Class Placement Exam (2)
There, a perfectly unremarkable young man with jet-black hair stood waiting.
His name was Justin.
True to a name that sounded so very righteous, his personality matched it perfectly. He could never forgive injustice, and the moment he smelled a villain, he would charge headfirst at them with reckless abandon.
And somehow, it always worked out. Because he was the protagonist, after all.
Maybe I should just fail him right now.
One thing Luid had learned from living in this medieval world for a year was that people here were far more backward than he'd expected. Virtues any modern person would take for granted were celebrated here as "noble conduct."
His face would scrunch up automatically at the sight of someone reeking of unwashed body, and whenever he crossed paths with someone who had nothing between their ears, he found himself unwilling to waste a single word on them.
And those traits were largely shaped by one's environment, so with commoners, it was inevitably obvious.
Frankly, Luid wasn't confident he wouldn't end up a target of the protagonist.
That grubby, grimy look alone already made him lose all respect for the man.
...No. If I pick the wrong fight now, it'll be trouble. Staying quiet is the best move here.
There was an old saying: keep your mouth shut and you'll get by. Luid decided to trust the wisdom of his ancestors.
"Sophia? Why are you—"
"Hershey, I could say the same about you..."
The two of them stared at each other awkwardly for a moment before noticing the strangers standing behind one another, and both shifted into a more formal register.
"And who might they be?"
Two people stood tensely behind Sophia. She beamed brightly as she introduced them.
"I asked them to form a party with me this time."
"Ah, I... see."
Hershey was a little puzzled. Their faces were unfamiliar. At the very least, they clearly weren't from a family of any renown...
"Your name?"
"It's Justin."
A commoner?
Refusing to state one's family name meant one thing: a commoner.
Hershey's brow furrowed. Not out of disgust, but out of confusion. There was no way Sophia would form a party with people like this.
Then Luid turned his gaze to the other one — a fierce-looking girl with red hair, who answered while pointedly looking away.
"...Catherine Oblivion."
Obi—Oblivion?
This time, his surprise was of an entirely different flavor. The Oblivions were a founding-hero family. But they had been caught practicing filthy black magic and long ago expelled from the ranks of the great houses. They sat at the very top of the list of nobles that other nobles despised.
A commoner, and a vilain on top of that? Is she out of her mind?
*vilain — meaning base, lowly. Often used as a slur against commoners.
Sophia was her childhood friend. Their bond stretched back a long, long way.
Hershey worried for her. If the young lady of the Ducal Spencer house kept company with people like these, scandal was all but guaranteed.
"Sophia. What on earth are you—"
And so Hershey was about to tell her to dissolve the party on the spot — but Luid stopped her.
"I don't know what's going on, but keep walking your own path. This is our spot."
My spot for living my life, that is.
The plan to lie low was hereby scrapped. All because of objective number two: prevent Hershey's misfortune.
"And if I refuse?"
The one who answered was Catherine. She didn't appreciate Luid's high-handed attitude one bit.
Ugh, what a pain.
A sigh escaped Luid before anything else. But a job wasn't done until you cleaned up after yourself.
"You'll be the fastest ones to fail, I suppose."
"Hee hee. Confident, are we? Funny thing, though — every man who talks that big has never actually been worth a damn."
Catherine drew her wand and leveled it at Luid.
It was ignorance born of foolishness. Had she known even a little about Luid, she would never have done it — but that "had she known" was doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Ordinarily, no one outside the so-called "mainstream nobility" knew anything about Luid. Catherine, having come from some remote countryside territory, was a frog at the bottom of a well.
There was simply no way she could know the lazy genius, Luid.
"Ahaha, forgive my late introduction. A pleasure to meet you, Lord Luid. I am Sophia Spencer."
Sophia gave a slight, graceful dip of her skirt — slipping him a subtle hint, since Catherine apparently had no idea who he was.
But Catherine had the kind of stubborn grit that made powerful people think, so what? Her wand shifted into an even more aggressive stance instead.
Works out fine, actually.
Truthfully, Luid had been waiting for magic to come flying out of that wand.
No wait — this gave him the perfect pretext to throw them out.
After all, the early elimination of that trio was already a fixed future. Luid crossed his arms.
