Ex understood Darius immediately.
‘Andras is rushing things…? Why?’
There was still far too much that wasn't ready.
The Tournament where the attack was supposed to happen wasn't far off, but that alone shouldn't have been enough to convince Andras to make her move.
Andras only acted once she was absolutely certain.
If Andras had moved, that meant she'd found something that gave her that certainty.
Ex had no idea what it was, but he had to stop her.
「We have to apprehend her now, before it's too late.」
Ex made his appeal even though it could be taken as an insult against the imperial family.
But Darius shook his head grimly.
“After you showed up at the Academy, the Imperial Princess said she had business elsewhere and left. Right afterward, almost as if she'd been waiting for that exact moment, the curse grew worse. I immediately tried to have her detained, but by then, every trace of her had vanished.”
Darius had been willing to bear the disgrace of forcibly arresting an Imperial Princess, but even that had failed. He ground his teeth at his own mistake.
Ex could roughly guess what Andras was planning.
‘Andras is going to meet the revolutionaries.’
She clearly intended to meet the revolutionary forces in person and take command of them.
Even in the original story, at the moment she made her move to usurp the throne, Andras had personally led the revolutionaries in a surprise attack on the Imperial Palace where Darius was staying.
But there was no chance this scenario, which had already veered so far away from the original story, would unfold exactly the same way.
‘I don't know what the hell she's thinking, but…’
Fortunately, Ex had a cheat that could tell him everything he needed to know.
‘It should all be written in the Synopsis.’
He immediately activated the Synopsis and went through everything Andras had done up to this point.
‘…So that's what happened.’
A chill crawled up Ex's spine.
If he hadn't had this function, he might have walked straight into the trap Andras had prepared for him without ever realizing it.
“You don't look well. Are you all right?”
Darius was startled by how pale Ex had suddenly become.
Ex hurriedly pulled himself together and schooled his expression.
「I'm fine.」
“It seems I've caught you at a bad time.”
「I'm really fine.」
“No. I was being inconsiderate. I should be going.”
Darius prepared to rise.
When Ex reached for something to write, Darius stopped him.
“There's no need to bother seeing me out. I'll borrow this relic. Who knows? Maybe having this will finally change something.”
Ex had no particular reason to refuse, so he nodded.
It wasn't as though anything would change if the relic remained in his hands.
“Then get some rest.”
Darius immediately turned and headed outside.
He had to find some way to deal with the curse using this relic.
“…Haa.”
Milia watched Ex, who had fallen deep into thought, for a moment before letting out a faint sigh.
She soon followed Darius out, then asked him with a grave expression.
“What will you do, Your Highness?”
Milia had intended to hear Darius's decision on what was to be done with Ex.
Ex was in an extremely dangerous position now.
He knew the true nature of the Imperial Princess who had disappeared.
He was also bound to the Imperial Prince by some sort of agreement.
And he was a commoner who knew dangerous information he was never supposed to know.
Worse still, he was now a dangerous man who had outlived his usefulness.
“If you give the order…”
She would suppress every emotion and swing her sword.
She saw no need to say the words aloud.
The Sword of the Empire did not think for itself or make decisions.
That was the iron rule she had to uphold.
“I…”
Darius barely managed to answer, his face weighed down by worry.
“I don't know. Despite being subjected to unreasonable suspicion and pressure that put his life at risk, he still wagered his life to honor his loyalty and his promise to me until the very end. Is it truly right for me to cast someone like that aside?”
Darius stopped walking and turned his head, looking at Milia as if desperately seeking an answer.
“What do you think?”
“…I would not dare answer.”
“You still haven't let go of your suspicions, have you?”
“The only things that matter to me are protecting Your Highness and His Majesty the Emperor. Nothing else. And to do that, I will doubt anything and anyone, and I will point my sword at whatever I must.”
“You've placed quite a heavy responsibility on my shoulders.”
Milia lowered her head in silence.
Darius let out a deep sigh and started walking again.
Then he posed a question that sounded almost like a riddle.
“If you are the one protecting the imperial family, then what is he protecting? What is someone who has nothing supposed to protect?”
“Pardon?”
“It's nothing.”
A riddle was a riddle precisely because its answer did not reveal itself right away.
***
Not long afterward, Ex left the treatment room.
He simply couldn't relax in that hospital-like atmosphere.
Going back to his dorm room was far more comfortable.
