Nyeah~
Nyeah~
“......”
“...Asuka.”
“.......”
“Asuka!”
“Huh? Wh-what?”
“What are you doing? You've been spacing out even more than usual lately.”
The swordsmanship club room at Eloni Academy.
Despite being only a first-year, Asuka Elfosis occupied the most prestigious seat in the room. In front of her, her best friend Nove Ersosa waved a hand once before flopping down onto the sofa beside her. A high elf in the same first-year Class A, and gifted with a blade far beyond her years, Nove had been Asuka's friend even before either of them enrolled at the academy.
Though the gap between their ages was more than a hundred years.
“Nothing.”
Their mental ages, after all, were about the same.
“Nothing, my foot. You're thinking about that girl, aren't you?”
“......”
“Ugh. Fine, then let's at least get the club recruiting done.”
If you had to name the two people everyone at the academy was talking about these days, the answer came without hesitation.
One was the Elf Queen's second daughter, the girl destined to become the Child of the World Tree — Asuka Elfosis.
The other was the nightmare of the professors, Ria Elfosis.
“All she does is cast magic. It's got nothing to do with swordsmanship.”
“Isn't it because you couldn't solve the problem she made?”
“......”
At first, it had been nothing more than curiosity.
The girl had radiated a presence sharp enough to raise the hair on one's arms. But afterward, when that presence vanished entirely, Asuka had shrugged it off as her imagination.
Then Ria made a bet with a professor, and was reborn as the nightmare of the magic faculty — and that curiosity swelled into something far harder to ignore.
Her body is weak. One careless swing in her direction and she'd die on the spot.
Ria Elfosis was fragile. She knew that for a fact.
And yet, somehow — she couldn't shake the feeling that if they ever clashed head-on, she would lose. Absolutely, unquestionably lose.
“A few days ago she bet that professor over a problem, and she was the only one who solved it — even he couldn't. It took the headmaster himself to crack it, you know.”
“......”
“Her mind must be razor-sharp. She'll probably be promoted to Class A before long…”
She knew. She knew all of it.
The girl was so famous by now that the gossip was impossible to escape, and Asuka had even gotten hold of that infamous problem and tried solving it herself.
...What on earth even was that?
Not because she lacked the brains — she simply could not solve it, no matter how hard she racked her mind.
At first, everyone assumed Ria had simply invented an unsolvable question. But the moment the headmaster stepped in personally and declared the problem flawless, Ria Elfosis became the most famous person in the academy.
So famous that there wasn't a soul anywhere in Eloni Academy who didn't know her name.
All of it, in barely three months since enrollment.
“...Fine. If she comes up like you say, I'll see for myself.”
“C'mon, she seemed pretty decent at a glance.”
“More importantly — the applicant for the club?”
“Oh, that's what I came to talk about. One sec.”
“Hey! Come on in!”
Nove shouted toward the door, and as if they'd been waiting for exactly that, it swung open.
“What, you already brought them?”
“No reason to wait. The skill's the real deal.”
The only flaw was…
“...that she's a beastkin.”
“...Hello.”
A fox beastkin with silver hair bowed her head politely.
I've infiltrated, oppa.
Her eyes sparkled, filled with starlight.
Aisha had been thinking it over.
For three straight months. To be precise, she had spent the last five hours since entering the dungeon observing Lily, and had turned up nothing that could honestly be called information.
The one oddity, of course, was how suspiciously deep her knowledge of magic ran.
This went beyond simply casting spells well — the way she talked about formulas and mana circuits made it clear she was no ordinary user. If anything, she was closer to an NPC than a player.
But raising that as an issue now would be pointless, because Lily had been like this since the very beginning.
She'd been teaching others how to sense mana. Even how to use specialized techniques.
...Then why did I just take all of that for granted?
Didn't it seem strange, when you actually thought about it? Someone who'd started the game only a few months ago, possessing that kind of knowledge?
Sure, you could chalk it up to a class penalty — but even before any penalty existed, in the earliest days, Lily had already been spouting strange information.
Definitely suspicious.
...But what if the penalty had been in effect from the very start?
Lily had earned her hidden class by taking down the tutorial boar — not with the standard issue equipment, but with a sword that was practically falling apart. Plenty of people had attempted the same feat before her; vanishingly few had succeeded. And even those who somehow pulled it off after hours of trying never received a class out of it.
