From Among You

Yurio Harmatan was in better spirits than he had ever been in his life.

He had received praise.

And not just from anyone, but from the instructor he had come to admire with all his heart!

On top of that, the man had personally guided him, realigning his flow of breath. The agonizing pain that had choked him for years was gone, replaced by a surge of stamina he had never thought possible. While he still fell short of the class average, a spark of hope had finally kindled inside him.

"Are you really that thrilled?"

"Of course I am. Hey, Karen, how did you do today?"

"Five more laps than last time. I'd say I put in some decent work."

Karen Aswan's expression was a delicate mix of pride and sheer envy.

"At this rate, you're going to catch up to everyone in no time, Yurio."

"I have to work hard. By the end of the term, I'm aiming for first place at least once."

"Oh, come on. Kundel and Rihardt are in the class, remember?"

Even their names carried a distinct chill of distance. To ordinary freshmen, Deleve Kundel and Celia Rihardt felt like creatures from an entirely different world.

"So what? If I put in the effort, nothing's impossible! In fact, I'm thinking of entering the Exchange Event selection trials."

"Seriously? I thought you swore you'd never enter."

"Well, maybe I stand a chance now, don't I?"

Yurio practically overflowed with newfound confidence. The terror that had loomed over his path like an insurmountable wall had vanished into thin air.

"Instructor Xiel told me, remember? He said he'd teach me how to conquer fear. I think this was what he meant."

"Your fear is completely gone?"

"Completely. Now I can finally keep up with everyone else."

Karen stared at him in silence for a moment, then let out a soft snort of amusement.

"I haven't known you for very long, but this is the brightest I've ever seen you look."

"Is that so?"

"It is. You used to be such a walking cloud of doom. 'I'll never make it,' 'I'm sick and useless'… That was all you ever muttered."

"Did I really?"

"Constantly. Our instructor practically remade you into a whole new person."

Xiel Steelheart.

The elective lecturer who had appeared out of nowhere.

"What on earth did he do before coming here?" Karen mused aloud, tilting her head.

Yurio tilted his head right alongside her. "Now that you mention it… have you ever heard of House Steelheart?"

"No, never. Isn't it just some obscure rural house, like ours?"

"…Isn't that selling ourselves a bit too short?"

"Well, who knows? It's not like great figures can't come from humble backgrounds. Maybe Instructor Xiel is one of those rarities."

Which means we could become like him, too.

Hope sprouted vigorously in Yurio's chest. Just then, Karen snapped her fingers as a thought struck her.

"Oh, right! Show me that thing."

"What thing?"

"The Praise Card Instructor Xiel gave you."

"Ah."

Yurio reached into his pocket and carefully pulled out the card he had received earlier that day.

"Do you think he stamped this smiling face himself?" Karen asked, leaning in close.

"Probably, right?"

"That's surprisingly cute of him."

"Huh?"

Karen scrutinized the glossy paper with narrowed eyes. "Yurio, what did he say when he handed this to you?"

"He said it would protect me from danger."

"Really?"

"Yeah. He told me to throw it if I ever found myself in an emergency."

"What kind of card is this, then? Some sort of magic tool?"

"It doesn't feel like it has mana infused into it, though… What could it be?"

Yurio took the card back, glanced cautiously around the courtyard, and lowered his voice. "Want to test it out?"

"Test it?"

His eyes sparkled with daring bravado, undoubtedly fueled by the day's breakthrough.

"Yeah. He told me to throw it in a pinch, right? So let's see what happens if I throw it. There's nobody around right now."

"…Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"What's the worst that could happen? Come on, let's just try."

Infectious curiosity won Karen over. "How about inside there?"

She pointed toward a disused annex bordering the edge of the campus grounds. A wooden sign declaring RESTRICTED AREA was hammered into the dirt, accompanied by a faded notice stating that the structure was scheduled for imminent demolition.

"It won't explode or anything, will it?"

"No way. The instructor wouldn't give a student something that dangerous."

After a hasty scan of their surroundings, the two slipped through the cracked entrance. The interior was dead quiet, thick with dust and devoid of human presence.

"Let's use that room over there," Karen whispered, pointing toward a door left slightly ajar down the corridor.