‘This is a little better.’
The moment he entered his room and lay down on his bed, silence settled over everything.
And as that silence stretched on, his thoughts eventually turned toward the system.
Ex immediately opened it and checked his information.
‘Nothing's… changed.’
His Talents and Titles were exactly the same.
His Base Stats and other information hadn't changed either.
He had thought defeating Leon in the Ancient Ruins might have activated the Comeback Warrior title, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
‘Is it because I wasn't the one who actually finished him off?’
He couldn't help feeling disappointed.
Then again, if raising his stats were as easy as winning like that, there wouldn't have been any reason for him to go through all this miserable crap in the first place.
After checking one part of the system after another, Ex could only conclude that everything had returned to almost exactly how it had been before his race changed into a demon.
‘But this stat is still here.’
『Base Stats
Stamina : 4.0
Intelligence : 2.5
Agility : 3.5
Magic Power : 2.5
Demonic Power : 1.0
Luck : 0.0 [Fixed State]
Charm : 2.0』
Demonic Power.
A stat whose exact nature he still couldn't figure out.
He'd begun using it unconsciously after his Demonization, but even now, he had no idea what Demonic Power actually was.
‘Then again, I'd never even used Demonic Power before that…’
If it allowed him to wield a demon's power, it could become a major weapon.
Ex stared down the system window, locked in a silent contest with the display as he considered the possibilities.
‘…Huh?’
There was something strange about the Demonic Power stat.
‘The [Sealed State] tag that used to be beside it is gone.’
Until now, the reason he'd been unable to use Demonic Power despite possessing the stat was because it had been sealed.
But if that tag had disappeared, then maybe the seal itself had been lifted.
‘Can I actually use it?’
Half in disbelief, he recalled the sensation he'd experienced in the Ancient Ruins.
Fwooom-
At that moment, a strange black light gathered around the tip of his finger.
It was so faint and so tiny that it was difficult to even notice.
‘This is Demonic Power?’
There was no mistaking it.
It was a demon's power.
Demonic Power.
‘This… could be useful.’
If he could make use of this power that had suddenly awakened, he might even be able to turn the trap Andras had set against her.
Even Andras, suspicious of everything and always prepared with a second and third plan, could never have anticipated this.
***
The next morning, Roxwell, who normally came to train Ex every single day, didn't show up.
When the routine he'd followed every day suddenly broke, Ex found himself strangely uneasy, so he contacted Roxwell first.
Roxwell's reply was brief.
「Take some time off.」
‘Why does everyone keep telling me to rest?’
There was no way he could rest.
The situation had reached the point where he couldn't even guess what would happen one step ahead.
He didn't have enough lives to spare to sit around taking it easy right now.
‘There are mountains of things to worry about, but…’
Grrrrrrr-
That didn't mean he could survive without eating.
As if to prove he'd really become human again, hunger loudly announced the emptiness of his stomach.
Feeling genuine hunger for the first time in quite a while, Ex headed toward the cafeteria.
And on the way there, he came across a bizarre sight.
“Put your backs into it, you pathetic weaklings!!”
“Uaaaaaagh-!!”
“You think you're gonna build internal energy when you're that damn weak?!”
“Gyaaaaaagh-!!”
Out on the outdoor training ground, a group of scrawny students were hauling enormous logs around while being put through a brutal, sweat-soaked training regimen.
No matter how he looked at them, they were clearly magic-track students, so Ex couldn't understand why they were doing log-carrying exercises.
“How the hell did that bastard do this every single day…?!”
“I don't know, gyaaaaaagh-!!”
Quite a few of them were first-years who had laughed at Ex for training every morning and evening.
‘Well, getting stronger can't hurt.’
“Nngghhhh! Goddess, grant me strength…!”
For some reason, he thought he spotted a divine-track student among them too, but he made a deliberate effort to ignore that.
The bizarre sights continued even after he reached the cafeteria.
“The fundamental unit of magical power is classified as the mana particle, and…”
“The classifications of magic circles are… Aagh! Can't I just go boom and cast the damn thing?!”
Martial-track students, who normally should have smelled like sweat, were instead reeking of ink as they studied over their meals like even the time spent eating was too precious to waste.
Some were working their brains so hard they probably couldn't tell whether their spoons were going into their mouths or up their noses, and every so often, one of them would even get a nosebleed.
