Chapter 4
“Th-this... I can't accept this.”
Helia stared at Bin with a blank expression.
This made no sense.
She should have been the first to succeed in class.
By objective measures, it was only natural.
Among the new students who had entered the academy,
there was no one more serious about magic than her,
nor was there anyone stronger.
“That's just... a cheap trick, isn't it..?”
Helia's words remained inside her,
never making it past her lips.
In the meantime.
Naia announced Bin's results to everyone.
Naia tossed Bin's creations with a satisfied expression, and
they transformed into neat Magic Missiles and Energy Bolts.
“The finish is certainly... not bad..”
Helia bit her lip as she looked at the result.
It was magic with an extremely high level of cohesion.
However.
That was nothing more than a fluke.
“I... I'll do it my own way..”
She turned her head.
Then she concentrated again and began making a sphere.
Somehow, it was going much better than before.
However, words that shattered her concentration came from right beside her.
“Oh... I wonder if I can do it that way too?”
It was Kanghan.
He picked up a sponge ball.
Then he recklessly gathered mana inside it.
“Ma... Mana has to be handled delicately!”
Helia was horrified and tried to stop Kanghan.
How could he handle mana so recklessly?
That wasn't how it should be done.
“Oh, really? But with that method, can't I just do it crudely?”
Helia's breath caught at Kanghan's question.
He was right.
With that method... as long as there was a spherical framework, it didn't matter.
“That's true, but..”
“Then I'll just give it a try!”
Kanghan stuffed mana into the ball just as Bin had, and
succeeded in making a perfect circle with absurd ease.
“Ahaha, there's such an easy way to do it.”
“Oh... ah...”
Helia lost her mind during her very first class at the academy.
—-
“Were you... a genius?”
This was bad.
Really bad.
I'd drawn way too much aggro.
“.. Is that even possible?”
Ena didn't believe me. She just stared at me.
A cigarette was dangling from her mouth.
The cigarette smoke smelled awful...
“Well, I guess geniuses don't go around calling themselves geniuses.”
Ena blew smoke into the air.
Then she looked at me.
“Want one?”
“No.”
“Tch.”
She pulled a portable ashtray from her pocket.
Good lord, a smoker carrying one of those around.
She was meticulous in the strangest ways.
“Let's go get lunch.”
I said as I brushed the dirt off myself and stood up.
I was starting to get hungry.
“Sure!”
Ena must have been hungry too, because she stood up right away.
And so, the two of us went straight to the cafeteria.
“Wow... There are a lot of famous people here.”
Ena got her food and sat down in front of me.
She piled up a mountain of food, like she was an elephant.
“Yeah. There are famous professors here too..”
Lunchtime at the academy was a social gathering where countless geniuses came together.
Even students who rarely had a chance to talk because they were in different classes
often got acquainted by eating together here.
‘.. In game terms, lots of affinity-up events happen.’
But that was normally something that happened from the middle of the game onward.
Usually, no one wanted to eat with a player who had no reputation at all.
But.
Why did it feel like people were sitting near me?
- Scrape. Clack
“Hello..”
A familiar face sat down right beside me.
Was it... Helia?
“Ah, hello.”
“Oh? Hellooo. I'm Ena. A famous person has come to visit—what brings you here?”
Ena spoke to Helia with her cheeks puffed out, mumbling around her food.
You could have finished eating before speaking..
Well, given Ena's character, she wasn't exactly concerned with manners.
“Ah..! I'm Helia.. Would you like to have lunch with us?”
Helia looked at me with a slightly flushed face.
Huh? She wanted to eat together?
That was unexpected.
Helia was extremely shy by nature.
That was why events like this rarely occurred..
Why?
“Well, I'm okay with it.”
“Me too.”
Ena ate without even looking over.
Hmm... she certainly seemed okay with it.
“Ah... thank you!”
“Hey~ It's just lunch, so you don't need to thank me for that... Oh, by the way, we're in Class 3 too, right?”
“Oh! Yes, yes! You remembered?!”
“Right? You handled mana really well. You were the first to succeed without any help from tools, weren't you?”
If I hadn't used a shortcut to succeed quickly,
Helia would have been the first person in Class 3 to succeed.
Helia was the most talented mage in the academy,
and would go on to become an archmage in the future.
“Ah..! Thank you!”
Helia's complexion brightened for a moment.
Then she stared at me and pursed her lips.
“Um...”
“Yes?”
“Ah... never mind!”
Hmm, as expected, Helia was extremely shy, just as she was in the game's setting.
She was the type who had trouble saying what she wanted to say.
But why on earth had Helia asked me to eat lunch with her?
There seemed to be only one answer.
“You were curious about what I did during Professor Naia's lesson, weren't you?”
“Ah... yes, yes!”
Helia hurriedly nodded.
She had probably approached me because of that from the very beginning.
But... I had nothing to say.
“.. I just wanted to freeload my way through it.”
“.. What?”
- Pfft.
