Proof (5)
"No, absolutely not! How could anyone cut such beautiful hair...! Hnngh."
"...Who even are you?"
Garnet peeled the uninvited guest off of her with practiced ease, then regarded the girl with wary eyes and a low mutter.
The student, dumped unceremoniously onto the floor, jutted out her lips and grumbled in protest.
"That's a awfully cold way to treat the person who saved your life, isn't it?"
"What? Saved my life?"
"If I hadn't gone and fetched Professor Ziya back then, things would have gotten really bad..."
"..."
Only then did Garnet understand what the girl was talking about.
The girl squared her shoulders a little and continued in a voice full of self-satisfaction.
"Do you have any idea how shocked I was when I happened to walk past? Good heavens, what kind of professor does something like that! How could anyone treat a student so roughly, I mean, really..."
"That's still not an answer to who you are."
Cutting her off sharply, Garnet asked again in the same frigid tone.
The girl before her was a most unwelcome visitor.
All the more so because she had dredged up memories Garnet had desperately tried to let sink into oblivion.
"...I'm Carol. First year, Alchemy Department."
Rising to her feet, the girl neatly swept her hair back with her headband and answered in a faintly wounded voice.
"My concentration is Magical Metallurgy. I'm really interested in crafting weapons and accessories. Oh, if that's something you're into, maybe..."
"State your business. Only."
As the girl looked ready to lunge at her again, Garnet recoiled in horror.
The girl who had introduced herself as Carol hesitated for a moment—then suddenly cried out, her voice brimming with expectation.
Miss Potts! Be my friend!"
"...What?"
Caught completely off guard by the words, Garnet found herself echoing them before she could stop.
"Fri... end...?"
"Yes!"
The girl nodded her head vigorously without a shred of hesitation, just as before.
"It was love at first sight the moment I saw you at the entrance ceremony! That impeccably combed platinum hair, those azure eyes brimming with melancholy... you're a lady knight stepped straight out of a painting!"
"Hold on a second—"
"And who else could possibly do justice to the weapons and accessories I make but you, Miss Potts? Goodness, just imagining it already makes me..."
Garnet stared, mouth agape, at Carol as she rambled on to herself.
No one had ever approached her like this since she'd enrolled at Elysion.
"Miss Potts! Please, won't you become my muse—!"
But Garnet's expression iced over in an instant, and she spat out her reply.
"Get lost. I don't need anything like friends."
"M-Miss Potts? Wait...!"
Garnet turned away as if she couldn't even hear the voice reaching out to stop her.
She steeled the resolve that had wavered, if only for a heartbeat.
Friends were nothing to her now but a meaningless waste of time.
All she had to do was sharpen her sword, again and again.
To wash away her father's stain and reclaim the honor of her fallen house—and her own with it.
That was all there was. Nothing more.
"Gwahk!"
"Hnngh, my thigh...!"
Screams rang out one after another across Elysion's outdoor training grounds.
Truthfully, the spectacle looked less like training and more like a circus act.
Blindfolded, the students flailed about inside the sensory-suppression barrier, struggling desperately to catch a rabbit beast they couldn't even see.
Yet days had passed since the intensive course began, and not a single one of them had managed to capture a wolpertinger.
All the students accomplished, day after day, was rolling across the dirt and screaming as the rabbit beasts darted in out of nowhere to strike them.
The only things that increased by the day were the dye stains on their clothes and the bruises on their elbows.
"Oof!"
One boy, sent sprawling in a ridiculous heap by a wolpertinger's headbutt, spat out a stream of curses.
"Oh, damn it all!"
He tore off his blindfold in irritation, revealing a distinctly weaselly face beneath it.
"I quit. No—absolutely can't do it. You could beat me to death and I still couldn't do it!"
Zarel, a first-year of the Swordsmanship Department, shouted his protest in a voice worn down to the last thread.
"Hah... hah... what kind of training is this supposed to be?!"
His clothes, as he rolled around on the ground, were plastered with an extraordinary number of dye marks.
For Zarel, who had dreamed of coasting through the semester on cruise control, this was nothing short of a bolt from the blue.
"Hey, hey! Keep it down!"
Kayden, another exhausted student taking his break—a young man from the continent's eastern reaches—jumped in alarm and warned him off.
"What if Professor Kallen hears you?"
"Gah..."
Zarel sucked in a sharp breath and finally glanced behind him, face drained of color.
Professor Kallen, dressed in his usual rumpled clothes, was simply sprawled across the stone lectern outdoors, snoring away in a deep drunken stupor.
Zarel let out a belated sigh of relief, then shot the man a dirty look anyway, because why not.
"Damn it. Sleeping through this madhouse—that's a talent in itself."
"Still better than getting chewed out, at least..."
Kayden shook his head and swept his gaze across the surroundings.
The students were still scrambling to dodge the wolpertingers' attacks, their dignity in tatters.
What drove them to endure such farcical clownery was one thing and one thing only: fear.
"We all saw that with our own eyes, after all..."
The image of the man who had ruthlessly pummeled Garnet into the dirt remained seared vividly in the students' memories.
Kallen was still every bit the disgrace of a professor he'd always been—but the freshmen who openly looked down on him no longer existed.
"I mean, seriously. We've got perfectly good Tin Knights sitting right there, and instead we're doing... this with a rabbit?"
Zarel grumbled, shooting a glance at the iron puppets lined up in ranks along the edge of the training grounds.
The Tin Knight—Elysion's specially made training doll, designed alongside the Magic Department's Dancing Scarecrows to hone the students.
Capable of adjusting its output to match its opponent and even detecting demonic energy, it was sophisticated enough to be used for gate security and campus patrols.
Leaving things like that idle while they played hide-and-seek with rabbits—it was enough to make anyone's blood boil.