‘Have they all gone insane? Or am I the insane one?’
Ex slowly ate his meal while trying to decide what he was supposed to make of the surreal scene around him.
‘Come to think of it, Circe said something about this before…’
“So? What do you think of the mess you've caused?”
Someone dropped a tray onto the table in front of Ex and sat across from him.
It was Circe, wearing a distinctly displeased expression for some reason.
“It's been like this ever since that curriculum was made public. Every last one of them is obsessed with getting even a fraction closer to the Hero, even if they're chasing something completely unrealistic. And you're the reason all of this started.”
The curriculum she was referring to was the training method for using internal energy and magic power simultaneously.
As the person responsible for spreading that method in the first place, Ex merely shrugged as if he had no idea what she was talking about.
Circe snorted and started eating while continuing to complain.
“The real problem is that rumors started spreading that you can use magic power and internal energy at the same time. Then the rumors got blown completely out of proportion, with people saying that must be how a nobody like you managed to beat Griphoc in your duel. After that, everyone started thinking, ‘If he can do it, why can't I?’ And now we've ended up with this.”
Ex shrugged again.
“Right. Of course you don't know anything.”
Circe let out a long sigh.
“I don't like this. There are plenty of people who can't succeed even when they devote themselves to one thing, and now they're all trying to pull something like this…”
「Let's eat. Talking while you're eating is rude.」
“…”
Circe barely suppressed the urge to stomp on Ex's foot and swallowed her food along with the fury she'd decided to save for later.
Once Ex finished his meal, Circe practically dragged him out of the cafeteria and into one of the library's private rooms, where they could talk in peace.
「There's no point complaining to me.
Students studying and exercising is a good thing.
Besides, this is just a temporary craze. It'll die down soon.」
The instant the private-room door closed behind them, Ex wrote out his opinion.
Circe barely swallowed the anger threatening to burst out of her and sighed.
“Fine, I don't think that's a bad thing either. If I bend over backward, no, if I bend over backward ten thousand times, then sure. Mages getting a little healthier and martial artists getting a little smarter is great. That's all fine, but…”
Then she slammed her palm down on the table and exploded.
“But it can't become the goal everyone's aiming for! What the hell is this?! Every single person is trying to turn themselves into some half-baked Hero! How is this anything but a massive waste of time?”
「It's completely different.」
Ex slowly continued writing.
「The Academy exists to cultivate a Hero.
But Leon has already been chosen as the Hero.
Deep down, every student here will eventually start believing they've already lost.」
I can never become the Hero.
Someone else has already been chosen.
That tiny seed would only continue growing as time passed.
For students with fragile hearts, that reality was far too cruel to endure.
「The Academy is a place of learning, and learning inevitably forces people to compete and compare themselves to others.
If the summit is somewhere they can never reach, they'll eventually give up in despair.
So even if it's false, they need to be given a little hope.」
“And that hope is using magic power and internal energy at the same time?”
Ex calmly nodded.
The simultaneous use of magic power and internal energy was not a requirement for becoming the Hero.
Leon could use both because he had become the Hero.
That was all.
It was a ridiculous sleight of hand that reversed cause and effect.
「But if it makes the students work harder, isn't that a good thing?」
Ex cared about the result.
The story had already strayed far from the original plot anyway.
Even Andras had disappeared, and the Imperial Schism had begun.
He had no idea what would become of the Hellgate Episode either.
If they were going to survive a catastrophe that could erupt at any time, then everyone needed enough strength to defend themselves.
No one could afford to give up.
Circe looked as if she had plenty she wanted to say to that.
“Quit acting like some wise old man. You're barely old enough to shave.”
But in the end, she let out a sigh and begrudgingly accepted his point.
「Well, I didn't expect them to take it this far either.」
“Whatever. And if I'm being completely truthful… it just frustrates me. Everyone's obsessed with the title of ‘Hero,’ but none of them are paying attention to what actually matters.”
Ex understood perfectly well why Circe felt that way.
There were very few people who had spent as much time watching a real Hero from up close as she had.
“Anyway, what are you planning to do from here?”
「I have to stop the world's destruction somehow.
And there's something I wanted to discuss with you about that」
“No, not that. I mean next week.”
Circe reminded Ex of something that had completely slipped his mind.
“You do know the Grand Festival is next Monday, right?”
He had completely forgotten.
The Tournament was about to begin.
–TL Notes–
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