The Role of a Teacher (1)
"That concludes today's class."
The moment the words left his mouth, students collapsed to the floor or leaned over their knees, gasping for air. For two agonizing hours, every muscle in their bodies and every nerve in their minds had been stretched to the breaking point. The exhaustion hit them all at once, heavy as lead.
"Holy shit. I'm going to die. Seriously... should I just drop the course?"
"And take general electives with next year's freshmen?"
"Ugh, damn it..."
There were five general electives available in total, and by sheer misfortune, they had landed in the two taught by Xiel. Under the academy's system, students enrolled in Electives 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 as paired courses, with the fifth taken as an extra credit if necessary. When they first fought through the brutal registration competition, they had rejoiced, thinking they had secured an easy ride. Now, regret tasted like ash.
"We can't even drop it..."
"I'm actually going to die."
Yet not everyone shared the misery.
"I don't know, I actually feel kind of refreshed."
"Did you take a blow to the head?"
"No, really. Sure, I'm tired, but it feels surprisingly good."
While some students were reduced to shallow panting, unable to string a single thought together, others had entirely different priorities.
So who did the best?
It has to be me, right?
Deleve and Celia stood with their eyes fixed unwaveringly on Xiel, waiting for an evaluation.
"Moving forward, you will repeat this exercise until you succeed in executing a proper self-defense maneuver against me."
The students stared in disbelief. How on earth were they supposed to manage that? Defending themselves was one thing, but against an instructor who moved without a single pause, effortlessly parrying and counterattacking forty students at once? It defied reason.
"Um... is that actually possible?" Yulio raised his hand timidly, his face drained of confidence.
Xiel gave a single, measured nod. "It is possible. If you do not give up, you will improve step by step."
Yulio nodded back unconsciously. Just as he had during the endurance run, he keenly felt the weight of his own shortcomings today.
"Student Yulio Harmatan, your final movement today was well executed."
"R-really?"
"Yes. Your reflexes were quite decent."
Yulio's eyes lit up with unfiltered joy. He had been praised—and by none other than Instructor Xiel Steelheart!
"..."
Deleve, on the other hand, slumped visibly. I worked hard too. After getting thrown around like a rag doll in the first class, I gritted my teeth and practiced until I bled.
"Lucky you, Yulio," Karen murmured, elbowing him lightly in the ribs. Yulio responded with a sheepish grin.
"Once you return to your quarters, rest briefly, wash up, and get as much recovery as possible," Xiel instructed. "Post-training recuperation is paramount."
Hearing the dismissal, the students began heaving themselves upright with groans of relief. But Xiel spoke once more.
"Ah. One more thing."
They froze.
"Since no one managed to successfully defend against my attacks, as promised, I cannot award a Praise Card."
A collective sigh of deflation rippled through the hall.
"However, I also stated that I would award one to whoever demonstrated the most improvement."
A dozen pairs of eyes suddenly sparkled with renewed hope. Deleve, however, had already written himself off. He hadn't received a single compliment throughout the entire two hours, nor did he feel like he had made any meaningful progress.
"The student who showed the greatest growth in today's class is..." Xiel raised his chin and pointed directly at Deleve. "...Student Deleve Kundel."
"Pardon?!" Deleve snapped his head up, his voice cracking in bewilderment.
"Comparing your performance from the beginning of class to the end, you showed the most substantial improvement. Your response to surprise attacks was markedly faster, and your situational awareness sharpened incrementally."
Deleve stared blankly. To his own senses, nothing of the sort had occurred.
"Though the margin may appear modest, the rate of your growth exceeded that of your peers." Xiel paused, then added in his customary flat tone, "Well done, Student Deleve Kundel."
Well done.
Those simple words stirred an unfamiliar sensation deep within Deleve's chest. His heart felt buoyant, practically soaring into the rafters.
"A Kundel is still a Kundel, I guess."
"Deleve was going at it like a madman today."
"I thought for sure he'd drop out after that first humiliating lesson, but he's trying harder than anyone."
The murmurs of his classmates washed past Deleve unheard.
"Step forward and receive your Praise Card."
Deleve scrambled to his feet, dragging his aching legs across the wooden floor to accept the white slip of paper Xiel held out. Up close, it was remarkably plain—a standard white card with nothing special about the stock. In the center, however, sat an inked illustration.
A round, grinning face.
