Chapter 128
If the academy story was going to progress.
Since it was only natural for most of the main and supporting characters to gather at the academy,
Mirne had naturally enrolled at Velos Academy as well, following that rule.
The exam difficulty wouldn't have been all that challenging from Mirne's perspective in the first place.
From enrolling to confidently entering the class occupied by only the top 1%....
For Mirne, it was a natural result, in a sense.
'I'm in the same class.'
The class I belonged to was Class 1,
a class filled with members who could not help but drive the main story forward.
First, Arveda and Pavan among the executioners had enrolled under assumed identities.
In addition, there were Theo, the Northern Grand Duchess Estella, and the Saintess Rowena.
And then there were the Northern War Champion Gorrhan and the hidden male protagonist, Roomta the giant.
Everyone who had occupied an important position up to now ended up in Class 1.
'The cliché where the generation in which the protagonist enrolls naturally becomes a golden generation.'
There were even people who had come over from the Eastern Continent.
It was a combination that was bound to give rise to incidents.
In fact.
"Welcome to Velos Academy."
As soon as my address ended,
[ The Academy entrance ceremony has ended. ]
[ The first raid event has occurred. ]
[ The 'Academy Black Mage Raid Incident' has begun. ]
One of the Academy's major events, the entrance ceremony event, had begun.
Normally, this was where the protagonist identified important characters or distinguished themself through a specific incident.
But in this case, it seemed to be the latter.
I had anticipated this much and was about to move immediately.
[ The current number of active black mages within the Empire is extremely low. ]
[ The 'Academy Black Mage Raid Incident' event has been canceled. ]
[ We have confirmed that the black mages were eliminated in advance. ]
[ One Tech Tree point has been awarded as a preemptive-elimination reward. ]
"...?"
The messages that followed stopped me in my tracks.
'It turns out like this?'
I learned that black mages were roaming around the Empire after stripping Mirne of everything.
Immediately afterward, I moved to conduct a large-scale purge,
and after that, I began turning the entire Empire into a holy land through the power of divinity.
In the process, the black mages' foothold naturally dwindled,
and as a result, not even enough forces remained to launch an attack on the Academy entrance ceremony.
'Huh.'
But that wasn't what surprised me.
'You give me a whole point for resolving just this one thing?'
One of the rewards for resolving all five pacts was ten Tech Tree points.
Of course, there had been many other rewards besides that,
but considering points alone, even an undertaking of that scale yielded only ten.
And yet simply preventing one Academy raid event in advance earned me a point just like that?
The pacts required me to discover their conditions, and failure carried the risk of destroying the Empire,
whereas the Academy raid event came on its own and was an event that was bound to succeed according to the flow of the story.
'The reward makes no sense compared to the difficulty.'
I felt keenly why the possibility of destruction had dropped by 50% the moment the Academy was built.
Now that I looked at it, it had been structured that way from the start.
'This is just a reward-generating machine.'
I suppose this was what it meant to be showered with rewards.
I was genuinely glad that the Academy had not been built in the Kingdom of Mazerin.
If an Academy that showered out rewards like this had been built in the Kingdom of Mazerin,
I couldn't even imagine how much Mirne would have run wild from that point onward.
'Even if the Academy hadn't been built in the Empire... I wouldn't have obtained something like the Fortuitous Encounter Sensor, either.'
Had the Academy itself nearly become a training institution exclusively for Mirne?
Who would have thought a single facility could become a steppingstone for raising the protagonist?
'Academy stories are supposed to be about the protagonist attending the Academy, experiencing various events, and growing.'
Whether it was a novel or a game starring Mirne, there must have been plenty of places that showered her with benefits besides the Academy.
Once I realized the Academy intended to shower her with rewards on an entirely different level, I was incredibly surprised.
Perhaps the best way to put it was that I could feel its determination to feed her until her stomach burst.
'Thanks to it, I'm the one who looks set to leave with a full belly.'
Shall I gorge myself on the Academy's fortuitous encounters?
+ + + + +
As soon as the entrance ceremony ended, the cadets headed straight to their assigned classes.
The classes were divided according to scores, beginning with Class 1.
Each class had no predetermined number of students; cadets were assigned according to their absolute-evaluation grade.
In other words, even if the class they currently belonged to was low-ranked, they could aim higher as long as they continued to grow.
Even those at the top could not afford to relax, because the moment they failed to maintain their performance, their grade would drop.
That was why.
"...Hmm, I suppose Class 6 still falls around average."
"They say Class 1 is completely absurd."
"His Highness the Crown Prince is in that class, so naturally, right?"
"Wow... I really want to go to Class 1 too."
