Jealousy and the Duel
Bohn Zaborg.
If you were going to start Legend Route as a male character, I'd recommend Bohn Zaborg. He comes packed with formidable stats and a genuinely useful trait at the same time.
Resistance to all status ailments increases by 50%. When afflicted with a fatal status ailment, there is a 25% chance to overcome it. You cannot be killed instantly by a status ailment.
Status-ailment resistance is a stat you absolutely have to lock down by the mid-game. Fail to pick it up through items, skills, or any other means, and boss fights start throwing every kind of misery at you.
Run into a boss plastered with status skills the way Sierra Grimkeeper is, and that's the game—right then and there.
And it isn't just bosses. The same resistance is plenty useful against ordinary monsters. Having a trait that covers status ailments for you is a serious advantage. From a speedrunner's point of view, it can even look more appealing than Sara's trait.
A trait I'd copy if I could.
Unfortunately, copying his is impossible for me.
The prerequisite for a trait copy is a kiss.
And Bohn Zaborg's gender is, needless to say, male.
Bohn Zaborg, I'm gay. And the gay standing in front of you likes you.
!?
Bye.
A hideous scene flashed through my head. I shook it off with a jerk of my chin. There was no world in which I was going to end up with Bohn Zaborg's trait. I'd sooner lock lips with Ralph Leoris.
Young Johann! In truth, I love you with a burning passion!
Ah. That's not it either.
Get a grip. The genre almost changed on me.
"This is absurd!"
Maybe it was the Surging Courage talking. The Silver-Haired Noble, Bohn Zaborg, had no hesitation about airing his grievances even while the entrance ceremony was still underway. Every student in the hall turned to look at him.
"I didn't even place in the top three! And Johann Baker—what even is that student!?"
You couldn't quite call it an Academy freshman running his mouth without knowing his place. He was, after all, a direct heir of the Zaborg family, and the Zaborgs were a great noble house on the same tier as the Leoris family.
Of course, even among the great houses there was a subtle ranking, and the Leoris family sat at the very top of it—but the Zaborgs were not a house that yielded ground to anyone. Purely in terms of family prestige, they stood above the Swordhorns.
"Cadet Zaborg. Compose yourself. This is the entrance ceremony."
Someone stepped in to check him: a colossal man whose entire body looked scorched black, packed from scalp to heel with muscle so dense a needle wouldn't have found a gap. If Arsha's brown was the healthy kind, this was outright jet black.
Naturally. He was a Black man.
"It's Professor Kerr!"
"Professor Joseph Kerr. They say he's the only former slave gladiator who ever became an Academy professor."
"I heard that in raw ability, he stands comparison with Professor Tepes."
"Come on. That's just a rumor. How's a gladiator supposed to measure up to a Swordmaster?"
"That's not the point. Professor Joseph Kerr's... you know. It's over thirty centimeters."
"Whoa. That's freaking huge."
Professor Joseph Kerr, Vice-Head of the Swordsmanship Department, had made his appearance. He looked like a cannonball given human form—imposing, bristling with dignity—and the students' commotion died down at once.
Bohn Zaborg was the exception. His ranking, apparently, mattered a great deal to him.
"Professor Joseph Kerr, something here is wrong! How am I not even in the top three!? I was certain—"
"Cadet Zaborg."
Professor Kerr's voice dropped. A vast storm seemed to roll off him. Under that heavy, smothering pressure, even Bohn Zaborg's shoulders hunched.
"The remark you just made is an insult to the Academy."
For a former gladiator, his diction was endlessly courteous. The atmosphere inside it was anything but. Bohn Zaborg's face went paper-white. All the bravado of a moment ago vanished on the spot.
"I—I apologize. I retract what I said."
Bohn Zaborg, scion of a great noble house, had apologized. However exalted his blood, he was an Academy student now.
"All right, all right! Let's not get carried away. Today's supposed to be a happy entrance ceremony, you know."
It was Professor Flora who clapped her hands and tidied the situation up. Unlike Professor Kerr's severe expression, she was beaming, looking for all the world like she was having the time of her life.
It was a completely different face from the weight she'd put on during the entrance examination. This was the real Professor Flora.
I'd seen a similar look on Ralph Leoris. Like him, Flora was an eccentric who adored sudden incidents—which was probably why she'd staged that kiss event earlier.
"Well, it's not like I don't understand how Zaborg here feels. In that case, why don't we just prove it right here?"
"D-Department Head!"
Professor Kerr's alarm showed plainly at Flora's bombshell.
"That works, doesn't it? Looking at Zaborg's face, he was about to challenge Baker to a duel anyway."
At her words, Bohn Zaborg nodded.
"That's correct. Give me the stage and I will prove it. That I am superior to that Johann Baker!"
