Chapter 10
Week 2 at Elterion Academy.
I stepped outside Linea Hall for the first time.
No, to be exact,
...I had been dragged out.
“Don’t even dream of running away, Lady Lunaris.”
I mean... at least give me a chance to run before saying that, and what’s with holding my arms so tightly on both sides...
Even these maids were fully equipped in a full set of magical armor.
They’d remembered how I’d once used telekinesis to send them flying whole and had come thoroughly prepared.
Tch. Thorough to a fault.
Honestly, if I pushed myself a little, I could probably get away.
The problem was that this wouldn’t just end today. I was also still half-asleep.
And so I was quietly(?) escorted to the classroom.
There wasn’t even time to dawdle. Once I was shoved inside, silence fell over the classroom.
Dozens of eyes turned to me at once.
Well, I’d probably look too if the maids dragged someone in.
I shook off the lingering drowsiness and looked around.
Whispering spread everywhere.
“That’s her, right? The top scorer?”
“Looks like it.”
“...She looks young. Are we even the same age?”
“So she really did attend the academy...”
“But why was she dragged in by the maids? Don’t tell me she caused trouble?”
Most of them seemed curious, but a few students were openly mocking me.
“She really is lazy.”
“I heard she’s some street rat with no connections...”
“No wonder she made the professors in the interview dislike her and ended up in the Magitech Department.”
I let the whispering slide and headed for an empty seat.
What still bothered me was the senior maid from Linea Hall still clutching my arm.
These people were keeping a tight watch on me right at my side, just in case I tried to run. What ruthless people.
Once I sat down, the two senior maids finally let go of my arms.
Then they vanished after only telling me to have a good day.
“Uuuaagh...”“
As soon as the maids left, I flopped forward with my arms stretched out across the desk.
“Ah... so hard...”
Damn it. How am I supposed to sleep here?
Even if I did sleep like this, I’d just wake up stiff, but there was nothing to be done. I’d gotten up far earlier than usual, so I was short on sleep.
With my eyes closed and my arm as a pillow, breathing out with a saek-saek sound, I felt a presence at the front of the lecture hall.
A low voice came with faint footsteps.
“Hmm, so in the end, Student Lunaris really did come to my class...”“
It seemed the professor had arrived.
“Haa... an advanced mage, of all people, in a class as small as mine...”“
I cracked one eye open and peeked at the lectern.
The professor standing in front of the blackboard was trembling for some reason.
Was he feeling unwell? Well, it was that time of year. The perfect season to catch a cold.
If he was sick, he should just cancel class.
Being too dutiful about your job could be a problem too.
As I watched the professor blankly, I noticed one thing.
For some reason, his gaze kept landing on me unusually often.
He kept sneaking glances as if checking my reaction.
And whenever our eyes met, he would startle.
The reason was obvious.
I was the only one who had openly slumped over before class had even started.
Naturally, I didn’t exactly feel motivated to straighten up.
This was unavoidable.
My whole body felt so heavy that I just couldn’t sit upright.
“In the end, magic is the act of directly imitating the power of the spirit realm...”“
I wondered if the professor might wake me, but that disaster never happened.
“It must be supported by an understanding of natural phenomena...”“
Instead, the professor told me to sleep well and even sang me a boring lullaby in a gentle voice.
Ironically, despite worrying how anyone could sleep under such terrible conditions, drowsiness soon washed over me.
My eyelids sank heavily.
The professor’s voice sounded faint,
then drifted farther and farther away.
My consciousness... is...
sinking...
...Zzz.
...
...
-...Hey.
Tap-tap, a strange touch brushed my elbow.
I couldn’t easily drag myself out of the swamp of sleep.
I’d sunk so deep that my body felt heavy.
Again, slowly...
“Hey, wake up.”
A small hand gently shook my shoulder.
The unfamiliar sensation of rummaging through my dream made those heavy eyelids rise on their own.
A hazy green light came into view.
Soon, it focused.
A female student came into view.
She was looking at me with an anxious expression.
Startled, I jerked my head back.
“Hwaaak?!”
By the time I came to my senses, the classroom was unnaturally quiet.
Uh, hmm... what’s going on?
I blinked slowly, trying to come to my senses.
The blackboard was covered with complex magic circles and formulas that looked like practice problems.
The professor on the podium looked flustered, glancing back and forth between me and the blackboard.
“...Ah.”
