162. Study Group
162. Study Group
Professor Drain, who was on night duty, had a bizarre experience during his midnight patrol.
"Has this place always been here?"
It was a two-story house.
The mansion, slightly larger than a typical home for a family of four, had a somewhat gloomy atmosphere at first glance, though he could tell that was simply because he had stumbled upon it in the dark.
Looking closer, only the frame had been erected, and building materials were stacked here and there, as if construction was still underway.
He wondered why something like this would be on the academy grounds.
There had been several incidents lately, so he considered the possibility that the collapsed faculty quarters were being rebuilt.
"There were a few professors whose quarters collapsed...."
He had a feeling someone was inside.
"... Nah, no way."
At that moment, someone suddenly materialized right in front of Professor Drain.
"You saw."
"Aaaaagh?!!!"
A scream echoed through the moonlit night.
————————
Even though it wasn't finished yet, the construction had nearly been discovered in the middle of the night.
It wouldn't matter once the building was completed, but for now, this was a problem.
The professor who discovered the construction site during his patrol had his memories blurred with shock therapy, leaving him convinced that he had dreamed the whole thing while making his rounds.
That took ten years off my life.
To commemorate my full recovery courtesy of the holy relic, I decided to implement the plan I had mentioned before.
This was the very first study group gathering since I had brought up the idea.
The villa was still under construction, so for the time being, since I was still hospitalized, we gathered in my hospital room.
There was no proper desk for studying, but since it was a VIP room, one was prepared as soon as we requested it.
The reception sofa and low tables were cleared away, and chairs and a desk of suitable height were brought in.
Everyone else was properly dressed, but I was the only one shuffling around barefoot in slippers, wearing comfortable patient clothes.
The participants were the four of us who had first discussed it: me, Liber, Amy, and Lucia.
I had wanted Casey to come too, but she said something about studying not being included in her duties, or whatever.
Not that I was in any position to talk about others.
"I want to take a nap."
"Already?"
Study my ass, I'd rather just sleep.
I had already learned all the required academy subjects ages ago.
The Titan family's gifted education involved beating children to a pulp like they were exterminating rats and then making them study academics in the afternoon — it was truly a structure perfectly designed to produce one utterly broken human being.
For most nobles, the Five Pillars included, the required subjects likely felt more like reviewing material they had already covered.
After all, the things you actually wanted to learn at this academy only came once you shed your freshman label.
"Now, now, open your books. Let's start with the history of the continent."
A student could typically take about eight lectures per semester.
There were slight differences from person to person, but most took around that many.
The final skill test was broadly divided into two types: the first was submitting the results of your efforts during the semester or a report. Personally, this was the easiest option, and I liked it.
The second was the true skill test.
Some professors gave classic paper exams with problems written on test sheets, some bastards made students fight each other, and there were tests where you had to demonstrate techniques you had learned.
If you had managed your schedule decently, you would probably end up with about four submissions and four exams.
Our study group would be a gathering where we worked on whatever we wanted — whether for exams or report submissions — and helped each other out.
The history of the continent textbook I had just pulled out was for a subject that had a test.
"Other than this, the only exam we have in common is Instructor Andy's, right?"
"That's about it."
It was a truly wholesome and completely ordinary study group, where we solved collections of past exam problems the professor had handed out and asked each other about things we didn't understand.
"Atlas... do you happen to know what this problem is about..?"
Lucia asked questions quite frequently.
Perhaps she was weak in memorization-heavy subjects, because her face as she worked through history problems was full of misery.
"It's asking what specific acts of rudeness each side committed during the Bright Incident, which marked the beginning of full-scale national conflict between elves and dwarves.
This is the point where the rift between the two races began to spread into a problem between nations, so each side committed the greatest rudeness possible to the other...
The elves set fire to the dwarf envoy's beard, and the dwarves wounded the elf's ear. Their diplomatic ties have been severed ever since, lasting a thousand years to this day. You'd do well to remember this problem.
There are countless incidents that stem from this one."
"Given how you usually act, it seems like you never study at all — it's amazing."
Every time someone asked me a question, I simply told them what I knew within reason, and each time, they were all surprised.
The fact that I was the only one not solving problems, casually flipping through other books yet knowing everything anyway, must have seemed mystifying to them.
But... well, Amy had been hunting demons since childhood, so she wouldn't have had the time. Liber knew the material well enough. So why was Lucia the one having to study this?