Class 1 was an object of admiration for the cadets.
And naturally, whenever there was an object of admiration, its opposite was bound to exist as well.
"I really don't want to go to Class 13."
"If I went there, I might seriously start wondering whether I had no talent at all."
"They only barely made it in, right?"
"Considering how many people applied to Velos Academy, Class 13 is impressive too... but among all the people who passed, it's only natural for them to be looked down on."
Class 13.
The place where the students with the lowest entrance scores had gathered.
They too were first-year cadets of Velos Academy, so they could be considered to possess brilliant talent.
But since they were at the bottom of a place containing nothing but people with brilliant talent, their reputation was not entirely favorable.
And in that last-place class.
"...Ah, I'd forgotten. I installed a mod that puts me in the last-place class."
There was Mirne.
Since she received a reward each time her class rose one tier,
she needed to enter the last-place class to collect the greatest number of rewards.
Mirne belatedly remembered that she had installed a mod that guaranteed she would end up in the last-place class.
It wasn't merely a mod that put her in the last-place class; it put her at the very bottom of the Academy.
Her rank was, in effect, dead last among more than a thousand students.
It was the power of a mod that guaranteed she would catch the last train to Academy admission.
'Was it called the Academy Last-Train mod?'
Since the mod's name wasn't important, Mirne decided not to worry about it.
What mattered now was to keep receiving excellent evaluations in the monthly grade assessments and advance to the next class.
They took an exam every month, and cadets moved classes each month according to the results.
If she put her mind to it, she could reach Class 1 in no time.
She had even installed various convenience mods in case her grade failed to rise,
so, bluntly speaking, her class grade would go up as long as she kept attending regularly.
'I've suffered a lot of interference up to now, but... at least I can breathe a little easier inside the Academy.'
Thinking that, Mirne entered the last-place class with a broad grin, and the first thing she heard upon entering was:
"Class evaluations take place once every six months?"
"So they divide us again through absolute evaluation based on our semester-wide grades... and reassign our classes accordingly?"
"That's rational but cruel. But since it's absolute evaluation, maybe we can still cheer each other on?"
"But I heard Velos Academy's absolute-evaluation standards are truly vicious and brutal. Can we really do that?"
It meant that class transfers did not take place every month.
"...W-what, what, wh-wh-what? Once every six months?!"
A bolt of thunder and lightning struck Mirne's mind.
At that same time.
Meanwhile, Class 1—the class the Crown Prince was scheduled to visit—was in an unusual state.
"Tin Can, why are you standing? Sit down quickly."
"Arveda, then why are you standing?"
"...Are all of you going to keep standing?"
"Are you saying that while standing yourself, Saintess?"
A strange battle of nerves was unfolding.
+ + + + +
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Before the Crown Prince had entered Class 1,
Theo tapped his desk as he watched the battle of nerves unfolding in Class 1.
'Good grief... Do they really need to think so complicatedly?'
The reason the women were standing was obvious.
They wanted to dart over and sit beside His Highness the Crown Prince the moment he entered the class and took his seat.
There were only so many people who could sit at the long, straight desk.
The instant they lost the battle of wits, they would be unable to sit beside His Highness the Crown Prince, let alone at the same desk.
It wasn't hard to understand why they kept standing and sizing one another up.
'Couldn't they just sit down, wave brightly when His Highness the Crown Prince entered the class, and actively ask him to sit beside them?'
There had to be a better way, so it was frustrating to see them deliberately engage in such a battle of nerves.
Even people from the Empire's strongest ranks were acting like this, so the ordinary cadets who had entered Class 1 were extremely tense.
Could everyone really be this hopelessly dense when it came to romance?
'Do I, Theo, have no choice but to step in?'
Muttering that inwardly, he was about to get up.
"Where are you going? Class will start soon."
"...Princess Erna."
Princess Erna sat down beside Theo with remarkable naturalness.
"Hm? Why?"
"No."
"You just thought it was surprising that I'm in Class 1, didn't you?"
"How could I harbor such an irreverent thought? Besides, I've always believed Princess Erna's magical talent was superior to mine."
"Really? You do know how to say things that sound nice."
As soon as Princess Erna sat down, she glanced at Theo.
"Ahem, we'll be spending time together from now on, won't we? Seeing each other often?"
She tossed out those words for no particular reason.
"Y-yes?"
Just as Theo was flustered by Princess Erna's words,
"Hm? Why is everyone standing?"
the Crown Prince entered the class.
Crackle.
And at that very moment, as though they had been waiting for it,
the women who had been waiting for the Crown Prince exchanged glances, and sparks began to fly.
It was a moment when a new cultivation technique derived from Sol Velos might be born.