Midterm Exams (2)
Avery smiled as she looked over the stack of documents that had come in the brown envelope.
Yes. Lucy Alrn. There's no way you're a clean person.
The brown envelope in Avery's hands held everything she had commissioned from an information broker she happened to make contact with — a mountain of intel on Lucy Alrn.
This was what the documents contained.
First, that the current combat professor, Carl, was originally a knight of House Alrn.
So that's why those two are always together — they were master and retainer from the very start.
Under Academy regulations, that was flatly illegal — more than enough grounds for a formal protest.
And that wasn't all.
Within the documents was evidence that Lucy Alrn had dealt with people of the underworld.
A daughter of a knightly house, who ought to carry herself with nobility, striking bargains directly with the filthy and the lowly just to get what she wants! That is disgrace, plain and simple. She couldn't even be bothered to go through a proper middleman. What a profound lack of dignity. Then again, how would a savage who never even dreamed of learning refinement know anything about it?
The documents didn't say exactly what kind of deal Lucy had struck with the underworld, but that hardly mattered.
Isn't it obvious? It has to be cheating connected to the Soul Academy entrance exam, or something bought to win that bet against Prince Arthur. Maybe something even worse.
Beyond that, the documents were stuffed with all manner of scandal and suspicion regarding Lucy Alrn.
Good. I was only half-convinced when I first saw it, but that gloomy man in black was competent after all.
At the very bottom of the documents, the broker had apparently appended a line — "Do not make an enemy of House Alrn officially." — but Avery let it slide right past her.
What on earth is he worried about? Lucy Alrn hits a new rock bottom every single day — there's no way someone like that could ever harm me. Ah, of course, if that witch swung her fists at me it'd be a different story, but I can simply refuse to engage. Surely that lunatic wouldn't actually lunge at me and try to kill me?
Avery tucked the documents back into the brown envelope and slipped out of her room, humming a little tune.
Her destination was the room where Joy was resting.
Lately, the Partran young lady had been growing close with Lucy Alrn.
The Alrn lady saved her life, apparently. And now she claims Lucy isn't nearly as bad a person as everyone thinks.
That was what Joy said — but the other young ladies didn't believe a word of it.
Every last one of them had been insulted by Lucy Alrn in society's days past.
That vicious Lucy Alrn, reforming herself? As if! It's far more realistic to say she's learned to put on airs.
Because the person in question was Joy Partran, none of them said it to her face, but that was what the young ladies mostly believed.
Avery's thinking was much the same.
The Partran young lady simply doesn't know the ugly truth hidden behind Lucy Alrn. Once she learns how filthy it all is, surely her heart will change.
That was why, after being humiliated by Lucy Alrn the other day, she had sought out a broker. She'd been convinced that witch had to be up to something dirty, and commissioned the investigation.
Her guess had been right.
Lucy Alrn was a woman far removed from anything resembling integrity.
If I show this to the Partran young lady, she'll change her mind too. Once she learns what a piece of trash commits crimes without a second thought.
Knock, knock. Not long after she rapped on the dormitory door, it opened.
The Partran young lady was as dignified as ever today.
Her bearing, more graceful than at any other time, was truly a model for noble daughters everywhere.
Seeing Avery, Joy furrowed her brow slightly and spoke.
"Good evening, Lady Partran."
"Good evening, Lady Lumley. Is something the matter, at this hour?"
"Well, it's..."
Avery laid out before the Partran young lady everything she had prepared.
The many scandals surrounding Lucy Alrn. The string of incidents she had stirred up since entering the Academy. And finally, the information Avery herself had investigated.
Lucy Alrn is not the pure person you believe her to be. So by all means feel grateful to her, but do not grow close. Return to being the Partran young lady you once were.
Such was the summary of everything Avery said.
Listening to the explanation with her arms crossed, Joy waited until Avery fell silent, then let out a small sigh. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and asked in a voice a step colder than usual.
"Have you said everything you came to say?"
"Excuse me?"
"Judging by your expression, you have. Then here is my reply. Enough of this, Lady Lumley."
I'm sorry — what?
"I was aware that you had been spreading rumors about the Alrn lady. I let it pass, because I knew she had made mistakes in the past. She herself never said a word about it, either."
Lady Partran. What on earth are you—
"But I never imagined you would go so far as to dig into her background just to humiliate her."
Avery could not believe what was happening.
Those blue eyes, which she had been certain would soften once she heard her out, were still looking down at her as if she were something beneath notice.
"Lady Lumley. If you pull something like this one more time, then even if the Alrn lady lets it go, I will not."
"Why?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Why do you defend the Alrn lady so fiercely?"
It had been less than a single year since the Partran young lady had truly come to know Lucy Alrn.
Avery, by contrast, had known her for a stretch of time that could not even be compared.
