Club Experience (1)
It was true that Stella Academy encouraged club activities to foster its students' social skills.
That did not mean, however, that the academy had abandoned its founding spirit of endless competition.
Social skills were one thing. Competition still had to go on!
So the professors of Stella Academy put their heads together once more.
How could they cultivate at least a minimal degree of sociability while still driving the students to compete?
They worried the problem over and over until they were nearly spent—and then, from a corner of the conference room, a young professor shot his hand into the air. (It was the same professor who had proposed clubs in the first place.)
Why don't we just make the clubs fight each other?
!!
And so the Outstanding Professor of the Month was born.
That was how Stella Academy came to hold the Grand Exhibition every year—a battle royale in which clubs competed for one another's funding and clubrooms.
The Grand Exhibition worked exactly as the professors had hoped.
Students who had spent a full year growing close in their clubs banded together to defend them, and the result was the perfect two-for-one: social bonds forged and competition stoked at the same time.
But exceptions have a way of turning up no matter the place or the hour.
There was one person who single-handedly dominated the Grand Exhibition and held her club by force of will alone…
"That would be the president of the Hero Research Club, Senior Dorothea!!"
"Wooooah! So cool!"
"Hehehehe!!"
At a ruin on the western outskirts of Stella Academy, Kruse's applause and Dorothea's unnerving laughter rang out together.
Aiolet watched the farce unfolding in front of her with a look of pure disbelief.
The sudden spatial transfer still left her stomach turning, but the mental exhaustion of the scene before her was far worse.
Don't those two ever get tired?
They had all gone through the same transfer, yet Aiolet alone seemed dizzy. Everyone else was laughing and chattering without a care in the world.
The moment they arrived, Gladia had set Aiolet down and launched into a full campaign of flattery, spinning whatever half-heard stories she had picked up to heap praise on Dorothea.
Kruse stood beside her playing the perfect hype woman. (Of course, Kruse had no idea she was the hype woman. She was always completely sincere.)
Dorothea, who had started out a little shy in front of unfamiliar underclassmen, now had her mouth stretched into a grin that threatened to climb off her face under Gladia and Kruse's relentless hyping.
"Already a 5-Circle mage before graduation! A Great Mage! And a master of space magic, no less!"
"Woooooooah!!!"
"Hehehehehe!!!"
"Haa… You three. How long are you going to keep this up?"
When the skit passed the ten-minute mark, Aiolet finally snapped.
She had left them alone to see how long they would go, and they showed no sign of stopping!
"Aww, my lady. We were just getting to the good part~"
"Good part, nothing! You were obviously just toying with her!"
"Me?"
Gladia rounded her mouth in a perfect O of wounded innocence.
Aiolet was not fooled.
Praising people until they danced to her tune was Gladia's specialty, after all.
And she used to say I was the most amazing one…!
If she was being honest, a tiny spark of jealousy at the sight of Gladia fawning over Dorothea might have been involved as well.
Of course Gladia was never going to miss what was going on in Aiolet's heart. She slipped quietly to Aiolet's side and murmured against her ear.
"…Don't worry, my lady. No matter how impressive Senior Dorothea is, to me you will always be the best."
"W-who said anything… That's just obvious. Hmph."
Struck dead center, Aiolet's pale cheeks flushed scarlet in an instant.
Kruse and Dorothea watched the two of them.
"D-do those two always act like that…?"
"Yes. Every single day."
Kruse's answer was so calm and matter-of-fact that Dorothea looked at the pair with a peculiar expression. No matter how you sliced it, that sticky atmosphere between them was not ordinary.
"U-um… so when close friends are together, they normally whisper in each other's ears, hug, blush, and… that sort of thing? That's normal?"
But Dorothea, who could have claimed second place in a contest for fewest friends without anyone arguing (Sara existed, technically, though most of their time together was spent with Dorothea fleeing debt collection), could not quite judge whether any of this counted as normal.
When Dorothea asked carefully, still bewildered by the scene, Kruse nodded without a shred of hesitation.
"Of course!"
Having spent her whole life as a loner, Kruse herself firmly believed that the way her first two friends behaved was simply what friendship looked like.
"Aha…! I-I see. I just don't have many friends, so I misunderstood…"
Ah. This was what they meant by a statistical trap.
And so the seeds of Kruse's rather open-minded view of romance found new soil in which to take root.
A short while later, Gladia and Aiolet fell into step and walked over to Kruse and Dorothea.
The discontent on Aiolet's face had already melted away.
Sure enough, she was living proof of her own claim—that Gladia's specialty was praising people until they danced to her tune.
"So where exactly is this?"
Aiolet glanced around.
Untended weeds choked the ground in every direction. Ruin was a generous word for it; abandoned lot would have been more honest.
"This is really a ruin connected to the Hero? It just looks like neglected garbage land to me."
Aiolet swept the surroundings with a suspicious eye and asked again.
She had gone into a Hero-related dungeon with Gladia before. At least that place had had a door. This was a complete empty plain!
Even Kruse, who until moments ago had been heaping praise on Dorothea, quietly agreed with Aiolet's doubt.
The spatial transfer had made them forget for a while, but the place the Hero Research Club now stood was far too shabby to hold any trace of the First Hero.
As if she had expected their lukewarm reactions down to the last detail, Dorothea launched into her explanation with triumphant energy.
