The Fragile One Grinds His Teeth
The sound of a man's teeth grinding as he stared at the letter was crystal clear. Beside him, a middle-aged man in a suit polishing a cup glanced his way.
"Did you pass?"
"......"
"You failed, then."
"......Yes."
The man crumpled the letter and hurled it into the trash. It had been last-minute cramming, but he'd devoted himself entirely to studying magic for nearly a month. He'd thought he stood a chance. He might not know the theory well, but magic was something he'd used to the point of exhaustion, so he believed picking it up would be quick.
Yet his name was nowhere on the admission test results.
He checked three more times, but nothing changed. Hurtlocker Siegfried. That name was nowhere to be found.
"I knew it would turn out this way. Expecting you to get into the Imperial Academy with only a month? Does that even make sense?"
"It was my own shortcomings."
"Plenty of kids pass on their second or third attempt. What are you on about? You said there weren't any questions you couldn't solve because of time, right? Study for another year and next year you'll definitely—"
"There is no next year."
At Hurtlocker's firm declaration, the man fell silent. He was right. The intelligence agency's ambitious Imperial Academy Terror Operation had been planned entirely on the premise that Hurtlocker would enroll this year.
The worst-case terror plan of slaughtering every student and professor had already slipped away.
"So you're abandoning the Imperial Academy?"
"No. We still have Emilia."
"What can that girl accomplish alone?"
"She should handle reconnaissance perfectly. We'll shift the Imperial Academy from a terror target to a surveillance one."
The man stared wordlessly at Hurtlocker, who spoke so dispassionately. This was a man who'd spent over a decade on the battlefield. He'd hoped this pitiful boy—who had never experienced ordinary social life—could enroll in university. Even if the goal was terrorism, he'd hoped the boy might live like a human being for a short while.
Because the current Hurtlocker was nothing but a rigid killing machine.
"Then will you return to headquarters now and help with operations here?"
"Not yet. I still have work to do."
"What is it?"
"There's one collaborator at the Imperial Academy. He's no longer needed, so I must eliminate him."
"......"
Watching Hurtlocker speak of such a brutal act so casually, the man offered a bitter smile. The plan to enroll him at the Imperial Academy and let him live in peace for a while had failed. It meant a storm of blood would blow through. It meant the reactivation of the killing machine.
"Is this the place...?"
Erika kept glancing around as she walked. Before the semester began, the Imperial Academy was so deserted that aside from the occasional passing staff member or professor, it was practically empty.
What she sought in that quiet academy was none other than the single-occupancy dorm room.
-The top admitted student, you say? He has already moved into the single dorm.
When she barged in on the head professor demanding to meet the top student, that was the answer she received. It was strange that someone would move into the dorm before even enrolling, but the head professor wouldn't lie, so Erika headed straight for the dormitory building.
I can't rest until I see what kind of bastard he is!
A genius among geniuses. From childhood, Erika's nickname had been the one who always achieved the highest scores among noble children. Even now, after considerable time had passed, she could confidently call herself the finest mage of her generation, yet the gap between her and second place was no longer as overwhelming as before.
That was why she had expected, to some degree, to lose the top spot. She had even considered the humiliating possibility that a lower noble's child who had awakened late might overtake her.
But she had never dreamed it would be a commoner whose name she had never heard in her life.
The issue wasn't losing the top spot. The real problem was that she hadn't even known the commoner's name. The fact that she had failed to notice the existence of someone superior to her wounded her pride more than anything else.
That was why she needed to learn what sort of person this commoner with the tacky name Schluss Heinkel was. At the very least, she needed to confirm that he was inferior to her, that claiming the top spot had been mere luck, and that the possibility of overtaking him again still existed. Only then would she be satisfied.
"Is this... it?"
It was supposed to be behind the dormitory building. Erika circled the structure and followed a path through the small forest that appeared. The woods soon ended, and when an open area came into view, Erika's mouth fell open.
"Whoa..."
A vast garden and a modest mansion—one she would never have imagined existing on university grounds—lay before her. It was small for a mansion, but considering it was called a single-occupancy dorm room, its size was abnormally excessive.
She had heard that the top student received various privileges, but she never expected an entire space like this. The front gate opened without resistance when she pushed it. Erika stepped into the garden, admiring the well-tended flower beds.
Knock, knock, knock.
Three knocks on the front door. No response. The mansion was rather large, so it might take a servant some time to arrive. Erika decided to wait patiently, but—
Bang, bang, bang!
After thirty seconds her patience ran out, and she pounded on the door with her fist.
"Damn it..."
Still no response. No hurried footsteps of a servant, no voices. Was the house empty?
"Hmm...?"
Erika tilted her head after checking the space behind the mansion. The door to a building that looked like a storage shed stood open. She quickly composed her excited expression and walked toward it.
As expected.
She could sense a presence inside. Was it Schluss Heinkel? Planning to overwhelm him from the start, Erika opened her mouth to speak loudly.
"......Hup."
But the moment her eyes moved past the doorway, her mouth snapped shut. A pool of congealed blood stained the floor. Bloody trails even stretched to the entrance, as if someone had crawled there while bleeding. It looked exactly like a murder scene.
In the center stood a middle-aged woman holding a mop, and their eyes met.
"What brings you here?"
"Ah, um, that is—"
"What are you doing here."
A very hoarse male voice came from behind. Erika flinched and spun around. There stood a man in a school uniform, dark circles hanging heavily under his eyes and a fierce glint in his gaze.
"Ah! I'm sorry!"
"......"
From that confident attitude and demeanor, Erika assumed he must be a senior and bowed her head. But she soon noticed something strange.
