Killing the Prince (2)
Three weeks had passed since the day we began our emergency strategy meeting to kill McHart.
It was a span of time that could be called long if you were preparing for something, or short if you weren't. One thing was certain, though: within the Academy at least, those three weeks had flashed by in the blink of an eye.
That was only natural, seeing as we had to push forward with our assassination plot against McHart while still attending our Academy classes as diligently as ever. Juggling all sorts of preparations on top of studying at Luminor Academy—an institution already infamous for working its students to the bone—was no small feat.
My neck mattered more than anything else, so my other subjects inevitably suffered a little. The most glaring example was the magic swordsmanship class taught by Harold.
*Ding-a-ling.*
"Hah, hah... I l-lose, hah, sir..."
"...Right. Good work."
In my final bout with Harold during magic swordsmanship class, I had ultimately failed to reach the level where I could shatter an Arcane Shield with my blade alone.
On top of that, I hadn't managed to beat a single one of the four first-division students even once, and in the final assessment match against Harold himself, I went down without putting up much of a fight. In other words, it was safe to say that this semester had yielded essentially zero progress in my swordsmanship.
Granted, a mage hardly *needed* to be proficient with a sword. As long as you had a reliable vanguard, it was obviously the wiser choice to devote yourself entirely to one spell and min-max it into the ground.
Because of that, in a semester where time was scarcer than usual, I had focused on my major subjects instead of the blade, and wrapped things up without any real growth to show for it. The emptiness of closing out a class I'd spent three hours on every single week with such a hollow finish stung quite a bit.
"Haaaah..."
"Don't be too hard on yourself, Lilith."
"Professor... Harold..."
"Growth is simply not something that happens overnight. Try to be patient and let it come in its own time."
"Ah... yes, sir..."
It was a rather delicate piece of comfort coming from Harold, but it didn't really land.
And no wonder—one of my fellow 1.5-division students in Harold's magic swordsmanship class had abruptly broken through the Expert wall a while back and joined the ranks of the first division.
It was something that never happened in the original story, so I was caught off guard more than I cared to admit. Given that I couldn't even place the name clearly, the guy had probably been such a minor extra that he didn't even qualify as a side character in the game.
And yet that very student had become the fifth person—after the Hero, Ethan, Nathalie, and Karamh—to ascend to the first division.
It's probably Harold's class that did it. Harold doesn't just tailor his swordsmanship instruction to each individual student—he's a specialist in personalized growth training.
This was, after all, the man whose skill had raised Ethan, a dual-blade wielder, all the way to vice-captain of the Academy's swordsmanship club. Anyone admitted to the club had talent sprouting from the start, so it wasn't strange for that talent to blossom under Harold's tutelage.
But watching that scene unfold while I—the main character of Luminor Academy—stood there feeling hollow inside was another matter entirely.
Even accounting for our different majors, purely in terms of a character's innate abilities, Lilith should have had the overwhelming advantage. Yet while one of us had grown to the point of breathing down Ethan's neck, the other still couldn't even cut through an Arcane Shield with a blade.
Worse still, my own situation was uniquely privileged—I was in a position where I could keep taking Harold's swordsmanship lessons even during vacation—and yet my growth had stalled. The shock was that much heavier by comparison.
"Lilith, what are your plans for magic swordsmanship next semester?"
"I'm sorry?"
"I'd like you to enroll in the class again next semester if you can. Given the level you've already attained despite not majoring in the sword, I believe it won't be long before you achieve something truly remarkable with a blade in hand."
"...I appreciate the kind words, Professor Harold, but you really don't have to go that far to console me."
"That isn't consolation. I'm saying it because I genuinely believe it."
"Yessir..."
...Well, if a Sword Master is the one saying it, maybe I ought to believe him at least once more.
Honestly, I'd assumed this was as far as I could go with daggers and had been planning to quietly stop learning swordsmanship altogether.
But the magic swordsmanship class itself was a shared major with Ethan, so I'd intended to take it next semester regardless. And if I was going to sit through it anyway, there was no harm in pushing myself a little harder until then.