She hopped up onto a boulder in front of her and planted her hands on her hips. With her tiny, compact frame, only standing on the rock brought her eye level even with Aiolet's.
"I-I'll explain…!"
"Yes! Listening carefully, President!"
P-president… fufufu
Gladia's perfectly timed interjection melted every last scrap of wariness in Dorothea's heart.
President! That honey-sweet word rattled through Dorothea's skull without mercy.
The corners of her mouth twitched beyond her control. She fought down the laughter trying to escape and did her best to preserve a president's dignity.
"Ahem! Th-there are actually quite a lot of ruins related to the H-Hero inside the academy…!"
"Hold on."
Aiolet cut her off, brow furrowed.
"Didn't you say the principal wiped out every remaining trace of the First Hero at the academy?"
If Gladia's earlier explanation was right, Principal Rustiel of Stella was known to foam at the mouth at the mere mention of the First Hero.
Anything connected to him that turned up at the academy, she supposedly rushed over and destroyed on the spot.
At that question, Dorothea only smiled wider.
"Th-that's right…! Most of the ruins that were on campus have been destroyed, or locked away tight with the p-principal's magic… B-but if you reverse it and follow the principal's mana…"
Dorothea stretched both short arms out in front of her.
Gladia felt the same sensation she had noticed during the spatial transfer wash over her again.
That alien sense of space twisting.
5-Circle Applied Magic
⟨ Spatial Crush ⟩
Wuum—!
Magic that shook space itself unfurled from Dorothea's hands.
The air over the empty lot rippled for an instant, like a strange disturbance on still water.
Dorothea's spell shattered the magic Rustiel had laid over the clearing and forced its hidden true form into the open.
"T-ta-da…!"
The shabby lot of weeds and dust vanished. In its place rose pillars that seemed to pierce the sky, and the broken remnants of a ruin that must once have been magnificent.
"…!"
"Wooooah…!"
Aiolet's and Kruse's awe rode the air and reached Gladia.
Gladia was impressed as well—though not by the revealed ruin.
What drew her admiration was Dorothea's magic.
The spatial transfer earlier was already incredible, but this is on another level.
The magic that had just been broken was an illusion cast by none other than Rustiel herself—the ancient, legally-loli, pocket-sized Great Mage who had lived for over a thousand years.
Bring an ordinary Great Mage here and they would struggle even to find a trace of it, let alone locate the ruin.
In fact, even Gladia's Mind's Eye had failed to sense it.
She had only assumed something must be here because Dorothea had brought them.
And Dorothea had not only found the ruin as if it were nothing—she had dismantled the magic as well.
"I-if you just find the principal's magic like this, you can find the H-Hero's ruins easily too…!"
Dorothea squared her shoulders with pride and huffed a little snort through her nose.
Even she had to admit she looked pretty cool right then.
At the sight of her, Gladia's instincts flared.
Now!
Gladia was already there. She slipped her hands under Dorothea's arms and hoisted her clean into the air.
Somewhere, a certain Lion King would have looked familiar.
"As expected! Our president! Genius of space magic! Number one in the Hero business!"
"That's right! That's right! Senior Dorothea is amazing!!"
"F-fufufufu…! W-well, this much is nothing…!"
If it meant getting on the good side of a master of space magic, Gladia would pour on as much praise as it took…!
Gladia's dazzling flattery and Kruse's tireless hyping, landing without missing a beat, began to suck the soul right out of Dorothea all over again.
At this rate she would have handed over a solid-gold Hero statue if they asked…!
Of course Aiolet was never going to stand by and watch the three of them bond so warmly.
"Hold it."
She stepped in close, first made Gladia set Dorothea down, then tugged Gladia's now-empty hands firmly against her own chest and looked down at Dorothea.
Dorothea stared up at the suddenly intervening Aiolet with a face that said she had no idea what was going on.
"You just said you broke the principal's magic, right?"
"Y-yes! That's right!"
"Then… the moment you broke it, the principal noticed too, didn't she?"
"Y-yes! That's right!"
"???"
Dorothea's utterly confident answers only left Aiolet and Kruse more rattled.
Doesn't that mean we're in serious trouble?
Both of them clearly remembered the foul temper Rustiel had displayed at the entrance ceremony.
If someone smashed her carefully hidden magic and walked into a ruin she had sealed, wouldn't she come flying over in a rage?
Of course Dorothea knew Rustiel's personality perfectly well.
How many times had she run into Rustiel while running the Hero Research Club?
Every time she cracked a spell and found a ruin, Rustiel would somehow sense it and come streaking in like a ghost to hand down disciplinary action.
"S-so from here on out, i-it's a race against time…!"
A resolute light entered Dorothea's eyes.
This was the spirit of the Hero Research Club…!
If you feared the principal, you would never meet the Hero…!
"B-before the principal gets here, g-grab whatever you can and run!"
With that, Dorothea took off at a rapid toddle into the ruins.
She had wasted a little time showing off for the underclassmen, so she needed to sweep the site even faster than usual.
Still, her heart felt lighter than it normally did.
A-at least this time, I won't be going to the disciplinary office a-alone…!
For Dorothea, that was more than enough.
Aiolet and Kruse, of course, felt rather differently about the matter.
This was Stella Academy. The naive did not survive.