"I warned you clearly. Since you refuse to listen, I have no choice but to fail you. Blame no one but—"
The instant the words left his mouth, three armbands were about to be torn away—
"Haha, what a cute little kid!"
"...?"
It was Justin. He was fairly tall, but he bent at the waist to match Luid's eye level.
"Still, looking down on people like that isn't a good look. Maybe you should apologize?"
Come to think of it, I got complacent. I could just kill him, couldn't I???
Being treated like a child genuinely infuriated Luid.
"How dare you."
At that moment, Hershey swept her wand through the air.
"Hwagh!"
A wave of mana blasted Justin backward. He crashed to the ground in an undignified sprawl. Hershey's wand flooded with golden light.
"A commoner dares to interrupt the Young Lord's words?"
Hershey stared down at Justin as if he were an insect, wand leveled, and shouted:
"Apologize for your insolence this instant!"
"Wind!"
Catherine narrowed her eyes and flicked her wand.
"What is this, spellcasting from the last century?"
"...!"
But it was neutralized by Hershey's simple Dispel.
"My, what era do you think this is? Do you vilain still cling to those dusty old methods?"
Spell magic referred to casting spells by chanting them aloud — a style that had flourished a hundred years ago and was now regarded by modern mages as hopelessly rustic.
"Why, you—!"
"Ha, can't even trace your own lineage properly, huh? I called you a vilain, you wretched girl. What are you going to do about it?"
Hershey was a noble among nobles.
That's... insanely cool.
Luid had to admit it — she wasn't wrong.
A villainess? When she was on his side, there was no one more reassuring to have around.
"The Academy really is a remarkable place. Out there, you wouldn't even dare meet my eyes — and yet here you are, laying hands on nobility. Interrupting a Young Lord of all people. If we'd crossed paths on the street, you'd have been summarily executed for insulting a noble. Do you understand?"
"...The Academy has no social ranks."
Justin, still sprawled on the ground, rose to his feet.
His eyes were blazing.
"You might be right anywhere outside the Academy. But now that we're here, you'd do well to throw away that disgusting arrogance of yours."
"Wh-whatever? D-disgusting? Why, this mongrel—!"
But excess is as bad as deficiency. It was touching that she was angry on his behalf, but if this went on, everything would unfold exactly as it had in the original story.
Even out of gratitude toward Hershey, Luid had no intention of watching her life spiral into ruin.
And above all—
"Too much trouble."
Crack—!
"...!"
Three barriers shattered simultaneously. The armbands burst apart and scattered into the empty air.
A pristine white light streamed from Luid's right hand. When he clenched his fist, the light vanished.
Well. Nothing to be done about it.
The protagonist's party stared at their own armbands in disbelief.
Seeing Justin's slack-jawed expression was oddly satisfying. The irritation from being treated like a kid earlier melted away in an instant.
You really think I was avoiding you out of fear?
Avoiding conflict with the protagonist had always been—
because it was a bother.
Not fear.
If he'd wanted to take them on, he could have done it any time, in any measure.
Eliminated participants are to proceed to the outer perimeter immediately.
Magic script rippled across the empty air.
Luid gave the dazed Hershey a light poke in the side and said:
"I'm starving. Let's go grab some food."
"Hoh. So that's the famous Lord Luid, is it."
The Academy's observation hall.
Professor Nemesis, who had been monitoring the exam in real time, spoke with evident interest.
"Truly remarkable power."
The professors had gathered to grade the students. Part of it was to keep watch for any cheating, but the greater purpose was to gauge the caliber of the incoming class.
"I finally understand why the Chancellor granted him the right to skip his lessons."
They were watching Luid's magic. A few of them replayed the footage, letting out low whistles of "whoa" and "good grief."
Barrier magic. For most mages, it was the first thing cast upon waking each morning — a routine as natural as breathing.
Barriers were among the very few sustained spells that could be maintained passively, without interfering with the simultaneous casting of other magic.
The simplest of spells, and the most resilient. For the one trying to break through, it demanded many times more effort than the one who cast it.
And yet Luid had destroyed barriers with a single flick of the hand — three of them, simultaneously, no less.
