The Final Entrance Exam
The entrance exams for Vyrant Academy stretched across an entire month. As an institution charged with forging talent devoted to the empire, they poured no small effort into the process.
Today marked the final test of those exams. And somehow, I had been summoned to it in my capacity as faculty.
Normally only the professors who actually taught classes were assigned as exam supervisors. This was an exception. Granted, as a mage I was stronger than any professor currently on staff at the academy.
But when I took the counselor post, I had deliberately buried my past career as an imperial mage. Under ordinary circumstances I would never have been called in as exam staff.
Yet Bernard Walker—academy principal and my old friend—had specifically requested me.
I arrived at the examination hall, received the briefing, and found the whole thing thoroughly trivial. So why had Bernard dragged me here?
He sat far off in the seat of honor, watching the prospective students. For the final exam, it seemed the principal himself had decided to attend in person.
Our eyes met and the corner of his mouth twitched upward. That lightness of his was hard to believe in the man who headed the empire’s premier academy.
He flashed me a look that said Glad you made it!, then apparently remembered his station and schooled his face back into seriousness.
Unable to fathom what he was scheming, I loitered about and simply watched the final stage of the entrance exams unfold.
The last trial for the prospective students was a simplified combat evaluation. None of them yet knew what they would face.
Because the exam was held in full view of everyone, the first student called was placed at the greatest disadvantage.
As befit the final test, a tense silence hung over the crowd of candidates. Every gaze was fixed on the raised platform at the front of the hall.
Professor Sigmund, already standing on the dais, adjusted the monocle perched on his nose with one finger and called out a name.
“Ciara Rogent.”
My girlfriend.
As the clear favorite for top rank, she had apparently been chosen to go first.
At the summons, Ciara stepped forward with measured, elegant strides. Jet-black hair gathered in a ponytail. Crystal-clear blue eyes. An aura of lofty dignity that seemed to radiate from her very features.
She looked as though she had stepped out of a classical painting. The other candidates appeared almost overwhelmed by the pure, untouchable air she carried.
And her gait? Every step proclaimed her the daughter of the powerful Rogent family—clean, economical, without a single wasted motion.
Her beauty approached something essential, almost sacred; it left little room for base desire to take root. Yet the male students staring at her soon began to murmur among themselves.
It was because of her chest. Her stride remained the most refined of anyone present, but her breasts were simply too large to be contained. With every step they swayed.
I sharpened my hearing with sensory-enhancement magic and listened in.
“She’s the top prospect? Her tits are top-tier too.”
“You pervert. Stop staring at her chest and look at her face. That face is first place.”
“You animals. Don’t just leer. Try learning something from the top student. Ciara’s thighs are the real masterpiece, you know? There’s a reason she’s good with a sword.”
“Haah… I’d only heard the rumors, but seeing her in person is driving me crazy. I’m gonna have to take care of myself tonight or I won’t sleep.”
“Got material for the job?”
“Burning it into my brain right now.”
“I’ve got some shots I snuck on campus. Want me to lend them?”
“You absolute bastard! …Thanks!!”
“By the way, the senior guys aren’t gonna leave Ciara alone, are they?”
“Rumor is he already made a move.”
“He?”
“Shh. If anyone hears, they’ll think we’re slandering him.”
The male candidates were pouring every kind of filthy remark toward Ciara. Now I understood. That was why Bernard had dragged me here.
Knowing full well about my Netorase kink, the bastard had deliberately planted me in this hall so I would hear every word of the appraisal aimed at my girlfriend.
Crazy Bernard bastard.
At least he repaid favors with favors.
Among the prospective male students were even those who claimed they had secretly photographed Ciara, or planned to use her as jack-off material.
That much still skated along the edge of the line…
But one comment crossed it and scraped a raw nerve. Someone among the seniors had already started moving to get his hands on Ciara. The freshmen were referring to him only as “that man.”
A short list of candidates who could be called “that man” flashed through my mind at once.
