Chapter 44: The Beginning of the First Act

Morning came earlier than necessary.

I got dressed and glanced toward the eastern tower visible through the window.

Sebastian had left before dawn. He had appeared at my door while it was still dark, handed me a folded note with a contact address in the city, looked at me for a moment, and left.

The note said: When the situation requires it.

"Now I was curious about his past."

I put it in the diary and went to the first morning assembly.

***

The main hall was built to hold the entire student body simultaneously and had been designed by the greatest dwarf of all time, someone who understood how to build a space meant to hold several hundred people.

High ceiling. Stone that held sound differently from the dormitory wing. Rows of seating in a gentle arc facing a raised platform where faculty stood in a line.

I found a seat toward the middle.

Lina wasn’t here. She was staying in another dorm with Aria, who had arrived a week ago on the nominated candidate intake and had apparently already formed opinions about several things. Entirely consistent with Aria.

I looked at the faculty line on the platform. Found faces I recognized from the novel and faces I did not.

Did the author even write half of these people?

The headmaster spoke. His address covered the academy’s founding principles, its historical record, its expectations of the current students...

Blah Blah Blah

The headmaster concluded. Polite applause for stopping. I contributed.

Then he announced the top candidate of the entrance examination.

"Representing the incoming First Year’s, with the highest combined score across all examination components Sylvaine Valtier."

The hall did not erupt. Instead, several hundred people silently updated their understanding of the situation at once. Heads turning. The attention that arrived all at once.

She stepped onto the platform from the left side. The look in her eyes was the same as before, the same composure that had nothing to do with effort. She wore the academy uniform as though it had always been hers specifically and had been waiting.

She looked at the hall.

Getting involved with her would complicate things. I only needed a way back.

"I will be brief, because the things worth saying rarely require much time."

She was actually brief.

She spoke about potential as a direction rather than a fixed quantity. About the academy and about the incoming first years as people who had earned the right to be in this room and would spend the next several years finding out what that meant.

It was a good speech. Better than the headmaster.

I watched her deliver it and thought about the corridor at the Ardyn estate and the carriage road south and the way she had said I am looking forward to it in a tone that had nothing to do with pleasantries.

She finished. The applause was genuine this time, which told me she understood how to hold a crowd.

She returned to her seat without looking back.

I was reasonably certain she knew exactly where I was sitting.

***

The S-class room was on the fourth floor of the main building.

Twelve of us.

Twelve students in the highest potential classification in the entire incoming first year, standing in a corridor outside a closed door. The ambient mana density was measurably higher than the rest of the building, twelve people whose mana hearts/cores were all operating at a level far above normal students.

[Quest: Release all your mana at once]

[Reward 500PS]

[Time limit: 48 hours]

I looked at the other eleven.

A room full of prodigies. Perfect place to try Aura Framing.

Some faces were familiar from the guild hall waiting area. Some I didn’t recognize. All of them had spent their lives being the most capable person in whatever room they were in and were now in a room full of people with the same experience, processing that at varying speeds.

The half-elf from the guild hall was there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, eyes moving across the group. He was assessing rather than observing. He caught me looking. Didn’t look away. Neither did I. We were still looking at each other when the door opened.

***

She came through the door the way the weather came, simply by arriving the whole class went silent.

Shizuka Hiratsuka.

The homeroom teacher of S class.

Early twenties, or an age that looked like it and might not have been. Her dark red hair tied back with the efficiency of someone who had decided hair was a logistical matter. She carried a stack of documents under one arm and a cup of coffee and moved through the doorway with the ease of someone who owned the space.

She looked at us.

"In," she said.

We went in.