Is This the Main Story?
Is this the main story…?
“Tisha! Lady Elga!”
Kyle pushed forward through the dust that had yet to settle, calling their names as he went. We would simply have to overlook the fact that Ian’s and Leto’s names were conspicuously left out of the roll call.
Please tell me they aren’t badly hurt.
They were not friends of many years. Barely two months had passed since he had met them. Yet outside of the John Nassen family, these were the first people he had truly befriended, and attachment was inevitable—especially toward the two young women who had shown him such open interest.
No answer came back to his shouts. Anxiety climbed, but he forced it down. Still, these were protagonists with luck as a passive skill; surely they would be fine. At the very least, Ian’s body was serviceable enough that he might have thrown himself up as a shield.
Little by little the dust thinned, and the full scene finally came into view.
Ssshhh…
“…Huh.”
A soft note of wonder slipped from Kyle’s lips.
Tisha, Ian, Elga, and even Leto—every one of them was unharmed. And what had protected them was not the customary protagonist’s fortune.
“Haaa… thank goodness…”
It was Tisha’s shamanism—more precisely, the barrier she was murmuring about under her breath. The hemispherical violet ward that had cradled the four of them was already fading. Without that barrier they would have been caught full in the blast and badly wounded. For people who could not cast a single defensive spell, it was nothing short of a miracle.
“Tisha, you…”
The greatest change showed on Elga’s face. She had always regarded shamanism with open disdain, yet now her eyes were wide as she stared in wonder at the barrier that had saved her life. She even muttered, “This… was not in my calculations.” The shift in her perception of shamanism could not have been clearer.
“Hoo…”
Tisha slowly released the barrier and let out a long breath. Then she spun, seized Ian by the collar, and shook him.
“You absolute lunatic! You nearly got us all killed!!”
An invader, harried by pursuing knights, had come charging straight toward them. The moment Ian saw the man he had lunged forward before anyone could stop him—and that was the precise instant the bomb’s timer ran out. The explosion followed at once.
“….”
From Ian’s point of view the whole thing was thoroughly unfair. An enemy had appeared, he was the only one capable of fighting, so he had stepped forward—only for the invader to explode at that exact second.
“I’m sorry.”
Even so, he admitted he had charged the enemy far too abruptly. Because he apologized so readily despite the lack of true fault, Tisha found she could not scold him further.
Watching the exchange, Kyle folded his arms and gave a soft, impressed hoh. He had been wondering exactly how Tisha would climb onto the main story’s rails—how she would stand on her own with something as poorly regarded as shamanism. It seemed events like this would give her chances to shine, and from those moments something new would begin.
“Tisha.”
“Ah—Kyle!”
She had been rising and surveying the area; now she hurried to him on urgent steps. Then, all at once, the weak scolding began—where on earth had he gone, did he have any idea how worried she had been.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was when you suddenly vanished?!”
“I-I’m sorry. I should have stayed by your side.”
“I’m not saying you ran away! For a second I thought I’d lost track of you and set the barrier range wrong—I nearly had a heart attack!”
She looked every inch the woman fretting over her lover. Elga opened her mouth as if to speak, then pressed her lips shut and turned her head aside. She was a little annoyed, yet she had owed Tisha her life; the least she could do was observe basic decency.
“I’m sorry, Tisha. But there really was no other choice—”
“And just what was this ‘no other choice’ of yours?!”
“Catching the people who caused all this.”
“…What?”
A completely unprepared note of disbelief escaped Tisha. The rest of the party seemed equally stunned; Elga and Leto both tilted their heads. Not even ten minutes had passed since this chaos erupted. He had already caught every last one of the lunatics responsible? Was that even possible?
“I’ve more or less rounded them all up. They’re completely subdued—won’t be able to do a thing. All that’s left is to hand the prisoners over to the Imperial army.”
“….”
Only a John Nassen could make such an impossible claim sound perfectly ordinary.
The terrible wave that had crashed over the Academy mercifully vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. An assault that had unfolded in mere minutes—the first of its kind in Imperial Academy history. There had been considerable property damage and a few injuries, yet by some miracle not a single person had died. Every invader had aimed for the central Academy buildings rather than the outskirts; most had been subdued before they ever reached their targets. The security forces, still sharp after the earlier half-destruction of the Academy, had done their part as well. On top of that, the heavily reinforced buildings had served as near-perfect shelters.
“I scarcely know how to express our gratitude, Your Highness the Fifth Princess.”
