Chapter 32

Serpens blinked and looked around the room.

The dim light coming through the wide window carried a cold glow like ice.
In the middle of it, the figure of a woman sitting at a long horizontal desk entered his sight.
Blue hair. It was not a simple blue, but a transparent hue like a thin layer of ice frozen over a lake in midwinter.
The ends of her hair caught the light and shimmered faintly.

Her deep, cold blue eyes slid toward the visitors.
Almost no emotion showed on her face.
Her thin lips were pressed tightly shut.
Neatly arranged documents lay on the desk, and beside them, ice crystals holding a cool chill had lightly bloomed.

Frost.
The woman bearing that name was dressed so neatly and cleanly that it looked uncomfortable.
The buttons of her blue coat, ironed without a single wrinkle, were fastened all the way up to her neck, and even the small brooch was perfectly aligned.

A face close to white, as if it had never once faced sunlight.
That face, like a sculpture made of ice, silently stared at the two of them.

“……What brings you here, teacher?”

A voice that felt not merely cold, but chilling.
Serpens thought back over that voice.

“Teacher?”

She had clearly said teacher.
Who? Lucas?

The boy’s head turned this way and that as he looked back and forth between the two of them.
The guards were just as flustered.

“I am not your teacher.”
“If you taught me something, then that makes you my teacher and master.”
“I have never taught you.”
“Teaching is not only given intentionally.”

Lucas and Frost.
A cold silence settled between the two of them.

The one who continued speaking was Frost.
She closed the document she had been working on and glanced at Serpens.

“Is it because of that child?”
“It is.”
“To think you would bring a child to the Academy, teacher. And with Lord Lars’s nameplate at that.”

Frost tapped the desk with her finger as if thinking.

Serpens silently stared at her face.
Eyes from which no emotion could be felt.
It was surprising that someone other than Lucas had eyes like that.

“You would not have come to the Academy to ask me to enroll a child……. Now I am curious what this is about.”

Serpens was curious about that as well.
Even on the ship out of Killip Gorge, they had only talked about how to handle Aura.
That was why he had naturally thought they would return to Litoret and train with Aura.
But the Academy?
Of course, it was not that he disliked it.
Having new experiences was enjoyable.
He was simply curious about the reason, just as the words implied.

Silence came again.
This time, Lucas continued speaking.

“A recommendation letter for the knight examination. As the Academy’s principal, you write those, correct?”

Frost’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you think I will write one for you?”
“You will. Since recommendation letters exist for young candidates qualified to take the knight examination.”
“Hoo……?”

Frost’s cool eyes passed over Lucas and turned to the boy.

Serpens gave an awkward smile.
Frost did not like him.

“The authority I have only applies to students affiliated with the Academy.”
“There is a special exception, is there not? There are always exceptions.”
“Exceptions……. You are bringing up the word I hate most.”

The principal’s eyes swept over Serpens once more.
A body with a certain amount of muscle.
But that was only for his age.
An unkempt appearance and dirty clothes hidden beneath a fur garment.
Did he not look closer to a beggar than someone who wielded a sword?

‘What is worth being wary of is his experience.’

He was a child Lucas had taken with him.
However long that time had been, it certainly would not have been ordinary.

The quality of one’s experience was not necessarily determined by age.
Because it was decided purely by the person who underwent that experience.

But even considering that, he was too young.
Fifteen at most, perhaps.
She could feel an unfamiliar energy, but it was not at a level worth guarding against.

“A special exception…….”

Frost looked into the air and thought for a moment.
In the process, the ice crystals formed on the desk rotated here and there.

“Do you truly think that child can receive a special exception?”
“……I do.”

Serpens was inwardly moved.
He did not know what a special exception was, but was it not something good?
Even when he tried to hold it in, the corners of his mouth twitched.
That Lucas was introducing him favorably to someone else.

“This batch of candidates is not made up of people to be underestimated, you know? Their skill and backing are both guaranteed.”
“It does not matter.”

Frost silently watched Lucas’s attitude.
Her fingers tapped the desk again.
The ice crystals trembled slightly, then slowly shattered.

“How interesting.”

She quietly rose from her seat.
Her coat swayed gently while maintaining its neat silhouette.

“I cannot understand why you, of all people, would go this far for someone else.”

Frost looked back and forth between the two of them.
Her eyes were still cold.

“If you want a special exception, then let him go through the process according to the rules.”

A calm voice.
Lucas also answered in a similar tone.

“Understood.”

As always, Serpens was the only one with a blank expression.

“Let us set the date for exactly three weeks from now. It is exam period, so any earlier would be difficult.”
“Understood.”
“During the preparation period, you may use all of the Academy’s facilities. I know you are not the sort who would care, but if people start talking later, I think it would be somewhat irritating.”
“……Understood.”

Frost shifted her gaze away from the two of them.
Countless documents beneath her snow-white fingertips.
She looked at the documents with an empty expression.
Serpens did not miss those eyes.

“Then, three weeks from now. I will look forward to it.”

And the moment her words ended.
It felt as if the temperature in the room had dropped even lower.

“So, what exactly did you say I have to do again?”

A field near the Academy.
Serpens spoke with the bread they had bought as a meal in his mouth.

“As I said. Three weeks from now. You will spar with three Academy students.”

Serpens coughed as if the bread had caught in his throat and swallowed it down.

