The academy was in an uproar.
A first-year had challenged a fifth-year to a duel.
The first-year was a Tier 3 mage, while the fifth-year was a 5-Star martial artist.
On top of that, the fifth-year was the heir to House Dremore.
Out of 306 people, 301 had predicted the fifth-year would win.
Of course they had.
The first-year was Weed Ex, while the fifth-year was Griphoc, an officer of the Sword Gang.
And yet Ex the weed had won.
The impossible had happened.
“This is a scam!! Give me my money back!!!”
“That was supposed to pay for the premium feed I was going to buy Alexander!!”
“How the hell does a first-year beat a fifth-year!! That match was fixed!!”
As a result, a mob had gathered at the academy’s main gate, all of them glaring at Ex like they wanted to murder him on the spot.
Their gazes were so vicious they almost looked more painful than Griphoc’s Aura Blade.
“Everyone.”
Naturally, things like this no longer fazed Ex in the slightest.
Since he had the chance, Ex put on the most obnoxiously crooked grin he could manage.
“Did anyone tell you to bet on Lord Griphoc?”
“What’d you say, asshole!!”
“Did I hold a sword to your throats and threaten you not to bet on me?”
“Y-You damn Con Artist!!”
“Take responsibility for your own choices! Of course, thanks to all of you, I did manage to multiply my entire fortune sixfold!!”
“Y-You, you bastard!! Kill him! Kill him!!”
Ex fled at full speed from the enraged mob.
The people who had personally seen what Ex was capable of had been absolutely convinced that there was no chance he could defeat Griphoc, a fifth-year.
That was probably why so many of the students who had participated in the betting were first-years in particular. Ex was taking every elective course available, so practically the entire first-year class had gotten a chance to see his abilities for themselves.
Of course, the actual result had been the complete opposite of what they expected.
Even after he entered the classroom, the looks directed at him were exactly the same.
“Commoner, you’re late!”
Except for Lola and Elia.
“Elia, morning.”
“…Good morning?”
Elia seemed strangely listless.
Her smile was gloomier than usual, and even her complexion looked worn out.
Ex had a good idea why.
‘She must still be agonizing over it.’
Ex made a mental note of Elia’s condition.
“Milady, you’re here awfully early today.”
“What’s that supposed to mean! I usually get here early!”
“Hmmm. Sure. Let’s go with that.”
“Hmph. There you go again, looking down on me in that sneaky little way. But starting today, things are going to be different.”
Lola rummaged around inside her clothes and pulled something out.
It was an exquisitely crafted brass-colored brooch.
Holding it up proudly, Lola raised her chin as high as it would go.
“The investigation into that demon mansion incident we solved is finally over. My name was officially listed as one of the key contributors, and last Saturday, I proudly received an award for my service!”
“Oh, already? I thought it would take a little longer.”
“Which means that I, Lola Lu Lemercier, Young Lady of House Lemercier, have now received the ‘Royal Knights' Honor Medal,’ a Third-Class Decoration of the Dritania Imperial Family!”
“Oh… wait, what?!”
“Do you understand now? From today onward, you’re to address me as Sir Lola!”
The ‘Royal Knights' Honor Medal’ was a decoration that bestowed the highest rank of honorary knighthood.
It did not make the recipient a formal knight, but among the medals that granted honorary knighthood, it was the most prestigious.
However, that was not why Ex was surprised.
‘Is this really okay? Receiving the Royal Knights' Honor means the Imperial Family has taken an interest in her.’
The Imperial Family taking an interest in someone was not necessarily a bad thing.
Since she had performed an honorable service, it meant the Imperial Family would watch over her and offer some degree of protection for a while.
The problem was that, in order to do so, they would also monitor and investigate practically everything she did.
‘She’s an academy student, so it probably won’t be too intense, but…’
Either way, there was no avoiding the fact that Ex himself would end up inside the Imperial Family’s investigative net as well.
That was more than enough to make him uneasy.
When his expression stiffened, Lola furrowed her brows.
“What! You’re supposed to be happier for me!”
“I am happy for you… sigh…”
“Hey!!”
