"Cut the crap."
How did it come to this? — Count Geist, the B-class instructor, thought to himself.
"No, pardon me. Let me rephrase — are you kidding us, Count Geist?"
It was supposed to be simple.
Just like always — go to Class B. Use his silver tongue to drive home just how incompetent, how utterly talentless they really were.
And then calmly draw out the truth. Make them confess to the cheating in the last competition — cheating they'd most likely carried out on the urging of Ermes, that lowborn commoner who didn't know his place. That was all.
It shouldn't have been a particularly labor-intensive task. There was no need to go through the tedious process of calling each student in individually for questioning.
All he had to do was speak from the podium, just as he always had — just as he'd done on that very first day Ermes transferred in.
Last time, Ermes had ruined everything with his underhanded interference, but this time the man wasn't even here. If anything, the Count had been practically giddy — this was the perfect chance to bring down the thorn in his side once and for all.
So, just as always, he began his speech — laying out exactly how Class B were dropouts, how inadequate, how pathetic.
And once he'd made them understand their place, he shifted to a gentler tone.
— There was no way you lot could have surpassed the chosen Class A through magic. Just like before, you must have been made to use some dirty trick of that man's, correct? Come clean about what you did. If you do, all the blame will fall on that commoner, and you won't face any further consequences — that was what he said.
In other words, he was goading them into pinning all the blame on Ermes.
Class B may have been dropouts, but they were still more capable than that commoner, and they knew their place. They had always been honest and obedient, following his lead — so naturally, if he said something like this, they would open up and bare everything they'd done. After all, that was how it had always gone before.
And yet.
"We'll say this one more time,
we
did not
cheat."
. A perfectly natural victory, the result of two weeks of legitimate effort and preparation carried out in strict accordance with the rules. That is what that man would say, and we accept it as such. To be accused of cheating is frankly absurd."
But the words spoken by the male student who was the first to raise his voice were the exact opposite of what she had expected.
The one glaring at her as he spoke was Albert von Yelk, the eldest son of Viscount Yelk.
He had been one of her favorites. When he first enrolled, having been granted Bloodline Magic befitting an earl's house—she remembered how his eyes had shone with hope and conviction over something so trivial, and how thoroughly enjoyable it had been to watch him broken during the joint magic practical right after enrollment.
After that, through her guidance in class, she had taught him his proper place. Watching his eyes gradually dull, watching him grow obedient toward his superiors... seeing her "education" take root, watching him develop into a proper aristocrat befitting this fine nation—she had trembled with pride in her own talent as a teacher.
And now that same boy was glaring at her with that same insolent look he had worn when he first enrolled, spitting words of defiance at her.
—Accepting that sincerely was something the inflated pride of Count Geist could never permit.
"W-what is that look?! Who do you think you are talking to?!"
With words that Ermes would likely mock as "Is that your stock line?" the Count twisted his face into a grimace and lunged at Albert.
"It seems that man has deceived you into forgetting everything I have taught you until now! To still carry on with that sort of attitude—what exactly have you learned at this academy, I ask you? Pathetic!"
"What I have learned? Of course—I have come to understand it perfectly well, even in this very moment. ...That you never had any intention of watching the students change, grow, or push one another to improve. Not one bit!"
Words unthinkable coming from the Albert of before—no, a rebuke befitting the real Albert that this academy had been rotting away—and Count Geist flinched.
As if timed to coincide with that, a girl rose to her feet behind him.
"...Everyone has been working so hard. Overcoming their differences and truly coming to understand one another."
Sara von Hartmann.
This girl was the same. When she first enrolled, she had been cowering in fear of everything around her, lacking any confidence whatsoever.
That despite being a mere baron's daughter, her properly measured demeanor had earned her the enviable position of being courted by numerous young nobles and even caught the eye of a prince—
which he had—
generously let slide—
and yet she still—
Now she fixes me with a face that carries the same impudent conviction.
"Ermes met me halfway in response to my selfish persuasion. The rest of the class accepted that as well. ...And to dismiss everything the class worked so hard for—the results of the tournament that was the culmination of all that effort—with a single word of 'cheating'—please, don't."
Though her words and tone were more restrained than Albert's, the strength of will she carried was no less formidable.
I grit my teeth and try to fire back regardless, but as if to cut me off, a girl's voice rings out from yet another direction.
"Seriously, I think you're the one who needs to learn something here."
Nina von Frodoit.
She had always been a student who was hard to pin down, but she was never one to openly defy me, either.
Even a student I had dismissed as someone who—while she supposedly possessed some minor special skill—was after all merely from a viscount's household and couldn't amount to much... even she now stood before me with something close to pity in her eyes.
