Spirit Affinity Lecture (1)
What matters most to making a semester at the academy a rewarding one?
Well, opinions may differ from person to person, but in my view the single most important thing was course registration.
The academy is a place you attend to learn something. If you were going to walk away without gaining any knowledge, there'd be no reason to pay such steep tuition in the first place.
The same went for sitting through lectures you didn't actually need. Unless it was knowledge required for living… no, for surviving, attending it was nothing but a waste of time.
Course registration marked the very start of a semester, so I needed to choose my classes with as much care as possible.
What I needed was the knowledge Luminor Academy could teach me — not its diploma.
…Well, granted, in this world having an academy diploma on top of that certainly wouldn't hurt.
"Lilith, have you decided which classes you're taking next semester?"
"Yes. I've more or less settled on them."
"…Could you maybe tell me just which classes those are?"
"To start with, I've registered for two lectures on stabilizing mana flow to improve accuracy. My spellwork has gotten a little better since I enrolled, but I suspect I still need more practice."
"Right, your mana arrows are still a bit unstable."
"……."
"W-well, of course you can do Triple Casting, so a little instability is fine, but even so, I was just thinking it's better to land all three shots reliably rather than only one or two of them."
"…Yes, that's fair."
I had merely been quietly mulling it over, agreeing with Ethan's point — so why was he suddenly backpedaling and tiptoeing around me like this?
At any rate, on the point that my mana arrows needed better accuracy, the two of us were in agreement.
"Beyond that, I plan to take two required major courses from the Magic Department. Oh, and I'll be taking the practical monster hunting training as well."
"Practical monster hunting training?"
"Yes. Since next semester's assessment is a monster hunt in the Dark Forest rather than duels between students, I figured it would be wise to learn how to deal with monsters in advance."
In truth, I was just planning to use the class as an excuse to grind experience in the Dark Forest.
I still couldn't fathom why on earth they'd written a rule barring first-years from entering the Dark Forest for personal business. Because of it, I'd come all the way to the academy and still couldn't level up properly.
From here on out, the fastest path to growth was leveling, so securing experience points mattered above everything else.
"Why don't you take it too, Young Master Ethan? I imagine the Hunting Festival at the end of the semester would give you quite a bit of practical experience."
"Y-you think so?"
"Yes. Of course, the choice is yours, Young Master — I won't push."
"…No, you're right, Lilith. I'll register for it too. Thanks for the advice."
…Not bad.
As I'd mentioned before, whenever there was a lecture I could sync up with Ethan on, I planned to take it alongside him whenever possible.
Not for any creepy reason like wanting to be near Ethan — it was simply far more convenient for my duties as his exclusive maid.
It beat traipsing over to the Magic Department lecture halls like last time and drawing every student's gaze for no reason.
Plus, we'd get a head start on building synergy for the Hunting Festival at semester's end.
"Lilith, just asking to be sure."
"Yes?"
"You're not taking magic swordsmanship anymore?"
"…By magic swordsmanship, do you mean the applied magic swordsmanship lecture that Master teaches?"
"Yeah. Strictly speaking, since you use daggers, it's not a class you strictly need, but I thought I'd ask anyway."
"That one was decided from the start, so I didn't think it worth mentioning. After all, Master took my course registration form with him before we departed for the academy."
"…Ah, he took yours too. I thought he'd only taken mine."
Well, unlike Ethan, I'd seen it coming. Given that Harold had advised me to register for the applied magic swordsmanship lecture, he'd obviously have told Ethan — whose understanding of the blade ran a good dozen times deeper than mine — to do the same.
And knowing Harold's personality, he'd never have bothered nagging us about taking the same lecture anyway.
As for me, I'd just conveniently secured a spot in a registration slot I didn't have to fight anyone for, so it worked out nicely.
Besides, magic swordsmanship was, for Lilith, the most essential survival knowledge there was.
"So this year we'll be taking two classes together."
"Yes. It seems so."
"I'm looking forward to it, Lilith."
"…Yes. As am I, Young Master Ethan."
…I nearly fumbled for a second there at Ethan saying he was looking forward to it.
