Inferiority Complex
Veronica, the eldest daughter of House Ardi, hated Lucia.
That feeling had been with her for quite a long time — but lately, its shape had begun to change.
I'm scared.
It was lunchtime on the weekend, and she was still lying in bed. Not out of laziness.
Now that she'd learned of Lucia's secret, she couldn't sleep soundly even at dawn. Sometimes she didn't drift off until well after the sun had risen.
And then there was the other thing.
Why does Instructor Lihel keep coming to visit?
The woman was suspected of being one of Lucia's subordinates. Lately she'd been showing up at Veronica's room once a day like clockwork, and with every visit, her terror of Lucia only deepened.
"Hoo..."
Just thinking about it made her shoulders tremble.
At first she'd sensed something was off and dug into the woman's background, but she had since withdrawn every information network she possessed. There was no telling how far Lucia's reach extended within this academy.
...Still, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions.
Steadying her breathing, she forced her thoughts into order.
Even if she can manipulate Instructor Lihel, that doesn't mean she can swallow the whole Academy.
The Imperial Magic Academy answered directly to the crown. It was a national institution the Emperor himself oversaw. Lucia, nothing more than the second daughter of a count, could never shake something like that.
An obvious, self-evident fact.
...Of course that's how it is. I've just been overthinking.
She soothed herself by repeating those words like a daily prayer.
Besides, the Imperial Princess is in the second year right now.
Whatever happened at the Academy, it was no longer something she could afford to involve herself in.
"Aaah..."
Intellectually, she understood perfectly. She knew there was no reason to be afraid — and yet the moment Lucia's face crossed her mind, her body shuddered on its own.
Let's just get ready and head out for now.
Calming her pounding heart, Veronica made her resolution once again today.
Never, ever provoke Lucia.
Lucia was an unknown quantity — one with nothing to gain from poking.
With that thought, she finally dragged herself out of bed. Today she had a promise with Chloe. They were supposed to head to the Simulated Training Facility before the exams.
I can't wait.
Her heart fluttered. Simply knowing she would get to see Chloe made her feel cleansed, as if her mind were being washed clean.
Her fear of Lucia had vanished entirely.
All right.
With a purified heart, she finished preparing and stepped out. Now it was time for a happy hour alone with Chloe.
"There are too many people today, so you'll need to enter as a group of three."
...It was fine, right up until the attendant said those words.
They'd agreed to stay together until the exams were over. Surely, by tomorrow or the day after, there would be a chance to be alone together.
It's fine.
It didn't matter who tagged along.
...No.
"Huh? Lucia?"
It shouldn't have mattered.
"..."
The moment Chloe said the name, Veronica's heart slammed against her ribs.
The sounds around her vanished. Her strength drained away on its own. Her vision clouded over, her breathing turned ragged.
A piercing ring flooded her ears, and just as her head began to ache—
"Veronica?! Your hands are ice cold. Are you actually sick?"
The last thing she saw was Chloe's worried face.
Before long, Veronica came back to her senses.
What was that?
She'd frozen up out of nowhere like her mind had just shattered — and then Chloe had grabbed her hand and talked to her a few times, and she'd snapped back to normal.
Does she actually like her?
There was no way that was really it. Anyway.
The black-haired, short-haired, well-endowed attendant soon returned, and we followed her down yet another long corridor. The building was genuinely enormous — evidently all that money had to go somewhere.
"We've arrived."
After about a minute of walking, the attendant stopped in front of a door.
"You can adjust the settings on the screen on the wall. And even if a monster lands a hit on you, it won't leave any real injuries, so please don't worry."
With that, she bowed politely and waited until we had all entered the room.
The door closed behind us, and—
-Dah-dah-dak!
—someone sprinted down the corridor at full speed.
Living her best life, I see.
Anyway. Leaving the very hardworking attendant behind, I took stock of the training hall's interior.
A stark white space where a single wall stretched thirty meters. The ceiling sat maybe four meters high — you could practically smell the Academy's capital reserves.
"Let's set things up first."
Chloe fiddled with something like a blue hologram floating on the wall.
Hm, what's this now.
