Professor Ferzen
A dreary rain tapped against the windows of the lecture hall.
Perhaps because my words had carried such an edge, the mood in the room had sunk completely. It was not only Lizzie. The other students kept stealing glances at me, and whenever our eyes met they hurried to duck their heads.
The only one who still faced me squarely was Laura.
"...We will continue the lecture."
I had talked so much that my throat was beginning to ache. Next time I would have to bring a cup of warm black tea.
"To repeat part of what I said a moment ago: even if you master battlefield experience and understanding as you are now, should a war break out at once and send you to the front, the efficiency with which that interferes with implementation rate would be negligible."
"And so the practical experience you receive through cooperation with the outside will be, for the most part, the sort of thing ordinary soldiers are likely to carry when they are conscripted."
As I spoke, I set down on the board the weighting of the first semester's midterm, final, and assignments.
"The midterm and the final will each account for forty percent. Setting aside five percent for attendance, the remaining fifteen will be given over entirely to assignments. I have already spoken privately with Her Highness the Imperial Princess. From the third week, each of you will be assigned a single corpse..."
"A corpse, sir?"
"Yes. You will receive that corpse, and your first long-term assignment will be to raise your understanding and proficiency with it, and to be evaluated on that through the first-semester midterm."
No one answered.
"The amount of mana you are permitted to use in interference will, of course, be standardized."
This was a world in which black magicians stood on fairly solid ground, and so the trade in corpses was treated as a perfectly legal matter of course. Procuring the bodies of ordinary commoners was hardly difficult.
"The overall aim of the course will be to have you acquire a shared understanding."
Silence again.
"There is no need to make it complicated. A capable black magician is meant to be full of miscellaneous knowledge to begin with. I called it a shared understanding, but some of it is the sort of thing you could obtain easily enough right now, if you only put your minds to it."
I did not expect to need the chalk again. I set it down, lowered the sleeve I had folded back a turn, and smoothed it neat.
"Let us take an example... yes. The basic common knowledge between men and women."
"Pardon?"
"I would prefer you not hear this as something indecent."
I stood at ease on the platform and cleared my throat.
"As a rule, you will have grown up educated in sexual knowledge, and that too belongs among the basic common sense of the sexes. So when a woman enslaves a man's corpse, or a man enslaves a woman's, they show a better implementation rate than those who were never taught such things."
I had told them not to take it as indecency, and still most of the students looked uncomfortable. I went on as if that were of no concern.
"From a black magician's standpoint, of course, the basic common sense between men and women goes further. It includes the experiences a man or a woman is all but certain to have at least once while living."
Even the corpse of an outstanding elemental magician or aura knight was, in the end, only one of two sexes. For a black magician, then, this was basic knowledge one ought to possess—closer to common sense than to anything else.
"Take women as the example. At least once, the first time you put on heels, the sensation was so unfamiliar that you turned an ankle while walking. And after a bath, drying long hair is its own ordeal."
Of the fourteen, five young ladies gave the faintest of nods.
"The pain of a period, returning on its cycle, varies sharply from person to person. A woman with a large chest will complain that her shoulders seize, of fatigue and of discomfort."
"Oh my..."
At my words the noble girls flushed, murmuring, and fanned themselves with their hands.
"Moving on to men: when you wake in the morning the penis erects of its own accord, and though it differs by individual, you also experience nocturnal emission."
"A-ahem..."
"Pathetic. I told you not to take it as indecency. You are black magicians who pursue black magic, and yet you are this ignorant of the two sexes that exist in the world."
No one spoke.
"The ones who ought to feel shame are you yourselves."
I gave them a look faintly mixed with contempt, then glanced at the clock. It read nine forty-five.
Has it grown this late already?
I wiped the board clean, gathered the attendance roll, and went on.
"You may send a letter to your territory and have the servants survey the people there. You may place a commission with the mercenaries' association. You may go out and do the work yourselves. The means are many."
This was what I meant to set them as their first assignment.
"The deadline is next month: Monday, the twelfth of April. Investigate experiences that men and women are likely to have at least once while living. You need not do it. If you do not, you will of course be marked down. Furthermore..."
Education itself was a symbol of the upper class, a thing monopolized. This world had no proper textbooks to speak of. All there was, was private instruction from some renowned tutor one invited in. There was no need to say how tight-fisted the world was about the sharing of knowledge.
"The assignments you gather and submit—setting aside whatever information overlaps—I will join to my own knowledge, bind into a book, and make a textbook of them. Your names will of course be printed at the very back. More precisely, your houses. I expect you to work hard."
"A textbook... sir?"
The word was a little unfamiliar, a little strange, and the students looked unconvinced.
