The Direct Disciple's Offer
Once the students had all gathered and lined up, the teaching assistants came around and fastened a plain, rough-hewn white bracelet onto each of their arms.
Simon flexed his arm. It felt surprisingly heavy.
"Now channel your Jet-Black into the bracelet."
At Hong-Peng's instruction, the students sent their Jet-Black flowing in without a second thought.
"Huuagh!"
"Wh-what the—?!"
Their bodies suddenly buckled, dragged toward the ground.
"You all know what the Exhaust Curse is, right?" Hong-Peng asked with her hands on her hips, smiling brightly. "Your next course is right over there."
She pointed at the very same steep hill they had just come down. At its summit, a teaching assistant was waving, a flag planted beside them.
"You'll carry the Exhaust Curse all the way to the top of that hill."
Every single face went pale.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Hold on just a second...
This can't be serious, right?
But not one of them dared lodge a protest against a professor of Kizen. Hong-Peng beamed, twirling in place.
"Prejare yourselves right away! I'll be checkin' who falls behind."
Only then did the students finish grasping their situation, and they lined up at the starting line with faces set like stone.
Simon, trailing at the back, was already dripping with sweat. Just walking to the starting line with the curse clinging to him was a struggle, and worry overshadowed everything—could he actually climb that steep slope?
"Alright then—go!"
The instant Hong-Peng shouted, every student in Class A surged forward in a stampede.
At first they all walked upright, if only to preserve some dignity despite the curse's weight—but once the grade grew steeper through the middle stretch, mercy vanished. Commoner and noble alike were flat on the dirt, crawling inch by inch.
"Hnngh! Hnngh!"
"Ggghhk!"
Pained breathing and groans erupted all around. Simon's whole body was caked filthy with soil, but with Hong-Peng and the assistants watching, there was no choice but to push forward.
Hoooooh...!
Hands scraped raw and bleeding against the rocks, Simon pressed his palms into the earth and dragged himself a little farther.
Every step was a mountain. His vision spun in circles and the sky turned yellow at the edges.
I will make it. No matter what.
Head start or no head start, this was pure territory of stamina and will. If he fell behind his peers here, he would never catch up afterward.
While others rested, Simon wrenched out strength he didn't have and kept climbing. He set his own pace—and refused to compromise on holding it.
Rattle, rattle.
His arms had slipped free of his brain's control and were trembling, but Simon forced them to move anyway, squeezing out every last drop.
Now the summit was in sight. Where the flag marking the finish fluttered in the wind stood a teaching assistant—and Hong-Peng.
Just a little more!
Simon was in the lead. He wasn't pulling dramatically ahead of the runners below, Dick included, but he was unmistakably ahead of every other Class A student.
And there was one more, right beside him.
Hector was climbing the hill at almost exactly Simon's pace.
...Damn it all. You again?
Hector glared at Simon through gritted teeth.
He was sick of it. The guy had been jamming himself into his line of sight since the very first class.
Worse, Hector had quietly worked his own method to blunt the curse's effects as he climbed—while Simon, using no tricks whatsoever, ascended raw and still matched him stride for stride.
At this point, pride alone meant he could not lose. Hector's fighting spirit detonated.
The closer the flag drew, the steeper the hill became. The two of them, first and second, stretched the gap to the runners below and pushed their pace even harder.
"You can do it!"
Hector—no, Hong-Peng shouted, fist pumped high. The assistants clapped and cheered alongside her.
I'm first!
I'm winning this!
The moment Simon and Hector flung their arms out toward the summit—
Step.
Someone walked up and over both of their outstretched arms.
Unlike the two of them, smeared head to toe in mud, she was pristine—striding past with an effortless gait, skirt swishing, sky-blue hair flowing in the wind.
Meilyn Villenne, ranked first in Class A.
She was the first to set foot on the summit.
"Congratulations. The shudent takes first place!"
"Thank you, Professor."
The assistant standing nearby checked off her name on the list. Simon and Hector, souls halfway out of their bodies, froze mid-motion for a long moment.
