"No Choice? So I Enjoy It"
Heard someone say you should enjoy life if you can't avoid it. But if you want to enjoy, you need something to enjoy.
***
“……Do I even have a reason to be here?”
While students frantically manipulated gravity to block the rising water, I rolled over from my resting spot in response to a voice from behind.
There, seated on a staff and raised to my height, was Isolde.
She looked slightly tired, as if she had completed all the tasks I had set for her earlier.
“Isolde, you’re looking at the landscape of my shield and asking why I’m here?”
“……For what reason……?”
“No, if I did everything alone, I wouldn’t need you to do anything. And isn’t messing around like this grounds for expulsion from the professorship?”
Following Isolde’s pointing finger, I turned my head.
There, students were screaming as they desperately tried to lift the water that was barely falling.
It seemed the limit was around five meters from the floor after I had added more water. They were still barely holding on while trembling, which looked quite precarious.
But…… was there a problem?
Even though it looked tough, growth was definitely happening, right?
I scratched my head and answered Isolde.
“Specifically……? And I’ve been deploying a visual distortion barrier every class time, so no one will see it…… Everyone seems to be fine with it……?”
“You really committed a complete crime, didn’t you?”
“Crime……? There’s no one dead, and there won’t be any, so what…….”
“Haaah…….”
Isolde let out a deep sigh at my words.
She looked at me with eyes like a stunned younger sibling, making me feel a bit gross inside, but I barely calmed myself and asked Isolde.
“So…… did the noble handle it well……?”
“Yeah, no problem. When the noble woke up, they were shaking like crazy, so there won’t be any more visits. Besides, it looks like they’ll keep their mouth shut on their own.”
Plus, the other noble family students who saw it would spread rumors on their own, so the nobles wouldn’t dare approach tomorrow.
Isolde stopped talking there and closed her mouth.
In short, Isolde had perfectly carried out my order to handle things with Mira regarding the noble.
It was fortunate that the noble had been dealt with by Mira, even though they looked pretty pitiful.
There was a good chance it was because the noble was close to a fallen noble, but I didn’t want to belittle Isolde’s hard work, so I reached out my hand toward her head.
I intended to pat her head and give praise, like I did with Mu and the other kids.
But—
Thud──
It seemed the method didn’t apply to Isolde either.
“……Ah……?”
“Don’t treat me like a child. Even if I look like this, I’m over seven hundred years old.”
Isolde said this while gently slipping my hand aside, though it looked rough.
There was a genuine rejection in Isolde’s eyes, as if to say not to pat her head. I felt awkward and withdrew my hand.
Everyone liked it, but that was strange. Ah, of course. I had forcibly kidnapped her and turned her into a slave and master relationship, so maybe she really didn’t like it.
I understood that enough and withdrew my hand that had been pushed by Isolde. Then, I suddenly remembered what Isolde had said earlier and froze.
Just a moment. What did she say just now?
“……Seven hundred years old?”
“W-what. Is there a problem?”
Isolde flinched and asked, startled, when I muttered with my body suddenly stiffening.
She looked like she was checking if she had said something wrong, but before she could find an answer, I blurted out a word on impulse.
“I’m completely jealous…….”
No, I had known she was over a few hundred years old from the settings, but when I thought of her age matching the appearance and behavior so far, seven hundred felt newly huge.
“……”
Isolde’s blank face, as if shocked by my “jealous” remark, while she repeated what I had just said and mulled it over.
Her expression of having heard something she shouldn’t, combined with her stillness, meant the shock was pretty severe.
Had I made her too attached by bringing her under me? Maybe the only chance to see Isolde this dumbstruck was now, but I had no intention of observing her.
If I said I didn’t want to observe, it would be a lie, but there was a more urgent reason: she hadn’t answered her first question yet.
So I shook the half-groggy Isolde awake and, once she had calmed down, told her.
“You have something to do, so wake up…….”
“What does a jealous old hag like me have to do…….”
This looked like she was seriously sulking.
She was muttering so quietly I thought I wouldn’t hear it, but Meiel’s body had better senses than expected, so even the small murmurs were picked up completely. I could only think she was sulking.
But did it matter? After all, I had brought Isolde to use as a slave, so there was no need for me to be concerned with every emotion.
Thinking that way, I set aside Isolde, who had a faint sense of guilt, and pointed my chin toward the shield where the students were trapped.
“It seems it’s about time…… so let’s break the shield and help with the cleanup…….”
They had held up well so far, but they were probably at their limit now.
Mana depletion was one reason, but gravity manipulation required enormous concentration beyond that.
So I intended to break the shield that was barely holding and let Isolde handle the water.
If that amount of water burst out, the entire academy ground from here to the main building would turn into a ten-centimeter-deep swimming pool.
Isolde was still stronger than Meiel, but a powerhouse who couldn’t be rivaled even by the representative characters, so she should be able to handle it easily.
“Just handling that water, right?”
“Yeah…… that’s it.”