Yurio drew the card from his pocket, his fingers trembling slightly with nervous anticipation.

Do I just fling it?

After a brief pause to steady his breathing, Yurio took aim at the narrow gap in the doorway and flicked his wrist. The card sailed through the opening and landed inside.

"Wait, is that it?"

Nothing happened.

Or so they thought—until a sharp, corrosive hiss broke the silence.

Pssssshhhhh…

Thick, pale smoke billowed violently from the paper, spreading with astonishing speed until it engulfed the entire room in a blinding fog.

Yurio and Karen locked eyes in utter shock.

"H-Hey… what is that?"

"Is that… a smoke screen?"

Their hushed whispers squeaked with panic. A mundane piece of cardboard had just detonated into an impenetrable mist.

Psssssh!

It was impossible to fathom where so much vapor could have been packed into a wafer-thin slip. There was no fire, and the smoke didn't spill out into the corridor in overwhelming clouds. Within a few moments, the thick haze began to thin and disperse into the rafters.

"Wait, the card is gone, too."

"You're right… Ah! So when Instructor Xiel said it would protect you from danger…"

"He meant you're supposed to pop a smoke screen and run for your life!"

"Incredible. That's actually amazing. It didn't feel magical at all, either."

"Ugh, what a waste, though. If we'd known, we could have saved it for later."

"…Wait, why am I suddenly so tired?"

"Well, today's training was brutal. Now that you mention it, my eyes feel heavy, too…"

Having inhaled the faintest drift of the sweetish vapor, both of them rubbed their groggy eyelids, chuckled over their little prank, and turned to leave.

Silence settled over the derelict hall once more.

A few moments later…

"…D-Damn it… can't… fall asleep… Who the hell… threw that…"

A trembling hand clawed weakly at the wooden door frame from within the room. But the desperate grip lasted only a heartbeat before slipping away.

The door swung fully open on rusted hinges.

Revealed behind it was the interior that had previously been obscured from view.

Snoooore…

Hnnngh…

Three upperclassmen lay sprawled helplessly across the floorboards in deep, comatose slumbers.

Beside them lay scattered evidence of illicit leisure: half-drained bottles of cheap spirits and unlit rolls of dried tobacco leaves.

"Khk… hrrmph… snoooore…"

Pinned to the chests of the snoring youths were Edelbein Academy nameplates. The metal gleamed in vivid purple—the color worn exclusively by second-year students.

A month went by.

Tyron, the teaching assistant assigned to Professor Elcanto, let out a deep, soul-weary sigh as he sorted through the unending mountain of paperwork piled on his desk.

The documents covered every conceivable bureaucratic headache: mundane forms that required him to forge Elcanto's official seal, and urgent notices regarding disciplinary actions forwarded directly from the Student Affairs Office.

Naturally, managing such affairs was the professor's responsibility, but in the Sword School, it was an open secret that indentured graduate assistants handled all the actual labor.

"How on earth did these idiot second-years manage to get themselves caught…?"

Skimming the report, Tyron shook his head. Three second-year students had sneaked into a condemned building awaiting demolition to drink and smoke, only to be discovered red-handed.

The Sword School of Edelbein Academy strictly prohibited alcohol and tobacco consumption among undergraduates. Of course, many indulged in secret, and internal faculty usually turned a blind eye if things were kept discreet. But this time, campus security guards on patrol had made the arrest, blowing the incident into a formal offense.

"Morons. But why were they fast asleep when the guards found them? Did they drink themselves unconscious?"

Tyron had heard whispers that those three had poor disciplinary records, but unfortunately for them, none hailed from prominent bloodlines. Wriggling out of disciplinary sanctions would be impossible.

Brushing the incident aside, Tyron reached for the next stack of papers on his desk. It was the weekly curriculum report submitted by Xiel Steelheart.

"Why is this so thick?"

A standard weekly course report was typically a page or two at most. Xiel's dossier easily exceeded ten densely penned sheets.

"What could he possibly have written in here?"

All Tyron needed to do was stamp the bottom page with Elcanto's seal to process it. With the intention of just glancing over the cover, he flipped the first page open—and his eyes widened in disbelief.

"Let's see here… Wait, what?"

