it wouldn't be easy to find.
Even in the original story, the Followers were consummate experts at evading pursuit unless they themselves chose to make their presence known.
If I remembered correctly, the setting gave them some unique magic that only they could use — though I had no way of knowing the principles behind it.
Still, I didn't expect him to be this forthcoming about it.
As Olberus walked me through the progress of the case in considerable detail, I found myself unable to shake a mild sense of surprise.
Frankly, I'd assumed that once the incident was over and the Academy had extracted whatever information it needed from me, they'd cast me aside quickly enough.
Objectively speaking, I was nothing more than Cadet Number One — a student who'd stumbled into the incident by chance, resolved it by chance, and handed over the evidence. Nothing more, nothing less.
So why he was revealing the inner workings of the matter in such detail was honestly beyond me.
Did he simply believe that reporting this much to the person who solved the incident was basic courtesy?
But for something involving the Followers — hardly a matter to be bandied about lightly — that explanation seemed thin.
Well, whatever the reason, as far as I was concerned, the chance to gain even a little more information was more than welcome.
"And the second reason I called you here is none other than this. Professor Seras has no doubt already given you a hint."
Having finished his brief explanation of the case's progress, Olberus shifted topics and took another sip of his tea.
I knew what was coming, but not wanting to come across as some greedy opportunist, I replied in as level a tone as I could manage.
"Yes, I did hear something."
"Then this will be quick. Ideally, the faculty and I would have settled on your reward at the end of our meetings, but it's proven rather difficult."
So that's why he called in the person concerned.
In other words, this amounted to: Tell me, in your own words, what reward you'd like.
It was honestly a little embarrassing, but on reflection, stating it myself seemed better than receiving something I had no use for.
Just as an awkward birthday gift from a friend tends to sit forgotten in a drawer, a reward works out best when both giver and receiver end up pleased. That was simply how I saw it.
"Is there anything in particular you desire?"
"Nothing comes to mind, sir. In the first place, I don't think this warrants the kind of praise you're giving it."
After all, even if I did name what I wanted, whether the Academy would actually grant it was another question entirely.
So I was reluctant to open my mouth carelessly.
If only I could get some rough sense of what category of reward was even on the table.
"Then how about this?"
Olberus, who had worn a thoughtful expression at my answer for a moment, finally spoke.
Apparently, since I hadn't offered a suitable answer, he'd decided to think of an appropriate reward on my behalf.
I leaned in with interest, and a rather unexpected proposal came out of his mouth.
"As I'm sure you know, the Academy treats its students quite differently depending on rank. I hear you're in Class E — have you ever considered requesting a class promotion?"
"A class promotion, you say..."
"Of course, jumping straight to Class A may be out of the question. But as far as Class B, I would gladly raise you at once."
It was a strikingly bold offer.
In this Academy, ability and achievement were everything. Promoting me — who hadn't even sat the Class Reassignment evaluation yet — straight to Class B was, without question, a considerable gesture of favor.
Especially for me, the very student who'd enrolled with an F-rank mana manifestation and dragged a storm of outlandish rumors in from day one, to be regarded this highly was frankly astonishing.
But it's a no.
Accepting it at this point in time felt off in more ways than one.
If I didn't get to the bottom of how Arden came to be in Class E now, it would leave a sour taste — like relieving yourself and not washing your hands afterward.
Besides, even in the original story, that girl was a walking incident magnet. A kind of protagonist bias, if you will.
In other words, having resolved to tackle future incidents as they came, the correct move for me was almost certainly to keep Arden close and snip each of those buds before they bloomed.
The agony that would come with it was just the price of admission.
And my current treatment isn't exactly bad, either.
Sure, the living allowance dressed up as a "dignity maintenance stipend" was pitiful, and the dorm room was a wreck.
But it was no great departure from life back home, so it was more than survivable.
Moreover, word had it that Class B in particular was rife with nasty gossip about me, and I had zero desire to live in a place like that.
Class C, where Rone was, might not have been bad — but knowing her, she'd trail after me regardless of which class she landed in, so sharing one hardly seemed necessary.
"I'm grateful for the offer, but I must decline."
"Unexpected. I thought it a fair proposal."
"Yes. But I believe the time isn't right yet."
Saying it this way, Olberus wouldn't have a clue what I meant — but no better excuse came to mind, so I simply spoke my true thoughts aloud.
At that, both of Olberus's eyes went round, and before long a booming laugh filled the Headmaster's Office from wall to wall.
His laughter carried mana in it, it seemed — for an instant, something pressed down on my eardrums.
Ow, my ears. The old man laughs entirely too loud.
"I see. I understand your wishes well enough. Then let us set this matter aside for now. Should something you desire come to mind, send word through Vanessa or Professor Seras at any time."
"I will do so."
With the conversation winding down, I gave a nod and let my shoulders — which had gone somewhat stiff — finally relax.
The privilege of being able to ask a single favor of the Academy's Headmaster himself was a weighty one.