She should have gone through harsh gifted education as a child too.
"Don't families usually teach this?? Or is it just me again?? Russell, you learned all this stuff as a kid too, right? Please tell me you did!"
"...Sister Lemnos spent most of her time learning the Secret Swordsmanship, so she didn't study much academics. Families like Perda or Albion likely finished all of it."
So she didn't learn it because she placed that much weight on swordsmanship...
Suddenly my stomach began to burn.
I felt like I finally understood, just a little, what that man had been thinking when he ground me down like that.
When I was young, I ran on a three-part routine: physical training, swordsmanship training, and studying.
Because I was congenitally short, I constantly struggled to master Titan's Secret Swordsmanship, which only demonstrated its true power when you were tall. In the end, during that time, I would learn the theory and movements of Titan's Secret Swordsmanship, and then get beaten by Father under the guise of training.
On the surface, he claimed that even if it was hard to learn properly right now, if I had any sense, I might be able to grasp it by steadily observing how the swordsmanship actually worked.
That was because even he knew that, apart from the Secret Swordsmanship, I had achieved quite well in ordinary swordsmanship.
In ordinary families, if you hit a wall with the Secret Swordsmanship, they would simply pour everything into that alone. But that damn bastard seemed to think I hadn't learned a thing from the morning swordsmanship training, so he made me study in the afternoons as well.
Just thinking about it again made rage boil up inside me.
I really should have killed him before I ran away from home.
"Still, your results are improving bit by bit, so let's keep your spirits up, Lucia."
"Yeah...."
There are types of memorization where, no matter how intensely you cram it in the short term, it all vanishes from your head the moment you stop thinking about it. But when those things pile up and accumulate, they eventually become knowledge.
Perhaps because she was decent at short-term memorization, Lucia was showing quite good results in a short amount of time.
Though I had no idea what the next day would bring.
-Sagaksagak sagak
Lucia had opened her book and was reviewing the contents she had organized beforehand once again.
Since Liber and Amy were solving past exam problems for the same subject, the sound of writing utensils scraping over paper was pleasantly tolerable.
Everyone was studying in preparation for the skill test, but I was alone, having brought books I wanted to read and casually flipping through them.
What I was reading now was still, ultimately, a history book.
It was a book akin to a thesis, written about the various tribes of the Beastmen Union from a contemplative angle.
I had been reading it little by little before, but recently, because of Hulan, I had grown more concerned and was revisiting it.
It wasn't a book written for entertainment, but if I thought of it as reading a setting bible, it was fine.
Since this was a second life I had to live through, comparing it to the novel settings I knew from before, or filling in the gaps left by vaguely described lore, was genuinely enjoyable.
It was a habit ingrained in me since childhood.
'Up to that point, the reason the beastmen — who had previously lived strictly in tribal units due to the accumulated ill feelings between each tribe — began to gather as a union
was because of the cannibals who captured them indiscriminately, calling them a less evolved species... This is exactly the same as the official setting.'
As I flipped through the pages swiftly, my gaze suddenly shifted to the side.
The profile of Liber, who was studying hard, caught my eye.
He was propping his chin on his left hand and scribbling away, but his head was bowed down, so the hair that had fallen to the side of his face stirred my heart.
'... It's fine to play a little prank, right?'
Using my hand would be too obvious, so I decided to use my foot.
I slipped off my slipper and stretched my bare foot sideways toward Liber's leg.
The desk was quite large, so I had to be careful with my posture.
Because I was short, if I had tried to do this to the person in front of me, I would have nearly stretched my body to the point where my posture looked bizarre.
My big toe touched Liber's calf, and the soft, plush sensation felt incredibly good.
Good enough that I wanted to just rub my face against it instead of using my foot.
Since there was no particular reaction for the moment, I decided to proceed to the next step.
With my bare foot, I slowly swept upward from the bottom of his calf.
"?!"
The effect was tremendous.
As soon as my foot touched him, Liber's body flinched and cringed in surprise.
"Are you alright??"
"Uh.. uh! It's nothing! A bug landed on my neck and startled me, that's all!"
Flustered and mumbling nonsense, Liber glared at me as if blaming me.
That reaction was so adorable that the corners of my mouth lifted without my realizing it.
Glancing sidelong at me and glaring, Liber silently mouthed the words without making a sound.
-... Don't do it.
Being told not to just made me want to do it more.