Back to the Academy
Academy, second year. The time had come to choose a minor—to step beyond one's primary field of study.
Most students in the Swordsmanship Department gravitated toward related disciplines: Tactics and Strategy, Magibeast Ecology, and the like. Those already shouldering the weight of succession sometimes chose Political Diplomacy or Business Administration instead.
But among those well-worn combinations, my choice stood out as anything but ordinary.
Swordsmanship as a major. Magic as a minor.
To devote oneself to the sword alone was already a lifetime's work. Pairing it with magic—a discipline widely considered its polar opposite—was a decision that would raise eyebrows in anyone who heard it. And yet even this seemingly absurd choice had its reasons.
Two years from now, a catastrophic monster wave would strike for the first time in a thousand years: the Great Upheaval.
It would be nothing like the waves of thousands or tens of thousands of beasts that rolled in every two or three years. This would be a tide of millions, a flood that would crash over the Empire like a tsunami.
Before a calamity capable of wiping every landmark and every trace of civilization from the map, even a swordsman who could hold a thousand foes at bay was still only one mortal man.
But Caelus has—no. I already have the power to wield 4th-Circle Magic.
My maternal house was the Berlien Marquisate, the West's storied magi-engineering family. Thanks to the Berlien blood in my veins, I had as much talent for magic as for the sword. And if I could secure the Marquisate's support, I could prepare anti-wave magi-weapons well in advance.
I could, of course, leave the operation of those magi-weapons entirely to the mages, as was customary. But on a battlefield where life and death hung in the balance, the core of my firepower had to remain under my complete control.
On the front lines, where a single second of error meant the difference between living and dying, I had no intention of placing my life in the hands of mages whose judgment and reflexes were far too slow.
And that was the real reason the top-ranked student of the Swordsmanship Department had chosen to sit in Magic Department lectures.
Under my mother's tutelage I had reached the 4th Circle, but that was still nowhere near enough to operate magi-weapons in concert. I had two years. Two years to grow strong enough to command them all.
I clenched my fist as if sealing the vow, then opened it, and set my steps toward the Magic Department building where my first lecture would be held.
I had taken a path few people used, and the corridor leading to the lecture hall was steeped in silence.
Thud. Thud.
I walked with nothing but my own footsteps for company—until, at a bend in the hall, I found a face I was in no hurry to see.
Zenon Argent.
For a man who had mocked me as a "northern barbarian" to Elysia's face, he was remarkably quick to fold at the waist the moment he laid eyes on me, every inch the picture of deference.
"Young Lord, it's been some time. I never imagined I'd find the top student of the Swordsmanship Department within these halls. ... The House of Hartelion has my everlasting gratitude for its patronage. Should you find yourself at an impasse during the lectures, I would be more than happy—humble as my abilities are—to offer what guidance I can."
So this was the kind of shameless hide you needed if you wanted to squeeze patronage money out of the old men of a Grand Ducal house. I clicked my tongue without meaning to.
He wore humility like a well-cut coat, but the rot underneath seeped out all the same, a faint stench no amount of polish could hide. The image of him sliding a hand around Elysia's waist and declaring that my family would starve without the South's help flickered behind my eyes, and I felt not the slightest obligation to answer this garbage with ceremony.
Zenon had planted himself across the corridor, waiting for a reply. When I walked on as though he weren't there, he faltered, a flicker of panic crossing his face.
He showed no sign of stepping aside on his own, so I turned my head, slowly, and looked down at him.
There was no anger in it. No distaste. Only the cold, settled gaze of a man regarding a worm writhing underfoot.
Zenon took that look full in the face. A sound caught in his throat, as if the air had been cut off, and the color drained from him in an instant.
The words were ice, and he moved on reflex, clearing the path. I passed him without so much as a brush of fabric against his shoulder—a perfect, absolute dismissal.
I thought I heard him grinding his teeth to powder behind me. It was none of my concern.
Caelus Hartelion.
Ignorant northern brute that he was—the kind who bared his teeth at anyone from the South—he had never once shown his hostility this openly.
But the eyes that had looked down at me just now held no simple dislike, no ordinary anger. What lived in them was raw, unvarnished contempt.
...I never let it show in front of him. Did that woman Elysia run her cheap mouth?
The corners of my lips had gone stiff, but I dragged them up into a smile anyway and bowed toward his receding back.
"...I hope your class goes well, Young Lord."
I had clenched my jaw so hard that the inside of my mouth was thick with the copper taste of blood. Rage and shame surged up together, hot enough to choke on—the simple fact of being dismissed by a northern barbarian of all people.
...Grit your teeth and endure it, Zenon Argent. Until you sit as Magic Tower Master, Hartelion's patronage is not optional.
I let out a long breath, and the fury filling my chest cooled in an instant, going cold and still. With reason restored, my mind began its calculations all over again, as ruthless as ever.
The old Caelus, even knowing I was from the South, had the sense to separate me from House Argent on account of my place in the Magic Tower. So why the sudden change? Is it really because of Florence?
