The Free Sample Ends
The free sample had ended. From here on, it was the main story.
It was the first weekend of the new semester. Thomas stepped into the Academy’s indoor training hall.
With nothing particular planned for the weekend, and feeling stiff from too many hours hunched over a desk, he figured he would loosen up with some light exercise.
Inside he found a handful of male and female students. They were going through the motions of a workout, but their real focus was conversation. Most of them simply hung onto a piece of equipment while chatting away. Nearly every student in the indoor training hall was doing the same.
That one over there must be from House… and that group…
Thomas kept sidelong glances going even as he moved, ready to answer at once if anyone spoke to him. No one could overstate how vital the connections built at the Academy were. So he kept his ears wide open and listened to every scrap of talk around him. Most of it was empty chatter, but even empty chatter mattered among nobles.
Creak—
The door opened and a young man walked in.
The terrifying first-year who had recently shattered a sword with his bare hands. The second John Nassen storm to hit the Academy: Kyle.
“….”
Perhaps because there were more people than he expected, Kyle casually swept his gaze across the room. To noble eyes it looked as if he were checking who was present. He was not.
The information that actually registered in Kyle’s mind ran more like this:
That guy’s squat max is probably around 50 kg.
The one over there looks like he could manage an 80 kg bench press, at least.
In short, his eyes were simply flicking from person to person, measuring combat power by lifting capacity alone.
“Hey, hey. Isn’t that him?”
“You’re right. The John Nassen who enrolled as a first-year…”
“Shh! Keep your voice down. What if he hears you?!”
Beside them, Thomas desperately wanted to yell, I can already hear every word, you idiots!
This was the same Kyle who had split a desk in half just to greet people on the first day of General Studies. At the freshman welcome party he had entered a duel and shattered a sword with his bare fist. Whispering right in front of someone like that took a level of courage that suggested they must each possess about thirteen lives.
“Hmm.”
The muttering had clearly reached Kyle’s ears. He simply did not care. What mattered right now was not other people’s whispers—it was inspecting the equipment.
Last time Tisha showed up out of nowhere and I never got a proper look.
Even a quick tour had shown that the Academy, true to its name, possessed gear on a level that could almost rival John Nassen. Today he planned to check the condition and variety of every machine so he could make recommendations to Tisha.
He confirmed that the isolation machines responsible for single-joint work had been manufactured in the northern territories. Thanks to John Nassen influence, northern-made equipment was simply the best. Stuff from elsewhere made progressive overload far too easy.
Plenty of power racks for free weights too. Basically everything you’d want is here.
One disappointment did surface. Floor deadlifts were impossible in this space. That truly stung. Fortunately the plate diameters matched what he had used at John Nassen. The bars were not bent, and there were enough plates to pass. Digging into the corners even turned up dumbbells heavier than 50 kg. When he found kettlebells he had never expected to exist, an involuntary little cheer slipped out.
After examining every last detail, Kyle crossed his arms and nodded.
The biggest letdown is the lack of showers… Should I put in a request? Aside from that it’s solid… No, I should say “good.” I have to keep in mind this isn’t John Nassen.
He had heard that the indoor training hall—what Kyle privately called the Academy gym—was open around the clock. Weekdays, weekends, holidays. Morning or night. Year-round, no exceptions.
Thinking I’m pretty far gone if I get this happy about something like that only lasted a moment. Then he remembered his older brother lighting up like a primitive man discovering fire whenever new equipment arrived, and his older sister smiling in her sleep at the mere thought of training. By comparison, he concluded, he was completely normal.
I can’t skip it entirely… Just a little. Really just a little!
Watching Kyle stand there nodding and smiling to himself, Thomas gave a small shiver. He was beginning to fear whatever new scheme that storm of a first-year might be hatching.
“All right, wrap it up and get moving. The festival’s about to start.”
One student said it, and the others rose one by one. Thomas hastily pulled himself off the bench and made an emergency exit from the gym.
Weekends were always special, but today was especially so. This weekend the Empire’s Victory Day festival was being held across the land.
More than thirty years had passed since the Empire finished its wars of conquest. Aside from a few small western kingdoms and some eastern nomadic tribes, everything had been brought under Imperial rule. The final period had been placed on those conquests decades ago on this very day.
So every corner of the Empire now hosted parties and festivals celebrating the victory. Nobles celebrated as nobles; commoners celebrated as commoners—everyone simply enjoyed triumph as citizens of the Empire. Naturally the Academy held its own events as well.
Rumbling—
Between the Victory Day festival and the arrival of a first-year who made conversation feel dangerous, the students vanished from the gym like a tide going out. They had never been there for training. Even here they had only been conducting social life.
In an instant Kyle was alone. He did not mind in the slightest. In fact, having the place to himself left him feeling wonderfully unburdened.
Perfect. No one hogging the equipment now.
