Don't Fall for It. I Know Best
The stupid hat had spent the last several minutes dutifully advertising nothing but high-grade trash, and the lecture hall’s atmosphere was now an absolute wreck.
“What’s wrong with everyone?” I asked innocently.
“Haha. It seems the young lady’s staggering talent has left them all rendered speechless,” Giselle replied smoothly.
“What good is a bunch of useless talent? I already said I don’t want any of it.”
“Are you truly certain?” Giselle murmured, his squinty eyes gleaming. “From what I gathered, twenty-four divinities vying for the supreme throne offered you Apostle classes, and several Legendary classes bound to monumental destinies were unlocked as well.”
“I’m gonna be a Magic Swordsman!”
Isabelle looked as though she were in physical pain at the waste. “Are you serious? If explorers uncover a class with a name that ominous inside an ancient ruin, they change classes on the spot without a second thought!”
“Did you hate being an explorer, Isabelle?”
“I wouldn’t say I hated it. It’s just a way to put food on the table. In the same way grave robbers dig up treasures hoping to strike it rich, most explorers are just hoping to hit the jackpot by unearthing some secret, ancient, legendary class.”
“Really?”
“Ancient. Legendary. Either one of those keywords reeks of turning your life around overnight, and you got handed both at the same time!”
Well, sure. Newbies loved that sort of thing.
Hidden classes, unique classes, one-of-a-kind overpowered jobs that belonged to nobody else in the world—that was the classic beginner fantasy.
If there weren’t lethal traps hidden beneath the fine print, I would have snapped them up in a heartbeat, too. But the risks lurking in the shadows were far too steep. As a veteran gamer, the idea of wagering my very soul on a high-risk gamble like that held zero appeal.
“I like Magic Swordsman!” I insisted firmly.
“Haaah... What on earth is so great about that damn Magic Swordsman anyway? It’s half-baked at swordsmanship and half-baked at sorcery.”
“If you’re good at both, you’re twice as broken!”
When encountering monsters with high physical resistance, you blast them with magic. When facing monsters with high magic resistance, you hack them to pieces with physical attacks. What if that character happened to be a student in the Adventuring Department on top of that? You wouldn’t even need one-trick rogues for pathfinding, trap disarming, or lockpicking. You’d have a solo build capable of pulling off three roles at once—the ultimate all-rounder.
“More importantly, why am I the only one getting publicly roasted here? Aren't you going to test the rest of them?”
I puffed out my cheeks in a disgruntled pout. Professor Bronze stared at me in sheer disbelief.
“Freshman Orknodi’s sheer audacity never ceases to amaze me. You will surely grow into an enormous figure one day.”
“Of course! I’m going to be at least two meters thirty!”
“...That was not quite the kind of 'enormous' I had in mind,” Professor Bronze sighed, shaking her head. “Very well. For the students who have not yet worn the hat, we shall proceed only with those who consent.”
A few hands tentatively rose into the air.
Aside from Isabelle, Giselle, and Titocoga, the lecture hall was virtually devoid of volunteers. The only other person who caught my eye was Sing.
“They say bold figures attract spirited heroes. A courageous display; quite impressive,” the professor remarked.
Fortunately, she chose to interpret my companions’ stubborn defiance as courage rather than reckless bravado.
“Watch yourself,” Professor Bronze muttered, giving the hat a sharp poke with her trench dagger.
The hat shivered violently beneath the cold steel.
“Department of Administration,” the hat called out. “You possess the aptitude to achieve greatness as a Dark Merchant. Cold-blooded and ruthless—a war profiteer wouldn’t suit you poorly either.”
“Department of Production. A born culinarian. With that finesse, you’d make a fine Dark Chef, slipping a drop of lethal poison into a feast without a soul ever noticing.”
“Bwahahaha! And what is this pathetic little coward? Weak-willed, mediocre talent, constantly reading everyone else’s expressions—you’re a born maid! Why not strip off that school uniform and put on a maid outfit already?”
The hat had been blathering on as it pleased, but when Titocoga burst into quiet, sniffling tears with a pathetic “H-hinging...”, Professor Bronze promptly drove her blade straight into its fabric to shut it up.
