A Military-Vet Schoolgirl Enrolls in the Magical Girl Academy! (4)
The teacher’s voice sent a chill down my spine. “It might not be entirely fair, but I’ll try to be as careful as I can.”
Be careful? Wasn’t that just a fancy way of saying she was going to beat the crap out of me? I slowly reflected on my past behavior, wondering if I’d really earned that much hatred… and yeah, I had to admit it. From a third-person perspective, my actions were pretty damn hateable.
I’d dozed off during the principal’s entrance speech. Ignored the mana measurement while everyone else was participating and just slept by myself. And even when we got to the sparring arena, I’d curled up and taken a full nap like it had nothing to do with me. Any teacher would’ve lost it seeing that. So had she been holding back her anger this whole time just for this moment? Was that blank, disinterested expression all an act? Had she been pretending to be a cool, icy city woman on the outside while sharpening her knife on the inside, waiting to mess with me?
“Still have a problem with it?”
The sly teacher was still staring at me with that emotionless face, not showing a single hint of what she was thinking. This was the true art of adulting. The way grown-ups hide what they really feel… yeah, bullshit. I let out a long sigh.
I’d been forced to attend this academy and planned to just coast through it, but things had gotten wildly complicated right from the start.
“…No, it’s fine. Whatever. I’ll do it.”
Ha. No choice now. I was sleepy and my motivation was in the toilet, but since the bridge was already burned, I might as well try to give it my best shot.
…If I could manage it, that is.
“Good. Then put on the protective artifact and—”
“No need for that. I trust the teacher’s skill.”
I stopped her hand as she reached for the protective artifact. She’d go easy, right? There was no way a teacher would use her full power against a new student. I’d refused the artifact to imply we should take it easy, but the teacher seemed to interpret my action differently. The corners of her mouth curved up, and her eyes sparkled with curiosity. No matter how I looked at it, her expression screamed, “You’re underestimating me?”
“I see… Very well. A magical girl must have spirit, after all.”
That wasn’t what I meant. Spirit? What was this old-man talk? Her appearance was that of a beautiful woman in her early thirties, yet she had the mindset of a grandpa. The teacher really didn’t know how to make use of her looks.
“If you’re ready, come up. Ah, can student number 25 give the signal to begin the spar?”
“Y-yes! I’ll do it!”
Somehow my newly made friend, Seyeol, ended up acting as referee. She watched the teacher warm up for a moment, then walked over to me.
“Jihye, are you okay?” Her voice was packed with worry.
“Yeah, sure. It’s not like the teacher’s trying to kill me.”
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“Why would I be…? Is there any need to get tense?”
I’d meant it in the sense that the teacher would stop if things got dangerous, but Seyeol seemed to completely misunderstand me. I had no idea why so many people were misreading me today.
“Jihye… you’re really something else.”
“What? You saw it earlier. My mana is zero. I probably won’t even be able to use proper magic… Yaaaawn. So don’t hype me up too much.”
Even after I explained with all my heart, Seyeol muttered to herself, “As expected, Jihye has a plan,” so it looked like clearing up the misunderstanding would be difficult. Leaving her to her delusions, I lightly stretched before the spar. Maybe sleeping a little more really helped? My condition was definitely better than before. Mana levels… okay. This should be enough for two light spells.
“Number 42… are you done?”
“I’m all set.”
“Alright then… both sides, prepare yourselves. Sparring match, begin!”
The moment Seyeol’s words ended, we both shouted our transformation phrases.
“Transform.”
“Huuuaaaum.”
Newly awakened magical girls often used full incantations for transformation, but once you got used to it, a simple shout of spirit was enough. And once you were even more experienced, you could transform without saying anything at all. Our transformation speeds were about the same. Actually, maybe the teacher was a little faster?
“Fast,” she said.
“Aw, it’s nothing special.”
While I was humbly responding to the teacher’s compliment, a sharp paang sound rang out as a basic projectile spell—Magic Missile—flew at me at the same time as her words. This woman… she was sneakily launching magic at a student while talking?
“Teacher… that was too fast just now.”
“Didn’t you say you had no mana in your body? You really managed to transform.”
“Well… even so, transforming is basic knowledge for a magical girl.”
“True. If you couldn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to enter the academy in the first place.”
I looked at the unique weapon in the teacher’s hand. A gauntlet. So all that talk about spirit was because she was a close-combat fighter?
Tick. The teacher’s finger, covered by the gauntlet, made a flicking motion. But it wasn’t just a gesture. I felt the texture of mana rushing toward me. She had fired a magic bullet.