"
We're
,
no longer
the students
you think you know
anymore
. If you keep screaming without realizing that, not only will nothing get through to you—but you'll probably end up worse off than before, you know?"
Nina, her golden eyes gleaming with an eerie sharpness, pierces the earl with her gaze.
That was the spark. One by one, the other students follow.
They say nothing, but the looks they direct at me speak volumes.——Undeniable distrust and hostility toward me.
"You lot, every last one of you—!"
He tried to retort, but perhaps cowed by the pressure of nearly thirty pairs of eyes, his voice came out small.
...A collective uprising from students he had always considered clearly beneath him. The sheer scale of it left the count utterly flustered—someone who had always bullied the weak and never once imagined they might defy him. There was no way he could come up with any useful countermeasure.
In the end, he kept muttering small, pressure-laden remarks, but every single one was just a rephrasing of his usual arguments. Far from having any effect on the students, it only—just as Nina had predicted—fueled their defiance even further.
In the end, he was all but driven out of the classroom.
"This is outrageous!!"
And so, while Ermes was in the adjacent staff room, enduring the instructors' petty, needling barbs with weary resignation, Count Geist burst in.
When the instructors cheerfully asked how his interrogation of Class B had gone, the count answered with a dejected expression—only to be immediately met with Head Instructor Legrand's furious outburst.
"
You didn't find out—
a single thing?
Is that what you're saying!? Do you think you can get away with that!!"
"I-I'm terribly sorry! It seems that this Ermes has quite skillfully talked his way around the Class B lot—"
"I don't care for your excuses! I'm disappointed in you!"
Legrand's thundering voice echoed through the room as Count Geist—who had been so imperious in Class B—bowed his head desperately.
A glimpse into the power dynamics among the faculty... but honestly, I couldn't care less.
"What are we going to do!? We've already received numerous complaints from the parents of Class A—high-ranking nobles, no less! We told them we would prove Class B's misconduct and asked them to wait! If we can't deliver on that, what on earth will happen...!"
And as for how this forced interrogation had come about, it was more or less what I had expected.
Legrand's face had gone pale—it was clear he was catching serious heat from above. ...Seeing that, I felt at least a small measure of satisfaction.
"Well then, as promised, I'll be returning to Class B."
"W-Wait!"
As Ermes rose to leave without further delay, Legrand predictably moved to cut him off.
"You—You heard what just happened, didn't you! If you don't admit to it here, a great many nobles will be put to serious trouble! If you understand that, then why won't you just admit it!!"
"I've told you many times—there is nothing to admit to in the first place. And if anyone stands to suffer trouble, it's not the nobles, is it? It's you."
"It's the same thing! If we're gone, who's going to run this academy! Stop stalling and just say you did it, otherwise—"
"Um, you promised that if you can't get testimony from Class B, you'll drop the investigation, right?"
"Shut up! Forget about that—this academy is more important! Don't you feel any shame for stirring up trouble in the kingdom like this!? It seems you don't even understand your position here. Who do you think we are—!!"
"..."
...To think they'd so shamelessly renege on a verbal promise.
This academy really kept surpassing my expectations in all sorts of ways. In terms of strength like Class B's, in terms of the A-class's... and in terms of stupidity like these people's.
"...My position? Now that you mention it, you did say something earlier, didn't you? 'Those with stronger magic earn more rights.'"
And even Ermes, for all his composure, did have his limits when it came to patience.
"If that's the case, then," he said, silently apologizing to Yurugen for just a moment before—
"——
If I
were to, right here,
right now,
kill
every last one of
you—
would you all listen to what I have to say?"
A shiver ran through them.
The magic power Ermes released as he spoke, the pressure, and something terrifying that could only be called killing intent.
Every single instructor present turned pale and lost their voices all at once.
They were, for all their faults, instructors at this magic academy. And what was most demanded of them — magical ability — was generally high.
That was precisely why they noticed. Why their instincts perceived it.
—
His
words
were not lies
— that he truly possessed something hidden within him, something powerful enough to overwhelm every last one of them, should he so choose.
Something that by all rational reckoning should have been impossible, yet they understood it through sheer, irresistible intuition.
……But naturally, neither their reason nor their pride would allow them to acknowledge it.
The instructors began shouting again — whether to regain their composure or to cover up the fact that they had been thoroughly intimidated.
But Ermes no longer had the slightest intention of lending an ear to any of it. So he ignored everything and walked toward the exit.
After opening the door, he turned back, caught fragments of their words, and delivered one final remark.