"This is... the Praise Card?" Deleve murmured. Did the instructor buy a stamp somewhere? Did merchants even sell stamps with faces like this? The smiley face was simplistic to the point of absurdity, yet its rigid symmetry and starkly circular border gave it an odd, intense presence.
"Do we receive a prize once we collect a certain amount?"
"No. Simply keep it on your person."
"Ah. So it's purely symbolic—"
"It will protect you from danger."
"Th-this will?" Deleve turned the paper over, wondering if it held an invisible enchantment, but it felt entirely ordinary. What, is it supposed to deflect an arrow? A gentle flick of his fingers bent the card effortlessly; it clearly had no protective qualities whatsoever.
"When in danger, throw it toward the adversary."
"Throw it?"
"Yes."
It's not going to blow up and kill someone, is it?
"It will not kill."
Deleve flinched, wondering if the man could read thoughts. Tucking the slip into his uniform pocket, he offered a stiff nod. In truth, the card hardly mattered. His wounded pride was finally restored, and that alone was worth celebrating.
Xiel spoke again before Deleve could turn around. "Should you collect five Praise Cards, there will indeed be a reward."
The pedagogical manuals had emphasized the principle: stimulate the students' desires. Providing an incentive to accumulate rewards proved far more effective than a single, isolated gesture.
"What kind of reward?" Deleve asked, his eyes gleaming with open curiosity.
"You will discover when the time comes."
Deleve's expectations immediately skyrocketed. It has to be something extraordinary. Suddenly, he felt an itch to put the mysterious card to the test as soon as possible.
"You may return to your quarters."
Yet Deleve lingered, hesitating on the spot.
"Do you have further business?"
"Uh, well..."
"Praise Cards are distributed strictly one at a time."
That's not what I meant... Shouldn't there be applause or something? Deleve swallowed his disappointment and trudged back to his bag.
Assassins underwent an exhaustive variety of training regimens, and mana manipulation naturally ranked among the most essential. Beyond merely channeling mana into concealed blades or throwing needles, they relied on specialized mana breathing methods designed specifically to optimize an operative's lethality.
A breathing method was a comprehensive framework for circulating and harnessing internal mana. Knights, mages, and various martial disciplines each maintained their own proprietary arts, and assassins were no different.
Xiel, for instance, had mastered the Polar Night Breathing Method.
It was a legendary technique handed down through Black Sky, an art so convoluted and abstruse that for generations, not a single operative had managed to grasp it. Yet Xiel, recognized as the most formidable prodigy in the organization's history, had become the sole practitioner to achieve full mastery. And now that Black Sky had been wiped from existence, he stood as the only living soul who even knew the technique existed.
Is this an aftereffect of developing a sense of self?
Lately, techniques derived from the Polar Night Breathing Method had begun manifesting unconsciously. In the past, his internal control had been absolute. Perhaps the awakening of genuine emotions was eroding his restraint. For that reason, Xiel had become particularly cautious regarding his gaze. As demanding as the breathing method was to learn, the boons it granted were equally terrifying—chief among them the ability to project mana and impose psychological suppression purely through direct eye contact.
I must remain vigilant.
Even so, the change was fundamentally positive.
"A sense of self, hm."
He had been abducted into the syndicate long before an individual identity could take root, subjected to endless conditioning and emotional erasure. Now that the suicide command had failed and shattered the mental shackles, he was finally free.
Does this mean my ego is forming behind schedule?
Xiel had little trouble identifying the strange sensations that occasionally squirmed or simmered deep within his chest. Emotions. The very things he had been barred from feeling throughout his years of servitude. His hollow, desensitized consciousness was undergoing tiny, irrevocable shifts.
"Mm."
Xiel closed the volume he had been perusing: What Is Emotion? It was a title recommended by the academy librarian after he had inquired about introductory texts on human sentiment. According to the text, emotions were states of mind, moods, and internal reactions to external stimuli. Having spent his formative years as an unfeeling tool, the concepts remained largely abstract to him. Yet one particular entry had caught his attention: the definition of fear.
Xiel possessed no fear. Other emotions might slowly resurface over time, but fear had been systematically excised during his indoctrination. An operative paralyzed by dread was an operative who failed missions.
An emotion characterized by dread, terror, aversion, and an awful, visceral unease toward an object or circumstance.
By all accounts, it was not an enjoyable sensation.
