Chapter 92
“Ughhh—”
Exactly five minutes after Princess Celestina had dragged me out of the dormitory, I started regretting it.
The sun, the sunlight... it's too bright... my eyes are going to burn up... somebody, please turn off the sky's lights...!
"What's wrong, Luna? The weather's lovely."
Princess Celestina kept a tight hold on my arm and wouldn't let me go.
The way I was being dragged along made it look as if Her Highness were escorting me away under arrest.
Princess Celestina's beaming smile looked wonderfully refreshing.
Enjoying going to class... Princess, you must be out of your mind.
"Wow... even Lunaris can't do anything in front of Her Highness."
"How on earth did Her Highness tame her?"
Every student we passed on the way to the lecture hall whispered when they saw the princess and me.
Hey... tame? I'm not some wild animal.
When we reached the area near the main building of the Magic Department, where the lecture halls were, the whispers only grew louder.
"Hey, did you see that? Lunaris was here."
"What, she's still enrolled? I thought she'd already graduated early from the academy."
"Come to think of it, Miss Lunaris received an Archmage appointment from the Imperial Family this time, didn't she?"
"I-is it really okay for an archmage to be taking an introductory magic theory class?"
I didn't want to come either.
After we arrived at the lecture hall in the main building, I headed for the prime window seat farthest from the podium.
Claire was sitting there, her grass-green hair neatly braided.
"Good morning, Claire."
"Princess Celestina! Welcome! But who did you bring with you... huh?"
Claire, who had been waving both arms at the princess, went wide-eyed when her eyes met mine.
"Ohhh~ Look who it is?"
Soon, Claire's eyes and mouth curved into smiling crescents.
“Isn't that the world's busiest archmage, the one who lives in the same dorm building and still hasn't shown her face even once?”
"Hiiiii... yawn—"
“I didn't even see you during the first week, so I figured you'd be ditching lectures again this semester, but you actually came? Did you decide to become diligent for the new semester or something?”
"There's no way Luna would do that."
The princess answered for me and half-forced me into the seat beside Claire.
Then she sat on my other side, completely blocking every route I could use to escape.
"She was trying to become one with her bed again today, so I practically had to beg and plead to drag her here."
"Ahaha, that really does sound like Luna."
I didn't even have the energy to reply, so I just slumped face-down on the desk.
How could I get into a more comfortable sleeping position?
I tried shifting around, resting my forehead on the backs of my stacked hands, then my temple on my forearm, and so on.
But on a hard wooden desk, no position felt comfortable at all.
Just having to lie face-down was already putting serious strain on my back and waist. Ah... this is why I didn't want to come to class.
I'd only lain down on the princess's bed for a moment before being dragged out, so the contrast is brutal.
As I rolled this way and that, conducting an in-depth study of the world's most comfortable position...
"Hey! It's a complete disaster around Linea Hall right now!"
The lecture hall door suddenly went bang— and a male student burst in.
"The housemaids, the imperial knights... even the head of the Magic Department is down!"
He couldn't hide his excitement and blurted the words out in a rush.
"When Lunaris grabbed her staff and swung it, a meteor shower started raining down from a clear sky...!"
"Is that the staff you're talking about?"
"Yeah, yeah! That silver-white staff... huh?"
Still lying face-down, I turned my head slightly to look at the male student.
Our eyes met.
"So what did I do with this?"
My flat voice made him jump in alarm.
His face drained of color as he shrank back; it was quite the sight.
"N-no, n-nothing! Ahaha... g-good morning!"
He creaked over like a golem and awkwardly took a seat in an empty spot.
The lecture hall's atmosphere turned cold in an instant.
Everyone held their breath, as if trying to read the room.
Well, thanks to that, it's nice and quiet.
"Wow... the lecture hall atmosphere is completely different from last week. I wonder whose fault that is."
Princess Celestina grinned mischievously and poked my arm.
"It's all because of you, Princess. You have no idea how stressful it is for an ordinary person like me to take class in the same room as royalty."
"Saying that in such a flat voice doesn't make it sound stressful at all. Besides, the students here are probably more afraid of Luna than they are of me."
Amid the awkward silence, the front door of the lecture hall opened and the professor walked in.
"You're all properly prepared to quietly take class today. If only you were like this normally."
The professor activated the wizboard he was holding, looking pleased.
"Well then, it's pointless, but let's check attendance..."
The professor swept the lecture hall with his eyes, then flinched the moment his gaze met mine.
Soon, the professor's eyes trembled like an earthquake had struck.
For a moment, a look of disbelief flashed across his face.
