Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Squirm, squirm.

With my eyes closed, I caught a mana stone between my toes and tossed it into the air. I caught the falling stone on the top of my foot, then flicked it upward.

THWACK!

The mana stone dropped and stuck squarely to my forehead. An astonishing little trick.

All those days of wrestling with mana stones had not been for nothing. By now, I could detect them even from a slight distance.

If I focused my mind and narrowed down the places where a mana stone might be, the stone would respond to the mana inside my body.

Now I could keenly feel that mana really did exist within me.

Even if I still could not release it outside my body, simply being aware that it was there made me feel that I was improving.

As the final step of my training, I flicked the mana stone from my forehead and guided it to the back of my neck.

I was busy marveling at my own accomplishment when Koromang entered the room.

I had already eaten lunch, and judging by the hour, it was not dinnertime yet, so what was this? Startled, I froze in place.

Koromang stared at me with wide eyes and said,

“You have a guest.”

“Oh. Right. I will go out.”

Thoughtful as ever, Koromang quietly shut the door behind her as she left. Thanking her inwardly, I slipped the mana stone from my neck into my trouser pocket.

A guest. There was only one person who would come looking for Raphael. So it had finally come. Steadying my uneasy heart, I made my way outside the manor. The moment I saw the person waiting for me by the door, I knew for certain.

Ah, she really was just a child.

The moment I saw the heroine, I knew at once that she was the protagonist worthy of 5,500 characters of description.

Bishot Puremoon, the heroine of .

How could I not? It was hard to imagine that the world could contain two faces like that. It was merely beauty, and yet it loudly advertised that she was the heroine of a novel.

From her hair, dark as ‘pitch-black night,’ to her eyes as though ‘rubies’ had been set into them, to her ‘delicate’ features and skin like ‘white jade,’ she looked exactly as she had been described in the text.

I could only stare at a beauty so overwhelming that it made me question whether she was even the same kind of human as the rest of us.

The owner of that appearance, so embarrassing that merely describing it aloud might make a man die of shame, lifted her chin slightly and looked up at me. The instant our eyes met head-on, my breath caught.

“Must you truly go this far? No matter how much you rely on your family’s power, it means nothing within the Academy. Even if you follow me there, you will never obtain what you want.”

At her words, I fell silent. I was flustered, and on top of that, my head throbbed as I tried to think of an answer. This was the opening immediately after the prologue in the original work.

Raphael had loudly declared that he too would be going to the Academy, and in response, the heroine, Bishot, had come to admonish him. She tried to persuade him not to do anything foolish, but Raphael shut his ears and threw a tantrum.

He insisted stubbornly that he was not enrolling in the Academy to follow her, but to study. A laughable excuse. Raphael, who had spent all his time idling and indulging himself, now claimed he meant to study? As if.

Unfortunately, I truly did need to go there to study. I had to go to the Academy if I wanted to protect my position as lord, at least for now.

“Oh. Really? I see.”

I gave a foolish answer, knowing that nothing I said would be believed anyway.

As I stood there with a vague expression, nodding like an idiot, Bishot blinked as though she had not expected that response.

She looked satisfied merely because I had not argued with her.

Judging by her attitude, she must have come all the way here fearing what sort of outrageous nonsense Raphael might cause. Given the path Raphael had taken so far, that was understandable enough.

Satisfied that the conversation had ended without incident, Bishot lowered her head in farewell. Her black hair slipped down softly.

“Thank you for understanding what I meant. Then I shall take my leave.”

She turned and walked toward the scarlet-haired maid waiting for her. The maid let out a short breath, as though relieved that the matter had ended like this.

The knight standing at Bishot’s side, however, was broadcasting through his eyes, nose, and mouth that he was thoroughly displeased. Rays seemed to shoot from his glaring eyes as they stabbed into me.

As expected.

I thought they were about to leave just like that, but the knight switched places with Bishot as neatly as though he were handing off a baton in a relay. He strode toward me in her stead.

Tall, with a stern face.

And absurdly handsome.

There was a word for it when someone piled one overblown compliment after another onto a male lead’s appearance.

My sister had always excelled at that kind of shameless gushing.

And now the result of it stood before my eyes. He truly did have an unreal sort of face.

Bishot’s escort.

The Genius Knight, Jefrin.

One of the many candidates who might one day kill me.

Seeing him in person after having known him only through writing, the most striking thing about him was his eyes.

My sister lived on coffee, though she stubbornly preferred drinks with milk in them.

His eyes were exactly that color.

I let out a faint laugh, thinking that my sister really had managed to scatter her tastes into every corner of this world.

Did Jefrin take that as mockery?

He bit down on his tightly closed lips before speaking.

“Things will be different at the Academy from how they have been until now. If you approach Lady Bishot again, you had best be thoroughly prepared. Remember this well. Things will be different at the Academy.”

This was that scene.

The one I had argued about with my sister again and again, but that she had stubbornly forced in for the sake of making Jefrin look cool.

Later, at the Academy, Raphael was utterly crushed by Jefrin in swordsmanship.

Not merely defeated or outmatched. He was crushed in the truest sense of the word.

And then, with Raphael’s head ground against the floor, Jefrin pointed his sword at Raphael’s neck and sneered, 'Did I not tell you things would be different then?'

For readers who despised Raphael, it was the kind of scene that felt like gulping down a cup of pure catharsis. The current situation was foreshadowing for that moment.