He used the word superior without a flicker of hesitation. Because I was a commoner.
I wasn't particularly offended. Bohn Zaborg had always been that kind of character.
"Good. But listen—people have to take responsibility for what they say. You know that, right?"
Professor Flora smiled sweetly as she said it. Her eyes, curved into crescents, settled on Bohn. He answered without the slightest pause.
"Of course! A noble takes responsibility for his words."
"If Zaborg here fails to prove he's better than Baker... would it be all right if we processed him for expulsion from the Academy?"
Expulsion.
The hall stirred at her words.
"E-expulsion? At the entrance ceremony?"
"If it's expulsion, that'd be unprecedented."
"Surely he won't take a condition like that? There's always a chance, you know."
"But the other guy's just a pretty-faced commoner..."
A crack appeared even in Bohn Zaborg's swaggering expression. He knew as well as anyone that nothing in the world was a hundred percent. Could he really swallow the risk of expulsion?
He had no choice. After coming out this confidently, tucking his tail because he was afraid of being expelled would deal a catastrophic blow to a reputation he valued as much as his life.
Professor Flora's talk of expulsion had been aimed precisely at that—a punishment, of sorts, for a student who'd caused a scene at the Academy's entrance ceremony.
As expected, under that bright, smiling face sat a fox's cunning. Her official epithet was the Maiden of Thorns, but she was also known by another: the Fox of the Sword.
"I accept! However—if I win, I believe Johann Baker should bear the same risk! It would prove he claimed first place at the Academy by dishonest means, after all!"
Bohn Zaborg had used his head, in his way. A drown-together tactic. If I got spooked and refused the terms, he'd have grounds to refuse them himself. But—
"I accept."
As if I was going to refuse.
If Bohn Zaborg had been a woman, I'd have found some way to raise her affection. But you're a guy.
Until you show up with a pair of breasts, I've got zero interest in you.
No—even if you did, a gender-bender would be pushing it.
And just like that, an impromptu duel between Bohn Zaborg and me was on.
"A duel at the entrance ceremony. I suppose that's the Golden Generation for you—unprecedented things keep happening!"
A kindly smiling white-haired old man clapped as he spoke. Like Flora Tepes, he seemed to regard the whole situation as a form of entertainment. He was Taylor Grass, Headmaster of the Academy.
"Trouble."
Sylvie Mercure, professor of alchemy in the Magic Department, tugged her white coat closed and watched the improvised dueling ground with a blank expression. She'd wanted to wrap up this tedious ceremony and get back to her research; now she was stuck. For someone who prized efficiency above all else, the situation itself was a problem.
"Eek...! Students fighting from the entrance ceremony... Kids really are terrifying..."
A gloomy female professor, dark circles heavy under her eyes, hunched in on herself and turned her face away.
The faculty, no less than the students, were a gallery of wildly different personalities.
The two who stepped onto the dueling ground were Johann Baker and Bohn Zaborg. Johann Baker was the incoming student who had passed the Academy entrance exam with a perfect score; Bohn Zaborg was a rookie whose stock had been soaring of late. Neither was a student the Academy could afford to throw away.
"Headmaster. How do you intend to mediate this duel between those students?"
Professor Joseph Kerr asked it in a voice close to a sigh.
Expelling one of them, as Professor Tepes's condition demanded, would be an enormous loss for the Academy. And if Bohn Zaborg were the one expelled, the aftermath could be ugly.
The Zaborg family was one of the Academy's major patrons. Of course, that patronage had never bought preferential treatment for Zaborg students—fairness was a value the Academy had to treat as sacred. But whoever had started the fight, Bohn Zaborg's expulsion would drag the Zaborg name through the mud. The family would then scale back its support, and the Academy could find itself in a difficult position.
In the end, the Academy's best option was to mediate. And yet Professor Tepes had thrown fuel on the fire instead.
"Children grow by knocking each other around, you know."
Headmaster Grass stroked his beard and continued at his leisure.
"Professor Flora is a professional at this sort of thing. Since she's stepped in as referee, she'll call it a draw at just the right moment."
Flora hadn't sicced the two students on each other purely for her own amusement.
As she'd said, Bohn Zaborg challenging Johann to a duel had been a matter of time. Better to put it on an official stage and defuse it like a dud than let them brawl somewhere the faculty's hands couldn't reach and kick up a scandal.
"I see... My judgment was shortsighted."
Professor Kerr clicked his tongue in admiration at his senior Flora's deftness. As a swordsman and as an educator, she was several moves ahead of him. A senior who inspired respect without even trying.
The two boys took their places on the dueling ground. Bohn Zaborg on the left, Johann Baker on the right.
Standing between them, Flora looked from one to the other and declared, full of spirit:
"Begin the duel!"