The Road to the Academy
Six years had slipped by since I swallowed that elixir.
Somewhere along the way, my body had filled out, sturdy and broad-shouldered, and the boy who once could barely swing a wooden sword now knocked out a thousand practice strikes a day without breaking stride. Whether it was thanks to the elixir or not, I had a strong suspicion that my skills were growing at a pace that was anything but normal — though for now, that skill was little more than what I'd carved out on my own, hunting wild boars and beasts in the hills behind the village with no teacher to guide me.
Perhaps that was why my expectations for the academy I would set out for today burned all the hotter. It was, after all, the finest educational institution in the empire — surely it would be full of masters worth learning from.
"Huuh! Huuh!"
"Nine hundred ninety-nine... one thousand!"
I finished one of my daily routines while Rhone counted my wooden sword swings beside me.
"Good work, Bell."
"Yeah. Thanks."
I wiped the sweat from my face with the thin towel she held out and gave my thanks. Today was the day we left, so I would have preferred to rest, but this training had long since become second nature — skip a single day, and my body would itch with restlessness until I couldn't stand it.
"You finished packing?"
"Sis is probably busy wrapping things up right now. You'd better double-check your own stuff."
"Don't worry. I packed ages ago."
Rhone clenched both fists and flashed a grin brimming with confidence. There was something undeniably cute about it. Then again, she'd always been meticulous about everything, so it wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn she'd had her bags packed a full week before our departure was even confirmed.
I'd rinse off the sweat and get moving myself. The carriage departed from the next village over, so time wasn't exactly a luxury we had.
"I'll wash up, grab my things, and be right down. Wait for me a moment."
"Okay. Take your time."
On my way to the water basin set outside the house, I ran into my sister. She'd been a nervous wreck worrying over me right up until yesterday, but her expression looked noticeably brighter today, and that alone put my mind at ease.
"Bell, your luggage is all packed. Are you leaving now?"
"That's the plan."
"...Come back safe. Even if you don't pass, don't let it crush you. Got it?"
Apparently my sister had already resigned herself to the idea that I would fail, because she was offering her condolences in advance. To be fair, it wasn't an unreasonable assumption. A single academy admission would turn a village like ours upside down — expecting both me and Rhone to get in probably was the stranger thing to believe.
Honestly, if I claimed I wasn't anxious, I'd be lying through my teeth. But what could I do? A man who's drawn his sword has to swing it at something.
"Want to give your big sister a hug before you go?"
"I'm not a kid anymore, a hug is—"
"You don't want to?"
No, that wasn't the issue — I was still drenched in sweat and hadn't washed yet. But one look at her eyes told me she was seconds away from welling up with big, chicken-scratch tears. In the end, I had no choice but to spread my arms, and she stepped right in and held me tight. Back in the day, she'd been the one lifting me up in her arms; now the roles had reversed. It stirred up strange feelings, I'll admit.
"I'm off, Sis. Don't worry, just wait for me. I'll write plenty once I'm enrolled."
"Mm. Come back safe. Don't forget to say goodbye to Mother and Father. And look after Rhone, you hear?"
"You just said I'm not a kid anymore."
I answered her round of well-worn reminders with a wry smile. At that, she pulled back from my chest, tilted her head up to look at me — I was a full head taller than her now — and nodded with evident satisfaction.
"All right. I won't worry anymore. Off you go, then."
With those parting words, I left my sister behind, clambered up the hill for a quick wash to rinse away the sweat, then stepped inside to bid my parents farewell. Like my sister, they offered nothing more than a simple wish for a safe journey — no tears, no fuss. They'd always been made of stern stuff.
And so, luggage in hand, I walked out of the house I'd lived in for eighteen years, passed through the send-off of the villagers, and set off alongside Rhone. The moment I set foot on a road I had never once walked in my life, a landscape I'd never seen stretching out before me, my heart began to pound for no reason I could name.
It finally felt as though something had begun.
Delos Academy.
Unlike every other institution of learning, it was not built at the heart of some great city. Instead, if you traveled northeast from a city called Hispen, long enough, you would arrive at an island — and there the academy stood. The island had never borne a name of its own, but at some point it came to be called Delos Academy Island, borrowed wholesale from the school that claimed it.
With an environment all its own, the island wanted for nothing. Head northwest, and you'd find dense forests, valleys, towering mountains, and true wilderness. Head northeast, and you'd reach ancient ruins said to hold the history of long-lost magic — sealed off to entry now, but there all the same. A place woven into the very history of the Arcadia Empire itself; its depths were beyond anything I could imagine. That was the kind of ground we now stood upon.
"Are you the entrance applicants?"
"Yes, that's right."
The man who greeted us at the academy's gates was a stern, middle-aged fellow with deep green hair and a no-nonsense face. Since he didn't ring a single bell, I doubted he was anyone of much consequence in the original story.
"Place your hand here and channel your mana through. If your identity cannot be verified, you will not be admitted."
He held out some sort of round disc toward us. This, I gathered, was the mana scanner mentioned in the original novel — a method unique to the academy that confirmed a person's identity through the mana they channeled into it.