Kayden, listening silently to Zarel's grumbling, seemed to remember something and let out a small, wondering murmur.
"Come to think of it, Garnet—whatever her name is—didn't show up again today either."
"Would you show up? Knowing you'd have to look the professor in the face again after he beat you down like a dog?"
Zarel rolled his eyes as if the answer were painfully obvious.
"She's probably off doing solo training somewhere."
Zarel shook his head wearily and muttered on.
"Did you hear about Seamus? He's planning to transfer to the Alchemy Department next semester."
"What?"
"Aria and Roche are seriously considering it too."
Switching departments once you'd enrolled was no simple matter.
It required the approval of the professors in charge—not to mention the humiliation of enrolling as a junior to the classmates you'd entered with.
That students were willing to go that far said everything about how hopeless they found their current situation.
"I suppose it beats flushing an entire year down the drain."
Zarel scratched his head furiously and snapped.
"Damn it, if I'd known it would turn out like this, I'd have just gone to the Imperial Academy! Why did I have to be such an idiot...!"
"Well, no one expected Sir Tyrell to... pass away like that..."
"Ugh... and over there, I hear the Sword's Successor shows up in person to give them encouragement..."
"Noel Aramis, you mean?"
The fame of Noel, the Sword of the Empire, had spread even to the far side of the continent.
Kayden had long since heard the name himself.
After all, when it came to freeing his homeland—the eastern kingdom of Calande, devastated by pestilence—only the current bearer of Prominence, burning at its brightest, could hope to do it.
The Swordsmanship Department of the Imperial Academy had been riding high on the title of being Noel's junior school, swelling with pride year after year.
"And here we are, without so much as proper training, playing tag with a rabbit beast... honestly..."
"Weren't you the one saying a lazy professor was a good thing a while back?"
"Argh! That doesn't mean I signed up for this circus!"
Watching Zarel explode, Kayden gave a wry smile—then abruptly seemed to recall something and asked, puzzled.
"...By the way, why did you enroll at Elysion?"
Zarel's family, House Castellan, was a storied noble line that had produced the Empire's Prime Ministers for generations.
They were also quite close to Step-Empress Margrete, who had been steering state affairs while Princess Kaziah kept herself shut away.
Given that background, enrolling at the Imperial Academy would have been the natural choice.
"Don't even get me started. That place is just a snake pit. How's anyone supposed to breathe in there? Three whole years of kissing up to royals who've been worshiped their entire lives? No thanks."
Such was the remarkably candid answer from the irreverent third son.
Then, letting out a heavy groan, Zarel spotted Yulian tripping spectacularly over his own feet in the distance and barked at him.
"Hey! Put some muscle into it! That guy's too busy sleeping to even watch us!"
"B-but still..."
At Yulian's whimpering reply, Zarel pressed a hand to his forehead in exasperation.
"Good grief. That's the heir to the Grand Duchy of Phebiel. What's the Empire coming to..."
"You shouldn't talk so big just because you're a third son with nothing to inherit."
"Argh! It's not like I'm wrong, is it?!"
Zarel's resentful glare swung back once more to Professor Kallen, still limp and snoring away.
"Damn it. The Alheim Basin practical is next month, and this is what he's doing? What is this nonsense?"
The Alheim Practical—the exam with the greatest impact on first-semester grades and a tradition handed down through Elysion's long history—was now breathing down their necks.
"I should've gone into the Magic Department at the very least. Ha... I wanted to study under Professor Ziya too..."
Professor Ziya of the Introduction to Magic class was beloved by students of every department for her crisp beauty and her outstanding teaching.
Strict as she might seem at a glance, she possessed a rare genius for drawing out each individual student's natural aptitude.
The upperclassmen of the Magic Department, already shaped by her guidance, were utterly crushing the Swordsmanship students of their own year.
"Damn it. I can't stand this. It's just not fair."
Zarel, venting his frustration, suddenly shot to his feet.
Startled by the abrupt movement, Kayden asked blankly.
"What are you doing all of a sudden?"
"Paying that bastard back. One taste of his own medicine."
"What?"
With a sly grin, Zarel casually rearranged the barrier stones.
Then, ever so subtly, he guided the wolpertingers inside the barrier toward the sleeping Professor Kallen.
Kayden saw through his scheme at once.
"Hey, wait—! What if he gets hurt...!"
"Tch. You won't know until you've been through it yourself."
Zarel's face was alive with an energy it had never shown in all these days of torment.
The professor was perched precariously on the edge of the lectern—one slight bump and he'd come tumbling flat onto the ground, no question about it.
Undeterred by Kayden's protests, Zarel busied himself with his little plot.
"What, you're telling me he can sense movement with his eyes covered? Please. That's not even supposed to be possible..."
After all, the horns had already been clipped—no one could get hurt. The plan was simply to stage a mildly ridiculous scene and enjoy the show.
And dead asleep as the man was, he'd never figure out who was behind it.
It was a small, satisfying revenge against the professor who had wrecked his plans of coasting through the semester.
Before long, the wolpertingers found their target, eyes flashing red as they coiled their hind legs and fixed on Kallen.
Watching them, Zarel's grin stretched all the way to his ears.
"Take it like a man for once, you son of a bitch."
And so, with a mighty spring, the rabbit beasts launched themselves from every direction to bowl Kallen over—
"Mmm..."
In an instant, Kallen's body twisted in an uncanny, impossible arc.
The rabbit beasts, leaping in perfect trajectories, sliced through nothing but empty air.
Zarel could only stare, eyes wide with disbelief.
"He dodged... it...?"
A dead silence had settled over the training grounds.
The students, training forgotten, stood staring open-mouthed at the scene before them.
"Wha...?"
Kallen was still snoring away, sunk deep in sleep.
"Zzz..."