For now, rather than spending it on personal comforts, I figured I'd hold it in reserve as an investment in the future.
"I would love nothing more than to talk longer, but class will have started by now, and I can't very well keep you. You're free to go."
And so, with Olberus's farewell as the final note, I left the Headmaster's Office under Vanessa's guidance.
I should stop by the campus store on the way and grab myself another bread roll.
As it happened, the next classes were herbology and alchemy — ones I'd been itching to skip anyway. Perfect timing, really.
Elisha Krochel was, by all accounts, the very model of a diligent cadet.
During lectures, her pen never stopped moving, and her gaze shifted only between the blackboard, the professor, and her notebook — she paid little mind to anything else.
Yet today, she sat with her chin propped in her hand, staring absently out the window.
Professor Philip — the skinny, bespectacled man in the midst of lecturing with passionate fervor — noticed none of it, scribbling away at the blackboard with his chalk.
After all, it had never once occurred to him, as a professor, that a dependable student like Elisha might fail to concentrate in class.
Scratch. Scratch.
Completely betraying her professor's faith in her, Elisha began scribbling furiously on a blank page of her notebook.
For a moment one might have thought she'd finally started taking notes — but alas, no such thing was happening.
Bell Dinauer = the Sword Saint's successor?
Having written out the four-word phrase, Elisha sank into deep contemplation.
At first, she'd dismissed it as baseless conjecture and tried her hardest to clear her head of it.
But in the wake of the Magician's Forest incident, that conjecture was steadily hardening into conviction.
She set her pen moving once more, writing out the foundations of her reasoning one by one.
And each time the blank space filled in a little more, Elisha had to fight to quiet the pounding of her heart.
His reason for pushing so hard to place at the top of the mock exam — this would explain all of it.
At first, she'd simply taken him for a conscientious sort by nature.
Watching him throw himself at the mock exams with such fevered dedication, when hardly anyone else gave them a second thought, she'd thought him an unusual young man.
But what if what he'd sought wasn't the exam itself, but something it would yield?
The Observation Pass. Joining the Magician's Forest survey through it. And then, in the aftermath, succeeding in protecting the Blessing of Astesia. Could all of that truly be written off as coincidence?
Not to mention what the Class C cadet said. That they clearly witnessed him cutting down a spirit.
Recalling the conversation she'd shared with a witness of the incident before her meeting with Olberus yesterday, Elisha narrowed her eyes.
The realm of cutting down formless spirit-entities was not one a swordsman reached easily.
It was precisely why swordsmen, upon reaching their limits, so often turned their attention to magic and other arcane powers.
Among all the swordsmen Elisha could recall, only two had ever reached that level through nothing but the strength of their own blade.
The first was her own father, the Red Sword, Balzac Ponter Crochel — one of the Five Heroes.
And the second was the Sword Saint, Kalon Schweizer — history's undisputed strongest swordsman, in name and in fact.
If Bell had studied under the Sword Saint himself, then reaching such a realm at his young age was hardly impossible to believe.
How he came to learn of their plans doesn't matter. For the Sword Saint's successor, that would be entirely within reach.
That was it.
His enrollment, the course of his resolving the incident, and every hypothesis she had built on top of them —
The single fact that Bell Dinauer was the Sword Saint's successor made every last one of those coincidences click into place, every question answered.
So it really was you. The Sword Saint's successor.
It would have been laughable, truly — a duke's daughter addressing a commoner with scrupulous honorifics for someone not even present to hear them. But Elisha didn't care in the slightest.
And so, as her suspicion settled into certainty and the wild pounding of her heart finally began to subside, she resolved to decide her course of action going forward.
First — this fact must stay hidden.
The very fact that he had noticed the Followers' existence in advance yet kept his presence suppressed told her how meticulous he was.
Were the truth of his succession to the Sword Saint to come to light, they would move at once — and this Academy would be thrown into utter chaos.
Which meant that what she ought to do now was simple: keep his existence hidden as best she could, so that he might live out his days as an ordinary Academy cadet, exactly as he wished.
The only people she might have confided in were Headmaster Olberus, or her father — who, like the Sword Saint, had been one of the Five Heroes. But in Elisha's judgment, even that risked being the worst available option.
In the end, the fewer people who knew, the tighter the secret stayed. And if Bell himself wasn't revealing it, then he surely had his reasons.
More than that, though... what face am I supposed to show him from now on?
The thought that the successor to the Sword Saint she so revered had been right before her eyes all along made Elisha's cheeks burn inexplicably hot.
He was not the Sword Saint himself, of course. But with the man dead, seeing his chosen successor as one and the same hardly seemed strange.
No — I simply treat him the same as always. An ordinary friend. I can do this. Elisha Krochel.
She gave both her cheeks a brisk slap, renewed her resolve, and nodded with a determined expression.
It felt as though she'd been saddled with a grave responsibility — but weighed against what he must surely be carrying on his own shoulders, this was hardly worthy of the word.
And so, on this day, the Sword Saint's successor was born in the mind of one young woman.