"Fear..." Would he ever experience it again?
With a faint snap, Xiel tucked the book beneath his arm and exited the central library. He felt several gazes brush past him, though none pursued him with the clumsy persistence Deleve had displayed.
Still, I should stay alert.
He maintained a broad sensory sweep, keeping his assassin instincts sharpened to a razor's edge.
"Did you see that guy just now? Who is he?"
"No idea. Which department? Sword School? Arcane School? Or maybe the Arts School?"
"Has to be Arts. A face like that belongs in an exhibition."
Xiel filtered out the idle student chatter while keeping his ears open. As he walked, his eyes automatically mapped blind corners, waste bins, park benches, and dense shrubbery—any vantage point suited for an ambush. Breaking habits ingrained over two decades of lethal tradecraft would take considerable time.
"...We apologize, Seniors."
"Academy life sure has gotten soft, hasn't it?"
"N-no, sir! Not at all!"
A muffled exchange drifted into his sensory field. It did not sound like ordinary conversation. Xiel considered ignoring it, but realized the sound originated from the very path he was walking. Curiosity—another impulse born from his burgeoning sense of self—tugged at his steps.
Following the hushed voices around the corner of a stone hall, he peered into a secluded, shadowy alcove behind the building. It was the sort of dim, neglected recess assassins favored for wet work.
Though those three certainly aren't assassins.
Two familiar faces stood cornered against the brickwork.
"Hey, where is House Aswan even located?"
"Some backwater village in the East, isn't it?"
"Figures. Never heard of it in my life."
Karen Aswan stood stiffly before them.
"And what was your name again? Yu..."
"Yulio Harmatan, sir!"
"You should've picked a more famous family to be born into. I can barely remember that mouthful."
"W-we used to be renowned, once..."
"When, exactly?"
"About two hundred years ago..."
"And you're nobody now, right?"
Yulio Harmatan bowed his head.
My students, Xiel observed silently.
The other three were unfamiliar upperclassmen. Xiel pressed his shoulder lightly against the outer wall, tuning his hearing to catch every syllable.
"Man, they weren't kidding when they said this year's freshmen have no discipline. Can't even recognize your own seniors? When you see an upperclassman, you salute. Got it?"
"W-we are truly sorry!"
"You think an apology settles everything in this academy?"
"I apologize, sir. We haven't had time to memorize all the seniors' names and faces yet..."
"Hah! Hear that? Soft as melted butter." One of the upperclassmen sneered, crossing his arms. "Back when we were freshmen, we had every single senior memorized within two days. And we still got our asses chewed out for not doing it in one."
The Sword School enrolled roughly one hundred students per cohort. Committing one hundred distinct names and faces to memory within forty-eight hours was practically impossible for an ordinary human.
"Listen up. The third-years and fourth-years might pamper you, but we don't play that game."
"We apologize..."
"Get your act together. Oh, right—the Year Exchange Match is coming up soon, isn't it? We'll be seeing plenty of each other."
With sneering grins, the three second-year students roughly shoved past Karen and Yulio, their shoulders intentionally striking the freshmen on their way out.
Watching the exchange, Xiel felt an odd, prickly tightening in his chest. He could not yet pinpoint what the sensation meant. The moment the three seniors rounded the opposite corner, Xiel stepped out from the shadows and appeared directly before his two students.
"I-Instructor Xiel?!"
"How did you..."
Xiel regarded them with an unreadable expression. "What just occurred here?"
"Uh, well..."
"Those appeared to be second-year students. Is that correct?"
Karen flinched. She was accustomed to Xiel's stoic demeanor and monotonic delivery, but today, something felt subtly different. There was an undercurrent in his stillness that sent a shiver down her spine. It was frightening.
"Yes, but..."
Yulio hastily cut in, waving his hands with an awkward laugh. "It's nothing serious, Instructor! Haha, our seniors were just offering some friendly guidance to us underclassmen..." He subtly poked Karen's ribs, urging her to play along.
Karen pressed her lips together and remained silent. Xiel, unswayed by the flimsy excuse, pressed further.
"To my eyes, it appeared they were tormenting you."
"Instructor Xiel, th-this is just standard etiquette between upper and lower—"
"Why did you remain passive?"
"Pardon?" Yulio blinked, entirely caught off guard. Why did we just take it? "Well... because..."
"Does the status of an upperclassman command unconditional submission?"
