Kestral Academy (2)

The next day.

“Good morning, everyone.”

“Huh? Professor?”

The students gathered in the lecture hall for first period started when Sophia threw the door open and walked in. She had been away from her post on business for nearly a week, and nobody had expected her back so suddenly.

“It’s been a while. I trust you’ve all been studying hard in the meantime?”

Sophia strode past the blackboard and, with a bright smile, set a thick book down on the lectern.

— Thud!

The students flinched at the dull, heavy sound. It landed like a declaration that she meant to root out every trace of idleness and sloth that had crept into this class.

We’re finished.

I haven’t done a single piece of the homework.

That was Sophia Flavius for you. Beautiful, kind and adored by everyone, she was also an educator of boundless strictness when it came to teaching.

“Ahem.”

Sophia cleared her throat and began.

“I know it’s sudden, coming the moment I’m back, but I have one piece of news for you all today.”

She let a short pause fall and glanced toward the entrance of the lecture hall.

“A new student is joining the first year.”

The instant the words left her mouth, small, curious murmurs rose here and there.

“It’s the middle of April, though…”

“Who’s the kid?”

Since awakening came at a different time for everyone, a new student turning up mid-term was perfectly ordinary. Most students, though, finished their enrollment preparations by January, or March at the latest, or put enrolling off until the following year altogether.

Not rare, then, but hardly common either.

“Come in!”

A small figure stepped through the open door, and in the same instant every student’s eyes went round.

He had a tiny frame that looked ten years old at the very most, and oversized clothes that hung loose on him because nothing fit. His cheeks were puffed out in sulky protest. At a glance, he was a child absurdly too young to be enrolling in any academy.

Oh, he’s adorable.

When he fought the monsters, a ghastly aura had poured off his whole body, and now he was nothing short of a doll, wasn’t he? Sophia had been wearing a fond smile without realizing it, and she came to her senses with a start when she noticed several students wearing the exact same expression.

“Th-then, shall we have you introduce yourself a little?”

“…”

Despite her prompting, the child only stared down at his feet.

What the hell am I doing at my age, honestly.

Leonard’s face burned red. Picturing the figure he must be cutting in front of the students right now, he felt like finding a mousehole and crawling into it on the spot.

“…My name is Leonard Felix, from Keld Village.”

He fell silent there for a moment. Then, apparently deciding silence wouldn’t get him out of this, he went on, biting the words out.

“This year I’m… nine…”

“Nine?!”

One of the students blurted his age back without meaning to, but the others were so stunned that not one of them paid it any attention.

The minimum requirement for enrolling in an academy was reaching the first Circle. Unless his qualifications had been properly verified, then, there was no way Leonard Felix could be standing here.

On top of that, mana usually came into bloom at around twelve, yet Leonard had become a mage at nine. Three full years ahead of everyone else, he was a tremendous talent on that alone.

And for a genius like that to come to Kestral Academy instead of the prestigious Delonia or Everforce Academy? The irony could hardly have been richer.

“I figured he’d be young, but even so, that’s just too…”

“Can a nine-year-old even come in as a first-year?”

— Swish.

One of the students raised a hand.

“Professor, does that mean the new student is joining our class?”

At that, every eye turned back to Sophia.

“Leonard Felix hasn’t been assigned to a class yet. We’ll let you know as soon as that’s decided, and until then he’ll be attending lessons with us on a temporary basis.”

Sophia gave a small cough and spoke again.

“Leonard, sit wherever you like.”

With the matter settled, she rapped the blackboard with the flat of her palm, and its empty surface began filling up with dense rows of white letters.

“History of Magic, page 65.”

“Have you heard about this new student who’s supposed to have arrived?”

Inside the closed-off world of the academy, the arrival of a capable new student was more than enough to stir up everyone’s interest.

The rumor raced from mouth to mouth, and by lunchtime it was hard to find a student who didn’t know the name Leonard Felix.

“You can tell without even looking — he’s bound to be all show and no substance.”

A student said it with his mouth full, spraying spit.

“From what I hear, the kid’s not from a noble house, not even from a merchant family. What sort of proper education would a kid like that have had? He’s probably off crying somewhere nobody can see, now that he’s away from his parents.”

Some of the students took a dim view.

Unlike nobles and merchants, commoners often lived their whole lives without any contact with magic. In practice, students of commoner birth tended to be much slower to grow or adjust than their classmates.

“And look at Professor Prospero, while you’re at it. A man with that much talent is rotting away to no purpose at an academy like this one, so what difference is that little brat going to make? Being a genius doesn’t guarantee anybody success.”

“Well, I wonder about that.”

The student sitting across from him pushed back.

“They’re calling him ‘a genius the continent will never see again.’ If he’s really that good, you’d think people would be scooping him up from every direction whether he liked it or not.”

Kestral Academy had been built for students who struggled to cover their tuition. It enrolled far more students than the other two academies, but its outside reputation and the standard of its students both tended to be lower.