Isolde finally relaxed her expression from earlier and, realizing what I had asked, asked me directly.
I nodded positively to Isolde, who had figured it out so quickly without details, and slowly descended toward the floor of the academy ground.
Isolde followed me down to the floor.
Without waiting for anyone, we both landed at the same time and lifted the staff together.
“Alright, let’s start…….”
“Ready.”
I would smash the shield, and Isolde would handle the water from the broken shield.
After checking the pre-set plan one last time, I nodded once at Isolde and matched her eyes.
Then, at the same time, I activated the magic by infusing light into the staff’s gem.
Massive mana and magi began to gather.
Wait, just a moment. Magi?
“Hold it! Magi is gathering!!!”
“Eh?! Ah!”
I shouted urgently without my usual lazy tone, because the gathering mana made my skin tingle.
Isolde realized what I had done and quickly scattered the magi she had been collecting on the staff.
I quickly covered her collected magi with mana and completely erased it, with not a single magi left in the air.
I let out a sigh of relief and glared at her.
“Uh, s-sorry.”
“It’s fine as long as it wasn’t a problem…….”
Isolde, who seemed to know she had done something wrong, gave a pure apology.
It had indeed been a shock, but my fault was also there, so I accepted her apology and picked up my slightly roughened breathing.
After signing the contract, I had taken away their magi-imbued weapons from Isolde and Morgan because using magi would reveal their demon nature.
Instead, I had given them high-quality swords and staffs made of normal materials and told them not to use magi.
But over the past five days, busy with other things, I had completely forgotten it.
They hadn’t swung a sword or cast a spell in those five days, so I had to be careless.
Isolde had probably forgotten too, so she had naturally gathered magi and tried to cast magic with mana, as always.
Isolde’s mistake was large, but my fault wasn’t none either, so I replaced my heart that had jumped out and looked around.
“Thank goodness…… it looks like the magi didn’t escape…….”
Because she reacted immediately after gathering, the magi that might have been missed was completely eaten by my mana.
A good mage might have noticed for a moment, but only I, Isolde, and Mu could sense the exact moment within the academy.
After deciding it was safe, I raised the staff I had lowered and, this time, engraved a warning clearly into Isolde’s mind.
“You forgot like I did…… but from now on, use only mana properly…… got it……?”
“Yeah, sorry…… I forgot too. I won’t make a mistake like that from now on.”
Isolde, self-reproaching, affirmed while I lifted the staff in time.
This time, pure mana without any magi rushed into our staffs.
Whoosh, a small clear resonance sound as clean mana condensed on the staff.
“I’ll break it…….”
And when Isolde signaled readiness with her eyes, I swung the staff gathered with mana and shattered the shield trapping the students and a large amount of water.
Crack───!!!
The shield broke cleanly along the trajectory of my swing. Then, Isolde’s magic covered the water bursting from the gaps of the collapsing shield.
“『Evaporate.』”
Chiiiii───
Using fire element to turn the mana between the falling water, the water evaporated and disappeared in the air along with its fall.
The sudden fire element between them bubbled and boiled before disappearing.
When all the falling water vanished, the only thing left were the students lying on the ground writhing from mana depletion.
“I-it looks like I’m going to die…….”
“Mana…… mana isn’t coming out…….”
“I can’t hold on anymore…….”
They all collapsed to the floor from mana depletion. The floor wasn’t completely dry, but it was moist. The students didn’t care and lay their bodies on it.
The students who were still holding on were those with spare mana, those skilled at mana control, and the representative characters Shaty, Pina, and Fran.
The sight was so utter defeat that Isolde clicked her tongue and said to me.
“This class is nothing but torture.”
“Shut up……!”
Of course I immediately denied it.
The more you teach, the greater the growth, right!
There were students who looked like they were about to die from overdoing it……?
***
Mana depletion was felt.
Exactly, just before depletion, but the same sense of exhaustion as if depleted, Shaty pressed her knee to the ground to support herself and barely stood up.
“Haa, hehe…… I thought it would be easy…….”
Gravity manipulation magic.
Shaty had confidence in elemental magic, so she thought it would be simple, but when Meiel created that much water, her heart broke once. When water actually collided with gravity manipulation, it broke twice.
If Pina and Fran, who were lying beside her, hadn’t been there, she probably would have collapsed in under ten minutes.
The pillar’s core that they had been pushing water upward had been the three of them until just now.
Of course, the other students had helped, but the three’s magic being the core was undeniable.
“Just barely held on…….”
If even one had collapsed, it would have been like dominoes and all fallen, but thanks to the two holding up well with her, she had managed so far.
Shaty inwardly thanked the two and felt her legs that had been barely holding finally loosen completely.
She had thought if she collapsed here she couldn’t get up again, so Shaty forced her body that was about to fall forward back and plopped down on the moist floor.
“Ugh…… gross.”
The academy ground floor, soaked with water, stuck uncomfortably, but with no strength left to move, what could she do?
Shaty kept her head up and stared blankly at the sky.