“I’ll block it roughly.”
Unlike the teacher’s gauntlet, what I held in my hand was a plain, slender iron rod. No patterns, no decorations—it looked like something you’d pick up at a construction site. I lightly swung the rod to the left. A metallic clang rang out.
“To block a magic bullet so easily… you’re no ordinary new student. You’re not a veteran, are you?”
I flinched.
“Ahem… Teacher, I really am a new student.”
We exchanged pointless banter and traded blows a few more times. Mostly the teacher attacked, and I calmly blocked.
“Hey, can you see anything…?”
“No. Nothing. But every time she swings her weapon, there’s a sound like something’s blocking it.”
“Is she really the same new student as us?”
I could hear the students outside the arena murmuring in agitation. Even Seyeol, who was refereeing closest to the ring, looked extremely flustered. Magic bullets couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. They were fast and good for surprise attacks, but they weren’t often used in real combat. Their power was too weak. Unless you poured mana only into your fingertips, the efficiency was terrible. It was far more effective to attack with other spells. The reason the teacher kept using magic bullets was probably because I was a student—and a new one at that. Most new students, no, almost all of them, would never be able to block this attack. Blocking an invisible attack was nearly impossible for a new student. And even if the speed was slow, maybe they could block it once or twice by luck, but the teacher’s magic bullets were quite fast.
However, I wasn’t a new student. I had been a pro among pros. This level of attack? I could block it with my eyes closed.
Ting. As the clear sound of the staff rang out, I thought, …Are you going to keep going?
I looked at the teacher with a questioning expression. There was no response. She was just mechanically firing magic bullets by moving her fingers. While I continued to carefully observe her movements with suspicion, I noticed that her other hand—the one not firing the bullets—was making unusual motions.
“Geez… Teacher, that’s too much.”
I started to think the teacher might actually be quite a sneaky person. While continuously blocking the barrage of magic bullets, I slowly moved my feet. The way I moved looked exactly like someone playing a rhythm game at an arcade, so the students began to voice their confusion at my suddenly changed movements.
“What is she doing right now?”
“She’s spinning around the arena?”
“She might be running out of stamina. Just blocking would tire you out, so now she’s trying to dodge. But it’s useless. Escaping the teacher’s attacks is impossible.”
Just as one of the analyzing students said, moving to dodge the magic bullets was the wrong move. The teacher’s accuracy with them was absurdly high, making it difficult to avoid them except by blocking. Had she really spent all her time practicing only magic bullets? Even I, who had experienced all sorts of things, was impressed by the level.
So why was I dragging my tired body around like this? You could tell just by looking at the teacher’s expression.
“Not going as planned, is it, Teacher?”
“…You’re reading it all.”
“Yaaawn. That’s right. I can see all the real-time positional calculations.”
The teacher’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. While firing magic bullets, she had been preparing a location-fixed trigger spell at the same time. A location-fixed trigger spell. In simple terms, it was just a trap. Think of it like a landmine that activates when you step on a certain spot. She probably planned to circle me with magic bullets and catch me with the trap spell. But since I already knew her intentions, I lightly avoided the pre-planted traps she had calculated based on my position, erased them with my foot, and moved my body to dodge whenever she tried to plant a new one under my feet. Judging by the slow calculation speed and how clearly I could see the calculations, this probably wasn’t the teacher’s specialty magic.
“Shall we end it here… Teacher?”
Even though I had read all of the teacher’s magic, my stamina wasn’t infinite. I was exhausted. I hadn’t even used any magic, but running around like this had drained me completely. At this point, the purpose of this spar—to measure skill—had been sufficiently achieved… or so I thought.
Right then, the teacher stopped firing magic bullets and clenched her fist tightly. It seemed I was the only one who had been thinking too casually. From her stance alone, I could tell something was off. It was coming.
“Wait a second, Teacher. This is a bit…”
What was coming was the mana loaded into the teacher’s fist. It was a technique she had trained as a close-combat magical girl. This is insane. A magic fist?!
The moment her fist shot forward, a compressed mass of energy flew toward me. No matter how you looked at it, this was way too much for a new student, Teacher!
“Damn it. I didn’t want to use mana.”
I had just barely recovered my condition. Damn it. I steeled myself and swung the iron rod—no, the staff—in my hand. The magic I was trying to manifest was a defensive spell, Shield. Since my mana was practically zero according to the measuring device, I had to squeeze out maximum efficiency with minimal mana. Dozens of geometric structures were drawn inside the main magic circle, connecting with other small magic circles orbiting around it. I never thought I’d have to make the magic circle this complicated just to cast Shield.
