Chapter 70 - First Day of Classes (3)

As expected, I ate lunch alone. Thankfully, perhaps because it was the first day, I wasn’t the only one. But at this rate, I might end up eating alone the whole time. That would be a problem, so I’d better talk a few people into joining me.

At least the food was excellent—every bit as good as what I ate at home. Long live the Royal Academy.

Afternoon classes followed lunch. Unlike the morning lessons, they were divided by faculty. Mine was with the knights faculty.

We changed into the leather armor the academy had issued us, strapped on our swords, and headed to a training ground. It was one of several on campus, and enormous for the number of people gathered there.

“Form up, quickly! Did you all leave your wits behind?”

The voice rang across the training ground. As I took my place in line, I couldn’t help chuckling to myself. It was that sharp, ringing voice. I hadn’t heard it all that long ago, yet it felt oddly nostalgic.

It was the voice I’d heard at the marquis’s estate, in the underground Dungeon: Katrin’s voice from her mercenary days. Not the voice she used at court or as a teacher, but her raw, unvarnished mercenary voice.

“I’m Katrine de Rattenhammar, and I’ll be in charge of the first-year knights faculty. I don’t hold a knightly title, but I’m more than qualified to train you, so don’t worry!”

Katrin stood on the platform wearing leather armor like ours. Even so, she looked different from the woman I’d known as a mercenary. Perhaps it was her noble standing and neat appearance.

In any case, no one would look down on her for lacking a knightly title. Everyone knew what the House of the Count of Rattenhammar was famous for. And once word got around that she was teaching the knights faculty, everyone learned who she was: the Queen’s younger sister and heir to the house.

Though I was probably the only one who knew how strong she really was.

Armored knights stood beside her on the platform. She looked over our ranks and said, “Since this is our first meeting, I should see what you can do, shouldn’t I?”

One student promptly asked, “You don’t mean we have to fight those knights, do you?”

Who was the idiot who’d said that?

I looked at the freshman. He was far bigger than the others, nearly two meters tall and packed with muscle. A typical physical-enhancement user.

Huh. Not many students were looking at him in disbelief. If anything, more of them seemed to agree with him. Were they all stronger than me? No way. Apart from a handful, they’d all looked pretty feeble.

“I knew this would happen,” Katrin said with a sigh as she surveyed the students. “I’ll straighten you lot out today. We’ll show you just how strong knights are.”

She turned to the knights. “Give them a proper lesson.”

“Understood.”

The knights stepped forward, each taking a position at the head of a line.

Oh, a sparring match with a royal knight. How much of my strength should I show? I’d love to have a real fight. My heart raced at the prospect.

But Katrin walked up to me instead. “You’re sparring with me.”

“What?”

“I know what you can do. Did you really think I’d put you against the knights? I’m not letting you ruin the lesson. Come over here.”

I let out a long sigh.

“There’ll be plenty more sparring. You’ll get your chance to fight them. For today, fight me.”

The demure woman she’d been until recently was gone. The rough-edged mercenary stood before me again.

To be honest, I was curious too. How did her strength, bolstered by the legacy of her predecessor, compare with mine after all my growth? I stepped out of line and walked toward her, the startled students’ eyes following me.

Now, how much should I show? I stopped in front of her and raised my sword.

* * *

“Aagh!”

A sword went flying, and a student tumbled across the ground. Screams rose from every direction.

“I surrender! I surrender!”

“A-are you trying to kill me? Are you swinging that thing for real?”

Frightened voices kept shouting.

The royal knights were acting as training assistants, I supposed. One student after another was crushed in their sparring matches. Most of the boys and several girls ended up sprawled on the ground. Students who had never properly sparred before were terrified by matches fought in earnest, almost like real combat.

They shouted at the knights, but most of the students here weren’t children of great nobles, and hardly any were heirs to their houses. Awakening did put them above knights in status, of course, but royal knights could disregard that to a degree. As for the few students they couldn’t disregard, the knights took care not to treat them roughly.

CLANG!

“Urgh!”

“Well blocked.”

Iker, the second son of Count Piruna, had barely managed to stop the knight’s sword, but he smiled at the praise. He had seen the students ahead of him and around him get knocked down, and it was still happening before his eyes.

He, too, was being pushed back a little. But he had awakened only five years ago, and for a fifteen-year-old boy without proper training to withstand a seasoned knight’s sword was impressive enough. Unlike the lesser nobles who had never even faced a knight, Iker had sparred with the knights on his family’s estate. He could judge both their skill and his own fairly objectively.

The knight before him did seem stronger than the knights back home, but Iker thought he had done well enough not to bring shame on his family.

“I believe I’ve seen enough of your ability.”

