One of the students collapsed to the ground with a thud.
"Hah... hah..."
Without a care for anyone watching, the student crawled on the ground, gasping for air with rough, labored breaths.
Yet not a single person admonished them.
—Because every other student nearby was in much the same state.
"…………"
They were the very picture of exhaustion—bodies strewn about like fallen soldiers.
In fact, those who could still manage to make a sound were the relatively healthy ones. Most students couldn't even do that, lying on the ground as though dead, unable to move so much as a single finger while desperately fighting off the urge to fall asleep.
The training regimen he had devised—or more precisely, the training he had learned from his master and then adapted to suit the students—was, just as he had declared, absolute hell.
First came the magic power manipulation exercise. In simple terms, it required students to repeatedly cast a General-purpose Magic of equal power and attribute in the opposite direction to neutralize an incoming spell—all by themselves. If they managed to succeed completely even once, they could move on to the next exercise.
The students had initially scoffed at it. "Don't underestimate us—we'll show you how easy it is!" they declared with bravado—
—and in the end, not a single student succeeded on the first day.
They came to understand anew just how difficult precise magic manipulation truly was, and how much mental energy it drained. They realized how carelessly they had been handling magic up until now, operating on nothing but rough intuition.
And then there was the day of the joint magic exercise. They recalled just what kind of godlike feat Clyde—that is, their opponent rather than one of them—had performed back then.
Next came the magic power capacity and output training. This was hell in a different way from the manipulation exercise. After all—it was a brutally simple, no-frills gauntlet: fire off General-purpose Magic at maximum output, over and over again, with absolutely no finesse involved. And that very simplicity was what made it such a pure, distilled form of hell.
To make matters worse, they had to keep going until they ran out of magic power—no, until they had fired five more shots after reaching the point where they felt completely drained. They were demons for this.
As Ermes put it:
"'Saying it has to be painful or it's meaningless' might be putting it too strongly. ……But at the very least, when it comes to this particular training, there is undeniably meaning in the suffering."
—or so she said.
In essence, it's the same as physical training. By pushing yourself to the very edge of your limits, you forcibly send the body a message — 'the way you are now isn't enough' — and compel it to evolve.
Pure foundational ability training, the kind that has nothing to do with technique, ultimately boils down to exactly that.
Now that you think about it, it makes sense — they had never really pushed themselves hard with magic before. Before entering the academy, they'd relied on Bloodline Magic. Once inside, they'd used their Bloodline Magic as an excuse to give up. They had never truly gone all out with their magic.
And so, having made a genuine effort for the very first time in their lives, the sheer brutality of it had left every single one of them collapsed on the ground with their Magic power completely drained.
Ermes had probably been doing this for years. To them, it was inconceivable.
……And what was even more inconceivable was this.
That the same Ermes who — in order to give them individual instruction — had carefully adjusted her fighting style to suit each of them, who, though she'd taken breaks in between, had fought simulated battles against all of them as promised, twenty-seven in a row, who must have pushed herself through hardship far worse than anything they'd endured — was right here, before their very eyes as they lay collapsed on the ground.
The question was: how was she still carrying on, non-stop, with close-combat training against Niina?
The sound of sword and fist clashing rang out through the air. Ermes' movements had slowed compared to her normal state, but she was still managing to hold her own — employing martial arts without losing her form, occasionally weaving in magic with precision, fighting an opponent who outclassed her.
Boundless stamina. Inexhaustible Magic power. Refined technique — and a willpower that was nothing short of terrifying.
The students, still lying on the ground, watched the scene in a daze, once again struck by a mixture of shock and awe at just how far away from her they truly were.
──But not a single student felt fear or despair.
Because at the foundation of her teaching, there was 'theory.'
"If you do this, this part will improve for this reason."
"To achieve this, I followed this principle and did it this way."
"This approach is more efficient because this kind of reasoning applies here."
Everything was endlessly logical. The path she had walked, how she had obtained her current strength — in both her group instruction and her individual coaching, she had held nothing back, explaining everything to them with care and thoroughness.
Hearing this, the students thought to themselves.
She really was far away. Incomprehensibly far.
──But at the end of the road, if you kept moving forward one steady step at a time — there she was. In a place that, however distant, was unquestionably connected to the very ground they stood on.
That meant they, too, could reach it — that they had every right to reach it.
Because of Bloodline Magic, which decided everything from the moment one was born.
For them, who had been forced to accept resignation as their only option — with no reasoning, no logic, nothing but what they had been granted at birth — how great a beacon of light that must have been.
And his method of instruction was the same.
...Well, admittedly, there was something honestly a bit unsettling about it. He was somehow detached; you could tell he didn't hold a particularly strong interest in them.
Yet the words he spoke were unfailingly sincere. Precise identification of flaws, and genuine praise for improvement.
He looked at them — always on equal footing, without a trace of prejudice or bias.
This, too, was something they — having lived their whole lives in aristocratic society — had never known before: a certain kind of comfort.
...At the time of his enrollment, they had thought him an unknowable person. So first they had written him off as inferior, and when they realized that wasn't the case, they decided instead that he was something entirely different from themselves — and in either case, they had tried to push him away.
