Chapter 55
Silence is deafening.
Elettra, Mella, and Sillon.
The three women’s gazes converged on one particular place on Gilliam Everchess.
“…Gulp.”
“…Gulp.”
“….”
The three exchanged glances.
Cautiously.
Slowly, they reached out…
“Ah, no….”
“Seriously?”
“S-something like this is supposed to go in…?”
“Won’t it tear?”
“U-uh, aaah, haa, haaa…!”
.
.
.
The next morning.
Before class began, Kadisha went to the infirmary and found Mella and Sillon staring blankly into space.
‘?’
Professor Mella was one thing, but why was Professor Sillon here? Didn’t she have class to prepare for? (←Even though I came here myself)
“Has Everchess already been discharged?”
“….”
“….”
Dazed stare.
Even more dazed stare.
“Professors, what on earth is wrong?”
At Kadisha’s question, Mella and Sillon wore complicated expressions.
Fear.
Awe.
And excitement.
Mella spoke.
“…Professor Kadisha.”
She spread her hands apart.
“Do you think you could take something this big?”
“…What exactly are you talking about?”
All they offered were sidelong glances and evasive looks.
But that awkward atmosphere itself was the answer.
“W-wait. It really was that big?”
Sillon slowly nodded, too.
“It really was that… big?”
“And it wasn’t just big.”
Mella made a gesture as if gripping a cylinder with her hand.
“It was this thick, too. No, this thick…?”
Wait.
They meant the size of that thing of Everchess’s…
“Last night, you actually—!!”
“N-no!”
“No! We wouldn’t dare… we couldn’t even bring ourselves to…! We only worshipped it!”
Kadisha blinked.
“What did you say you did?”
“We d-didn’t even touch it… We couldn’t even touch it….”
“Then what exactly did you do?”
“U-uuuaaaah….”
Sillon blushed even more and squirmed.
I wasn’t sure what exactly they’d done, but apparently it wasn’t something she could say in the morning sunlight.
“Haa….”
Kadisha folded her arms in front of her two fellow professors.
“Professor Mella, Professor Sillon.”
Her demeanor was stern.
She gave them the exact same look she used when reprimanding a cadet.
“Isn’t this too much from both of you? Honestly, it’s pathetic. As a fellow professor, I can’t respect or admire you at all.”
“Ugh.”
“Uuugh….”
Mella and Sillon groaned.
To be honest, they thought they were pathetic, too.
“And to be even more honest, I’m ashamed of you not just as professors, but as women.”
Mana gathered at Kadisha’s fingertips, forming a cylinder.
“You’re not three-year-old children who lose their minds at the sight of a big rock, so how can you say such ridiculous things as ‘worship’ just because you saw one body part?”
The cylinder took shape.
“Was it about this big?”
“…A little longer.”
“A-and thicker, too.”
Kadisha adjusted its size.
“Then about this much?”
“Still a little more….”
“Both thicker and longer….”
“….”
She adjusted it again.
“Still.”
“Yes. Still.”
“No….”
Kadisha looked flustered and adjusted it again.
“Th-then, about this much…?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“That’s about right now… exactly….”
Hmm.
Right.
It really was pretty big.
At this size, wouldn’t it be in the top one percent of men?
But.
Even so.
“Professors, shouldn’t you have a little more common sense as women… no, as human beings?”
Kadisha set the roughly finished model on the desk.
“Even if Everchess really did have something like this attached to him, a normal person wouldn’t feel ‘reverence’ or anything just by looking at it. At least, I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t.”
She could say that with certainty.
Because.
“I don’t see him as a man.”
“….”
“….”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I didn’t feel a wall. I didn’t feel a wall. I didn’t feel a wall….”
“P-Professor Kadisha, for Professor Mella’s sake, maybe go a little easier….”
“?”
Kadisha tilted her head.
‘Ha… honestly.’
Come to think of it, maybe the two of them had been drinking last night and still hadn’t sobered up?
They couldn’t possibly be saying such nonsense while sober.
Kadisha looked over the cylinder model she’d created.
‘It really is big.’
But still, it was just a body part.
No matter how nice a particular body part looked, was it really reasonable to feel reverence for it?
Where in the world was there someone who looked at a forearm and went, ‘That forearm is so beautiful! I must worship it!’?
‘Well, the real thing probably wouldn’t be a simple cylinder like this.’
Kadisha was a virgin with no experience with men.
