The Scheduled Event
My grand scheme to exploit the princess crashed and burned in spectacular fashion.
To think someone could actually inflict the bitter sting of defeat upon a hardcore veteran like me! Truly terrifying, that Mesugaki Second Princess!
"Puhuhu. Getting some late-night exercise was wonderful♡ It totally blew away all my stress♡ Feel free to ask anytime if you want to make another wager♡"
"Hmph! As if! You went and slaughtered someone else's collectibles without asking! I'm never inviting you again!"
If this had been the Hunting Codex, killing the targets wouldn't have mattered in the slightest. The Insect Collecting Codex, however, only registered catches that were captured alive and secured for a set duration. If you harvested a corpse or let a specimen die midway through, the progress counter reset or vanished entirely.
[You played energetically and had fun engaging in a midnight collecting contest with the Princess.]
◈ Observation EXP: +15
◈ Auditory Perception EXP: +15
◈ Darkvision EXP: +15
◈ Block EXP: +10
◈ Gathering EXP: +10
◈ Throwing EXP: +10
◈ Concealed Weapon EXP: +5
◈ Running EXP: +5
◈ Dark Lightning Generation EXP: +3
◈ Pitch-Black Coating EXP: +3
◈ Sensory Focus EXP: +3
◈ Reflex EXP: +3
◈ Psychological Prediction EXP: +3
◈ Behavioral Prediction EXP: +3
[The Princess now regards you as an 'amusing child.']
[The chance that the Mesugaki Second Princess will intervene to prevent hostile actions by Imperial faction students has slightly increased.]
A staggering windfall of skill proficiency had rolled in as the aftermath of that chaotic skirmish, but I didn't even possess the stamina to celebrate. As I trudged along, completely drained, a gigantic hand clamped onto the scruff of my neck and lifted me clean into the air.
"What kind of 'game' is that savage?"
"I really wanted to keep them alive, though..."
I had wanted to earn the title right after Baby Fabre so badly...
Watching me genuinely mope, Hestia somehow looked pleased. What gives? Huh? Now I'm getting annoyed.
"Hestia. Why are you grinning just because I'm depressed?"
"No reason."
"Mean."
Making me mad? Unforgivable. Even for Hestia, this crossed a line. I wasn't going to let this slide! I'll show her... I'll hit her with this!
Puffing my cheeks full of air, I activated my secret weapon: Pouty Side-Eye! It was an expression meticulously calibrated to induce maximum guilt, yet it only seemed to elevate Hestia's mood further. Her stride lengthened, and as a consequence, my little body dangling from her fist began swinging back and forth like a frantic pendulum.
"Aaaah! I'm getting dizzy—!"
By the time we concluded the journey back to the dorms, I earned [Sense of Balance EXP +3]. Using petty schemes had only brought me extra suffering.
To call it child's play was absurd; it had been a fight on an entirely different plane. Judging by Zhuang's grim expression, Hestia wasn't the only one who felt that way.
I couldn't even track it properly.
The princess's concealed weapons had pierced through the darkness with lethal precision. Tracking the whistle of tearing air alone, Orknodi had parried them left and right with a boulder—clink, clink! Her deflections were executed with a finesse rivaling the shield-work of a seasoned mercenary.
"My, scurrying away like a little rat, aren't we?♡"
"Just give up! Unless you can slaughter every single bug I've got on me, I'm guaranteed to win anyway!"
Despite the shout demanding her surrender, the princess merely sneered with cold amusement.
"The word 'defeat' does not exist in an Imperial Princess's lexicon. Don't you even possess that much common sense~?"
The princess snapped her fingers, and every projectile she had launched thus far erupted with ominous mana.
Imperial Royal Mana Cultivation Technique.
Latency — Property Transmutation.
Metalization.
The chilling, razor-sharp aura distinct to refined steel radiated from the surrounding trees, rocks, and soil. In the glow of the torch held up for safety, Hestia saw a forest dyed in metallic sheen, framed by the sinister smirk curling across the princess's lips.
"Look out, Orknodi!"
Barely had the warning left Hestia's lips before the princess unleashed another relentless barrage of throwing weapons. Ever since she snatched Orknodi's specimen tweezers, she had been hurling them without pause, making one wonder if she carried a pouch that spawned infinite metal tools. Unable to contain her bewilderment, Hestia approached a tree trunk where one of the projectiles had embedded itself, and the secret behind the tweezers was laid bare.
"Are these... fake?"
"It's the princess's specialty," Zhuang murmured, poking her head out from behind to inspect the tree. "Touch it."
"The tweezers... they're crumbling?"
"Matter transmuted by mana naturally degrades once separated from its caster. As the imbued mana drains away, it loses its structured form and breaks apart."
"Even so, it was remarkably solid."
"She infused enough mana to maintain the projectile's shape for a set duration. Some of them hold even greater concentrations, like this one."
Snatching a deflected tweezer out of the air bare-handed, Zhuang handed it over. Hestia took it between her fingers and squeezed; unlike the previous one, it remained rock-solid, showing no signs of deforming. Even when she exerted enough force to bend true steel, it refused to budge. It was unnervingly durable.
"You should throw that away. Quickly."
"Why?"
"Unless you fancy a shiny new pair of metallic hands?"
Realizing the implication, Hestia gasped and hurled the tweezer away in horror. Barely an instant later, the princess snapped her fingers once more. The mana brimming within the projectile erupted from its tip, instantly turning the grass beneath it into cold iron. Dread gripped Hestia's chest.
"If that struck a person's body, they'd be finished!"
"A dispel spell for metalization could restore organic structure," Zhuang countered calmly. "Assuming the tissue hasn't necrotized or the transmutation hasn't invaded the bloodstream, that is."
"And you're telling me it's fine to unleash something so monstrous on a child?!"
