Club (2)
Gladia made her way to the first-year classroom with Aiolet and Kruse for the first time in quite a while.
It feels like just yesterday that I was here… Time’s already flown by quite a bit.
Tiered desks arranged in rows, the massive blackboard at the front, and the teacher’s podium.
Through her Mind’s Eye, the unchanging scenery of the classroom pulled Gladia into a brief reverie.
The classroom itself looked exactly the same as before. In the landscape conveyed by her Mind’s Eye, the only thing that had changed was the number of students inside.
The student body has thinned out a lot.
The students filling the room numbered roughly two-thirds of what they had been at the start of the year. For a full third to have already washed out when the first-year curriculum was not even halfway done—well, it certainly lived up to its reputation as the empire’s premier educational institution.
Still, the level of those who remained had risen dramatically compared to the early days.
Gone were the greenhorns from the first day of enrollment who could not control their own mana and left it leaking everywhere they went.
The mana flowing through the survivors’ bodies had grown considerably denser, and their eyes carried the distinctive venom of those who had clawed their way through Stella Academy’s merciless survival competition.
That said…
The atmosphere in here is downright vicious.
The currents inside the classroom, as perceived through Gladia’s Mind’s Eye, were so razor-edged that—with only a slight exaggeration—it would not have been strange for blades to start flying at any moment.
Among first-year classmates who had enrolled on the same day and endured the same hardships, one would normally expect at least some budding friendship or sense of camaraderie. Here, there was none to be found no matter how hard one looked.
Well, it was hardly surprising.
Over the past few months, these students had come to see one another not as peers but as rivals who absolutely had to be stepped on and climbed over.
Gladia, Aiolet, and Kruse pushed through those stares and walked deeper into the classroom.
The moment they moved, the students’ murderous gazes locked onto them as if they had been waiting for exactly this.
“Eek…”
Intimidated by the sheer hostility, Kruse quietly hid herself behind Aiolet and Gladia.
Aiolet, on the other hand, clearly disliked those stares. She immediately moved to seize the initiative.
“What are you looking at?”
Just four short words.
At the same time, Aiolet’s mana erupted exactly as it had on their first day in this classroom, crushing the surroundings with overwhelming force.
The other first-years had improved a great deal, but…
Still nowhere near our young lady.
Gladia felt Aiolet’s mana pinning the students down and allowed herself a small smile.
The other first-years had grown in various ways, true enough, yet Aiolet’s rate of growth far outstripped theirs.
Naturally sorted into their proper place by her mana, the students’ gazes dropped to the floor.
“Hmph.”
Satisfied at last, Aiolet snorted and strode toward the very back of the classroom.
Gladia matched her pace and followed.
Kruse, who had been cowed by the surrounding pressure only moments earlier, now watched the two of them with sparkling eyes. Then she marched after them into the classroom with confident steps of her own.
My friends(?) are the strongest!
At least for now, Kruse felt that all the “sincerity” she had been paying out lately had been worth it.
Ellahim had summoned the first-years to deliver guidelines on club activities.
Stella Academy was vast, and it boasted an equally vast number of clubs. Per educational policy, every student here was required to join at least one without exception.
One might wonder whether it was not contradictory for an academy that had spent so long fostering cutthroat competition among its students to suddenly force them into joint club activities. From the academy’s perspective, however, it had been an unavoidable last resort.
Stella Academy’s history stretched back nearly a thousand years. It had been founded around the same time the empire itself was established. (Of course, that process had involved a certain dragon getting her house stolen out from under her.)
Across those long centuries the academy had consistently raised elites who thrived in every field under the banner of “infinite competition.” As a result, a Stella Academy graduate was treated as a reliable talent anywhere in the empire.
Everything had seemed to be going well… until, over time, one particular problem rose to the surface.
The graduates’ ability to cooperate was scraping rock bottom.
Perhaps it was the price of throwing students into the swamp of infinite competition at such a young age. Stella Academy alumni were, to a remarkable degree, extreme individualists who cared only about themselves.
Stella Academy is individualism!
It was a situation that inevitably called to mind a certain special forces unit’s famous line.
When things finally escalated to the point that academy graduates were sabotaging their own colleagues just to climb higher, letters piled up on Rustiel’s desk by the mountain—letters whose tone essentially said, “We asked you to raise talent, and instead you’ve been mass-producing high-functioning sociopath trolls.”
With the situation spiraling out of control, the academy had no choice but to overhaul its entire curriculum.
Yet they could not simply abandon the motto of infinite competition. It was the very core of what made Stella students the best, the spirit of Stella itself.