And yet why did she take Lucy Alrn's side? Even granting that Lucy had saved her life, considering all the years of friendship, wasn't she owed at least a hearing?
At Avery's question, the Partran young lady sighed and took hold of the door handle.
"One question for you, Lady Lumley. If you are truly my friend — then why is it that you never listen to a word I say?"
"I — well, that's — because the Alrn lady—"
"It's the Alrn lady again, is it?"
...
Avery could not answer.
At the sight of Avery pressing her lips tightly shut, the Partran young lady shut the door without a moment's hesitation — and Avery was left standing alone in the corridor.
Why. Why is it always me?
In the game Soul Academy, exams had never been particularly weighty content.
Your grade was determined by how diligently you had raised your stats in the lead-up, with rewards doled out accordingly — so most players treated exam season as nothing more than a window for grinding stats, or a stretch of downtime to prepare before the next event dropped.
In truth, it was hard to give the exam content any real weight.
Soul Academy was, above all else, a game about conquering dungeons and clearing quests. Scoring well on exams could only ever be a side objective.
And that hadn't changed much for me now, either.
What mattered to me wasn't my Academy grades so much as what I could squeeze out of them.
Which is why, with midterms looming and everyone else burying themselves in the library, I didn't set so much as a toe inside it.
Even when Joy invited me to study together.
Not needing to study for the midterms was reason enough, sure — but if that had been the only reason, I would have gone to study with her anyway.
It's youth, spent with my favorite character! If I get to enjoy that, I can stomach even the soul-crushingly boring, joyless slog of studying!
The real reason I refused Joy's invitation, with blood curdling in my throat, was that there was something I had to do first.
"You're certain there's a dungeon in a place like this?"
'Yes!'
"And you doubt me? A two-bit information peddler like you, doubting me?"
"But there's nothing here at all, is there."
A spot in the forest beyond Academy Street. To the naked eye, it looked like absolutely nothing.
But that was only what it looked like on the surface.
'Grandpa. What was the Prayer of Purification again?'
<Didn't you say you had no need of the likes of me?>
'You're sulking?! You nag constantly and you're stingy with answers — you're a total boomer.'
<...Young lady. You are being consumed by that curse, bit by bit, aren't you?>
'Am I?'
I wouldn't know.
Grandpa grumbled a little, but soon enough he obediently recited the Prayer of Purification for me.
The moment I repeated his words exactly, a wave of holy magic spread outward, and the hidden dungeon's entrance revealed itself.
'See? It's there, isn't it?'
"There you have it, information peddler. Even those useless eyes of yours can see it now, yes?"
"...So it seems."
"Why would you doubt the young lady in the first place? The young lady is always right."
"Easy for you to say, Sir Knight."
Tearing my eyes away from Carl and Alsaetin's bickering, I fixed my gaze on the dungeon entrance.
In the main story of Soul Academy, an incident was supposed to occur during the midterms.
The Apostle of the Evil God who had attacked the Academy previously would personally seduce one of the students and stage a terror attack from within the Academy's walls.
And the tool used for that was none other than this dungeon near the Academy.
Nakrad — a chuuni wet blanket of the highest order — would send the dungeon here into a rampage, then use the student he'd groomed as his conduit to link the dungeon to the Academy itself.
The monsters dwelling here were a pack strong enough to overwhelm the Academy's current first-years outright.
The professors stationed nearby reacted swiftly, and the rampage was suppressed before it could spread far — but in the chaos, a portion of the Academy's students took casualties.
On top of that, the monsters serving the Evil God would pour into the Academy and set off incident after incident.
Astonishingly, though, this was an event that players could actually prevent.
Because all you had to do was clear the dungeon Nakrad intended to rampage before he ever got the chance.
Whether the Apostle of the Evil God had a limit to the range over which he could link a dungeon or not, if you cleared every dungeon in the vicinity, the event simply got skipped.
Of course, the Apostle of the Evil God was no fool, so he kept the locations of his intended dungeons hidden — but before a veteran of the highest order, such tricks were helpless.
Ahh, I can't wait to see Nakrad's face when he realizes every dungeon he had staked out has vanished. I want to see him trembling with rage as his plan crumbles to nothing.
When he comes invading later, I'll tell him all about it — won't he be absolutely delighted?
Just imagining it is delicious. The face of the man who tormented me, flushed red and shaking with fury. I want to see it so badly.
'You two over there? Let's hurry up and clear it.'
"Losers, both of you. I don't want to find out which of you is the bigger loser, so let's move."
"No need to find out, my lady. I am the bigger loser."
"That's right. You do seem to be the bigger loser."
Watching Carl take pride in being declared the bigger loser made my eyes sting with secondhand embarrassment.
THIS is my bodyguard? I'm truly grateful he can absorb the Mesugaki skill's insults, but couldn't he at least keep a shred of normal thinking?