Then Lola seemed to realize something and snorted as though she had figured him out.
“Are you regretting not putting your own name down as a contributor now? Want me to beg them to add you retroactively?”
“No. Absolutely not. Anything but that.”
He had already attracted more than enough attention at the academy.
If the Imperial Family started watching him on top of everything else, he might become unable to do anything at all.
Especially if he ended up caught in an Imperial Prince’s surveillance network. At that point, it would be over.
“What? Boring. Then at least show me some more respect!”
“Oh my, how incredible. Our Lady Lola… no, Lady Sir Lola… wait, should it be Sir Lady Lola?”
“You little!! You somehow got even uglier since the last time I looked at you!”
“Oh? You want to go?”
While Ex and Lola were bickering, Elia, who had been listening to their conversation, spoke up.
“A contributor? What does that mean? And what’s this demon mansion incident?”
“Hehe. Look at this!”
At the question, Lola handed Elia the Royal Knights' Honor Medal.
As Elia examined it with eyes full of curiosity, Lola puffed herself up as if she had been waiting for exactly this opportunity.
“Two weeks ago, I, Sir Lola, helped track down and uncover a demon hiding inside the Empire, then played a vital role in foiling its evil scheme! And I did it as a ‘key contributor,’ no less!”
“Wow! You really did that?”
“The investigation revealed that it was serious enough to potentially put the entire Empire at risk. In other words, I practically saved the Empire from a crisis! Well? Feel like showing me some respect now?”
“That’s amazing! So you did something incredibly good, right?”
“It wasn’t just something good! I saved the Empire!”
“But…”
Elia’s gaze shifted toward Ex.
“Was Mr. Ex a contributor too?”
“I wasn’t nominated as one, though.”
“Then does that mean Mr. Ex did something just as incredibly good as Lola?”
“I suppose it does. More or less.”
There was nothing in particular to brag about, so Ex answered calmly.
Besides, he was trying to build an image in Elia’s mind that perhaps he was actually a good person. There was no reason to hide the truth.
“Why?”
But at that answer, something in Elia’s eyes changed.
The light vanished from her once-clear pupils, leaving them noticeably darker.
Elia continued questioning him.
“Why would you do something good, Mr. Ex?”
Ex immediately realized what she was trying to say.
‘This is bad…!’
Elia’s eyes were trembling violently.
Her breathing was growing harsher by the second, almost as though she were having some sort of attack.
Elia was not in a normal state right now.
She was a ticking bomb seconds away from exploding.
“Wait, Elia. Let’s go outside and talk about this…”
“Why do you keep doing good things?”
“I can explain, so just…”
“You’re not supposed to do things like that…!”
“Elia, wait…!”
“This doesn’t make any sense!!”
Elia slapped Ex’s hand away.
Even Lola, who had been laughing just moments ago, whipped her head around in surprise.
The other students were startled by Elia’s shout as well.
Under everyone’s gaze, Elia spoke in a trembling voice.
“Mr. Ex, they said your nickname was ‘Screamweed.’ They said you were academy trash who did nothing but cause trouble from the very entrance ceremony and couldn’t do anything properly. They said you couldn’t use swordsmanship, magic, divine power, anything.”
“Pfft… heh…”
Someone snickered from somewhere in the room.
It came from a group of students chatting in one corner.
“They said you caused problems for everyone by making ridiculous demands, then nearly got expelled for challenging people to duels whenever you felt like it. And even recently, you skipped every one of your classes without permission, barged into other classes whenever you wanted, and beat up the students there…!”
“Elia, stop…”
Lola tried to intervene, her expression complicated.
But Elia would not listen.
“You’re filthy, shameless, completely lacking in common sense, an arrogant commoner vermin…! That’s who you are, Mr. Ex…! So what the Goddess told me has to be true…!”
“Elia, stop it!”
Among all the mocking laughter in the room, only the three of them could not laugh.
Lola desperately tried to stop Elia.
Elia screamed as though she were shrieking in agony.
And Ex simply stood there and accepted everything she said.
“It’s wrong for someone like you to do good things for other people! The Goddess told me! She said you’re the incarnation of unspeakable evil, the source of all wickedness…!”
