Aris Lumen
Academy Main Arena.
About a hundred first-year students had gathered.
Some were checking their gear, while others clustered in little groups and chattered away. It looked exactly like the day before a picnic.
This is it.
The first-year outdoor practical evaluation.
The tutorial segment where Siel dies horribly to kick off the game.
Are you fucking insane? Why the hell would I die for you?
I had to survive somehow.
There were only about ten minutes left until the evaluation started.
I slipped out of sight and pressed myself against a pillar at the edge of the arena.
Then, with trembling hands, I started rummaging through my pockets.
I brought everything properly, right……?
These were the survival kits I’d scraped together like a dog in Chloe’s clubroom, working my ass off as a slave just to avoid the tutorial’s guaranteed death.
“Haa…….”
Just looking at that pathetic excuse for a loadout made me sigh.
What the hell was that grayish-white potion supposed to be?
Apparently it was Chloe’s latest masterpiece, made with all her heart and soul. But if I drank it, the first thing to kill me would probably be food poisoning, before the wounds even had a chance to heal.
But was I really in any position to complain? Sniff.
“Attention! I will now announce the team assignments!”
The chief instructor on the podium shouted into the microphone.
At the same time, the giant mana screen in the center of the arena began listing the students’ names one after another.
Of course, Siel’s partner was already decided.
⊳ Aris Lumen
⊳ Siel
Whispers broke out all around me.
“Wow, poor Aris.”
“How the hell did that guy even get into the academy?”
“I heard he’s that pervert who messed with Lady Selah and ran away. Isn’t he going to do something weird to Aris too?”
Jesus Christ, this is a disaster……
I hadn’t really felt it when I was running from Selah, but the past few days had made Siel’s reputation crystal clear.
The worst talent in academy history.
Trash so worthless it’s a shame it even breathes.
A Z-class student who’d be too much for F-class.
I’d even heard people say he was less useful than a slime.
And now there was the latest trend in nicknames:
The legendary pervert who toyed with the northern duchess’s daughter and threw her away!
Still, if Siel dressed up, he did look like the kind of frail pretty boy people could at least tolerate……
What the hell happened before I possessed this body to make his reputation this bad?
I was busy worrying over that when someone spoke to me.
“So you’re Siel?”
Shimmering orange hair.
Golden eyes brimming with confidence.
It was Aris Lumen, one of the main heroines.
She folded her arms and looked me over from head to toe.
“I don’t care what rumors are going around about the duchess’s daughter.”
Aris tapped my academy tie with one finger.
“Just stay in the back during this practical and don’t get in the way.”
A character who believed, without a doubt, that she was the academy’s greatest talent.
And honestly, she wasn’t entirely wrong……
But if Siel’s partnered with Aris, how the hell did he die?
Even if she was only a first-year who had just become an adult, Aris’s strength was on a completely different level.
A masterpiece of the Lumen family, the empire’s greatest magical bloodline.
The verbal magic user born once in a thousand years.
The next great mage. And so on.
Even the title of first-year top student looked pitiful next to her.
If you followed Aris’s route in the original story……
Aris let out a cry.
Aris was absurdly strong, so Aris was the strongest.
That kind of thing just kept repeating over and over.
If she had anything in common with Siel, it was that same impossible feeling of, “Why is this person at the academy?” and “Is that even human?”
“What are you thinking about so hard……?”
“Ah, nothing.”
This genius girl was looking up at me with clear eyes.
Her gaze dropped to the old training dagger hanging at my waist.
“Siel, is that the only weapon you have?”
“Yeah? It’s the one they handed out at the start of the term.”
“Oh no…… You probably can’t even pierce goblin hide with that……”
Ah, that was the truly terrifying kind of person.
Someone with no malice at all, but whose words still cut people to pieces.
“I’m not telling you not to interfere because I’m looking down on you. I’m just worried you’ll get hurt.”
“Oh, really……? I’m counting on you.”
After the team assignment ended, we moved to the outskirts of the Dark Forest, the practical exam site.
***
“Attention! Each team is to move to the entrance of its assigned zone and wait!”
Our team had been assigned to Zone 1.
I was standing at the starting line, staring blankly up at the sky.
“Aris.”
A blond male student wearing the swordsmanship department uniform walked toward us.
What was his name again……?
Roen? Raen? Something like that……
“You’ve got your hands full heading into the forest with a piece of baggage strapped to you, huh? Hahaha!”
Aris answered with a bright smile.
“Oh my, Leon. Thanks for worrying about me. But what should I do? I think I can beat your team, though.”
Right! Leon.
“Hmph. We’ll see soon enough. Just work hard playing servant to that maggot you can’t even kill.”
Leon stormed off, fuming, back to his own zone.
The guy was seriously pissed now.