“Ugh. In the old days I could just draw it simply and crush it with sheer mana volume. Seriously.”
Kwaaaang—!
A sound twice as loud as when I blocked the Magic Missile echoed through the arena. Fortunately, the Shield manifested in time and successfully blocked the teacher’s magic fist, but…
Ah… I feel dizzy. I wasn’t hurt, but the aftereffects of using magic hit me.
“Ah… I’m so tired I could die. Teacher, I don’t think I can do any more. I give up. I lost.”
I couldn’t even stand on my own two feet, let alone continue the spar. Rest. Right now I needed rest. The kind called deep sleep. Leaving behind the teacher’s dumbfounded face, the moment I stepped out of the ring I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and immediately flopped onto the floor.
“Jihye?”
“Student number 42?”
I’m too tired… I’m just a kid. I want to sleep. So don’t talk to me. I won’t answer. You evil teacher. I lightly cursed her in my mind. Then, ignoring the noisy shouts around me, I completely surrendered my body to the tidal wave of exhaustion crashing over me. I set off on a journey to dreamland.
✮✮✮
Teacher Cha Seoyeon found it hard to believe what had just happened. No matter how she thought about it, that wasn’t the level of an ordinary new student. Student number 42, Kim Jihye, was a fully trained magical girl just like herself. And one with countless real battles under her belt.
Originally, her plan had been to use the spar with Kim Jihye to show the students that a magical girl’s battles weren’t as glamorous as they imagined. Sometimes dirty, sometimes full of tricks—that was what real magical girl combat looked like on the field. With that in mind, she had designed an extremely practical training plan. Real-battle-like training. It was the value that Cha Seoyeon, teacher at the Magical Girl Academy, pursued.
But the spar hadn’t gone as Cha Seoyeon expected. It was because Kim Jihye’s ability far exceeded her predictions. She had no mana, so she mostly deflected attacks by swinging her staff, but even that was impressive. A magical girl didn’t only use magic; sometimes physical force was what mattered. When her magic bullets were blocked more than three times, she quickly revised her plan. She decided to catch her off guard even if it meant pushing a little. That was why she used the unfamiliar location-fixed magic.
Although she belonged to the type commonly called close-combat fighters, Cha Seoyeon could still handle a certain level of magic, so she thought it would work on a slightly outstanding new student.
‘But she was reading it all. Even if I didn’t pay attention to security when building the spell, reading the calculations in real time should be impossible at a student’s level.’
It was a feat that would be difficult even for professional magical girls. The ability to analyze a magic circle the moment it was being constructed. Even the academy’s instructors couldn’t do it easily. Even if they tried to analyze it, their accuracy was low and they weren’t fast. And that wasn’t all. The fist strike she had thrown thinking there was no way it could be blocked had been stopped cleanly as well. It had been half a gamble. Unlike the magic bullets, the power carried by the magic fist was quite strong, so Kim Jihye could have been seriously injured.
I trust the teacher’s skill.
Just as Kim Jihye had said, Cha Seoyeon had trusted Kim Jihye. And in the end, she had blocked it. Using an incredibly complex magic circle for a simple defensive spell like Shield.
“She said she was a new student… but what kind of monster is that? No matter how I think about it, she’s a veteran who’s rolled around on the front lines.”
“Huh? Teacher, what did you say?”
Shin Seyeol had hoisted the sleeping Kim Jihye onto her back. Looking at Kim Jihye’s face, which was peacefully asleep with an expression that didn’t match her earlier skills at all, Cha Seoyeon let out a small chuckle. Just by her face, she looked like a new student—or even younger. She had the appearance of an angel, yet her skills were anything but.
Hiding her true feelings, Cha Seoyeon spoke to Shin Seyeol.
“It’s nothing. Can you take this kid to the infirmary?”
“Y-yes. I understand.”
“The infirmary is straight down the hallway right after you leave the arena, near the central entrance.”
She watched with her eyes as Shin Seyeol, carrying Kim Jihye on her back, disappeared from the sparring arena. Although the result was good overall, the fact that she had gotten too excited at the end remained unchanged. No matter how much she trusted the student’s skill, she had accelerated too suddenly. Cha Seoyeon thought to herself that she probably couldn’t become an excellent teacher after all. At the same time, she thought that the girl sleeping so soundly on that other girl’s back would become an incredibly powerful figure.