This was the single-occupancy dorm room. Therefore, the identity of the man who had appeared here was obvious.
"You couldn't be—"
"I am Schluss Heinkel."
The man looked down at her with an expressionless face. The moment she heard the name, Erika's cheeks burned crimson.
"So what business brings you—"
Without waiting for Schluss to finish, Erika sprinted across the garden at lightning speed and fled. She was too embarrassed to even lift her head.
"What the hell was that about?"
A sigh escaped me at the absurdity. Trespassing into someone else's house and then suddenly running away. That sly face and silver hair... it had to be Erika. Erika von der Lichtenburg. The count's daughter, a heroine who would show remarkable talent at the Imperial Academy and later become an elder in the magic academic world.
Ah. Since the protagonist failed to enroll, she wasn't a heroine anymore. And her father was actually... No. That no longer mattered.
"Have you already been discharged?"
"Yes. I heard you took me to the hospital. Thank you so much."
"No need. I only did what was necessary..."
I discharged myself as soon as I could move. My whole body still ached and I was just as exhausted as before, but I had returned early and the training room cleaning wasn't finished.
"I'll help."
"Pardon? With what?"
"The cleaning."
"No, it's my job, why would you—"
"I want to use the training room as soon as possible."
"Ah..."
It wasn't out of kindness. If cleaning was delayed, I couldn't use the training room, so I helped. The start of the semester was fast approaching. There was still much to analyze and much to do before then. Therefore, I needed to make the training room—where no one would catch me—ready for immediate use.
I could probably use it even with a blood puddle on the floor, but... it still felt unpleasant.
"Thank you."
"Not at all. Thanks to your help, Mr. Schluss, it finished quickly. Well then..."
Mrs. Marie left the training room and closed the door. The moment she did, I snapped my fingers and the barrier enveloping the training room reactivated. It seemed control had transferred to me; I could turn it on and off at will.
"So what now..."
There were many things to do. The date had changed, so I could use Memory of the True Body and Selection and Concentration again. That meant sword training, and I also needed to test whether I could convert mana energy into mana by applying Selection and Concentration to my mana response... but the thought alone exhausted me.
I had stayed up all night yesterday and nearly died. My body felt unbearably heavy. Simply walking here had been grueling. The desire to sleep was overwhelming, but if I fell asleep now I would likely remain unconscious for at least twenty hours, so I fought desperately to keep my eyes open.
"Haa... What is this?"
While looking in the mirror I felt a strange sense of dissonance. That my eyes looked like dead fish eyes was something I had noticed since yesterday. But the dissonance I felt now was slightly different.
My entire body was currently screaming at the peak of fatigue. So what should normal eyes look like? They should obviously be bloodshot, as if they might burst at any moment. Yet my eyes right now were strikingly white. They looked more alive than any other part of my body, which conversely made the rest of me seem dead.
No, you've got to be kidding me.
At that instant, everything before my eyes went pitch black. Even the quiet white noise filling the training room vanished. I must have cursed, but I only felt my lips move; no sound reached me. Sight and hearing had been completely severed.
I had experienced this sensation before. Yes, it was exactly like when I had been trapped inside the barrier of fear. Back then I hadn't understood why it happened, but now I thought I could guess.
There was one setting I had scribbled down in passing long ago: if a blind or deaf person possessed extremely high mana sensitivity, they could observe mana vibrations and use them like sight or hearing.
Quite coincidentally, Schluss Heinkel's mana sensitivity was also extraordinarily high. The stat sat at 75—a level the protagonist in the original work only reached in the latter half. I had wondered why it was so high. It turned out Schluss Heinkel had been seeing and hearing through mana.
That was why his sight and hearing were cut off inside the mana-vacuum barrier of fear. Thanks to that, he had received full marks because he literally couldn't see anything fearful...
That was one thing during the fear barrier. But if you asked why it was happening now... the only answer was that I had become conscious of it.
It seemed the original Schluss Heinkel had lost his eyes and ears long ago and begun seeing and hearing through mana. He had done it so naturally that it had become completely internalized, reaching the point where he performed it unconsciously. Even after the body's owner changed, the body still reflexively converted mana vibrations into sight and sound.
It had been so seamless that I never noticed. But by becoming aware of it just now, what had operated in the unconscious realm shifted into the conscious one. It was the same principle as never thinking about your tongue's position until someone mentions it, then suddenly having no idea where to put it.
First, stay calm. Sense the mana vibrations.
If Schluss Heinkel could do it, then I who had inherited his body should be able to as well. I closed my eyes and focused on the mana surrounding me. Without sight or hearing, only mana could be perceived, so it wasn't difficult. Then I analyzed the frequency and waveform of those vibrations, converting them into the forms of light and sound.
"Wow, fuck. I thought I was going to lose my mind from the frustration."
Before long, sight and hearing returned. It felt as refreshing as surfacing after being underwater for a long time.
"Ow."
......The moment my concentration slipped, my vision almost went black again. It seemed that once I had dragged the process into the conscious realm, losing focus would cause me to lose my sight like this. How could I push it back into the unconscious?
"Tsk..."
What else could I do? As expected. The only solution was to see and hear through mana every single day until the body grew accustomed to it. The obvious yet unwelcome conclusion was that time and effort were the answer.
"Schluss Heinkel. What the hell kind of person was he?"
This incident made me even more curious about his identity. Stats far below average. An internal circuit that, in the doctor's words, was "raising hell." On top of that, blind and deaf. There were too many defects in this body... To the point where even a one-HP character seemed healthier. I wasn't sure whether I could survive until the ending with a body like this.