SLAP-!!!
The crack of a palm striking a cheek echoed through the classroom.
The students jumped at the sudden sound.
Ex was just as shocked.
Because something he never would have imagined was happening right in front of him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Lola had slapped Elia across the face.
And she was glaring at her with an expression so frightening that Ex had never once seen anything like it from her.
“Who the hell are you to keep spouting that kind of bullshit?”
“…What?”
“I asked who you think you are, saying shit like that.”
“What do you mean, who am I…”
Elia could not believe she had just been slapped.
Especially not by Lola, the one person she had thought of as her only friend.
“I-I’m Elia… Goddess Elysia’s…”
The pain of Lola’s terrifying stare hurt far worse than the slap itself.
“It hurts, Lola…”
“Why do you keep saying crap like that? You’ve been doing it since last time. You think it’s strange that Ex does good things?”
“That’s not what I mean. Mr. Ex is actually…”
“You’ve known him for barely a week! What the hell do you know? Are you really so great yourself that you get to talk about him like that?”
Ex hurriedly stepped between the two of them.
“Wait, milady. Please calm down. There’s been a misunderstanding…”
“A misunderstanding? Do I look like I can calm down right now? Doesn’t it piss you off hearing her talk about you like that?”
“No, milady. Just calm down first…”
Calming Lola down when her emotions were running this hot was not going to be easy.
But Lola was not the only one who had lost control of her emotions.
“Lola, you’re being deceived!”
Elia shouted, looking almost completely panicked now.
“You’re being fooled by Mr. Ex! No, everyone is being fooled by Mr. Ex…! I’m the only one who knows the truth!”
“…Shut your mouth.”
“Mr. Ex threatened me too! He said everyone would be in danger if I told the truth! That’s the only reason I haven’t said anything! Mr. Ex is actually the most wicked, evil person in the entire world…!”
“I said shut that goddamn mouth, you ungrateful bitch-!!!”
At that moment, Lola instinctively unleashed magic.
Somehow, at some point, she had reached Tier 4.
And the spell she unleashed was Tier 4 explosion magic.
She cast an explosive spell at point-blank range without thinking about what would happen afterward.
Inside a classroom.
‘You have got to be fucking kidding me…!’
At this rate, Lola, Elia, and the other students would all get hurt.
Unfortunately, Ex did not possess some delicate technique capable of shattering and dispersing the core of a spell.
The only option he had was to throw himself in front of someone and protect them.
And even then, he could only protect one person.
‘If I have to save someone…!’
The other students were standing a little farther away. They might be fine.
But Lola and Elia would definitely be injured.
Neither had prepared any defenses. If things went badly, they could both be seriously wounded.
‘If I look at it coldly, Elia will probably be hurt less. Her Stamina stat is high. The odds of her suffering a serious injury are low. But Lola’s a mage, so she’s much more likely to get badly hurt…’
Halfway through that calculation,
Ex suddenly felt disgusted with himself.
— Do I really have to make that kind of distinction even now?
“Fuck it!!”
He immediately unleashed his aura.
He ignored every eye around him.
Plausibility Penalty? Let it come.
What he pictured was a round sphere.
What he applied was Griphoc’s Aura Armor.
What he wanted was a sphere of aura that would contain the explosion.
Aura Armor was a technique normally mastered only after an extreme amount of training. And this went a step beyond that, altering the shape of Aura Armor itself.
It was an absurdly difficult technique, something a martial artist who had only just stepped into 4-Star should not even dream of attempting.
But right now, he had to do it.
‘If I don’t have the technique, then I’ll make up for it by dumping every drop of internal energy I have into it…!’
A crude, incomplete sphere of aura formed around the explosive spell.
He had not been too late.
The instant the aura sphere closed around it, the explosion went off.
BOOM-!!
The light of the explosion pierced through the aura, while the blast hammered against it from every direction as though trying to smash the shell apart and burst free.
There was no way such an incomplete technique could hold it.
CRACK-!
Fractures spread across the sphere of aura in an instant.