The icy chill that had gripped the room thawed ever so slightly thanks to the absurd spectacle of Titocoga being branded a maid.
“Haah. That hat did that on purpose, didn’t it?” Isabelle grumbled, crossing her burly arms. “A Dark Chef? Now everyone’s going to remember me as some suspicious lunatic who poisons her own food.”
“Haha. Life is all a matter of perspective, is it not?” Giselle offered warmly. “Fewer people will dare pester you for free meals from now on, so you can enjoy some peace and quiet.”
“Love the optimism, 'Mr. Dark Merchant.'”
Giselle, who was already an active underworld broker, took zero damage from the evaluation. Instead, realizing the hat possessed enough insight to pinpoint his exact profession, he seemed to conclude that the sinister classes it had suggested for me were dangerously plausible. Ever since, an unsettling mix of anticipation, concern, excitement, and ambition had been swirling in his gaze whenever he looked in my direction.
“Uncle Giselle,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Just to be clear: if you suddenly show up waving some Legendary Class Change Stone in my face, I’m going to be really mad.”
“Haha. Perish the thought. Such artifacts command astronomical sums—where would I even source one? Unless I went hunting through ancient tombs alongside Isabelle, there is no chance I could ever acquire such a thing.”
So you’ve already considered dragging Isabelle along to hunt for one.
I was truly glad I gave him advance warning.
“Hing... Orknodi-i-i,” Titocoga whimpered, clutching my sleeve. “That mean hat told me to just be a maid. What if everyone calls me a maid and treats me like their servant starting tomorrow?”
“Just come tell me! If any student tries to bully Titocoga, I’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!”
I swung my arm to make a fierce chopping motion with my chopsticks—only for my grip to slip. The chopsticks went whirling through the air end over end, striking a ceiling fixture with pinpoint force.
Crash!
The shattered glass fixture plummeted straight to the lecture hall floor, exploding in a spray of sparks and fragments. Screams erupted throughout the room.
Meanwhile, the reinforced walls of the classroom caused the metal chopsticks to ricochet at terrifying speeds—ping-ping-ping!—bouncing between the ceiling and concrete before burying themselves straight down through the thick wooden desk of a nearby student, where they finally hummed to a halt.
“Ah! That’s the boy who called me a maid earlier!” Titocoga gasped, her eyes going wide. “Orknodi... did you hear him? Were you avenging me just now?”
Well, what was done was done.
There was no escaping the penalty for property damage now anyway.
“...Of course I was!”
The moment I brazenly puffed out my chest and took credit, system prompts flashed before my eyes, notifying me that I had once again terrorized my fellow classmates.
Fear Induction EXP +15
Bad Child EXP +2
“Freshman Orknodi,” Professor Bronze sighed, rubbing her temples. “Steel yourself to humbly accept the invoice for classroom property damage that will be arriving via your magic watch shortly.”
“Okaaay...”
An unintended expenditure of Points, sure, but if it spared my friend Titocoga from crying her way through the semester, wasn't it worth it?
Besides, I didn’t entirely mind having Titocoga cling to my side, chattering away with stars of admiration shining in her eyes.
Why? Because Titocoga was adorable!
There was no point denying it: I had an incurable weakness for pretty women and cute creatures. Just because my physical shell had turned into a young girl didn’t mean my personal tastes had changed in the slightest.
Though muscle memory is a real thing, so if something the original owner of this body loved pops up, I might react to it instinctively.
What had the original Orknodi liked?
I was curious, but not desperately so. What could an eleven-year-old child even care about? Dolls? Pretty flowers? Probably something typical like that.
“Department of Administration! And a natural-born quartermaster at that! It fits your wicked mind and cruel, heartless temperament to absolute perfection!”
Having wriggled free during the commotion, the hat bellowed out its evaluation of the final examinee, drawing everyone’s rapt attention.
Sing, the last volunteer, seized the hat by the brim with an expression that asked whether the enchanted headwear had completely lost its sanity.
“You had better think very carefully before speaking, Hat,” Sing said, his voice dropping into a lethal register. “I am a swordsman. A seeker of the path who has slain over a hundred duelists.”