Bubble bubble──
After sitting back and looking at the sky, what she saw was water boiling and evaporating like a teapot.
She didn’t know the exact principle, but it looked like a high-level magic she couldn’t follow.
Naturally, as a high-level magic, Shaty thought it was one Meiel used, but the voice that came after made her realize it wasn’t.
“Like this, it’s good?”
“Yeah…… now let’s install a mana field…….”
“Indeed. Everyone’s collapsing.”
“Mana’s depleted, so what can you do…….”
The voice of a woman, probably the one who owned this magic, talking to Meiel.
Shaty tried to lower her head that was looking at the sky because the voice sounded familiar, but before that, massive mana wrapped around the academy ground floor.
A geometric pattern spreading out on the floor as a mana field. When the mana field Meiel mentioned spread, Shaty felt vitality return to her body.
No, not only Shaty. The collapsed students, realizing mana was seeping back into their depleted bodies, opened their eyes wide and started getting up.
“Oooh, this is a mana field, right?!”
“Mana is seeping back into my body……!”
“Haa, now I’m starting to feel alive…….”
Each one muttering a word as they got up. Shaty, following them, raised her body that had started moving properly again.
And only after standing up did Shaty clearly see the identity of the magic and voice from just now.
“……Dividing mana like this among so many kids is hard.”
A purple-haired woman casually turning her staff-holding arm.
She was the one I had explained at morning roll call was in charge of magic class, so if it was now after seeing her face, I definitely remembered.
‘She does double duty as a magic class assistant too.’
And with her identity realized, the belated memory surfaced.
I had heard she was the assistant for magic class along with A-class in charge, but to think it was the assistant for Meiel’s magic class…….
Shaty, who already knew Isolde’s identity, could only end her impression of her with a light surprise. But the other students probably hadn’t known.
“Professor. Who is she?”
Fran, who raised his hand not far from Shaty, asked.
Other students, curious too, looked at Meiel and Isolde with question marks on their faces like Fran.
But for some reason Pina didn’t react that way, so when Shaty was about to ask Pina for her reaction, Meiel’s lazy voice rang out among the students.
“Ah…… now that I think of it, I didn’t explain. This is the assistant who will help me with magic class starting today…… name is…….”
“Isolde. No last name, just Isolde. Call her however you like. Starting today, she’ll guide you with Meiel.”
Meiel’s explanation for introducing Isolde was that she didn’t know the reason, but the introduction of Isolde from earlier seemed smoother than morning’s.
And Shaty turned her head for a moment and, with tears secretly wiping her eyes at the clock showing an hour left until class time, saw the students with questions already loaded in their mouths.
It looked like it would take a long time for the class to end.
***
“Aiyak……!”
While organizing Aria’s professor’s office, Mu quickly pulled back his hand that had been brushed by a sharp blade.
But blood was already flowing from the cut hand, and Mu glared at the fingers that had started throbbing.
There were always knives between the bookshelves in Aria’s mother’s room, so he should have been careful, but he had been careless.
If someone else had heard, they would have thought it strange that there were knives between the bookshelves, but from Mu’s perspective, where his mother’s fault was also his own, it was all just the wound caused by his own carelessness and recklessness.
“It hurts…….”
“Huh. Even a homunculus bleeds? And it feels pain too?”
Mu muttered small while holding his throbbing hand, and suddenly Morgan, who had been reading a book from behind, tilted her head and asked.
“Weren’t homunculi supposed to not feel pain or bleed? Even if emotions exist, isn’t it all implemented?”
“Blood is a copy used by the mother who created me. Pain is…….”
Mu answered Morgan’s question without hesitation, but when it came to the pain question, he couldn’t find words and closed his mouth.
It was exactly as she said. Why did he, a homunculus, feel pain?
As her worries deepened, Morgan cautiously got up from reading the book and approached Mu’s side.
A drop of blood from her hand.
“This is that guy’s blood, right.”
Morgan’s interest piqued by the words that the blood from their fight wasn’t even something they had seen before, lightly brushed the wound on Mu’s hand with her finger.
Chiiik───
“Kyaa?! What is this?! It’s blood mixed with divine power!”
As Mu’s blood-burned finger started crumbling like fire, Morgan screamed and shook off the blood from her finger.
If it was divine power, fine, but her flesh had crumbled from blood mixed with the opposite polarity of divine power to demons.
What the hell was mixed into the blood with divine power. Morgan really wanted to shout it, but she couldn’t ask because she feared the answer would be too much for her to handle.
So Morgan looked at Mu with a slightly fearful face, but Mu, deeply absorbed in thought, hadn’t heard her scream and was still quietly closing his mouth and continuing to think.
But that was short-lived.
Mu soon finished thinking with a clear expression and shouted.
“The mother is amazing, so she even implemented the pain!”
“……Yeah, the mother addiction is severe.”
Mu, true to his mother-all-mighty view, ended his worry with his own conclusion.
A peaceful rest time.
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