The Second Practical Class (1)
The Second Practical Class (1)
Though class was in session, the Headmaster summoned me, leading to a meeting with Count Chaipree.
Count Chaipree was waiting for me in the extravagant reception room attached to the Headmaster's office.
The Headmaster who had summoned me immediately gave up his seat, and Count Chaipree stared coldly at me as I walked in.
"So you are the bastard son of Duke Gracia."
I had sensed it before my death, too, but the Count clearly despised me.
Whether he hated me personally or simply hated 'bastards,' I couldn't tell for sure, but his dislike was undeniable.
Still, I put on a completely clueless expression and offered him a polite greeting.
"I am Alex De Gracia."
Since a mere bastard using his family's surname would infuriate him even more, I deliberately feigned ignorance and stated it loud and clear.
His brow furrowed, naturally.
Normally, I would have gotten an earful, but he merely knitted his brows and gestured for me to sit down.
Since he had something to ask me, he had no choice but to suppress his displeasure.
"Do you know why I called for you?"
'Wait, didn't the Headmaster summon me?'
It wasn't that I didn't know why the Count wanted to see me. But this was hardly the right time to act as though I knew.
"I am not quite sure."
I simply pretended not to know.
He scanned me up and down before speaking again.
"I heard that while searching for Ride, you found our family's relic. Since I only heard the story from others, I summoned you to hear the exact details directly."
It was a perfectly natural question for a father whose son had gone missing.
But before my death, I had never heard him ask a single thing about his son inside the ruins.
Even now, he definitely hadn't called me here out of concern for his son.
Nevertheless, I kindly went out of my way to recount everything about Ride in great detail.
I told him how Ride had vanished, how we had searched for him, and how we had ultimately failed to find him. I explained every single detail, even sharing my suspicions about Ride's odd behavior.
As he listened to my story, his expression twisted into a strange contortion.
His face revealed both a father's guilt over neglecting his son and a noble's impatience at not hearing the specific information he actually wanted.
But the fatherly expression soon vanished from his face.
"...Is that really all you found? Were there no other items?"
'Is he seriously asking about the pouch too? Talk about greedy.'
But since I had deliberately set it aside, there was no way in hell I was going to hand it over.
I shook my head.
He pressed me with several more questions after that.
He asked where the relic had been found, whether I had seen any other corpses, if I had ever come across terrain resembling a map, and whether I had noticed anything unusual about the map and the ring.
Instead of asking about his son, he meticulously checked how much I knew about the relics and the ruins.
With a deadpan expression, I simply shook my head in response to all his questions.
He glared intently at me as he listened to my answers, but acting had been my strong suit ever since I was an infant.
Deceiving a noble who knew nothing about me was an absolute piece of cake.
Once I had answered every question, he nodded with a satisfied expression.
Since we were done talking, he'd dismiss me now, right?
But before he could order me out, I spoke up first.
"Were the relics I handed over that important by any chance? Like, was the seal-engraved ring an official crest of your house...?"
At my words, the Count's expression hardened instantly.
"Who told you that?"
"Huh? I was just guessing, though?"
It wasn't a guess; it was written right there in the letter tucked inside the pouch.
"Just guessing...? Tch, I suppose being a bastard makes you utterly devoid of manners."
He looked at me and clicked his tongue softly.
"I'll let it slide this once only because you returned my family's heirlooms. If you ever open your mouth to spout such nonsense elsewhere, a bastard like you won't survive long!"
After issuing the stern threat, he dismissed me with a sneering smirk.
"Since a shameless cur like you knows nothing of honor, I'll toss you some gold just as you desire. Now leave. I'll throw enough gold coins your way so you won't harbor any complaints."
I gave him a polite bow and stepped out of the room.
'With this, I probably looked like some half-baked bastard who handed over the relics just to chase after money, right?'
Gaining gold while deflecting suspicion—a true way to kill two birds with one stone.
After closing the reception room door, I gleefully flipped off the Count still inside.
Thinking back to what had happened in the ruins, I really wanted to thrust a sword into his face instead of my middle finger, but those events hadn't happened yet in this timeline.
It was a pity, but for now, I had to settle for this much.
Besides, there were other issues, like the Count aligning himself with the Grand Prince and the Grand Prince's spies thoroughly infiltrating both the First Prince's and Second Prince's factions. But I decided to set those matters aside for now.
Whether the First Prince and Second Prince beat each other to a pulp or the Grand Prince barged in to wreak havoc in the middle, it had little to do with me.
As long as they didn't pick a fight with the Princess and me like they had in the ruins, I planned to sit back and enjoy the show.
'Though if they do pick a fight, I'll sabotage them as much as humanly possible, just like I did to the Count.'
Thanks to the Count summoning me during class, both the morning lessons and lunchtime had slipped right by.
Still, thanks to the gold coins the Count had promised to throw my way, I didn't even feel hungry.
I headed straight to my class at the Knight Faculty.
"You're late!"
At Katrin's sharp scolding, I quickly took my place.
Fortunately, I wasn't all that late.
"Since you've all been preparing for practical classes lately, today we'll warm up with sparring matches."
At Katrin's announcement, the students let out sighs of relief.
Preparing for practical classes was no ordinary ordeal.