"'If I don't comply, the academy will fall into chaos, the order will break down'? Then allow me to reply — go ahead and fall apart, and by all means, take yourselves with it."
After taking in the sight of the instructors' contorted faces one last time, Ermes shut the door with a crisp snap.
……Well, that said, judging from the way things stood, they probably wouldn't stop pressing Ermes tomorrow and beyond. The promise made on the spot had been nothing more than "we'll stop pressing the issue for today."
But that was no problem.
Ermes knew perfectly well that the pushback from the Class A parents — which the instructors were undoubtedly about to receive — would only grow more intense from tomorrow onward.
Because —
Starting tomorrow
,
Yurugen
will also
join them
.
He would fully leverage his position as Katia's father, putting forward the perfectly reasonable argument that "the A-Class my daughter belongs to was defeated. No irregularities were found. Therefore, there was a problem with the instructors who trained them." On top of that, he would likely also include the way Ermes had been treated today as grounds for impeachment. That was why he had been given a voice-recording Magical tool to bring today.
According to him, the groundwork with the parents who had been pressuring the instructors would likely be completed within the three days ending today. Yurugen had actually apologized for not making it in time today and leaving Ermes to face the arrows — but even Ermes could tell that it was the fact that the groundwork had been completed in just three days that was truly abnormal.
The pressure that was already proving difficult to handle would now be joined by the Trackia Duke House, and moreover, it would be organized and led by Yurugen himself.
No matter how you looked at it, they would be too busy dealing with the fallout to even think about Ermes — let alone face Yurugen, who would have rallied many high-ranking nobles to his side before turning against them. ...Even being generous, Ermes could not imagine an end for them other than ruin.
So it would be fine to leave the rest to him. ...Or rather, honestly, Ermes didn't want to deal with those instructors any more than he already had.
With that thought, he silently expressed his gratitude to Yurugen once more, moved down the corridor, and opened the door to the B-Class classroom.
"Oh, welcome back, El— whoa, you look absolutely wrecked."
The first person to greet him was Niina. And the moment she saw Ermes's face, she gave him a look that mixed surprise with a wry smile as she sympathized.
"Well, I can pretty much tell what happened. Seriously, you've worked hard."
"...Yes. No, I'm really exhausted."
"Judging by that, sounds like it was even more draining than expected, huh. ...You okay? Want me to pat your head?"
"Honestly, I'd really love that right now, but I feel like Lady Katia would get mad, so I'll pass."
"Heh, you're learning. Well then, too bad — I'll leave that to Lady Katia. I'm happy to listen to your gripes, though."
With that conversation still going, I take my seat. This time, a quiet voice calls out from my other side.
"...Good work today. ...And thank you, Ermes."
It's Sara. She'd more or less figured out what happened to Ermes too, judging by the somewhat guilty tone in her voice.
"...I'm sorry. I'm the one who put you through the worst of it..."
"...Not at all. If anything, thanks to you I was able to confirm that the Class B students are actually quite reasonable people."
Ermes smiled at her reassuringly.
"Besides, I owe you an apology too. If the one who came after you was Professor Geist, then I imagine he said some pretty awful things."
"N-no! I was fine, so it's Ermes who—"
"What are you two apologizing to each other for? There's a limit to being pushovers."
Just as they seemed about to fall into a strange loop, Albert walked up from the front with an exasperated look on his face.
"No matter how you look at it, the ones in the wrong are those faculty members. If anything, shouldn't you be proud that you didn't bow to their pressure?"
"That's..."
"...You're right."
It seemed Albert had been pretty stressed out too—enough to lose some of his usual judgment.
But that was all behind them now. They'd already shown that the faculty had no bright future to look forward to—and above all—
"...The students in this class really did change, you know."
"They did. ...I don't think any of them will stay in this class."
Sara answered Ermes's words with a hint of excitement in her voice.
"From this class, they'll surely go to Class A, to other years, and eventually—to the entire academy."
"Yeah. And we're at the center of that. ...Doesn't feel bad, does it?"
The oppressive hierarchy and suffocating sense of stagnation that had cloaked the academy when he first enrolled.
It all began with the inter-class competition, followed by this round of interactions with the faculty.
Those who deserve to change will find a future; those who cannot will be trapped in a cycle of ruinous stagnation.
This was the vision Yurugen had once longed for, and Rose as well—and the transformation Ermes wished to see was surely drawing near.
With that premonition stirring in his heart, Ermes exchanged one more smile filled with quiet anticipation among the friends gathered around him.
At last, the academy has begun to change.
Next time, we explore what unfolds around Class A. Stay tuned!