He surely meant he was excited for the new semester. Surely he wasn't anticipating that our shared lectures had grown from one to two.
"And for my final class…"
"…There's more?"
"Yes. We pay such steep tuition to attend the academy — shouldn't we take as many classes as we can?"
"…Fair enough. It's your choice, after all."
Ethan shot me a look of sheer incredulity, but no amount of staring like that was going to change my decision.
Still, I'd factored in my own limits, planning to take at most 21 of the 22 available credits.
Communication with Spirits
…Well, investing in this class for one semester couldn't hurt.
It wasn't as though I registered because I'd grown fond of that Sally creature.
My reason for choosing Communication with Spirits as my final course was simple.
Considering how much time I'd be spending with Sally going forward, our current level of trust seemed like it would make things difficult.
Perhaps because I'd heard her out in Grainstone Village and then tried to wash my hands of the whole affair, Sally had a habit of acting rather insolent whenever we were together.
As a human dealing with a spirit, I needed to properly educate her on her manners… well, maybe not that far, but at the very least I had to turn her into someone I could actually hold a conversation with.
Especially that habit of hers — waking me up mid-sleep just because she was bored. That alone had to stop.
'Communication with Spirits? Why not just spend that effort sincerely professing your reverence for me every morning instead? Then maybe I'd respect you back out of consideration for your devotion, hm?'
"You've already tormented me for a month, and you think I'm going to fall for that nonsense now?"
'Tormented?! I only talked to you because you kept ignoring me and I was bored~!'
"Don't hold a spirit who's awake twenty-four hours a day to the same standard as a human who needs eight hours of sleep a night. If you'd just guaranteed my right to sleep, I wouldn't be wasting time on this class in the first place."
'Hmph~! Take this class or don't — I'll prove it's all completely useless!'
Go ahead and squawk all you like. Whatever you say, I'm going to take this class seriously.
What I trusted wasn't the drivel of this noisy flame spirit, but the concrete reward the class would grant.
Completing it would earn me Spirit Affinity +10 — meaning that in the end, no matter what attitude she put on, I'd be able to turn her into a spirit who more or less did as she was told.
'I do wonder how spirit affinity points from the game will translate here, though…'
Well, that was something I'd find out once I completed the class.
With that thought, I stepped into the lecture hall for the first session of Communication with Spirits — where a handful of diligent students had already claimed their seats bright and early on day one, preparing for class.
And among them, I spotted a familiar face right away.
'So Agnes is taking this class too.'
Agnes Elizabeth Blaze.
Not only had she shattered the valedictorian benchmark to enter the Magic Department of Luminor Academy, she outpaced the runner-up by an overwhelming margin — the department's single greatest output.
Considering she was destined to become the Red Magic Tower Master one day, she was unquestionably the character among the department's current students with the most room to grow.
'No harm in getting close to her.'
We were both top-ranked in the academy's Magic Department, and starting this semester we'd be sitting side by side as valedictorian and salutatorian.
The results of last semester's final assessment had counted toward my ranking in all sorts of ways, bumping me all the way up to salutatorian.
Every final-assessment event of the first semester, this crazy woman went salutatorian hunting — so building a rapport with her now, before that could happen, mattered in every possible way.
Going head-to-head with her in next year's first-semester final assessment was, for a great many reasons, absolutely off the table.
Well, Lilith's appearance did tend to win people over, so befriending her shouldn't be too hard.
Besides, I'd cleared her route once in the game, so I had a rough grasp of her tastes and personality.
"Good morning, Miss Agnes Elizabeth Blaze."
"……?"
Agnes tilted her head in silent bewilderment as I suddenly approached and greeted her beside her empty seat.
Given her personality — she rarely spared attention for anyone who didn't interest her — I wondered if she simply didn't recognize me, and resolved to introduce myself first.
But unexpectedly, Agnes turned out to know exactly who Lilith was.
…Judging by the first words she ever spat at me, though, her impression of me wasn't exactly a flattering one.
"This is our first time actually talking, isn't it? My name is Lilith Blackwood Rose—"
"…The crazy bitch who used Mana Blast in the final assessment."
…Excuse me? Who exactly are you calling a crazy bitch?