But here, at last —
Perhaps, as Sara had said, they were — for the very first time — truly trying to see Ermes for who he was.
"...Yes."
As always, Niina's blade flashed with a sharpness that was almost breathtaking. It came at him without a moment's respite, and this time he finally couldn't evade the impact — his stance crumbled.
She wasn't about to let that fleeting opening slip by. The tip of her sword pressed against the side of his neck.
"I concede. That's as far as I go."
"Yeah... What I should be focusing on from now on is the difference in range between sword and fist. If I can work it into my awareness that closing the distance is sometimes the safer option, my choices open up. Mages always want to keep their distance instinctively, but if the other person is a mage too, they won't want you closing in on them any more than you want to."
"That's true. I'll adjust."
Until now, he had always been the one offering pointers to his classmates — but here, inevitably, he found himself on the receiving end.
Yet he took it in good faith, quietly updating the tactics in his head.
Once that was done, he was about to say "one more time" — when his body suddenly swayed.
…No matter how you looked at it, he had pushed himself too hard.
He was just adjusting his future plans accordingly and bracing himself when—
“—!”
“Whoa there.”
A sudden touch caught him from the side.
He looked to see the blonde girl hastily reaching out to support him.
She then held her hand aloft, and a pale blue light emanated from it.
Gentle magic power flowed into him, and his fatigue seemed to dissolve into it.
“Good work out there. A-Are you okay…?”
He gave a calm reply to her as she peered at him with concern.
“Yes, thank you. It was just a bit of fatigue, but thanks to your magic—”
“Ooh, Sara-chan’s using magic on him! So lucky~ Do me next!”
Halfway through his sentence, Niina interjected with a pout.
“C’mon, is that okay? I worked hard too, y’know.”
“Um, well… Niina-san doesn’t appear to be tired yet… and we can’t really afford to waste it right now…”
“Aw…”
She continued to pester Sara for some magic, but the latter refused with an apologetic look. Niina puffed out her cheeks slightly.
Ermes remarked with a hint of exasperation.
“…First time I’ve seen someone ask for recovery magic when they’re not even tired.”
“But Sara-chan’s magic feels so nice—”
Star Corolla
"—I just love having it cast on me. How should I put it? Even after the recovery, there's this really warm feeling that lingers inside, and it gives me energy. Don't you feel it too, El-kun?"
"Hmm, something like that, I suppose."
While she wasn't as ditzy as Sara, there was indeed a unique quality to Sara's recovery Bloodline Magic—unlike ordinary recovery magic, the sensation of her magic power lingered inside the body long after it had taken effect.
Whether that was simply an inherent trait, or the result of some unknown property of this spell, Ermes considered it worth analyzing someday, and then addressed Sara.
"Sara-sama, you've worked hard as well. …Actually, is your magic power still holding up?"
"Y-Yes. It's dropped quite a bit, but I should be fine for a little while longer."
Sara, like her other classmates, was someone who did not possess a Bloodline Magic with direct offensive power. As such, she had been excluded from this type of combat training.
In her place, she had been asked to take on the role of healing classmates who were injured or fatigued.
…On the surface, this appeared to be a perfectly comprehensive countermeasure against injuries—but in reality, it was a downright sadistic message that read, "I won't let you use 'I'm too tired to continue' as an excuse," and all of her classmates surely understood this by now.
"But really, you've been amazing. I bet there are people who managed to keep going thanks to Sara-chan's magic and encouragement, you know? Especially the boys."
Nina praised her efforts with a faintly amused tone in her voice.
Indeed, that was likely the case. She had maintained a barrier over the entire training ground while watching over each and every one of her classmates, working hard to encourage them—sometimes with magic, sometimes with words.
On this first day of intensive training, she could well be called the unsung—or perhaps the greatest—hero behind the fact that not a single person had dropped out.
…Ermes thought to himself that this was something he could never do.
"…? Wh-What is it?"
When he found himself staring at her, she seemed to notice his gaze and began fidgeting uneasily.
"Nothing. …I was simply feeling a renewed sense of respect. Trying to understand someone who isn't yourself, never giving up, and believing in them with pure sincerity… It's something I was never capable of, so I thought it was truly remarkable."
"Eh, ah, that's—"
He had spoken with complete sincerity, but perhaps that hadn't been the best thing to say.
Sarah quickly waved her hands in front of her chest, her cheeks flushing with an expression that blended confusion, joy, and embarrassment all at once.
"...Ah, th-thank you..."
She averted her gaze, though the corners of her mouth softened into a gentle smile. Faintly yet gracefully, she whispered her gratitude.
—And at the same time, it felt as though terrifyingly intense emotions were being directed at her from roughly half of her collapsed classmates.
"...It seems the boys are all getting quite fired up, doesn't it?"
"Well, that's to be expected. ...I guess it's a good thing if you think about the bigger picture?"
Ermes murmured, and Niina replied with words that were subtly ambiguous.
And so, she gained understanding, respect, and even hostility from her classmates—more than ever before.
The first day's special training came to a smooth close.
It'll be fine—Lady Katia should be in the classroom right now...!
The preparations for the competition are finally underway! Look forward to the next chapter!