It might become “the academy that raised the greatest mage on the continent,” or one wrong step could saddle it with the disgrace of being “the worst school there is, the one that ruined a genius.”

Right about now, Kestral Academy’s Dean and teaching staff were probably laboring under a quiet sort of pressure.

“Honestly, I don’t know. The whole thing sounds like a story from another world, start to finish.”

When one student muttered that, the others tilted their heads.

Now that I hear it, this is a bit…

It’s all a bit vague.

Individual ability counted most in deciding a mage’s occupation and standing, but connections carried just as much weight. So the students were forever sizing up the people around them, weighing whether each was worth drawing into their circle.

The attention on Leonard was part of that same process. Yet even with nearly all his personal details already out, the students could not readily judge his ability. Genius or otherwise, nobody had actually seen what he could do, and the only thing properly confirmed was his age, so it was no wonder the whole business felt unreal.

What sort of fellow is he, anyway?

Once they realized there was no need to rush to judgment, pure curiosity bloomed in its place. Setting simple gain and loss aside, they wanted to see this rumored new student with their own two eyes.

“He’s here!”

At someone’s shout, every head turned toward the cafeteria entrance. A boy who looked far younger than any ordinary first-year was walking in, clutching the waist of trousers that kept sliding down.

He was just an innocent nine-year-old, which made everything they had been agonizing over a moment ago seem pointless.

Wow, he looks even younger than I imagined.

A kid like this is really in the same first year as me?

The students ringed him and gawked as if at some rare animal, and Leonard clamped his mouth shut. His first feeling was not irritation at having his way blocked, but pity.

Most of Kestral Academy’s students were children of fallen noble houses or of merchant families, which meant they spent every waking moment under the heavy burden of having to restore their families’ fortunes. Amid all that pressure, Leonard Felix was the one person they could approach with nothing at stake.

Poor bastards.

Students left at graduation with nothing but warped values that made them eye everyone with suspicion, along with crude skills that had nowhere to be used. The academy’s standard sank lower as a result, and the vicious circle turned again.

With the atmosphere like this, there’s no way anyone can properly focus on studying.

Unable to keep from lamenting it inwardly, Leonard was just about to let out a sigh when…

“What’s going on?”

“Why are you all gathered here?”

The students who had cornered Leonard were making such a racket that others who had been eating their meals in peace wandered over out of curiosity. In the blink of an eye, the cafeteria turned into a bedlam that was all but a marketplace.

“What on earth are you all looking at? Move aside a bit!”

“Huh? It’s the new student, the new student!”

Eating lunch through a crowd like this was impossible.

Leonard clicked his tongue. Seizing the moment while the students shoved and jostled one another, he ducked low, crawled between their legs, and slipped out of the cafeteria unnoticed.

“Hnngh.”

Professor Mark, who had read the document meticulously down to the last word, let out a low groan and leaned back in his chair. One by one, the others around the table showed their unease as well.

“The contents of this report are…”

“They’re true.”

Before Professor Louis could get a word out, Ethan declared it flatly.

“Leonard Felix is by no means an ordinary third-Circle mage. In ability alone, he’s already on par with a full-grown adult mage. And on top of that, I’m telling you he made up the magic he needed on the spot and used it.”

Ethan Prospero was a playful man who loved a joke, but he was not one to talk nonsense in a setting like this. Louis knew that perfectly well, and let out a guffaw at the sheer absurdity of it.

A child barely past nine had reached the level of the third- and fourth-years, and as if that weren’t enough, he had fought monsters and survived? Not even Delonia or Everforce, where supposedly only geniuses gathered, had ever seen talent on this scale.

“Hrm.”

At Ethan’s firm answer, greed twisted several of the professors’ faces into something ugly. It lasted only the briefest instant, but Sophia was sharp-eyed, and she caught it.

Filthy bastards.

Unlike the students, whose circumstances were poor, the professors had strong backing and solid wealth. Their trouble was the Mages’ Association, which decided where they worked.

Anyone who fell out of favor with the Association, for any reason at all, was left waiting indefinitely on the grounds that there were no openings, until at last they came drifting into Kestral Academy, a place with no prestige at all.

It wasn’t true of all of them, but someone here was looking at Leonard Felix as a lifeline out of Kestral Academy. Sophia knew that perfectly well, and her brows drew together.

“The reason I have summoned you all here is that I judged we needed to settle our story in advance.”

The elder seated at the very head of the table spoke.

“I am placing a gag order on what we have confirmed today, ‘for the time being.’ Let none of it leak, not to the students, of course, and not outside the academy either. I trust you understand the reason well enough.”

Every professor nodded. Political calculation aside, little good could come of word getting out that Leonard was at the third Circle. Drawing pointless attention and jealousy would do a student who ought to be concentrating on his studies no good at all.

“…The academic affairs office will settle Leonard Felix’s class by this afternoon. The professors are to await notification.”

— Tap!

Having finished, the elder raised the staff and struck the floor lightly with it.

“That is all!”