10. The Academy Entrance Ceremony Is the Antonym of Peace

The entrance ceremony was drawing to a close.

The ceremony, which had started with the dawn rehearsal, was reaching its final stage with the Hero Department's address.

Of course, Pia Parma's speech would follow once the Hero Department's turn ended, but no one here had any intention of listening to her speech seriously.

Perhaps only the Third Faction supporting her would pay attention.

In that sense, Allen Price's response address was practically the finale of the entrance ceremony.

Leon, watching the ceremony's final speech through the screen, let out a sigh of relief.

They had managed to wrap up such a major event successfully.

Throughout the entrance ceremony, Leon had managed to conduct himself flawlessly as an Imperial Prince.

Considering it was thrown together in a single day, the content of the response address was excellent, and thanks to practicing all through the dawn, he hadn't stumbled over his words at the podium.

Allen's turn still remained, but he wasn't particularly worried about it.

He'd always been comfortable standing before a crowd.

He couldn't even imagine the guy who'd performed a bizarre dance called the moonwalk in the middle of an imperial palace ballroom making a slip of the tongue from nerves.

'His speech was impressive too, even by his standards.'

Leon had polished up some of the noble rhetoric and structure, but the original draft Allen had written was largely flawless.

Considering Allen's unfamiliarity with noble expressions, the content of the script itself could even be called superior to Leon's own.

Had anyone asked where he'd learned to write like that, he would've answered that he'd gotten good at it from ghostwriting speeches for his company commander back when he was a non-commissioned officer, but Leon had no way of knowing that fact.

Thinking the guy had some unexpected talents, Leon turned his attention back to the screen.

There, the head of the Hero Department was reading the welcoming address for new students.

With his long, whitish beard, the old man looked like the very embodiment of a reclusive master.

True to that impression, the head of the Hero Department was a legendary figure in the hero industry.

Even after retiring as a Hero, he remained one of the foremost archmages in the world.

And the same words could feel entirely different depending on who spoke them.

A speech that would've been unbearably dull coming from an ordinary department head became a masterful address when delivered by a legendary hero.

The students listened with an enthusiasm they had shown none of the other department heads.

There was good reason for it. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠To activate magic, one had to recite incantations, and those incantations were essentially a collection of words unconsciously uttered by a wizard who'd reached the zenith of imagination and fallen into a trance state.

The everyday language of an archmage, the expressions shown in his speeches—these were fragments of his unconscious mind, and so the students savored every single meaning in his address.

Responsibility, duty, and such expressions dominated, but not a single student thought of it as the nagging of a stiff old man.

On the contrary, some were even jotting down his speech, thinking this might very well be the secret to his great magic.

His address flew by in an instant amid the students' enthusiasm.

Amid thunderous applause, he descended from the podium and returned to his seat.

Soon, Allen stepped up onto the podium.

A response address to an archmage's speech could be a burdensome request for someone still new to society.

But the top student of the department guided by the greatest archmage at the world's finest academy ought to be able to handle such a thing naturally.

And Allen already had what it took.

Before a crowd of fifty thousand, he read his response address without a trace of nerves.

To him, who had already flourished as a world-famous actor, this level of attention was nothing.

Midway through his speech, he pulled a ballpoint pen from his pocket.

Seeing that ballpoint pen, Leon couldn't help but let out a wry smile.

'He's really pulling out that ballpoint pen.'

Ever since the day he'd become a hero, Allen had always kept a ballpoint pen in his pocket.

He was so fond of ballpoint pens that if one wasn't available, he'd transmute a nearby scrap of iron into one.

And whenever fan service was lacking, or when he had to give a speech or interview somewhere, he would pull out that ballpoint pen.

- Can I even produce something as small as this ballpoint pen? Do you think the works we make are as productive as this single ballpoint pen? Our works hold value only because there are fans who love them.

As if to prove those words, whenever fans approached him while he was out and about as John Armstrong, Allen repaid them with excellent fan service.

There were even assessments that the fan service of the actor John Armstrong had contributed to the commercial success of the John Armstrong Series.

Of course, the ballpoint pen metaphor wasn't perfectly suited to the current situation, but that was just a matter of adapting it to the context.

With Leon's help, the gist of Allen's speech had been transformed into something about protecting people and fulfilling one's duty as a hero.

Coincidentally, just as the department head had emphasized a hero's duty and responsibility, Allen's metaphor fit in splendidly.

'Next came... ... Wasn't that it? Where had he learned such stirring lines?'

Of course, the fact that this was the Ranger's Creed was something Allen would never utter even if his lips were torn apart.