Ena, who was eating across from me, suddenly snorted with laughter.
Why?
Had something funny happened?
“I knew it. I told you this guy was seriously obnoxious, didn't I?”
Ena had nearly finished her tray by then.
She was grinning at me, apparently finding something hilarious.
And Helia blinked at me.
“Uh... so you did that because you just wanted to take the easy way out?”
“Yes, I'm not a genius or anything. I can't even use magic. I just wanted to do it easily..”
“As expected, a genius would think of even methods like that so easily..”
“.. What?”
I stared at Helia in disbelief.
She was looking at me with a slightly dejected expression.
It was the expression of someone in second place looking at an unreachable first place.
No.
Absolutely not.
I was merely a student who wanted to get through academy life normally.
“See? I told you no one would believe me even if I said that.”
Ena chimed in from beside me.
When I'd told Ena the exact same thing after class,
she had said no one would believe me.
But this was really happening?
‘.. I wasn't planning to do anything genius-like though??’
I just wanted to get through the dangerous moments at the academy by freeloading.
But... it seemed like the wrong image of me had already been etched into their minds.
‘I need to be careful.. I should only use cheap tricks that look like freeloading, and be reasonably mediocre at everything else.’
The freeloading tricks I could use in future classes flashed through my mind.
‘I should use only slightly weaker cheap tricks in swordsmanship class.. and keep my sparring average.’
‘.. I can't climb too high. There are too many incidents of the academy being attacked.’
“Being so humble is a bit much! People like me feel discouraged, you know.”
Helia said something even more absurd.
The future archmage of the empire felt discouraged?
‘..! Wait, this is bad?’
‘Helia having low self-esteem could cause problems.’
I hurriedly shook my head.
As the story progressed, several dangerous events would occur.
If Helia failed to reach a certain level by then..
there would be times when it became difficult to clear the event.
‘No.. if Helia grows weaker because someone like me crushes her self-esteem.. it'll be a disaster when it comes time to clear those events..’
Honestly, if this were still a game, I probably would have thought, ‘Who cares?’
But.. this was a matter of life and death.
‘Damn.. I just wanted to freeload my way through, so why are there so many things to worry about?’
First, I needed to patch up her self-esteem right away.
“Um.. I really can't use magic, you know? I don't have any special ability either. I can't even use something like Magic Missile. I was honestly amazed when I saw you complete the assignment without any tools. I thought, ‘So it can be done normally!’”
“Wh-what? So.. you didn't do it intentionally?”
“That's right! It was my first time using Magic Missile! Energy Bolt? Of course I didn't even know what that was.”
As I rambled on, Helia's face began to brighten a little.
Of course, Ena's expression grew strange, as if she were wondering what was wrong with me.
“Ah... aha..! Then.. it really was nothing more than a lucky break?”
“I told you. I'd never even used magic before.. Do you think I'd know some primitive magic circle or whatever?”
“So that's.. what you're saying..?! Hmm~”
Helia began humming, apparently in a good mood.
Though I had no idea why..
“Hehe, if you ever get stuck while learning magic..! Come find me! I'll help you!”
“Oh. Would that be okay?”
“Of course! Since you had lunch with me!”
“Okay~ I'll contact you if I get stuck.”
Helia was already getting up, somehow having finished all her food,
while Ena had finished eating long ago and was watching the conversation.
I hadn't even eaten half of mine yet.
Somehow.
I had a feeling that lunches from now on would be quite difficult.
—-
“Phew.. Could you really just be lucky, rather than a genius..?”
Helia sighed deeply as she walked along.
Bin seemed like a pretty kind person.
I couldn't say exactly why, but I just had that feeling.
Ena, right beside Helia, smelled like cigarettes, which was a bit much.
But I couldn't blame her just for smoking, so it was fine.
“What's lucky?”
Helia was startled by the voice coming from right beside her.
It was Kanghan.
He had brought two fish-cake skewers from the academy cafeteria and was holding them between his teeth.
“Ah.. I had lunch with Mr. Bin.”
“Oh~ That magic genius? I guess mages really do have a way of understanding each other.”
“He.. isn't a mage, though?”
Kanghan tilted his head.
Naia had definitely called him a genius, so how could he not be a mage?
“What, then? A martial artist or a swordsman?”
“I think so.. He said he really didn't know any magic at all.”
“Huh? Isn't that a lie? How could someone like that do the assignment so well?”
“No, it really felt like he had no skill in magic.”
“Hmm... Ahaha!! I had a feeling it might be something like that. Mindlessly stuffing mana into it is the kind of thing someone like me would think of.”
Kanghan clapped as if he found it amusing.
To Kanghan, it wasn't particularly important.
Magic was merely a general subject.
“My next class is swordsmanship.. Are you taking it?”
“Ah.. I'm not. I guess.. it's not really my field.”
“Figures~ Hmm.. If that interesting guy isn't a mage.. he'd probably be in this class.”
Kanghan began walking away with a whistle.
He had a feeling that an interesting guy had appeared.