Besides, there was no downside to handling a self-defense weapon like a dagger well. In a world like this one, whether you happened to know how to use a dagger or not could mean the difference between life and death the moment you ran into unlucky circumstances.
"And one more thing—I don't particularly care whether you're better with the sword or with magic, as long as things between you and Ethan stay good. If that's what's been getting you down, you needn't worry about it."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Just keep up your good relationship with Ethan going forward. Even after you graduate from the Academy, if that's what it takes."
Why is he suddenly bringing up Ethan? Is this his way of saying to stop fretting over pointless stuff and focus on my duties as his personal maid?
Harold probably didn't know Ethan and I were dating, so he couldn't have said that with any particular awareness of the situation...
And so, while listening to Harold's incomprehensible rambling, my first-semester magic swordsmanship grade ended up a B.
The one saving grace was that most of the mandatory general education courses for the Magic Department had earned me excellent marks. Not that this was any great triumph—unlike the swordsmanship classes, I'd understood everything here without a hitch from the start.
Then came the final assessment of the semester: the midterm-finals evaluation matches, back again for a second consecutive year.
Just like last year, the combat departments would settle their final exam scores through student-versus-student evaluation matches.
Even if your coursework grades left something to be desired, a single strong showing in this final evaluation could redeem everything—so every student prepared for it seriously. Which meant, naturally, that everyone was dying to know which opponents the top students of each department had chosen.
To be precise, it was closer to the students ranked sixth through infinity praying in their hearts, please, anyone but me.
The undisputed top seat of the Academy's Magic Department belonged, of course, to Agnes.
Even though I hadn't been slacking off in my Magic Department classes, the gap between us was simply beyond my reach. This was true even though last year's strong showings in the evaluation matches and the Hunting Festival had landed me unexpectedly high in the final rankings.
She was, after all, the owner of a monstrously gifted brain—one that would rack up a perfect score the instant an exam paper got even slightly easy.
Sure, her everyday behavior was oddly pathetic and she was hopeless in any field outside of magic, but when it came to magic alone, even the combined advantage of my past-life knowledge and Lilith's physique couldn't touch Agnes.
There was a slight gap between first and second place, but I was narrowly holding onto the Magic Department's vice-top seat.
And knowing Agnes's personality from the game, she would obviously have used her top-ranked privilege to summon the vice-top and use the evaluation match as an excuse to show off her magic to her heart's content—meaning, under normal circumstances, I should have been standing opposite her right now.
I'd even seriously considered sandbagging my grades down to around third place instead of vice-top, precisely to avoid that possibility. All the more so remembering last year's Isolbe, who made a show of prominence as vice-top only to get absolutely demolished in the evaluation match and plummet to somewhere around tenth.
But as it turned out, I no longer had any reason to go to the lengths of fudging my grades just to dodge Agnes, so I'd kept the vice-top seat as it was. And the reason, of course, was my and Agnes's dramatic reconciliation—something unimaginable at this point last year.
She'd already been agonizing over her spirit contract, and by helping her contract with the flame spirit she wanted more than anything, we'd grown close in one fell swoop. Then, spending the entire first semester in the same major classes, we'd become close enough that we could honestly call each other best friends.
Put another way, at some point I had become a person irreplaceable in Agnes's heart. I was probably occupying the position of Best Friend #2 after Seraphin. ...Though it's a little embarrassing to say that out loud myself.
Unless Agnes actively wanted to ruin our friendship, even she had to see that requesting a bout against someone ranked third or below—rather than me, the Magic Department's vice-top—was the only thing that made sense this time around.
...And the thing that blew every one of those predictions clean out of the water was exactly the situation unfolding before us now.
"..."
"..."
Agnes and I stood atop the evaluation arena, glaring at each other across the distance.
Contrary to the expectations of everyone who assumed that Agnes and I—of all people—would never cross blades and staves in a mere evaluation match, my opponent for the first-semester final assessment had turned out to be Agnes herself.
To explain how things had spiraled to this point, we would have to wind the clock back roughly one week.