Ch. 28

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While Aden, flustered by her stonewalling attitude, broke into a cold sweat, Jane, who had been wearing an icy expression, spoke up first.

"So you have doubts about me being the Knight Department's top rank too, Professor."

"...What?"

"Fufu... I suppose that makes sense. If losing to some Magic Department student means I don't deserve top rank, I understand not wanting to acknowledge me as such. I understand it, but..."

To begin with, that final sparring match had already sufficiently proven she possessed both the skill and the fighting spirit befitting the top rank.

The only problem had simply been that her opponent had been a monster disguised as a mere Magic Department student.

But she was too consumed by the thought that she'd disgraced her family's name to care about recognition from anyone around her; all she could focus on was her own defeat.

It didn't help that this had also been the first time in her entire life she'd been so overwhelmingly defeated by someone her own age.

"There's no reason for me to step down from top rank in the Knight Department just because I lost to that guy. Actually, this works out well. Rather than let this kind of doubt linger, I'll prove it right here, right now."

With those final words, Jane drew her sword toward Aden.

A sword giving off a soft, white glow, Call of Yearning.

She began radiating a fierce presence, as if she hadn't been the least bit tired from her previous sparring match.

"Uh... is this going well?"

As the situation suddenly took an unexpected turn, Anna could only bite her lower lip and tilt her head in confusion.

Seeing this, Aden let out a sigh and raised his own sword to meet Jane, who looked ready to tear him apart on the spot.

"Since the professor doesn't seem to have any intention of stopping this..."

Before teleporting back, having spoken with Benjamin, the person who claimed to owe his life to him, Aden had managed to unload at least some of the emotional burden he carried over the students who had died.

He'd also, to some extent, sorted out how he should remember them, how he should carry their weight, and what he should do going forward.

Of course, that wasn't to say every doubt about Benjamin had been cleared up entirely.

Regardless, the two of them had even become friends, and with Aria, he'd been able to catch up properly for the first time in a while, offering a genuine, heartfelt apology.

But right in the middle of all that, with the misunderstanding having only just been mostly resolved, things had suddenly taken this bizarre turn, and even someone as gentle natured as Aden couldn't help but feel a bit irritated by it.

A professor demanding a sparring match with no explanation whatsoever, and a so-called top student suddenly having some kind of fit and lunging at him out of nowhere.

From Aden's perspective, it all came across as incredibly presumptuous.

"...I'll end this a bit quickly. Please be careful."

Given how displeased he felt, Aden's hand inevitably became a bit rougher than usual.

…

"Ah, I'm exhausted."

Right now, I was standing at the main entrance of Frigia Academy.

Having caught a little sleep, the overload had cleared, but the fatigue hadn't fully disappeared.

I was tired enough that I could probably fall asleep the moment my head touched the ground.

"When is she even going to show up."

It was already almost 10:30 PM, and Jane, who should have shown up long ago, still hadn't arrived.

She'd seemed a bit sloppy, but I'd still trusted her since she was, technically, a professor; guess appearances really do tell you something after all.

"Hey, you... who are you, and why do you keep lingering around here bugging me? Huh?!"

At the sudden voice, I turned around to find a man standing there, a long spear resting on one shoulder, radiating a level of sheer, petty spitefulness that rivaled even my own delinquent mode.

Hair that wasn't quite the bright blond of royalty, but closer to a plain, dull yellow.

Skin darkly tanned, apparently from long exposure to the sun.

For some reason, he seemed like the type whose girlfriend you'd feel compelled to steal; his name was Gold the Sun.

Despite his rough, delinquent looking exterior, he was actually the captain of the guards protecting the academy's front gate.

I'd never crossed paths with him in my previous life, but in Aden's life, he'd been a monstrous figure who single-handedly held the front gate to the very end against Silver Ring's all-out assault, right up until the ancient being finally appeared.

I had no idea why someone like that was working as a mere gate guard.

Even in Aden's life, that particular detail had remained a mystery.

"Is it not okay for me to be here?"

"Obviously not."

"Why?"

"You're bothering me."

"Me? I've literally just been standing here quietly."

"Your face is bothering me because you're so damn ugly."

At the sheer, out-of-nowhere absurdity of that attack, my mind briefly went blank.

How had I usually responded to comments like that.

I think the first move had always been to shut that arrogant mouth of his up.

"Benjamin?"

"Aden...? Why are you coming out from here?"

"The professor said she lost something and asked if I could take a look around near the front gate on my way back to the dormitory, so that's what I was doing."

"Wait... shouldn't Jane be the one coming here instead of you?"

"Jane...? Ah, she's at the Order right now."

"Huh? The Order?!"

"We suddenly ended up sparring for some strange reason, and she was way stronger than I expected. It was hard to subdue her without giving her at least some injuries."

If it had been "hard to subdue her without giving her injuries," did that mean he'd half-killed her while subduing her?

So she'd been placed under the Order's care for treatment because of that?

I clenched my molars, wondering if the professor had just told him to fight instead of spar.

No matter what, she should have stepped in before things got to the point of actual injuries; what an idiotic professor.

By the way, I noticed this guy's arm was also bandaged up.

"What happened to your arm?"

"Ah, I got cut a bit during the match... since Holy treatment costs a lot, I just got basic medicinal treatment instead."

Since this guy was also a commoner, just like Aria and me, receiving Holy treatment costing 2 gold would have been out of the question for him too.

"That looks like a pretty serious wound if it needed a bandage."