"How did you manage that?"
At Hong-Peng's question, Meilyn lifted her chin and answered. "I calculated a resistance formula to dispel the curse, then climbed."
Simon felt as if a hammer had swung into the back of his skull.
There had been a way to simply undo the curse and walk up—instead of wheezing and suffering through it with brute strength?!
"Wonderful work! Everyone take a breather now."
Meilyn graciously accepted the drink a teaching assistant handed her and settled into the shade of a tree, leaning back against its trunk.
Once again, first place was hers.
"Professor Hong-Peng!"
Just then, an assistant came hurrying up from below.
"We have an injured student! It looks like a minor ankle sprain."
"I'll go take a look."
She shot a single sidelong glance toward Simon and Hector, then followed the assistant back down the hill.
"...Ha. Unbelievable. I don't even know what to say."
The moment Hong-Peng vanished from view, Hector—having finally shaken the curse off completely—rose to his feet. Simon's eyes went wide with shock beside him.
Thud, thud.
Hector strode up the slope in long, unhurried steps and reached the summit. His name entered at second place, he accepted his drink and turned his gaze on Meilyn.
"Hey."
She turned her head.
"Dispelling the curse in a Magic Combat class? What kind of stunt is that supposed to be? You think I busted my back out there because I couldn't do that?"
"Excuse me?"
Meilyn gave an insolent little sniff, the picture of indifference. Hector let out a short, dry laugh.
"Well, what else would I expect from a young lady who grew up shut inside the Ivory Tower? Not much room in that life for understanding how the world actually works."
"..."
This time her eyebrow twitched.
"Are you picking a fight with me right now?"
"It's not a fight if it's the truth. There's no grade evaluation during the student protection period anyway. What matters is showing off a diligent attitude and catching a professor's eye. That stunt of yours just now might have landed you on Professor Hong-Peng's bad side, but it will never earn you a single point."
Meilyn's gaze turned razor-sharp.
"You are a spectacularly twisted piece of work, you know that? Why are you picking on someone who was just quietly minding his own business? Does coming in second sting that badly?"
"It's a warning not to wreck Class A's lessons. And let me make one thing clear—someone like you isn't even on my radar."
With that, Hector turned away. Just in time, Simon came wheezing and whimpering up over the crest of the hill. The assistant smiled and handed him a drink.
"Simon Polentia. Third place."
"Th-thank you."
Spent beyond exhaustion, Simon staggered over and collapsed into the shade of the tree, then gulped his drink down in great swallows.
"..."
"..."
Meilyn's and Hector's gazes lingered on him for a moment.
And so the three of them caught their breath together under the tree, in silence, for a long while.
Time passed, and the students made their way up to the summit one by one.
Even those who had found the climb itself beyond their stamina managed it eventually, as the curse's grip loosened little by little with time.
"I'm... I'm gonna die, Simon."
Dick had come up with a respectable upper-tier time, only to join the huddle of students retching in the distance a few minutes later. Simon went over and thumped him on the back in solidarity.
Aside from a few who'd dropped out from outright exhaustion, everyone made it to the top—but the fatigue this single class had piled onto them was staggering.
As the students lay sprawled, unable to twitch so much as a finger, Simon found himself at a loss for how they were supposed to get back to Kizen at all. If they were riding hippos again, he figured half of Class A would fall off along the way.
Fortunately, Hong-Peng had contacted Kizen and received permission to use a simplified teleportation circle.
"Waaah!"
The circle unfurled across the training ground. Step onto it, and you'd simply arrive at Kizen—that was how the servants who'd brought their meals had gotten here, too.
The students boarded the circle with profound relief. Simon, who'd been waiting in line with Dick, stepped onto it beside him as well.
Vmmm—
A dusky radiance poured out of the magic circle and wrapped itself around Simon's body.
With the sensation of his feet lifting off the ground, the teleportation was just beginning—
Thud!
—when he felt something slam to a halt. Pain flared through him as though he'd crashed into a wall, and Simon crumpled to the floor.