I had roughly figured out the situation.
This is that thing, right?
The thing where they wake up the kid sleeping in class and make them solve a problem.
“So... should I solve that problem? Yaaawn...”“
“Ah, no... I wasn’t telling you to solve it right now...”“
I casually flicked my finger.
A piece of chalk resting on the corner of the lectern floated up smoothly at my will.
Then it stuck to the blackboard and began writing out the equations.
“...?”
“???”
The moment the chalk began moving on its own, silence engulfed the lecture hall.
Scratch-scratch—the sound of writing rang serenely through the room where silence had settled.
Before long, the blackboard was filled with the solution process.
After writing the final answer, the chalk snapped neatly in half and fell to the floor.
“Hwaaawn...”“
I stretched both arms out wide and yawned.
Maybe because I’d just demolished the fantasy-version soft-brain classroom the moment I woke up, a little of the sleepiness seemed to lift.
“Amazing...”“
“You’re a freshman too?
“N-no wonder she was the top overall student...”“
Amid the murmuring students,
“...I-it was homework assigned to be solved by next week... and she... did it in less than three minutes...”“
The professor was muttering to himself with a thoroughly shocked expression for some reason.
An awkward silence hung in the air for a while.
The professor finally came to his senses and cleared his throat.
“Ahem! This week’s assignment is... none. Instead, Miss Lunaris’s solution... hmm, make sure to copy it down separately. I’ll also be giving a quiz, so make sure you know it perfectly.”
At the mere mention of a quiz, the other students all started taking notes, and I lay back down with my head on my arms.
I didn’t really have anything else to do, so I planned to keep sleeping until class ended.
Just then, the girl sitting next to me cautiously spoke to me.
“Um... you’re Lunaris, right?”
I turned my head and looked at her.
She was the very student who’d woken me up earlier.
Her brown hair was tied up in a neat round bun, and her clear green eyes stood out.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
She smiled in relief, then immediately bowed her head, suddenly not knowing what to do.
“Sorry! You were sleeping so soundly, I thought I should wake you.”
Hmm... did she think I’d get angry or something? I wasn’t really annoyed.
If anything, waking me at the right time was something I should be grateful for.
“It’s fine. Thanks to you, I got up just fine.”
“Phew~ that’s a relief... I was worried you might be mad.”
The girl moved her lips as if she had more to say.
“Do you have anything planned after class?”
“I was thinking of going somewhere and sleeping a little more until the next class.”
What do you do when you wake up?
Changing positions and falling back asleep is the correct answer.
Then my stomach growled.
...Come to think of it, appetite was one of humanity’s three great desires, just like sleep.
And I’m a person who’s very faithful to my desires.
“Do you know where the cafeteria is?”
“Huh? The cafeteria... you don’t know where it is?”
“Yeah. I don’t know anything about where anything is.”
“Then how did you get to the classroom... oh, right, you were dragged here by maids...”
Let’s not mention the nasty fact that I could’ve figured it out if I’d just stepped outside the dorm once and looked around.
It was all because the academy was ridiculously huge.
They say even spending a whole month squeezing in time to look around wouldn’t be enough to see everything, so how could I possibly feel like going out?
It’s all the academy’s fault for killing my motivation. Anyway, that’s how it is.
“Then I’ll take you to the cafeteria! Want to come with me?”
I gave a small nod. I was used to receiving kindness.
“Thanks. Um... so... your name was...?”
“Huh? Mine?”
The girl blinked, then smiled brightly and held out her hand.
“I’m Claire from the Department of Magic. Claire Loren.”
An unfamiliar name.
Come to think of it, that made sense. Most of the “protagonist generation” in the original story were Kyle’s classmates.
Unless there was some special connection, there was basically no room for upperclassmen a year above them to appear.
I stared blankly at the hand Claire held out, then gently took it.
This person is safe.
“Hi. I’m...”“I know. Lunaris Evermoon, right?”
Claire burst into laughter, saying there was probably no one at the academy—especially in the Department of Magic—who wouldn’t know me.
notes":"Fixed the title to match the nearby chapter-title pattern as a split-part format: 'Linea Hall's Worst Wizard (2)'. Cleaned a few awkward/incorrect spots, including the repeated phrasing in the maid line, 'right beside me' repetition, the Magitech department naming, and a couple of sleepy/fading-consciousness lines for smoother English. Kept pronoun references neutral where context was ambiguous."}]}