The Entrance Ceremony
And not long after, I regretted not saying I’d go to the academy on my own, even if it left a slightly bad impression.
“So that’s it…! I knew it! Just by watching me for that brief moment, you figured out my weakness. Hero Academy really is on another level…?! N-not everyone has observational skills like yours, right!?”
Yeonhwa was, in a lot of ways, a fiery girl.
Bright, gentle, dazzling — but too intense to stand too close to for long.
“Hehe, so I kind of hate summer. When I sweat from the heat, my flames get weaker, and then… Isn’t it funny that I’m a fire-user but I hate being hot?”
She was trying a little too hard to get close.
Like a dog that kept licking your face.
“Sorry. I’ll apologize on Jinhyun’s behalf. He doesn’t talk much. It’s not because he dislikes you or anything! He just… tends to avoid people, I guess…”
A dog means well when it does that, but if you let it keep licking your face, it gets irritating enough that you have to shove it away and tell it to stop.
I wanted to shove her away too.
“Oh, right. The police officers said they might contact us separately later, didn’t they? Ugh, sorry, because of us… W-will this leave a mark on my record or something…?”
Then, thinking of what had just happened, she shuddered hard.
“I wasn’t the one who killed them, so it’ll be fine. At worst, they’ll just ask for a detailed statement.”
Even if they analyzed the villains’ cause of death, they wouldn’t find a single shred of evidence pointing to me.
The cause of death would probably be internal bleeding from illegal drugs’ side effects.
I’d used my ability in self-defense, and because it just happened to overlap with the exact moment they were about to die, I’d get brushed off as someone who’d been unfairly misunderstood.
It was a fairly lenient society when it came to that kind of ability use.
If an ordinary person used an ability to kill a villain in order to survive, the maximum punishment was usually just a fine.
It was a damn hard world to be a villain in.
Among heroes, though, there were people licensed to kill — people who could execute heinous criminals on the spot.
“I-I see… If that’s the case, then I guess that’s a relief. But still, going to the police station is scary. I hope they don’t contact us separately, Blanca.”
Yeah, me too. More than that, could you maybe give me a little less attention?
It was a ridiculous thought coming from someone who’d deliberately staged all this just to get close to them, but honestly, I really did want her to back off a little.
I already had no clue how to deal with peers on equal footing.
And now she kept throwing herself at me, which was mentally exhausting in a way I couldn’t ignore.
I couldn’t just toss her aside like some other piece of trash, and since she was part of the protagonist’s group, I couldn’t even afford to fall out with her for no reason. That made it even worse.
I wished she’d just stop talking to me. At the very least, I wished she’d keep a little distance.
She clung to my side with sparkling eyes, and I was seriously considering whether it might be better to shove Jinhyun in between us and create some room that way.
At times like this, I hated Jinhyun even more for keeping his mouth shut. Say something, anything, and steal her attention for once.
But as expected of that idiot, my wish didn’t seem to reach him at all.
He only stared blankly at the academy in the distance.
“Blanca. What’s your ability? Smoke screen? Anesthetic spray? Or both? What’s the system? Transmutation? Emission? Enhancement? Or—”
It was almost impressive that she was only asking now.
I’d been waiting for her to ask the moment we met. But now she finally was.
I’d planned on telling her anyway.
There was no point in hiding it, and we’d probably be in the same class for a year.
More than anything, I needed to get close to them.
“Special type. It doesn’t have a fixed name, but… I guess you could call it a walking chemical factory.”
“A walking chemical factory…? Wait, more importantly, special type?! That means it’s the same as Jinhyun’s?! What can you do with it!?”
“I can produce all sorts of compounds from my body. Most things, really.”
If I had enough material and mana in my body, and if I knew the structure of the molecule I wanted, I could synthesize almost anything inside me.
Of course, I couldn’t make compounds that required elements not present in my body.
That meant I couldn’t just whip out gold or silver on demand.
And if the molecule was too large, that was a problem too.
It wasn’t impossible, but the bigger it got, the more the synthesis time ballooned exponentially, and the efficiency tanked.
Hormones were probably around the limit of what was practical in actual combat.
“Wow… What the heck, that’s amazing?! You could go straight into active duty! No, forget active duty — you could probably aim for the rankings right away!”
“That’s a bit much…”
The ranking tier would be a stretch, but… no. Could I maybe just barely scrape into the top hundred? If I really put my mind to it.
Of course, I had no intention of becoming a hero or anything.
Even after that, Yeonhwa kept pestering me.
Of course, she was doing it out of pure goodwill.
If it had been hostility instead, I could’ve smiled and brushed it off quietly. As it was, I was starting to feel physically ill.
Still, as if fate had decided not to kill me after all, by the time I’d been dragged along by her, we’d arrived at the academy entrance.
In both the novel and the game, there was a line describing the academy as so massive that just standing at its entrance felt oppressive.
It wasn’t exaggerated at all.
I really did feel utterly dwarfed. It was like walking into the entrance of some ancient, colossal temple.