Chloe had been holding hands with Veronica ever since the girl's meltdown had passed. She was absolutely not letting go of that hand.
Suspicious.
I studied the two of them closely. To be precise, I analyzed Veronica's movements.
Chloe married a man on every single route of the original story. Which made Veronica the prime suspect in the polar bear hunt.
...Anyway.
"They said the first exam usually has small monsters, right?"
Chloe operated the screen on the wall right beside the door. So that was what determined which monsters would spawn.
Hmm.
But a blue hologram floating on the wall? Wasn't that less fantasy and more science fiction?
"Mmm... done! I set the first round to something easy."
Having finished the setup, Chloe turned to Lucia.
"Oh, by the way, Lucia. Something I've always wondered — your familiar really does look just like a baby chick, doesn't it?"
"...?"
At the absurd remark, Lucia's eyes narrowed to slits.
Chloe went on with a grin.
"The first time I saw it from a distance, I honestly thought it was a chick. That was during the basic theory lecture, right?"
Come to think of it, she did catch me back then.
I was hiding in her skirt pocket at the time.
I considered it a fairly fond memory, actually.
"...You saw that?"
"Yep! You were in her pocket, weren't you? The noise outside must've been too loud, because you kept poking your head out — do you have any idea how adorable that was?"
Chloe looked down at me with a broad grin.
"Would it be okay if I petted you for just a second?"
She slowly reached out her hand, and—
-Smack!
Lucia slapped it away.
"...Oh. Sorry — that was me overstepping, wasn't it?"
Chloe forced an awkward laugh and retreated back toward the screen.
"I'll get us started then? Kobolds and Bearwolves. Should be easy enough to handle."
The moment she pressed the start button, mana gushed from the center of the room.
The rapidly shifting mana gradually took shape, building the monsters up layer by layer from the ground — like an ultra-high-speed 3D printer.
This is...
Not the fantasy I'd signed up for. They'd smuggled sci-fi in under the excuse of "magic engineering."
Granted, the moment you use magic to trigger nuclear fusion, you've already flunked the authentic-fantasy test, but still.
Uncomfortable.
I hadn't realized there were this many sci-fi elements masquerading as magic. The games had all skipped over this part, so I'd never known.
Just as I was feeling my entire magical philosophy being personally insulted—
"Kieeeek!"
The kobolds shrieked and charged forward. Roughly eighty of them, by my count.
And where are the Bearwolves?
Monsters with a wolf's head grafted onto a bear's body. They stood rooted at the very back, watching.
Sending in the kobolds first to gauge the situation? They really were remarkably intelligent beasts.
"Hoo."
Chloe exhaled. Her left hand was occupied holding Veronica's, so she couldn't use it — instead, she thrust her right hand forward.
-KWAAAAANG!
A fireball the size of a torso incinerated the kobolds. The blast was so devastating that the flesh was torn off the kobolds standing several meters around it.
It's made of mana, and it's bleeding them.
That had to be around five kills. Yikes. Brutal.
"..."
I was watching the spectacle in a daze when Lucia glanced at me for a moment, and then—
-KWANG!
She began casually rapid-firing mana bullets.
-KUGUNG! KUGUGUGUNG!
Thanks to all the practice she'd put in, she could now manage three to four shots per second.
She's going to win pretty much every duel from now on.
Chloe, riding her own growth curve, would be at a similar level around this point in the timeline. And once she finished clearing the Tower of Time, first place for Lucia would no longer be some distant dream—
"—Oh. Now that I think about it, fireballs are terrible for crowd hunting. Maybe I should try hunting with mana bullets too?"
Five sigils unfolded around Chloe. Slower than a proper mana bullet, but far more durable.
-KWAGWAGWANG!
Mana bullets rattled out from the five sigils spread through the air. Over ten shots per second — an utterly overwhelming volume of fire.
It looked like simultaneous casting, but it was actually a completely different spell. Those sigils were all linked together as one.
And yet.
She learned THAT — now?
That was a spell students didn't learn until right before the first-year winter break.
"...Whew! Yeah, this spell's still too much for me."