Even more astonishing, he hadn't cast any other spell afterward, and the armbands had been torn apart regardless.
In other words, everything they had just witnessed had been accomplished with a single spell. No one could think of a way to counter it.
"How on earth did he do that?"
"Looks like force magic to me. Some invisible form of strike — the barriers simply couldn't withstand it and broke."
"But there's not a scratch on anyone, is there? The strength of those three barriers would have been different, yet they all broke at the barrier line and stopped."
"No, it tore the armbands too. Judging by the pattern, it's some kind of wind — he may simply have calculated the positions with perfect precision."
They were so absorbed that they briefly stopped watching the other students entirely, replaying only the moments when Luid cast his magic.
They had pumped so much mana into their crystal orbs to rewind the footage that sweat dripped down their faces from the heat pouring off them.
"So a genius is simply a genius, after all..."
Clifford, Chancellor of the Imperial Academy, stroked a beard of middling length. Old and worn as he was, there was nothing faded about the gleam in his eyes.
"And yet."
He was, after all, a man still called an Archmage to this day. And in stark contrast to Luid, he had once been known as Clifford, the Genius of Effort.
He was famous for compensating for his lacking magical talent through sheer application and technique of movement.
"Insolent whelp."
"Ahem, with power like that, wouldn't it be stranger if he weren't arrogant?"
Clifford held quite the grudge against Luid.
He had never liked these so-called "geniuses" to begin with, but the incident with Phoenix a week ago had been the final straw.
Phoenix was Clifford's familiar — and among magic, there existed spells that shared a familiar's field of vision.
Clifford had seen it. Luid drifting serenely through the sky, alighting upon the very peak of the Cloud Spire where Phoenix resided.
And he had seen him coerce the great beast to get exactly what he wanted.
While some clawed their way upward on two legs, bleeding for every inch — someone else had slyly borrowed the power of talent and plucked it all with ease.
Thud.
Clifford slammed a hand on the table with a face that made his displeasure plain, drawing every eye in the room.
"What are you all gawking at? Back to your assigned observation sectors. All of you."
"B-but..."
One of the more timid-looking professors ventured carefully:
"M-might we not keep watching this? I'd like to use that spell for my current research."
The moment Clifford's chilling glare met his, the man meekly set his crystal orb back down.
Had I known he was this kind of punk, I would never have permitted it.
Clifford sincerely regretted the special privilege he had granted Luid a month ago.
He had judged that self-directed study would benefit the boy more than sitting through lessons.
Never in his wildest imaginings had he pictured such a loafer. Just look at him now — because the world wouldn't bend to his will, he threw his power around like he owned the place.
Those who wield great power owe a duty to match it. But not a shred of responsibility could be felt from Luid, and that was what grated on Clifford more than anything.
"It seems I must revoke it after all."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Sir Nemesis. Have you prepared the plans for the second day?"
Sector A4 — Luid's chosen residence for the exam — was under Professor Nemesis's supervision.
"Given the two of their levels, I believe an ogre would be appropriate."
The second-day event of the Class Placement Exam was designated as a monster assault.
Of course, safety came first: a supervising professor was stationed in every sector, and the monsters were calibrated at least two tiers below each student's level.
A simple test of how students reacted when a monster appeared without warning.
"Contact the Magic Tower. Have them procure a troll with every body-reinforcement spell known to man layered upon it. Use that instead."
"Y-yes?"
It was the other professors who were flustered by the Chancellor's sudden lurch forward.
"Th-that's a bit excessive, isn't it? That's a creature you can't subdue without at least an entire knight order's strength."
"His magical level is more than sufficient to suppress it. And Nemesis will be there to shield him. It will be fine."
The corners of Clifford's mouth curled upward.
"Whether a pampered young lord raised in silk can handle it, however — that, I do wonder."
And if he can't crush it decisively...
...then he would use it as grounds to revoke the exemption and put the boy back in class.
With particular emphasis on the character education portion of the curriculum.
Fail to complete it? Supplementary lessons.
I'll have to add physical conditioning to the syllabus as well.
Clifford let out a low chuckle as he indulged in a thoroughly delightful fantasy — one where he ran that lazy good-for-nothing into the ground until the boy begged for mercy.