The first to draw every eye was, inevitably, Fifth Princess Yulika. She had pulverized a great many invaders while subduing them, and she was the Emperor’s own daughter. In other words, the Imperial House itself had stepped forward to save the Empire’s people from catastrophe. The Palace Ministry, which lived and died by Imperial prestige, was never going to let such an opportunity slip. It was only natural that the greatest share of attention fell first upon Yulika’s deeds.
“…It was nothing special.”
The princess receiving those thanks looked neither pleased nor proud. If anything she fretted her lips, looking thoroughly unsatisfied and ready to explode. The citizens assumed she was simply seething with righteous anger at the invaders who had dared attack the Academy—after all, they had invaded an Imperial domain in broad daylight with intent to harm. Of course, Yulika’s true frustration lay elsewhere.
Damn it. One more and I would have tied him.
A few of the invaders had taken direct hits from combat mages in the opening moments; that had been the decisive difference. Without those early losses she could have closed the gap, even overtaken him. Still burning over the shortfall, she took her irritation out on the mages.
“Keep your heads on straight.”
The combat mages snapped to attention and bowed under the force of her command. She was simply sulking because she had failed to beat Kyle. To the mages, however, her words could only sound like a scolding: Even if this is a cushy posting, you still need to maintain at least a minimum level of readiness!
“That’s her, right? The new student who saved the young lady of House Litorio.”
“Yeah. The purple hair. Tisha, was it? People said she was the shamanism freak.”
Second only to Yulika in the amount of attention she received was Tisha herself. House Litorio was one of the great Grand Duchies that stood just beneath the Imperial House. In a moment of extreme danger she had pulled the duchy’s young lady out without a single scratch—even with a massive explosion going off right beside them. As a bonus, the shamanism she had used drew enormous interest as well. She could not cast magic, yet she had raised a barrier every bit the equal of defensive magic. People began to murmur that perhaps the roles long monopolized by mages could be shared, that this might offer an answer to those who could never wield magic.
“It’s a little disorienting. Until yesterday they were calling me a freak.”
As shamanism rose on every tongue, Tisha’s expression turned faintly uneasy. The shift in public opinion was exactly what she had wanted, so she was glad—yet it still stung that everyone spoke of it only as a substitute for magic.
“It’s all right, Tisha. At least the flood of negative prejudice got wiped out in one stroke, didn’t it?”
“That’s… true. You’re right, Kyle. I probably won’t be hearing the word ‘black magic’ for a while.”
She shrugged, set her book down, and sneaked a glance at him.
“Is there something you want to say?”
“There is. The person who actually contributed the most in this whole affair was you, Kyle. Her Highness is getting praise, I’m getting praise, the knights and mages who fought are getting praise… but the one who should be mentioned most of all is you. It just took a little longer for the news to spread.”
The reason Kyle’s exploits became known relatively late was simple: he had moved so fast, and finished everything so completely in one go, that almost no one outside a handful of knights even realized he had been the one subduing the invaders. Only after the knights spoke up and the various limp-necked prisoners were collected did the truth emerge—that the same house which had once half-destroyed the Academy had this time saved it. The quiet first-year who had acted before anyone noticed and then sealed his lips as if nothing had happened… that first-year was Kyle, second son of Viscount John Nassen.
“Scoop! We’ve got a scoop!”
“Academy Destroyer John Nassen turns Academy Guardian! This is the story!”
It took less than an hour for the newspaper reporters who had caught the scent to descend in a swarm. For people who would walk into hell itself for a headline, a topic this perfect was impossible to ignore.
This is exactly why I tried so hard not to draw attention…
Thanks to them, Kyle had lost even his training time and was cursing inwardly. He was not trying to play the “hidden power” cosplay. The problem was that these maniacs used the chaos as cover to chase him all the way into the gym. Working out in front of an audience was not exercise; it was a monkey performing tricks. For someone who had always enjoyed his private routine in quiet solitude, it was pure hell. That was why he had fled the gym and taken refuge here in the library. The librarians would keep the reporters out, and in some quiet corner he could still manage a light workout.
While I’m here, I might as well deal with the other thing I was planning to do.
Kyle sat at a library desk, took out a pen, and after a brief moment of thought began to write.
Dear Mother and Father, and my brothers and sisters,
I trust you have all been well. An urgent matter has compelled me to send this letter. Not long ago I experienced something truly wretched and tragic. A heinous, unforgivable atrocity is unfolding—one in which people pursue only results, without any effort or training whatsoever…
— Kyle
It was a doping accusation.