Tobias Hartmann of the Rare Demonic Beast Research Society, already sniffing around Chloe. Wolfgang Engel, who could never keep his overflowing testosterone in check. And so on.
Honestly, I had fantasized about using those guys as Netorase partners at least once.
But among the faces that flickered past, there was one I had never once imagined in that role—because even the thought of him made my skin crawl.
I prayed the “that man” these freshmen were whispering about was not him.
If…
If by some chance Ciara ended up having sex with that bastard…
The moment the thought formed, my heart hammered and a twitch started under my eye.
An uneasy premonition swept through my whole body: that he might actually be able to take Ciara from me. The dread that this could turn into Netorare instead of Netorase.
The creepy sensation raised goosebumps. And yet I was still a complete degenerate.
Even while imagining something so repulsive, I was getting hard. My brain, already pickled in Netorase, was painting a vivid picture of Ciara pinned beneath the man they called “that man.”
Fuck…
The curse rose unbidden. In the fantasy, Ciara’s face twisted as he drove into her.
A golem was summoned and the exam began.
That’s right.
A golem.
Professor Sigmund, overseeing the trial, had used his specialty—summoning magic—to call one forth.
A golem’s grade depends entirely on the caster’s magical capacity.
Sigmund had reached the pinnacle of summoning arts. Even with its output deliberately limited for a prospective-student exam, the thing was nothing to take lightly.
Yet Ciara maintained her usual composure. No—calling it composure was too generous. The atmosphere around her was closer to pure absence of emotion.
Pupils that did not waver a fraction.
An expression of absolute hauteur.
Yes. That was Ciara Rogent.
Cold and nearly silent even toward me, her boyfriend.
But in bed she was more than anyone…
The golem, faced with that near-emotionless girl, roared and charged. Being made of rock, the sheer mass of its rush was already lethal.
If that bulk crushed her—
Danger!
The rock golem did not slow; it simply barreled straight at Ciara’s body. Reflexively I prepared a spatial-transfer spell. She looked about to be hit—
But…
Slip—
Ciara shifted her weight a single step to the side and let the charge pass. Unable to check its momentum, the golem shot past her; its head separated cleanly from its body and hit the floor with a dull thud.
I never even saw her draw the sword. Even with my senses enhanced, my eyes could not fully track the speed. I had been ready to cast magic out of concern for her safety, but it proved unnecessary.
Clean, precise swordsmanship of the highest order. The prospective students who had been staring blankly finally processed what had happened and broke into applause.
Her movement once again proved she was unquestionably the academy’s top prospect. And she had not even used her primary magic—ice.
Even to me, a former imperial mage who had seen every kind of battlefield, her skill was astonishing. It yanked me right out of the Netorase fantasy I had been sliding into.
That was when a figure in the distance caught my eye—someone clapping for Ciara.
The second-year senior the male freshmen had called “that man.” He leaned toward the ear of the fellow sitting beside him and began speaking.
Even with enhanced hearing the distance was too great. So I enhanced my vision instead and focused on his lips.
I had handled the empire’s dirtier work; I possessed enough skill to read even half-decent ventriloquism. Frowning, I watched his mouth carefully.
‘I should invite that top-ranked junior to my entrance welcome party. Arrange it.’
The one giving orders to his right-hand man like a subordinate was…
the First Prince of the Vyrant Empire.
Vermouth Heidenberg.
The “entrance welcome party” Vermouth mentioned was the annual gathering to which he invited whichever new female students caught his fancy. Exactly the sort of thing a notorious womanizer would do.
In a way, it was a situation where I, already planning Netorase, could get what I wanted without lifting a finger. But a crown prince was an opponent of an entirely different weight class.
He was not someone you could draw a line with, enjoy lightly, and then walk away from.
My worst fear had become reality.
Time to admit it.
The mere fact that I had taken the counselor post at the academy and become lovers with both Ciara and Chloe had already pulled the trigger on Netorase events.
But the incidents unfolding around those two girls were already outside the range I had anticipated.