"It isn't that, exactly, but..."
The real issue ran far deeper: lineage. Those same second-year bullies would never dream of cornering Deleve Kundel or Celia Rihardt. Kundel and Rihardt were titanic names in the empire—houses that no sane noble crossed without courting ruin. By contrast, House Aswan and House Harmatan carried zero political weight. One was an impoverished rural clan from the eastern frontier, the other a destitute northern family clinging to the dregs of a legacy five centuries dead. Even among nobles, castes existed.
"Judging by what I observed, your combat proficiency was not so vastly inferior to theirs that you could not have mounted a defense," Xiel said plainly.
"What?"
Xiel had assessed the physical capabilities and mana reserves of all five individuals within seconds, though neither freshman had any way of knowing that.
"Why did you shrink back?"
"Because... they are our seniors, and..."
"If you cower before such arbitrary pretexts, you will react identically to most obstacles you encounter in the future. Student Karen Aswan, Student Yulio Harmatan."
A sudden jolt thrummed through Karen's chest, accompanied by a spark of frustration. Aswan. Harmatan. Just as the seniors had sneered, both families were irrelevant. That was why she had learned to keep her head down, swallowing her pride before arriving at the Sword School and continuing to do so after. She looked up, her jaw tightening.
"Then... should we have fought them?"
"No."
Karen frowned. What was he asking of them, then?
"What you experienced appears to be 'fear.'" Xiel recalled the passage from the library. "Fear is defined as an emotion characterized by dread, terror, aversion, and an awful unease toward an object or circumstance. Is that accurate?"
To Xiel, fear was an ancient memory, buried so deep under conditioning that he could no longer recall its taste.
"Generally speaking... yes?" Yulio managed.
"Then you must learn to conquer it."
During his years in the underworld, human emotions had proven remarkably resilient, refusing to die entirely despite relentless brainwashing. Fear was especially stubborn. When facing assassination targets, when driven to the edge of physical collapse, or when hopelessly surrounded by enemies, fear sought every opportunity to claw its way to the surface. For that reason, operatives underwent brutal training routines solely dedicated to severing the roots of panic.
"In our upcoming lessons, I will instruct you on methods to suppress and overcome fear."
"Ah..."
"You would also do well to read a specific text," Xiel added helpfully. "It is titled What Is Emotion?. You will find it in the Central Library, Section B-24, fourth shelf, the sixth volume from the left."
Both students stared at him in stunned silence. The sheer specificity of the citation left them speechless.
"By the way," Xiel said, shifting topics without missing a beat, "what is this 'Exchange Match' one of them mentioned?"
"Oh, that..." Karen collected her thoughts and explained. The match was part of the annual Observation Event, an open-campus festival where parents and guardians visited the academy to observe their children's progress. The multi-day schedule featured various showcases, but the flagship event was an inter-grade sparring tournament pitting the cohorts against one another.
"So different year levels compete directly."
"Yes. Many parents attend to watch the bouts."
"That sounds like an excellent opportunity."
An opportunity for what? the students wondered, but Xiel gave them no time to ask.
"Dusk is falling. Return to your dormitories at once. Dismissed."
"Ah, yes... good night, Instructor."
"Take care, sir..."
Karen and Yulio stood rooted to the pavement, watching Xiel's receding silhouette with bewildered eyes. Neither spoke for a long moment, yet both could feel a strange, quiet ember rekindling beneath their bruised dignity.
Meanwhile, as Xiel rounded the front of the hall, the peculiar sensation in his chest refused to dissipate. It was an internal pressure he had never experienced as an assassin.
Karen and Yulio.
They are my students.
From the instant he had witnessed them being verbally degraded by upperclassmen, an irritating friction had taken root beneath his ribs. Xiel narrowed his eyes and sharpened his senses. He tracked the scuffed dirt on the stone walkway and caught the faint, lingering scent of the three second-years on the evening breeze.
"That direction."
His brow furrowed into an uncharacteristic, subtle scowl as he altered his stride, following the trail. He had not realized his expression had shifted, nor did he fully grasp the nature of this foreign impulse driving his limbs.
There they are.
The stifling heaviness in his lungs grew slightly more pronounced. Was it because his own pupils had been harassed?
According to the text...
Xiel paused, matching the internal heat against the definitions he had just studied, and reached a steady conclusion.
It was faint, but unmistakable.
He was angry.