Every building on the sprawling campus — large enough to swallow two small cities, maybe — also vaguely resembled old Greek architecture, which only added to the effect.
“So this is… Hero Academy.”
Even Jinhyun, who’d been keeping his mouth shut the whole time, finally spoke, apparently overwhelmed by the sight of Heros Academy.
“Yep! This is where it all starts…!”
I didn’t suddenly become solemn or vow anything. Still, that part was true enough.
At last, we had reached the starting point. The days of tiptoeing around in the dark were over.
…And it wouldn’t be long before the Liberators were made known to the entire world.
That solemn mood was shattered when Yeonhwa looked up at the clock tower and started flailing like a cat that had just seen a snake.
The minute hand was already pointing to eight o’clock.
“Ah, we’re going to be late! W-where’s the main auditorium?! Is it this way?!”
“Not that way. This way, Yeonhwa.”
When I pointed her in the right direction, after she’d started heading off in the wrong one, she thanked me and hurried off.
In the game, the original protagonist sat beside them during the entrance ceremony, so there was no need to go anywhere else to meet him.
And naturally, I intended to get close to the original protagonist too.
Partly because I needed it for my plans, but even more because of pure admiration and fandom.
Once we reached the auditorium and sat down, I looked around — and quickly found the original protagonist. Yong Minho.
Before Jinhyun or Yeonhwa could sit down, I hurriedly claimed the seat right beside him.
They did end up sitting next to me, but that was irrelevant.
The character I loved most was sitting right beside me.
Yes. If you were the protagonist, that’s how you should look.
Not like the guy on my right, who smiled vacantly no matter what he was doing.
You should be sharp, powerful, and solitary. That kind of presence.
Though, by ordinary standards, both of them were handsome.
Jinhyun had a friendly, puppy-like face, while Minho was the sort of guy you’d call sleek and wolfish.
Minho wore the face of someone who still seemed to believe the world he’d been thrown into was exactly the novel he’d read.
…But. As sorry as I was for him, this world was not the one he knew.
Because I was here too, on top of the game’s protagonist.
As I stared at him, lost in thought, Yeonhwa leaned over and spoke to me.
“…Do you maybe have your eye on that guy?”
“A little.”
Yeonhwa shrieked in delight and started making all kinds of absurd assumptions, but I had no intention of opening my heart to anyone.
He was a guy. That was the biggest reason.
But the next biggest reason was different for each person.
I didn’t want to hurt Minho enough to break him, and Jinhyun just inspired pure disgust.
“Oh, Blanca. Come to think of it, what department did you apply to? Hunter Track? Hero Track? We’re in Hero Track! It’d be nice if we could stay in the same class!”
“I’m in Hero Track too. What a coincidence. Though now that I think about it, maybe we’ll even end up in the same class? If I go by what I just saw from you, that might happen.”
I hadn’t come here to become a real hero.
Well, the story was complicated. My goal in coming to the academy was to destroy the academy.
The ultimate objective was to turn Heros Academy upside down in spectacular fashion and announce the Liberators to the world.
At the same time, I’d be dealing a huge blow to Heros Corporation’s prestige.
My personal goal was to crush Jinhyun completely and turn him into a shell of a person, but that wasn’t important enough to outrank the organization’s objective.
Maybe it was a sub-quest or something.
Keeping those thoughts to myself, I answered Yeonhwa’s question with studied calm.
“That would be nice. It’s better if there’s someone you know in class!”
Yeonhwa didn’t seem worried at all; even here, she shone brightly.
She looked like someone absolutely certain she’d be assigned to Class A.
Your acceptance was announced only after the entrance test was graded, but your class wasn’t.
Which class you’d been placed in was sent out all at once by text after the ceremony.
So even if applicants had passed, they couldn’t fully relax yet.
Passing still meant you might end up in Class E.
Some might say that even Class E was better than nothing, but if you were talented enough to pass the Heros Academy entrance exam, you certainly wouldn’t be satisfied with merely scraping by.
Still, I was certain I’d be placed in first-year Class A. I’d been overwhelmingly first place, after all.
The performance I’d put on during the entrance exam would help too.
I’d modeled it after the game’s protagonist.
At the entrance ceremony, I’d pulled the stunt of charging straight through a gimmick that was supposed to be avoided.
So I’d caused a big incident too.
Of course, I had no intention of mangling the story before even arriving at the academy, so I’d made sure to avoid the actual day they were taking the entrance exam.
Heros Academy was a brutally meritocratic place.
There was no way a place like that would let a talent like me slip through its fingers, even if I had done something like that.
“I hope so too. Oh, it’s starting!”
The moment Yeonhwa said that, the lights in the auditorium went out, and the entrance ceremony began.
Right then, I got ready to unleash poison from my fingertips at any moment.
Minho, of course, was the same — gathering mana and preparing to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
Because at the Heros Academy entrance ceremony, trouble was, naturally, the only thing you could count on.