As Tyron scanned down the numerical records, his jaw dropped toward the floorboards.

"Does this make any sense at all?"

How could someone's stamina skyrocket to this degree in such a short window?

A freshman named Yurio Harmatan had somehow leapt from 20 laps to 60 laps by the second week, pushed through weeks three, four, and five, and reached an astonishing 100 laps in the sixth-week evaluation.

"Wait… wasn't this kid registered as sickly and constitutionally frail?"

Next was Deleve Kundel.

In the first week, he and Celia Rihardt had effortlessly outperformed the rest of the cohort. Starting from week two, however, their training regimen had been completely overhauled: continuous high-speed sprinting. Pushing maximum velocity for even a few circuits was supposed to leave an unconditioned knight gasping for breath, yet Deleve's sprint endurance was extending by leaps and bounds with every passing session.

And it wasn't just those three. Every single one of the forty students enrolled in Xiel's first and second elective classes exhibited the same staggering upward trajectory.

"Just how on earth is he training them…?"

The surprises didn't end with raw numbers.

Every single student had an individualized pedagogical appraisal appended to their profile.

"Incredible…"

No instructor could produce an assessment like this without obsessive dedication. While a handful of veteran professors maintained such meticulous records, the overwhelming majority merely scribbled vague, generic praise out of sheer indolence. Tyron found his opinion of the enigmatic elective lecturer shifting entirely—even if some of the notes took rather peculiar tangents.

"What kind of academic comment is that…?"

Still, there was no denying the results. The physical conditioning of these students had reached monstrous heights, and there was no reason to suspect the numbers were fabricated.

Curious, Tyron pulled up the dossiers for the other elective tracks—specifically, the three introductory courses overseen directly by Professor Elcanto.

The stamina evaluations of Elcanto's students were thoroughly unremarkable. Even taking into account differing grading metrics, their progress couldn't begin to compare with the explosive growth of the forty students under Xiel's tutelage.

"When the term evaluations come out, this is going to be quite a spectacle."

The Sword School prized raw physical stamina ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠above all else. Naturally, most freshmen treated their first year as an excuse to socialize and carouse rather than train like madmen. But if the forty students under Xiel continued to soar while the rest stagnated…

"I wonder what the professor's face will look like."

What would Elcanto do when the students of a lowly contract lecturer completely outclassed those taught by a full tenured professor? The thought sent a dark thrill through Tyron's overworked chest.

To make matters more volatile, the flagship annual competition—the Exchange Event—was just around the corner.

It was the grandest spectacle in the entire Sword School calendar. Before the main matches could begin, however, the academy held its internal selection trials to determine the roster.

While the Exchange Event itself was an open tournament where cohorts formed teams to battle before foreign dignitaries, scouts, and high nobility, the selection trials were a cutthroat internal contest fought within each respective academic year.

"How much time is left…?"

Checking the wall calendar, Tyron calculated roughly two weeks remaining. An involuntary smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.

Things were about to get very interesting.

The upcoming selection trials were the hottest topic of conversation among the freshmen.

Ten representatives would be selected from each academic year, forming a prestigious 50-man contingent spanning from the first-years to the fifth-years. With a total freshman class of one hundred students, a few chose not to apply, but the vast majority threw their hats into the ring regardless. Even if they failed, there was no penalty, and the chance of catching lightning in a bottle was too tantalizing to pass up.

"Hey, did you hear? The Imperial Knights are dispatching scouts to this year's exchange! They're looking for early draft picks!"

"Has the official notice been posted already?"

"Went up yesterday on the central bulletin board. All the major ducal knight orders and imperial commanders will be in attendance!"

Securing a spot on the exchange roster was the fastest way to alter the trajectory of one's entire life. Representatives from the Five Great Families' private knight orders, along with the most prestigious mercenary companies and imperial enterprises, attended in droves. Performing well meant making an indelible impression before graduating.

Of course, direct heirs to high noble houses didn't need to worry about future employment, but for the majority of the student body, their entire careers hung in the balance.

"Did you hear about that third-year senior from House Exion? He received an early enlistment confirmation after last year's event."

"House Exion? His life is practically set on gold rails now."

"I'm so jealous. I doubt any first-year has ever pulled that off, though."