Zeeeeng.
"Applicant number 2437, Bell Dinauer. Is that correct?"
"It is."
"Next — applicant number 1437, Rhone Elua. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
Once our identities were confirmed, the man laid his free hand on the stack of papers he carried. In the same instant, our information printed itself onto the sheets as if by magic, and he handed each of us our own.
"Take these and proceed to the examination halls. Signposts have been set up all over the grounds, so you shouldn't have much trouble finding your way."
"Thank you. Rhone, let's go."
"Yeah!"
Leading Rhone along by the hand — she nodded with a energetic little bob of her head — we arrived before the examination halls, where the path split into two branches. The left entrance bore a sign reading Combat Department Examination Hall. The right read Magic Department Examination Hall. And before each entrance stood men in immaculately pressed suits, keeping watch.
"Rhone, that's your way. See you after."
"Got it. If I finish first, I'll wait by that tree over there."
She pointed to a large tree beside the entrance of the Combat Department hall, where I would be testing. I gave her a nod, and she hurried off toward her own entrance. I watched her go until she disappeared from view, then turned and walked toward my own fate.
A line of fellow applicants stretched out ahead of me — and among them was a face I knew all too well. My eyes went wide before I could stop them.
Elisha Crochel. Of all people.
Golden hair spilling down to her waist, turquoise eyes, a figure so striking you could pick her out of a crowd from across a field. And her gaze — sharp as a blade, the look of a hunter stalking her prey. Like Rhone, she was one of the original story's central heroines: the second daughter of the Crochel family, a house renowned for the sword.
Her backstory was a familiar one — born with talent that paled beside her older sister Ellen Crochel's, she had been all but cast out of her own family and sent packing to the academy. In truth, anyone else would have called Elisha a genius by any measure; it was simply that Ellen was so monstrously exceptional that her little sister's light had been overshadowed. In the original story, it was the protagonist Aden who came to understand this wound of hers and gently took her under his wing — which is, of course, how her flag got planted.
Still, I never dreamed I'd run into an original character this early, Rhone aside. What a nostalgic feeling.
"Applicants 2435 through 2438, please enter the examination hall."
Just as I was quietly savoring the sight of a familiar face, the man guarding the entrance called the next batch of applicants. Elisha was among them.
The door swung open, and I stepped through into a considerably spacious chamber. At its center sat a woman with deep violet hair, occupying a chair with a pedestal, a stack of papers, and a single pen in hand. Even her face was achingly familiar.
Professor Seras. Just as I thought.
She, too, made her first appearance at precisely this point in the original story — the wielder of the Eye of Insight, an ability that laid bare the inner depths of whoever stood before her. I didn't know the exact mechanics, but according to the novel's description, she could perceive a person's current capability and their ceiling of potential, the way one might see an aura around them. It had limits, though — it judged the flesh, not the mana. That was why, even in the original story, she'd relied on mana-measuring devices to fulfill her role as examiner.
"Sit in your assigned seats and place your hand on the measuring orb beneath your chair. Then state aloud the color your orb produces. An observer is watching from behind; anyone found lying will be disqualified on the spot."
No greeting, no preamble — Professor Seras rattled off her instructions in a tone as brisk and businesslike as a customs inspection. Her manner was a bit brusque, but she'd been exactly like this in the original story too, so I paid it no mind. Following her orders, I took hold of the orb at my feet.
Light spilled out. In the same instant, I felt something drain out through my palm, and the patternless orb began to glow.
My insides were churning as I stared at it.
Just give me C. At the very least, C.
I prayed with everything I had, because even the purple of a C-rank would be cause for celebration. The reason was simple: this academy determined everything about a student's treatment based on a comprehensive rating from A to E — a system that was, in practice, a straight-up caste system.
Granted, even a poor mana evaluation could be overturned if you caught Professor Seras's eye and scored an S-rank on the physical assessment. But as I saw it, that was about as likely as plucking a star from the sky. Even by the official lore, only a handful of students in history had ever earned that kind of assessment from her. Elisha herself — a certified prodigy — had only managed an A-rank physical evaluation in the original story, landing her at an overall A.
The pure white light surrounding the orb began, at last, to recede.
What kind of result was waiting for me? I peered into the orb with my heart in my throat.
"Ah."
The moment I saw what greeted me, a sigh escaped my lips before I could stop it. The color glowing within the orb was green. Which meant I'd been granted an F — the lowest possible rating in the mana assessment.
Wonderful. This was the moment my dreamed-of future came crashing down. It was still better than being a commoner who couldn't manifest mana at all, but that distinction meant next to nothing. Worse still, an F-rank in mana manifestation meant immediate removal from the admission roster — no physical evaluation, no second chance, nothing.
As the realization sank in, I felt my consciousness begin to drift. Was this really it? Were six years of effort about to dissolve into nothing?
"Welp. I'm screwed."
The hollow murmur slipped out of me, heavy with defeat. Feeling Professor Seras's gaze drawing steadily closer, I braced myself and waited for my verdict.