Figuring that line was about to come up any moment now, Leon prepared to applaud.

"A hero's strength—"

That was the moment.

BOOM!

A projectile shot past above Allen's head with a roaring sound loud enough to drown out even his voice.

The projectile pierced straight through the chest of the Hero Department head, who was seated behind Allen.

The massive projectile, closer to a harpoon than an arrow, pinned the department head's body to the wall behind him.

Bright red paint spread across the wall behind the impaled department head.

Before he could even pull the harpoon embedded in his chest, another harpoon flew in and pierced through his skull.

To anyone watching, it looked instantly fatal.

The headless department head's body slumped limply.

In this entire sequence that took less than a tenth of a second, before the other department heads could even react, their seats exploded.

Where the department heads' seats had been, erased without a trace, only scraps of cloth and soot remained to show that people had once been there.

"?!"

While everyone stood frozen by the sudden situation, masked intruders descended from the dome ceiling.

Several of them immediately aimed state-of-the-art magic bows at the headmaster.

The rest conjured fireballs or lightning orbs above their staffs and aimed them at the audience seats.

The Hero Department students who'd been about to rush the stage the moment the intruders appeared had no choice but to halt their steps at that sight.

High as Hetairo Academy's average standard might be, they were still students, and among them were many in non-combat tracks.

With them held hostage, the Hero Department students couldn't attack the intruders immediately.

People could easily deduce the identity of the intruders who'd driven the dome into terror by the markings on their masks.

Cultists.

They were a group that rejected the holy gods and worshipped evil gods instead.

And they were known to the public as world-class terrorists.

Their reason for being here was obvious.

As the place where the world's most promising sprouts had gathered, it was the most fitting location to deliver despair to the holy gods.

To begin with, the academy was exposed to terrorist threats dozens of times a year, and today, of all days, one had succeeded.

While the audience members were all plunged into panic by the academy assault event, backstage, Leon was quietly gazing at the screen.

His escort, Karl, rather than advising Leon to evacuate, was simply standing beside him and watching the screen in silence.

"It's finally begun."

"It had to be this year, of all years."

The two showed only a dry reaction to the academy assault... scenario.

However elusive and inscrutable the cultists might be, the nations were not so incompetent as to fail to detect even the slightest hint of their movements.

The Leven Kingdom's Shadow Knight Order, the Parma Empire's Foreign Intelligence Department, the elves' Dark Guardians, and so on.

Since the founding of these organizations, there had been no instance where the nations' intelligence agencies failed to grasp the cultists' movements.

Typically, when a terrorist attack succeeded, it was only because they'd been deceived by false information or couldn't stop it due to administrative limitations; there was never a case where they failed to catch any sign at all.

And as an Imperial Prince, Leon had the authority to access every piece of information held by the Imperial Intelligence Department.

He had not received any report of cultist assault signs for this entrance ceremony.

Therefore, he could be certain this was not a cultist attack.

So what was this situation?

It was precisely the academy's irregular event, the Assault Scenario.

The academy had begun these events after a devastating terrorist attack that had struck the academy a hundred years ago.

Afterwards, they built a terror defense system in cooperation not only with the Imperial Intelligence Department but with various nations, yet they remained unsatisfied.

In this world, there was no such thing as absolutes, and no shield that couldn't be pierced.

They had prepared a scenario for the case where a terror attack succeeded.

It was meant to train the island's residents and students to respond without panic even in the worst-case scenario.

The scenario usually came during school festivals, entrance ceremonies, or sometimes suddenly in the middle of class.

However, if such an event came every year, there was a risk that people's sense of crisis would be lacking, so it arrived without warning once every four to five years.

And it seemed the academy had prepared a scenario for this entrance ceremony.

Whether the cooldown had elapsed, or the headmaster was simply bored.

In any case, in this year of Leon's enrollment, they'd prepared the entrance ceremony assault scenario.

'They got us good.'

The academy's sudden relocation of the entrance ceremony venue to the dome, summoning all enrolled students for a mere entrance ceremony, sending the admission notification only the day before—all of it had been their operation.

For the naturalness of their operation, they had used even the immature princess's speech, and Leon's own status.

The people had gathered in this dome without suspicion, and the scenario had successfully caught them off guard.

The sight of knights blocking the passage from backstage to the stage confirmed Leon's suspicions.

He looked around.

The people backstage were uniformly high-ranking nobles.

They had gathered the top students of each department, but originally, most top students in each department were high-ranking nobles.

There was no particular corruption involved.

As an academy that professed to be open to all capable individuals regardless of status, they did not provide additional benefits to high-ranking nobles just because of their rank.