The finely honed instincts of a long-time Netorase gourmet were sending me warning signals.
This was not Netorase…
This was a Netorare buildup.
I had come this far trusting that a Triple-A game had included Netorase content.
A strong suspicion was forming that the creator of this world—the developer of Is It Wrong to Pursue a Harem at the Academy?—might be someone who could not even tell Netorare from Netorase.
Confusing Netorare and Netorase.
A classic trap I had fallen into more times than I could count.
The critical faculties I had built as a Netorase gourmet kicked in automatically.
What the hell were they thinking when they put Netorase content in? If they meant to build up Netorare, they should never have advertised Netorase content in the first place. Don’t tell me the developer can’t even distinguish Netorase from Netorare? Netorase is when a man voluntarily offers his lover—his partner, someone he cherishes—to someone else of his own free will. These flags right now aren’t NTS, they’re NTR—Netorare! Not being able to tell the two apart is an insult to NTS fans. And NTS isn’t just a genre for getting off. Netorase is a true test of manhood, proving to your woman that you are a man, pushing yourself to the extreme and constantly walking the path of dick-proof so you never get NTR’d. NTS is a man’s genre. And the heroine who is that man’s lover? Even if she offers her body to another man, she has to make the male protagonist find her attractive and get even more excited by it—proving she is the ultimate female. Confusing NTS and NTR like this shows zero respect for the countless Netorase lovers. It may look like a small issue, but it’s a chronic problem in the entire NTR/NTS genre ecosystem.
Without realizing it I had composed an entire lengthy protest letter inside my head. The thought that the world I had trusted had betrayed me left me furious.
Calm down. The person I needed to deal with right now was not some game developer who did not even exist here.
I had to respond to the Netorare events triggering around Ciara and Chloe. What I wanted was Netorase, not Netorare.
The one in immediate danger was Ciara. There was no doubt she had been marked by Vermouth, First Prince of the empire.
I had served as an imperial mage and shared deep ties with the emperor himself… yet the First Prince was still an overwhelmingly burdensome opponent.
Regardless of how close I was to the emperor, Vermouth was the blood heir of highest priority.
No matter how well-connected I was to the throne, I could never outrank actual blood.
My thoughts tangled…
In moments like this, stay calm and keep it simple.
First, I would speak to Ciara honestly. Tell her not to accept Vermouth’s welcome party. Tell her he was targeting her.
Yes. For now, that was all I could do.
The night before the entrance-exam results were to be announced.
At Ciara’s request, I met her.
Secretly, of course. A relationship between faculty and student becoming public would do neither of us any good.
Ciara sat silently on the bed, turning the pages of a book with quiet composure.
Even in this situation—visiting my bedroom—she was reading. The academy’s top student really was different. Still, she was my girlfriend. I asked her softly,
“Ciara. Tomorrow’s the day, isn’t it?”
“Mm.”
She answered without the slightest movement.
Beyond blunt; it felt cold.
Sometimes when she acted like this, a little hurt would rise in me.
In private she could at least be gentle with her boyfriend… yet even alone with me she remained so aloof…
But that very loftiness only stoked my desire to conquer her further. She kept her eyes lowered, quietly turning pages.
The pale nape of her neck caught the moonlight spilling through the window. It was hard to believe this was the same swordswoman who had severed a golem’s head in a single stroke earlier that day—so pure, so delicate.
A few stray strands of hair clung to that nape, and I could no longer hold back. I was already wound tight from everything that had happened with Chloe earlier.
“Ciara!”
I lifted her and carried her onto the bed. She should have been startled, yet her face remained expressionless.
That very blankness only made my heart race harder. Because I knew the expression she was about to show me…
The reason I could never stop falling for a girl as cold and blunt as Ciara usually was…
She met the eyes of the man covering her. Then, in a soft, melting whisper, she said,
“Teacher. I’ve been waiting for tonight♥”
Because the moment we were alone in the bedroom, she became a completely submissive woman.