I thought of the Grand Duchy of Hartelion's vast funding, of their top-grade magic stones. Without Hartelion's patronage, competing with Serin for the seat of Magic Tower Master on my own merit would have been impossible.
The moment the supply of magic stones is cut, my standing in the Tower will start to crack. If he's doing this out of personal feeling, he still knows how to keep public and private separate—it'll amount to little more than a pissing contest. But if that's not what this is...
A chilling premonition slid through my thoughts, and the blood in my body seemed to sink, going cold.
I eased the tension from my jaw and neatened the cuff of my uniform with care. In the space that rage and shame had scoured clean, only sharp calculation and wariness remained.
Whether a wounded northern dog was merely baring its teeth in a fit of temper—or whether he meant to overturn the entire board.
I would have to watch Caelus Hartelion's next move very, very carefully.
"...Lord Caelus! I heard you chose the Magic Department as your minor. You picked it so you could spend more time with me, didn't you? You should have told me beforehand!"
The moment I stepped into the lecture hall, Elysia came toward me with a brilliant smile. In that coquettish voice peculiar to southern young ladies, she slipped her arm through mine, as if to put our relationship on display for the entire room.
She seemed to have convinced herself that, cowed by her father's sanctions, I had chosen Magic as a gesture of reconciliation—that I had followed her here with my tail between my legs.
There was a limit to delusion.
Still, it wasn't the moment to set her off on another circus, and to anyone watching, there would hardly seem to be any other reason for the top student of Swordsmanship to take Magic. I decided not to bother explaining.
Whatever sour mood the banquet had left her in appeared to have fully dissolved. Elysia's beaming face was flushed a bright, vivid pink—the same shade as her hair.
"I've been occupied with family affairs and hadn't the chance to send word. Class is about to begin. You'd do well to take your seat, my lady."
I offered a brief, indifferent nod and moved to walk away, hoping that would be enough to peel her off. It wasn't. Elysia followed me all the way to my seat and settled herself in the chair beside mine.
The weight of her gaze from the side was a nuisance I could have done without, but I ignored it as best I could and quietly opened my textbook.
That was when the lecture hall door opened, and Uriel Crescent walked in.
As the Saintess, her major was Theology—but as a daughter of the Crescent Marquisate, a northern house renowned for its magic, she too appeared to have chosen Magic as her minor.
The living saint, praised as divinity made flesh. The murmur of the hall died in an instant. Beside me, Elysia gave a small, involuntary flinch at the sight of her.
But perhaps the delusion that I had followed her here, combined with the simple fact of occupying the seat beside mine, had gone to her head. Unlike the banquet, when she had fallen into outright panic, Elysia recovered quickly and slipped on the mask of the gracious, elegant Grand Duchess-to-be.
"I didn't realize the Saintess would be taking this class as well. There are plenty of seats—please, sit wherever you like."
Elysia's eyes curved into a gentle smile, even as she pressed herself closer against my side, her whole body broadcasting a single message: There may be plenty of seats, but the one beside Caelus is not among them.
It was a power play of the most southern-aristocratic kind. It was also the kind of game that would never work on Uriel, who had spent her entire life as the Saintess and seen every variety of human being there was.
Uriel did not so much as grant Elysia the dignity of being worth her attention. Her gaze passed straight through her and settled on me.
Then, in a voice calm and immaculate, she spoke.
"There may be plenty of seats, but among them, the one I am meant to take already seems to have been decided. I looked over the practical groups the professor posted. It appears I will be conducting this semester's practicals with the two of you. I look forward to working together, Your Highness—and you as well, Lady Florence."
Uriel tipped her chin with elegant ease toward the practical-group list posted at the front of the hall, then sat down beside me as naturally as if the seat had been hers from the beginning.
"W-what did you just say...?"
That single remark was enough to shatter Elysia's sense of superiority, and the easy composure on her face along with it.
She tried to hold a strained smile for the sake of the watching room, but her eyes, darting frantically over the posted notice, were shaking without mercy. The panic in her gaze after she confirmed it, the way her fingers secretly twisted and tore at her sleeve, laid bare just how thoroughly she had been thrown.
Confronted with the reality that even a victory she thought she had claimed could be undone in an instant before Uriel, Elysia bit down lightly on her lip.
Uriel, by contrast, remained perfectly composed throughout. Still wearing the Saintess's noble mask, she let her gaze slide across to Elysia on the far side of me, and looked her over. There was nothing in those eyes but cold pity, looking down from a height.
"Lady Florence. If the group arrangement is not to your liking, shall I ask the professor to reassign us?"
The tone was all consideration. The thorn of mockery underneath it was unmistakable.
Elysia's cheek twitched. She bit her lip.
"Ah—no. Why would it not be to my liking..."
She seemed to sense that another word would finish off what remained of a young lady's dignity. She shut her mouth by force and left it at that.
"Then I look forward to the semester, Lady Florence."
The Saintess's smile, warm enough to seem almost fond. But the cool, unhurried composure behind it was a humiliation more cruel than any rebuke Elysia could have been given.
In the face of a perfect defeat, Elysia could only hide her trembling cheek as best she could, and bite down on her lip against the shame.