"...Huh?"
When he lifted his head, his surroundings had completely changed.
Dick, who had stepped onto the circle with him, was nowhere to be seen. Simon was alone, standing inside a small cabin.
This is... definitely not Kizen, is it?
Simon got to his feet.
It had the cozy feel of the house he'd lived in back in Leshill—only smaller, and wilder somehow. The walls and floor kept the rough, unworked grain of raw timber; a hammock hung where a bed would be, an animal pelt lay where a rug should have been, and along one wall, salt-cured game hung drying in the sunlight.
Click.
The cabin door swung open, and a tall woman stepped inside.
"Sorry for the surprise, Simon."
"Professor Hong-Peng!"
She smiled warmly and gestured for him to sit.
Simon sank into a chair in a daze, and she poured him a cup of tea before explaining, briefly, what had happened.
Something suspicious had been worked into the teleportation circle's formula. When she'd had her assistants investigate, they'd found an embedded equation that reacted to a specific person's Jet-Black and redirected them elsewhere.
The target of that equation was Simon.
"Someone who'd pull a stunt like this. Anyone come to mind?"
Simon, who couldn't think of a single soul, shook his head.
Hong-Peng made a thoughtful hmm and folded her arms. Unlike Simon, she seemed to have a suspect in mind.
"So I interfered with the circle myself and bent its coordinates toward my home."
"Ah..."
"Protecting my shudents from unknown threats is part of my job, after all. And..."
Her eyes sparkled.
"To be honest, I'd been hoping to talk with you alone anyway, Simon."
"...Me?"
"Now, contacting a student during the protection period breaks the rules—but from what I've seen, some people have already bent them, so."
The smile she always wore grew a shade more serious.
"Simon Polentia. How would you feel about majoring in Magic Combat?"
Simon's pupils dilated in an instant, and she pressed on.
"If you want it, I'm willing to take you on as my direct disciple."
"...What?!"
A Direct Disciple.
A student raised personally, and under a professor's sole responsibility—no one else's.
A professor could take only three direct disciples per academic year, and a student could study under only one direct professor.
The benefits of becoming one at Kizen were all but endless. Above all, the professor took absolute personal responsibility for the student's growth, guiding them one-on-one—so of course everyone wanted the title.
For the professors, too, it reflected directly on their own achievements, and with the strict headcount limits, selections were made with extreme care.
And yet Hong-Peng had moved to claim Simon as her direct disciple on the very first day of class.
"I... don't quite understand."
Simon was genuinely flustered.
To be sure, the offer made him shiver with gratitude—being asked to become Hong-Peng's direct disciple was an staggering honor. But he was sure he hadn't shown her anything special during today's class.
He'd simply kept up with the other students, nothing more. Even the final hill climb had gone to Meilyn and Hector.
Besides, it was only his second day at the academy. Hong-Peng would meet countless more students from here on—yet she had chosen him.
Setting aside whether he wanted it or not, the whole situation just didn't add up.
"You shudents may look at rankings, but I look at talent."
Hong-Peng took a sip of tea and continued.
"That flick of Jet-Black you used to kick off the ground when you leapt across the valley earlier. First time in my life I've ever seen it. Am I right?"
How did she know that? Simon nodded, astonished, inwardly reeling.
"And even so, your leap was the best in all of Class A. At that point it's not a question of talent or luck or any of it. On top of that, the hill climb just now proved your stamina and your grit. What more praise do you need?"
"..."
Simon swallowed dryly.
He still found it hard to believe—but when a Kizen professor spoke that emphatically, he could hardly say no.
"That stamina. That mentality. And above all, a staggering talent for Jet-Black. Come to Magic Combat, and I'll make you bloom into the finest talent this academy has ever seen."
Hong-Peng's clasped hands trembled slightly, her face terrifyingly earnest now. Even the accent in her continental speech had sharpened into perfect clarity.
"Within a few years, I'll raise you strong enough to surpass even me. No—stronger than anyone alive."