‘If I don’t have enough internal energy, then I’ll use magic power too…!’
There was no logic behind what he did next.
He simply poured magic power into it out of desperation, grabbing at the last straw he had.
Of course, no ‘miracle’ occurred.
But he discovered a certain ‘possibility.’
‘I don’t know why, but I can do this…!’
Just as the aura sphere reached the verge of shattering, the internal energy and magic power he had recklessly forced into it allowed him to alter the direction of the blast.
He redirected it toward a place where no one was standing.
The ceiling.
KABOOOM-!!
“Aaaahhh-!!”
The heat and shockwave of the explosion were fired straight into the empty ceiling above them.
“An explosion! It exploded!!!”
The students screamed, but fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
The only casualty was Ex, who had exhausted both his magic power and internal energy and was now completely drained.
“…I’m gonna die.”
But while nobody had been physically injured, there were people who had been wounded in another way.
“Ah… ah. I… I didn’t mean for this to…”
Lola was horrified by what she had done.
“I-I was… I was only trying to protect Lola and everyone else…”
And Elia was shaken to her core by the fact that Lola had attacked her.
With a mind as painfully fragile as hers, Elia simply could not endure the situation any longer.
“…I’m sorry.”
So she chose to run away.
It was the first thing Elia had ever decided for herself.
***
Fortunately, they somehow managed to get the situation under control.
When Roxwell arrived, took one look at the aftermath of the explosion, and asked, “Who did this?”, every student in the classroom pointed at Ex.
He ended up getting beaten like a dog, but at least Lola and Elia were spared a trip to the disciplinary committee.
There was something else that worried him far more.
“…Elia still hasn’t come back.”
“…I don’t know.”
Even by fourth period, Elia had not returned.
Every break, Ex had gone out to search for her, but finding one person across academy grounds this enormous was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
And that was not the only problem. He also had to comfort Lola, who had been thoroughly crushed by what happened.
“Don’t beat yourself up too much. Nobody got hurt.”
“…That’s only because you stopped it.”
She had fallen into a spiral of self-loathing like this.
She seemed to regret all the horrible things she had said to Elia too.
No matter what Ex tried to tell her, she only became more depressed, which made it hard not to feel bad for her.
‘What the hell am I supposed to do with this…’
He somehow dragged himself through fourth period, feeling like he was sitting on a bed of thorns the entire time.
Once lunch began, he started worrying about Elia even more.
‘She needs to eat, at least. Where the hell did she go?’
Come to think of it, Elia did not even own a Mana Phone.
Naturally, there was no way to contact her.
‘And then there’s this…’
『Warning! Simultaneously using magic power and internal energy is an ability exclusive to the Hero! It is not something a useless commoner vermin should be capable of!
A Plausibility Penalty will therefore be imposed.』
『Plausibility Penalty Acquired: Demon Infiltration of the Academy』
In the end, he had gotten one.
The message practically radiated malicious intent.
It had been a while since his last Plausibility Penalty.
‘At least it only spread as a rumor, so the penalty itself doesn’t seem too severe…’
Listening in on the students whispering among themselves, Ex heard things along the lines of, “I’m telling you, I definitely saw him use aura.”
If Ex had not released his magic power at the very end, it probably would not have ended as nothing more than a rumor.
But that was not the real problem.
The real problem was the contents of the penalty.
‘Demon infiltration of the academy…’
Given the current circumstances, this might be the most dangerous penalty he could have received.
‘Who’s coming in?’
At this point in time, only one person came to mind.
‘Is it Gremory after all…?’
Ex did not know what kind of demon Gremory was, but there was a strong possibility she was one of Elysia’s subordinates.
What irritated him most was that there was no way to prepare for her even if he wanted to.
He had no information, which meant he could not be certain of anything.
One disaster was piling on top of another.
At first, Ex had felt a little resentful toward Lola and Elia, but once he calmed down and thought about it, there was really only one root cause behind everything.
‘I’m the problem.’
All the lies he had fed Elia had piled up until they finally exploded.
This was simply his own actions coming back to bite him. He had no one else to blame.
Still, it was not as though everything happening to him was bad.