But at her age, she did have some biological knowledge. She’d even secretly glanced through sex-ed books.
‘A distinctive head, and a hole at the end that releases fluid….’
To put the use of mana crudely, it was an act of challenging the world with one’s imagination.
Thus, those who devoted themselves to studying mana had vivid imaginations, particularly the ability to conjure up concrete, detailed images in their minds.
Kadisha was no exception.
She pictured the shape and form in her mind.
Vividly.
In detail.
Kadisha was a genius, too.
Her extraordinarily brilliant mind accomplished the task with ease, then combined it with a naked image of Gilliam Everchess.
“…Hweh?”
The scene came to mind too vividly.
Gilliam, naked.
The huge thing attached to his body.
And.
“Hh, h-hik, hweee…♡”
Kadisha’s knees gave way. She sank onto the bed behind her. Her breathing grew ragged. She couldn’t breathe properly. Her heart pounded.
Everchess stood in front of her. Naked. He pressed a thing as huge as that cylinder against her.
Kadisha’s mouth opened on its own. Her red tongue, still untouched by a man, slipped out. Saliva streamed down.
“Hweh♡ Heh♡ Hhek♡”
Watching Kadisha imagine it all herself and then surrender on her own, Sillon murmured hollowly.
“Shouldn’t all of us actually be fired from the academy this very moment?”
“Professor Sillon, you’re too bound by common sense.”
With a smug little huff, Mella lifted her coffee cup.
“Maybe because I’m a special genius, I don’t even twitch when I see something like this. If anything, it makes me laugh. This is a piece of cake, hoho.”
R-r-r-rattle.
“I’m a genius who’s seen worse madness dozens, hundreds of times. Even seeing something like this makes me smile.”
“Professor Mella, you’ve spilled all your coffee. Isn’t it hot?”
——————
I was gradually getting used to heading straight to class from the infirmary.
‘Shouldn’t I not be getting used to this?’
Anyway.
As I walked down the lecture hall corridor, I organized my thoughts.
‘I have 1,000 Praise Points left.’
And before the next event started, I needed to get 10,000 points and buy the item that could verify lies, 〈Spirit Butterfly Wing Dust〉.
That was what I had to do right now.
‘Assuming events unfold just like in the original….’
A transfer student who showed up out of nowhere two weeks before midterms.
And on a Saturday, no less. The weekend had already begun.
It was obvious that we wouldn’t be able to prepare properly for midterms.
‘Midterms are in two weeks.’
It was last Sunday that I discovered the group poisoning incident in Mercho.
On Thursday, I went on a quest with Maron, rolled around in the grass, and faced Oro of Erosion.
‘Wait. I forgot to report completing the quest to Professor Mella, didn’t I?’
I was also supposed to get the sex-ed textbook for studying with Maron then.
‘I should go tell her later.’
Anyway, today was the following day—Friday.
So the Saturday two weeks before midterms was… tomorrow.
‘I only have one day left.’
There was no time to spare.
‘I guess this is the only way.’
If I classified my classes based on who I took them with, there were three types:
Classes with Maron.
Classes with Elettra.
Classes with both Maron and Elettra.
For the record, there weren’t any classes I took with neither of them.
Strangely, I thought there had been some in the first week, but after the schedule adjustment, they’d disappeared.
—Elettra? Didn’t you used to take this class at a different time?
—Who knows. Must be a coincidence.
‘What a strange coincidence.’
Surely Elettra hadn’t used her influence as a princess to make them change it.
And today’s first class was type two.
It was a lecture with Elettra but not Maron.
“Elettra.”
I whispered to the girl sitting next to me.
“What is it?”
“Sorry this is so sudden, but can I have you all to myself tonight?”
No.
Just the evening might not be enough.
“And tonight, too.”
“…….”
Elettra turned to face me.
Then looked down.
Then looked back at my face.
“How can something so monstrous come from such a pretty face….”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gilliam.”
“?”
“How many women have you killed so far?”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden, seriously…!?”
I was already frustrated enough over all the people I’d accidentally killed. Now Elettra was saying this, too?
“So now I’m going to be one of the women you’ve killed….”
“Elettra? Hey, can you hear me? Your Highness?”
“As a woman… I’ll die…♡ Just… so pathetic, so weak…♡ Hh, hhaaa♡”
“Princess Elettra Xanthias, Second Princess of the Empire, what on earth is wrong with you!?”