But realistically, it was true that high-ranking nobles, who had received various elixirs, their family's secret magic, and instruction from the finest tutors since childhood, had an advantage over commoners.

Occasionally a genius emerged who could overturn that, but it was an exceedingly rare case.

Usually, the top spot was always reserved for high-ranking nobles.

That background gave high nobles one particular advantage: they inevitably knew far more about the academy than people of other classes did.

Be it siblings, parents, or friends.

Within high-noble circles, information about the academy was practically common knowledge, including the possibility of a staged attack scenario.

As proof, the people backstage were the very picture of composure, no less than Leon.

On the contrary, if someone were to panic in this situation, they would be someone ostracized in high society or devoid of social awareness.

In contrast to the composed atmosphere backstage, the people in the audience seats beyond the screen were gripped by panic.

Unfortunately, they were mostly commoners or lower-ranking nobles.

They weren't well-informed enough about the academy to consider such an assault scenario as common sense.

A few perceptive ones did try to be suspicious, but there was no way the academy would be so sloppy.

That was because upperclassmen who'd been tipped off—or who'd spent a long time on the island, mostly graduate students—were acting desperately for their adorable juniors.

- Get down!

BOOM.

An upperclassman threw themself in front of a junior, and their head burst apart.

With the department head assassinated and an upperclassman exploding before their eyes, few new students could remain rational.

Leon, sweeping his finger through the air characteristic of a Sanctuary that had at some point enveloped the dome, gave a wry smile.

For someone capable of so discreetly wrapping this vast dome in a temporary Sanctuary, they would have to be at least cardinal-level.

'The academy's pulled out all the stops.'

Where would ordinary civilians ever have occasion to enter a Sanctuary typically used as a filming location or sparring arena?

Most people wouldn't have noticed the temporary Sanctuary either. Leon was unusual only because Allen had taken him into Sanctuaries so often.

'Think of it as a good experience, friends.'

Looking at his potential schoolmates, Leon wore a pleased smile.

Since no being was as honest as a human facing terror, they would show their true faces, and that would be recorded by professors observing from somewhere.

There might be a bit of embarrassment in the process, but no professor would view that as a demerit.

Wasn't this an academy where students learned to overcome fear and become proper Heroes and the like?

Just then, one hero candidate stepped forward to save their classmates.

Unfortunately, their courage was for nothing, as they were instantly subdued by a cultist.

It couldn't be helped.

Those currently playing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the cultists were professors from the Hero Department or graduate students.

It was a tall order for fresh-faced new students to beat them with courage alone.

Still, a student who demonstrated courage in that situation would leave a favorable impression on the professors.

Then, abruptly, Allen appeared on the screen.

He stood on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the podium, frozen in the very pose of raising a ballpoint pen with one hand.

Could he actually be panicking?

There was no way.

His behavior might be frivolous, but Allen was unquestionably a high noble.

Both his father and mother were academy graduates, and his older brother, with a considerable age gap, was also an academy graduate.

Far from being ostracized in high society, his family was actively courted, and his maternal relatives even belonged to the Intelligence Department.

There was no way he wouldn't have caught on to this scenario...

At that moment, the chronicle of Allen's upbringing flashed through Leon's mind.

During the time when other noble children were studying with tutors in their mansions, he'd been throwing punches at the imperial training grounds or the knight order's training facility.

When it was time to mingle in high society, he'd been living exclusively in Sanctuaries filming the John Armstrong Series.

And, crucially, he was so utterly lacking in social awareness that he didn't know a single noble expression.

'No way... nah, no way.'

Would he cause an incident in a place like this?

Exactly three minutes later, Leon regretted that thought.

On the screen, a graduate student playing a cultist approached Allen.

It happened sometimes—an underclassman would freeze, unable to process such a sudden change.

With such complacent thoughts, the graduate student approached Allen.

He reached for the poor underclassman's arm to lower it.

"Wanna see a magic trick? This ballpoint pen's gonna disappear."

"Huh?"

The instant Allen's voice, thought to be frozen stiff, resounded through the dome via the microphone, everyone's eyes turned toward the stage.

Before the people's gazes could even fully focus, Allen spun around and jammed the ballpoint pen into the cultist's eye.

Then, grabbing the head, he slammed it down onto the podium ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as if hammering a nail.

THUD!

The sound of hammering and metal piercing flesh echoed through the dome via the microphone.

Allen's unwilling magic assistant collapsed and rolled off the podium.

While tens of thousands stood frozen at the unimaginable spectacle, Allen whispered into the bloodied microphone.

"Ta-dah~"

Leon and Karl simultaneously dragged their hands down their faces.