Chapter 19

Chapter 19: Talent Will Out (2)

The next day, the first classes at Saengterminum Academy began.

"The classroom is huge......"

"Want to look around the facilities after class?"

Even though lunchtime was already drawing near, the atmosphere among the freshmen assigned to each lecture hall was relaxed.

That was only natural. 

At any school, the first day was usually spent on orientation, with the students being told the direction of the classes and what they would be learning going forward.

Saengterminum was no different in that regard.

I, too, sat in a suitable seat and listened carefully as the teachers from each department came in one after another and explained the way their classes would be run.

'This damned curriculum follows the same general direction whether it's the Black Magic Department or the Holy Magic Department.'

First-Year Holy Magic Department.

That was the name of the department I currently belonged to.

Saengterminum's departments were divided into five major branches.

The Weapon Department, the Martial Arts Department, the Magic Department, the Holy Magic Department, and the Black Magic Department.

And the freshmen were assigned to departments based on the department preference they had written down during the Entrance Exam.

But no matter the department, the classes were focused less on theory or academic achievement and more on the practical question of how one would use one's abilities in battle against monsters and demons.

That was because Saengterminum was not the sort of academy that kindly taught you from the very basics.

Just look at the Entrance Exam, where they told us to use Holy Power to protect a Scarecrow.

From the very beginning, they had only selected students who were already capable of handling their own power.

In other words, everyone here was a student who had already spent time honing the techniques they possessed.

For someone like me, for whom handling Holy Power itself was entirely new, it was inevitably a disadvantageous style of instruction.

'It's not as if I asked Yulia for help yesterday for no reason.'

Even before entering Saengterminum, Yulia had been steadily learning how to handle Holy Power from the Holy Order.

When it came to how to wield Holy Power, she would probably teach me at least as well as, if not better than, the Holy Magic teachers at Saengterminum.

Which meant I already had something to rely on.

"Ah, h-hello."

"I heard both of you are from the Holy Order."

"It's an honor. I can't believe I'm actually getting to meet members of the Order in person......"

When I turned toward the voices, I saw three students from the classroom approaching Yulia and Viole, who were seated some distance away, to greet them.

I had already seen that exact scene more than twenty times during breaks. 

Even second- and third-year students from the Holy Magic Department had occasionally dropped by just to catch a glimpse of the two of them, so there was not much more to say.

At this point, every freshman in the classroom except me had gone over and introduced themselves to those two.

'Well, that was only natural. They're from the Holy Order, and one of them is the top entrant.'

The Holy Order was treated as an elite organization even within the Holy Empire.

On top of that, most users of Holy Power were people from the Holy Empire.

With that in mind, it was only natural that attention would be drawn to the two of them.

Originally, the two of them had missed today's orientation because of the aftermath of the battle with the mid-rank monster in the Rift yesterday.

I had wondered whether my actions had unintentionally caused the two women to draw a little too much attention from the very first class... but, well, it was probably fine.

'You're still better off than I am......'

The students in the classroom were all greeting one another, yet not a single one of them had come over to greet me.

Was this that social distancing thing or whatever?

Even when I had been in the Black Magic Department, plenty of students had come to greet me because of the prestige of House Bayonel, but now that I had entered the Holy Magic Department with no backing whatsoever, I was being treated as if I did not exist.

Apparently, the twisted image people had formed of me during the Entrance Exam still had not changed.

Even the teachers who entered during class kept glancing at me and minding my reaction.

Judging by the teachers' behavior, it seemed they had already heard from Levia that I had taken down a mid-rank monster... but they appeared to think of me as the type with a rotten personality but good skills, the sort of punk who was good at fighting.

Why was it? 

Why did it feel as though the way people treated me was worse than in the previous timeline?

They say people cannot be fixed once they are broken, but if someone has gone through a national war and the end of the world, shouldn't that be enough to change him?

This is unfair.

'Well, whatever. Take it easy while you still can, you bastards.'

I checked the time on the clock hanging on the wall.

Judging by the hour, there were about ten minutes left until lunch began.

'He should be here soon.'

This was where another reason Saengterminum was called a prestigious academy came in.

Saengterminum was an academy established to fight monsters and demons.

You could practice fighting monsters in Saengterminum's Artificial Rifts, but demons were a different matter.

Demons could only exert their power by borrowing the body of a contractor.

Since most people who made contracts with demons ended up living as criminals, training to fight demons was generally close to impossible.

Still, that did not mean there was absolutely no way.

One way was to face a Black Mage who, despite having contracted with a demon, could still control the demon's power and had even been officially recognized by the Dark Empire as someone who had mastered the Descent Type.

True to Saengterminum's status as a neutral zone, when I had been in the Black Magic Department, Levia had personally invited Black Mages so that students from each department could experience demonic power firsthand.

It probably would not be much different for the freshmen in the Holy Magic Department.

'I wonder which Black Mage they'll bring.'

I was thinking that as I cast a glance toward the classroom door.

Creak.

The door opened, and a sturdily built middle-aged man strode in.

He did not spare so much as a glance for the students in the room, his demeanor blunt and curt.

'...Huh?'

The moment I recognized who it was, I was left staring blankly for a second.

Every student in the class, as though they had rehearsed it, also held their breath the instant they saw the man.