In the original, Raphael had snapped furiously at Jefrin, shouting, “How dare a mere commoner!”

Was that not the very reason he later suffered such a humiliating defeat at Jefrin’s hands?

If I handled this well now, perhaps the man might go a little easier on me later.

Even if he did hit me, perhaps he would at least not put quite so much force behind it.

“Right. I understand. I will keep my head down and mind my conduct.”

“If you so much as approach Lady Bishot one more time... Pardon? Ah... yes. Understood.”

Jefrin clicked his tongue.

He looked faintly disappointed. It was as though he had wanted me to grow angry. As though he wanted a reason set aside in advance for taking revenge on me later.

That was not going to happen.

I forced a smile and said,

“Right. You are going too, are you not? Safe travels. Goodbye.”

I even waved him off.

As he left the manor behind Bishot, he kept shooting glances at me as though he thoroughly disliked me. His stare stung.

---

By living off all the things my sister gave me and reading one romance fantasy after another, I had come to realize a few rules. One of them was the importance of names.

Whether a name appeared in the novel suggested a great many things.

For example, within the Academy’s Swordsmanship Department, Jefrin was the only person whose name was ever mentioned.

Which meant that within the Swordsmanship Department, Jefrin was the only one who truly amounted to anything. Everyone else was little more than decoration.

Raphael, as a noble with a count’s title, qualified for special admission to the Academy.

In fact, that was exactly how he had entered in the original. Instead of bothering with the examination, he had taken the special-admission route. It was the sort of privilege there was no reason not to use.

How one entered the Academy had no effect whatsoever on how one was treated once inside.

But human psychology was a different matter.

There was a prejudice that those admitted through special admission lacked real skill.

Ordinarily, I would not have cared what others thought, but the trouble was that even Katarina, the Sword Saint, thought that way.

She used only one thing as her first filter in the entrance examination: whether a student had manifested mana. The remaining candidates were then made to spar with one another.

After that, she selected the winner of those bouts and took that person as her disciple.

In the original, that person had been Jefrin.

For years, Katarina had refused to take any disciple at all, claiming that no one had yet caught her eye. But this time, she was destined to be so astonished by Jefrin’s talent that she would accept him.

Jefrin might have been a genius with the sword, but compared to the other male leads, there were places where he fell short.

The Crown Prince, the Grand Duke of the North, and the Master of the Magic Tower all possessed not only martial strength but also splendid backgrounds to support them. Jefrin, by contrast, had only his swordsmanship.

For that very reason, Jefrin was given more opportunities to grow stronger than the other male leads.

Katarina’s instruction as the Sword Saint was one of those opportunities. Under her tutelage, Jefrin’s swordsmanship advanced by leaps and bounds, and at a young age he rose to the rank of Sword Master.

“I have to steal that.”

Now that I had fallen into a brutal world of schemes and bloodshed, strength was not merely necessary. It was indispensable.

I had to become strong.

And among all the methods available, the most plausible and fastest was to receive instruction from Katarina.

If I could beat Jefrin in the entrance examination, I could take that place for myself.

“It feels as though it might be possible.”

Jefrin was strong.

Even if there were weaknesses in his physical ability, in swordsmanship alone he was a talent at the very pinnacle of the world.

On top of that, he had trained since childhood, and his swordsmanship was on the verge of completion. If I fought him straightforwardly, I would lose without question.

But if it was not a real fight, only a sparring match, then there was one method.

Because aside from my sister, no one knew better than I did how Jefrin had been made.

If I used that well, it could work.

“Ah! There!”

When I usually searched for mana stones, I focused only on them.

This time, however, I had simply let my mind wander and, out of habit, felt around for the mana stones.

And then blue light burst from my hand.

The mana stone responded at once and stuck fast to my palm.

I had succeeded in manifesting mana.

As blue mana spilled from my hand, I carved the sensation into my memory.

It felt as though all the blood in my body had rushed into the hand from which I had released the mana. The rest of my body had gone dull, but that hand alone had become infinitely sensitive.

Startled by the strange sensation, unlike anything I had ever felt before, I flexed my fingers one by one. The mana moved in accordance with each motion. It had the shape of a glove laid over my hand.

I poured out more mana.

I expanded the mass of it.

I compressed it into a sphere the size of a fist.

Then I kneaded it as though it were a toy.

“Only now can I finally breathe a little easier.”

There were only a few days left until the Academy entrance examination.

At most, about ten days.

The second test, the sparring, was one thing, but I had been worried about the first: whether or not I would be able to manifest mana. Now it looked as though I would pass that hurdle safely. Everyone else had probably learned to use mana from childhood, but thanks to Raphael’s laziness, I had sweated blood to catch up.

“What do you mean, you can breathe easier? About what?”

Right on cue, Koromang opened the door and came into my room.

I checked the clock. It was time for dinner.

Her eyes fell upon my hand, and at once they widened. She pointed at me with her index finger.

“Ah! Ah! You manifested mana? Truly?”

Koromang’s eyes bounced in every direction.

There was no particular reason to hide it, so even if not now, I had intended to tell her eventually. Since things had turned out like this, I calmly stated the truth.

“I can use mana now.”

For a noble, manifesting mana was not especially remarkable. They often did it for the simple reason that they had to operate various magical tools.

But Koromang seemed to take it differently.

By the end of the day, everyone in the manor knew that I could use mana.