Honestly, even from my perspective, Sing’s natural fit was clearly the Department of Knights with a class like Murderous Swordsman. Watching the hat toss him into Administration without a shred of hesitation was genuinely unexpected.
The Department of Administration was where students who lacked the talent for other faculties went to scrape together some sort of credentials through sheer grit—or where royalty and high-ranking aristocrats gathered in droves.
To put it bluntly, it was a vanity department created so talentless nobles could wave around a business card claiming to be a Gift Academy graduate or former attendee. A convenient institution for international diplomacy and face-saving. That was why imperial scions and foreign princes were so heavily concentrated there.
The Mesugaki Imperial Princess was an outlier with genuine magical aptitude, which was why she was bound for the Department of Magic instead.
“Which is precisely why it suits you all the more!” the hat cackled, undeterred by the threat. “Have you ever considered it? A quartermaster who slaughters the raiders and enemy infiltrators targeting his supply lines!”
“A trivial chore,” Sing sneered. “How is guarding military wagons any different from acting as a hired guard for a merchant caravan?”
“That would be true for an ordinary quartermaster! But what suits you is a Dark Quartermaster!”
“...‘Dark’?”
“When the army’s morale plunges to rock bottom, when deserters and casualties run rampant, you are the quartermaster who marches into the field despite the risk of friendly betrayal and leaked supply routes! You may well cut down more allies than enemies!”
“Oho.”
“You can abuse your authority to frame insubordinate troops for hoarding rations or leaking intel, executing soldiers on the spot without trial! A truly marvelous class for drenching yourself in blood!”
“Oho” my foot, I thought, staring at him. Of course he’d take a liking to something as twisted as he is.
Though even from my perspective, if an unhinged butcher like Sing showed up as a supply officer escorting a transport wagon, any sane person would take one look and think: Whoa, that guy looks completely insane, maybe we should just let this carriage pass.
It certainly hadn't earned the title of Dark Quartermaster for nothing.
“Its advanced tier is Dark Logistics Commander,” the hat declared excitedly. “And its pinnacle class is the Shadow Power behind the Military! An existence that directly dictates a sovereign nation’s martial rule, reducing mere swordsmen to expendable ants to be worked to death at your leisure!”
“Now that sounds entertaining,” Sing murmured, a faint smirk tugging at his lips.
Are you out of your mind?!
Sure, it might be entertaining for him, but it was going to drop a tactical nuclear bomb right into the Department of Administration, where princes, princesses, young lords, and noble ladies spent their days laughing politely and making pleasant conversation.
That department was a peacefully rotten playground where students sorted themselves into hierarchies based on their home nations and faction backing, coasting through academy life while underlings ran their errands and did their homework.
Imagine dropping a solitary, blade-happy madman who solved minor disagreements with decapitation into that delicate ecosystem!
Bloody storms would brew by the day. Before long, I could practically see desperate nobles hiring academy assassins for all-out turf wars with Sing in the corridors.
“Don’t fall for it! I know best!” I yelled, waving my arms frantically. “That won't be fun at all!”
I preferred not to meddle if I could help it, but for the sake of preserving a peaceful academy life, I had to stop the hat from filling his head with nonsense.
Sing turned toward me, his eyes gleaming with the chilling intensity of someone who looked fully capable of having slaughtered three men on his morning walk to class.
“What would you know, giant little girl?”
I needed something persuasive. An excuse so universally terrifying that he would buy it instantly, even if it wasn't based on my own personal experience.
“...Papa.”
“?”
“Papa told me!” I said, putting on my most earnest childish face. “He said the military in every country is totally boring!”
Sing paused. He stared at me for a long moment, processing the weight of that name, before nodding in complete understanding.
“Is that so. Then living as a swordsman is better after all.”
Sing casually tossed the hat aside onto his leather briefcase.
Whew. Thank goodness he bought it.
...Except someone else entirely bought it too.
Over by the podium, Professor Bronze went stark white, muttering beneath her breath in sheer horror.
“Those Foundation bastards... No wonder they breached our academy’s security so easily. Did they pull strings within the military, leaving us starved of external support? And not just ours... but within every single military across the world...?”
...Sorry, Papa.
I had a terrible feeling I had just caused another massive misunderstanding, but it would probably be fine, right?