That was probably because the air about him, unlike the teachers they had seen so far, was dark and ominous.

Step- step- step-

In the classroom, which had sunk into silence in an instant, only the sound of his footsteps rang out as he calmly took his place on the platform.

"...I can't say it's a pleasure to meet you. Just standing here right now is irritating me enough as it is."

His tone and gaze alone were enough to tell the students one thing.

This man was not favorably inclined toward them.

One student forced himself to raise a hand and asked him in a faltering voice,

"W-who are you? Are you perhaps the professor who'll be teaching us?"

"If we're speaking only in terms of the conclusion, yes."

Skin lined with fine wrinkles.

A fierce-looking face marked by a diagonal scar.

It was a face I knew well.

"I'm Dave Boris, formerly an Instructor at Necropia. By rights, I'm one of the Black Mages your Holy Empire ought to avoid."

The expressions of everyone in the classroom turned pale.

"N-Necropia?"

"I know that place...... Isn't that the school in the Dark Empire that trains Black Mages?"

"Dear God......"

"Why is someone like that in this class? Shouldn't he be in the Black Magic Department instead?"

The students were unable to hide their shock at the sudden appearance of a Black Mage in the classroom, but I was flustered for an entirely different reason.

Excuse me? 

Instructor?

Why are you here?

I had expected the Holy Magic Department to invite a relatively strong Black Mage.

Holy Power was the bane of Black Magic, after all, so most ordinary Black Magic would simply be purified by it.

But even so, I had never imagined that instructor would be the one invited here.

Even in the previous timeline, that instructor had never once been invited to Saengterminum.

Then why was he here now?

"Ha....... This is why I hate brats. Their thinking is far too shallow."

Dave lowered his head and sighed, then narrowed his eyes.

In one of his hands was a long flask.

Inside it, a white crescent-shaped object filled roughly half the container.

When he pulled out the stopper, there was a light hiss of escaping air.

"Didn't you enter this academy because you wanted to face not only monsters, but demons as well?"

Whoooosh......!

Mana burst from Dave's entire body, and the mana that had flared up blue began turning purple, centered around him.

A sign that he was using Black Magic.

Several students' faces turned deathly pale, and they immediately began sprinting toward the classroom door.

"That's real Black Magic!"

"Shit! What kind of school is this?!"

The students tried to run out of the classroom, but Dave did not even spare them a glance as he continued speaking.

"You're going to talk about subjugating demons without ever having experienced demonic power for yourselves? Heh, I'm past the age for word games."

Sshhk!

The moment the flask came into contact with his mana, the substance inside it vanished instantly.

At the same time, bloodstained lumps of flesh began bubbling up throughout the entire classroom.

GURGLE! BLOP-BLOP—SQUELCH!

The spreading flesh blocked off every door and window in the lecture hall.

"Aaaah!"

One of the students who had tried to grab the doorknob accidentally touched the mass of flesh and let out a shrill scream.

"W-what is this disgusting thing......?"

"I can't grab the handle!"

"The windows too!"

"Are we trapped?"

Before long, the mass of flesh had spread all the way across the floor and even reached the chairs and desks in the classroom.

RATTLE! CLATTER!

The desks and chairs that had been transformed into masses of flesh started writhing as if they were alive.

"Ugh... ah......"

"Let us out!"

A few students looked as though they were about to panic at the grotesque sight, but I recognized at a glance the demon ability Dave had used.

The ability to consume objects or inanimate things and turn them into masses of flesh placed under the contractor's control.

There was only one demon with that particular effect.

The Demon of Flesh, Bioji.

Though it looked quite grotesque, that demon's power did not actually pose a direct threat to human life.

The targets it could consume were limited to things that had never possessed life activity to begin with, and even in the case of objects, anything like an artifact that possessed even a little mana took a considerable amount of time to consume.

In the Dark Empire's registry, that demon was classified as Low-Rank.

It was fair to say it was suitable for frightening students who knew little about demons.

Of course, since it was still demonic power, it could be lethal to people depending on how it was used.

'Still, he really is going easy on them because they're students.'

Remaining seated at my desk, I observed how the students would react.

Before long, I was treated to the strange sight of most of the students, including Yulia, rising from their seats and facing Dave head-on.

All of them wore tense expressions as they tried to draw upon Holy Power against him.

They were Holy Power users, after all, so quite a few of them did have the guts to stand up to him.

Their nerve was not bad, but honestly, there was no need to go that far.

Not wanting to stand out too much, I put on the expression of a student who had seen demonic power, panicked, and frozen stiff.

"What are you doing just sitting there!"

Before I knew it, Viole had come up beside me and was speaking to me with a flushed face.

Her entire body was already wrapped in Holy Power to defend against a possible attack from the demon.

"Don't just sit there blankly. Hurry up and use your Holy Power too! It's dangerous."

I almost let out a snort.

Then again, since she was not a Black Mage who studied demons, maybe she still did not know about things like this.

Instructor Dave had summoned the demon by offering up the contents of the flask as the price.

What had been inside the flask were fingernail clippings.

And fingernails were among the lowest-quality offerings one could give to a demon.

In other words, you could not wield a demon's power for very long with fingernails alone.

Instructor Dave was merely testing the students gathered here.

Shrrr......

The masses of flesh that had engulfed the classroom all began turning transparent at once.