It must have been a time attack, then. That was the only explanation.
At any rate, if the class she'd obtained that way had been applied from the moment the game began, the story held together well enough.
Come to think of it, there's Leo, there's Devil — there's even that bizarre magical girl.
This game was hardly short on lunatics. It would be fair to say that more than half of the people carrying hidden classes or special races were not entirely sane.
That was the kind of unhinged game this was — and Lily, too, did not exactly look normal.
“Ugh… not enough evidence…”
As it stood, it was nothing but a conspiracy theory. To call out Lily's absurd abilities, she needed hard proof.
“Hm?”
Then, after trailing along for who knows how long, Aisha discovered a single letter sitting inside a desk drawer.
Wait, this is…
Aisha. Attach yourself to Asuka Elfosis. I don't care what methods you use.
— Sword God
“S-Sword God oppa?”
It was his handwriting.
Sword God's fan club, the Sonjabi, dissected absolutely everything about him. For Aisha, who sat at its very summit as president, being able to recognize Sword God's handwriting was simply one of the fundamentals.
Asuka… you mean that princess?
Why would Sword God order something like this? Truthfully, the reason didn't matter to Aisha at all.
What mattered was that Sword God oppa had asked her for a favor.
After a brief moment of sorting out her thoughts, Aisha rose from her seat.
All right. First, get close to someone in Asuka Elfosis's circle.
Her current identity was a beastkin. A member of what people politely called a lesser race — approaching a princess of the realm by ordinary means was out of the question.
And so she slipped away to carry out her mission, and—
“And she's gone.”
Her original objective, forgotten once again.
“And she's gone.”
Aisha had left. Sword God had departed long ago and rarely showed up to class, which had left only Aisha — and now she, too, had vanished, muttering Sword God's name under her breath.
Finally, some peace and quiet.
“Well, I'd never even met her before today, so…”
Past or present, I had plenty of enemies — but today was the first time I'd ever come face to face with Aisha herself. In other words, there was no history between us that could have earned me a grudge.
If I had to pin down a reason… it was probably the fact that I'd beaten Sword God, wasn't it.
From what I'd heard in chat, Aisha was an enormous fan of his.
[Episode 3: Club Recruitment — in progress.]
[You have accumulated Contribution Rate with numerous promising candidates. This may exert a minor influence on your choices.]
[Prominent candidate Asuka Elfosis is now aware of your existence!]
[A portion of your stats has been unsealed.]
Three months had already passed since I entered the academy. I had become a household name, and even without exchanging a single word with Asuka, a full 3% of Contribution Rate had accumulated.
One could dismiss it as a measly 3% — but Asuka was a candidate already confirmed as the Child of the World Tree. Which meant that, with the outcome already decided no matter what anyone did, stacking Contribution on her in the first place was practically impossible.
Unless, of course, some up-and-coming talent suddenly popped up to threaten her position.
“...Speaking of which, why hasn't Merni come up yet?”
Asuka kept climbing — so why not her older sister, Merni? She was a fourth-year, still attending the academy with graduation as her goal, so surely she knew who I was by now.
“Ria Elfosis!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take it. Your report card.”
I dismissed the silence spell and descended toward the lectern. There stood the elf professor eyeing me with open displeasure — Denver Elbua.
Not only had he made a dropout bet with me, but when his teaching came under fire, he was the very man who'd sneered, if you're so brilliant, why don't you come up here and try.
And thanks to that, my influence had only grown.
“Hmm… first place, I see?”
The placement exam, held once every three months. Every student in the academy took it, and the results reshuffled everyone's classes all over again.
My score was, naturally, first place. Each grade sat a different exam, so my result was first place among the first-years — a rank that put me above even the princess herself, Asuka Elfosis.
“Don't get cocky. This was merely the written portion. The midterms include practical evaluation as well, so a result like—”
“Nyeah~”
“.......”
I gave him the softest, cheekiest answer I could manage, and he furrowed his brow and called up the next student.
“So am I Class A now?”
“...A notice will be posted in due course.”
“I see.”
Which meant that by the time this episode wrapped up, I'd already be sitting in Class A.
I returned to my seat, gathered my things, and walked straight out the door. Regular classes were about to let out, and the professor was clearly praying for me to disappear as quickly as possible.
“Might as well go find a club to join.”
It just so happened that this episode was about club recruitment.
Now then… which one should I join?