The Suspicious Pink-Haired Girl (1)
It was selection day. The academy's front gate was a madhouse — people pouring in from every corner of the Empire on foot, on horseback, and by carriage.
Tents had been pitched and tables hauled out at the reception area, where Teaching Assistants were matching application papers against the people standing in front of them. Anyone who cleared that checkpoint passed through the gate, made their way to the main auditorium, set down their luggage, and waited.
Once attendance had been confirmed and the overall plan and precautions explained, the evaluation would begin at once. Anyone who failed today's first-day evaluation would pack up and leave on the spot; those who passed would move into the dormitories and sit the final second-day evaluation tomorrow.
"That's a lot of applicants," Kirlin said, looking out at the packed front gate. "I never thought this many people would show up."
"It's not a private school. Being able to transfer straight into the graduating class of an Imperial academy is a huge advantage."
"Even accounting for that, this is a lot."
Kirlin was right. Every kind of person you could imagine had shown up. Men and women alike, every shade of skin and hair and eye, dialects so thick you could barely make them out — it was enough to make your head spin. And the outfits. Every style under the sun.
"Personal weapons are not permitted. Turn them in here and take a claim ticket."
Teaching Assistants blocked people who'd arrived bristling with swords, spears, and shields strung all over themselves.
Those guys belong to the famous Leblanc Mercenary Corps. What are a bunch of well-paid mercs doing applying here?
"Hey! Don't just light up wherever you please!"
A Teaching Assistant shouted at a cluster of men in fur cloaks, puffing on tobacco and filling the air with acrid smoke.
Northerners. Too uncivilized for ordinary social conventions to stick. Not academy material.
"Please dress yourselves properly! This is the Imperial Special Duty Academy!"
The chief administrator had climbed onto a platform and was bellowing through a megaphone. His eyes were locked on a hulking, muscle-bound man who'd stripped off his shirt, his entire body covered in tattoos nobody could read. Judging by the tattoos and the jewelry, he was definitely from the distant Pretonos Archipelago Alliance.
Every kind of person really had applied. And that wasn't all. Dwarves, orcs, lizardmen, gnomes, beastkin — every race you could name. It felt like every Imperial citizen with enough brains to read the recruitment notice had shown up.
The more I looked, though, the more everyone seemed like a hard case. We'd set an age limit given the nature of an academy, but more than a few of these people looked seriously suspicious. I should tell the reception desk to be extra careful matching applications against actual identification papers.
I headed for the reception tent, and sure enough.
"What do you mean, nya?! Over the age limit?!"
A cat beastkin had every hair on her body standing on end, hissing.
"According to the cat beastkin age conversion, you are over forty by Imperial standard years."
The Teaching Assistant showed her the racial standard-age conversion chart, and the cat beastkin bared her fangs.
"That wasn't in the notice, nya!"
"It clearly says right here: 'Must not exceed twenty years of age by Imperial standard.'"
"Hyaaak! Who even reads a notice that carefully, nya?!"
"Regardless, you can't. Please go home."
"Then why are you letting that bearded old man in?!"
The cat beastkin jabbed an angry finger at a heavily bearded dwarf who'd just passed reception and was heading into the academy.
"That kid is eighteen this year. He's a dwarf."
"This is racial discrimination, nya!!"
The cat beastkin yowled at the top of her lungs, then suddenly heaved and hacked up a hairball. The sticky, vomit-like clump splatted onto the ground, and the people around her recoiled in horror.
What a public nuisance.
"Hey. Just hand her one of those and send her off."
At my order, the Teaching Assistant sighed and pulled something out from under the desk. The cat beastkin's eyes lit up with greed the moment she saw it.
In the assistant's hand was a small pouch containing a few catnip leaves — a Catnip Leaf Pouch. I'd spotted several cat beastkin among the applications and had them prepared just in case. Cat beastkin were mostly self-righteous and arrogant, prone to pulling exactly this kind of absurd stunt, and getting rid of them was a real headache. If they didn't like something, they'd go wild, start clawing, cause a scene — you had to have a contingency plan.
"Here. Take this and go home. No means no."
"Hurry… hurry up and give it, nya!!!"
Drooling, the cat beastkin snatched the pouch, tore it open, and jammed her nose into it, inhaling deeply.
"Hyaaang…"
Her eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. Practically in a trance, she staggered off like a drunk, weaving away into the distance.
"Chief Professor!"
I was still grinning at the tottering cat beastkin when a staffer from the administrative office came running, calling for me urgently.
"Please come quickly! There's a fight!"
"Where are the Teaching Assistants?"
"They can't handle it right now. We need you to step in, Chief Professor!"
Wondering what the hell it could be, I went over — and what was this supposed to be?
Two young orcs were glaring at each other. One held a sharp double-bladed axe, the other a vicious iron club. The academy guards who'd been sent as extra manpower hovered at a distance, not daring to get between a pair of fighting orcs.
Looking at the tattoos on their forearms, it seemed like rival tribes had run into each other.
"I'll chop you into pieces and kill you!"
"I'll strip your bones, boil you into stew, and feed you to a wyvern!"
One orc bared his tusks and raised his axe; the other slammed his iron club into the ground in reply.
"Hey. This isn't an arena. Either pretend you didn't see each other and turn in your weapons, or drop out of the selection and go fight. Pick one."
"Stay out of this!"
"This is an orc fight!"
Then the orcs let out battle cries at each other that were enough to freeze the blood in your veins.
"Eek?!"
