Kestral Academy (3)

The next morning.

When Leonard stepped out of the dormitory, he found Sophia standing at the entrance to the academy’s main building. She rummaged in her robes, drew out something small, and held it up for him to see.

“Here.”

A thin brass badge glinted gold in the sunlight. Though no bigger than a coin, it bore an exquisitely fine pattern engraved on its face.

“Your class was decided just last night. This is the badge for it, so don’t go losing it.”

“My class?”

Leonard played dumb. In answer, Sophia detached a baton-sized rod from her great staff and tapped lightly at the badge’s emblem.

“It’s Raven.”

Ripples ran across the badge’s surface and soon settled into the vivid shape of a raven. While Leonard was still examining it, Sophia dropped to one knee, picked the badge up, and pinned it to his collar herself.

— Click!

The moment the pin locked into place, the hood of his uniform darkened to black, like a raven’s feathers. Only then did Sophia give a faint, satisfied smile and hand Leonard a sheet of paper.

“That’s your new timetable, in effect from today. I’m one of the professors teaching you, so don’t go getting any ideas about wandering off somewhere you shouldn’t. Well then!”

She was off before he had the chance to get a word in. All that remained in front of the main building were upper-year students hurrying toward the lecture halls, and Leonard, standing there at a loss.

“Raven, is it.”

He fiddled absently with the badge.

Since long ago, mages had often been likened to birds. A bird surveying everything from high in the sky and a mage reading the state of a battle shared much the same gift, and perhaps for that reason the organizations tied to mages, and the idioms about them too, borrowed the names of birds again and again.

Kestral Academy kept to the same tradition, sorting its students into three classes: Falcon, Owl, and Raven.

…Come to think of it, I was Raven that time as well.

He had enrolled a full seven years earlier than in the original timeline, and yet here he was, starting his first year in the very same class, which left him with a peculiar feeling.

Ah — this is no time to be standing around.

When the bell for first period rang, Leonard hurriedly skimmed the new timetable and set off.

“Right, quiet, all of you.”

Amanda Ailwalker’s voice was low and clear enough to carry straight through the students’ chatter.

She had taught them several lessons by now, yet the students still hunched their shoulders on instinct at the particular air she gave off. Only one student among them was not cowed by the sight of her.

That child is…

Leonard Felix.

He alone met Amanda’s eyes head-on. A genius without precedent on the continent was standing in her lecture hall at this very moment, and that fact, if anything, was what put Amanda on edge.

Honestly, you’d never once imagine it from the look of him.

A child that small had gone around beating monsters to death with his bare hands. She had read as much in the report, but frankly the story was hard to credit.

Well, fighting is one thing — but will that talent of his hold up in alchemy as well?

After letting the moment hang, Amanda finally spoke.

“Today we shall be learning how to handle the ingredients for the potions that came up in the last chapter. The tools and ingredients are laid out in the cupboard, so each of you take a set and begin your measuring and preparation.”

The instant the professor finished, the students filed out of their seats one after another to fetch the scales and mortars set out on the cupboard. Soon the sounds of ingredients being strenuously crushed and cut rose from every direction.

“As I stressed from the very first day! Every ingredient is to be handled without spoiling it, and with the loss of usable parts kept to a minimum! Call to mind the preparation methods you learned in Chapter 1!”

Amanda drove each word home.

Among the students she was notorious for being boundlessly strict and exacting where her subject, alchemy, was concerned. Yet there was a reason behind it, and by her lights a perfectly sound one.

Alchemy by its nature demanded delicacy. Amanda knew all too well what fatal results an error the size of a grain or two of sand could bring about, so naturally she had no choice but to be hard on her students.

“Felix, open the first chapter of the book.”

“Yes.”

“I shan’t have you do the practical today. Observe what the other students do, and take your time comparing it against the book.”

Leonard must be far behind in the syllabus, and a practical in his very first lesson would be too much to ask, so Amanda set him apart with separate instructions.

“Um…”

He hesitated a moment, unable to answer straight away, then gave a slight shake of his head.

“Understood.”

A glance at the ingredients told him roughly what potion the students were preparing. Making it himself would have been easier still, but Leonard had resolved to stay within the bounds of an ordinary student as far as he possibly could.

“Haah.”

Leonard let out a small sigh as he watched the students make one mistake after another.

Kestral Academy’s greatest problem was that its students had no self-esteem. Deep down they had settled into despair, convinced that no amount of striving would ever bring them success.

What did people like that need?

A genius, at any rate, isn’t the answer.

Leonard had paid for his present power and skill with pain that cut to the bone. In the students’ eyes, though, it would look like nothing more than the airs of someone born gifted, never the product of effort.

If he wanted to get anywhere near them, he had to come across not as an overwhelming genius but as a plodder who worked for it. He could hardly change his age at this point, but as long as he watched his words and his conduct, he could hide the fact that he was at the third Circle well enough.

Even if he had to reveal his true ability later on, for now he needed to keep it hidden as far as he could.

Still, sitting here just watching is far too dull.

Pretending to read his book, Leonard looked around.

“With twilight flower I said ‘the petals and no further,’ so who told you to use the lot of it, right down to the calyx underneath? Empty that pot and start again! And you, there!”

Professor Amanda’s reprimands came bursting out.

“The unicorn’s horn has a faint grain to it, so I believe I told you to allow for that and cut it rather than crush it?”