"Haha, it's fine! They said it should heal in about a week."

Even without Holy treatment, the Order's medicinal treatments had reached a fairly high standard.

Which meant if a wound from a simple cut required an entire week to heal, it had to have been a fairly deep and severe cut.

"That's not good... let's go back to the Order. I'll cover the treatment cost. But before that."

The moment I finished saying that, I pulled a sword from its box and swung it at the guard captain.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

It had only been a single swing, but three distinct clashing sounds rang out.

His spear tip, which had blocked my sword, had somehow already reached right between my eyebrows.

"You little... what is this...!"

Fundamentally, a spear had a longer reach than a sword, and one's skill was determined by how perfectly they could establish their own zone of control.

So I'd tried to ambush him before he could establish that zone, but far from breaking through it, I'd instantly ended up with his spear tip right between my eyes.

Since neither of us had used mana in our exchange, it was fair to say I'd been completely and utterly overwhelmed in terms of raw physical ability alone.

"I'm sorry!"

Before he could even finish speaking, I immediately pressed my head to the ground and apologized.

I kept forgetting that, since the people who appeared in Aden's records were evaluated based on his own standard of strength, someone he'd considered weak could easily turn out to be strong by my own standard.

But even so, it had been my own fault for charging in, wondering if I might have had a chance.

"You... you've got a really nasty stench about you."

The "nasty stench" he was referring to wasn't about my body odor; it was about that particular scent unique to back-alley types, someone who acts tough only against the weak and cowers before the strong.

It was slang used specifically to identify people from that kind of background.

He must have sensed it from how quickly I'd shifted my attitude, without a shred of pride left.

I was more from a slave background than a back-alley one, though I wasn't sure which one was actually worse.

"Judging by your uniform, you're a first-year, right? If you've become a student, you should be studying, not swinging a sword around at people. Huh? You want to get your ass beaten to a pulp?!"

At my silence, Gold spun his spear shaft around irritably, clearly annoyed.

Hmm, I didn't particularly care about him misunderstanding my background, but getting my ass beaten to a pulp was something I cared about quite a bit.

"No, sir! I'm sorry! I won't step out of line again!"

"Heh, should've done that from the start..."

"I'll never forget this mercy you've shown me for the rest of my life!"

"Heh! Never forget my ass... you're clearly still grinding your teeth on the inside, but whatever, forget the nonsense, both of you get lost. Don't hang around near my post again. Got it?"

"Yes! I shall engrave this in my bones with utmost romance!"

"You mean gratitude, I think... an ugly guy like you talking about romance, give me a break..."

I'd just added yet another reason why I needed to get stronger, fast.

Because now there was someone I really needed to beat within an inch of his life.

Anyway, now that I knew Jane wasn't coming here, there was no longer any reason to stick around, so Aden and I began heading toward the Order together.

While I was internally grinding my teeth in frustration, Aden walked along beside me, seemingly lost in thought, saying nothing.

I didn't have much to say either, so we walked in silence, but after a while, he suddenly broke that silence and spoke.

"Hey... hypothetically speaking. What if you knew the future? How do you think you'd act?"

At the sudden question, I felt a flash of unease inside, but quickly realized this had nothing to do with him figuring out my identity; he was simply approaching the topic of his own regression indirectly.

If that was the case, I needed to answer carefully here.

"What kind of future did I end up learning about?"

"Hmm... it's not exactly a happy ending."

I stopped walking and looked at him.

"An ending? You're talking like the future actually has some kind of conclusion?"

At my words, it was now his turn to feel a flash of unease.

I could pin that particular question so precisely because I already knew about the ancient being's revival leading to a catastrophic ending, but he had no way of knowing that I knew.

"I-I suppose it could sound that way. Then how about this: what if there's simply a future where everything gets destroyed?"

"A future where everything gets destroyed, huh... if my future were about to be ruined, I'd probably try to carve out some way to survive, no matter what."

"Carve out a way to survive?"

"Right, for example, if I knew a natural disaster was going to strike me in the future and there was no way to avoid it, I'd build a barrier capable of blocking even that disaster."

"...A barrier?"

"Yeah. I said barrier since the target here was a disaster, but if something else could work as a countermeasure, I'd use whatever I could get my hands on. Money, connections, that sort of thing?"

"..."

"If I needed to, I'd even use the hand of that guard captain over there, someone I don't have a single likable thing about. And besides him, there are plenty of other impressive people at the academy worth pulling in too, aren't there?"

Using whatever you could get your hands on.

This was, ultimately, exactly what I'd wanted to tell him.

Which was also partly why I'd recklessly swung my sword at the guard captain earlier.

While I did have some issues with my personality, I wasn't quite the kind of psychopath who'd just start swinging a sword at someone out of anger for no reason.

And even though I'd felt a flash of irritation, I wasn't exactly some sheltered scholar who'd easily fall for a provocation as petty as being called ugly.

There were, in fact, two major reasons why I'd swung my sword at him: for one, since Aden's records only contained written evaluations of him, I'd needed to accurately gauge his actual level myself.

And the other reason I wanted to accurately gauge his level was largely because I intended to recruit him as an ally against Silver Ring.

If he could become part of the team formed to stop the ancient being's revival, he'd end up being a huge asset.

Of course, there was a nagging feeling that I might end up losing a girlfriend to him, but unlike Aden, I was never going to get one anyway, so it didn't really matter.

Being immune to that kind of misfortune, and yet for some reason, it left me feeling a little melancholy anyway.