Entrance Exam (4)
Ellie’s stone shattered to pieces.
No matter how gifted Dane Edwick was, no matter how much he had been expected to shine as a promising new student, it was obvious to anyone watching — Dane included — that the match was already over.
And yet Professor Ressanti shouted,
“Wait, hold on! It’s not over yet!”
Ellie and Dane both turned to him in confusion. He went on.
“There’s still the young master Edwick’s turn left, isn’t there? Young master, please, take your shot!”
“This is….”
Dane let out a disgusted sound too. He might have been able to crack a big one, but smashing it to bits like that was beyond him.
But Ressanti kept crying out desperately.
“You never know! What if young master is actually that powerful? He might be able to do it, so please, give it a try!”
There was a frantic, unhinged sort of desperation in his eyes, the kind belonging to a man staring into a bottomless pit, and they were fixed on Dane alone.
So he didn’t notice when Scaha’s tiny body floated up from the stands and drifted over.
“U-um….”
Dane was already thoroughly cowed by Ellie.
So he did as he was told, clenched his fist, gathered mana, reinforced it, and struck the stone. Since things had come to this, he might as well see how strong he really was.
At once, crack! A fissure began to spread across the stone. A crack far too enormous to belong to his own power.
“!?”
Alarmed, Dane tried to pull his hand away, but Ressanti shouted,
“Keep your hand on it! Don’t let go!”
Only then did Dane realize what was happening. Ressanti was committing blatant fraud.
No. This is… I—
Even Dane, who had not exactly been raised to have a noble heart, felt a cold drop of shock in his chest.
What the boy had wanted was to show off his strength, bully the easy target of a maid, and make the strange girl who had picked a fight with him cry before dragging her around as one of his underlings — hardly a goal anyone could call righteous.
But cheating in order to win left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The founder of the Edwick ducal house had been a hero who defeated enemies by fair means, by foul means, and by every means in between — and the boy loved and admired heroic tales.
He was still only a child who had not yet grown properly, twisted in some places and not in others, a boy with more than a few awkward knots in him.
Still, as he tried to pull his hand away, Ressanti’s magic was now clinging to him and the stone both, pinning his hand in place.
“Yes, just a little more! As expected of you, young master! I knew you could do it!”
“I said, I’m not—!”
That was when Scaha, floating over, came to a stop directly in front of Ressanti.
“Hmm? Headmaster, surely you have not come to stop this match?”
The corners of the middle-aged man’s lips curled back into a hideous smile, driven there by desperation.
“If that is what you’re here for, then all of this is void, and we’ll need to discuss it from the beginning! Not whether to restart the match, but whether to hold it at all!”
Scaha looked down at him and asked,
“Tell me, boy. Before the Three-Fold Comparison, do you know how mages used to settle superiority?”
“What is that supposed to—”
Ressanti’s words were cut off there.
Scaha’s hand seized the back of his head and slammed it straight down onto Dane’s stone.
CRUNCH!!
A sound that should never have come from a human skull, and if it did, would have been a very unfortunate one for the skull’s owner, rang out across the field.
“The answer is: a fight to the death.”
Scaha’s manner and tone were exactly as usual when she said it, but there was a difference in her voice.
Because the body itself had changed.
Outwardly she appeared to be in her late twenties, standing at nearly 180 centimeters tall. Her legs were long and slender, yet her chest and hips were enormous, while her waist tapered sharply inward.
It was a build that combined striking femininity with clean, sweeping lines, creating a body of unfamiliar but intoxicating beauty.
But most striking of all were the countless scars that covered her entire body.
Her arms, her legs, her sides, her back, her neck, even her face — the place women found most dreadful to scar. Every bit of exposed skin bore scars. And if the skin wasn’t exposed, there was no reason to assume it was spared.
Even the kinds of wounds varied: slashes from blades, punctures, burns, the branching marks left by electricity, arrow wounds piercing straight through….
By body and face alone, she was a peerless beauty.
By scars alone, she was a weapon horrifying enough to make one fear she was alive at all.
Put the two together, and she was Scaha Merlinia, founder and headmaster of the Academy.
“Frad Ressanti. Effective immediately, you are dismissed from your post as professor at the Academy. If you wish to lodge a complaint, come see me separately.”
Scaha flung Ressanti’s limp body, dangling like a rag, onto the grass beside her.
Then she turned, and with a wry smile looked at the students who had gone pale with fear and were holding their breath.
This is why I hide my true form on the grounds. You made me bring it out, idiot.
In truth, she could have neutralized someone like Ressanti perfectly well without revealing her true form, but she couldn’t have dealt with him in one blow like this. Rotten as he was, he had not earned his position as Academy professor by playing cards.
And as for taking things slowly…
She was too angry for that.
No matter what form it took, a contest of skill between one person and another was a duel, and even if the other party happened to be one’s own colleague, once one had taken on the role of arbiter, fairness had to be upheld.
To Scaha, that principle was more sacred than any god’s and absolutely inviolable.
So she felt no regret for publicly punishing the one who had desecrated the duty of an usher.