"Uh, why are you here?"
"Why else? A student came to attend class."
"W-well, yes, but... you're a student..."
"I am a student."
"That's not exactly wrong, but..."
Resting my chin in my hand, I shot back in a bored voice.
"Let's start class already."
"R-right... since Student Lunaris is here, there's no need to check attendance, I suppose..."
A muttered sigh about how today's class was really going to be rough reached even my seat, the farthest one from the podium.
"Then let's start by solving the practice problem I lightly assigned last time."
*
"I-if you express this problem as a magic circle..."
The hand holding the chalk was shaking violently.
Our professor's shaky hands were no joke.
At this rate, I wonder if he'll even be able to draw a proper magic circle.
"In the end, the key is transformation..."
"Yaaawn—"
"Eek! S-student Lunaris? Is there perhaps some problem with my class? Or are you complaining about something...?"
"...Not really."
If I had one complaint, it'd be that I don't know why he keeps sneaking glances at me. At this rate, even sleeping openly would feel awkward.
Resting my chin in my hand, I glanced subtly to the side.
Princess Celestina's and Claire's notebooks were packed with notes.
Wow, did they really start class in the first week?
There's always one of them. Those inconsiderate, clueless professors who insist on pushing ahead with the material from orientation week.
"Claire, did you try solving the problem the professor gave us last time?"
With me between them, Princess Celestina asked Claire in a very low voice.
"I tried to set aside some time over the weekend to work on it, but it was too hard."
The princess muttered that she'd had no clue how to solve it.
"Heh-heh-heh~ It really was a difficult problem. Even for me, a scholarship student from Linea Hall's honors track, it wasn't easy."
By contrast, Claire was unusually full of confidence.
I really don't like that smug expression.
Claire is best when she's all shriveled up.
Since I wasn't sleepy anyway, maybe I should tease her a bit?
"But!"
"But?"
"I've also studied ahead really thoroughly..."
"Solve it, my foot. From what you wrote as the answer, the magic doesn't even work in the first place."
After sneaking a glance at Claire's notebook, I casually chimed in.
"...Are you trying to pick a fight this early in the morning, Luna?"
The moment I cast the bait, I got a bite right away.
Her pout made me smile despite myself.
Yeah, now that's more like Claire.
"What? Why? What part is wrong this time? The solution process is perfect, absolutely perfect."
"If it were, this answer sheet would already be a magic scroll."
I let out a sigh and drew natural mana to the tip of my finger.
"But look at this."
Then I brought the mana-filled finger down onto Claire's notebook.
At that instant, mana surged back from the notebook and sprayed everywhere.
"What?!"
"See? If you solve the problem wrong, this is what happens. If you'd sold this to anyone, the buyer would've filed a complaint right away."
"B-but I definitely checked my work too...!"
Claire's voice dropped to a whimper.
Her once-confident expression was nowhere to be seen, and she was back in her familiar timid mode.
"Tsk, silly Claire. I don't know how you even got into Linea Hall if you don't even know what you got wrong."
"Wuuugh..."
“You didn't even seem to understand what the point of this problem was, or what this magic circle is supposed to do, so it's amazing you still wrote out equations and even an answer. At this point, I could almost say you created an entirely new spell.”
"You know that much, don't you?! This is the formula for turning mana of the water attribute, one of the basic four elements, into the subordinate ice attribute!"
At Claire's indignant cry, I let out another sigh.
"You can't seriously think it's that simple."
"...Huh?"
“There's no reason to turn water-attribute mana into ice-attribute magic with such a complicated, convoluted formula. That's inefficient beyond belief.”
I flicked my finger lightly.
“Starting with the assumption that ice is a sub-attribute of water is wrong.”
Then a hexagonal pillar-shaped ice crystal floated up at my fingertip.
“Water and ice are ultimately the same in essence, so why are you even using a transformation formula?”
At my words, Claire blinked blankly, then quickly flushed red and raised her voice.
"Th-th-that only works because you're an archmage..."
“No. This is something you could do just fine if you only knew low-level water magic. You can do that much too, can't you?”
I flicked my finger again.
“The same goes for other attributes, but magic is ultimately an imitation of natural phenomena.”
Soon, the clumped ice crystal floating in midair broke into tiny pieces and scattered in all directions.
“You just need to understand its essence.”
Centered around the seats where Princess Celestina, Claire, and I were sitting.
A pale frost blossom settled down.
"L-look at that!"
"Wow... isn't it pretty?"
Small gasps rose around us at the winter scene that had arrived a little early.