If a scion from a minor or fallen noble house secured early enlistment into a high ducal order, it would be an occasion for nationwide celebration back home. An offer from the Imperial Knights was the ultimate dream.

"That settles it. Starting today, I'm dropping the laps and focusing purely on blade work."

"Same here. Anyone up for sparring later?"

"Me! How about a match with me?"

"Sieg, you're not in my league yet. Try again next term."

"Hey! We haven't even crossed blades!"

That didn't mean high noble scions took the tournament lightly, either. A dazzling performance under the eyes of the imperial court elevated personal prestige and boosted the honor of their entire lineage.

"Hey, Deleve. You're entering the trials, obviously, right?"

"Why ask the obvious, Celia? You're entering too, aren't you?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Of course I am. My father is attending the Exchange Event in person this year. Yours will be coming too, right?"

"Who knows. Probably not."

"Why?"

"He's too busy dealing with my older brothers lately," Deleve replied curtly.

His mind was entirely preoccupied with the self-defense lecture about to begin.

Today, I'm landing a counterattack. No matter what.

To this day, not a single student—including Deleve himself—had successfully landed a counter on Instructor Xiel. While he could feel his technical instincts sharpening day by day, the utter lack of tangible success had driven his stubborn pride to the boiling point.

"There are only two weeks left," Celia remarked, tilting her head. "Do you think Instructor Xiel will have us run trial-prep drills today?"

Deleve looked up. "I wonder."

Clack.

The heavy gymnasium doors swung open, and Xiel stepped inside.

The instant his silhouette crossed the threshold, the noisy training hall fell dead silent. As if guided by an invisible drillmaster, the students snapped instantly into their designated self-defense formations.

Xiel regarded the orderly rows with a flat, emotionless gaze before opening his mouth.

"Calling roll."

His ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠voice was the same as always—monotone, clipped, and devoid of pitch variation. Yet there was a strange, resonant timbre to it, echoing through the chamber like speech emerging from a deep cavern.

When the final name was called, Celia raised her hand.

"Instructor, I have a question."

"Speak. Student Celia Rihardt."

"Our selection trials are coming up very soon. Will we be conducting any specialized preparation for them in this class?"

Deleve slowly shook his head beside her.

She still doesn't understand our instructor at all.

The man was rigid, uncompromising, and completely impervious to persuasion. Ironically, that very stubbornness was what commanded such respect, but it meant one thing was certain: he would tell them to shut up and focus on the syllabus.

"The selection trials bear no relevance to this curriculum."

Predictable as clockwork.

Does he even know what the selection trials are? Deleve mused inwardly.

"Aww, come on! Instructor, please! The selection trials are massive for us. Making the exchange roster is an incredible honor!"

Xiel cut her off without a flicker of hesitation.

"Focus on your coursework. What is taught in this hall is basic self-defense."

"Instructor, please—!"

"Are you anxious about failing?"

"I… Well, I'm confident in my own abilities," Celia replied with a pout. "But what about the others?"

"I cannot speak for them, but… isn't everyone nervous?"

Aside from Deleve and Celia, very few students possessed the luxury of absolute confidence.

"Then if your anxieties are alleviated, you will be able to focus more diligently on this class."

"Yes! Exactly that! So if we could just practice a few trial drills—"

At that moment, Xiel uttered words that struck ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the hall like a thunderclap.

"Ten from among you will be selected."

Before anyone could process the statement, he drove the nail in deeper.

"Ten from among the students currently enrolled in this class."

"Pardon…?"

"It is as I said. The representatives will be drawn from those who attend my lectures."

Xiel's eyes swept over the frozen ranks before him, his voice as unyielding as iron.

"From among the forty of you."

The total freshman class numbered one hundred students. It was teeming not only with scions of the Five Great Families like Deleve and Celia, but also with prodigies hailing from the empire's most distinguished martial lineages.

Naturally, not all one hundred were enrolled in Xiel's two elective courses. There were only forty gathered in this gymnasium—the cohort taking both of his classes simultaneously.

And yet, he was declaring that all ten roster spots would be swept exclusively by these forty, entirely locking out the other sixty students?

"I guarantee it," Xiel stated calmly. "All ten will come from among you."