As Rustiel’s hysterical demands for a quick solution reached their peak and the professors grew exhausted from endless meetings, one young professor offered a suggestion.
“Why don’t we just force the students to stick together?”
It was a rather lazy idea born of the thought that if you just stuck them together long enough, some reluctant affection might form. But with the fire already at their feet, the academy had no better options.
And so the mandatory club participation rule was born at Stella Academy.
Fortunately, the method worked to a certain degree. It at least instilled a bare minimum of social skills in students who had previously known only themselves. (For the record, the young professor who proposed it was named Professor of the Month and received a hefty reward.)
Their social skills still lagged far behind those of students from other academies… but at least they had learned to look after their own people. Nice!
For these reasons, Stella Academy actively encouraged club activities among its students.
“…You all get the general idea, right? Come up and take an application form.”
Ellahim tapped the stack of papers in front of her with a weary expression.
At that moment one student raised a hand.
“I have a question!”
“Speak.”
“Does ‘one or more’ mean we can join multiple clubs?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t particularly recommend it.”
Ellahim shrugged as if the whole topic bored her and added,
“Every club has mandatory regular activities you have to attend each month.”
As she explained, once you joined a club you were required to participate a set number of times every month.
“Your seniors pulled a lot of clever little tricks, you see.”
In the beginning the academy had not managed clubs this strictly.
But this was Stella Academy—a place where the naive did not survive.
Students never simply overlooked any opening the academy left them.
Joining in name only and becoming ghost members who never actually participated. Creating shell clubs that existed solely to siphon off funding. And so on.
A constant game of cat and mouse had played out between students determined to milk every possible benefit and the academy determined to keep them under control, and that struggle had shaped the present system.
“So don’t bother with any pointless schemes. Think carefully and decide.”
With those final words, Ellahim distributed the application forms to everyone and ordered them dismissed.
Once the assembly ended, Gladia, Aiolet, and Kruse headed for Cafe Rubato, which had already become their regular hangout.
This was the same café they had visited on the day Kruse first brought the Fragment of the Holy Sword—the day Gladia had nearly been forcibly class-changed into a Hero.
After finishing a late breakfast there, the three of them immediately launched into a discussion about clubs.
The first to speak was the group’s unspoken leader, Aiolet.
“Why does the academy make us do such annoying things?”
A complaint tumbled from her lips.
Aiolet had already been accumulating dissatisfaction over how little time she got to spend with Gladia since coming to the academy. And now they wanted her to do club activities on top of that?
She had managed to accept Kruse somehow, but Aiolet had always been strongly reclusive by nature. The idea of having to deal with even more people did not sit well with her at all.
Soothing her, of course, fell to Gladia.
“They probably just want the students to get along. There will be seniors in the clubs as well, so it should help with building upperclassman-underclassman relationships too.”
“Do we really need to get along? Most of them are going to drop out anyway.”
Indeed—Aiolet was personally demonstrating the exact brand of social skills that had forced Stella Academy to mandate club activities in the first place.
If large numbers of talents with this mindset were unleashed upon society, it would be nothing short of a disaster for the human world. There was a reason people said safety regulations were written in blood.
In contrast to Aiolet, Kruse spoke up with a visibly excited expression.
“But doesn’t it sound fun? Look at this! There are so many clubs!”
She slapped a thick booklet she had somehow already acquired onto the table and flipped it open.
“Just look! There are ordinary ones like the Swordsmanship Club or the Magic Research Club, but there are also things like the Dessert Exploration Club, the Nap Club—there’s even a Treasure Hunting Club!”
Kruse had always harbored romantic notions about school life spent with friends. Faced with this long-awaited peaceful event, she could not contain her excitement and kept vigorously shaking her overwhelming presence.
Whoa, those breasts…
Kruse’s chest was full of dreams and hope.
Gladia had thought she was used to it by now, but when the violently swaying mass was conveyed through her Mind’s Eye, she unconsciously swallowed.
So that’s how much they bounce…
Honestly, Gladia herself possessed a rather substantial feminine presence, yet in front of Kruse she could only feel humble.
Of course Gladia did not let any of that show on her face—but Aiolet was not the type to miss it.
How dare she try to seduce the Gladia I already outbid?
Slap!
“Kyaaah!”
Completely unprovoked violence descended upon Kruse!
Struck without the slightest idea why, Kruse clutched her tingling chest and stared at Aiolet with questioning eyes.
It had not been an especially hard hit, but it was the first time anyone had so blatantly targeted that particular spot, and Kruse’s face instantly flushed bright red.
“W-why did you hit me…?”
“Just because.”