Whether from low proficiency or not, she canceled the spell in under five seconds — but even that alone was an absurd achievement.
"..."
Having witnessed the whole thing, Lucia stopped casting for a moment.
Her gaze was fixed entirely on Chloe.
[Lucia?]
"...Ah."
Only then did Lucia seem to realize she'd been standing there blankly, and she resumed firing mana bullets.
-KUGUGUNG!
After that, she and Chloe mopped up the remaining kobolds with ordinary mana bullets.
"Phew..."
Catching her breath, Chloe shot Veronica a concerned look.
"Veronica, why aren't you casting anything? Are you still not feeling well?"
"...Huh? No, I mean — it's not that. My magic is all raw firepower, you know? I'm bad at dealing with small monsters like kobolds."
"Ah, right — lightning magic."
Chloe seemed to accept it immediately.
She just looks like she had a mental breakdown, honestly.
One glance at her face said everything. Something in her had been worn down, hollowed out.
She was a character written to hate Lucia, so I had no particular fondness for her — but seeing her in such a plainly wretched state did worry me a little. Had she been under a lot of stress lately?
If she spent her days with Lucia, none of this would be happening.
What a pitiable child, really.
"Then let's go deal with the Bearwolves that are left."
At Chloe's words, Veronica readied her magic. Lucia, for some reason, was staring blankly into empty air.
Veronica murmured under her breath.
"Electro—"
-KRAKAKAKOOM!
Ten wolf-headed bear-things were seared black by lightning.
"Now let's move on to the next stage. We need to practice against monsters that won't die in a single mana bullet."
While Chloe fiddled with the screen—
"..."
Lucia simply kept staring into empty space. There was unmistakably nothing at all in her eyes. No emotion of any kind.
"—Okay! Settings are done. Lucia, Veronica — shall we begin?"
The training continued for roughly three hours after that.
Chloe constantly held back her strength the entire time, keeping it just low enough that Lucia and Veronica could still take the monsters down.
And every time she did.
Lucia simply watched Chloe in silence.
After our reserved time at the Simulated Training Facility ran out, we trained a while longer in the forest before heading back to the dormitory. It was a night where moonlight had swallowed the sky whole.
"Time went by quickly today, didn't it."
Lucia said it while glancing at the clock, fresh from her shower.
[It really did.]
Midnight had long since slipped past. Thankfully, there was nothing left to do tonight.
I lay down on the bed beside Lucia. As always, I was about to fall asleep facing her when she turned her body away from me.
"...Master."
[Yes?]
"Good... night."
Her voice was impossibly small.
It was, without question, the same calm, emotionless tone as always.
[Lucia.]
"...Yes."
[How were you feeling today?]
"..."
She fell silent.
[It's okay. Take all the time you need.]
I waited for her answer.
The moments stretched on and on, and still—
"...I don't... know."
Lucia's shoulders hunched inward.
"I'm sure... I wasn't thinking anything at all. But every time Chloe used her magic... something, my heart felt... strange."
Her body flinched, little by little. The trembling in her arms traveled up through the blanket.
"I don't... I don't understand why I'm like this either. Why I'm like this, what state I'm even in, I..."
Her breathing had turned ragged and uneven. A small sound escaped her lips — she was biting at them, worrying the skin raw.
"I just... don't, know..."
For some reason, she seemed to be trying desperately not to breathe out at all.
"...Hnn, hck."
I couldn't say a single thing to her.
"I'm sorry..."
The emotion in her voice was, unmistakably, the same as any other day. That cold, measured restraint ran through every word. Nothing about her tone had changed at all.
Lucia felt nothing. She never did.
"I'm truly... sorry..."
And yet her words — her heart —
were, without any doubt, trembling.
[Why are you apologizing?]
It hurt.
Watching her say those words, something coiled tight around my heart and squeezed.
"You told me... that someday, I would... become strong..."
"But I... I don't know anymore if I truly can."
[...]
I had no idea what to say to her like this.
The truth was, I wasn't good enough a person to be teaching anyone in the first place — and so I couldn't bring myself to say anything at all.
...
And so, dawn simply came and went.