“You said they were not just students, but the strongest ones.”
“They are still only at the level of students.”
“Wouldn’t I also be at that level?”
“In some parts, you fall short of that.”

He was dumbfounded.
Serpens drank water, wiped his lips, and glared at Lucas.

“I fall short? Then what are the odds that I win the sparring matches?”

Lucas answered with a face that seemed to have no particular thought.

“In your current state, thirty to forty percent.”
“……I’m not sure whether I should be happy about that.”

It was exactly as he said.
The people he had to face were students close to twenty.
And if it was around forty percent against elites who had trained since childhood……
For Serpens, who had held a sword for less than a year, it was quite a high probability.

But it was not something he could simply be happy about.
Serpens had, one way or another, opened a path to Aura.
In a sense, the boy had achieved something his sparring opponents might not accomplish even after honing themselves for their entire lives.

‘And what good does that do? For me, Aura is only useful for making my hand sparkle.’

Serpens clenched and unclenched his hand.
Wavering black Aura.
It looked somewhat cool, but it had no practical use.

“Ahh.”

When Serpens shook his hand, the Aura vanished like a candle flame going out.

“Fine, whatever. If I do as you say, my odds of winning will go up, I suppose.”

What mattered to the boy right now was not something like sparring.
There was an emotion that came before that.

“But you said that the reason we came here is so you can keep me with you longer?”
“……Well, for now.”

There was something Lucas had said while buying bread.
It was something he had tossed out indifferently, as if it were obvious.

Clearly, Lucas had been thinking of parting with him around the end of this winter.
Serpens scratched his head awkwardly.

In a way, it might have been something he could say indifferently, or something natural to say.
Because in their relationship, the right to decide when they parted lay entirely with Lucas, who had allowed him to accompany him.

But Serpens still found it hard to accept the idea of parting.
Because Lucas was the first person he had ever grown close enough to think about parting from.

With a frustrated heart, Serpens took a large bite of bread.

Still, it was not yet time to part.
Had Lucas not changed his mind?
Though he did not know the reason, that moment had been extended a little longer.

Serpens did not intend to stay with him forever either.
He knew that was impossible.
Even so, thinking such thoughts made it impossible to stop his chest from feeling tight.

‘I will win those damn sparring matches.’

Serpens thought.
That the reason Lucas had extended their time together had to be related to his growth.
That in order not to be abandoned, he had to grow.

“Hrngh.”

Serpens hurriedly stuffed the bread into his mouth and stood up.

The time given was three weeks.
If the Aura he had finally obtained was nothing more than a sparkle, then he just had to train his swordsmanship as he had been doing.

The boy trudged toward the Academy.
Lucas also quickly cleaned up the spot and followed the boy.

Most Academy students lived satisfied with their lives.
They were thankful to have been born into families capable of sending them to the Academy,
and reassured by the fact that their futures could be guaranteed.

But even among them, there were those who expressed discontent.
Those people fell into three categories.
They were either top-ranking students competing over overwhelming grades,
commoner-born students who suffered discrimination over their origin,
or simply eccentrics full of discontent toward the world.

Their pasts, daily lives at the Academy, and futures ahead of them were all different, so aside from a few cases, they had no reason to encounter each other.
Those few cases included examinations, events, and the like.
Unless it was a day every Academy student had to attend, they had no reason to gather.

But today.
On an extremely ordinary day with no special schedule, many Academy students, including all three categories, had gathered.

“What is this? Why are there so many people?”

At the center of it was Serpens, his light-brown hair fluttering.

The boy had not intentionally gathered people.
Lucas’s words telling him to try training on his own.
Though the words were suspicious, Serpens had still gone to the training ground to follow them.

He had already felt the gazes around him.
They were all wearing identical white uniforms.
Only he was wearing dirty clothes with a single fur garment over them.

‘If it were me, I’d stare too, but…….’

He could not understand whether having one different outfit was really enough to gather dozens of people.

“Lucas? Didn’t that white-haired woman earlier say we could use the facilities however we wanted?”
“She did.”
“It looks like the news has not been delivered yet. Everyone is full of complaints.”
“They would be dissatisfied even if the news had been delivered.”
“Why?”
“Those people use this place after paying a huge sum. So of course, they would not like an uninvited guest who suddenly appeared looking like a beggar.”
“I guess that makes sense.”

Serpens was holding his sword.
But he couldn’t swing it.
The gazes were burdensome.
Two or three might have been fine, but dozens were too much.

“Should we…… move somewhere else?”

Lucas nodded slightly.

“That field from earlier was not bad, right?”

Lucas nodded again.

Serpens moved his feet.
The crowd parted along with him.
When he had almost made his way through the group of students, someone blocked Serpens’s path.

“Hi. What is your name?”

The voice of a boy whose voice had not changed yet.
Serpens recognized the owner of the voice at a glance.

It had only been for an instant, but that curly hair, which looked as if it had been struck by explosion magic several times, was not easily erased from his mind.

“You’re…… that guy from earlier…….”

He was the guy Serpens had seen when entering the Academy.

Reddish-brown curly hair and dark skin that looked slightly sunburned.
Shining eyes behind slightly bent glasses.
For some reason, he gave off an extremely overwhelming impression.

“Oh! You saw me!”

The curly-haired boy snatched Serpens’s hand.
A forced handshake.
Because too much strength was put into it, Serpens grimaced.

“I will introduce myself first. My name is Freak. Just as it sounds, I’m an eccentric.”