The Entrance Ceremony Riot

The Leoris invitation event wrapped up without a hitch, and I came home. After that, nothing of particular note occurred. Until the day we entered the Academy, I simply threw myself into training alongside Sierra.

Those were my current stats and skill levels. Strength, Agility, and Intelligence had ticked up by a modest margin — the fruit of repetitive training. Mana and Luck, my primary stat, hadn't moved at all. Their base values were already so high that ordinary practice couldn't budge them.

I only had four skills. There were more hidden pieces I could have hunted down, but I hadn't learned skills indiscriminately. In Legend Route, there's a cap on the number of skills you can acquire. There are ways to raise that limit, of course, but in the early game it pays to be stingy with your slots. Every skill I'd picked up was a premium cut — no filler, no dead weight.

Objectively speaking, my stats were strong. Sara Leoris, the girl people hailed as a genius beyond geniuses, probably sat around fifty in her primary stat. Arsha's would be somewhere near thirty. A primary stat of twenty was more than enough to place among the Academy's elite. The reason that fact never quite leapt off the page was simple: my primary stat was Luck.

Unlike the others, Luck had almost nothing that showed on the outside. Strength and Agility were obvious even to a layman. Mana and Intelligence leaked into the air as a tangible aura. In other words, they were the kind of stats that made people look at you and think, That one's the real deal.

Luck didn't work that way. You couldn't size someone up by it. It was a stat that made reading your opponent a genuine headache. In the game, pushing a given stat past certain thresholds would trigger events at a set probability — and Luck had the fewest of those events by a wide margin. Take Strength or Agility: hit a high enough number and some competitive character would come swaggering over with a You're pretty good! and challenge you to a duel. Luck never worked like that. As a stat for hiding your power, it was excellent.

I'd chosen Luck as my primary for a number of reasons. It wasn't simply that I wanted to keep my strength under wraps. It was a Legend Route master's judgment — factoring in Luck's latent potential, its synergy with hidden pieces, and a dozen other considerations besides.

"Johann! Today's the day!"

Sierra's voice was practically overflowing with excitement. At last, it was the day of our Academy entrance ceremony. Both of us had received our acceptance notices without a hitch.

The roads of the Royal Capital were choked with carriages. It was a busy city on any ordinary day, but this was something else. Students heading in for enrollment, and the families who'd come to celebrate them, had the streets in a full standstill.

Sierra and I went on foot. District 3, where the Academy sat, was a bit of a walk — but for a commoner, it wasn't a long one.

"I still can't believe it. Me, enrolling at the Academy. I honestly can't tell if this is a dream or if I'm awake."

I flicked her on the forehead.

"Ow! Johann! I didn't say you could hit me!"

Sierra rubbed her forehead, looking unfairly cute about it.

"Haha. Sorry. You just had such a punchable look on your face."

"What kind of look is a punchable look!?"

A horse whinnied sharply beside us. We'd been chatting away when a carriage pulled up right alongside, and the door swung open on a familiar face.

"Get in."

"H-huh!? L-Lady Swordhorn. I mean — Miss Swordhorn."

Sierra's eyes went round. The person inside the carriage was Arsha Swordhorn, on her way to the Academy by coach, same as everyone else of her station.

"M-may we really ride with you?"

"District 3 is a fair distance. You were going to walk?"

"Thank you very much, Lady Swordhorn."

I bowed my head properly. Arsha tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"You don't need to tack on the honorifics either. We're Academy classmates starting today."

A faint flush crept across her face.

Arsha's tsundere event. It only triggered at affection twenty or higher. The banquet the other day must have done some real work on her numbers. That mint-chocolate ice cream I'd served her had clearly pulled more than its weight.

Someone was offering a ride. There was no reason to keep walking.

Sierra and I climbed into Arsha's carriage. It didn't quite match the one I'd ridden in with Sara, but it was a fine, expensive coach all the same.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Sorry it's not as nice as the Leoris one."

Arsha muttered it brusquely, as if the comparison sat badly with her.

"Not at all! This is incredibly nice!"

Sierra's eyes sparkled as she peered around the interior, taking in every detail. And just like that, we arrived at the Academy in comfort.

The Academy. The finest educational institution in the kingdom, seated in District 3 of the Royal Capital. It wasn't a single building so much as a vast university campus — a sprawling collection of structures clustered around the Central Plaza where we'd taken the entrance exam not long ago.

"The ceremony's being held in the Central Plaza, same as the exam, right?"

The three of us stepped down from the carriage and headed there together. Our little procession seized the attention of everyone we passed.

"Look at him. Who is that? He's insanely handsome."

"Which house is he from? I don't remember anyone like that."

"That's the young lady of the Swordhorn family beside him. Don't tell me he's Lady Swordhorn's fiancé?"