After a few more exchanges, the knight stepped back. Iker exchanged a bow with him, breathing hard. His mana was nearly gone, and his inherited ability had been about to fail. What a relief.

He looked around. Few people were still standing. Most of the students were lying or sprawled on the ground. Besides the knights, the only person he saw still sparring was a girl.

Surprised, he took a closer look. She was slender, with brown hair. He didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t the child of a great noble, nor was she strikingly pretty, so he hadn’t committed her face to memory. If she’d at least had a sturdy build, he might have paid attention to her despite that—this was the knights faculty, after all.

Yet this student he’d overlooked was fighting a knight on even terms.

‘Is he going easy on her because she’s a girl?’

The thought crossed his mind, but even at a glance, both combatants’ swords seemed to be moving faster than his own had.

‘A speed-enhancement ability?’

Judging by her build, she probably wasn’t a power type. It seemed she had inherited a better ability than he’d expected from someone who wasn’t a great noble. An ability focused on speed would make monsters hard to fight, but... knights did more than fight monsters.

‘Surely the knight I fought wasn’t going easy on me?’

He glanced at his former opponent, then shook his head. The gap between a royal knight and a count’s knight couldn’t be that large. Unless the knights back on the estate had been going easy on him all along.

At least there was one girl who appeared to be holding her own. Relieved by that thought, Iker turned to the other side of the training ground and frowned.

WHOOSH! SWISH!

Two more people were still on their feet besides the knights, Iker, and the girl who was sparring: Professor Katrine and the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gresia.

They had clearly started alongside the first students to spar, yet they were still at it. The duke’s illegitimate son held a sword; Professor Katrine, unusually, held both a sword and a shield.

“What are they doing?”

“Dancing?”

“I heard that illegitimate son has some connection to the princess. Think they’re fooling around to make him look better than he is?”

“Surely they wouldn’t go that far.”

“Then what do you call that?”

“He does move well, though. Looks like he’s had proper training.”

Students whose injuries were mild enough to let them sit and rest watched the match between Professor Katrine and the duke’s illegitimate son, whispering among themselves.

It was easy to see why. Neither sword nor shield ever connected. The two kept slipping aside, thrusting into empty air and dodging in turn. It almost looked like a play in which the fighters had rehearsed their swordwork.

The knights weren’t whispering like the students, but they too watched with puzzled expressions. Iker was just as baffled until a memory surfaced.

‘It can’t be.’

He had seen a fight like this before—one where the swords never touched. Yet it had been far more advanced, and far more frightening, than a fight in which blades clashed. He had watched gifted fighters whose swords never met, but whose blades sent out light that cut their opponents.

‘No. It can’t be.’

Even if they had learned a proper mana cultivation technique, they couldn’t already be projecting mana beyond their swords. Besides, that illegitimate son definitely had a physical-enhancement inherited ability.

‘If he’d inherited the ducal family’s mana cultivation technique, he wouldn’t be in this faculty.’

Even the heir to the ducal house had gone to the inherited abilities faculty, not the knights faculty. And if the illegitimate son had inherited the technique, he probably wouldn’t have been allowed to come to the capital at all. The ducal house would never leave an illegitimate son who had inherited the family’s ability alone. They would either hide him away for future use or ruin him outright.

* * *

‘Aagh! Take it easy!’

I screamed inwardly and dodged. Her sword wouldn’t actually touch me even if I stood still, but the real version I was picturing extended far beyond the blade with mana and was cutting toward my body. If I hadn’t moved aside, it would have split me in two.

I swung my sword in turn, but Katrin deflected it with the slightest movement of her shield. She had brought the shield we’d found in the ruins, the one that expanded with mana. Our weapons never touched, but once I accounted for the shield’s expanded reach, my sword had no choice but to glance off it.

‘Damn it! With that shield too, she’s so far ahead of me I can’t do a thing!’

I’d brought this pointless ordeal on myself by suggesting we spar properly. A proper match meant using our weapons to their full potential.

We couldn’t actually project mana, though. Unlike the others, who couldn’t project it at all, we were likely to hurt someone nearby if we channeled mana into our sword and shield. So we had reached an unspoken agreement: we would picture the sword’s mana-extended length and the shield’s expanded reach, then fight on that basis. We’d seen enough of each other’s abilities to imagine them easily.

Without channeling mana, though, our movements were painfully slow. Training had made me capable of knight-level movement to a point, but without using mana, I had to throw my body this way and that just to keep up.

‘Wait. We can’t use mana, so we’re moving under our own power—but we’re picturing sword aura that extends as far as it would with our special weapons?’

Hold on. Something was wrong here. That made no sense at all.