"By that standard, Orknodi shares just as much blame."
"Shared blame?! If she takes a hit, she'll need emergency surgery at the infirmary!"
"Think about why Orknodi is matching her blow for blow despite enduring such a relentless onslaught."
At Zhuang's remark, Hestia managed to steady her nerves and examined the battlefield with greater care.
The tweezers whistled through the night. Orknodi hoisted a boulder to intercept one, hurled a pebble to knock another out of midair, and hooked a pinky through the strap of her specimen cage—the true target of the attack—whipping it safely behind her back. When the princess's tweezers ricocheted off the metalized ground to flank her blind spot, Orknodi pirouetted, parrying and dodging with fluid grace.
"Ah!"
Something went awry; a sharp squeak escaped the girl's lips, and with a crisp clack, one side of the specimen cage transmuted into metal. Its structural integrity failed, and the corner fractured with a brittle crunch. A rhinoceros beetle scrambled frantically through the breach—only to be skewered by a tweezer before Orknodi could shield it.
"You awful princess!"
Fuming with rage, Orknodi finally snapped and gripped a nearby uprooted tree.
"Hrnnngh!"
Heaving the trunk waist-high in a single breath, she shouted, "Hup!" and hurled the entire tree straight at the princess! The flying timber obliterated several standing trees, toppling them in a thunderous roar, but the princess darted straight through the cloud of debris, leveling a finger at another specimen cage.
"Take this!"
Golden arcs of electricity crackled forth—bzzzt!
"Ah, no fair!"
Thrusting her own finger forward, Orknodi unleashed pitch-black lightning, slamming the voltage directly into the ground to ground the strike. Chantless, instantaneous lightning magic—and Orknodi had countered it with identical speed.
"My, aren't you ahead of the curriculum~? Lightning magic wasn't scheduled on the syllabus yet. Heheh. Still too weak, though♡"
"Cheat! You're just brute-forcing the output with elixir buffs!"
"Keke. If you're so sore about it, you shouldn't have challenged royalty in the first place~. Stubborn little scrub♡"
She was clearly being pushed back. Yet Orknodi was reacting to every single maneuver. Every strike the princess threw—physical, magical, applied, unorthodox, relentless. Out of ten attacks, she countered six, evaded three, and narrowly lagged behind on one.
"Wait, with skills like that, how did the princess not become top of our year? She's clearly stronger than Orknodi."
"She probably couldn't be bothered with formalities. Anyone can see she marches to her own beat even more than Orknodi does. And besides..."
"Besides?"
"Orknodi isn't even attacking the princess. She's only trying to protect her cages."
"Ah."
From the very beginning, this hadn't been a duel. If anything, it was an escort mission—a desperate struggle between Orknodi trying to protect the insects inside the containers, and the princess trying to smash them to pieces. Like biting a cage strap between her teeth while darting through the trees to evade continuous fire, Orknodi moved solely for the purpose of keeping those cages intact. Had she directed her physical might, magic, and cunning directly against the princess herself, the outcome might have been entirely different.
"Getting sleepy♡ Time to wrap this up♡"
In the end, the princess remotely commandeered the metalized terrain scattered around them, raising countless metallic spikes and launching them in a synchronized volley that turned the cages into sieves, shattering every last one.
"You saw what happened today," Zhuang remarked, watching the distant aftermath. "You must realize by now that Orknodi doesn't really need your help. She's stronger than you to begin with."
"I can get stronger too if I trigger my Berserk state."
"Same goes for Orknodi. All she'd have to do is tap into her dark mana."
Despite such a vicious clash, Orknodi hadn't drawn upon dark mana even once. While traces of it leaked naturally during her spellcasting, she had never weaponized it as her primary offensive power. She was deliberately restraining herself, refusing to unleash such dangerous power against another human being.
"That's just what assassins are. We kill people for a job, not a hobby. We're professionals."
"...Is that so? Doesn't sound much different from mercenaries."
Hestia brushed it off stubbornly, pretending it was nothing remarkable. Zhuang gazed at her flatly, her eyes devoid of warmth, as if declaring she had zero faith in hollow bravado.
"I don't understand why so many kids in this academy want to play at being friends. They've all experienced enough of the outside world to know better."
"Maybe they just haven't grown up yet."
"You think that applies to the Western Noble Coalition, who claim to have crossed multiple battlefields?"
"Zhuang. You really don't seem fond of the word 'friend.' Or trusting others, for that matter."
"Because I'm an assassin."
"I don't know what you've been through, but Orknodi is different. So am I. And you can change too."
Zhuang pushed off the ground with her heel and spun around.
"It's not that I hate making friends. I just hate empty bonds that dissolve depending on time and circumstance."
Hoping that a friend made during the day would still accept her after seeing who she was at night—that was a childish wish she had harbored back when she was roughly Orknodi's age. Zhuang had made friends a few times, and she had lost every single one of them. The day would surely come when timid Titocoga and busybody Hestia showed their true colors and pulled away. And that day might be far closer than either of them realized.
"If you're so confident, best of luck. Next week marks the start of Guardian Visitation."
"Guardians...? W-Wait. That means Orknodi's...!"
Raising her hand within the shadow cast by the moonlight, Zhuang mimed slitting a throat and smirked.
"Officials from Orknodi's 'Foundation' will be visiting the academy."
Everyone would finally learn what kind of entity the Foundation was, how the outside world perceived them, and what kind of child Orknodi truly was to be treated as. Perhaps things were idyllic during the first month when everyone had flowers blooming in their naive heads, but could they still remain the same once the truth arrived? Hardly. Judging by that pathetic reaction, not a chance.
Leaving behind Hestia, whose face had completely frozen and whose feet remained rooted to the ground, Zhuang slipped silently into the shadows around the dormitory corner.