"No — that guy's a commoner!"

"What!? You're lying! There's no way someone with a face that noble is a commoner."

During the entrance exam, people had been too wound up to pay me much mind. Today was a different story. This face of mine drew eyes whether I wanted it to or not. At least it wasn't the wrong kind of attention — but it still made things awkward from time to time. Times like now, for instance.

"Johann, people are saying weird things."

Sierra's hand closed tight around mine.

"They're calling you Lady Swordhorn's fiancé. That's not true."

The light had gone out of her eyes. It was the kind of look that said she could bury one or two bystanders without breaking stride.

"If people get the wrong idea, it'll be a nuisance for Miss Swordhorn. Wouldn't it be better to clear it up properly?"

"That's not a bad—"

I was about to give her a noncommittal answer when the air around us changed all at once. One person had arrived, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and that was all it took.

"It's Department Head Tepes!"

Flora Tepes. Head of the Academy's Swordsmanship Department, and one of only three Sword Masters in the entire Royal Capital.

She had appeared.

The line of students ahead of us split cleanly down the middle. Professor Flora came walking through the gap ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she'd made, and she was coming straight toward us — a proud lion strolling through a herd of impala. A mischievous little smile sat on her lips.

"Blond. Bread. A shadow. And..."

A hiss of displaced air. In the space of a blink, she was standing right in front of my nose. The speed was so absurd you could have called it teleportation — a blink, in every sense of the word.

"A kiss."

Softness. Her lips touched mine. The contact lasted so briefly you could have measured it in microseconds, but it was contact all the same. Something I couldn't make sense of had just happened. There was no event like this in the original work.

What the hell?

A baffling situation, even for a veteran gamer. But true to form, I still managed to fish a new piece of information about Legend Route out of it.

The trait didn't copy.

The condition for copying a trait was a kiss. I'd floated a hypothesis once — that if I could just get a kiss somehow, the copy might go through even without sufficient affection. This had just proven that hypothesis wrong.

To recap: what Transcendent Copy actually required was the minimum affection needed to trigger a kiss event. And then the kiss itself. Both. In Sierra's case, it seemed she'd had the two of them already.

"Hmm~ Nothing special."

Professor Flora brushed past me as if I weren't there. To anyone watching, it would have looked like nothing more than a professor walking by. That was how fast she was.

"So that's the Maiden of Thorns."

Even Arsha only watched Professor Flora's receding back. She had no idea what had just taken place.

There was, however, exactly one person besides me who had caught the anomaly.

"Eh?"

Sierra opened her mouth in a dead little voice. She had seen it — all of it, in that sliver of an instant.

"That bitch. What was that?"

She leaned in close to my face.

"Johann. What did that skank just do to you?"

"That's..."

"She put her filthy lips on yours, didn't she? No. Johann. That's dangerous. You might catch an STD. There's no way a bitch like that has clean lips. You need to wash. You need to be purified. I'll clean them off with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my own."

Sierra had snapped. It was the yandere event that triggered on certain characters. So she had this side to her too. Then again, Sierra had originally been a mid-boss. She was no greenhouse flower, standing around offering the protagonist nothing but gentle smiles.

I'd have to be careful going forward.

"Miss Arsha, Johann, Miss Sierra. Good morning."

Fortunately, a savior arrived. Our very own Sara Leoris. I snapped my gaze toward her at once and offered a greeting.

"Lady Leoris. Good morning."

"You don't need the honorific."

"Miss Leoris. Good morning."

"It is a good morning. Although — Miss Sierra, has something happened? You look like you've been chewing on a corpse."

I took Sierra's hand firmly in mine as she glared daggers at Professor Flora with those lifeless eyes. Fortunately, it seemed to help. The murder in the air around her eased, just a little.

"It looks like the ceremony is starting."

Sara was right. Academy faculty were filing out of the academic building that fronted the Central Plaza, one after another.

Entrance ceremonies were always a tedious affair. I wasn't the only one who thought so — plenty of students were already zoning out and finding other things to do. Then a particular item on the program came around, and interest crept back into their eyes.

"Next, we will commend the top scorers of this year's Academy entrance examinations!"

For the students, this might well have been the most important moment of the entire ceremony.

"The first-, second-, and third-ranked students will be granted private dormitories, along with a number of additional privileges. I shall now announce the names."

Every ounce of attention in the plaza funneled toward the announcer's mouth.

The moment the names were read, the plaza went still. It was the silence of a crowd that had just been handed information it could not process. What broke that quiet ripple of confusion was a single voice.

"That's impossible!"

The voice belonged to a male student with silver hair like silk. Bohn Zaborg — one of the few genuinely handsome male characters in Legend Route.

He had just triggered the Riot Event.