"It will make good groundwork for the new students entering the Academy next year. The text will, of course, be sold for money, and a portion of that sum is to be paid as royalties to your houses."
Add that, and a glint came into a few of their eyes. It was an honorable service to one's house, and if anyone among them was competing for the seat of head, it could serve as a means of proving their own worth. Their eyes could hardly help but light.
"Every house among you might be listed, or might not. That judgment is mine alone, according to the quality of the work. If you have a complaint, then... yes. Once the finals are entirely finished, come to my office in person during the grade inquiry period."
Nine fifty-five. Five minutes left until ten.
"I did criticize the conduct of black magicians as they are now, but I never concluded that it was necessarily a bad thing. In the second week, then, I will lecture on magecraft, and in the third week I will lecture on aura knights."
Nine fifty-six. The lecture had ended some four minutes early, and I quietly left the hall.
Laura de Charles Rosenberg.
She reached carefully for the small of her back, which had begun to ache, and rubbed it.
More worth listening to than I expected...
Rosenberg was a territory of no small wealth. Loved by her father from childhood, Laura had of course been taught by a black magician of high repute, invited to the house for that purpose—yet not once had she heard the things Ferzen had laid out from the middle of the lecture on.
Basic knowledge of the sexes. Men and women...
Was that how he managed so overwhelmingly high an implementation rate on the corpse of her past life—Isabel Ron Pierre Genova?
No.
As he himself had said, that was nothing more than the foundation. And she remembered her previous life in full. The difference between them was not one that could be closed.
Still unable to make sense of her defeat that day, Laura rose with care.
He said the second week would be a lecture on magecraft, didn't he?
It struck her as odd. His knowledge of elemental magic could hardly run deeper than that of the other professors assigned to the subject. Even if he stood at their level, she and the others would be attending lectures on elemental magic regardless.
Now that I think of it, he didn't say elemental magic. He said magecraft.
Is there some real difference? I don't know.
In any case, her past self had been an Apollyon-rank elemental magician. Where the second week was concerned, at least, there would be nothing to learn from him.
"He was a man of nothing but rumors, but seeing him in person, he doesn't seem as bad as I thought. I wondered whether he'd swing Brutein's authority around and grind us under. The lesson itself... I suppose it was all right."
"Brutein isn't that sort of house. Meeting his eyes was hard, I'll give you that... but more than that, aren't the desks and chairs in this hall ridiculously uncomfortable? I'm built for it—I want to shove the chair back, and I can't. Why would anyone set out garbage like this?"
"That's what I'm saying. Never mind that they're all one piece. What kind of mentality bolts them to the floor? We're not beggars. Did they think we'd steal them and run? There's time before the next lecture, so let's go to the main building—what did they call it, the department office?—and file a complaint."
The heirs of noble houses who had been acquainted beforehand were talking among themselves. Had they felt the same discomfort she had? In truth, even calling it discomfort was a kind of courtesy. For Laura, a one-piece desk and chair went beyond uncomfortable and belonged squarely in the category of absolute shit. So when she heard that they meant to take a complaint to the department office, a quiet pleasure rose in her.
They would surely put the point across far more logically than she could, stammerer that she was.
I should get out of here.
Rosenberg was the holy land of art and culture, so the young ladies around her would certainly try to strike up an acquaintance. Laura, who stuttered, avoided the very act of speaking with other people, and she left the lecture hall quickly before any such thing could happen.
Next is Ancient Language...
Unless one was an archaeologist, or a scribe who translated and copied books out of the distant past, it was knowledge there was no particular need to possess. Laura could not understand why it had been made a required course.
Squeak. Squeak.
She was walking down the corridor when the sound of wheels came from behind her, and she turned her head, just slightly.
"Thank you..."
"Ah, n-no... i-it's... Th-this is hardly, hardly anything..."
Lizzie Paul Liana Claudia, drawing her wheelchair along by an enslaved corpse. When Laura yielded the way, the girl offered her thanks and went on ahead. Polite—nothing like the attitude with which she had talked back so rudely. If she was capable of this, why had she charged in so emotionally in the lecture hall just now? The question lingered.
The Academy was an extension of high society before it was a place of learning. There was little good to be had in earning Brutein's dislike. Rumors always traveled fast inside a closed space. Word had it that a marriage arrangement was passing back and forth between House Claudia and House Alfred, so today's incident alone would not see her ignored. Even so, no one would try to entangle themselves with her, not if they meant to keep their neutrality. They would not want to displease Alfred, nor Brutein.
It seemed a stretch that merely talking back without manners should come to that. But gossip always put on flesh, and grew exaggerated, as it spread.
Still young... is that it?
Laura watched Lizzie go down the neat ramp set beside the stairs, then slowly set her own feet moving.