But even when a choice is right, there are times one still has to swallow the bitter taste of it. This was one of those times, as Scaha found herself under the gaze of fifty terrified new students.
Scaha opened her mouth.
“The match is over, and the winner is Miss Ellie. All students are to return to the dormitory.”
She started to turn away after saying it quickly, but a hand tugged at her sleeve.
“Headmaster, Headmaster.”
It was Ellie.
Those unusually deep black eyes, so unlike a child’s, looked up at Scaha. Not in fear, but smiling.
“Please give me a piggyback ride.”
“……Huh?”
The greatest surprise of Scaha Merlinia’s very long life washed over her.
“A p-piggyback ride?”
“You’re really tall, aren’t you? If you gave me a piggyback ride, I think I’d be able to look down at the world from a really, really high place. Can you?”
“W-well. That wouldn’t be….”
Impossible?
No, not really.
It was just that since founding the Academy — and even before that — no child had ever once asked her for a piggyback ride.
She hadn’t even thought about dignity or authority as a headmaster. She was that flustered.
“Th-there….”
Realizing that she’d have to bend down a great deal to give a piggyback ride, Scaha hurriedly stooped over.
But Ellie, still growing, was far too short to climb up yet. Scaha lowered one knee to the grass.
“Th-there. Can you get on now?”
“It’s still a little high….”
Ellie’s hand touched Scaha’s shoulder. Soft little fingers, and a shoulder ridged by the texture of scars.
“Then cling to me like this.”
“Like this?”
As Ellie pressed her upper body against Scaha’s, now they could feel each other through their clothes. For Scaha, Ellie’s soft body; for Ellie, the scars across Scaha’s back.
“Y-yes. Now, step on my hand and climb up.”
“Hang on, let me take off my shoes first… heave-ho!”
Soft soles and rough palms met.
At last, Ellie succeeded in climbing onto Scaha’s shoulders.
“Waaah!! Ahaha!”
Ellie’s laughter rang across the entire arena.
Simply being up high made her happy, and because she was happy, the clear, bright laughter came naturally.
Like a cold fizzy drink washing away the discomfort of a hot day, that laughter washed away the students’ fear of Scaha.
She herself, still dazed after giving Ellie the piggyback ride, felt it most clearly — the change in the emotions in the children’s eyes as they looked at her.
Ah, Scaha let out a breath.
Had Ellie planned this? She didn’t know. And perhaps the fact that she couldn’t know was what made it most extraordinary.
“Headmaster, your height is amazing! How tall are you?”
“One, one-seventy-nine….”
In truth, she was over 180.
“Wow! So I’m looking down from way more than two meters up right now?”
“I-I suppose so…?”
Then Ellie giggled and looked down below her.
“Do you want a ride too?”
She asked Dane, the boy who had lost the match.
“!?”
The boy, still dazed, shook his head in a flurry, as if to say he could never dare such a thing.
The orphan girl looked down from above, and the true heir of a ducal house looked up from below, each confirming their place.
“Really? Then, Headmaster, I’m satisfied now, so please let me down.”
“Y-yes.”
Ellie had been gripping Scaha tightly with her thighs, but when Scaha knelt again on one knee, she carefully lowered herself. Then she glanced to the side.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to help me?”
The defeated boy flustered again and covered his face with his hands.
“Then who else is here besides you?”
“Th-then….”
Carefully, Dane thought about how he was supposed to help, then remembered how Ellie had climbed up using Scaha’s hand just a moment ago.
He held out his bare hand, and Ellie placed her foot on it.
At the soft touch, the boy’s mind went momentarily blank.
“Thanks. Heave-ho.”
Ellie hopped down to the ground, put her shoes back on, and then held out one hand to Dane.
“Here.”
“Huh…?”
“A handshake. If you’ve competed, then you shake hands afterward. Isn’t that common sense?”
Common sense? He wasn’t sure, but since Ellie said so, he figured it must be, and dazedly took her hand.
“Right. You have to apologize to Jaina too later, okay?”
“Uh….”
“Go on, to your friends.”
Still dazed, Dane went over to the group of his own followers in the stands. He sat down nearby, but since they were just as dazed as he was, none of them said a word.
No, he wasn’t even sure they could still really be called his followers. A bunch of students gathered together under a hierarchy or pecking order suddenly felt very childish and absurd.
His face burned hot. So did the faces of the others who had been part of his little gang.
The students sent their gazes one by one toward Ellie. Perhaps, if it was that girl, she wouldn’t just be playing at stupid little games of status and cliques — perhaps she’d tell them something that actually mattered.
Clea was staring at Ellie too, her mouth slightly open and unable to close.
Though she kept quiet, the teachers were no different; they too were looking at Ellie with expectation. They wanted to hear what that extraordinary child would say.
And Ellie herself realized that the atmosphere had become one in which she was expected to say something.
“Hmm~”
If she wanted to back out, she could. She could run.
But if she fled because she was afraid to speak before barely sixty people — and not six thousand — then she would not be fit to covet the imperial throne.
Still, there was no need for a speech, so Ellie simply shouted in a bright, spirited voice,
“Let’s all get along from now on!”