Because it was close-combat training conducted alongside senior students, it wasn't just physically grueling; there were far too many details to worry about.
By contrast, sparring let us pair up with people of similar skill levels, making it significantly less taxing.
I had already picked my sparring partner, too.
"Bria, let's spar together."
At some point, Bria had become my default sparring partner.
"Before, I was always the one begging to spar, but now Young Lord Alex is asking me first."
The first time I asked Bria to spar was the day after we returned from the 'field trip.'
Because of a certain realization I had gained in the 'ruins,' sparring with Bria had become an absolute necessity for me.
"You don't dislike it, right?"
"Why would I dislike it?"
Bria shook her head at my question.
There was no way she would dislike it.
Bria believed I had saved her life during the 'field trip.'
Thanks to that, her preconceived notion of me as an 'exemplary knight worthy of emulation' had grown exponentially since the trip.
For that reason, although I had to suffer through her endless badgering in all sorts of ways, sparring with her and asking her all kinds of questions was immensely helpful.
"Do you have questions today as well?"
Ever since the 'field trip,' I had been asking Bria all sorts of questions in addition to sparring with her.
I wasn't asking what she liked or fishing for romance-related gossip, but about her inherited ability—the Mana Cultivation Technique.
Before questioning her, I first called up my own abilities in my mind.
Chr-r-r-r.
Immediately, a semi-transparent window floated up before my eyes.
< Knight-type Hero Ability User >
< Active Abilities >
- Physical Optimization: Level 15
- Mana Circuit Construction Method: Level 1
- Mana Resonance: Unsealing in Progress
- Sealed
- Sealed
< Unauthorized Abilities >
- Mana Materialization: Level 1
- Death Regression: Level 1
My status—no, my ability window—unfolded before my eyes.
Thanks to retrieving the orb, the section previously categorized by rank had reverted to levels, but parts of the window still differed from before my death.
Namely, <Mana Circuit Construction Method>. In the ability window I had checked before dying, <Mana Circuit Construction Method> had been listed as 'Unsealing in Progress.'
But now it was listed as 'Level 1,' not 'Unsealing in Progress.'
The seal had already been broken, allowing me to use the ability.
It was an out-of-the-blue change, but I thought I understood why it had happened.
It was because I had experienced that phenomenon of time slowing down when escaping the ruins before my death, and again when invading the monsters' nest all by myself.
In both instances, time had slowed down through the use of mana, and I recalled hearing about similar experiences from other knights back in our domain.
"They say that if you continuously circulate mana according to the Mana Cultivation Technique, there comes a moment when you experience the world as if it has slowed down."
Miguel had told me that back when he was training me in the domain.
"Whether it actually slows down or is merely an illusion remains unknown, but I heard that even His Grace the Duke, who bestowed the Mana Cultivation Technique upon us, had a similar experience, so it can't be entirely false."
Although he hadn't experienced it firsthand and was merely passing along rumors, having gone through it myself made Miguel's words feel undeniably true.
<Mana Circuit Construction Method>—commonly referred to as the Mana Cultivation Technique—was the signature inherited ability of the knight-hero nation, Carlos Kingdom.
Regrettably, the royal family relied on Mana Resonance as their primary ability rather than the Mana Cultivation Technique, but nobles carrying the blood of the founding king possessed the Mana Cultivation Technique as their main inherited power.
Among them, the most renowned house was the Gracia Dukedom.
My dear f-a-t-h-e-r, Duke Gracia, possessed the Mana Cultivation Technique as his inherited ability, and my eldest brother Simon possessed that exact same Mana Cultivation Technique.
As in our house, nobles who mastered the Mana Cultivation Technique taught the techniques derived from their ability to their house knights.
And although they weren't quite at the level of the high nobles, the knights were able to circulate their mana along the pathways carved by the Mana Cultivation Technique.
This was precisely why knights had survived to this era, unlike magicians, and why they were so heavily beholden to noble houses and the royal family.
In any case, the best people to ask about the <Mana Circuit Construction Method>—the Mana Cultivation Technique—were Duke Gracia or Simon.
But I couldn't return to the domain just to ask about it, nor did I have any intention of returning to the territory right now.
That was why, instead of contacting the ducal house, I turned to Bria—my closest acquaintance among the students who possessed the Mana Cultivation Technique.
"Does your sense of time change while circulating mana? Why on earth would that change?"
Unfortunately, getting a straightforward answer was no easy task.
I couldn't reveal that I possessed multiple abilities, and since I had acquired powers differently from ordinary people, it was tricky to use them properly.
I had no choice but to pry out answers piece by piece, question by question.
As I continued training in my own way, the time for the 'practical class' arrived once again.
Unlike before my death, this 'practical class' was scheduled to proceed as originally intended, with us fighting monsters.
Neither the Royal Knights nor the Noble Officers Corps accompanied us.
Instead, Count Chaipree and his knights traveled alongside the students to the Seal Grounds.
Upon arriving at the Seal Grounds, they left the students behind and set off on their own path.
While rumors circulated among the students that the Count's knights were acting on orders from the royal family, I knew full well where they were heading.
The Count and his knights were heading straight for the empty ruins—the very ones I had already swept completely clean.