He had been itching to take a machine that someone had been sitting on forever. Unfortunately a female student had claimed it for over fifteen minutes. He had wanted to tell her to clear out, but of course he could not. If she had at least been training hard he might have felt better; instead she was doing one rep every few minutes. This was exactly why serious lifters avoided gyms full of women.
Keep it moderate. Moderate.
No one knew what Kyle’s definition of “moderate” actually meant. To him it was holding back; to everyone else it was the kind of volume no ordinary person could match. He was doing less than half of what he had done at John Nassen, yet here he was still an untouchable gym freak.
“Hoo. Hoo.”
Contract and relax! Contract and relax! He could almost hear Lea’s voice shouting it. He had heard the phrase so often he now chanted it without thinking. Honestly, he preferred her “Contract and relax!” to Lia’s terrifying One More Set.
Today’s Victory Day, right?
It was one of the grandest festivals in the Empire—a nationwide holiday, not limited to any single region. To Kyle, however, Victory Day and festivals were completely useless. He already trained until he hated training, and he hated festivals even more. At least training left something behind. Festivals left nothing.
He was starting to understand why the half-joke, half-truth of Muscle Loss existed. People needed to do productive things; constant consumption was no way to live. Tisha, for instance, planned to bury herself in the library all weekend despite the festival. She was not the sort of girl who wasted time partying like the other students. That meant no one would drag him out to celebrate, and he could happily pile on the weight in peace.
Creak—!
Suddenly the door opened again.
“…Um, is anyone here?”
A voice called from the entrance. Kyle thought What now? and prepared to ignore it so he could finish his set. Moments later a sharp “Kyaa!” and a tremendous clatter of falling metal filled the air. Someone had knocked over the carefully racked equipment. Could they not be more careful?
Sighing, Kyle set the barbell down and walked over. What he found a few steps later was a sight he simply could not comprehend.
“Nnghhh!!”
A pile of fallen dumbbells, and in front of them a female student who was, by her own estimation, working extremely hard to put them back. Her face had turned bright red from the genuine effort she was pouring into it. The dumbbell in her hands, however, weighed a mere 10 kg. Watching her strain and grunt over something that light left him thinking she must be severely undertrained. Beyond absurdity, it was almost pitiful. Could she even lift a spoon properly? Could she manage a bag over her shoulder? Even his mother would have scolded her for that form.
Kyle shook his head, quietly stepped beside her, and took the dumbbell.
“I’ll handle it. You’ll hurt yourself if you push too hard. These aren’t light.”
They were light. Extremely light. But they clearly felt heavy to her, so injury was still possible. Nothing was more wasteful than getting hurt. He decided to clear the mess himself.
“Ahhh! Thank you! Thank you so much!!”
“…There’s no need to bow from the waist like that.”
“When someone helps you, showing the greatest possible courtesy is only natural!”
If that works for you, fine, Kyle muttered under his breath while looking her over. He had no idea why she was wearing a hood, but he was not about to critique someone else’s clothes. Maybe she had not washed her hair, or it was a mess—whatever the reason.
One thing was certain: her voice was incredibly bright and radiant. It was the kind of voice that lifted the mood of anyone who heard it.
“Um, I’m looking for the banquet hall right now!”
“The banquet hall isn’t this way. You need to go in the opposite direction.”
“Ahh… I see. That’s strange. I followed the directions exactly…”
“What directions did they give you?”
“From the Academy entrance, go straight right until you reach the big building, keep it on your left, walk about ten minutes, then look to the right and it should be there.”
…That was actually quite clear. He could not find a single error in the instructions. Still, he needed to get her to the proper place, so Kyle led the girl outside and carefully pointed out every turn.
“See that path right there? Go left and head up until you reach the building right in front of you. That’s the library. From there walk another ten minutes and you’ll see lots of other students. It’s around there. If you’re still lost, just grab anyone and ask again.”
“Ahhh! I understand! You’re so kind! Thank you so much! May the gods bless you!”
She bowed from the waist once more, then skipped off with light, happy steps. Even that looked so endearing that a smile almost rose to his lips—until—
“Huh?”
No matter how he looked at it, the girl was heading right instead of left. Had he told her to go right? No. He had definitely said left.
“Hey! Hey!!”
“Yeees?!”
“Not that way—the opposite!”
“The opposite?”
“Not right—left! Left!!”
“Ahhh! Right! Yes! Thank you so much!!”
She spun around at once and ran off again with the same cheerful energy. A sudden gust of wind caught her hood and flipped it back.
“Huh?”
If you poured silver into a lake, would it look like that? Clear, luminous silver-blue hair streamed in the breeze. The sight was so noble he wondered if he was simply imagining it.
…No way, right? Yeah. Impossible. There’s no chance.
Come on. Why would she suddenly appear here? No one had said she enrolled as a student, and she was wandering around without a single escort. No. No way. Absolutely not!
Telling himself that over and over, Kyle turned and walked back into the Academy gym—completely unaware that the free sample of this world had already ended and the main story had begun.