Around the time fourth period ended and lunch began.
“Would Ex happen to be in this class?”
A beautiful voice.
Golden hair and alluring eyes.
A presence that naturally exuded both elegance and authority entered Class F.
It was Imperial Princess Beatrice.
The moment Beatrice appeared, everyone in the room stopped breathing.
Seeing their reaction, she covered her mouth and smiled.
“Oh my, was my visit too sudden?”
An Imperial Princess had just appeared in a place as insignificant as Class F.
When the students finally recovered from their shock and hurried to kneel, Beatrice quickly stopped them.
“It gets rather tiring having to stop everyone like this each time. Please treat me as just another student while we’re at the academy.”
There was a faint note of complaint in her voice, leaving the students unsure how to react.
Before stepping forward to meet Beatrice, Ex turned around.
“Milady, are you going to be okay?”
Lola’s complexion was extremely dark.
In her current state, she clearly did not want to be left alone.
And after fighting with Elia like that and nearly causing a terrible accident, who could blame her?
If Lola looked like she could not handle being alone, Ex had intended to stay beside her for now.
“…I’m fine.”
Lola forced herself to smile.
“…Then I’ll go.”
She did not look fine at all, but Ex decided to respect her choice.
When he approached Beatrice, her bright eyes swept over his battered appearance.
“We meet again. Did something unpleasant happen?”
“No. Nothing happened at all, Your Highness.”
“Hmm. I see. Would you happen to be free for lunch today?”
The students’ eyes widened in disbelief.
They immediately began whispering among themselves, spreading and confirming pointless rumors.
“Is it true that Ex caught the Imperial Princess’s attention?”
“Come to think of it, she was there as an official witness during that thing with Circe too, wasn’t she?”
“No way. Why would Her Highness care about some commoner like him…?”
Regardless of their questions, Ex had plenty he needed to discuss with Beatrice as well, so he accepted the invitation.
“…I’m available. It would be my honor, actually.”
“I’m glad. Let’s go, then.”
With that, Beatrice turned and started walking.
Ex fell into step beside her.
“You may speak freely now.”
Beatrice cast a sound-blocking spell around them.
It was meant to keep their conversation private.
“Isn’t this a little too blatant?”
“This much is necessary if I want to chase away all those annoying insects at once.”
“I can’t disagree with that, but…”
It was exactly as Ex had suspected.
What Beatrice had just done was a warning to the other nobles.
Ex had already been claimed by her, so they were not to set their sights on him.
It made sense. He was one of only two demons in the entire academy, as well as her sole subordinate.
Still, Beatrice’s current actions felt unusually rushed.
“Why are you moving so quickly all of a sudden?”
“There is something I must accomplish quickly, even if it means accepting losses along the way.”
“Is this related to your plan?”
“Yes. I’ve chosen my objective. I’ve thought about it countless times since the humiliation I suffered that day, but I could never quite bring myself to make the decision. I simply didn’t have enough pieces in my hands.”
“What made you finally decide?”
“I have restrained my ambitions solely for the sake of the Archdemon and the great purpose of His descent. But that piece of filth has crossed a line that should never have been crossed.”
She was obviously referring to Gremory’s deployment.
“Even so, until now, I didn’t have enough cards in my hand to oppose that creature. Then, by an amusing twist of fate, you brought me a gift that completed the hand.”
“You mean the Sword Gang.”
“Yes. I now have more than enough ‘sacrificial pawns.’”
“Then, when you say you’ve chosen your objective…?”
At that question, Beatrice smiled like the demon she truly was.
“When I think about it, that filthy piece of shit gets to sit at the top of the Theocracy and wield power however he pleases. I see no reason why I should remain nothing more than an ‘Imperial Princess.’”
“…Don’t tell me!”
“That’s right, Mephisto.”
Beatrice turned to look back at Ex.
Andras declared her intention with a chilling, fearsome smile.
“I will become the ‘Emperor.’”
That arrogant, blasphemous declaration.
‘So this is where it began. The Imperial Schism Scenario…!’
Ex had been waiting for it.
–TL Notes–
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