At the students’ shrill “Hiiik!”, Leonard blinked.

Good grief.

The sight was too pitiful to just sit and watch, and in the end Leonard, unable to hold out any longer, opened his book and showed it to the student beside him.

“Um, have a look at this.”

“Hm?”

“Going by the book, the one you’re supposed to grind to powder isn’t the cinnamon, it’s the mint?”

The student blinked blankly, then flushed and shot back.

“What’s this, I know that much myself.”

Leonard had worried the advice would simply be brushed off, but the student went to fetch the ingredient again exactly as he had said. Getting scolded by the professor was evidently scarier than losing face.

“Right, that’s enough, all of you!”

The lesson was nearly over. At Professor Amanda’s word, the students set the tools in their hands down on their desks.

“I want each of you to call to mind for yourselves what you did wrong in today’s lesson and how you ought to improve it. Bottle the potion you made and hand it in on your way out. I shall tell you your marks in the next lesson. That is all!”

“Yes.”

The students left their vials on the lectern and hurried out. Leonard followed last of all, and the lecture hall that had been so noisy finally sank into silence.

Amanda lightly worked the stiffness out of her shoulders, then began going over the students’ potions one by one, closely checking each for color, impurities and the like, and entering the marks in the register.

Group 1 has come on a little from last week. Group 2 is still below what I’d hoped for, and Group 3 isn’t much either… hm?

Moving on from Group 4’s potion to the one Group 5 had submitted, Amanda was briefly taken aback. Unlike every potion she had checked before it, this one was vivid in color and perfectly clear, and the sediment was about right as well.

It wasn’t entirely free of clumsy touches, but allowing for the students’ level, even this much comfortably earned a pass.

What is this? There was hardly anything different from usual.

Which made it stranger still.

Amanda stared hard at the ceiling and traced back through her memory. If there was one single difference between the last lesson and today’s…

Leonard?

A student’s face came abruptly to mind, and she turned her eyes toward the empty desk. As it happened, Leonard belonged to Group 5, and of all the groups, that Group 5 alone had turned out a satisfactory result.

Was this simply a coincidence?

“…Hah. Surely not.”

That was far too much of a leap.

Amanda looked down at the register again. Telling herself the students had simply pulled off something out of the ordinary, she recorded an A beside the names in Group 5.

Leonard, having finished all his lessons, moved to the last lecture hall to take his supplementary lesson. Because his enrollment had fallen out of step with the other students, the academy had arranged it specially, worried he might fall behind in the syllabus.

I don’t particularly need supplementary lessons, though…

Leonard grumbled to himself in the empty corridor, where no one could hear. Yet at the thought that he might get to see Sophia’s face again, strength welled up in him unbidden.

“Excuse me!”

“Whoops. Hello.”

He flung the lecture-hall door open, bright and full of energy, but sadly the person waiting for him wasn’t Sophia Flavius. It was a man giving off the musty smell of someone who lived alone.

“What is it?”

“…”

Ethan, legs propped up on the desk and chair tipped back, glanced at Leonard with slightly hollow eyes.

“You’re not Teacher Sophia…”

“Since when exactly did you get that friendly with Professor Flavius?”

Ethan muttered it as though he found the whole thing absurd, and nudged the chair beside him out with the tip of his foot. Leonard pouted, dragged a palm down his face, and dropped heavily into the chair.

“Why?”

The question was vague, with everything before and after it left out, but Ethan caught its meaning at once.

“Because I’m the one professor here with the least to do. So, half by my own choosing and half by other people’s, I ended up saddled with it.”

He snickered at Leonard, whose disappointment was written all over his face.

“Anyway, what’s got into you?”

“Sorry?”

“I had you down for putting on a grand initiation show from day one and starting the term that way. You’ve been unexpectedly quiet, haven’t you? Whether you aimed for that or not, I couldn’t say…”

Ethan let the words trail off.

“In any case, be careful from here on. The professors already know your ability exactly. A gag order’s been laid down to keep their mouths shut, but in the end that’ll only be a stopgap. Somebody is bound to leak the story about you to the outside.”

To protect Keld Village, he had needed to wring every last drop out of his third-Circle power. With no room whatsoever to hide what he could do, Leonard had already expected his tier to come out to some degree.

What came after that was the problem.

“One slip and you could end up living your whole life like a stud horse.”

“You have a filthy way of putting things, you know that.”

Leonard grimaced.

In mage society, where ability was as good as rank, Leonard’s existence carried great weight. Magical ability was strongly hereditary, and so his blood held enormous value.

Seen from that angle, Ethan’s “stud horse” was very apt indeed. Where else would nobles who prized bloodline find a prospect like this to marry into the family?

“What’s your reason for going out of your way to tell me all this in the first place?”

“Prickly, aren’t you… I’m giving you advice. That whenever anybody comes near you, you should always suspect them and keep your guard up. Get yourself tied down like that, and life becomes exhausting.”

Was it his imagination? For an instant, a self-mocking smile seemed to surface on Ethan’s face.

“Right. That’s the pointless chatter done with — shall we get on with the supplementary lesson?”

Ethan jerked his thumb at the mountainous stack of paper on his desk. Faced with a quantity fit to choke the breath out of him, Leonard quite literally froze.

Isn’t this elder abuse?

Silently swearing every oath he knew, Leonard took his writing things out of his bag.