“All right. Then let’s head in.”
Aris smiled with satisfaction and started walking.
Dark Forest, Zone 1.
Normally, this was a decent map where you’d just kill a few goblins or slimes and be done with it.
“Be careful and follow me. The ground might be slippery.”
Rustle—
Three goblins appeared from between the bushes.
They were snickering at us while holding rusted daggers.
“Oh my, goblins?”
Aris stepped forward and lightly parted her lips.
“Disappear.”
The moment the verbal command fell, the goblins vanished.
Just like that. No warning, no buildup, just poof.
The same thing happened to the slimes and giant boar that showed up afterward.
So this is the first-year top-student bus, huh?
“Siel, are you okay?”
Aris looked back and smiled gently.
……Did I even have time to get in any danger?
“Perfect. As expected of the top student.”
“Hehe, this much is nothing. Let’s go a little deeper.”
Looks like the practical could just end like this—
Huh?
I froze.
A sudden, ominous feeling.
The forest had gone far too quiet.
“Aris, wait a sec—”
The instant I tried to warn her in a hurry—
-KWAAAANG!
A tree was blasted out of the ground, roots and all, and came flying at us.
“Oh my?”
A massive frame, easily twice the size of a normal orc.
Muscles swollen so hard it looked like the blood vessels in his entire body would burst.
The bastard who had split me in half in the original story raised a giant axe.
Its target was Aris.
Fuck, dodge it!
But Aris didn’t look afraid in the slightest. If anything, she just looked a little annoyed.
“Crush it.”
-KWAJIK! WUDUDUK!
The ogre’s body crumpled in an instant.
With a horrifying series of sounds—bones snapping, internal organs bursting—it collapsed face-first into the ground as nothing more than a bloody pulp.
“……”
Aris shrugged at me.
“See? I told you I’d protect you.”
That’s kind of a heart-fluttering line……?
-Ssssss.
The bushes behind me rustled.
Behind me?
I didn’t even have time to turn my head. A second Blood Ogre appeared, aiming straight for my throat.
“Stop.”
Its muscles bulged as if they were about to burst, but it still wasn’t enough to break Aris’s command.
“Siel, could you step away from it a little?”
Once I backed off a few steps, Aris cast again.
“Die.”
The ogre tipped toward the ground.
Thud!
Wow…… if that had landed on me, I really would’ve been in danger.
“Don’t worry, Siel. Pest control doesn’t take long.”
Aris brushed her hair back with ease.
And yet my bad feeling only got stronger.
At this point, there’s no reason for me to die……
-Thud. Thud. Thud.
“The pests just keep coming.”
Aris frowned.
The third Blood Ogre was even bigger than the two that had been killed before it.
Wait, that thing……!
I spotted a pendant hanging around its neck.
A pendant glowing with a muddy purple light……
An artificial artifact that had no business being on a wild monster.
The Silent Curse Stone!
The story where Aris somehow fell into corruption and turned into an enemy.
Without that artifact, there was no way to counter her verbal magic, which made the route almost impossible to clear.
A clearly deliberate tool made for one purpose only: countering verbal magic.
All the scattered puzzle pieces clicked perfectly into place.
Why Blood Ogres had been released into the tutorial zone.
Why the extra Siel had died so miserably in the original.
It was a trap set to assassinate Aris Lumen.
Siel had been dragged into that assassination attempt by sheer bad luck and died like a dog.
“What a pain in the ass.”
Aris shouted at the ogre.
“Die!”
“No! Stop!”
I screamed until my throat was raw, but I was a second too late.
The pendant around the ogre’s neck spewed out a foul mana.
-Crack!
The pendant shattered, and something I couldn’t see happened.
“Ghk……! Cough!”
Aris’s eyes flew wide open.
She clutched at her throat and coughed up blood.
The recoil of her own death command backfiring through her body.
The arrogant first-year top student rolled on the ground, screaming.
Red blotches began spreading across her skin.
“Kruuurk!”
The ogre, already certain of victory, began walking forward at a leisurely pace.
“Aris!”
I rushed over to check her condition.
HP: 22% / 100%
Mental Strength: 15% / 100%
Even if I used hypnosis, how the hell was I supposed to stop that monster right now?
The White Liquid of Salvation
📍 Location: Battlefield
🎁 Reward: Aris’s recovery and one-time access to verbal magic
I hurriedly pulled a potion from inside my clothes.
◈ A grayish-white potion that inspires a weird sense of resistance.
◈ It looks suspicious enough to kill you before it heals you.
Thank you! Thank you!
I bowed deeply toward Chloe in my heart and bit the potion cap off with my teeth.
I’ll shove it in nice and thick!
I grabbed Aris tightly by the nape of the neck, even as she flinched.