Kirlin, who'd followed me, clapped her hands over her ears and trembled. Everyone around us flinched and backed away.
This was a complete circus. Talking wasn't going to work with these two.
"Kyaaaaaaah! My bracelet!!"
I was just about to step between the orcs when a woman's piercing scream erupted from another direction. A slender woman, dressed all in gray, was clutching herself in terror and screaming.
"Someone stole my bracelet! Everyone run! If you don't want to die, run!!!"
Now what?
"I'm a werewolf! Without the bracelet I transform! Get as far away as you can!!"
A werewolf?
I immediately checked her wrist — and the Silver Bracelet a werewolf should always be wearing to suppress transformation was nowhere to be seen.
"Don't just stand there, hu—grrrrrrrrr!"
Her body suddenly began to swell and bulge, her mouth stretching into a long snout. She was transforming. Tearing through her clothes, she ballooned in an instant into a bipedal wolf over three meters tall.
A transformed werewolf in the middle of a packed crowd. Compared to two orcs waving an axe and an iron club and screaming battle cries, this was on a whole different level of dangerous.
That was why we'd listed werewolves as a disqualifying condition. But if they claimed the Silver Bracelet was just ordinary jewelry, there was no way to tell while they were in human form.
This was a real pain.
"I'll be borrowing that."
"Grrrrrrrrrr!!"
The moment I snatched the iron club from the orc's hand, the werewolf charged at me. I shrugged off my cloak and wrapped it around my left arm as Kirlin shouted from behind me.
"Dian, look out!! Dodge to the side!"
The throwing knife Kirlin hurled grazed my shoulder as it flew past. The werewolf swatted it aside with a single sweep of its arm. Then she flung a noose around the werewolf's neck — impressive technique. But that wasn't going to stop a transformed werewolf.
The werewolf grabbed the noose around its neck and cracked it like a whip, sending Kirlin sailing through the air — whoooosh — off to the other side.
"Whoa! Wah!"
Teaching Assistants rushed in and caught Kirlin as she came down.
"Nobody interfere! I'll handle this!"
I waited until the werewolf was close enough, then thrust out the cloak-wrapped arm. It bit down hard. I shoved my fingers through the wrapped cloak, seized its tongue in a tight grip, and brought the iron club down on its skull.
"Kyek!"
Hit square in the head, the werewolf yelped and crumpled to the ground. Keeping hold of its tongue as it thrashed and tried to get up, I hammered it mercilessly with the iron club and gave an order.
"Someone go grab a spare Silver Bracelet."
"Kyekyek! Kyek!"
"Here, Chief Professor!"
I snatched the Silver Bracelet the Teaching Assistant tossed me, smashed the club down a couple more times to kill any remaining resistance, then snapped the bracelet onto its wrist. Just as quickly as she'd transformed, the werewolf shrank back into a naked human woman.
I'd had them prepare a few Silver Bracelets too, just in case, same as the catnip — and here I was using them already. Who'd have thought a werewolf would actually hide her identity and apply?
"Thank you…"
The woman thanked me with glazed eyes, then passed out. Teaching Assistants rushed in to take her.
"Take her to the infirmary. Make sure you tell Priestess Maya she's a werewolf."
Once the assistants had carried her off, I turned back to the orcs.
"If you still want to fight, take it outside. Otherwise…"
"We're friends!"
The orcs, who'd been staring at me in a daze, suddenly slung their arms around each other's shoulders and started acting like best pals.
Ugh. Those idiots.
"He took down a werewolf without even being properly armed…"
"Is he a Polymorphed dragon or something…?"
Kirlin shoved through the whispering crowd and came running.
"Are you okay?!"
"I'm fine. That said, this is an absolute mess."
It was the first time we'd done this, so there were plenty of kinks. Next year we'd have to tighten the eligibility requirements based on this year's lessons.
Kirlin grabbed my arm, worry shadowing a face that was already dark.
"It's already like this… Can we even evaluate this many people properly?"
"Don't worry. Half of them will probably wash out before lunch today."
The applicants' first evaluation was a physical fitness test. Whether they ended up in the field or behind a desk after graduation, this was a Special Duty Academy — you needed a baseline of physical fitness. If your body couldn't keep up, it didn't matter how smart you were. You didn't belong here. I planned to check fitness first and weed out the unfit as fast as possible. If you were frail but clever, you'd be better off at one of the other excellent traditional academies.
"Principal. Things seem more or less under control here, so let's head to the main auditori—"
I was turning to Kirlin when my voice trailed off. Something over her shoulder had caught my eye.
A vivid splash of pink hair, mixed in among the milling crowd. A girl with rare pink hair, worn in two long pigtails down to her waist, was staring straight at me.
Judging by her gear, she looked like she belonged with the Leblanc Mercenary Corps standing over by that reception desk — but had they had a girl like that? I'd operated alongside the Leblanc Mercenary Corps during the war, and back then I'd been told they didn't recruit female mercenaries. But that girl looked too young and too delicate to be a mercenary. Maybe a mage, or some other class.
Well, if she made it through the final selection, I could look into it then.
"Let's go, Principal."
No answer. I turned around to find Kirlin being swept away by the crowd — whoooosh — drifting off. I quickly ran over, grabbed her hand, and pulled her behind the reception tent.
"Whew, that was close. Thanks, Dian."
"You're a dark elf. Why get shoved around when you could just leap?"
"When it's this packed, even that's not easy."
Kirlin gave an embarrassed little laugh.
She really was high-maintenance, in more ways than one.